After reading my first love poem
And misunderstanding my first love story
Romanticizing your bleak hope
I knew I was ******

And in trying to explain this
I am left feeling like a schizophrenic Walt Whitman
Scrawling poems about your beauty

As if love is something you can actually seek outside yourself
While inside you there are walls
Mine fields
Trapdoors leading to deadfalls
All to keep you from it

I want to stand at the entrance to myself
And be baptized in my own sweat
From the work of this deconstruction

There is heaven and peace in the rubble
Blueprints for a home without safeguards
A simple place you can rest your head at night
This chest

Love is not something you seek
But you tell that to these hands
This pen
This mouth
Tell these eyes without losing my gaze
That it is not hiding somewhere behind you

It is not
I know this now
I know that love is this
Your heart is this
Your body is this

A spare room in a small house
You had intented on living alone in

And everytime someone comes to your door
Know it is always nicer inside
And be grateful that someone came to it
Let them in with your smile
say
"I have been expecting you"
Then let them leave if that is what they must do
They might

Just remember to be grateful for their presence
Everyone who sought your door
Sought it because there is something good there
There is always you

I want to write this poem
Like a band-aid
For a knuckle scrape the stucco frustration

The adrenalin shiver
Maybe you look at your fingertips
And know you'll never be a doctor

A poem that finds you peaceful

We go to exrtremes so often
This middle ground has leeway
Move around in it

There are things I need to say
Halfwritten letters
Stacked inside a gut-heavy dumbwaiter
And if I ever found the courage to pull the rope
I might choke

This poetry gets scared sometimes
I know you get scared sometimes
There are memories you re-live
Like a masochistic dvr
Or a photo album labeled
"Let's not go back to this place"

I want there to be poems in response to this

A literary anitbiotic
For the sickness we create

There is a reason chemistry makes use of the alphabet

And I find myself searching for the language
Like a child holding his head up to the rain with his mouth open
And wondering why he never feels a single drop touch his tongue
Like a scientists he decides that the water evaporates because of the heat in his breath
So he holds it

It has taken me years to finally understand
You don't need to hold your breath
But you do need to be still
And the reason you think the rain never touches your tongue
Is because your tongue is already wet

And you
Every moment of you
Already is poetry

I have traveled back in time
Or maybe I have dreamt this place in 1987

A bank
My mother a teller
In the middle of a divorce
Or maybe the divorce hasn’t happened yet

My father walks in
He is a security guard
College dropout
Ex-marine
Loves fighting as much as I do

She never went to college
Maybe she thinks he is mysterious
He prevents a robbery
Beats a man in the parking lot

He flirts with her over a coffee break
And this is the part where everything goes fuzzy
Because I could never see my father as a charming man

I want to tell them to stop
If love at first sight
Cared enough to have foresight too
They’d stop

Maybe they were nice people once
If we all knew what we’d one day become
We could fix things

I want to tell them that they will have children
I want to tell them about the things that they will do to these children
And then to themselves
And back and forth and back and forth
Like a pendulum made of knives and soft things

But I do not exist in this place in 1987
And even if I did

I want to live
I want to live

It hasn’t been as cold lately
The train of shopping carts rattles
Vibrate my forearms
Especially as I cross the yellow speed bumps on the ground

The city put those there to trip up skateboarders
And to confuse babies in strollers

Old women on walkers avoid them

There are things designed to make us slower
More careful

I think about my last poetry reading while filling the coolers
And don’t ask myself why when alone
I take myself to the places that make me most happy

My cashier asks me when he can go home

You do everything slower when
You keep yourself company
When you’re lonely
You’re not savoring moments
You just taking your time
Because you can
I set the alarms and lock the doors
The moon has been out for a while
I will go home and write

Everyone is asleep except for me
I crack open a few beers
Open the window so the moon can keep me company

Forever I thought there was something wrong with me
But I have learned
Like the moon
Some things will only shine in the nighttime
Not everything looks like gold under the sunlight

Writing poetry is a lonely thing
It looks you square in the eyes, smiling
It asks you to write alone
Even in company
When writing poetry
You are alone

And even lonelier still
It asks you
To go inside of yourself
There are things there you must find

There is a man inside my body
A boy
And they look just like me
They each hold letters
I do not know what they say
I must find them

Poetry is love you want
Is someone you want to be in love with
Poetry is a child tugging at the pant-leg of someone
You want to be in love with

Poetry is the coffee stain on long sleeve shirts
Right over the wrist
Your mother called them chocolate stains
Never blood

Poetry is my drunk fingertip stumble
My white-boy wasted
My way of loving less awkward

Poetry is someone telling you they love your poetry
Poetry is loving someone for loving your poetry
Poetry is also kissing that person

There is a man
In mirrors he might be me
We have a letter we want to give to you
But they read like a feeling

We spend hours in solitude
Finding ways to step into the daylight

Poetry is convincing you
You need a reason to step into the daylight

There are words etched into your teeth
All white
No bling
The letters change with the shape of your mouth

Smile more often
Even when you don’t want to

Poetry is trying to teach you to speak peace
with the words in your smile
To people you don’t want to speak peace to

Poetry is an angry father
Is neck bruises from belt loops
Is rug-burn from being dragged across the floor

Poetry does not love you
It simply asks you
To find space inside of yourself
And then it wants you to give it to someone else

There are people inside of you
With stories

Writing poetry is a lonely thing
Giving it away
Until no one can be a thief to your soul

That too
Is poetry

I am a bear inside the church of bees
There are people in here I am in love with

They are covered in bees
They tell me that the bees hurt

I am hungry
The pastor tells everyone it is god’s gift to them
This sting

I want to hold you like honey
I have been eating daffodils
There is sunshine in my belly always

I am not afraid of the bees

The buzzing is loud
If you listen carefully it is god sending you a message through white noise
Listening for it is futile
You are in pain

I begin to pluck the bees from the bodies
Of the people I am in love with

Though I try to be gentle
I hurt them still

There is honey and blood on their skin
I want to lick both

Punch today in the face
She said

Today you will make a stranger happy because you can
Today is your day to be charming
Don’t waste it
I said

Just so you know
That wasn’t a sunset you saw
That was bruises on the face of the ending day

And I smile
Every time I think of you

Charming is a birthmark you just found out you had
You find you like its shape

Be charming like a birthmark
It makes people trust you
You can have oodles of charm
When you want to