brick by brick.
piece by piece.

there was that night in the alleyway
when you confessed that you loved me
[the words pouring out of your mouth
like oil onto water]
and these words collided with my wall
dropping abruptly
to the ground
like the raindrops that were
falling from the heavens
onto our eyelashes.

day by day.
each by each.

it was that night in the alleyway
when you admitted you love me
and you see me
and you hear me
and you
know me.

and i know you.

it was that night when one of my
bricks toppled to the
ground, liberated by your
perfect imperfection.

we are insane, yes.
having known each other a
minuscule fraction of
a lifetime and wanting to
spend the rest of it with
one another.

but these bricks
[which were
lying heavy on my
sprightly soul]
were ****** to the ground,
emancipating me from my
encumbering wall
as you began to
pour into the spaces
where they once persisted.

you replace my opposition to
vulnerability with the kind of love
i have fervently yearned for,
craved and desired
night by night.
each by each.

the clock strikes 11:11,
it's always you i had wished for.
for now i know;
if you hope hard enough,
it works.

for a person like me
[a person like us]
letting this guard down
is almost as arduous as
quantum physics.
or advanced chemistry.
or seeing someone you love
in tears.

i feel that i am destined for you
so much so that i can
easily
imagine being this older couple
i once saw at the park,
holding hands and living like they
were still 21.
and i wished to God that i would
find that love.

dear God, i don’t even know
if i believe in you but...
thank you for
sending him to me.

he is it.
he is endgame.
there are some things that a
heart just knows. my god, i
feel him with me when i am alone,
[i can barely breathe without him]
and know that he should have been
holding my hand all along,
holding my all, all along.

he is my ultimate karmic
retribution.
[chapped lips,
countless kisses.]

never be scared, my dear.
never doubt my love.
for as you say you will never
leave me, it will be in my arms
that you will always stay.

there are just some things
a heart knows.

brick by brick
piece by piece
day by day
each by each
we will crush our
doubts and fears.
hesitations and tears.

i am madly, madly
irretrievably and
blissfully
in love with you.

my dear,
we are meant to be.
you are living,
breathing poetry.

what lips my lips have kissed,
and where,
and why;
i know not why.

what arms have held me,
and how tightly,
and how rightly;
i know not why.

he was my friend
of all friends, but
it was futile to be
just friends.
so, i
let him have me,
all of me.
nothing shatters you
like a first love.

he gets all of you,
drags away these
shards of you
that stick in his memory,
of that desperate girl who
only wanted to be loved by him.
but could not trust him,
and rightly so.

for when he has grown sick
of you,
and that girl at the party
was simply easier to be with - -
more vanilla,
less rocky road,
and he never really
loved you at
all --
something is killed
inside of you.

[but i know you did love me and i
know you still think about me,
like i still write about you.]

he was my friend but
we had never been together
alone. i knew that
he wanted all of me.
and i wanted all of him.
yet, i held him,
his body trembling
in my arms,
and he was still too in love
with that other girl
to take advantage
of me.
[he loved this girl that
made him move to the states,
that lived with him and loved him,
and then loved another
and then slept, soundly, next to him
in the darkness.]

i had just met him
and just kissed him
and just fell too fast for this
fast-moving man.
we strolled along the
charles, and he told me i was
beautiful and gave me a flower
like they do in those
idiotic romantic comedies
that we all can’t help but love.
and when he kissed me on
the bridge - -
grabbed my wrist and
****** me into his
lips - -
the city lights
illuminated our
fervent faces,
and then i let him have
most of me,
and at that hollywood moment
i forgot that
men will do these things.
and leave you naked in the night.
and say they’ll call.
[they never do.]

he was just a
flat out
mistake.
there was nothing
poetic
about us.
i do always strive,
in living,
for pure poetry.

three days later,
he was another mistake.
he kissed me and i forced
the passion because i just
wanted to be close to someone
and he was there, and it was easy,
and i never should have asked
him to be with me
that night. i know that
now.

and so, the girl i had been
so long ago
no longer exists.
and thus, i feign my
demeanor,
my kindness to
strangers.
it's simply affectation.
because, from what i’ve
ascertained
in my exceedingly dramatic life,
most people are ****.
no, seriously.
most people
are ****.

and so, why bother with recounting
what loves have come and gone,
for my innocence   is   now gone.
summer sang in me for a short while,
and these flames extinguished
its voice.

he was exactly like my first love.
an *******.
hilarious, gorgeous,
but an ******* as it was.
and still, i let him have
most of me,
and feigned my amicable demeanor,
and spent the day with him.
and when he left i cried
because i knew what this
had meant nothing to
either of us, and it was
finally
getting to me.

for the next few months
i convinced myself that i could be
alone, that being with someone,
really being with them
would simply
dim the unrestrained sparks inside of me.
thus i realize i stand frozen in the snow - -
in winter stands the lonely tree, which is me.
and i apprehend that the ***** i give
vanish one by one.
and i apprehend that my heart
boughs more silent than ever before.

that is,
until he asks me to grab
a drink or two,
and stay the night at my
place, and says
he's looking for something
casual, at first.
and ***.
and if we were compatible,
he is o p e n
for a relationship.
and i let him have
most of me that
night. and we had
a stressless
non-relationship
for a while.
that is,
until i wanted him
to stay longer than an hour
[which even the *******
deign to do]
and at the drop
of a hat, in his eyes,
i’mattached.

well maybe i am.
but he will
never know that.
because he doesn’t want

me.
nor does he care about
the person, the woman, who inhabits
the body he has been exploiting.
he is the very opposite of poetry.
he   is    prose.
he  is   a    box
who  does not
want   to    get
attached      to
me     because
he    is  scared
as    all     hell
that      maybe
i    could    be
the     one   to
turn his prose into
a free verse, to open up his
life to love, but instead
he closeshimselfup
to me, to the notion,
hibernating in his
lovely shell.

the air  is  awash of  ghosts
tonight who  tap  and sigh,
who      long       to       take
back     the      body     they
so   readily   seized   when
it was open for them.  they
await my reply.  but in my
heart  remains a quiet pain
for   all  of  these  lads who
will         remain           now
unremembered   and  who  
will  no longer  turn  to me
at  midnight   with   a    cry,
convinced  my disguise  is
who i am.

[what they know won’t
hurt them.
but it absolutely will
hurt me.]

Fred occupies his chair, innocently enough.
Occupying his time by
Solving the crossword puzzle, racking his brain
for the answers.
So all of the letters fit together.
So every space is filled. The beauty of solved Enigmas.
Ten across. Opposite of faithfulness.
The fire consumes the logs. Contained Chaos.
The room is illuminated in frantic light
Emanating from the fireplace.
Flames prevented from yielding to their Natural


Yearning to Disseminate to whatever matter
Will accept them. Fred sits on his chair,
Innocently enough,
But if you look in those
Eyes of his, you will witness the Beauty of
Pain, la Douleur exquise d'amour.
Loving Someone he will, invariably, love and forgive.

A woman

Whose love has changed patterns. Changed
Directions. Altered. There is a string
That hitches his heart to that of his infidel.
His wife. He feels foreign blood impairing
Them. He knows her. Without her telling
Him anything, he knows the Lies in those
Eyes of her. Confirming his knowledge.
Ten across. Infidelity. Means unfaithful.


She walked in moments ago, sat on the
Usual chair in front of him. Fred’s
Heart aches now with the immensity of the
Heartache within his wife.
He feels her heart has been broken
By the same man who usurped her from
Him every Thursday. She would return

[not quite yet]

Home on those days, Disjointed, Distracted. He
Knew this was what Falling in
Love looked like. But today, his wife's
Heart feels different. Her Lover is
Absent from their blood. Fred no
Longer is
Obligated to pump the blood of his
Wife’s flame throughout his own body.


and yet, he feels sorry for her.
feels her suffering.
feels her pain more than his own.


He watches her face, the Sorrow in
Her eyes drinks the flames of the
Fire. Fred can tell she wishes she were


In the flames. Better yet, the
Blaze itself, free from her despondency,
The places her mind must be traveling to.
Fred is fully aware that she is contemplating
Unloading her triste to him. Not for
His own Benefit, to be Honest with him.
Only to assuage her Guilt, to
empty her conscience of
Bad Blood.


She is a sinner. She will sin
Again. No doubt about that. But.
His Infidel.
He cannot stand to see her...
His love...his life...


If someone is spread out before you
Seeking to surrender to Death,
You do not Simply let them die.
Especially if they share half your blood.
Especially if your Happiness is
Contingent upon their survival.


Fred’s wife has a ghostly look on her
Face and he cannot help but save her from
Her caustic thoughts, from the
Consuming pain in her very
Core.


and so he guides
her back to him.
just her wide eyes.
he knows all.

And He forgives her.

The pervasive silence fills my ears, the resonance of it inundates me. I speculate what you’re thinking about, why you are now drifting into nothingness, why we are now on the precipice of nothingness. Maybe I revealed too much, perhaps I shouldn’t have told you that you are what I want, that you will always be what I want...that this will never change. My feelings for you are constant, they never waver. They bubble over into hysteria, into rash thoughts, into frantically telling you these things. Things that make your lips still. My lips are still too. They are meant to kiss you with, my dear. They are meant to break the absolute fragility of this silence, the glass house that we currently inhabit. Words right now would be like stones, carelessly thrown. I am living in the reality I have created in my mind. I do not know what to accept as fact or fantasy, for your silence deafens me,  your silence stops me from being able to rationalize my own reality. For I will never know what gears are shifting in your machine of a mind. For I will never know whether this silence is meaningful to you, whether you know the speed at which my spry thoughts are sailing. You could be thinking about how unreal the sun feels on your back after the months of winter we have endured. You could not be thinking about me. Or maybe you want to admit to me that we occupy the same reality, you and I...Or maybe you’re plotting your inescapable escape. This silence will be misconstrued in infinite ways, overanalyzed, thought about incessantly until my mind becomes overcome with you. Until my mind tires of you. Until I force you away from me. Until my feelings are fleeting, and you wonder what I am thinking when I thoughtlessly wander away from you, abandon you...leaving you standing there with your own thoughts, your own mind. Your own reality.

you tread over my heart
like a heavy foot to the ground.
like a man stranded in the sea
using all of his strength to
keep his head above the water.

i try and try,
and try...
yet to no avail.
i am of
no concern
to you.
at all.

you don’t
know how
your disregard
confounds me,
for my feelings
remain
unknown to you.

[only so you don’t
give up on me
completely.]

respect is
indispensable.
without it,
who are we?
we must
cherish love.
[a homeless man
cherishes
every cent he earns.]

but,
we are cavemen
without the
common decency
to be considerate
to each other’s
hearts.
but, we are
savages
without the
knowledge that
our actions
completely
and utterly
transform
others.
but, we are
insects that
eat their mates
after they
copulate.

*** means less to us
than it does to that lowly spider
spinning his gossamer thread
in that corner, there.

our bodies are
empty shells
filled with
could
have been’s...
should
have been’s...
would
have been’s...
these feelings are
obsolete.

looking me
straight in the eye,
without hesitation,
you say
not only
don’t you love me,
but
you never once
have
and never once
will.

you just
wanted my
listless
corpse of a body
to do with as you
please.
to seize it
blindly and wholly
to use it
as if it were
your right.
as if you’re
entitled.

you took advantage of my weakness,
for passion and for you.
you managed to trick my mind.
doing magic tricks with your eyes.
casting spells on me with your hands.
holding me as if you always would.

[not only
for the night.]

death is simply the
absence of life.
but life cannot be the
converse. life cannot be
absence of death,
for death lurks around the
corner, death thrives
inside us all. every breath, the
last we may take. every
blink, the
last we may see the light.

for when i walk down the
street, whenever i cross a
busy intersection, i heed the
grin of death in the confines of
my mind. this cheshire cat smile, the
bane of my existence...
end of my existence. the
car that is whizzing by could
hit me, whisking me away, the
plastic bag caught in the wind,
dandelion seeds blown off the
stem of a **** by an innocent child.

[she doesn’t yet know her own mortality.]

i was that girl once, playing with the
boy from next door,
without the
crushing reality
that i could slip, hit my head on the
boulder on my lawn
and end my life, just like i ended the
lives of that colony of ants i
thoughtlessly massacred earlier.

and what about the
sinister knife i hold in the kitchen?
what about the
infinite pills in my drawer?
what about the
precipitous stairs in my apartment?
how easy it is to end the
life i have spent so long
cultivating, constructing; the
meaningless hours i have spent
doing things that make me long to
abstain from life and feign death in the
only place that makes death appear to be
the favorable option.

death lingers in the shadows.
it is the one thing i am certain of
in life.

if you wanted the sky,
clouds, overwhelming blue,
i would harness it
and give it to you.
if you wanted the sun,
self-perpetuating, vast ball of flame,
i would gather it
and give it to you.
if you wanted my heart,
the thing that keeps me alive, ****** fist,
i would rip it out of my chest
and give it to you
wrapped up
with a bow.

all of these things i would give,
without resignation about
how life would be
for others
without a sky,
without a sun to keep them warm...
or how i would function
without my heart.

[with my heart
in your greedy
hands.]

you would take all of this from me,
without shame, without guilt,
selfishly and ignorantly,
believing that i’ve given
all of this to you
because you are
somehow
entitled
to it.

but i won’t blame you for
accepting my gifts.
after all, i am the one
who now gives them to you.

i am the one who rips the sun
out of the sky,
who then takes that sky
scoops it into a bucket
and delivers it to you
without a second thought.

i am the reason why my chest is
completely open,
why i am bleeding out now.
i am the one who granted you
my heart.

i cannot condemn you for taking it.