I want you to regret
Ever having left me;
So I go to the gym, 
I read,
I become something
More than me,
So you’ll regret.
But not too much,
For if you asked me back
I’m afraid I’d agree

I want to ask a girl out:
And one guy says
“Just be true to yourself,”
Another,
“Just be like everyone else,”
and another,
“Just keep working out;”

And I think
I’m just going to ask her.

When the wind blows,
I blow by it,
In my car,
And I lack the time
And patience
To stop and realize
How the trees dance in the wind,
Better than I can.

I loved a girl once, and she loved me back, for a time. It was academic, in the sense we were together on behalf of academia, but it became apparent to me only one of us fit in, and it wasn’t her.

But I loved her just the same, and when the time came to part ways, my heart was broken in two as she made the final call. So as all lovers do in a face of determined heartbreak, I stopped my love, and learned to hate.

So I hated that girl for a while, and learned to convince myself I was better. Not just better off without her, but better as a whole, in any and every way that would help me ease the pains of heartbreak. The friends I’ve made came in, telling me I was smarter, I was better looking, I was the better candidate for life. And I started to believe it.

And here we are, almost a year later, and I see her across campus and we’ll wave. After months of commitment in convincing myself I’m better, my grades are higher, my jobs pay more, and the circle of friends and power I have around me is constantly growing, overshadowing her own.

I can’t help but stare in wonder at the way she smiles at life, seemingly loving every minute of it.

She smiles at life while I only find reasons to write poems.

I know nothing about you,
Other than you feel alone
And don’t want to feel that way
Anymore

I wonder how your city Christmas went,
If the air is still thick, your backyard small
Do you still catch fireflies at night by candlelight,
Or is January too cold?

I remember
Times before snow
Mere months ago
Walking through
Fields of corn
Pumpkin spiced life
All night
The smell of leaves
Decaying sweet
The sound of your voice
Singing me to sleep
Ages ago.

Remember when people used to want to fall in love?
Me too.

That was a long time ago.

I only knew you were drunk
When you tripped in heels
Falling sideways
I caught you
You smiled
And asked me to carry you
Down the street
To the car
Where he was waiting.

I fell
Across the sea in search for you
In dreams, but never found
A wave work repeating
Because shores are shrinking
And beach property too expensive
For me to gamble
My limited heartbeats in.

So you, like any other landlubber,
Fell to your knees praying
"Oh God, don't let it be true, don't
Allow the seas to swallow me whole,"
Because you felt your life above
The urchins and other bottom dwellers,
And wiped ink from your fingers
As you tried to draw us reason.

But the illustrations
Of land locked trees
Only solidified the fact that
You were never one of us at all,
Us bottom dwellers, members of the sea,
And the power we felt together
Was but lies from a crooked tongue
You wore so well.

Wind swept
           Me away

While you were dancing
           With the leaves.

I drove to work
Under snow covered trees

That reminded me how
Your love once covered me

And kept me cool.

People have asked why
I use so many conjunctions

And
  But
    Because

I love them.

In time
  We will become lost
     In all that we have
        Become.

You’ll be branded a fool,
A coward,
And a lier,
Same as I should,
Only I kept my tongue
Far enough away from my heart.

I wish I hadn’t had so many bad nights,
And I’m sorry you were there
To catch the stars and the tears,
But I’m glad you were, and I can never thank you enough
For keeping me sane when sanity was just a dream
And every day was a puzzle I was afraid
I couldn’t complete.

I often think back to the day, I brought you that place
With graffiti on the walls all failing to decay
And how in the summer’s ending heat I held your hand
And underneath arches I pulled you close and then

I, I kissed you right
Not like the time from the preceding night

But then came a new day, one further from our past
And you started to think about us, seeing this could last
I understand you were afraid, but fear is not to blame
When you held my heart so tightly then stomped it again and again

Three times, and never from a fight
Three times, sweetheart that’s not right

I’ve written a lot of love songs,
Poems,
But none more honest
Than saying
We tried
And failed,
And that’s all there is to us.

Small towns,
Are hidden gems,
Like the place of peace we go
In Leverett, for portraits
Of pretty girls who know nothing
Of buddhist beliefs,
Other than what their friends say
At dorm room parties.
And the mountains are small,
Lining the horizon we watched
As the sun set on them all
And we looked from the trash room
For the best view
Of the orangey hues
That reminded us we were closer
Than we thought after all.
But this school, and these people,
And the way they view the world
Sometimes clouds the hearts
Of the young people inside
-The cage of education we’ve created-
And I can’t help but feel
You were one of them,
And I just want you to see that.
We were never wrong.
Only the politics of the situation,
Singing Western Mass’ song,
“freedom, independence,
Social liberation
From the sense of responsibility,
Confrontation,
We are a free-love
And no-love nation.”

I saw you,
Again.
We took pictures,
Again.
I wanted to hold you,
Again.
But you made it clear
I never would
Again.
And now I’m weightless
In Western Mass,
And I’m ready
To try to fly,
Again.

The house on Hillside Ave is massive. It’s three stories tall, with a turret at the top and a set of stone lions at the front steps to greet welcomers and ward off intruders. It used to house 5 people, but now only 4, and even Christmas and Thanksgiving don’t always live there every year.

Before, the gardens the lined the house were beautiful, lining the foundation with more colors than in a Crayola box. At the roots of the flowers was a base of fresh cut grass, offering soft spots to sit and look at the clouds on slow summer days.

That was when Nana was still alive, and when Nana took care of it all. After days spent outside in the sun she’d come in and carefully wash the green of the plants off all her fingers and drink cold lemonade on the porch.

My father tried to take over the gardening, but it’s not the same. He doesn't wash his hands as carefully and doesn't drink lemonade, instead a cold beer from the cooler downstairs. Now the flower beds are a little sadder, the colors not as bright and dark patches of emptiness are seen amongst the once thriving flora. The flowers aren’t quite as happy when he tends to them. His hands just aren’t as green.

I left the town and the girl I loved to come to college when I was 18. The night before I left, she came over and cried, which made me cry, so we cried together about being torn apart by the unloving forward movement of time. The next day she watched as my parents packed my car and drove away, and she texted me the entire time.

I still go home sometimes, for weekends, vacations and holidays, but I never see the girl I once loved. She loves someone else now, and I love no one, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to go. I’m not even sure I love the town anymore, but I realize it’s prettier than I gave it credit for. However, when I go there now, the friends aren’t around, the school no longer my own and when I walk my dog on the farms the regulars look at me with an hint of distrust, as if I’m a foreigner in their land.

The scenery could be on a postcard somewhere. “Welcome to Small-Town Massachusetts, the town that soon forgets.”

Auntie Jean got a gun and she loves it. She calls it her little .38 special, and she carries it around in a concealed harness under her jacket all the time. She even brought it to Christmas once.

Auntie Jean also loves wine, and she carries that around a lot too, concealed in a paper bag so crinkled it looks like a burlap sack with a glass neck with a cork in it sticking out. She brings that to Christmas every year.

I drank a bottle of wine with a friend, and after a time he said
"I haven't even figured myself out, I don't know what to tell you,"
To which I replied, in time,
"Sometimes, I fear we never do."

Many days,
I live in the present,
And I am content,
Happy even,
Until I'm reminded
That the future is coming,
And I must prepare.
I must prepare,
Because tomorrow is coming
And holds
Endless opportunities
I have yet to comprehend.

I used to spend my weekends on a lake called Ossipee, somewhere up in New Hampshire. During the day we’d spend hours in the crystal waters, working on our tans and watching as our skins turned a shade of golden brown. At night we’d make campfires and roast marsh mellows and play loud music until the old neighbors next door told us to keep it down.

I would ride my bike down to the campsite where my friend Brian’s parents had a place, and we’d ride all over the grounds or swim the lengths of the beaches. When we had money we would go to the general store and stock up on sweets and pizza, and sometimes our parents would bring us out on the boats to explore new sections of the lake.

We did this every weekend until the day that Brian’s brother fell off his boat and drown under the dock. After that, Brian’s parents didn’t bring him up on the weekends as often, but during the week his mother would sit in their doorway and cry, and sometimes when I rode by seeing if Brian was around I’d hear her saying William’s name.

Okay, we get it
I love you,
Now please come back into my life
As we’d expect you to
In a romantic comedy,
Or happy-ending novel too,
Because this realization is killing me
One breath at a time.

I'd rather live my life
Trying to love and losing
Than never trying at all.

I went to college
in search of success
and found heartbreak;
In search of full pockets
filled heartache;
In search of change
faced namesake.

I look at old photographs,
Our sun-kissed skin glowing
In the beginning of our final year in schooling,
Soon to turn pale-sour,
As sunshine gave way
To late fall gusts of leaves
And with imminent winter approaching,
I missed your sunburnt touch.

There was only one girl
In the world who understood
All I wanted for my 22nd birthday

Was a typewriter,
To help me understand the world
Of the written word.
And still, with months away
I want that gift
If only to type her name,
“Juliette, Juliette
Why did you never return?”

I spend all day dreaming
About a love I'll never find
If my head is stuck up in the clouds
But it's so much nicer up there
Than down here on the ground
Where expectations are lower
Than I'm ready to hand out.

I'm not a poet,
Barely even a writer,
Just someone who reads too much
And tries to figure out
How words and rhymes
Work together like puzzle pieces
In the syntax of life.

How can such a waste of time
Have such a pretty smile
And know just the right things to say
To make my own come out for a while?

There's something about talking until you fall asleep and your arm going numb, but she's too beautiful for you to move it so you deal with the bitter pain of pins and needles, and stroke her hair and kiss her head until she wakes up a little bit after her dream, half asleep, eyes barely open, but just enough for you to move your arm, and a small smile crosses her lips as she recognizes you and you hug her and tell her goodnight. And the morning she looks at you with those fresh new eyes and you know she doesn’t remember that one small moment from the night before, the one small moment you’ll be holding with you forever, flashing through your mind when weeks later she tells you it’s over, that you should take some time alone and that you’ll never have her fall asleep on you again, and you just want to scream “I loved you, I cared for you. I let you sleep on my arm when no one else would, through the hell of pins and needles, and I didn’t even wake you. That’s emotion, that’s devotion!”

But you don’t, because you know she wouldn’t listen anyway, telling you to quiet your writer brain, she doesn’t have time for it today. So she’ll close the door and walk back to her chair returning to the work she was doing before you came to visit, knowing in comfort that she’ll have the entire bed to herself tonight, and you’ll walk home feeling un-whole, alone, like a piece of you will forever be left in Prince 302.

And you’ll fall asleep wishing to suffer the waking pains of pins and needles from a brown haired beauty again. And you'll awake knowing your arm is in a better place.

But your heart is a different story altogether.

I just want you to know
I see you from the inside
And all the ******* and lies
You try your best to deny.

You might be fooling someone,
But not me, not this time.
You might be fooling the next guy,
But you’ll never again catch my eye.

The lone man walks into the night, looking up to the sky and cries
“Stop expecting so much from me, I’m only one life!
Only one mind to work with the complexities you compile!”
To which the stars take lightyears to reply,
“Do not pray to us, we are not your kind.”

Fall is for falling in love
Or so I thought
When I felt your heart beat next to mine,
Our legs tangled, bodies intertwined
And you told me that you loved how the leaves
Turned golden yellow from their vibrant summer greens,
And I told you, under harvest moonlight
"That's just because they're dying."

I’m sorry I have chapped lips. It’s cold out, and they’re from kissing you, at a time when you still wanted to be kissed. It was a long time ago, but know your memory is still missed.

And my crooked smile is not of my own design, but of genetic disrepair and a household too poor to fix such trivial tasks in life. I always thought it was “cute,” or so said you. Plus I always thought it made yours shine.

The sense of not being listened to is a lie, I want you to know. Some form of undiagnosed ADD where I look away when you talk and write stories in my head as I hear every word is what I feel. But I heard it all, every single syllable. And I could recite them all.

I’m sorry my stories are so extravagant, because I’ve always been one for the additives of fiction. Since day one my heart has told me to add more, and sometimes I can’t help but look for the deeper metaphor, even when it’s not there. But I’d stop looking, I swear.

I’m sorry I’m seen as controlling, but my friends all look towards me and thats a hard role to displace when it’s become your everyday life. All I needed was a little more time. And some patience, on your line.

I'm sorry I'm cold at times, with the things I say and the way I seem. It's not always easy being mean.

And I’m sorry I’m so driven to become more than what I’m from, and my dreams lie far beyond the mountains and the clouds above. I can’t help but dream, with the mind I’ve been given and the things I see.

But most of all, I’m sorry none of this was enough for you and me. I'm sorry I couldn't live your dream. I'd be your prince charming if I could have been.

There isn't enough I can say about perseverance and doing what you know is right. It doesn't matter how much you want it, you want her, you want anything.

When you know it's wrong, it's wrong. Even if they define the wrong themselves.

Even if all you wanted was what you had, but for a little longer.

If it's wrong, it's wrong. It's never going to work. Even when you know the wrong is wrong itself.
So you persevere.

The days pass, and she still lives a life you wish more than anything to be a part of. And while your heart breaks even more, more than a split in two, you begin to realize, you're better off. Somehow.

You deserve better, you deserve more. Whether it be someone who's there in the morning or a person to listen to the small thoughts that eat you inside, if they weren't there, they weren't enough. She wasn't enough. You begin to realize this now, because your friends have shown you how.

So you work through it. You persevere.

And in time you realize they weren't the goddess you believed them to be but a human with more flaws than you can count. Their smile shrinks and their belly grows and you begin to see their weaknesses in every way. But you can't hate them, not yet. You want to more than anything, but hatred is an easy out. It's too easy to count.

So you persevere.

And eventually you see them, truly, for who they are. Like you, like your friends, like the family you've grown to love, they are beautifully human. And while you may never wish to speak to them again, you understand they have a heartbeat, they are alive in the rhythm of life. And in that, you are the same. And your friends try to tell you you are better, but you cannot believe them, not any longer.

Your heart may never heal as it should, may never beat as fast as it did with them beside you. You long to kiss their lips, long to hold their hand. And when you see them with another man you feel the world is above you, looking down and laughing.

But you know all this, you've seen all this. You know it gets better, someday, somehow, when you least expect it. You hold your confidence and you hold your dignity. And you refrain from calling them names.

Then the sun rises at the end of the night and you think about all the good times you had, all the memories you shared, and all the memories you could have built together. You begin to tear up inside.

And you persevere.

Take a break
And let your mind wander
With someone new.
You never know what you'll find.
It might be good.

Trust me.

“Like your father said, just do what was done unto you”

So I’ll just find someone I could love
Lead them on
Then break them down slowly,
Silently even,
With small actions 

And even fewer words,
Call it a fall,
And tell them
“I’m sorry, I’m not ready.
I’m sorry it didn’t work out,
Maybe in another place in time
Maybe in another lifetime altogether”

I hate this holiday. I always have. Dressing up like someone else to cover up the monster I truly am has never been an ideal time for me. And trying to hit on the slutty girls with their fishnets and minuscule mini skirts has never been my scene. I’d rather spend the night having everyone dress up to who they truly are: the misogynist, the adulterist, the studious, the conversationalist...I’d rather not hid behind the disguise.

But I love the ghouls, and the ghosts, and the stories we tell ourselves to stay up late at night, reminding each other to check behind the shower curtains at 3am because, you never know, he could be in there.

He could be, or he could not be. You may never know. But it’s always better to check.

I love this holiday for the stories, both of history and of those of today, which we create in our liquor laden haze. The face-covered costumes, the ghoulish festivities, the next morning apologies... Oh, and pumpkin everything.

The horror filled movies and hay rides and walk-through-corn-mazes we subject ourselves to, all in the name of fun, of suspense. I love it, I love every second of it. Heart racing, adrenaline running, it’s life in a sense we can no longer find without the threat of true death behind it. And that’s likely why we do it, as we feel a need for this sense of adventure, of thrill, without the everlasting and promising black blanket of the true end lurking in the shadows

And tonight I went out, dressed to the nine’s, white shirt and tie, and watched as all those fishnet girls passed me by, boys in toe behind their masquerading lies while I smoked cigarettes on the sidelines.  And I had my picture taken, and I had my face mistaken, and I couldn’t help but wonder

Isn’t it just all a lie?

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I love this holiday.

You are just some girl
I dated
Then hated.
Nothing more,
Is what you deserve.
I’ve moved on.

I can’t steal her heart,
But I can steal back mine
So that’s what I’ll do
In the dead of night,
I’ll sneak back
Into her life
And bring back home
What I know is mine.

A friend posted old pictures of me today,

From high school,

From another time, really

And all I can see

Is how my smile has changed

So cynically.

I felt
Oddly alone
Once I realized you stopped following my blog.
Because I did it
For you
In the summer
Of my 21st year
In the comfort
Of warm summer's heat
And the promise
Of seeing you soon.

Now I realize
I’ve been alone all along.

Sometimes,
You realize you’re not the light
You thought you were in someone’s life.
Sometimes,
That’s alright.

'Who will love you?

Who will fight?

Who will fall far behind?”

Simple as these three lines may be, there is a lot of truth in them, something to keep in mind as we move forward in our lives.  It’s amazing what human influence in your life can accomplish, what forward momentum it can stir. Or at least, what we perceive as forward, because sometimes momentum isn’t always positive. Many times, that momentum is just digging a hole for ourselves.

And as we grow older, and start to think about what makes sense in our lives, we come to find our ideas of happiness, of sadness and of sanity are all skewed in comparison to those around us, those we care about. And as we listen, as we follow, and as we fall behind, we begin to dig those holes deeper for ourselves.

Towards mid life, if you’ve been digging, your hole is chest deep, and you have two choices: escape or keep digging. And those in that position many times tend to keep digging, not for love’s sake, or for the sake of their future, but because digging this hole is all they’ve gotten to know. For years they’ve been digging, whether it be for money, for fame, for love, and that’s all they know. And when you only know one thing, you tend to stick with it, and your choices are slim.

By the end of your life, your skin is sagging and you’ve become tired of digging. Your heart is heavy and your hands weary as you let loose your final breaths and lay back. You’re now alone in this world, under this world, away from everyone, and it’s of your own doing. Every choice you could have mad to leave the hole floods your memory, and you’re stuck knowing, from day one, you chose this. You dug your own grave.

A few young men throw gravel on you, and a headstone is placed above. A few kind words may be scrambled in, or just two dates, birth and death, and a first and last name, if you’re lucky. And the knowing truth that you brought yourself to this point.

If you’re looking for a happy story, this is not the story for you. There are so many ways to dig your own hole in your life, and you may not even realize you’re doing it. From love, to career, to the way you treat your body, your hole is being dug. You could be wiping the dirt of your hands at night, so sure you’ve done a worthwhile thing that you’d never even expect that you've been digging your own grave, plunging yourself deeper into the dirt and farther away from the life you deserve to live.

I can only speak on a small spectrum here, as I am young, and my hole shallow still. But I can say, with confidence, to find people who will fight for you, people who will love you, and get away from digging yourself into a hole. Find people who are the helping hands to pull you out, and who you can be the helping hand back to. And once you have those hands, don’t let them go.

All I can say is, if you want to be happy, stop digging. Stay together and build a treehouse instead.

I want to tell you I hate you but I can’t, because hate is pretty close to the opposite of how I feel.

Don’t take that the wrong way, I don’t love you, as I don’t love much, and am close to truth when I say my one feeling is “general apathy,”

But you were pretty cool.

And I could get used to you. And how your hair falls weightless to your shoulders, or how you mispronounce words with your not-New-England-Accent, or how your smile lights up my entire life.

I could get used to it. And I was.

Until you left. And now I need to get used to it being gone.