A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

I had my first dream last night that you weren't in.
not even a minor character,
your ****** name wasn't even in the credits,
let alone plastered across the sky in flashing lights
like you want it to be.
my first reality that you didn't belong in,
and it was the most blissful peace that I can remember since we bathed in pools of cloud.

I heard the first song that didn't make me think of you yesterday.
the lyrics, for once, were just lyrics,
not an embodiment of you and the things you do.
guess what?
it was coldplay.
you always hated coldplay.

this morning, I basked in the sun and didn't picture you coated in gold light beside me.
I didn't look at the leaves adorning the trees and picture your face laughing beneath it.

I didn't trace the plate lines of my palm and imagine the earthquake we used to create when yours collided with mine.

I didn't eat new food that I wanted you to try and I didn't want to share the smallest details of my day with you.

you may have won this poem, loverboy,
but don't be too triumphant.
your victory won't last long.
it's the era of my new beginnings without you and I'm going to be just fine.

"But what if we're wrong?"
It was silent
But her thoughts echoed around in my head as we laid on top of her pickup truck
I swatted at the eighteenth mosquito chewing on my leg
I don't want this to be love

We were tangled up in the acoustic music they play on the radio on Sunday mornings
She was trying to dream up something clever to write about
And I was pretending I could learn to play guitar through osmosis,
As if blending myself in with the harmonies, finding her in every lyric, and sheer willpower would give me wings or at least magic guitar hands

She set the alarm, checked it over and over
She was not going to be late for her first day
I told her I'd be asleep when she got home, she told me she knew
I told her to wake me up

I wasn't looking for perfect
Perfect really only applies in first year physics courses
After that, we learn to fall in love with "rough around the edges" or "unique" or "unfinished"
As if their life is a puzzle that we need to complete
Just so you know, it isn't

She bought me breakfast and dropped me off
She used to tell me she loved me, but I know she didn't
She does now, so she doesn't have to say it anymore
When I said, "love," before, I didn't really mean it
Not like I mean loving the garden on the balcony of her apartment or thunderstorms in May
Even if I was a puzzle that she completed (and I'm not saying that I am), we didn't need any glue to fit perfectly

I wonder how I've ended back up in this position
dependant on not just a chemical or two, but
dependant on the love of a person
You see, I was not born a human, nor have I lived as one,

I'm used to the beauty of the darkness, for in dark places
beautiful flowers grow, but it takes eyes
shadowed in darkness for decades to see them
and to pluck them, one needs a still heart
that no longer beats with the rhythm of a living being

that darkness has shaped my world, shaped my mind
yet in her voice, her words, and her love
I've found myself slipping from that place
being pulled into one in which I do not know how to live
Here there is light, and sights to be seen
with eyes practiced to the sun

I used to believe the universe whispered to me
and maybe it still does, it's just that it's been so long
since I've listened, that its song is distant
raw, and uncaring

You see the universe is lonely,
that's why it turned into you, and into me,
to be embraced with it's own warmth
to embrace itself in its own desire,
what a simple thing we endeavor, is it not?

By becoming creatures bounded in time, and space,
we've forgotten our true self and along with it
the wellspring of love that created us,
now we seek it, although in lesser forms,
experiencing it with only a few
and the upper casts of beings know this,

Somewhere deep in our subconscious we also understand, and we know that we've forgotten it.

It's just that demons have embraced darkness, and a total absence of love, while we try to fill ourselves with small glimmers plucked from flowers that grow in the sun.

Demons, on the other hand, pluck flowers that grow only in the darkness, and those flowers have power over mortals, they will call to thee and under their spell, you will dream dreams meant for only devas, asuras, demons, and spirits.

This nectar is not meant for humans, yet in our arrogance, we reach for their stock and supply,
and with it we compose beautiful songs and paint beautiful shapes, we piece together majestic art and music that can open the mind, bend it, twist it, and mold it in ways from which it can never retreat.

We create,
Things that even devas desire,

We create,
Things that even demons devour,

But to us humans these things are toxic, they are too much, and we become lost to them.
Such that we call madness is a consequence of reaching too deeply into the well of knowledge with an unbalanced, ignorant, distracted, and frail mind, and in doing so, we forsake everything for the pitifullest glimpse of eternity.

In that place; only gods and asuras may roam freely; humans, on the other hand, are far too greedy,
far too curious, far too ignorant, and far too dangerous to possess such knowledge.

We should stick to light plucked from flowers growing in the sun,
because those flowers which grow in the darkness will only lead to our damnation, the conclusion of our race, and the manifestation of something far more terrible than any of our myths ever suggested.

If birth control pills could give a buzz
"Unwanted" pregnancy would no longer be a
Problem