at the death
of the day's candle,
the night makes fun
of its brief life,
sending the stars
to pin its soul,
forgetting,
nature has no end,
it is only a routine
designed by the heaven.

When I look at you, I see a wall:
A wary way of walking through the world,
hands pushed deep into your pockets,
keeping them safe from other hands.
Your laughter comes only controlled,
even smiles sometimes shielded
during our careful conversation
that’s calculated before it clears the air,
sentences screened for slips of the tongue,
holding back secrets that sit in your silences
when I ask the questions you can’t answer.

Whoever took that hammer to your heart
has this hard shell to answer for,
this barrier built on top of broken trust,
a mountain I am not strong enough to move
so instead I choose to love you from the outside in,
drumming on the door of this fortress you made
when someone made a fool of you.
May this love make such music that one day
you find yourself holding my hands
as we dance to it, laughing, talking, smiling, free.

My wet warm tongue
Wants to tango with your desire

I stare at you and feel the empty air
begging to be filled with
the admirations festering in my lungs

And as thoughts form flavor on
my lips,
I choke them back and **** them
with the smoky cancer

I exhale in a thick white stream
and hope that it could be
enough of a
screen to hide my eyes
and the hole I'm boring
into your face.

I pray that if you
breathe it in,
you can taste the
honeyed intentions

I fill space with common talk
that distracts from the reality in
which real feelings burn quickly
and leave empty an air that you
ignore.

I swallow it like absynthe
as my jaw clenches with
the weight of my masochistic heart.

You filled me with warmth,
wrapped me in you arms,
kissed me too hard,
loved me too deeply.
We laughed together,
the sweet bliss of ignorant love.
But it was not real.
We woke up empty handed and confused.
The love was a lie,
and the lie was a dream,
and the dream was lost.

I crave independence,
desire freedom
but I am trapped,
forced to watch
from this cell that holds me,
extinguishing flames of the hopes of freedom.

I've felt my fingers
withered to the core.
Wet chalk on a broken blackboard;
my words powdery prints
yearning for
a string of thoughts
that doesn't screech at night,
or that age old rhyme
that would surely make
the worst of my burdens
light.

Yet words that held no meaning,
leave me empty once transposed
from their coddled womb of inspiration,
to confined sentences in rows.

A thousand locusts inciting
itching urges
to scratch my mind across
a page,
but try as hard as I may
my rhymes betray
my age.
No wisdom pours
from out my lips, nor
knowledge
that is deep.
For all I ever held
with any depth,
I've dwindled in
my sleep.

Listen:
Despite my clingy nature,
and as unlikely as it seems,
I swear to You,
those **** locusts
ate my dreams.

I’m writing because it’s midnight, and that’s what happens. My fingers start itching and words start running around in my neural pathways. I’m writing because I’m not really sure I have anything to say.

That’s not true though. I’m writing because there’s always something to say. There’s always something worth hearing, something worth breathing in after it rains. There are metaphors I’ve already overused, so why not use them one more time. There are metaphors unexplored at the bottom of these literary chasms I chase my mind down into and somebody’s got to find them.

I’m writing because I have nothing else to do. Because it’s midnight and the world always starts falling asleep right when my sense of security starts waking up.

I wish you could see me like this in the daytime: unafraid, that is. Unafraid of what sort of patterns my fingers will stroke out on this invalidated copy of Microsoft Word that keeps asking me to validate it. We all want to be validated. You’ll have to get in line.

I’m writing because there are words like efflorescence that roll off my tongue like new pennies dropping into wishing wells.

I guess I’m writing because I’m sad.

We’re all a little sad though, some of us just see it when we look in the mirror. We see it under our eyes and in the empty space around us. We can see it where others can’t. In the empty space inside us.

I’m writing because there’s an ephemeral “her” to be written about, and she’s not even me. She’s this sad girl who curls up in bed at night and wonders what it feels like to be loved by another human being and wonders if it will ever happen to her. She’s one of these girls you pass up and walk past without noticing. I’m writing because my whole existence notices her.

I guess I’m just writing because well… it’s what I do. It’s what I do when I’m empty, it’s what I do when I’m full, it’s what I’ve always done. It’s what I do when there’s nowhere to run to and no one to run from. There’s nothing chasing me; it’s just me in this dark room.

I’m writing because the sound of keys is nice. It’s really nice. It’s the sound of pancakes on the griddle on Sunday mornings when I was young and of heavy breathes against the curve of my neck when I wasn’t so young anymore.

I’m writing because one day I’ll be older and my sadness will be out of touch. It will be a thing of my youth when I was self-indulgent and my universe was still small enough to only spin around me. Because one day you wake up and realize all the pettiness is still there but you don’t matter to yourself anymore.

I’m writing because I do matter. I do matter.
I’m writing because I can.