love is an illusion
it’s just oxytocin;
a chemical in the brain
it’s not real
but the
magnocellular neurosecretory cells
must be very good
at making it
and the posterior lobe
must be very good
at releasing it
into my blood
because it feels
pretty **** real
to me

Finding your path
under Odin's gaze
tease out meaning
hewn in every tile
assembled stories
rendered in wood
known to the soul

From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
  Like little ripples down a sunny river;
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
  Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever.

you are standing
in a studio
in front of a painting
with your head cocked to one side
chewing on your lip
hands folded at your chest
mind racing with
the running and skipping brush strokes
pulling you from one corner
of a canvas planet
to the farthest point
at the edge of the acrylic
where you and i stand
at the endless ocean of white walls
recessed suns illuminating
great plateaus
rising like revolutions from the deep
and the bristles of God
delineate my hand from yours
with a dark line
a moment
becoming permanent
as the air flutters past
removing our mortality
as it goes
and you look at your watch
and you unfold your arms
and move to the next piece
where i am waiting
ready
to hold you again.

- ©2013 Gabriel Anthony Garza

Punch today in the face
She said

Today you will make a stranger happy because you can
Today is your day to be charming
Don’t waste it
I said

Just so you know
That wasn’t a sunset you saw
That was bruises on the face of the ending day

And I smile
Every time I think of you

Charming is a birthmark you just found out you had
You find you like its shape

Be charming like a birthmark
It makes people trust you
You can have oodles of charm
When you want to

Writing poetry is a lonely thing
It looks you square in the eyes, smiling
It asks you to write alone
Even in company
When writing poetry
You are alone

And even lonelier still
It asks you
To go inside of yourself
There are things there you must find

There is a man inside my body
A boy
And they look just like me
They each hold letters
I do not know what they say
I must find them

Poetry is love you want
Is someone you want to be in love with
Poetry is a child tugging at the pant-leg of someone
You want to be in love with

Poetry is the coffee stain on long sleeve shirts
Right over the wrist
Your mother called them chocolate stains
Never blood

Poetry is my drunk fingertip stumble
My white-boy wasted
My way of loving less awkward

Poetry is someone telling you they love your poetry
Poetry is loving someone for loving your poetry
Poetry is also kissing that person

There is a man
In mirrors he might be me
We have a letter we want to give to you
But they read like a feeling

We spend hours in solitude
Finding ways to step into the daylight

Poetry is convincing you
You need a reason to step into the daylight

There are words etched into your teeth
All white
No bling
The letters change with the shape of your mouth

Smile more often
Even when you don’t want to

Poetry is trying to teach you to speak peace
with the words in your smile
To people you don’t want to speak peace to

Poetry is an angry father
Is neck bruises from belt loops
Is rug-burn from being dragged across the floor

Poetry does not love you
It simply asks you
To find space inside of yourself
And then it wants you to give it to someone else

There are people inside of you
With stories

Writing poetry is a lonely thing
Giving it away
Until no one can be a thief to your soul

That too
Is poetry

I want to write this poem
Like a band-aid
For a knuckle scrape the stucco frustration

The adrenalin shiver
Maybe you look at your fingertips
And know you'll never be a doctor

A poem that finds you peaceful

We go to exrtremes so often
This middle ground has leeway
Move around in it

There are things I need to say
Halfwritten letters
Stacked inside a gut-heavy dumbwaiter
And if I ever found the courage to pull the rope
I might choke

This poetry gets scared sometimes
I know you get scared sometimes
There are memories you re-live
Like a masochistic dvr
Or a photo album labeled
"Let's not go back to this place"

I want there to be poems in response to this

A literary anitbiotic
For the sickness we create

There is a reason chemistry makes use of the alphabet

And I find myself searching for the language
Like a child holding his head up to the rain with his mouth open
And wondering why he never feels a single drop touch his tongue
Like a scientists he decides that the water evaporates because of the heat in his breath
So he holds it

It has taken me years to finally understand
You don't need to hold your breath
But you do need to be still
And the reason you think the rain never touches your tongue
Is because your tongue is already wet

And you
Every moment of you
Already is poetry

And when it rains,
On this side of town it touches,
Everything.
Just say it again and mean it,
We don't miss a thing.
You made yourself a bed,
At the bottom of the blackest hole.
And convinced yourself that it's not the reason,
you don't see the sun anymore.

How could you do it?
I never saw it coming.
I need the ending,
So why can't you stay just long enough to explain?*


Tonight I'll sleep with the door wide open.
Afraid of what lingers in the darkness.
What is darkness?
Why, it's nothing but a lack of light.
That's all I've felt since time immemorial,
When you left,
And I had nothing,
Except broken hopes, and the echos,
Of words you once whispered to me.
I'm not going to say I'm hopeless without you, because I'm not.
I'm not going to say I'm lost without you, because I can find my way,
I'm not going to say you were the best thing that's happened to me, you weren't.
I'm not going to say I want you back, because I don't.
I just wish I had someone by my side,
Who could scare the voices away and calm my ever-growing fears.
I'm not going to say that was once you, because it never was.
You were never that person.

Oh nights like these
When 10 little white pills
Snarl like the teeth of a spoiled child
The sadness and forbidden surrender
To sleep and easy satisfaction
Become overwhelming.
It becomes the books on my bookcase
My big nose and thin wrists,
It becomes my parents ugly, angry whispers seeping through the heating vents
All the envelopes hidden under my bed
It becomes every question I haven't answered, and every word I was too weak to say
Old chapels covered in dark vines
It becomes big, it becomes huge,
It becomes mountains, it becomes oceans
Continents, nations, the sky, the galaxy
It becomes
10
little
white pills