I didn’t realize that being in love
With someone who doesn’t love you
the same could affect your mind,
leaving you spaced out, divided,
blindsided, draining the life out of me,
making me hurt, overwhelmed with unbearable
despair, staring at the darkened shadows
in my empty bedroom, pondering on when this
nightmare would ever end.  My lungs
are becoming numb to the strumming sadness
streaming inside my system, feeling like
I’m drifting out of reality into unraveling
chaotic episodes that I can’t control.  I’m high
on Mary Jane, popping pills, feeling the chills,
spinning in dizzy dreams, turning up on the flaming
*****, Patron, and Henny, unable to digress  
the situation, my mind still swimming
inside your intoxicating equations of undying passion,
crashing into absolute devastation.  My skin
is swollen and cold, stolen with overflowing poetry
of brainwashed sensations and chaos, shuddering
without disruption, corrupted, erupted, untrusted,
covered in a soak-stained puddle of grubby mud,
unlucky in love, cussing and fussing, thinking
about you touching me, knowing that it will never be.
I’m consistently dreaming of the impossible,
like if I give it time, you will see that I’m the one
that can fill your mind with vision and precision,
give you the affection that you need to be
all the man that you need to be.
But you don’t see things the way that I see them.
You shut me out of your life without
an explanation, had me fumbling and stumbling,
embracing the rumbling thunder inside my belly
as I felt like my entirety had become misspelled, dispelled,
failed, undelivered mail, blackmailed, crazed, dazed
escapes, pale, stale, wailing, welling with heartache,
with no cure for this condition.

I toss and turn for you
   You surround me and subvert my thoughts
The operator behind the switchboard
   Changing the wires from stress to love
With the flicker of your eyes         I unwind
You let me talk and talk and talk
   About jazz and comics and magic and league
         And you smile
I see the stars get to know the fireflies
As I lay facing the night
   The grass cool         The air warm
                          I unravel
And dream         (about you)
And our conversations
and Paris and Italy
And your smile      God your smile
   The most potent drug God could dream up
Like nothing else      I can see it perfectly
Like looking through the windows
   Of an Edward  Hopper painting
      Clear

Whenever I went to the beach as a kid
I would count and number the lizards that scampered on the porch
They were like napkins dropped from the hand of someone hurrying down the street
After delaying their commute for a pastry
I wonder years later
Was ever a lizard counted twice?

I can’t help but number every poem I’ve ever written
As a kid I counted everything
Every time I clapped at a school assembly I clapped the same amount:
25 claps every time. I couldn’t stop myself
Children of divorce count more I think
I counted all my Christmases
One with mom, mom’s mom, dad, dad’s mom, and dad’s dad
5 every year

Looking at anything in a self-referential series is like living in liquid glass
Transparent but warped and shifting
The path taken is obvious but misguided
But the numbering freezes time
My first poem about numbering was how I felt then
This is how I feel now
Evolution

You are familiar,

I always see how you feel –


yet I do not know.

when you’re the one
that has done the hurting
it takes time to heal too

it takes time to accept your faults
the pain you contributed to
the ending of it all

even if they hurt you too
even if they forgive you
the guilt inside you lives on

you might spend your life
hoping your sorrow
can be felt by them