I was written over
Again and again until
When the pen
Ran out of ink
I was simply stabbed instead
With the dull ball-point
Forming a scar;
A sideways eight
Like my sideways heart
Scratched across the skin
Of every moment
I can never un-wear

A tattoo is just a scar;
A person is just a human being-
Not much more than a Wendy’s bag
That looks like road-****;
Not much more
Than a series of frames in a film
With a blackness in between
That our minds remove,
Creating an illusion of motion
Similar to the illusion of effortlessness
Created as we drive up a hill,
Pumping fossil fuels into the air
As everyone breathing outside the car
Rings like the aftermath of a gunshot
Or a screaming plea in an unfamiliar ear
“Stab me some more, dear,
Let the ink flow,
The film is running out
And I can see the blackness finally
Of the space that’s in between”

Though I’ve been ready for bed
Since the moment I woke up
I take one more sip
Of ****** sangria

One more “drag”-
As I’ve been taught to call it
By the older, cooler, kids
Who take a lot more drags
Than myself-
On a cheap cigarette

One more kiss
On one more set of lips

And one more fleeting thought
That maybe it’s all just part of
A single careless search
For the set of lips that kisses back;
A search with no regard for
Whatever face to which those lips
Could be mounted...

Though I know that’s not true-
As I finally
Close my eyes,
I know (I think)
That’s simply
Just not true

I wrote you love poems
In a pink sharpie because
I was falling in love with you,
And the more I listen to this song
(Sixty four times tonight),
I think that it isn’t fading
Like the chords she played
As I held you
And as we swayed

I wrote you love poems
In pink sharpie
Not thinking of you
But thinking instead
That the four shots of *****
Maybe made it okay
For me to kiss you

I wrote you love poems
In a pink sharpie
And then I threw the love poems
In the trash,
Not drunk enough to forget
That showing you
Might make you cry

Those love poems
That I wrote in pink sharpie
Came out of the trash this morning though
Because somehow
I thought a few tears
Might make everything better

We sat at the melted granite counter
And your hair glowed a reddish-orange
In the light outside of the darkness.

You held my hand and you blew bubbles
As I laughed, as I cried
As you laughed, as you laughed.

I told you I'd misunderstood you,
The playful little spirit hiding
Under the layers that popped that night.

Your eyes, all to meet mine,
Looked up in an inimitable way
From your bubbles, now overflowing
Onto old drawings made by strangers.

You gave me the kind of moment
I can write books about
And poems too.

Thank you so much for holding my hands
That night and every night;
You kept those hands from popping
Like the bubbles did.

I color in between the lines
A darkened circle on a
Standardized scantron
Like the other numbers in the room
Wasting my life
With every stroke of breaking led

I color in a circle on a scantron
But I'm really coloring in
To America's capitalism
To the capitalism that acts as God-
The “Invisible Hand” made visible
By McDonalds and Burger King;
By my father's law firm
And the rest of the world

In coloring in this little circle
I'm coloring in myself
Marking myself
Right or wrong
Form 32A or Form 32B
98th percentile or 95th

And as I become applicant
Number 8574
I realize
I've become unable
To do anything
For the person
Beyond the number

Our failed attempt at change,
Re-elected in a last ditch
Show of democracy,
Sits in his oval office
Looking at the ice left
At the bottom of his drink,
Wondering what he should do

Surprised that his half-assed attempts
At diplomacy are poised to fail,
He's already shown America
Where we really stand
Which is just about nowhere

We don't want vengeance
And we don't want death
We just want a voice
And what that voice would say,
If he cared to open those office doors is
'Wait; not yet.'

Because we understand the pressures
We understand what happened
Ninety-nine years ago
On a rainy day in July
And we want the skies to stay clear
For even just a little bit longer this time

If he even so much as looked
Outside his window
He would see the picket signs
Of the storm set to brew
Upon his push
Of a button.

I love you
Especially when I
Drink.
If you feel-
The same way-
Maybe shots should be
Called: good

And if you
(Love me)
Maybe we should
Kiss.

More often.

My mom welcomes me in from the cold fall air
With a plate of home-made french toast-
Maple syrup pouring like the lies I tell her;
Powdered sugar, the dots of truth I work in
When it's convenient to do so

The smell of *****, spilled
On that place on my jeans beneath which
I have tattooed every moment spent without her,
Is masked by the batter of a sleep-deprived morning
When all I want to do is go to my mom
With all the problems she doesn't even know I have

Over that breakfast of laughs and warm family smiles,
And over a warm cup of tea to get me passed my hangover,
She asks me all about my night that didn't happen
And I continue to paint for her
The lie I don't even really remember first telling.

Your nails
Drum on the frame
You stand in,
Calling all eyes
To the blue paint chipping
Into clouds of colorless
Like the wood on the door
That peeled polish
Serves to form-
Separating my creaking
Wooden porch
From the motel lobby
Of endless strangers ignored
As your nails still drum
With stories still unheard

Fleetingly holding
Air of lungs in palms
I gaze up at floating blankets
Incapable of warmth
And hanging just below
The stars and bodies bouncing
Off the water in my mind

Though confined to basement
I see the shore we stand on,
Skipping stones
Across the lake
Until me my body throws
To a wind too powerful
To threaten sailing thoughts
Like the hands I hold-
Refusing to understand
The weight of breath

Autumn rushes from the vortex
Where a bottle-cap used to be
And as last drops run down dry throats,
Glasses now empty like the people who are,
Winter pours from the spring
That a pen-cap once clogged
And I sit in the bathroom wishing
A single variation of summer pleas
Would keep the modern world's fallen leaves
From manifesting themselves on wrists and thighs
But a collection of words can never be more
Than all the tattoos that are all just scars
Like the people who are-
And when the hell
Did the leaves turn orange?

We biked to the market
For too-much ice cream
And hot afternoons

We drove to a parking lot
For a couple joints of ****
And impossibly late
Evenings

We exchanged
Cheesy compliments
In my mother’s basement
Just before your first kiss
(Our first kiss)

We flattered each other
With beautiful poems
And genuine emotion
Just before
We finally kissed again

We picked flowers
From the garden
By the middle school
Becoming best friends

We picked basil
From the garden
In my back yard
Not knowing
What we were becoming

But regardless
Of whether we never
Get off our bikes
Or go upstairs
Or head back indoors
I’ll be happy
To be with you

Unmelted candle wax
From two hundred melted candles
Litters a granite counter top
The metaphorical resonances of which
Were lost three weeks ago
When the counter swam like water
In hallucinogenic bliss,
As through knowing each other more, not less,
We fell finally all the way out of the love
Which once seemed so much more solid
Than water

As I smoke a cigarette
On the front porch
Where I once declined
I listen in my memories
To my sister yelling at my mom
In a crowded Mexican restaurant
That she should be allowed
To love both my mom
And my dad
But then our food finally came
And my cigarette
Finally goes out
Having mostly burned
Without help from my lungs

As our friend
Is helped to *****
Into the toilet beside us
We take off our clothes
And climb into a bath,
Me smelling too much like cigarettes
To say anything
About the violent red slashes
On your upper thigh

As we slept
In each other’s minds
Through the night,
Fearing commitment
Equally as much
As striving for it,
I kissed you
Thinking that maybe
I’d let myself pretend,
Having finally uncorked
That bottle of wine,
All hesitancies
Had disappeared

But I tried to kiss you
Again in the morning,
Thinking
As I think now
That if it may be
Our last chance
I want to take it:
I want to swing dance
Through thunderstorms
And sip our wine
With nothing
But the certainty
Of one another

But you pretended
Not to notice
My eyes meeting yours,
And filled
With all the reservations
That should have been in me,
You averted your gaze
And walked away
(As I still worry
You will one day)
From that surreal bed
Of whispers
And fewer tears

Neither of us
Like to lead
When we dance
Forming a pattern
Of basic step,
Basic step,
Eye contact
A moment too long,
Brushing hands
That linger

Everything that in the day
Seemed like a leaf
Was now nothing
But blackness
Showing only
Where light
Could not penetrate;
Black lines dotted
Against the near-black sky

(You try to read
My poems
As messages to you
But every conversation
Is made of shadows
And I'm sorry
But these poems
Are about me)

As the sky fades,
Remembering a sun
Lost to time,
We're drawn in darkness
To that place
Where our heartbeats
Form one rhythm-
The only thing left
In the vast expanse
Of nothingness
Stretching
From what used to be
Horizon
Onwards to infinity

Every moment
Tattoos a web
Of ink
In the deepest
Seas of my mind
Floating like oil
And only in sleep
Can I dive
And swim
Edit
And undo
Until
Waking up
I'm once again
Just on the shore
Looking out,
The Great Pacific
Garbage Patch
On my eyes,
Helpless
To do anything
But keep walking,
Crossing countless grains
Of sand
Serving to keep my body
On the Earth
And imagining itself
Out in the sea
Sinking-
Pulled
By the weight of the ink
The past
The trash

We once spoke,
A long time ago,
In wordless poetry;
Every glance
A stanza
And every movement
A line.

You'd trace
Three freckles
On my neck
Making a constellation
As from your mouth
Came whispered visions
Of forever.

You asked me today
In a poem of words
If I'm happy now

From a needle,
As from a fountain pen,
Pours ink
Into my skin

A promise of
Eternity sealed
And very few
Will ever know

(I wonder why
Those I love
Are those to whom
I only lie)

Driving through the darkness
The Wendy's bag
On the side of the road
Can start to look
A bit like roadkill-
Which it is
In a way,
Because no matter
How many broken people
I cram into the front
Seat of my car
And no matter
How many cigarettes
They've all been smoking
The blindness
And the landfills
Which push the rich
Further North of the city
Will continue to push

Born within my skin
Is a swamp white oak
Stretching its branches
Through the grey matter
In my mind
Over-taking, over-whelming
Each leaf becomes a cell
A part of me
In a most central way
And me a part of my species
A tiny acorn
In the context of its whole
Laid by an impossible
Evolution of trees
To people

The lights are off,
The fans aren't spinning
And even when the sun
Is shining through the windows
I still look at the digital clock
To check the time

Perhaps
I'm just
Poetically
Exhausted

Everything
I've been writing lately
Has seemed the product
Of one too few cups
Of caffeinated tea

I've written a lot-
About loss,
Autumn,
Syria-
And I think
I've now used tea
As a metaphor
For just about
Everything

But what's done is done
And the seasons are always changing
And the U.S. will attack Al-Assad
No matter how many words I write
And I'll never be able to get
This ******* tea-stain
Off this ******* page
In my ******* journal
And maybe

To get through
The hopelessness
of it all
I should just
Keep writing-
It seems
To have worked
So far

Sitting on your back porch
My jaw began to hurt
Because I'd been smiling so much-
And I wondered how,
As a cold front blew through
Our dismal state and world,
We managed
To find such happiness
In one another

Sad Winter music plays
In the background of my life
As I sit in an empty doorway
Writing empty love poems
All across my skin
And I think about the potential
Tattoos I could put there
To one day look at
And see nothing

This weather
Of things slow to end
And things slow to begin
Makes me think that maybe
One day soon
These empty poems
Could have meaning again

I miss the smell
Of the cigarettes
Whose smoke danced
To the stars
Which were always
So much clearer
In your back-yard
Than anywhere else
In the city

We speculated
That it was maybe
Because your yard
Had no fence
But that wasn't it-
For now that you
And your cigarettes
Have moved,
The stars
Are no longer
So clear

Maybe
It had nothing to do
With your smoke
Or your yard-
Maybe the stars
Were only so clear there
Because you yourself
Had no fences

A couple days ago
I bought twelve cartridges of ink
For my fountain pen

"Guys," I said
A couple weeks ago,
"I'm a writer"
And you all nodded so
"No you don't get it
I don't just write things
I'm a writer"
And you all nodded so

I bought twelve cartridges of ink
For my fountain pen

At the end
The sky is cloudy.

All my friends
Have moved away
And the love of my youth
Has been lost
To a reluctantly emerging
Adulthood.

Rain threatens
But does not pour.

My three month hangover
Is finally
Subsiding
And it's at last
Being replaced
With the headache
Of an impossibly short
Autumn.

The first drops fall
Bringing a few leaves with them.

I wonder if there will be
Any green
After the storm passes-
You grab my hand tightly
And tell me "of course".

But at the end
It's hard to see the sun
Through the clouds.

Sitting at the edge
Of the dock
And looking at
The water below,
A little bit of nausia
Creeping up my throat,
I wonder how you feel
About all the lies you told
Before remembering
That it doesn't even
Really matter

(I also wonder sometimes
If you know
How many spiteful poems
I write about you
While you're laughing with me
From the next room)

We always thought
That the post-war generation
Might actually
See the end of war
But here we are
Riding the waves
Of two world wars
And I sit
On a front porch swing
Watching kids
Ride by on bikes
And thinking that their smiles
Might be as ephemeral
As the war
That will end the world

And after my country strikes,
A move it has to make
In this apocalyptic
Game of chess,
I'll just pray
To gods I don't believe in
That whoever is drafted
In my place
(Maybe one of these boys
On their bikes)
Runs and joins me
In Canada
Rather than fight
The Russians for Israel in Syria
In corporate America's
Name

That night
In the middle of the road
You held my hand
And pulled me close

Talking conspiracy theories
And laying
Side by side
Everything was almost
But just not quite

Part of me wishes
We'd never moved off
To one side
Or the other

I would have loved
To stay there
And hold your hand
In the middle of the road
Forever

Suits walk
Over human skins
Indifferent to
The shifting winds

The basil plant
In the window
Was dead
When we arrived
And I'm not sure
At what point
It was replaced
But over a glass of wine
I realized
That it was again
Leafy
And full

I pulled open
The balcony door
To find that a spider
Had built its web
In the frame

I knew
That if I didn't
Destroy the web
Someone else would
And very soon

But I left it alone
And I turned around
And walked back
To my bed-
Far too ashamed
Of my species
To do anything
But sleep

(Though I was
Far too many cups
Of coffee
Into the morning
To even close my eyes)

The last time
I drove up here
With these people
You were with me too

You said you liked
The farmland- it appealed
To your sense
Of order

I tried to explain to you
How disorderly
It really was-
Because it's really
The natural world,
Uninfluenced by man,
That's orderly

Because us humans,
With our self-destructive
Monocultures which exist
To support our self-destructive
Industries,
Produce 98% of our corn
For just about anything
But human consumption...

But you didn't understand that
Of course,
So we sat in silence
For a few minutes
As I failed
To understand you too

And I should have known then,
As you failed to see the world
As an oncoming apocalypse
Revealed through  shades of corn
And I failed
To see the world
As anything but,
That though everything was fine
On so many levels
Beneath the surface,
At some fundamental level
We, like the corn industry,
Were unsustainable

A pulsing electricity
Fuels your computer
Which takes you to websites
You'd rather not visit
But that you visit
Anyway

It's that same electricity
That fuels the cameras
Which we covered with boxes,
A last ditch attempt
To reconcile ideals
With the world
We really live in

And when you think about
What fuels our hearts
And concequently our minds
You  might
Come the conclusion
That we
Are not products
Of the modern world-
The modern world
Is a product
Of us

I could've gone to bed
Two hours ago
But there have been
So many better
Things to do
Like mostly
Talking to you

I wonder if it's
Self centered
To say that
One of my favorite
Things about you
Is that you like me
Genuinely
For who I am
But you smiled
When I told you
So maybe you need
No explanation
To understand
Exactly
What I mean

I hope my mom
Doesn't still cry
Every time
I pack my bags
To go to my dad's
But I wouldn't be
Surprised
If she did

I do wonder though
Whether I'd be surprised
If she didn't
And I wonder too
Whether she still
Thinks of the bag
That always travels
With me
As hers

The fan spins
So quickly overhead
That the whole thing
Shakes and wobbles
As I,
In between blinks
That are more like naps-
Telling of a sleepless night-
Sip at my third cup of tea
Which threatens
To burn
My lips, my hands, my tongue-
But I think
Too much in metaphor
And if it hurt
As much physically
To kiss someone
Or hold someone's hand
As it would emotionally
Then maybe
I'd learn more quickly
The things that are
Truly bad for me...
But after another sip
I know that the threats of burns
Were empty so
I continue
To lay on this couch
And sip my tea,
And think about sleeping,
And wonder idly; carelessly
Whether that fan,
Which shakes in a chaos
Contained by the stability
Of the surrounding stone walls,
Will come
Crashing down

We usually
Make tea together
In the mornings
And I just wish
We could still
Find the time
To hold hands
And slowly drink it
Together

Whenever I grimace
Or cringe
It feels on some level
Like I'm just an actor
Making faces
For society
Because goddess forbid
I should ever show
My genuine
Lack of empathy

(Maybe you thought
If you cut yourself
It'd be clear
To yourself
That you weren't just
Acting.
I wonder
If it worked.
I doubt
That it did.)

I look across the table
And my eyes catch yours
And I wonder briefly,
If without the pressures,
We could be happy
As two parts of a whole

But then I look away
From your eyes and I
Gaze outside instead
Thinking that maybe
I'd be happier out there

I remember a time
Last year
When I'd wake up
Wanting nothing more
Than just to go back to bed

But then I met a girl
And I became happy
And I loved her
And I didn't even
Have to wait for my alarm
Every morning

Eventually,
My happiness spread
And I started getting
Out of bed
For other friends;
Other things

And that girl
Became jealous
And worried,
Evidently rightly,
That I'd stop needing her
And I'd want to move on

And somehow,
Ironically in large part
Because of her fears,
Because of her worries
Both of those things
Became true

And now
I almost dread
Getting up again
And I always
Just want to be asleep
Because I don't want her
To keep being sad

Yesterday
I saw someone
Texting
During a documentary
About Syria
And I wrote
A lot of poems
About it
But today,
Sitting here,
Sipping
At my Capri Sun,
I don't feel
Like there's any less
Justification
For me
To be at
The center
Of my poems
Than that person
Texting so
Here's a poem
About me

Every cigarette,
Every addictive inhale
Of warmth
And nicotine,
Keeps me farther
Away from you
And father
Away from myself
So-
“Can I have another cigarette?”-
And my friends laugh at me
Knowing that
I notoriously
Don't smoke
But I'm handed one
Anyway