i didn't want to be back here
how come im back here

you were the one that brought me here in the first place
showed me this place of feeling
broke down my walls and carried me away
to this place of colors
both light and dark

and then some how we saw it for what it was
and grew together
made it out alive
carrying each other on our backs until we'd
made it across that impossible abyss

but now you've taken me back here and why
when it was a fight to the death to get out
why would you toss me back into this maw
with no escape
no you

today has been so long and so tiring; i think i should lie
down. the anxiety has me feeling like a stranger
a lot lately. it’s not the only thing getting me down
it’s always the same sad songs that i’m listening
to that make me feel alive it’s usually always music that brings light
back into my life but lately, music isn’t my only friend

sometimes, i wonder if you really are my friend
i can’t help but stop short when i catch you in a lie
or saying something insulting or being devoid of light
it may be the anxiety speaking, but you feel like a stranger
you’re always doing the talking and i’m always doing the listening
but there are good times too so i push the red flags down

whenever you hit me up, drunk at 4am, im always down
sometimes its not me, but you rather, who is in need of a friend
you go on and on and deign to ask if im still listening
and of course i am, i always am, even if im afk —i’ll lie
and say i did because it would be stranger
to admit it —no, i would rather leave off that light

but that’s just the thing, though right — light?
i give you so much, yet you give none, i bring you up, but you bring me down
at this point i’m not sure which one of us is in fact the stranger
at this point i’m not sure which one of us is in fact the friend
when you’re good, i’m bad; when you’re bad, i’m good; when i’m bad, i lie
and say i’m good because its not like you’re listening

on the other hand, sometimes you are listening
and its those days when i start to feel light
because it seems like things are changing, like you’re changing —a lie
i tell myself over and over again, while i watch you drag me down
of course, the lyrics to this song fit —"thoughts of a sober friend”
when you’re sober you play the friend, but when you’re not, you play the stranger

i’m starting to think that if you’re going to keep playing the stranger
then I’ll keep you at an arm’s length away, always listening
but never leaning in, never getting wrapped up in you more than a friend
should ever, never letting you steal my light,
never letting you drag me down
again, never believing you when you lie

I'm the kind of girl who burns through guy friends like rubber on tiers, like sulfur on matches, like gasoline and kerosine and flameward moths.
But I don't want to burn through you.
We just go together so well—like puzzle pieces.
You and I are like day and night, sun and moon.
If you only knew how it eats me up inside, keeping my cool.
I feel this tiny spark dancing in my heart and it threatens to rake my body in flames, ready to pounce on me, licking and biting at the first sign that I'm falling for you.  
I'm really trying to hold my fuse right now, but one second we're joking and laughing and in the next you say something that tugs at me and I feel my hold on it slipping.
If I don't burn you first, this fire in my bones will certainly consume me.

"Oh God," she says, hands clasped together, fingers entwined, knees bent.  
He doesn't answer; /he does.
/he answers with earnest, continued, devoted worship,
head bowed, eyes closed, his mind devoid of all else but this
—this soul-shaking, earth-shattering pleasure, this blessed communion between man and woman,
the Holy Spirit an undoubted ****** through the candlelight,
this holy practice wherein they do some of their finest praying.

Every little move, every soft step, every breath I take,
I am reminded of him; I am reminded that he was here.
I savor the subtle soreness, the secret that only we know
—the remnants of pleasure that reside there.
They remind me that I am his, and his alone.

I await him, naked, head bowed, kneeling
With leather and rope he binds me tightly
Deft hands’ feather touches send me reeling
Melting candles ready, burning brightly  
He blindfolds me then gags me with a bit
And through the darkness, slowly I am led
To a place where in pleasure I shall sit
‘til ecstasy claims me upon the bed
He’s summoned the small death from me thrice now
Three rounds; it does not end with my pleasure
“You’ll take and like what I give you,” he growls
We’re done when he pleases —at his leisure
After all the teasing, pleasing, and pain
We collapse together —one, once again

Is it too much to ask that we
just lay around with our
cigarettes and coffee and jazz
and just enjoy each other?

Why do we strive for perfection—
when it would only neglect
the intricacies of this gritty,
raw, ****** existence?

Resurrected, I arose
for mornings thick with lust
and love and caffeine and naked kisses
And again, when night came
I did too, and fell sweetly, sinfully  
prey to the small death
ushered in with a grand symphony
of your name

The French call an ******
“la petite mort” or “the little death”

tango with lips, teeth, and tongue
undress each other with our eyes
an unspoken agreement that
we’re both dying a little tonight

once I was a waning crescent, pale and thin—incomplete
a silver sliver of light peeking unwanted in between the
folds of the velvet, midnight sky

and now, having gazed at my sun from a world away, I
am whole—I am full and complete—grand designs,
imperfections, craters—making me no less whole

when you are near it is not you that completes me,
but rather you who illuminates the parts of me I
thought were lost forever

the paradox that you both do and do not complete me
brings me as much comfort as the sun’s warm rays
on my cheeks and the moon’s cool gaze on my back.

I am endless, immense,
no God nor Goddess am I.
No fixed being,
no stagnant, static entity,
no trapped energy,
no universe.
I am ever revolving,
undulating, expanding,
experiencing,
growing, evolving,
understanding.
I am eternal, infinite,
unfathomable,
unlimited.
I am woman, and I am endless.

eyes roll back
lips part slightly
soft moans come
short breaths loosed
steel thighs melt
nails dig in
possession?
small death?
or both?

Time and time again I self-sabotage
I drink the poison; I eat the dollar bills
I make bad decision after bad decision
to punish myself.

Now, I think it’s time I pour out the wine,
pour out my soul and let go of the pain
because how else will I ever hope to heal
my future when I keep beating myself up
over the past.

Barnacled shipwrecks are beautiful in their sundered glory.
Ivy-covered age-old walls are deemed charming and quaint.
The moon is mystifying even with craters that can be seen with the naked eye

Neither age nor imperfections make you any less whole.
Instead, they showcase your closeness with nature and authentic beauty.

He comes, she goes, no one every really sticks around much.
It rains, the sun bares its face, the clouds come back to steal it’s thunder.
Nothing is ever set in stone
Well, except for maybe human bones and Founding Fathers.

This is a poem I quickly threw together after I heard the line “Since when did my apartment become your watering hole of choice?” —Dan Humphery, Gossip Girl, S2:E22, 21:45-21:40. The last two lines are a play on Mount Rushmore and the setting, Founding Fathers, a bar that often appears in the hit TV Drama, Bones. In the show, Dr. Temperance Brennan, Agent Booth, and their friends often meet at FF for drinks after work. The poem is basically saying, “Nothing is certain, except alcohol and my favorite watering hole.”

Night flower blossoming
Beneath the summer sky
Petal parasols unfurling
Throughout June and July

She was born under the moon
Nocturnal butterfly
Pollinated by pale moths
To live one day then die

Moonflower blooms in warmth
Her short season’s end nigh
Shriveling once the frost sets in
And conceding to the ice

Moonblossom rich in scent
A true pleasure to stand by
Her short-lived sweet fragrance
Would all surely vivify

As you wrote my name in
cursive with your tongue
I saw explosions behind my eyelids,
I heard a melody that was
so blissfully new, yet familiar,
I tasted lightning and saw colors
that for now have no name here,
and only exist in that realm.

As I stroked gently the head of the sun-spun hair draped
softly across my chest, I couldn’t help but find myself
thinking, for what must have been the hundredth time,
what are you thinking, how are you feeling?
What have we done to each other?
Yet, as if on cue, as if reading my thoughts,
your head snapped up and your eyes met mine.
You looked at me half-lidded and while my first
two questions remained unanswered, I realized it
was merely a catchlight I saw in your eyes, and
what we had done to each other was ***** out the
starlight that had once dwelled there.


“When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers. The primal questions of any marriage. What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?” —Ben Affleck, Gone Girl

Found poem from the opening lines of the movie, Gone Girl.

The world has turned grey in your absence and feels as if I will remain blind to all of its brilliant hues for as long as we’re required to be apart—for the foreseeable future.

When this is all over—when I do see you again, I know this dormant fire coiled in my bones will set us ablaze.
When we reunite, our kisses will be sweeter than our first kiss.

When we get together, our love will be even more ravenous, even more demanding, even more essential than before, and we will desire and be desperate to become reacquainted.

When I see you again, it will be like my soul has returned to the water, and once again I have been made anew.

When I see you again, every part of me that came from
the dust of dead stars will be alive again.

“Unbind
Unclasp
Uncover
Uncurl
Unfurl
Undo
Unfasten
Unfold
Unhing­e
Unhook
Unleash
Unlink
Unmask
Unroll
Unveil
Unclip
Unlace
Unzip
­Untie
Unbutton
Unlock”

“Undress.”
“Understood.”

Unravel

Siren, sorcerer, seductress of my soul
Vampire of verve, temptress of thirst tantalizing,
captivating, enthralling me through craving
Wrenching away transmogrified desire exposing
a colossal and cavernous aching

Licentious liquors and provocative potions
Ethereal and corporeal hexthralling mixtures
Alluring, ensnaring, inviting concoctions  
Tempting with tinctures, enticing elixirs
Banquet of seduction and tonic of attraction
She is the enchanted device of my own unmaking

As I sit in porcelain canoe, submerged
in lukewarm bathwater, which grows
colder and colder each passing second
I take a long, longing look down at my
belly-bowl full of jelly-rolls and wonder,
am I worth more than the sum of my parts?

Am I more than *** and ****?
Am I more than the 206 from 270 bones,
give or take a few here and there,
without which, I would be entirely jelly?
Am I more than the lips, the teeth,
the tip of the tongue?
more than the skin and hair and
and miles of veins pumping
life in pulse after pulse as I sit doing
nothing but contemplating my worth?

if you took it all away,
if you cold-shouldered  
this body I have come to
love and hate and love again
in one lifetime,
if you held the meat,
would the milk be enough?


I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able [to bear it], neither yet now are ye able (1 Corinthians 3:2).

Barren—they call you and now
it is your badge of honor, one
you wear proudly on display.

They likened you to a desert for
a lack of children and lack of
desire for them.

Be Mojave—Gobi—Sahara—
because your glittering, glass sand dunes
are great
and bearing fruit and flowers
is your prerogative and yours alone.

Ice
Beautiful, yet beastly.
Creeping translucent tendrils of cold.
Frozen, frigid fingers pointing down.
Crystalline and gelid shivs poised to ****.
It is only day two of the ice storm and there is
expectedly, more to come.
The weight of the world rests upon delicate, weary boughs, and though they're strong, they were not made for this.
Limb after limb encased in ice, cracks and secedes from the once-great behemoths —remarkable evergreens, landing in a crashing heap, only to be collected once the thawing ends.
One tree, if not the most important of them all, is kept under careful surveillance—24/7 watch.
She is called Survivor—for weathering a different kind of storm— though now, 25 years later, will she survive this? She has already lost one great branch, and others now cannot bear the weight of frozen glaze on their spindly arms.
Electricity is yet another danger to many others of her kind.
Fire and ice alike threaten to claim them.

C.  kissed me in his beater car
J.  in the hall,
But he only looked at me
and never kissed at all.

C’s kiss was quick, demanding,
J’s was sweet and light,
But the kiss that lingered on his lips
haunts me day and night.

each day I push the stone
each day I tread the waves
each day I carve the marble

but when

when will I see peace —the long-craved result of all this guiltful carving?
when will I breathe feely, free of tons of tons pushing and pulling on me from every side?
when will the stone break over the mountain and bring rest?

when will forgetfulness step out from the block and free me from my bonds by saying,
"enough tears, I've come to end your suffering"?

I was meant to be named Elise but my aunt stole that name away from my mother —from me

I never felt like an Elise anyways, but even so I’ve always felt a strange ownership of the name and when the girl named Elise sat
in the back of my painting class, I felt a kind of kinship to her, perhaps in name or what might have been in name.

He looked at me with lamenting eyes
which said everything he hadn’t with
his own tongue and that was how
disappointed he was with me.

He caressed my legs which were draped
across his own but stayed quiet as I
supped hungrily on water which became the
only thing I could stomach after all the
drinks I’d happily given into

But if only he knew why —if only he
knew how terrible a place my mind is.
If only he knew how blissfully deadened
my racing thoughts were when I ******
on the sweet, stinging nectar.

It is the cream, the sugar the spoon
I should be reaching for, but this early,
my fingers know only the route to
the buttons on your shirt and the zipper
of your jeans and nothing else.

watched you walk
down cracked pavement
bird’s eye view

past yellow taxis
blue postal boxes
and red phone booths

details I could see from here
though none caught my
eye quite like you

He said never again would he flood the earth
but instead, we’ve been at the fingertips of war,
we’ve had rampaging fires that lasted months,
and now a plague wiping out our weak and wise

I’m convinced it’s the end of time now,  
and we still haven’t got flying cars.

You are no temple; you are a tree and that’s just fine.
Temples always crumble, but all trees grow tall with time.

You are a sequoia, with wedded roots running deep -
an ancient redwood with more strength than stone or concrete.

Trees stand tall through whatever weather comes, rain, snow, or shine.
Temples are felled in and out of battle, whilst trees remain sublime.  

Castles of men come and go, falling like sand into sea
What remains when we’ve all gone is the life in the trees.

Leaves color, fall, and come again, with each new springtime
Temples fall to ruin as empires of man decline.

Color me in the seven
Touch your soul with mine
In our little slice of heaven
I Worship you, my love, divine

Go now, cast your spell on me
Blend us together for a new hue
I’ll be your faithful devotee
Love me, as I love you.

You teased and teased.
“*******,” I taunted.
You took me seriously.

Set me on fire
my body will be the kindling,
my soul will be the flame.

how could you not know that
you’d be the oxygen, for fire
or flesh, I cannot breathe
without you.

Silver rings upon your fingers
fingers trace my collarbone
silver’s soft, but gold lingers.
It reminds me of our home.

Where fleeting moonlight filters in,
through old windows veiled in lace,
over sheets, and over skin,
softly caressing your face.

Then, gold pours in once the sun
awakes form dreaming far beneath
a cloudless, moonlit horizon,
and falls like feathers on your cheeks.

An endless dance of day and night,
like hostages, inside we stay,
‘neath rays of gold and silver bright,
with you shall I forever lay.

a hot cup of
coffee in the  
morning is all
well and good
but I'd rather
have your lips
on mine, kissing
me awake
instead

All my life, I thought
I needed seas and
mountains and bright
city lights to be happy,
to be satisfied.

The truth is, all along,
I just needed you.

He creeped in through my window,
the moon’s shadow peeking softly
while I slept, watching, observing, guarding
a neither malevolent nor benevolent thing
just existing, in his own orbit, pulling the tides,
serving his purpose, being.

Glass plate, window to the road, the future, caked in red dust and
baked in sunlight, showing nothing but blue skies ahead,

I wish it had only been blue skies ahead.
I’ll never forget that warm summer afternoon when it was you instead of the sunrays beaming through the windshield,
when the air was so hot, we had to roll down the windows,
except, of course, the windshield remained,
and you didn’t.

Perhaps we should look to the
natural sweetness of wildflowers.
They’re beautiful without reason,
blooming each summer, for no one,
yet, their beauty is a truth that has
stood the test of time.

He was sweet, dripping honey from
his lips, lust from his eyes,
fire from his hands.

I know sugar is bad for me.
My head reasons, drinking from
crystal clear fountains of love
would do me more good than
that sweet sap, that poison, slowly
killing me, eating me from the
inside out, desire coursing
though my veins.

But my heart welcomes the sting, and
savors the burn as it moves down and
down and down

He might be sweet, dripping
honey from his lips, lust from
his eyes,
fire from his hands.

But sugar is no good for you,
***, and wouldn't you rather
drink from crystal clear
fountains of love than


let sweet, hot tea burn
you again and again?

you don't have to
love yourself
everyone says to,

that you can't really
love someone completely
if you don't love yourself

the truth is, you just have
to accept yourself and say

it might get better,
it might not, but I'll
stick around anyways

He was never my rock
but he was always my oak,
constantly standing through
whatever weather I blew his way,
and still growing.

Day after day and night after night you watch the sun and stars swirl overhead.
How many times must I remind you to not take for granted all that which you've been blessed so richly with, before you realize that in keeping count of stars, you lost sight of the moon.

Between sips of espresso and difficult late-night conversation,
I realized I like my coffee with milk and that Cancer hurts.
It hurts those who have it and those who have those who have it.

When I explained how frightened I was that my friend
had been diagnosed with Cancer, he diminished my feelings
by saying, “I had a friend with Cancer. She died of it.”

Between difficult late-night conversations and espresso,
I realized; I like my relationships with milk as well.

Found Poem from *** and The City, Season 6, Episode, 16

Love me as an artist loves to create.
Love me as the pianist loves the feeling of his hands across the keys
Love me as the sun loves the day and the moon the night.
Love me as I love you, or not at all.

she was never nice
to me

even so, with or
without heaping coals,
I'll continue to show her
love and patience

she's one who needs
it the most

Two lovers tied
by invisible thread,
black, white ropes
like snakes tangling.

Their depressive
nature, a Gemini feed,
a cosmic cauldron,
stirring them to fall
apart together.


Found poem in Banks' song "Gemini Feed."