The star doesn't shine
(no candle is inside)
The wind doesn't blow
(no switch has been flipped)
The words mean nothing
(no book has been opened)
The bed isn't made
(no person slept there)
The heart doesn't long
(no heart beats)
The phone doesn't ring
(no one questions)

I hung mistletoe
I heard you were in town
visiting your parents,
or something.
I cleaned my house
and I shaved
and I bought three packs of cigarettes.
I sat in my room,
by the phone,
smoking cigarettes,
waiting for you to call.
Finally,
4 packs,
and two days later you did
and I picked up
before the first ring ended.
And the second I heard your voice say "hello"
I hung up.

I asked you if you would like me to stop writing about you.
You said no, you would just stop reading what I wrote.

Who else do I wish to read these words?
Even if I'm not writing about you,
I'm writing about you.
because you're here,
you're a part of me,
and I'm better because of that.

I need to stop writing about you,
hoping for things to change.
I need to start writing poetry again.

I wrote a poem about you in my mind.
It was short and snappy and sure to hurt.

Why?

I still love you
and nothing can change that.

I've been finding it terribly hard to write more than disillusioned rants and I've been finding it even more difficult to sit still with my thoughts.

I think about you a lot and it never fails to make me happy. Never. But I can't think about you all the time, and those moments late at night when I can't see the moon for the ceiling and I can't hear your voice for the time negative thoughts linger. And usually I let them vent, like a man professing his love by writing it in wet cement, I put thought to hand and pen to paper but now... I don't know.

I can write about you and God knows I do. God also knows I have not and hope not to run out of things to write about you. But there are other things in my mind that I wish to let out but I can't. There's a purple liquid slowly amassing to a sizeable resivior in the bottom left corner of my brain; I can feel it. It's where I store my doubts and anxieties but it's been dammed.

Driving back, I couldn't wait to get home.
Now I'm home,
smoked a couple cigarettes,
took a shower,
started a load of laundry
and it took me a minute to realize
all I really wanted was not to come home,
but to come home to you.

It's hard for me to believe the things you say.
It's hard for me to think of you
without a hint of bitterness
intruding upon the smell of jasmine
that you left to linger in my mind.

I wish things were simple;
like they used to be,
like they should be.

I wish I knew what complicated things
(I know what, I wish I knew why they complicated things)
so I could fix it.

I'm the same
and I can't help but feel that you've changed.
Changed as people do,
nothing wrong with that
(nothing wrong with that)
I just wish your changes didn't include
cutting me out of your life.

I'll be here,
waiting in my room for the phone to ring,
but I'm tired of leaving you voicemails
and I'm tired of waiting for a call,
and I'm tired of being tired.

I've been good,
my life has been good
and you've been gone
and it's hard for me to determine  
if I'm happier about that which has been going on
or sadder about you being gone.

The higher I get the closer to God I become.
I can feel him, coursing through my veins.

I promised you I would get sober
but you left

I've written three poems tonight,
and each one ended up in my waste basket.
Sometime after writing the third,
and giving up for the night
I realized what was wrong.

I wasn't writing about you.

I've only talked to you once.
We were in the school library.
I was cutting out on Biology and you were working ******* finishing a Chemistry lab write up.
I noticed how beautiful you looked as you walked up to the Librarian's desk and asked for a tissue to blow your nose.
Your dark hair was pulled back and your tights wrapped perfectly around your legs and you lipstick was the perfect shade of red and your boots came a quarter of the way up your shin and I never felt so emotionally detached from the world around me as I did in that moment, watching you blow your nose.

As you walked passed I said in a hush only you could hear "Love is more thicker than forget; more thinner than recall; more seldom than a wave is wet; more frequent than to fail."

And you stopped there, in that moment. You did not turn around but simply said "It is most mad and moonly, and less it shall unbe; than all the sea; which only is deeper than the sea."

And in that moment I never felt so found. I never felt so infinite.
We were connected by the meaning of our recitals
as well as by the soles of our shoes.

And when something is so truly beautiful it is lost.
And it must never be found.
And so we have not spoken again.
Yet we know so much about the other.

I'm not feeling regret or bitterness
I just wish you'd stop embarrassing yourself.

And if this will only make you sad, for God's sake do not read it.
I miss the way I thought of you before I really knew you.
I miss the way I perceived you to be.
As this beautiful, mysterious, intelligent thing.
I don't miss how you turned out to be.
How you were all along.

And if this is making you sad, I beseech thee; do not continue.
I miss the way your hair smelled in my mind, before I ever smelled it.
I miss the way I imagined your hands touching.
The soft elegant strokes would run across my back and neck.
I don't miss how they turned out to feel,
only how they felt before you ever stroked my skin.

And if this will only make you angry, avert your eyes, please.
Because I do not need you.
Least of all angry.
I need to do this though.
I need to put these words out there.
Just as I did before I met you.
Just as I did while I had you.
Just as I do now that I lost you.

I am a burning candle and I have burned out.
There is still a lot of wick left, though.
But I'm too drunk to find my lighter.
And who really gives a **** anyway.

It's nights like this
and it's girls like her
and it's wine like my father's
that make me enjoy drinking alone.
The taste of the locally produced wine
and the failure of love despicably drawn out
and the dry heat of scorching July nights that validate my drunken state.

Understanding that no two headed boy will save me tonight
and the acceptance of lost cigarettes makes this night
even more painful and forlorn.


The shadows envelope the tip of the Tree around nine o'clock this time of year.
The heat stays
and so will I.
Drunken,
nervous,
longing,
afraid.
With no two headed boy to save me tonight.

Oh you're face,
oh so full of beauty and so full of grace,
and oh how i hate your graceful ******* face.

I once heard a man say
If i don't go to hell when i die then i might go to heaven,
but probably not
and it has always stuck with me.

And i have made it a habit of mine to not capitalize my i's.
Because really, what's so important about me that i should be capitalized?
And what's so important about God that "He" may be capitalized?
And what's so important about Jesus that he should have a book written about him?
It's not like Jesus even had a biological father, anyway.

And why are we here?
And why does Santa live in the North Pole?
It's so inconvenient.
Why would the man who gives toys to all the kids in the world live in one of the few places on Earth that has no kids?

The word that really should be capitalized is Earth.
Earth is everything.
And Stars should be capitalized as well.
After all, we are all made of Stars.

And just one final thought, before i click save poem and shot my laptop and try to get some sleep,
why do people say The Universe?
As if they aren't more.
Why does ours get to be called "The" Universe with a capitalized T and U?
And one final thought (I promise this is the final thought) what's so important about capitalizing anyway?

-
Nothing
is more
scary than
realizing
you still love
the person
you told
you no
longer
want to
talk to.
-*

I've been thinking about all the wrongs
I did to you and did while we were together.
And maybe it's that I want to apologize
and maybe it's that I've been feeling weird
all day and this is why.

I don't know what I want.
I want to not want you.
How terribly inconvenient attraction is.
How terribly inconvenient your beauty is to me.
I may regret this later,
after your eyes have chanced upon it
but that's only if you take it the wrong way.

If someone wrote a book about me,
about my life,
it would be boring.
It would be the same thing everyday with occasional flare ups of happiness and love.
The ending would be good though.
The part where the main character kills himself, that will make the book.
Up until the final chapter it will be boring but you have to read it.
You have to understand.
You have to understand why the book must end.

And what a slap in the face it is
to keep my father's old driver's license
tucked nicely into my cigarette pouch.
Because every son wants to slap his father's face
and also to be just like him.

They say stress can cause headaches
and nausea
and cramps
and they say that stress can lower your bodies ability to fight infection and viruses.

But I'm here to tell you that it's not stress that causes those things for me.
Stress is partly to blame.
It's a combination of stress and lack of cigarettes
and alcohol
and laughs
and love
and they say that too much of anything is a bad thing but I'm here to tell you that not enough of some things can be just as bad.

A lack of water can cause headaches
just as a lack of cigarettes will.
A lack of sleep can cause stress
just as a lack of cigarettes will.
A lack of purpose can cause depression
but a lack of cigarettes will not.

Dedicated to Bobby Trice, Willem Cole Traupel, and Haley Ristow*

Spilled sodas
and spilled hearts.
Smoked cigarettes
and smoked days.

The snow has ceased falling, and my mood has continued climbing.
What used to be a dark shade of orange, an orange haze,
is now a light, gentle shade of white.
Crisp and clear.

And as I shoveled the drive way,
I thought of the less than extraordinary Sunday
and how extraordinary it was.

And as I looked into my cigarette pack, finding it empty,
I remembered a quote the director of our school play had said
"Do not cry because it's over, smile because it happened"
And I guess it's silly to think of a pack of Organic American Spirits in the same shade of white that others think of a school play.
Maybe it's not so much the cigarettes but the people I shared them with.
The people I love.
My bestfriends.

I write about it a lot,
but the truth is
love is fleeting.

Like a bird
that lands on a lamppost
it will remain for only a moment.
Before departing;
spreading it's wings
and flying to a new heart.

Breathe deeply
and lengthily
so as to avoid
becoming light headed.

You are so beautiful to me
and I want you to want me
as I want you.
I want you to read these words
the way I read the ones you write about
a boy better than me.

I have everything I could ask for.
I'm white, straight and I hail from a lower-middle class household.
So why do I lay in bed and wallow in self pity when everything I could ever ask for sits right in front of me.
I have enough money to buy all the drugs I need and if I run out I can steal my mothers medication and sell it (I've never been a fan of amphetamines.)
I have two or three girls who take their clothes off and kiss my chest without me asking them too,
and I have friends who pick me up whenever I fall down,
so why do I never stop whining?
Why can I never feel fulfilled?
Numerous pairs of lips feed mine owns lust.
Yellow powder finds its way into my nasal cavity,
and plenty of ***** rests cozily in my stomach,
and plenty of chances to better myself fly by,
so what am I looking for?

Someday,
I'll have peace.

I know I will,
this can't go on forever.

I know you can see that I'm angry.
You can see it in my eyes,
hear it in my words,
and feel it in my touch.
Sure, I'm angry because you rejected me,
are continuing to reject me.
No, I'm not angry at you,
how could I be.
I'm angry at myself.
I have nothing to offer you,
I'm broke, unemployed, addicted.
I don't have a car, or good looks.
I don't have a big house, or presents to give you.

But I have dreams and a heart that I'm begging you to take.

It is all that I can give to you that you do not already have.

Patience.
I'm getting better.
I am,
and the things around me will start to soon.

I just have to be patient.

"Give it 'till the summer," she said,
"things will get better."

It's hard not to believe her
when she smiles like she does,
and so I do.

The Outlaw Josey Wales doesn't shoot so much anymore,
he has nothing to shoot at.

The sun blazes and it blazes and it burns all those under it
with extreme prejudice.

From the Alpha to the Omega the teeth of wolves are sharp
and they tear through flesh with such disregard.

Jack Kerouac is still writing, the ink still rolls from his pen on to paper
but now, thankfully, nobody knocks on his door.

Death will come once, and death will come for all,
and I'm sure when death comes, I will be cold
and all alone.

stay calm
breathe in
breathe out.

do the dishes after dinner
and breakfast
but eat out for lunch.

a polish hot dog
and two lines of coke
will fill your stomach.

I never thought I was doing all that great,
I just knew I wasn't as bad as I had been
and I didn't fall to my knees and thank god
every day that I could sleep without taking a knife to my skin
and that I could wake up without my mother shouting from the next room.

I took it for granted and now it's hard to fall asleep without
licking blood off cold steal
and it's hard to get out of bed without
incessant harsh words.

I took it for granted and now I am not being held and now
I am not being held
and now I am not being held
and it's hard to breathe without being held.

So I use
people
and substances
and routines
and aimless walks .

It's hard to get on my knees and thank god for the sun when I don't want to ever see it.

A man walks down the same street he did a month ago.
His shoes are slightly more worn than when he last made this trek.
Although the sun rests in the same spot and the trees whisper in the same way, he feels cold.

That is to say that love sings in a different way when you are alone.
Love can taste like strawberry lips or it can taste like cheap brandy, the only difference is with what you purchase it.

I had been sober for three days
and I had not seen you for three days
but tonight I took
five times the recommended dose of hydrocodene (they always were my favorite)
and I looked at old pictures of you for three hours (you always were my favorite)

Your parents hung mistletoe.
And we obliged to the tradition.

Your lips screamed lust
louder than my head begged reason.

I may not be happy.
But I can always chase down some Tums with a bottle of wine.
And I know I've changed a lot over the past year so you can stop pointing that out every ******* minute. I know you know I'm in love with you and I know you know how much I hate myself.

Four years ago I promised myself I would never smoke cigarettes, I remember it clearly.
Now look at me, smoking a pack a day when I can, re-lites when I can't.

On the other hand, I used to be happy.
On yet another hand, I used to be ignorant.
Ignorance is bliss.

When I looked into the crystal ball
hoping to see my future
I saw only my face, twisted and swirled out of proportion.
And at first I thought maybe it's not the right kind of crystal
or maybe there is no way to see the future
but then I thought maybe there is.
Maybe I did see the future.
And I'm just too scared to realize it.

Last night,
I lost myself.
I became twisted and swirled.
As the smoke came out of my lungs so did my convictions.

As the hash burned gently in the hookah
the snow fell gently from the sky.
As the laughter poured heavily from our hearts,
the general disbelief fell heavily from our heads.

And as I looked into the crystal ball,
I laughed.
I knew the ball was really like water,
always changing, always shifting.
And just like water, it refracts light in strange ways.

I watched the film
not because she told me to,
but because she told me she enjoyed it.
You must understand how important this is.

I have been in love since the moment I was born.

My mother was first and for a long time she held my heart.
At five she still had my love but so did Clint Eastwood.
That poncho wearing, cigarette smoking cowboy was the dad I never had.

In the sixth grade it was Stacy Smith.
She was my Wendy Peppercorn,
my Messiah,
my World Series Ring.
my love.

I made it to high school after
a few brief people put stars in my eyes.
In high school I met a girl
who took all the stars that had ever been in my eyes
multiplied them by all the stars in the sky
and put them back in my eyes, only for her.

Now, three years later,
a ******
excommunicated addict
I am in love again.

He is an author and he writes novels.
He is a novelist.
He is a genius.
He told me:
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

And I have figured that one out.
Until I have devoured him,
until I understand every single one of his literary pieces
I may not die.
I may not.
Until then,
I may love no other.
I may not die.

Not only heartbeats,
thoughts,
and nights;
I wasted too many wishes on you.
Too much time.

I guess I forgot a stamp
because you never wrote me back.
And I guess you couldn't feel my passion
because you never loved me back.

If only,
this numbness
would surround my whole
body. If only I could bathe in
benzocaine. Although, I would
much rather have no reason to do so.

Seeing you
makes me homesick
for a home that was never mine,
but one that you allowed me in.
And welcomed me in,
and ushered me into.

I smoked my cigarettes slower around you.
I don't know what that means but I know
that I like it more than being around
someone who subliminally makes me
smoke quicker.

My upper body becomes uncomfortably hot.
My lower body doesn't seem to want to move.
My hands become sweaty and a bit shaky.
My eyes dart around, not content to rest in one place.
In my mind there are many memories of your touch.
There are many memories of your smile,
but there is only one memory of the last time I saw you.

It feels like a life time ago,
but in reality it has only been a few months.

I remember, the last thing I did before falling asleep
with you in my arms was kiss you,
and the last thing I did before that was make love to you.

I remember, the first thing I did after waking up
with you in my arms was kiss you,
and the next thing I did after that was make love to you.

But that's gone,
it died with the summer.

Tradition dies with love  
and distaste is born with loss.

Sniff sniff, swallow,
to get the feeling you gave me.
Sniff sniff, swallow,
to make myself feel.

You take things day by day,
which is a marvelous way to love.

I envy you and the clarity you see the world with.
I as well, take things day by day,
only I am one day behind.
Still lurking on the happenings of yesterday,
the kisses given and love spent.

I'll go to bed tonight thinking about the girl I was kissing yesterday,
not the one I will kiss today.

God loves all of His children,
and I'm sure He will take special care
in bringing His child that you love home
from a war he has no business fighting.
he picks up his rifle everyday
because our country called upon him to do so.
Which is a good cause.

While he's there and you're here, you'll take things day by day.
The days in which you talk to him are great days.

The days in which you do not are merely good days.
And that is how you live.
Everyday is good and yet some are better.
Everyday for me is okay and yet some are more okay.
or less okay, depending on the state
of the weather
and the weather of one's kisses.

Hell fire rains down
as the Last Gunslinger grips the reins of his horse.
No longer does the authority of the Old Folk reign.

They say not since The Catcher in the Rye, has a real person been born from pen on paper.
But Salinger used a typewriter.
And nobody likes Caulfield, anyway.

I cry ***** the color of Christ-blood.
It stains these linen sheets
and gets me drunker than Uncle Jim at a Christmas party.

Lonely thoughts breed lonely feelings
and lonely feelings hurt.
They hurt in the same way you do, because they're made of the same stuff.
Mixed in the same kitchen;
the recipe is the same.
One part brandy to one part cola to seven part tears.

A little girl who believes in love is much better off than the one who does not.
Much in the same way as a child believing in Santa Claus.
Belief can only set you up for disappointment,
but the feelings at the time of belief run deeper than the feelings after revelation.

The
worst
time to
have an
existential
crisis is when
you're home, broke
and out of cigarettes.
The smoke can still my
mind and it can clean my
soul. It's funny, the cleaner,
the more sober I get the dirtier
I feel. I think it's because
in these sober moments
I learn more about the
crystal I sniff into my
nose and I learn
more about
myself
and I
learn
more
about
the
world.

Reflected onto the face of the sun is you.
You, who shine so bright
are an everlasting symbol.
A symbol of what?
Of the moon, of the stars.
Of it all.

And at the end of the day when I think about you
and I think about all of them,
The Boy With The Sunshine Face,
The Boy I Love More Than All Others,
The Boy With The Bandanna,
The Girl Not Named George Lopez,
The Girl Inconveniently Wearing Boots,
and all the others,
I think about love.
And I think about this group
and how we will undoubtedly fall apart.
And I think about how there's nothing we can do about.
Things change.

*I'm the same, trust me. It's only that everybody else is different

I give up, but only for a day.

I surrender today over to substances
and habits.

I give today to self loathing
and self pity.

I lend today to writing and erasing
writing and erasing
writing and erasing.

I allow today to not matter.

Although my eyes were on the movie screen I could not help but watch you.
I noticed every shift of position, every tap of your foot, every blink in your eyes, and every licking of your lips.
I noticed when your mouth curled into a smile and when your hands clutched your shirt.

Although my body was occupied drinking half bitter coffee my mind was transposed onto the image of us I had swiftly conjured up in my own head.
    
Although
my bed will only have me in it tonight, my fingers will be running through your hair and down your spine. My legs will intertwined with yours and our hearts shall beat in time to the flowing of a poem.

A room within a room
a door within a door
I need something more

Swallow
breathe
open the blinds
stretch

Touch you shoulders,
and kiss your freckles
hold on
stretch

Hold on
if love is the answer
you'll know
hold on

27/38                                                                  
                                                                  stop.
                                                   please                    please
                                ­     just                                                        just
­                       stop                                                             ­                     stop
                                     just                                                        just
­                                                  please         ­            please
                                                          ­         stop.
Can't you see you're killing me?
Can't you see that I'm not doing anything?
That I'm being the nice guy?
Can't you?

****.

Pardon my brute choice of English
but ****.

I'm slipping again.
I'm sinking.

I was good.
Believe me, I was.
I promise you, I was.

But I don't feel good anymore.
This doesn't feel good anymore.
I don't want to do this anymore.

Caught in a tug-a-war with the rope wrapped around my head.
Depression holds one end,
and Happiness the other
but tonight,
I swear to God
Depression is winning.

All I know is that I sure as hell am not.

Sometimes I think about you
and I get sad.
I think about you being here with me, on this couch
and I get sad.
I think about the way you lied
and I get upset.
I think about the way you manipulated
and I get disgusted.
I think about the way you loved
and I feel cheated.
I think about the way we continue to lie
and I am disgusted.
I think about the way you pushed me aside
and I am disgusted.
I think about you
and I feel cheated, disgusted, sad, upset, lied to and loved.
I feel.
And that is never a good thing.