we go together
like standing
in front of the fridge
with a fork in hand
at 1am in the dark
one gulp of milk
straight from the jug
and picking off from
yesterday’s chinese food
that is still cold
and sitting in a to-go box
on the top shelf

i sometimes have
to hold my breath
to fight the fire
in my chest
though i’m not sure
I know why it burns
it could be that
i miss my grandparent’s
peach orchard
when I would
drink their ripe juice
play and laugh
in the morning sunlight
or maybe i regret
when she held onto my chest
and i pretended she
wasn’t there
maybe i miss your lips
on mine so naturally
after you smelled my neck
and said the cigarette smell
calmed you inside
maybe i’ve learned too much
about the world
and myself
and i want to see
stale coffee rings on napkins
instead of ghosts
in the corner
when i sleep
i want eyes to look at me
with love
and the night to not call
to me
like a sad friend
who has nobody
maybe i miss
a hand in mine
and nowhere to go
but the fire
is there nevertheless
so i hold my breath
until i am nowhere at all

timothy lynch
the Catholic boy
won’t talk until Easter

he doesn’t speak in his classes
to his parents
or his friends
he doesn’t laugh or giggle
just keeps to himself
until lent passes by

i want to tell him it’s a waste
of three months

//
he’s ******* mary jacobson
the Baptist pastor’s daughter
every day after school
anyways

she’s glad
that he’s given up talking
she says he needs
to be Holier and cleanse

but she mostly
just likes when he’s quiet
during ***

there she sits behind the trees
alone
with her book and the leaves
just like me
they fall to her with
the rain
but i won’t
though i know she is my soulmate
                                        like all the others

she coughs and i wish i could be the air
stale in her eyes, in her lungs
beneath her ribs where it’s soft
                                        she is me
                                        i am her
watching that flowing sun
ripple on its surface
cowering at the sky’s laughter

she is my soulmate
the sky chuckles and says

               *“aren’t they all?”

i robbed a bank
because you asked me to
and parachuted from the sky
i danced on tables
quit smoking cigarettes
and decided i didnt want to die
i drove 9 hours with no rest
and stayed to cuddle in bed
i cooked some breakfast for you
told you what was in my head

i’d do anything
you asked me to
anything at all
but mostly i wish you’d look inside
and ask me to love you

it turns autumn and
leaves fall and spin-
nature’s dancers
graceful and neurotic
who seem to make love
to earth
as the inner manifestation
of my every thought
and yearning
naturally,
how could i keep
you off of my mind
my soul did not teach my body
how to **** relentlessly
like the summer heat
All i want to do
is make love to you
swiftly and gently

just as the leaves fall to the ground
i will fall to you
you will fall to me

i’ve heard that black holes eat stars for snacks
i wonder if black holes can die
as insignificantly as a fly who sat on my arm
or a butterfly who splat against my windshield
alive one second and gone to some other place the next
maybe gone to nowhere
where do black holes go when they die
where have my old eyes gone to
where are you
and do you ever think about
what happens to the stars that blackholes swallow
like the tongue i swallow into my throat
when i’m kissing someone i don’t want to
do you ever wonder
where a black hole goes to when it’s gone

our brains are only
soggy ventriloquist creeps
who never leave home

you said you weren’t a dream
but i could feel
some far away part of myself
falling asleep
and another part
just learning to wake up
i never knew
what people meant
when they said
they could forget
about the entire world
when they looked
in somebody’s eyes
but now i do
and reality seems
more coarse than before
somehow
after seeing how soft
your eyes could be
you said you weren’t a dream
but i’m not sure i believe you

I read
Le Mythe de Sisyphe
yesterday
and stared at the wall
for 10 minutes
afterwards
the only thing
i could think
was how
my dreams felt so real
when I drank coffee
before sleep
how I spend my time
trying to find
what God could be
and how a writer’s diary
could destroy the world

Well I wrote in my diary later
that there was no point
in writing anymore
there was no rational reason
to create
But today I wrote again
that I may as well be
Sisyphus himself;
but instead of a rock
it was pen and paper

I scrawled at the bottom
in cursive
‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy’
and closed my notebook
for a short while

i woke up this morning
(like every other)
tangled in my sheets
gripping my pillow so tight
that my knuckles were white
hair in my face
and a sigh escaping my lips
my legs were sore
and my heart hurt
vaguely in the distant
corners of my consciousness
and i wondered
if you had ever woken
quite the same as i do
and for the same reason

He had a beer bottle
full to the brim
in his right hand
And crossed through
the lines of traffic
screaming
at people
sitting in their cars
He held his hands up
in the air
as if to say
“There is no
stopping me”
When he stopped
and slammed his fist
on my car hood
I averted my eyes
though I admired
some part of him
that I couldn’t
put my finger on

i am an addict
of every experience.
release me, i beg.

she was in her own brain
all of the time
it was the only world she knew
free from everyone
she was just she

she read icelandic sagas
for fun in the park
brought home every
dog that was alone
even if it had a collar
she tore leaves from their trees
ripped them to pieces
and threw them in the air
the people who saw
thought she was celebrating
i think she
was lashing out

but she kept her anger to herself
and showed her friends
songs she thought were cool
nobody liked them
but she never paid the people
any mind
she wore the same shoes
every single day
the old chucks
with paint rips and mud
for decoration

she had pictures of people
covering every inch of her wall
they were strangers
but she liked their far away smiles
somehow captured in time

they all wondered about her
i liked her

you can’t gnaw from the outside in,
when the world is quaint
and you’re freezing in sin
and darkness falls
from the east suffocating the west
and the end calls
from the deepest wilderness
like a lonely wolf
the debris of truest paradoxes
the kiss of undeath
i follow my mind on the steepest paths
through otherworldly traps and boxes
and we sink into the comfort of our thoughts
because the world as we know truly is not
let your voice rise up
let it echo the blackness
let it scream of
silence

we lay together naked
and i whispered to you,
“break my heart”
i needed something to write about
you only said to me
“darling, i already have”
and then you left
without another word

If I told you about when
I tried to flip my car
at three in the mourning
in a field that would
be an accommodating  
burial ground
(which was all too ironic)
I think maybe
grass would grow faster
or just turn yellow
like it always does.

If I told you about
the time I lay face down
in a rain puddle
on my old playground
where I once
was pushed to the concrete
by a sad and angry boy,
I’d be left to think
that maybe I’ve taken his place
and kicked my own self
to the black pavement
laughing into
a ***** water pool
breathing in hilarious defeat.

If I told you about
when I climbed my roof alone
and smoked my first cigarette
jolly and wild and new..
I can’t help but think now
that I was low and not high.
I stumbled back into the warmth
of my room
dizzy off of this new sickness
that is no longer new
and is quite yellowing and calloused
on my fingers.

If I told you about
the first time I drove at night
sad and angry like the boy and me,
I think that I would chuckle
at how
I tried to flip the car over
so many years ago
quite halfheartedly
and how I am the same always

in the most laughable way

i tasted you in a dream once,
and from the moment I woke up
until this day still,
everything has lost it’s flavor.

nobody knows the part of the story
where Jesus
and Satan
lusted for eachother like common ****
the devil kept his lips puckered
but Jesus
He used tongue

so does that make french kissing
heavenly?
or does that make Satan
a *****?

i have been to a place
in the back of my mind
forever i am there,
forever has no time.
its like my instincts tell me
not to follow my instincts
and ofcourse that leads me to a black hole
where my nerves and brain and veins aren’t even linked
and i laugh
and its blurry
and i cough and i win
i love and i lose
and i have no hands to lend.
they have evaporated into my finger prints
as i babble on and on
with the world surrounding me
and not a soul to lean upon
who will listen to my plees
and i lay here and i sit here
while i’m really on my knees

my mind is wrapped around
all and nothing
and i’m lost inside my self
trapped like birds without wings
and i never knew who i’d be
and i’m not sure who i am
if this is me in future past or present
or if i’m seeing what i see

the world is spinning here
in so many different ways
and this is not a day
it is a day filled with years

i scream out and the words are foreign
to myself and the ones who can’t listen
all the eyes are glazed
as the sky and grass glisten
unrealistically
and it confuses me
cause they gleam the same
and i can’t remember my face,
my morals, my name.

she’d always whisper to me
“i have so much to say”
nobody cared though
i didn’t have the heart
to tell her
that she was invisible
always by my side
maybe in my head
trying to speak
to the outside world
nobody cared to listen
“i love you”
she’d say
“i read this book the other day”
she’d say
“i’m so lonely
so alone”
she’d say

nobody gave a ****
she started to realize
she was invisible

If I held your palm to my heart in the moonlight
would the soon-to-be sunlight matter much?
We could only whisper and never speak aloud,
stay forever underneath where nobody can see.
As long as your lips are mine to taste, no amount
of darkness could overcome our time spent in the night.
The curve of your neck I know is lonely,
your hands cold, eyes tired, and your lips dry.
I’ll cure you in the night, forever whispering
the world’s best kept secret to the bare dark.

after I told you I loved you
and you never said anything back
the radios went quiet everywhere
legend has it that they played the track
of my heartbeat very quietly, almost silently
I turned up the dial to thirty-eight, though,
and i didn’t hear anything at all
I guess you took all of the music
into your mouth
and I’d only hear it again
if you said you loved me back
But until then
I like to turn the radio up
and pretend I can hear the faint sound
of a too-fast beating heart

when I was sixteen
Grace and I smoked
some cigarettes on her drive way
on a summer afternoon
my first breath
a rush of nicotine
made me dizzy to childhood
we drove and listened
to Christian music
briefly sweating
while we swore and smoked

Allison and I loved
winter cigarettes
bland coffee and cold grass
beneath our bodies
warm sun lay sleepily across our backs
school left behind mid-way
with contented smiles

Aaron did not have a car
i drove the two of us
through foreign neighborhoods
after school with mix cd’s
short-lived and
always spraying sweet perfume
deep cologne
before sitting well-behaved
at the dinner table
enthusiastic about our studies

Next to the river
rushing water
sometimes littered and malodorous
on the highway bridge
in the center between two worlds
rushing past
Jacob and I
had nothing to do
everything to say

the one I lost
grew up without me
hunched on the curb
outside his parents house
with me next to him
older and less destroyed than he
we both inhaled exhaled
without knowing what it meant

i smoke still
those who have gone
stay with me
with each inhale
and swirl of smoke released
against the night canvas
must i let them go
for my poor lungs’ sake?

the man bowing
tonight in the temple
is a man who is more lost
than a ****-head in an alley

i do not want to hear
what your book says
about right and wrong
or what will become
of the world
your religious words
have become ***** to me
after all i’ve seen
so please
don’t make me hear it again

“Praise God”
“Hallelujah”
“Blessed is He”
“Salvation is near”
the words mean nothing
but easy acceptance

instead i will read
the secrets written
on flower petals
and listen to whispers
of far away galaxies
i will worship nothing
except laughter
friendship
and adventure

you can keep your holy words
and tiny world
i will take the universe as it is

Life is spent begging to be remembered. It’s like I don’t exist, really. I must convince others I am real or else I may just be a figment of my own imagination. And so here I am again, pen and paper; hoping these pages won’t disappear. The ink is there, existence of me alive in time. In the same way, I’ll look into your eyes begging you to remember every cave of dark green and pool of droughting blue. I speak whispers with my mouth near to you so that you can feel the warmth of my breath and remember the soft words I needed you to hear. Feel the uncalloused hands wrapping around yours, the hum of my car beneath us. I am real. I am here. And I love you. **If you ever remember me, just remember how I loved you. If I was ever real, it was because you believed I was.

Those who daydream excessively
who cannot escape their own mind
they are not real people
They are so many people
in one single body
that their thoughts require
much more attention
They escape to cemeteries
and rivers, to long car rides,
and sometimes only to
the backyard while
everybody talks in the kitchen
They can always be found
in seclusion, though
they’ll wish they
were not.

I have been so many people
that maybe I have been you
I’ve known heartache and
making love,
war and poverty too
I’ve seen ghosts and the Messiah,
both sneaking upon the ground
behind the people’s backs
I see graves and mourn
the loss of strangers who are me
There is no way to evade thoughts
of the elusive and unexplained;
but i don’t believe
that any daydreamer
would have it
any other way

poetry is great
because it eliminates
the lies that we tell ourselves
it is my friend
late at night
when nobody else is
it is my lover
when romance curses me

it is scary
when i write
the scariest thing i can imagine
but i do it all the time
i am strong
as much as i can be
but on paper
i can be vulnerable finally
despite the shame of it all

any song you sing makes me cry
you always put my name into the lyrics
and i wonder if you do that
when i’m not around

i can’t help but build illusions
in my old lonely brain
but please tell me you’re not one of them
or go on and bury me in the ground

don’t hold anybody else’s hand
don’t kiss them goodnight
just sing to me your sad songs
i can’t live without the sound

i want to see you come
hear the noises you make
feel your body tense
next to mine
your hands in my hair
head thrown back
eyes closed
mouth agape
your pink lips invite me
to swallow your oxygen
with my kiss
it is so pretty, to me
to experience
your vulnerability
in the secret place
between my blankets
but more than anything
i want to give it to you
give you anything you need

a soul and silence
are the same thing
says the girl
who smokes in her sleep
she writes endless words
but can’t quite make poetry
//
the musician lived on a busy sidewalk
playing the harp with his teeth
his gums bled but he didn’t mind
anyhow
he had no money to eat
//
the painter smokes and drinks
not water but beer
slaps on colors and
complains to me
he hasn’t **** solid in years…
(what a joke)
//
i know a dancer who
has no grace
her toenails fall one and two
blood smears the floor like a portrait
in her empty space
//
                                 but you are every kind of artist
                                 no need to try
                                 you could twist galaxies
                                 in a pathetic knot
                                 with just a sigh
                                 //
                                                                                 your fear,
                                                                                 the songs you hear,
                                                                                 the way your lips hum
                                                                                 while you dream,
                                                                                 and when you cry,
                                                                                 how you scream,
                                                                                 the glow of golden
                                                                                 at your feet
                                                                                 as they crack
                                                                                 the sidewalk
                                                                                 and street..
                                                                                 delicate rain
                                                                                 is what you are,
                                                                                 a cup of coffee,
                                                                                 a lit cigar,
                                                                                 the swooping stomach
                                                                                 of life discovered,
                                                                                 the breath in lungs
                                                                                 of love uncovered.
                                                                                 //
the only good artist
you won’t ever leave

i remember every bug i ****
i feel like a murderer
the god of their tiny lives
that decided at random
it was their time die

i remember every person i kiss
i remember what it tasted like
what sounds they made
if they opened their mouth
or ****** on my lips
i remember the look in their eyes
right before
i remember their heavy breathing
their smiles or their tears

i remember every day i wasted
when i ran away by myself
and kept thinkingthinking far too much
about love and death and science and God
until i was crazy
and sang songs to myself for hours
out of tune and in between
drags of my cigarette

i remember everything you say
i remember the songs you like
and the food you hate
i remember the weird dreams you’ve had
and the people who have hurt you
i remember the way you sleep
and how your eyes look when
you need to cry
but try to stay strong

i remember how i realized i love you
in a crowded room of strangers
how i stayed silent
and tried to convince my mind to do the same

x.

understand that nothing is real.

**.

search for art in all that you see (for art is present in all things).

***.

art is everything, nothing is real. we are left to conclude that art is nothing, nothing is art, or perhaps everything is nothing-which makes art more real than nothing, because it is in fact something.

xxxx.

when we smoked cigarettes in the alley way during winter, our backs against the cold brick wall; well, darling, that was art.

xxxxx.

you made poems and paintings and songs and dances, but i’d never seen anything more real (or perhaps less real) than the way your eyes looked when they were in love. and that, well that was the truest art there could ever be.

xxxxxx.

understand that your love is everything, and everything is art, but nothing is real, or art is nothing. my words will never quite be right, but your eyes in love were the rightest thing that never existed -(or existed more than anything).

i’ve got this feeling in my stomach
lately
like it’ll never settle again
i’m not sure what i want
but i want it too much
i’ve got rocks in my stomach
because of you
i think
waves crash against them
splashing
almost high enough to reach
my heart
i want to *****
i want you

the way you wanted me
is too much to bear
now
my shaking hands
and solemn acceptance
are gone
i just want you
the look in your eyes
the guttural moans
the way you said
“make love to me”
is always haunting
in my time of need
and
i go back to when
my lips were hot
on your bare skin
cry out
and continue
to wish forever

this is a poem because i say it is

    i could imagine that once you thought the same words
    with perfectly bleach-white blinds
    letting flawless streams of morning sunlight in
    maybe a smile on your face and a boy in your arms

these words are what I put together, okay?
they’re all i have when the sky is dark and the clouds are moving
in that too-fast way
and I need somebody to hold me but never ask

this is a ******* poem because I say it is

when i was a kid
i’d carry rocks
in my shirt
now i carry
secrets in my brain
and old scars
in my memories
and i’m ******* tired of
holding the weight
of useless things
in my tired arms

my newest habit
is running away
but still she said
i was lovely
theres nothing to say
so please go away
your eyes they look
right through me

i sit by myself mostly
watch as the train comes
listen to the men beneath the bridge
sing long lost lullabies
at the top of their lungs
the river breathed by
though i did not
left with all of my thoughts
i wished on a flower
like i do every day
but my heart cant take me away

the train passes again and again
who knows how long ive been here
or how long i will stay

“how do I look today
was it worth holding my hand?”


“darling,
i’m holding the hand
of all of my dreams
you look perfect
don’t doubt a thing”

he spoke in poems
always told her
she was beautiful
dipped her back
parallel to the ground
when he kissed her
like they were always
in a black and white movie
he bought her diamonds
and never let go
while she slept

at the park one day
his hand shook in hers
and he said simply
“darling,
i’m a woman
the operation is tomorrow
if you leave
well, you leave
but my love will never die”

she looked at his beard
and his old green eyes
she decided then
not to let love cry

*“darling,
dont you grieve
tomorrow you’ll look
the same to me
i’m holding the hand
of all my dreams
you’ll look perfect
don’t worry about a thing”

i don’t want to love you
anymore
i’d rather love books
and words
and the sea
when it rages
i’d rather love
adventure and
late nights
filled with smiles

i don’t want to hide
anymore
i’d rather fly
to a far away mountain
and scream
at the top of
a blue peak
i’d rather explode
with virtue
like a light—
a star
who has met
it’s end

i don’t want to love you
anymore
i don’t want
the sun to fall
i don’t want
my coffee to go cold
or my cigarettes
to wage war
on my lungs
but there’s little to do
when the universe
twists
in it’s inevitable ways

i love you so much
that i had to scream
“*******”
at the moon
just to feel okay

god is a murderer
a homosexual
a lover
a poet
a submissive *****
obese
bulimic
god is evil
god is beauty
a man
a woman
a child
a drug addict
an artist
an anarchist
a sexist pig
a mother
a smoker

we are many things
flawed and inconsistent
full of goodness sometimes too

they say we were made in god’s image
do you realize what you are saying?

i feel adventure in my bones
trying to crush me from the inside out
turn me to dust,
for what an adventure that would be

i could bathe in spring water
somewhere hidden deep in Fiji
maybe i would skateboard
on cobblestone sidewalks
in Spain or Italy
i’d like to run away to New York City
or to San Francisco
and wander the streets at night
with a new pack of cigarettes
and nowhere to be
some day i might like to go
to the white house
and Lincoln Memorial
or just a failing silver diner
it doesn’t matter

i just want to go somewhere
there is no explanation
i just want to go anywhere

i need to be a real person again
instead of getting lost
every chance i can find
i lost myself in
the way the wind blows
i feel that the answer
is right in front of my face
but i won’t see it until
it’s time to leave