as surgery
is to god

lemonade mouth taste, sugarless lemonade
thought we were past this phase but i guess
i was wrong again this time. my heartbeat is
breaking my rib cage, diaphragm disappearing
leaving me breathless and bleeding. you smiled
again today so i started digging my own grave:
six feet deep, shovel clanging like your laughter,
making me torn between slowing down and
working faster, eager to hear it over and over
but hesitant to let it be over. it’s a bittersweet
symphony, and you’ve reduced me back down
to cliches again. i wish that i knew how to just
be your friend, neptune and jupiter and nothing
more, but your eyes are just so warm. how can
we not be venus and the sun? i’m spinning,
reeling backwards with you at my center,
the planet of the goddess of love-- i’m mercury,
one day with you feels like two years (would
two years with you feel like one day? probably)
and my mood swings so drastically around you
because i’m too close to have any kind of
atmosphere, always running too hot or too cold,
no middle ground-- but who am i to talk, with
you and your solar flares, your cold spots. how
do i get into the goldilocks zone with you? just
right for life, just right for evolving into something.

you say “let’s go for a drive, put the top down”
and i do and i drive
and you tell me to slow down
that i’m doing it wrong
and that sounds like a perfect example
of who we are now.
i gotta stop thinking it will be like
the other times before
things fell apart.
it hurts me more than it hurts you
and i know it hurts you more than anything.

I want to
feel nothing for you.
I want to
soak myself in Novocain
when you pass me on the street.
I want to
not be blown away by the way
your hips shift when you walk .
I want to
delete memories of you
like they were data on a disk.
I want to
shove you so deep into a crowded backpack.
That thousands of years could pass
before I found you.
I want to
be like the neutered dog
able to **** away and away
with no consequence.
I want to
close my eyes and think of anything else
literally anything else
like dead bodies decaying
or something along those lines.
I want to
be free from your chains
and I mean that.
You don't seem to understand that
but I do.

Mean it.

Believe me.

I want to feel nothing for you.

i don't know how long it's been since i was thirteen years old- feels like a lifetime
maybe i am cicada child,
living 3 lives, dying too young too eggy
leaving my ridgey shell behind, hanging from a tree.
tan jacket, goes past my thighs
but i leave it wrinkled in the closet. maybe when it's summer, when bart trains switch with buses in the back of my head
and my phone is a soft playlist of names i don't recognize.
it is late but i am not sad anymore.
sometime this year the salt dissolved from my arms and the bitter coating fell away from my lungs.
i am in my second life, eating other bugs
waiting for summer

the pasta is too gummy
marsh swamp buckets
sheep on the hill overcast rainy a little the grass is green
im having withdrawal
from her face, you know.
throwing out my report card with my lunch
wanna have a skinny stomach
there's milk on my jacket sleeve, i remember it warm on my wrist.
everything on my hand has faded
it's just little poky hairs now, no more hearts.
the girl in my head walked by me red gray blue she looked like berkeley (no, richmond i guess) like a drizzle sun today's weather she walked like the rainbow at the end of the hill
someone lit the bathroom on fire.
i know if he was still here,
the moon would be out
but without him the pasta is just too gummy my stomach too full the hills too wet

on a plane going back
to a place not called home
but i have found myself
calling for you on its streets
and this time recovery
looks less like broken phone calls
and momentary goodbyes but
broken ribs and cracked skulls
i swore i heard the raven crackle
in pain of what was and what never
would be i guess what i'm saying
is that it wasn't supposed to end this
way but an australian girl told me
that love, mate, love it comes and goes
and as we stood in grand central station
amongst the hellos and deathly goodbyes
i realized she was right

i've written and posted
seventy three poems
on this website for the sake of you
and for the sake of my own safe keeping.
this makes seventy four.
seventy four poems that i've written
and still i don't think
i ever really
said
anything at all.