Tonight death has come to my bed
leaning over to kiss me on my forehead.
“Your wait is over”, I hear the whisper.
Who would not surrender to something so tender?
Yet I wish what remains of life gave me enough time
To kiss you on your forehead before I die.
When you wake up in the morning,
I would have left before the birds sing.
What saddens me is not my departure;
But whether grief will leave your eyes ever.
Will you still see beauty and able to laugh
Or miss me too much you end up going daft?
Love still remains after the end of so many lives;
Nothing truly ends when something dies.
And if you ever forget me, dear, if you do,
I will already have forgiven you.

mother.-
"why can you spend so much time
writing all this sappy bullcrap
but cannot study hard
to get good
grades?"

math teacher, senior high school.-
"why do you write such good poetry
but **** so bad
at math?"

acquantainces/maybe friends, anygradeinanyschool.-
"hey
your poetry sounds pretty good
i just
don't understand
what you are trying
to say."

writing instructor, free elective course, college.-
"your poetry is really good
for someone whose first language is
not english."

lover.-
"you are good at writing poetry,
but besides that,
you just seem clueless
almost
dumb
most of the time
you cannot hear
what i say
nor can you understand
much of it.
it seems like
you are lost
in your own world,
have conversation with me
in your head."

i want to blame all these people
for making me think
i must be really good
at poetry
for i hardly am
in anything else
that actually
matters.

same words, same tone
every time I see you I see your message I pick up the phone
I wish you would do it right
even just for one time.

but why, you always have to say something show something prove something do something
annoy me disappoint me make me add harshness to my words turn me into someone I do not want to become

why can't you, just once, before it's too late
say something do something be something
before it's too late, help me so I won't forget
why I once thought you were my world

Dear Gentlemen,
May I share with you a secret?
Some of you have already known,
some might overlook it.

No matter what your Lady says,
she loves it when you call her.

Her "If you're busy it's ok" is really not ok.
Your "I'm too busy to call" is definitely not ok.

No matter how busy you are,
you can always make time for your beloved.

A phone call, even with no conversational substance,
makes her believe you two are closer.

A phone call, even just a quick "I just miss you that's all",
strengthens her devotion.

A phone call, every now and then,
lets her known she is on your mind,
reminds her of you,
makes the sense of togetherness shine through.

So, Gentlemen,
no matter how much poetry you have written for her,
how much love you dedicate to her,
how many flower bouquets you send her,
every now and then, do yourself a favor,
put everything else aside (no multitasking!)
to call her on the phone.

If you are married,
call from work.
If you share the same place,
call from outside.
If you meet way too often,
call when you do not.

The more frequent your name appears on her little screen,
in her smart, love-coated mind,
The more grossly exaggerated your time of devotion will be.

Dear Ladies,
sorry that I slipped out our secret.
It just ***** not hearing that special ringtone
(you know, the one only his calls make)
a little more often,
doesn't it?

In those days, at every corner of the city
you could find a coffee shop.

There was never a high-rise building,
everything stood together in an unorganized manner,
for they never mastered the art of urban landscaping.

Street vendors had their own way of singing
their promotion songs. You remembered the tune, the words,
which reminded you of those streets.

The sounds of vehicles and their horns and the winds
never stopped. But in those days, they used to be
purer. Clearer. More innocent, perhaps. Less troubled.

Life never stops being tough,
but it was quite beautiful,
then.

When I grew up
the city was still left with fragments of history.
I had no memory of what had happened before I was born,
yet you felt in the air the gentle sadness, and the subtle beauty
from those French buildings. The architecture
slowly faded away as icons from the war,
becoming part of our modern life.
We had to move on,
and so did everyone who had left.

Those buildings, instead, became icons of my childhood,
of what I remembered about the city.
From my elementary school,
you could see the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica to your left,
the Central Post Office right in front of you.
I was always taken home via the street former known as
the Rue Catinat.

I would never forget the way it felt every afternoon.
I'm going home.

Those places have changed, and so have people,
and so have I.
The day they demolished Givral Cafe,
Xuan Thu Bookstore, Passage Eden,
the whole street block of memories,
was the day many of us lost something so deep in our heart.
History was gone once again.
And soon enough,
we would allow ourselves to forget once again.

I keep reminding myself,
Hey, it's ok to change.
My city does not repond to me.
It just becomes so foreign,
as if it has always belonged to somebody else
but me. And I keep digging
into the dust, the traces, the pictures
to find solace in what I could remember
about my changed lover.

They say, in the end it does not matter,
modern society needs revolutions.
Evolutions. Higher skyscrapers. Highways.
A North-South express railway even (Idea rejected.)
We need to catch up with the rest of the world.

Oh, dear men, I am fine with that. I am an easy fellow
who seldom feels too strongly about anything in particular.
But my heart keeps aching from some changes you guys make.
It outraged the day you took down my corner of memories.
I was in Boston reading the news my friends sent me,
picturing myself sitting at those steps in front of the Opera House
looking at the mass of broken bricks and dust
that was once a nice, little, iconic coffee shop-
Givral.

When my friend talked to me about changes around that block,
she talked in a tone that almost seemed guilty.
She did not know how to break the news to me
without also breaking me apart.
For just a few months before that,
we were walking down **** Khoi Street (the Rue Catinat, if you may),
taking pictures of the Opera House,
Givral Café, the Continental Hotel,
joking of how we acted like tourists.

Try being a tourist in your own city.
It means seeing everything with a fresh set of eyes,
trying to record everything,
trying to grasp the essence of everything
within a short amount of time.
I guarantee you it is fun.
And it will reinvigorate your love,
your understanding, your hope.

I was disappointed with some decisions others made.
Yet, being a city girl,
I was raised to adapt to them.
To learn that there will be thousands of other coffee shops
bookstores
landmarks
so many choices to overwhelm me
to drive me away from the time
when I had so few.

Will it eventually work? I do not know.
But that corner of the street (now demolished),
that corner of memory (now fading),
I was there.
Yes, I was there.

You can't muster so much as half a laughter
In a room full of familiar strangers
On a Wednesday night
Like most Wednesday nights
When we're off to do our own things
On different corners
Different worlds

I cannot laugh either
Being lost in my abandoned words
Trying to write you a letter
Only to watch the ink smeared
All over my thoughts
Every Wednesday night

Rain chasers,
how I've known them.

They smell rain from a far distance,
watch the clouds in precise anticipation,
catch the first drop and raise to their lips,
and it either turns sour or sweet.

When they know the rain will go foul,
they tell themselves to make another round,
to seek more rain, more rain, and more rain,
until they lose their conscience and become vain.

When they know the rain will be sweet,
they do their best to hold on to it,
knowing it will not stay forever,
but rain chasers despise the laws of nature.

Once I joined their force and began the game,
and I found my first sweet of rain.
I tried to preserve it, like all the chasers,
then it was gone, like sweet rain always was.

Many raindrops have touched my lips ever since that day.
Some sweet, some sour, yet they never stayed.
And somehow it is still quite hard to forget
how I felt after that one left.

Sun, and a very pale blue sky
I was here many sunny days before*

Summer is close,
and I am afraid
I will not survive the walls of heat
closing in on us.
We bend our backs grasping for air
only to drown ourselves deeper in tears;
tears that burn
the way tomorrow burns out today.
The sun only brings me fear.

Today has burned out yesterday.
The sun is near
I'm still here.
I've got nowhere to go.

The sunrays pass by my closed eyelids
bringing me by a thousand years.
I am going through the infinite nowhere.
Will you be there?

Will you remember
the last day of light on earth
when we smiled at each other
before we no longer
belong to a reality
lit by sunlight?

Here comes the explosion
of the last fire.
Goodbye,
my Love.

And Mama said children of strength never cried in front of others, for
tears proved a lack of control. I asked, did you not cry
when you saw me for the first time? She said,
no, I restrained from screaming, and I was
relieved.
With a smile,
perhaps.

Ever since, happiness to me
is the emptying of a stuffed stomach.

in the swollen summer days, the pressure
of what is coming to an end, the silent chaos
of the surroundings, and
the strange comfort of the new wind
completely took over everything else.
hence the slow details of day-to-day occurrences.

for there seemed to be no transition between day and night,
and light was slowly dipping into darkness,
and darkness was gently unfolding on light.

the intertwined arrays of sunshine on the clouds,
the fading sunset,
the smoke fondling the moon
all happened. all vanished.

when the eyes closed and opened
they anticipated the same thing,
and so they were served.

the aftertaste of a night's vivid creations was sweet
like honey
subtle
like tea
and lasting
like memories that were created to haunt for a lifetime.

what was remembered and
what was forgotten
all blended together.

thus past wounds were healed,
laughs were concealed behind lips,
and time was dissolved into air
to sink them all, to rise them all,
to sew fantasies seamlessly into reality.

and maybe the dream would last,
from the juxtaposition of breath to breath,
into eternity.

one day, he woke up,
and the day felt like a thousand others.
he reached for the phone and texted her.
she did not respond.
maybe work was busy, he thought.
the day went by. he put
lots of creamer and sugar
in his coffee. the coffee spilled
over the counter, dripped
onto the floor. he sighed and
wiped it carelessly, so it smeared
into brown patches and lines.
he got a book and started to read.
then he put it down and grabbed the phone again.
still no reply from her. he sent another text, asking
where she was. maybe she was very busy, he thought.
the afternoon arrived. he took a nap.
got into a bad dream. something happened,
he forgot. he almost always forgot why
he had cried hopelessly in such dreams.
she still did not write him back.
he wondered if he should call her.
but maybe not.
she got annoyed when work was busy and he called her and she could not talk right away, for she would not stop wondering what it was that he wanted to talk about. and it would probably lead to a small argument, which would lead to bigger arguments, which would end up with her being in tears and him feeling guilty, which would end up with them trying to make it up with ***, which would end up with him not being able to come, which would end up with her feeling upset because he could not come, and him feeling incompetent because she could not come either, and them being all melancholic and what not, and so on and so forth.
so he decided it was best not to call her.
she did not come home at the usual hour.
he kept glancing at the door, peaking his ears to noises from the street
the way a dog waited for its owner to be home at a certain time.
with every passing minute he grew more and more worried.
he texted her again. then immediately after called her.
and he called and he called and he called.
it kept going into voice mail.
he hated voice mail. he left her a few messages.
no responses.
she got home a few hours after,
looking tired as usual. apologized for being late.
said traffic was bad, then she got too hungry she
stopped at a diner and had a quick bite.
she wanted to call him but there was no reception.
her phone was acting up.
something like that.
he did not really smell food from her
not that he had enough time to take a sniff
for she had gone straight to the bathroom
to take a shower. when she got out,
he was sitting at the table, staring into the air
into nothing. her scent was soft, familiar,
and he could feel her smile and gaze upon him.
she sat down and kissed the side of his forehead,
asked him if he had eaten dinner.
he said he was not hungry. she took his hand,
placed her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes.
they sat still for a few minutes. then he asked
if she wanted anything from the fridge.
i would have some apple cider, she said.
he got them some apple cider. they drank it.
then she said let's go to bed.
he followed her. they got into bed,
turned the head lamp off, kissed each other good night,
and closed their eyes.
he wondered what was on her mind.
she wondered what was on his mind.
and they kept wondering
until they both
fell asleep.

dear lord,

please

take me back
to where I do not belong

take me away
from where I do not belong

underground held a slam poetry contest.
they drew me from the crowd,
"wanna be the judge? hold your score cards,
the poets would soon get here."

I was sitting on one of those chairs,
front row, facing the competitors.
oh how young they were, glasses and what not,
distressed jeans, leather boots,
some had strange bracelets and weird tattoos.
and some looked just like me,
eager for a show of the best of arts.

"this is exciting" "no ****. a friend brought me here,
never been to a slam show."
that guy next to me was even more excited than I,
he frantically slipped through his stack of cards, asking me,
"how picky are you? you like poetry? how do you decide on a ten?"
I said, "a ten is one that makes me **** my pants",
to which he shut up.

slam
the performance of the words, the rhythm, the rhymes,
metaphors and the like were dropped like fire,
I tried to catch them but a few I missed.
didn't need to make sense,
for they were so good.
I just sat there and kept drawing my ten's.
I could hear the guy next to me mumbling,
"now that starts to smell real bad."
I gracefully turned to him and said, "thank you."

have you been to a slam poetry contest?
it is like a festival of *******, except
you could only use your mouth, and some
body gestures perhaps. it became good,
when one poet started to create illusions and reality
with a story about one guy waking up constantly
like me, who kept running into the vicious circle
of daily mundanes and forgettable details.
to listen and watch him was to see poetry at its rawest best
posing itself ****.

underground poets, here I came to give you
my stack of ten's. for you have created
such lively, dedicated
recollections of my world.

Original Version

I cannot stop
wondering what this is,
what it means,
where it might take us.

You said,
"Love the question, accept the answer.
The only truth is the lesson,
and the lesson is there is no truth.
You have to come to accept ambiguity
rather than expect definiteness."

To own you is to never have you.
To have you is to never own you.
I have to learn how to let go.
Freedom in love is so ******* hard.

I am thirsty for possession,
I want to keep you away from this world,
I want to eat up each of your words,
leaving your novels incomplete,
unknown to the public's hungry eyes.
But I cannot.

For one day the world will expose you,
the chaos of fame will seep into your skin,
the others' eery obsession will surround your head,
and I will fade.
It is with you
that I do not have a name.

From others I can get everything
but the one thing
that only you have.

And so I have come to accept
and to look forward to
a lifetime of ambiguity
with you.




The Translation*

*******.
You ****** with my head, with my heart.
You know that you can just let me go and do whatever the **** I want,
because I will always come back.
I ******* hate what you have done to me, what I have done to myself
I have fallen so ******* deep in this **** with you.
My god I ******* love you, I am so ******* in love with you,
I love you so ******* much it ******* hurts.
But seriously, don't stop.
Be with me, take away my name,
consume me all.

Somebody once told me,
in our tender embrace,
"Love is all there is."

I told him to take it day by day,
to live and love in the very moment.
For I would probably leave him the next.

He took my advice
and stayed in love with me
every single moment he existed.

why don't you sit down with me
and watch the day go by?
I never did it before they
sent me to this place.

it is not as scary
as you think.
in fact, it is so quiet
even its ghosts are leaving.
the youngest ones at least.
the oldest are too tired to dream
of a better place, and thus
have decided to stay,
and every night
we talk about the past,
of how things used to be.

they tell great stories
for they stop telling lies
after their lives, long lives.
so many memories,
it would take more than eternity
to revisit each and every of them
try to understand what it means
and forget all of the what-if's.

if letting go is so difficult for the dead,
imagine how it is like for the living.

and so I have learned to forgive
myself, and those around me -
loved ones or strangers.
though I wish I could tell them
to take it easy, love life,
love love, appreciate,
do all the things that make them happy.
they will have all the time in the world
to ponder sadness, to be resentful,
to weep, to scream
afterwards.

so, young one, in your busy life,
once in a while,
give yourself a little time
to feel the angle of the winds,
know the depth of your living sky,
catch the color of the raindrops,
learn that every tree is different from one another
and you could recognize each of them
like the faces you have known.

and every once in a while,
close your eyes,
and open up your soul
to feel the grand stillness of time
that lasts forever in a single kiss,
to be caressed
by the fragile tenderness
of love.

these are some of the things
I have learned from the living
and from the dead.
you shall listen
to both, or either,
but not those who are dead
while they are still breathing.
they do not know where to go,
and thus, cannot give you directions.
if they try, you will either be hurt with a lie,
or a desperate attempt they make to feel alive
through you.

thank you for visiting.
if you ever come back,
bring me some stories
about the sea, for all of us here
long to go there, but we can only
recall and imagine it.
I long to feel the water
all around me.
its depth and vastness
are the dream we have
about a place where we can
completely
let go.

some lives are god's intentions gone wrong


executed way beyond kindness:

dreams taken away, dismembered, thoroughly un-remembered
&
smiles dissected to the core, where sadness lies, falling apart in broken nights
&
words scrambled with silenced anger, spoken in tone of non-lovers
&
kisses numbed by a million thoughts dying in the mind, slipping down against low sighs
&
teardrops clogged in eardrums, blowing up the misery of the moment


dark moods today?
no.
this is life, simply.
that is
all.

I only exist in fragments of time,
and so is my love.
You had me whole
in a night of tenderness.
I knew kindness and bliss
enough to turn you into a sweet memory.

"Why can't it happen again?
Why do you have to turn me into a memory
the moment you walk out of that room?"
You said I lived and loved
as a story teller.
Quite a story you were.

I cannot keep killing you,
but you are not able to let me go.
Perhaps I am not either.

Thus I wonder how to write a wonderful story
without having it falling in love with me
or myself falling in love with it.

you strip and fall
upon uneven surfaces
of irritation.

this is the last of your dreams
before the nightmares begin,
behold.

every splash is accompanied by a silent scream.
you beg and beg to return to reality
but no mercy is ever given.

you have lost hope.
you cannot make it up
to your gods.

your voice is gone,
deep under the sea
melodies of bubbles.

I did not try to forget you.

At the end of my day,
as I was crashing on my bed,
your voice was resounding in my head,
Don't fall asleep in your work clothes.

The scent of food you made in my kitchen
the aroma of your face, after-shave
the angle your lips formed with a smile
the long fingers tracing down my face
- they were still there,
as if you'd never gone away.

Why are you still thinking about him?
He wasn't worth it
Of course he was, the whole time we spent together.
Lovers know best how long is forever.
Those moments I had with him,
he was worth every one of them.

The streets, the highways, the mountains, the sea
Rain, snow, winds, moon, sunrises, sunsets
We walked, we ran, we drove, we flew through them all.
Until now I cannot get used to the emptiness
of my hands.

The blinds of my window haven't changed,
you said you liked them, for they blocked
glances from those highly unwelcome.
Thus when we made love, they were never up.

They have remained there after you left.
Glances vanished,
and so did the sun.  

And so did my attempt
to forget everything about you.
It does not concern me whether you are here.
To me you are a matter of fact.
To me you are intact.
To me you love me still.

autumn
the wind came by, and I forgot to ask
if it’d seen you.
rain
on the other side of the crowd you ran, your face
became so strange.
late night affairs
shitfaces everywhere, she almost poured her wine on the grass
I saw you getting ***** at her laughters.
people’s assumptions
they look at any couple, and immediately
“they must’ve ****** each other”
the truth of the matter is
you never know
what actually happens
in this life’s show
everything hides beside a mirror
yet all you can see
is your own horror.
But perhaps
I’m about to get over you
before the snow
right before the snow

I lean to the side of the world          where  my wound is
burst, this is the surface of madness
called reality.
You ask me what my name is
I answer you with yours.

The last of music drips onto my left arm
Leaves me cold.
A cold I do not remember.
Maybe I have not left the realm of death
where my mother comes from.

Unless today has become tomorrow
Unless your promises have come true
I will not see
I will not taste
My memories
Under the wind that swept by my nostrils

Who are you talking to?
Does he suffer from the same realization as I?
Life has left my fingertips
I no longer decipher the truth behind our words

All I do is dance.
Dance through the alphabet of the human beauty
an eternal misery.
Nothing is worth as much to me as the familiar warmth of your kisses on my eyes
bringing all the colors of life to my sight.
Nothing has the magic your hand has upon my skin
All the wounds from knowing and not knowing are healed.

Just love.
Love is what I have concluded by you.
Find it,
find the way we want to go
through the path of my smile sliding down your face.

Open me to the territory you have never entered yourself.
For me you will not cry.
Every moment gives birth to another.
We are children who fall in love – always at the verge of growing up
and contented with just that – lying on the sea to see
how the clouds have been here always
so we know they have never once come back.
Neither will we, but we laugh and cry, and the days and nights
open into a million stars that light up whenever I look at you,
whenever I turn away to feel you on the back of my neck.

Our tranquil jest
No need to explain any sadness - it is our friend.
Just like happiness of a glamourous day
When you take me to the cliff and we both jump
to fall upon the wide blue sky
Never have I seen anything so blue
Never have I seen anything like you
Cold and smiling and so incredibly beautiful

I think
[we are still falling]
I really do
Love you

that day, the world was beautiful because of you,
but i, long before the dawn, knew there would be no hope
in staying, and yes, i think you are my world
when i am with you. but that is not the point,
that is not the point at all. the origin of our feelings
had nothing to do with where we were going,
nothing to do with the saddest of days and nights,
and the tears that we shed at the wrong times,
and the loving words we spoke at the few times
when we thought we were in love. there were moments
and there were others. i could not carry you at all times
in my conscience. do you understand? i do not hate you, no,
it is quite the contrary. much so quite the contrary.
i do not need anybody else in the name of fairness
and common sense. but i do want you. times when i
thought everything was coming to an end i
thought of you, wanting to rush to you and say
"i love you" exactly how i used to wish someone,
just one, only one, would say it to me.
but the current of life and this shameful desire to live
always dragged me back, not letting me leave.

i do not mean to make you wait until the lights go off
to bare my soul to you,
to overwhelm you with undivided attention
(not the kind i have always given you in our presence,
but one that gives you the strongest sense of eternity,
the only time when death loses its charm and power.)
i do not mean to bring those tears upon your eyes.
but grief makes a person whom he is
while happiness makes him whom he thinks he wants to be.
are you whom you want to be? are you when i am holding you tight
in my arms, hearing my breath pacing against your heartbeats?

when i am with you
i am not whom i am or whom i want to be
but exactly what i must be if life is real, and death is also real,
and nothing else matters but the truth of you.

you asked me with tears down at your throat how i felt about you
how i truly felt about you, not how i thought you would want to be perceived. so here it is.
i am sorry that there are and always will be
disappointments. but disappointments, more often than not,
are so much needed for us not to lose touch with our truest feelings,
don't you think?

What if we are just characters
in someone else's dream?
What happens when he wakes up?
Will he remember us?
Will I remember you?

Agreement to Romance
No contract/ signatures
For the shared love of love,
they were brought together.

Defined by liberty,
he needs some space from her.
One day she crossed the line -
agreement was over.*

Yet she hides it from him,
and very well indeed.
She keeps the way she is
with charming words of wit.

He needs the privacy
she wants the true love's touch
They love the fantasies,
an adrenaline rush.

Behind the door she lives
is the absence of his.
He never stays the night,
sometimes forgets to kiss.

She sometimes wondered why
his scent vanished like dust.
They succumb to romance,
right between love and lust.

He still does not know how
she keeps him in her heart.
For if he did, oh my,
they would break far apart.

Agreement to Romance
we've all been there and lost.
The taste of full freedom
comes with too high a cost.

Breathe, breathe very calmly my dear,
and let me
take you slowly
into my world. Do not be afraid
of the unknown, the possibility
of stellar discovery, the risk
of being lost completely.
I am here, I want you
to be with me, I know
your fear.

But look at me, I am
right in front of your eyes,
trust what you
feel, the air
around us, the tension
of your clinging trust, the pulse
defining your blood,
the veins
so eager to burst
under the touch of your fingers.

I remember.
I will remember
as you go further, my happiness
as I slowly lose my mind,
my guilt, my sight,
and my words start to jumble
as you moan louder. You say
something I cannot hear,
but it does not matter, for I can tell
from the way the sweat runs down your forehead
how much you are in love with me.

When I slither down your spine
on the tip of my tongue,
I no longer see you, only your warmth
surrounding my face,
and I want to dig my teeth
deep into you, inject you
with the venom of my lust,
so you know how badly it hurts
to have this much desire
for you.

I try to wait for you,
but my ecstasy erupts
before my will. I am drown
in a frozen stretch of pleasure.
Until I see
you have been looking at me
with tears running down your cheek.
I do not understand that emotion
exuding from your eyes.
And I ask you, "What is it?"
but I cannot hear your answer.

Nonetheless, I have to clean myself,
come back, get dressed,
and tell you "I gotta go."
You nod. Say not a word.
I ask you again, "What's wrong?"
You shake your head.
I get irritated,
so I ask no more. Then I put on my shoes,
fix my shirt collar, and walk out
of your world.

there are times
when all i need is a certain
trigger
that will send me away
in a flash
so i do not have to look back
so i do not have to worry
of what might follow

it is
one thirty-seven in a monday afternoon
and i am just waiting
for that trigger
to click

I imagine there's a kind of love
in which you can't let me live
because you love me too much.

Because you think
death could freeze time.
Because you see
nothing else could stop time
but death.

You want my memories of you
fixated
at the moment where things are still good
before I could watch you
being consumed by your monster.

we walked toward the beginning of the sea, hand in hand,
you told me this was where you always took her to,
and she always fell in love with the sunset.

I dipped my toes into the cold water. It tingled like salt
on the tip of my tongue. I pressed my feet down and the sea monster
took a firm grip around my ankle. My laughter
filled the air, and your sugary scent from behind me
floated down my throat. Your lips
frantically searched for mine, my arm
pulled down your head, and we
kissed, and we kissed.
I kept
calling your name, and you mine,
and we lost balance and fell down on the
tide. For a moment, I thought
the ocean
could have taken us away
on a free ride.
Wouldn't that be good?

But you were laughing, lifting me up,
walking me back to the sand
with your endless kisses, and your arms
around my waist. We lay down together,
smiled constantly, whispered silly things,
then again we locked lips as the waves sang louder,
chasing seagulls away, so they would not bother us.
Under the light wind and the sun we made love
right by the sea, and under the sky so blue.
You sank deeper into me before
rising back, and I rose higher above you
before sinking in, in perfect harmony,
like those waves luring in the sea.

And I asked us to leave
right before sunset
though I always wanted to see it.

You were smiling as we drove away,
I was looking out the window,
and suddenly tasting salty water
falling down on my lips.

i finally knew
the scope
of my world
yes

it is only as big
as the days and nights
framed
within the window panes

i will not dive into it
nor can i run away
from the everyday changing
of lighting

do not
let me escape
this floating scent of alcohol berries
under my throat

i wish you would
hold me down
and kiss me until my eyes bleed
tears

you at seven in the afternoon
left me in some sort of nonsensical dream
i have learned to make myself
delighted

by sitting here
watching the night slowly
disguising the color of my skin
what is its true color will i ever know

i have given in
to the light
and the lack of it
so i could get along with time

my heart and soul
are given to you
i only need to keep this numbness
underneath my eyelids

you keep
inside the same clothing drawer
where your medicine bottles scatter
the gift she gave you

what remains of the life you had before me
and the love you had before me
or perhaps
you still do

i only have my
silence
the temporary escape
as cheap as a six-pack of mood-cooler

the windows of the house at the street's end
were already lit
i wonder what kind of stories
are going on behind them

do they read like mine
feel like mine
do they make somebody cry
too

there are so many things i do not know
where we are
where we are going
where we are meant to be

it is here
the dark
that will soon reunite me with
my lonely nightmares

I have fallen in love with you.

Before the end of my day, I try not to think of you, but you always come back.
There were nights when I did not think about you,
but you were always there, sleeping peacefully, somewhere behind the clouds.
Then I would not know how to react
when you came, full moon.

All I could do
was to devour your beauty
knowing that you’ll soon fade away
back into my darkened heart.

Perhaps, this is my chance
to understand you
to make you smile
to trust someone with my entire life
to not feel the danger of being someone’s mistake
Perhaps I just need to love you.

I cannot just love you.
I want you to love me too.
I want you to to feel the unfathomable happiness that I feel when I think of you
I want you to feel the pride that I feel when you amaze me being who you are
I want you to feel the calmness that I feel when you rescue my faith while others have failed me
I want you to feel the life that I feel when I know I am no longer lonely
I want you to feel love and the beautiful things it brings.

I do not want you to feel the pain inflicted on me when you are not close to me
I do not want you to feel the jealousy when someone else has a chance with you
I do not want you to feel the sadness when I realize I might never reach the moon
I do not want you to feel the fear of losing whom you want the most someday
I do not want you to feel the other side of love
it feels like the sky of those nights without you:
dark, empty, ready to fall.

But my dear, if you cannot feel the same for me,
I do not want you to love me.
I want you to find the one for you, and you both can go through something like this together, for the rest of your life.
And every time I look into the sky, no matter how it gets, I will always remember you.
So beautiful, discreet, full of hope, my only full moon.

I can only be so grateful for the new life I have
after knowing you
after knowing I have fallen in love with you
and never want to get out of it.

Oh, yes, I liked him,
before he saw me under the light,
before his first glance landed on my forehead,
before he extended his right hand, like a gentleman,
introducing his name, where he came from – things I would love to know,
without asking me what my name was.

Oh, yes, I like him,
but why does that matter at all, while his smile
resembling the sky after each rain, his hands
with long fingers and pretty veins, his lips
curved like a cave that draws you in,
are locked into another person’s.

Oh, yes, I like him.
He thinks he knows me, not because of me,
but with his experience. Wisdom.
Empathy. All done with the touch of a glimpse.
I have thought of forgetting him,
yet my feelings for him are not strong enough.

I miss you: the unique tone of your words,
the high and low notes of your voice,
the way you hold your wine glass
- how I adore your rough, handsome fingers! -
the shape of your smile,
the way your shoulder blades stick out,
the angle of your hips,
the length from the bottom to the tip,
and
the subtle sadness in your eyes
when I place my lips on you,
dance my fingers around you,
feel the furthest point of your body
under my tongue, leaning
against the back of my throat, and then
your hardness fall between my softness,
as my flow of life blends into yours.

Yet my memories, my deepest ones,
started one early morning
when you said hello to me,
when you were so gentle,
when you were still the unknown,
but somehow,
closer to my heart than you are now.
The more we know about each other
the further apart we get, even though
we have become more casually comfortable
with each other's presence, the growing intensity
of my emotions,
the endless, exhausting questions
from the part of me
that longs for what we cannot be
together.

Dwelling on thoughts about you
is my favorite way of getting lost.

Before we met,
we had been at the same places,
only separately.

I wonder if you ever walked past me,
or I you.
I wonder if we had the same emotion
looking at the sunset burned onto the sky.

Those streets that have seen you and me
must have wondered why we never turned around
and recognize the face
we would see as we have known now.
What took so long for souls like ours
to find one another?
What took so long for my dark brown eyes
to meet those of yours?

To know your hands have touched the same doors,
your feet have walked the same stairs,
your eyes have seen the same places,
your skin has felt the same wind,
is so unbelievably ******.

Even when I am not thinking of you,
I am always thinking about you.
The shadow of the thought involving you
is enough to make me smile,
give me hope, let time slide
down the sides of my eyes
along with the most bitter of my tears
So what remains is no longer fear;
just a calmness I have never felt before
as I slowly set myself on an endless desire
Maybe you really are
my life.

Maybe I need nothing else
but a short moment of truth
masked with expectations
and prior experience.
Maybe you need nothing else
but a single audience
who can never demystify any of your tricks
Maybe all we need is a mutual feeling
or rather, the exact same wish.
What do I know if you never tell?
It is hard, so hard to believe
either of us deserves any of this
We finally see, with our own eyes,
what it is like to be seen
how it feels like to be held
where it hurts the most to be loved.

I doubt I truly feel any of this.

Maybe I'm just too full of ****
to actually know
how to return your love.
But I do not mind, and nor do I care,
when I am with you life seems utterly fair
and makes perfect sense
I would never have to ask
if you are feeling the same way I do.

Even if life stopped right here
I would not be so upset
for my only regret
would be just one:
I could never tell you before I die
how much you make me want to stay alive
in this world
this very world

did you see her?

oh, dear god, why
did she pull
the trigger?
where did she get
the gun?

she was sweet
and caring
and everything
but now she is
dead
no one thought she was
the kind
who could take her own
life

did you hear
she left a notebook
full of her life secrets?

****, I wonder
what she wrote
in it

do you think
it would explain
everything?

I wonder
what she was
thinking
that moment
when she was alone,
in her room,
with the ugly gun
staring right into
her heart.

Poetry of the ones who are lonely
are not the same as poetry the ones who are lonely
without someone.

I have always known,
once I let you into this room called my heart,
it will never feel the same when you leave.

And yet I do, I do again and over,
you are my every lover, my any lover,
I have never stopped loving you.

You are the life of my words.
My readers do not know you, but they too,
have known how any love could hurt.

Poetry hurts because poetry is love
and because poetry is you.
Without you I would never have found inside myself a poet.

The world could do with one less lover. One less poet.
But I could not have become me without you and my poetry.
And the meaning of my life is just as simple as that.

Why do we keep hurting each other?

How much longer can I live your dream
before losing mine completely?

What more can I do to please you
before forgetting what pleases me?

How farther away can I go
for us to be closer to one another?

When will you be able to listen to me
without letting your voice take over your head?

No matter what I do what I say how much I try where I am
you cannot let go of my life
I cannot let go of the life you force upon me.

You have a way to make me feel
useless
like I always felt, when I wanted
more than once
to escape.
The only place where that is possible
is somewhere else but this Earth.

From time to time
I feel like I am just a kid
being manipulated
by your expectations.
You cannot stop worrying about me.
I cannot stop worrying about you worrying about me.
I am tired of trying to maintain the fake peace around us,
of not being able to tell you how tired I have got
especially now.

How do I gather the courage
to stop thinking too much,
which does not help at all,
to simply let go
of everything?

we join each other under our eyelids
your skin give my fingers the most gentle kiss
I feel your breath upon my right cheek
as your legs slowly embrace mine

I could taste the aroma of the night
as you're holding my tongue around your lips,
your palm running down my thigh
your heart thrusting against my chest

your hardness poking under my belly button
my throbbing love waits for you, as it always does,
you come look for it which you diligently worship
taking me to a height I've never risen to before

pain, lust, and everything else that comes with this,
whatever this is, this that drowns me in insanity,
turn our dreams into reality, so we believe
that you have I have always meant to be

I only want to remember this night exactly like this
because I know the nights before and after,
as our souls grow apart, because we must,
my memories will torture me, make me suffer

it is quite alright. I have become good friends
with my tears. They soothe me, tell me as long as
I allow them to come, I will be fine eventually.
tonight, just take me away from my mind

far away from my painful mind


I love you so much

you ****** so hard

it hurts

You wrap me in the crumbled foil and
  burn me, breathe me in
    slowly, and I rise,my soul
       in each blow of smoke
          into the air, as you keep some of it
             to yourself. I keep wondering
          how long I truly last,
       every time you put me on fire.
Maybe you do not remember.
               You have long forgotten what it means
                                                    to be addicted to me.
        I am something you just do
                out of a habit you have had
        and it no longer means anything to be gotten rid of
              so you keep me here, and whenever you wrap me
                 in aluminum,
              I would slowly vanish into the air,
         fill up your soul, and
                                             deepen your emptiness.

In a drop of a moment,
I am taken back
to the way I used to feel.

It makes no sense at all
to feel that way now.
(But why this heavy sadness
pressing against my chest?)
(And why these tears
falling against my will?)

Can I be me
but not this way of me?
Can I preserve memories
so that they'll never be lost
without remembering where they're stored?

To be myself - does it mean:
I must string together
all my broken pieces
to be complete?
(But can I be whole like this?)

Did I ever get what I wanted
or drown myself in thirst?

What makes me
is essentially what breaks me
without the final fatal strike.

Eventually I always return
from these tiny chaotic bursts -
perhaps once again
having altered my world
for good.

Let me take you to the realm of the past.
You know it was not pretty, you know it was sad.
But it was me before you arrived;
I was darkness before you were light.

I went through many lifetimes, many fights,
many women, many regrets.
I've never stopped loving any of those eyes
when they looked at my back as I left our beds.

The nights when I sneaked out and made phone calls,
tried to pretend that in the morning they would be all gone.
I thought I could hear the sighs, so soft,
tearing through the blind of darkness like thorns.

The same torment you all inflict upon yourselves
has got me immunized. I've watched every single one
walking out of my life after slapping on my face.
Where do you draw that strength from such little hands?

I feel you wanting to run away from me.
I feel you growing scared, worrying you have already
fallen into a deep trap. But neither of us
is meant to escape love, this love we have.

You tell me you're smelling death, and your face
has turned purple. I sit and watch you
struggle with your emotions, with your pains,
and as always I feel completely helpless.

If I ask you now, "Do you love me?",
you will say no. You are still in love
with him. Have you ever, for a split second,
realized he only exists in your mind?

You are fearful and so am I,
we are as flawed as the world we live in
and it is alright. Those who long for ideals
always find a way to survive disappointments,
or shall I say, reality.

The only ones who have committed suicide
are those who think they could put up with life,
who underestimate the way vanity takes a toll on them,
and at the crack of the sky, find themselves deceived,
so they jump under the flat surface of hope,
get everything in them shot with multiple bullets,
until it is too late to realize the lack of meaning
of their final decision, like many preceding others.

We are not like that, my love, and we love,
and I will make you love me instead of him,
because I am real, and so are you. I want you
to know how hard it is to want another person.
And our shared darkness has just only begun.

What if you lost me to the other side of the Earth?
What if you were always the dark side of my heart?
We move in the same direction but we never meet
We only share mutual passion in our own heartbeats

What if you left everything behind
while I left everything forward?
Our shoulders touch and I turn away
Only to feel your hand guiding me back right under your face

What if you had left me die in my sleep?
You would stay alive, for me you would weep
One day someone else would come your way
You would reach for her hand and ask her to stay

It will be okay you say, it will be okay
For love to exist only in this fate
We wipe our tears to laugh out loud
Our misery is our eternal vow

We dance, fight, drag each other to the ground
The pain all over my body makes me aroused
As long as you are there I have someone to blame
We play the game of putting each other to shame

I am dead only because you are too
Look how much life we need to go through
Light another smoke, let this day burn out
Let me remember love the way I do now

I get it – the blues of voices blurred into a shared distance,
restless eyes upon the prize of recognition
never larger than their own.

It is not the first time I see swollen pride
but it makes me ashamed of myself
to see the mirrors of my species blinding one another.

If only could we drop it
and let us become true,
at least,
to ourselves.