Ash black night.
Whipping river rain.
The screams like hammers.
A home is dying.

The night is a physical thing.
Flooded with the rapid waters of change.
The boy inside his room is oblivious,
he can hardly hear the rain over the massacre

The crack of thunder
sickly syncopated
with the rending of a vow.
The window is his world.

Light is born, and dies all at once.
Searing the shelter he calls home.
He sits, tiny to the world.
Perfect picture of alone.

There’s a war in the sky
and another down the hall
Which will never be long enough
To drown out the ceaseless splitting.

It seems the rain will not be ignored
soon, its prattling is the only sound.
Somehow time skipped this place,
Stole away a childhood to the deepness of night.

Dawn is breaking
Illuminating what is broken
The boy that was, is among the pieces,
but wiser, older eyes cannot find him.

There are moments in life.
Then there are moments, in life.
It's a gift to know exactly when
you discovered what love really is.
It was laying ear to ear with you,
So quiet I can almost hear your thoughts.
Cheeks pressed together,
yours so much softer than mine.
Laying, our backs on the cooled pavement
watching the sky spread out,
and the world roll over.
It's knowing I see you in a way few if any will.
A beauty that stretches past words.
Unfindable in any magazine or movie.
A living breathing diamond.
Intangible and unequaled.
It was the late night rides with the windows down.
The heat of the day dying on the breath of the wind.
The entire air charged with nostalgia.
Full of thoughts of friends and memories and feelings.
Watching the headlights cut the darkest parts of the night.
Thinking I'd die before I could find a way
to explain exactly what you mean to me,
but knowing I'd never be so happy to try for the rest of life itself.

I can lay
right next to you
and never touch you

I can see you smile
from across the room
without kissing you

I can watch you
leave the room
and resist hugging you goodbye

But sometimes
when I'm next to you
you have to ask me to move away

Because for a few minutes
I let fantasy get confused with reality
and I lean against you during a movie

And it's so warm
your arm and mine, touching
for that minute I'm at peace

But when you ask
of course I make room
Because I don't want you to feel uncomfortable

And if you weren't my friend
I would probably try it
just once, to know what it would be like to kiss you

But ideally,
I'll get over this
and when I am, we'll still be friends

So in the meantime
I try not to think about kissing you
and I only hug you when I have reason to

What I'm saying is
I will do what I can
to keep myself sane and our friendship intact

But just know
that with every look I give
I wish I could give so much more.

a few months ago,
you asked me: "What is love?"
As you can see,
it had taken me a long time to understand the question myself,
but I think I've finally come up with an answer.
Unfortunately,
the English language
has only one word to describe something that has limitless interpretations.
In Greek,
there are three words for the three basic types of love.
Eros;
lust.
This type of love
is when you find yourself doodling their name
on the inside of your history textbook,
dotting the I's with hearts
as if you are 13 again and you were just asked on your first date.
You chose that textbook
because it will be the only place no one would ever think to look.
You think about everything you would be far too shy to say or act in person,
making out in the back of a movie theatre
not caring who would walk past,
sneaking off away from your friends just to have two measly moments of what you both call "peace."
Most often,
this type of love is encased in "I love you"
only to obtain a certain goal.
Virginty,
a picture,
or even just one more night
of having them in your arms.
Eros is not authentic,
it is emphemeral.
Phileo;
Brotherly Love.
The friend you would drop anything for in a heartbeat to make sure of their wellbeing,
but also the neighbor you see from time to time watering their garden.
They ask you
to tend to their garden while they are away,
and you do it
even though you've never spoken more than a paragraph to the man
because it is what you believe is right.
This type of love is the devotion of time and energy without any promise of compensation in return,
purely out of the good of heart.
Phileo lasts as long as the people do.
The final type of love
is Agape;
unconditional love.
In religion,
we are guided
or pushed
towards showing this type of love towards the diety.
Yet, very rarely
it is shown towards a human being.
Unconditional love
is the ability to say so much with only uttering a single word.
I have experienced this love,
it is great pain
and great sadness
but the feelings of pain will never leave my lips
in case they are transferred to the person i wish to have the least pain.
This kind of love
is when it is not only enough that you think about them every waking moment but every slumber-filled one as well. You have hung up your needs at the front door along with the key to your heart and devoted yourself entirely to them,
even if they don't reciprocate.
They have been adopted by your body and taken the form of a vital *****.
If you do not
pay absolute attention
to them at all times
you will run into many problems.
You need to keep them running smoothly in order to stay alive and healthy,
because without them you are nothing.
You are a sorry sack of bones with a beating heart with no purpose.
Unconditional love is taking all the lessons you have ever learned
all the rights and wrongs you have finally learned the difference between and throwing them out the window.
It is the thin line between sanity and insanity,
heaven and hell,
and safety and danger.
You walk the rope
from building to building
without the promise of a net.
Unconditional love
is authentic,
but not emphemeral.
((Love *****, don't do it.))

I wonder if you pay as close attention
as I do to the little things,
the ones I go over in my mind
hours after you've walked away—
you turn and wave over your shoulder
and I walk the other way smiling at
myself like a fool.  I love it.

I am thinking about the slight tilt of
your head when you want me to
hurry up and follow you; about the soft
way you tap my arm with the back of
your hand, that I might turn round in time
to see what you're pointing at, something
you've decided I will enjoy, before it's
gone; the way, when I am sitting with my
gaze cast downward, that you reach out
and brush my hair away just to check that
my eyes are sparkling but not wet.

resting your knees against the tips of my
feet when they are in the way as we settle
into our little corner of the world, trying
to get comfortable. small things. I wonder if
they are but instinct to you. To me, they are
you claiming me as a friend.

I am weak. I let you, but I never claim you
back. I am no good at subtlety— everything
I do is too little, too late, or else it is too much
and far too soon. But words are forever, and
since I can barely speak at times, I have written
mine down.

Words are forever, and these are for you
my friend.

It was one of those mornings
where you peer out your bottom floor window,
and look up at the raindrops freshly fallen.

You feel broken,
and yet rushed with an unexplainable emotion.
but you know it’s a good one simply with a bad aftertaste.

You see people everyday, no, you stare at them.
You wish for relationships you once had.
Others you wish you could hold,
and those you could never give up.

Have you ever heard the saying about faking a smile?
It’s an understatement.
It’s not sadness, or anger really, just pain.

It doesn't start out as pain, it just evolves, over time.
The madness results in Emotionally caused Physical pain.
The pain doesn't hurt, it just...sits.

This emotion that we've nicknamed pain, rushes through the body,
Arms numbs, legs shaking, eyes holding back, everything.
It’s all caused from sight, with a drop of longing.

You see this person everyday.
You long for the same people every single day.
And your body just longs for them.

It’s not as lustful as it sounds.
You just possess an attraction to these people.
An attraction that even the most specific and descriptive of words could not describe.

You sit there and you are bound by society’s lock on intermingling.
You are bound by the mock and disgust of others.
You are bound by that person of which you desire.
You are bound simply by yourself.

All this.
All of this Emotion, if you will, was bound in that little drop that clings to the window.
That was but a drop of what I feel every single day.

You can’t imagine
but don't let me sound as if I am exaggerating.
For I am not.

I have felt wonderful things.
Things I am not sure most of you have felt.
Though I wish you could.

I wish I could place my hand on your chest
I wish that all of that energy, that emotion, would flow into you and then back into me.
I could look into your eyes, and I would know, that you know, how I feel.

You could understand everything.
You could sympathise.
but the fact of the matter is, you simply can’t.

I do not believe you have felt what I have felt too, no.
Different version and variations, yes.
But this feeling of impossibility, I know you have not felt.

You are common rebel,
this is not bad, no not at all,
you have more opportunities to release this emotion than I ever will.

And i envy you. All of you. Every Last one.

You look away from the rain drops.
You go back to living.
You go back to hiding.
You go back to solitude.

Yeah, it was just one of those mornings I guess.

just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess,
addicted to the feeling of something that could be
a distant cousin of loss,
but can’t be loss when it wasn’t there to begin with.
a cousin of loss and brother of bereavement,
a lexiconical gap
in the english maw,
a space where the definition slipped out
but the word never grew in.
a gap where a word should be,
a word meaning missing something you never had,
losing something that was never yours,
grieving for something that never looked your way
or graced you with its pain.
insomnia of the soul,
unable or unwilling to droop into the catatonic stupor
of love,
until my eyes ache with open,
and my heart aches with empty
and just beautiful aches and pains,
like stiff joints filled with sterling silver
or arthritic necklace clasps.
my tongue is tin because the argentine
is in my hands,
silver in the space between the carpals,
oozing precious metals
onto the page.
writing in second-best so that it’ll stay.
writing second-rate love letters
and pretending they’re real,
like the words i moan mean something other than
hello
i’m lonely
who are you?
like i’m not the girl who cried love
because the village had already learned
that wolves are lies,
and vice versa.
because faking it has always been my favorite pastime.
i’ll write love poems forever,
keep feeding my addiction for as long as it stays,
let my loveless track marks bloom cantankerous sores
on my ribs.
while i’m young
i’ll write poems of arthritis and weakness
and death,
because oh now i am immortal
invulnerable and omnipotent,
but when my bones are brittle and my flesh is loose
and my spine makes me bow to the earth,
my poems will be of life and strength
and god
because darkness is only beautiful when it isn’t
an imminent looming
future.
when i know i may die tomorrow,
i will write of bluejays
and of a love that never found me,
though it knocked on all the doors and called all the numbers,
waited on my porch while i hid in the closet,
nursing my ache
trying to fill a lexiconical gap
with bukowski
and insomnia.
supersaturated with emptiness
because all the words in the dictionary
can’t make up for the one that’s missing.
it changed the locks when it came,
shutting me out of my skull,
taking residence in my chest
and growing larger with each slow breath.
every huff of oxygen fed my
resident,
every injection of
late nights spent just writing,
every pill popped -
the lies that went down better
if i said them with a gulp of gin.
so my lovelessness cracked my ribs as it grew,
replaced my marrow with sterling silver
and i watched it happen like
a glacier devouring a desert
because i knew i would never survive loving something.
deserts were never made to run bounteous
with water.
just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess.
addicted to silver joints
and words that don’t exist.

Anglophilia
An early passion
one cannot say
when or why
perhaps his father's admiration
or was it his mother's apprehension
for them

Leaves of sweet ruby tea
hot ginger pasties
glory of candle skinned  ladies
the warm eyes and cold hearts
what lovely cats you have

Avon flows, its quiet cenote waters
surrounding the poetical urns
Cheery children
noses against windows
those of shopkeepers
that smothered
Napoleon

Yes, Avon flows
the timely midnight trains
to a myriad country stations
all the many
noble selfish
ideals
Joy of bright roses
in a small garden below
where the Keats still play
Adam and Eve
and hear the City's pride
its mechanical soul  
sing its hollow lonely tune again
Oh, where did all the angels go?

i.
He told her
That mathematics was too
Sombre.
Too, too
Linear
To be poetic.

She said that
He had only seen himself
In a mirror,
A reversed hologram
Of his external self
Burned into his retinas with
His subconscious filling in the gaps.

But she had seen him
The rays reflected straight off him
Into her eyes;
Not some half-assed reflection
Off some silvered surface.

ii.
She said that
His jawline was
The ***** of a curve
Pencilled on a graph sheet.
His candlewax skin
A wavelength
Quantifiable on paper.
His spine
A number line with
Dashes, to show real numbers
The set of which was infinite.

She said that
A Fibonacci sketch was
A minimalist rose,
A post-modern bouquet.

And that
The reflected pale morning sun
In a half finished cup of camomile tea
Was a cardioid
With fixed coordinate values on the axes
And an algorithmic tangent.

And he
Was a negative infinity
A paradox not sorted under
Quine's classification system.

iii.
She had
Recorded his heartbeat and blood pressure;
Measured the distance between his lips with her own;
Tried so hard, so very, very hard
To put him down in a numerical form
And write him off as an equation.

But all she could say was
That he was more
Than the sum total of his meagre parts
And that she
Was his reciprocal value.