You notice the browning leaves,
Early victims,
In midsummer
Late July and August
And they parallel our love
Crisping stale edges
Edging inward
Inward to where growing used to be
I blame the sun
The sun of truth
Blasting unmercifully on our greenness
And returning us to the soil
Of amorous compost.

here we are in the same morbid cycle
only theres a difference it seems.
now it is you who are scouring my effluences with your nose pegged
dancing around in the mess.

not fun is it?
no. no.
I wouldn't be so cruel to tease you all on top of it.
besides woudn't that make me just like you?

No. instead, I will just smile on the inside
arms folded with a feign look of concern botoxed on my face
wonder if by the time it wears off you all develop some tinge of compassion?

50 bucks says, none of you get it!


Sewage. Oh so important but, only when you realise **** isn't going anywhere.

Coming down with something
     blame summer
     point a finger at the city
worn-down pizzazz
     drunk trumpets
and I hide in my coat
    
trees look better without leaves
is it just me?
   see the sun bellow
   into buildings

student affairs
   like heat rash
bounce along hallways

foreign mumbo-jumbo
   mishpelt words

they say him met her
saw six pictures last night

I haven’t met me
   books know truth
not brunettes

good poetry
better than ***
   they’re running running running away with it
between spritzers
   and sandwiches
   now snooze until Halloween
   brown back in fashion

    caught in the middle
    piedra de aguacate
I handle guitars
    they fiddle with women

now  
   let apple juice trickle
from my lips
   and a man gets out a taxi
    drops his phone

I thought of you when i woke up
And how you stopped my heart beating last night..
All of the butterflies in my stomach are choking now,
They're falling hard like burnt fireflies..

And i'm out of town for a whole month,
I've got a new city to wander in
But every day when i wake up
I'll wonder why you're so fond of him

Cause its been years and years now
And i'm still saving for a half sleeve tattoo,
So i can wake up smiling to an art based on you
And all the good times we have yet to go through

And it's been years and years now
And every summer i've got my black pen on the go,
I'll pen your name up on the billboards so all the busy streets all know,
And i'll pen a heart on my sleeve that keeps on beating for you

I'm writing poems with mixed intentions
I'm trying hard to narrow it down..
So i'll write a song,
Throw away the acoustic sound..
Cause all i feel is electric now..

And nothing's supposed to hurt for this long, no not this long
And theres blood from my heart not inkpen, spilled on our favourite song

But its been years and years now
And you said that change was good for us all
And that pain was something you had to let go,
But your song is all i hear on the radio..

And it's been years and years now
And every summer i feel like the sun's raining down on me
Cause i'm about to drown in other people's positivity,
I just need a way to absorb that from just me..

So i'll ink your name on a band aid
And find some new band mates
And then i'll trade in your favourite records,
For some new cd's since i wrecked yours
And i'll pen out a watch, pouring out endless amounts of time
So on my wrist it'll never say
That its 'holding on' time
Cause i can't live without you
Not even for a day
But i'm gonna have to learn how to
Wash the inkstains from my veins

Please don't misunderstand me
I know this had to be done, things
were growing more rotten by the day
and sudden amputation was our only choice, but

I still feel you, like
fingers grazing skin, I feel you
like a heart that never left this chest
I still feel you, and

Though we had to cut away
the decayed flesh of what is
I am still trapped, thinking about
what was, and what could have been

My heart is still full of tomorrows
and I need you to know
I will never love again, not the way I loved you
never that way

Each path before, led me to you  
but somewhere we took a detour
and I can't stop thinking; Is this the way it ends?
is this the way true love was meant to die?

Severed limb and bleeding heart?
I am only human, and there is a limit
to how much pain I can endure
and even though you're gone

*I can still feel you beating in my chest

I am Monster:
rough hewn spent and jaded
a loaded revolver
the dark harbour
an improper conduct sponsor
the acerbated and saturated
sympathy and empathy terminated
smarter, harder and sharper
sense of honour departed
a cloned armoured martyr
an existence where love has faded
or simply overused and left degraded.

I am Monster:
shaped by unfortunate events
a life of sharpened steel
etched with the scent of malcontent
chaotic defiance and suicidal descent
the rise of the paragon of zeal
masked in the stench of the surreal
lurking in shadows dark
that leaves its presence felt
like a silent tsunami watermark.

That voice in my head
speaking in tongues
his tasteless insipid breath
fills my lungs
the only respite
is prescribed medication
and meditation dictates;
navigate the monster
and his origin appellation
will have to wait.

The sorrow I borrow
and the chaos I bring
like liquid will eventually
rescind like the pulse of a wasp sting
the poison will dissipate
and then evaporate
in the predisposed
wrath of tomorrow.

at the sight of you
moons are dull grey spotlights
flat, dimensionless, and known.
which could make us akin
if i let the end begin.

but i drag it out and twist it tight
all strapped in place
i dig a tunnel in my soft spot.

stretch the truth until it breaks its back.
bones of sugar
clumped together like lonely hydrogen
in a coronal marsh.
i thought i could tame it.

i see
silver and black wind
builders and watchmen.
your world famous carousel hugs
turn to languorous shrugs
but they both make me dizzy.

a gaze eclipsed for the moment
you're less a mind, more a slogan.

when his eye meets yours
it leaves behind
sunspots.

You were fingers drumming on the steering wheel, eyes always on the road ahead, inhaling the blend of my anxiety and your charm, exhaling gusts of songs I didn’t know I liked and ease that doesn’t belong to either of us. You were major chord progressions and eight o’clock lighting that you can’t hold under your thumb any better than the youth that you tuck into your back pocket as a precaution, only there for show, never for use.

You were self-deprecating humor that’s not real anymore by the time it’s fallen into your palms and a dose of sincerity pushed under your tongue like a vitamin you hope you never taste before washing it down. And you wash it down with everything and anything that makes you feel warm. You were the bits of everyone who’s ever made you feel warm so I sat like a radiator in your passenger seat hoping to radiate right into your core.

You were kindness on the dashboard and fears in the trunk, bumping up against the shell of your light blue disposition at speed bumps and leaned up against the walls of your mind on the straight aways. Audible under the sound of your laughter. Only audible if you were listening (I was listening) while you hummed along to words you don’t mean enough to say out loud.  But your affections sit like pennies behind the windshield, clinking together in sync with the sound of conversations you can’t help but have. You can’t help yourself at all. It’s always warm behind a wall of glass.

You were nights right before they became mornings because if time slips away then you never have to catch it. Time got caught in the space beneath your ribs until you diluted it with a love for everything bigger than you and filled yourself until you could be something bigger than Thursday nights and dog eared pages to books that no one recommended. And in the middle of a sunrise, something you could always say goodnight to, you were arms wrapped around someone smaller than you, holding onto something bigger than any of us, tapping out syllogisms like Morse code and like fingers on steering wheels.