Black and white
No color divides
The lines between the world I see
The words between the lines I read

Love poems are stupid,
Because in only a few months time
They’re likely falling to pieces;
Out of juice, out of line.

However, I’ll still write in my spare time,
But would rather focus on cacti,
Because no one gives them
Their time to shine.

I love you, sweet cactus
How you love when the sun shines,
I love you, sweet cactus
Your agave so devine.

I’d rather write about a cactus
All prickly up it’s spine,
Because that cactus is alive,
That cactus is mine,
That cactus will last
Longer than you and I.

I’m unemployed
And old enough to realize
That’s just not cool,
While kids around me
Friends of friends of parent's kids,
Are working their way
Into small names at big companies,
And it’s my job to clap for them,
To make them feel success
At selling out young,
While I give in all I have
All I’ve ever wanted
To live a dream
Worth chasing pennies for
Because I love the way
They click when they fall into
My piggy bank.

People have asked why
I use so many conjunctions

And
  But
    Because

I love them.

I think tonight is a
Drink wine, discuss life
And smoke-cigarettes-while-I-fume
Kind of night,

Pun intended.

I missed you today,
A little more than yesterday
But not as much
As I'll miss you tomorrow.

Sarah,
Sarah Sarah,
Sometimes I worry about you Sarah
That your heart’s too big, Sarah
That you’ve moved too fast, Sarah.
That you haven’t let your wounds heal, Sarah.
Do you remember, Sarah,
When your heart felt something for big for me, Sarah?
Then I broke your heart Sarah,
And you cried for weeks, Sarah.
For weeks and weeks, Sarah
Sarah, I hope you don’t forget it Sarah,
Because we don’t want you hurt again, Sarah.
Sarah, please don’t forget the past,
Sarah, please don’t fall in love
Too fast.

I want to say I’m weak for wanting
But I’m human, and we’re all inherently weak,
And we all want what we can’t have
Just to say we got it.

One time, when I was ten or eleven years old, for a holiday or something my uncle bought me a model set of a scale V-8 engine. He knew I was into cars, but without kids himself, had no idea that this kind of gift was worlds beyond my preteen intellectual abilities. It fell to the wayside that year, useless in comparison to the easy to open, assemble and operate toys my parents bought me instead.

I had completely forgotten about this model until one night in college when I couldn’t sleep because I was too wrapped up in my own existential crises of the time and too nostalgic looking at all the old car posters in my room. I remembered the V-8 engine, and how even at 21 I couldn’t name a single part in a car engine, let alone assemble one, which was sad because I had been driving them five years at that time. So, with some sort of unexplained sense of unfinished accomplishment, I felt a need to finish it. Or really, to start it.

I got out of bed and started to tear apart my closet, piece by piece, coming across old articles of clothing I never wore, a few aging airsoft guns and even a few smaller models I never assembled, but alas, no V-8 engine. With my labors unyielding, I grabbed a flashlight and headed quietly to the attic, hoping that would be lend a more fruitful search. It took me a little digging and a lot of splinter avoiding in my bare feet, but finally I found it. I blew most of the dust off the box, removing more with my hands, and held the box in my hands like a treasure. It was smaller than I remembered, and the age on the box said 12+, which now looking back on it means I should have been easily able to complete it when I got it.

I worked these thoughts out of my mind, instead turning my attention to the plastic wrap around the box which came off with ease. I pried the color-aged box top off to find a colony of loose parts, of all colors, alongside a small screwdriver, which at that moment gave me a sense of Excalibur in it’s placement. I touched the blue handle lightly, almost afraid to accept its reality at first. Then I just stared at the parts for a good five minutes before I remembered there was an instruction manual. I opened it to page one, and I began to build.

I must have worked on that model for five hours, by the light of my flashlight and the streaks of full moonlight that snuck in through the skylight above. Hours of part maneuvering and placing, losing, then replacing small screws and setting them into place with a tool made for hands half the size of mine word my fingers out. By the time I was finished, my fingers were a little sore and my flashlight was running low on batteries which didn’t matter because the sun was beginning to peer it’s eyes over the horizon. I looked at my creation before me, a lot smaller than I thought it would have been when I first received the box, and felt a sense of nostalgic victory. For years, this project taunted me from the dust piles and cobwebs of my attic, and now, too distant from my childhood to remember anything all too vividly, I completed a milestone that was meant for years prior. I thought about how, at age eleven, I would have proudly shown my father to gain his five minutes of fame for the day, and he’d ask me the name of a few parts of the engine as a quiz before asking me to grab him another beer and I’d feel like I was on top of the world. He’d tell me I could be a mechanic someday, or better year, a car designer. I’d smile and walk away accomplished.

That’s what I would have done then. Now, ten years later, I folded the pieces of the box and put them in the trash can, with the plastic wrap on top. I took my finely tuned engine, my product of nostalgic victory, and brought it back to the confines of the attic. I turned my flashlight back on, moving past splinters and upturned nails to the back, farthest corner, where a lonely black shadow kept all light from entering. I took my prized engine, which seemed even small now in my hands, and wiping away some of the cobwebs, placed it into that dark corner, displacing a slumbering daddy longlegs in the process. I placed the small blue screwdriver next to it, then thought better of it and wedged the sharp end into the wood in between two planks, with the crystalline blue handle glowing in the light of my flashlight, sticking straight out like the tool of Excalibur that it truly was to me.

I took one last look at my creation, then turned and left, knowing that, like my childhood, I’d never return to it. I locked the attic door on my way out and checked the floor for loose parts, covering up any traces of my journey back into one of the aspects of my childhood that I forgot to partake in.

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.

When I was a child,
I was given a silver necklace by my father,
Told the stories of how it was there when he met my mother
And cherished it dearly.
But as childhood would have it,
I lost the necklace,
In a full contact game of two-hand touch football,
In the backyard of my frenemy neighbor.
I searched for hours in the grass,
Coming across spiders, quarters
The remnants of dog’s passed,
But never again saw the silver chain
With the little cross
That was the closest thing I ever held to God.
Now I look back,
To the necklace, the touch football games
The neighborhood loving brawls,
And realize youth is an object,
It’s something we hold close
But never realize the importance of
Until years later,
When we miss it
Around our necks,
And we regret
Never truly
Falling in love
With what we had
Before it was gone.

When you walked,
it looked as if
you were dancing under the stars.

Little feet have
a soft-stepping cadence
when they explore small town streets,
and yours were no exception.

You danced the ballet vino,
each sway a dive
ready to be caught
in the movement of
the music you paced.

You stumbled,
I caught you,
and we laughed
like we had
Many times before.

It was cool and misty,
the burnt smell of fallen leaves
was in the air.

It was October,
the world was painted autumn,
and we were in love.

I found you over the rainbow,
In some kind of spectrum glory
Talking colors and how they only matter
When the eyes of the world are closed.
So I kissed you as the sun rose,
All yellows, oranges and light.
Hearts some kind of colliding.
Full spectrum love-shine.
Fading fast to daylight.
Never to return.

Because you are you,
And I will always
Be me;
In love with the notion of color theory
And colorblind to reality

No matter what I do
theres always something
I want more
Like a camera
or a trip
or even just something
just a little bit better
than what I have, even if its older, because
sometimes things
of old are
so much better
than the new,
like how I look at
These cameras I dream of
in stores, in
flea markets,
I hold their predecessors,
their grandfathers
and feel the cold calm
of the metal body
in my hands, and know that
things just aren’t built this way any
more, and people
aren’t what they used to be, or
so it seems,
from the history classes
and all the books
I read, about life
before it was my time
and how people seemed
to give a ****,
and didn’t just sit
and whine
and waste so much time,
but how did they live
before Facebook
how could they
fall in love without
Tinder,
or read the news without
Twitter
or pass their classes without
google on their Androids in their laps to pass the answers on the test before them?

So I guess they were just tougher
than us, like these old cameras
I want, and they
didn’t want, like we
want to pretend we need
so we don’t have to accept
what’s right in front of us.

Our excuse that
We need to wait for film
To develop.

Sometimes I can’t see you anymore,
You’re nothing like the girl I fell in love with.
Your voiced change, I noticed,
And your hair parts in different ways.
It's almost like you’re someone new,
Something I never understood.
And I can’t begin to understand
Why the hell you ever changed.
You were beautiful,
You were great.
You were heartwarming,
And you made my day.
Everyday.
But now you’re gone,
This girl I loved, she’s moved away
In her place a mannequin, a fake.
She looks like you, but she's not the same.

Love is not easy,
No one ever said it was,
But in the end it's worth it,
Or so we plan.

“What is the end”
He said, “we die
Without sacrifice;
Catholicity is
The decay of cathedrals,
of movie houses..."
But these movies are a moral force,
Of Christ and cross
Poems penned in gold,
Words no good, words too old,
Stories, cut deep with a man with a knife,
There is no life in the stuff because it tries to be “like” life.

She said there was zero squared chance of reconciliation
That our lives were not the circle she dreamed,
But two separate lines diverging at a point
Arranged in rays, and some other math terms I never understood
Because she finished top of her class, myself a comforting third
Tier, of the last tier, of those who made it through the door.
And the story has stayed the same, regardless of the term change
I was back in school, receiving a bad grade,
Thanking God for the bell curve, which rang
"Some things always stay the same, but keep trying anyway"
And my averages will remain somewhere between middle of the line
And the bottom of the drain.

So
I will raise my hand for hope,
I will raise my hand for shame,
I will raise my hand to look good,
And to never learn
Quite exactly what I should.

She walks like
the wind --

A wall of cold air
A flurry of autumn leaves
A wakeup morning breeze

-- every step disappears
into the next.

I was outside a bar one night, smoking a loaned cigarette and looking at the stars. Next to me was an old man on a stoop, smoking too. He asked me what was one my mind, and I said love.

"It's stupid, the way we think sometimes" I said.

He got up from his stair, and joined me by the street side, looking up at the stars while he took a deep drag, paused for a moment, then exhaled and walked towards the night.

"It's stupid to think."

Words are like melodies.
Without notation,
rhyme
or reason
they mean

nothing.

My words may sound similar,
Though my pen bleeds aged ink.

I am no longer the devil you once loved.

All these kids got
Sweet ***-pics
Of them around campus
After graduation
And all I’ve got
Is this lame *** pic
With me and three double chins.

I never told you this story:

The story is, when we first me, first falling in love, I had a choice. I was at a party, with my friends, and you texted me. You wanted to get drunk, bring a friend and show off some new guy you met.

And I was talking with a beautiful French girl.

She was impeccable, with long dark hair and she scared many of the guys away with the intensity in her stare. Her accent made every word a masterpiece, and her style strict Parisian. She did it all like we could do it, but she did it differently. And she could dance.

I asked my friend what I should do.

He took a drink and told me “If she comes man, she’ll only want to dance with you.” He said this as he glanced at the beautiful French girl smiling at me, and I smiled back at her. And that sealed the deal in the kitchenette.

So I walked backed to her, and she held out her hand. She pulled me in close, and I could smell her hair. She smiled as she taught me, laughed as I failed, and it took a while to get the hang of it, but I finally prevailed.

And I danced with the French girl.

I ignored your texts, blocked your calls. And it was her that I was texting on my walk home, forgotten about you at a bus stop far from home. It was the feel her of her body against mine I missed, not yours.

And even though I later chose you, I later fell for you, and I later lost you, that night, I chose her. I chose the dream over reality; someone knew over a scene well seen; I chose love, I chose me.

And do I regret that decision?

Well, out of all the decisions I made which lead me to loving you, I have absolutely no regrets in dancing with the beautiful French girl.

Maybe it was a precursor, a sign I should have taken. But to me, it’s just a memory, and a memory I’ll never forget, a memory I'll always have about dancing with the French girl in the downstairs kitchenette.

When the sun hid behind
a cover of trees
You shone with the intensity
of the full moon.
Stars in your eyes
like twilight skies,
Beetlejuice, Orion's belt;
the big and little spoons.

I’ll never forget to love you,
So long as you’re gone,
But once you’re home
There are no guarantees;
Daily luxuries
And nightly TV
Pray the devil in me.

I've never felt lonely
So long as music has been playing
Until I went outside, and smoked alone
To come home and heard it playing
With singing along, no answer at your door.

There are few things I love in life

And you are one of few.

We stayed up all night,
Drinking wine, listening to Dire Straits.
I told you I loved you like Romeo loved Juliet
You told me to get more creative,
So I said it again, in French.

One of the most amazing things about women is, they shine early. At age 20 you can tell the girl you’d love to love, and she shines. Her smile and her eyes light up the room like a roaring fire. And while she smiles, she loves the world around her, twofold; like a young girl in lust and a woman in love. She draws you in, and you cannot escape.

When you’re young, she will never love you as you deserve, if you deserve to be loved, which is a conundrum in itself. And that’s the motive here, and I apologize to those looking for a more obscure message. But when you’re 21, with a ****, and hormones, and a life waiting for you to **** it up, chances are you are not ready to be loved. But you want to be, because we all want to be. It’s our incarnate desire as humans to love and to be loved, unconditionally. And while she smiles, and while you think you love her and she’ll love you, understand she’ll always be looking towards the future, because the future right now is the best she has, and if you aren’t the future, which you likely aren’t, say goodbye.

It will get better than you. It will always get better than you, statistically. Statistically speaking, you are not the best. Statistically speaking, you will never be the best. It’s statistically impossible, and even I understand this having failed every math class I’ve ever begun. It’s impossible because you are you, human, and from two parents who were also human, so therefore perfection was never truly in your nature. You can try, and the rest of us will watch you fail. And as you fail, we will laugh. We will joke, and we will make fun, until it is our own turn to fail, wherein we shall weep and expect the sympathy of those around us.

But she’s still smiling, only now, at other guys. And these other guys have bigger chests and more defined arms than you. **** IQ and emotional reality, they have abs you couldn’t ever work for, and they’re southern regions, let us not digress. She wants Superman, all you can offer is Clark Kent, before he’s cool. You are not a superhero. You are mortal.

You will love her, you may always love her. She had the smile to draw you in at first, the smile to draw you in at night, and the smile to keep you awake for years after. She was it, she was perfect, she was the one, or so you tell yourself. Because hindsight offers the beauty of 20-20 vision, and you want so badly to see clearly. But you are young, as is she. And in youth comes lust, comes the man with defined features, chiseled abs and the IQ of your ******* dog.

BUT he’s not as hairy, thank god, because you own a Golden Retriever and you’d be ashamed to know the girl you loved is ******* someone hairier than you dog. At least you can pet your dog, but petting a man is, frankly, a little creepy. At least you know she’s not ******* someone like you, who undergoes the self conscious activity of man-scaping every Friday, when your friends pump you up enough to get you dreaming you have a chance of getting laid that night. So you pluck every extraneous hair hoping Ms. Lucky will not notice the red marks and the razor burn where you tried to hide the history of your sad genetics.

So call them Fido for me, of Fluffy or something else that sounds like they dog they are. **** him until your ***** is so ******* sore you forget what my name even was, how I spelt it, or how I pronounced it. And keep doing that, until you realize, eventually, of all the men you saw, of all the men you slept with, maybe one of us knew you’re middle name, and maybe one of us knew how you pronounced your last name correctly, and one of us us knew exactly how you spelt your first name, with the two t’s and the e at the end, every try, no regrets.

I never got it wrong.

Please don't call me "hunni"
Please don't call me "cutie pie"
Please don't call me "pookie-bear"

I am a 22 year old male.

I had a heart once.
It looked something like a locket that broke in two;

She took half,
And never gave it back

So now I love things incomplete.

When we come here
We come here to dream,
To live wealthy seaside fantasies
Until it's time to leave.
We hang our hats by the door,
And exchange our dreams for reality
Holding dearly to our memories
To keep us working, endlessly
Until our next retreat.

I brew beer because I like knowing
I created something from
Only what the Earth gave me
My father taught me
And my hands could carry

i can't help it,
everyday,
whatever I do,
we grow older.

i'd love to grow old with you,
but I'm not ready to give up my youth.

heavenly thoughts in you,
nostalgic thoughts untrue:
take me back to when
bike rides and ice cream ruled my land.

steak on the grill, corn on the cob,
fed my summer trance.

take me back to when
a simple sunset caught my glance.

She asks me if I love her
Then she asks me if I really do
She asks me why I love her
Then asks me if I think I should

She asks me if if it's worth it,
Then ask me if if my answer is sure,
She asks me why I'm leaving
And I say my answer was the door.

Living for the highs,
And dying with the lows
It's artistic, how it flows
Unconditionally, with time
Everyday a change
Yet uncomfortably the same
Leaving fleeting feelings
Of guilt and love
And the question
"What will tomorrow bring?"

I was told to make a decision,
so I did.
I was told to stick to my word,
so I did.
I was told to learn to be a man,
so I did,
And I was told to make myself happy,
so I did.

I was told to face the facts and move on,
so I did.
I was told to accept what you said,
so I did.
I was told to fall out of love,
so I did.
And I was told to find freedom within myself,
so I did.

I was told to survive alone,
so I did.
I was told to learn to never need anyone again,
so I did.
I was told to close my heart and mind to the world,
so I did,
Then I was told to learn to love again,
and I did.
Accomplishments.

The only thing holding me back
From this new year

Is you.

Do you remember the day we bought our beers, packed our bags and made our own party on the hill beside our building? It was just you and me and the sun. We were celebrating the first warm day of spring, but you still insisted on stouts, and they quickly lost their cool in the sunlight but I didn't mind. I brought my camera and photographed the wind curling through that blue and green sundress you loved, and you danced as if you were a leaf in autumn.

Until you spilled your beer, to which I reacted only with regrettable anger. You stopped dancing.

That lead us inside, away from the sunlight, to end the memory. You never wore that sundress again, and didn't enjoy those stouts the same way. We never celebrated another change of season, and I never again photographed you in the wind.

Beginning of summer, end of high school;

Windows down, driving too fast in warm weather with a girl you love to a song you'll learn to love just as much:

Can I ever feel free again?

I know, I know
I’ve been told so many times to give it up.
That what happened when I wasn’t there
Was what made her the girl I loved
But the problem is, now that we’ve moved on
She’s still the girl I loved
She’s still the girl who is liked
And I’m still the guy who is not.

You can’t necessarily turn feelings off,
I mean I have, but it wasn’t good
It kind of ended in misery, to be honest.
I think thats why she’s gone,
In a way I mean, on top of disasters past, and
Mainly because of everything we said to one another.

It kills me, you know, knowing she’s fine
That she’s probably gone on and found some other, new guy,
While I sit here at night, writing line after line
Of sad poetry and lyrical lies.
I’m sure he’s taller, of course, she likes that a lot,
She always wanted love taller than 5’9”.

It kills me, you know, knowing she’s fine
While I’m sitting alone at home,
Cooking dinner for one over an open stove.
Writing these god awful, sad sappy poems
That no one will ever even read.
It kills me, you know, knowing she’s fine
All the while I’m sitting at home
Slowly burning inside.

Uno mas,
or "one more."
One more stop until we're home
or close enough to call it so.
One more stop until we're close enough
to driving our car and picking up ***,
roadside.
To grabbing a coffee
to restart the night.
To talking 'till that predawn light
that reminds us why
we fell in love
the first time.
Uno
mas.

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 don’t think I offended her,
And I don’t think she was sad
But the way she looked out at us
With envy, perhaps,
As we walked out of the club
Left me feeling something
In the pit of my stomach
I can’t quite understand.

She stared as if
We were kids at the party,
Boredom matching desires
To let the night take fire,
Arriving in nice cars,
Ordering expensive drinks
Watching a show
We'd only paid money to see.

She stared as if
Not from her view;
Legs split
Betwixt stage and sound,
Dancing somewhere between
Some kind of neon dream,
And a place she’d prefer not to be.

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

Sunlit dew is beautiful.
A blanket of stars across the night sky is beautiful.
Cold beers at the end of a long day are beautiful.
A new year is beautiful.
And even a broken heart is beautiful, when seen from the right angle.

The key is the point of view.