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Sitting in my empty room,
***** in my coffee mug,
here I write and think of you
even if it won't be long.

Long, unlike the time we met.
It felt like a day or two,
yet I still can't comprehend
why you left me, oh, so soon.

Soon was when I fell in love.
I was drawn in by your charm.
Now I sit deadly alone
after suffering from your harm.

Harm I hadn't felt before,
even though I had been hurt.
I said I would have no more.
I should have been more alert.

Alert me if you do come back.
I can't hate you, that is true.
I am but a saddened man
who is madly in love with you.
 Feb 2016 Johnnie Rae
Morgan
We walked down unpaved roads, kicking up pebbles with our doc martins and inhaling cigarettes in between kisses.
We climbed over a gate marked "No Trespassing" almost every day last spring just to drink coffee with our feet dangling over mounds of white rocks, stacked like abstract sculptures.
We woke up at 6 AM to play on the swing sets at South Abington before kids flooded the mulch with runny noses and raspy voices.
We watched plow trucks sweep up all of our mistakes off of your road from the edge of your bed and counted how many maneuvers it took that driver just to get through your alley way.
You yelled at me for putting my frozen hand on your cheek after I went outside to heat up my car for work.
We sunbathed on your neighbor's roof when the kids were at school and their parents were *******.
We drank cheap beer in the bath tub and pretended we were going swimming.
We told your sister kissing would make her pregnant at your mother's cherry wood coffee table, and acted appalled when she replied, "Well then how come I'm not pregnant."
I rubbed your back as you cried with your hands balled up into fists on your front porch steps.
I sat silently on your bathroom floor while you tore through the house, breaking random things in frustration.
I cleaned the open cut on the side of your jaw with peroxide, and held your knees down with my forearm as you squirmed around in stinging pain, without ever getting a clear explanation as to how it got there.
I drove your sister to school & fumbled over my words after she asked why you don't wanna have dance parties with her anymore.
I sat in the hospital with your mother and read her the newspaper every night after work.
I tried to hold you in bed, but you pulled away from me.
And when spring came around again, I wanted to walk to the quarry but you just wanted to watch tv.
And when summer came around again, there were no make believe swimming pools.
You'd sit down in the shower with your hands over your face, and your legs curled into your chest, trying hard to catch your breath.
I'd put a towel in the dryer and wrap you in it afterward.
I held you as long and as hard as I could,
But you were slipping.
And the second you lost your footing,
And I lost my grip,
You took me down with you
And we hit rock bottom together.
So I guess,
It was never hate that I should've feared.
All along it was love
Because love is more destructive
than hate when it goes to the wrong place
Waking up
Sun is up
9 a.m.
Out of bed
Fill up the mug

                                                 Coffee dark
                                                 Jazz and Soul
                                                Crack two eggs
                                                Season well
                                                Breakfast is done

                                                           ­                                 Messy sheets
                                                          ­                                  Clothes on floor
                                                           ­                                 Sit and type
                                                            ­                                Drunk on jazz
                                                            ­                                Daydreaming score

                                                  Shower runs
                                                  Cold wind blows
                                                  Let it fly
                                                  You and I
                                                  Nobody knows

In my mind
All alone
Empty space
Ceiling gaze
Music still on

                                                    Without me
                                                    Day is gone
                                                    Music fade
                                                    Dream away
                                                    Lights turn off
And I ******* choked!

The words were dead before they even left my lips.
Their meaning lost in translation.
Empty noise reverberates in my skull as my thoughts mosh around, breaking against my sanity.
I can't scream, even though that's all I want to do.
My throat is dry, closed up.
Her eyes gaze at me as they desperately search for a sound...
a sound I can't produce.

I can't move.

I can't think.


What has she done to me?

Her poison is now running through my veins, and spreading fast.

The wicked *****!

I can feel myself dying.



Knees weaken.



Hands get cold.



Heart rate dropping.




Last thing I see is her evil grin as I fall to the ground
taking my last breath.

She was my end.
I stopped eating
you would tell me to do so
but we’re not talking anymore
and food tastes like ****

sweetness lingers too long on my tongue and turns bitter
textures feel odd, make me gag


so i’ve been eating soup
which I hate
but you love


which is ironic
because I love you the way you love soup
or the way you love snow

or the way you used to love me, and don’t anymore.
Dec 10, 2015
You asked if I was going to stay, I nodded,
but I'm just waiting here until your coffee cools,
until your feet go numb from sitting on them
so you have to switch positions, until the letters
magnetized to your fridge stop twisting themselves
into "sorry." Until I feel better about not calling you later.

Last night you asked if I liked Bon Iver,
I nodded, but I only did that in hopes that I could see
what the rest of your bra looked like, because
the strap was barely falling off your shoulder,
and I know you tried to tuck it neatly
under the straps of your dress, but darling,
I want to love you like a disaster. I want to tear
into your skin like your bones are a present,
it's Christmas morning, and I'm that little kid
sitting on the stairs, peaking. I want to line up
my heart with yours like they are those fridge magnets
with the thinest of barriers between them, your chest
a tiny cage that I have the key to, hidden
underneath my tongue. I want to rock you to that song
your telling me is your favorite that I promise
I'm not going to remember the name of. I want your sheets
curled between your toes as you breathe into my neck,
into my mouth, into my brain. I want to use your ribs
like a guitar, stroke them in a rhythm only I know,
only the two of us can hear the sound.
I want to come this close to falling
for you before I have to break free.

You asked if I really had to go, I nodded,
but in my mind I'm leaving you clues:
footprints on your carpet, my belt on the dresser,
my smile as I watched you through
the crack of light between the bathroom door
try to put your hair up ten different times
before you came to bed, just so you can find
my heart between the pillow cases
as I pull my car out of the driveway.
We ate chicken sandwiches, mine
no bun, at a table with an 80's
geometric design on top of two silver
metal legs with our legs
intertwined. I tried
to draw a comic on the wrapper,
but you kept making me laugh
by reenacting the conversation
we had with the lady at the register
who gave us the wrong change,
but using a baby's voice instead.
The boy mopping the floors wished
desperately that we would leave, but
you looked so cute with ketchup
on your lip and I really, really
didn't want you to drop me off.
There was an Adele song
on the radio that we've heard for the second
time, but you sound more like
a forgotten track to a John Hughes film--
a little heavy, a little messed up, a whammy
bar progression with blonde hair
who wore jeans and had a really cool car.
I'd like to kiss you like Molly Ringwald
does Judd Nelson in that movie
we talked the whole way through as it played
on Netflix. I'd like to wear you
like a bad haircut; something no one else
understands but I pull off effortlessly.
You feel effortless to me. So refill
my take-out cup with five different sodas,
make a scene as we leave the restaurant,
my hand laced up in yours, and let me drink
you in as I pretend we aren't driving
back home just yet.
 Jan 2016 Johnnie Rae
Jen Jordan
Junkyards are cemeteries too
they're just the ones no one brings flowers to
or visits after they've said goodbye
and they are filled to the brim
with forgotten wheels and empty bodies
and I am sick of these wheelbarrow operations
and the way the mice eyes sparkle
as they wait by the mailboxes
that don't even belong to them
for love letters from the cats that will never come
because when she said "I love you"
it was a junkyard kind of goodbye that she meant
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