I know where this path leads.

Before you kiss someone for the first time,
Just wait.

Take a second to look at them.
They are so new and so unfamiliar.
Right now you don’t know how they taste,
How their hands will intertwine with yours,
How they’ll exhale after touching your bones.

You won’t see them like this ever again

Stare into their wanting -
the apprehension
budding inside their pupils -
they don’t know as well.
In their mind
you are uncharted territory as well.

Isn’t that special?

Keep it.
That’s how you’ll never lose them,
Or so I think.
Every so often after this moment,
look at them through these
soon to be ancient eyes.
Find this vision,
this exact dialect
of witness,
find these
pair of eyes

And don’t lose this wonder.
Don’t lose the spark.

For if you do,
The burns will leave you scared of the sun,
While the sunlight will still dance in their hair.

Even the universe is jealous of this moment, and will take this away from you in years to come,

Just know
If you are the forest fire
I will be the rainfall calming smoke scented winds.

Skin is delicate
But this story could be beautiful,
As we dive into the unknown.

- an excerpt from a book I’ll never have the courage to write

Part 1

Some of us love badly.
Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes.
Folds in on itself. Eats its insides.
Turns wine to poison.
Behaves poorly in restaurants.
Drinks. Kisses other people.
Comes back to your bed at 4am smelling like everything outside.
Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex.
Thinks everyone a rival.

Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse.
Some of us love horrid, love beastly.
Love sick love anti light.
Sometimes the love can’t go home at night,
can’t sleep with itself, cannot contain itself,
catches fire, destroys the stomach,
strips buildings, goes missing.
Punches. Smashes heirlooms.
Tells lies. The best lies. F*s around.
Writes poems, impresses people.
Chases lovers into corners.
Leaves them longing. Sea sick.
Says yes. Means anything but.
Tricks the body.
Kills the body.
Dances wild
and walks away,
smiling.

Part 2

Why should you apologize
for the monster
you’ve become when
nobody apologized
for creating
the monster that
you are?

But the serious answer to that
is because you make monsters too.

And that apology you never got
is the apology you never gave.

It ain’t even about me.
Remember every single time
a person ever done you wrong,
and any st part of your life, you gotta realize
that you can’t control that.
The only thing you can control
is your own self.

I want to look at you
but I find myself
with closed eyes, staples
sewn against eyelids
and crimson stains
this dialect of innocence.

I am tired of crying pretty for people,
as if my sadness manifested through poetry
is only acceptable because I transform
life into art, paintbrush to verses,
transparency to kaleidoscope
and all the waterfalls in the world
could never drown
dead bodies as if
rose petals camouflage graveyards.

I want to be alone.
Alone with someone, as if
my mouth remains wide open
filling with rainfalls of hypocrisy,
and if someone were to
steal my soul
I'd hide myself inside their
treasure chest.

I don't know what to do -
when my name falls off lips
and into my million mile stare.
Clouded with the distance
and even so, I am so tired of running
from their kisses against my neck,
gold chains against my flesh,
and if the sky could
water our grave, I still wonder
whether roses could grow again.

Let me crawl inside your skin,
as I do not see beauty in people
rather muscle and bone, always
draining the marrow as if
I could continue finding pulses of summer
within this heartless winter.
I always build walls
and given a ball and chain
I will hold you like a hostage -
you're my Stockholm,
I am the syndrome,
and this is us between the distance
and a one time message
because Mercury is falling
through my bedroom ceiling,
and the stars above remind me
that despite the darkness,
we are still here through the distance.

I stare at the empty side of my bed,
and wonder about the things
I would tell you
if you were laying right
Next to me

(1) when I was little
a flowerpot fell from the balcony
and i stared at the beautiful mess
all the pieces had made
until I became sad
it wasn't until I got much older
that I started feeling sad
for the balcony too

(2) I remember in November
Knuckles turning purple as the leafs turned orange
My hand, a bruised, gnarled, yellow and indigo mess
How did this amazingly unfortunate injury happen?
I was punishing the walls
That saw my loss
But stayed quiet

(3) the world is too bright,
so I filter it into sepia tones gentler to the mind's eye and swim to where the water meets the clouds.
I am drowning,
but not from the ocean's relentless caresses,
but from the world's relentless stresses:
beauty that is measured and calculated,
saturated with standards that burn like the sun and are as intangible as its rays,
a paradise built on sand as quick as it is to judge.

I swim to where
the water meets the clouds.
where the water
is still water,
and I am still me.

I’ve learned how to dismember my ligaments
For those who need body parts, how to
Digest ***** burning the stomach lining.
I’ve learned how to read the bible
As a poem and not a story, as
A way of life; not an outline of life.

I’ve learned how to open my arms
To those claiming refugee on cement sidewalks.
I’ve learned how to sing; not choir songs,
No symphonies nor harmonies, but sing
With a shaking voice from the pits
Of carcass burnt within fiery honesty.

I'm still learning how to scratch the surface
To let scabs turn to skin, because I have always
Been fascinated with the process of healing,
But I become nostalgic when I outline stains
On my skin from previous memories.

I’ve learned how to paint the silhouette
Of a smiling man saying goodbye to his wife
While holding rifles pointed at the cross
By the church where they used to meet.

Knowledge comes in two forms;
The first resides within yearning, the second within coping.
I do not know how to tame forest fires
From flocking flames feathering forgiveness:

I guess I haven’t learned anything after all.

Feed the good wolf he says,
as if he knows right from wrong.

I am prey,
he remains hunter,
and this is where
I’m supposed to
let my hands gnarled,
******, to match
the stains on my back
because it’s more fitting, he says.

I learned that our parents
teach us sayings,
as translation always changes
throughout the years -

no words of mercy were staining lips
in the times of Roman hierarchy,
or how child abuse today
was merely strict parenting back then.

When they say curiosity killed the cat,
they never told us
satisfaction brought it back,
Or how jack of all trades is a master of none
but they don't tell us it is better than a master of one.

They lie to us,
because great minds think alike
yet fools rarely differ.

So don’t question me
when I believe
Blood of the covenant,
of word and life;
is thicker than
the water of the womb;

Don’t you remember?
The doctors cut me away at birth.

O, how wolves are now dead.

Just like this family does.
And here we are,
a mansion of memories,
waiting to take a number.

As if these walls now hold real grass,
and snaking each other out,
because we’re all hurting.

Don’t call me emotional,
for I used to see beauty in people;
now merely muscle and bone,
flesh and open wound,
skeletal mass, and empty.

I’ve finally learned.

you're slowly losing me.

crowded spaces,
familiar faces,
and sometimes
when my mind runs races
when this heart is tired of chases,

I cannot help
but wonder
if this too, is how love ends:
two dimensional,
as if
as if
as if
fairytales are just that;
tales, fabricated, lies.

How profound is it
to see your lover
intertwined with someone
that looks like you.

there's nothing special
between wanting to be alone,
alone with you:
if that doesn't make sense,
then i take back
all the love stories and
fragments of fickle phrases
stating the difference
between genuine, and selfish.

i am tired of dousing flames.
let me burn.

This depression
runs deeper than Hadal.
A dead man’s float
protects me from drowning,
and I’m told how strong this is,
as if it’s the same as
parting this Red Sea with my own hands.

In moments of sufficient serotonin,
I believe them, some days
arms go brittle, body limp,
stillness capturing blood shot eyes,
and right before I drown
something saves me,
but when I come to,
I cough sea water against the shore,
and I am still alone.

The ocean’s soot stained hands are the only constant I can recognize.

I know it will come back.
It always does.

I have called you the the best, the worst, and it’s strange now I call you nothing.

2 Being reduced to echoes of nostalgia forces me to stitch up the last five years and all the while looking at my Frankenstein creation, I always long to go back.

3. As if this graveyard trembles inside distant fogs that old friends and family cannot bring themselves to mourn over.

4. They call my soul a lake of toxicity. Not once have they asked how I manage to swim through the current of life, but instead look away as the drowning begins.

5. I tried creating my own vortex, but finding myself at the end of a wormhole with no idea how I got here yet alone return to the person before every bad choice, flawed reaction, and bottles tsunami inside of me.

6. Tactless comments, a thoughtless act, a reactive tongue; each transgression building stone by stone until I created this sentinel walling myself with an invisible shield so nobody can come close to me.

7. There’s no winning this war. The battles have always witnessed a type of loss, bloodshed or not.

8. If we touch again whose the reaching hand? Nobody. There’s no oneness without wholeness. And this fortress remains guarded, empty.

9. I cannot keep counting these days anymore. I am a prisoner against the bedroom window. The sepia tones of streetlights taunt me, and I’d rather speak to ghosts than answer the phone these days.

10. We knew how this would end. The white room will only cast my shadow. I don’t know where I will drift from here.

Like a flower pressed against someone's clenched fist will leave a final gift of scented skin holding selflessness to who has become killer; I must remember this when someone destroys me again.

I know you'll be a good man for another and I will be to blame for never being good enough. You never kissed this writer in the dark and I don't blame you, because this open envelope poem is my heart's remain and I hate myself for scenting strangers with picked apart scabs bleeding fresh, whisper to audiences I love you ‘til my heartbeat stops, and even if you call the cops I still wouldn't talk.

Within my darkest hour I find selfish courage so our cloud atlas love story will end with me pulling the trigger, and you never finding my corpse in a ****** bathtub with too many love poems that nobody wanted to read. That's the thing ... the terror, the gun fights, the trauma and bloodied moonlight, I can't tell whether you noticed the tide always rose with the passing of midnight. I don’t know if you ever heard me call your name from underwater.

You never kissed this writer in the dark, and I will love you even after the gunshot, the last letter, for I still feel you, and I always wonder now if you were to see me in passing, would you stop me, or let me go? You and I are lifetimes of found perfect places, and my heart will continue to break for all the goodness your next man will receive. My heart will continue to break for every time someone tries to kiss me in the dark, and I pull away.

My purpose in life falls into two very simple yet difficult things to do. The first to learn, the second to cope. This is what someone might call "hard feelings" like the memories left of buying groceries, getting high, the make up *** and hatefucks that are all still too real for me. I'll start letting go of all these little things until I'm far away from you, far from these perfect places and adrift on cloud atlas until I find you again in another life, another perfect place because this lifetime is nothing but one more letter calling itself a poem never sent, one last gunshot never heard.

© 2017 Lucas Kolthof

I light a cigarette
while driving down the coast
and the dim lit beach
calls me out
for this silent repression

and every time I want to
coast the wheel against roadside curbs,
I wait for the cigarette to exhale
it's final drag, and even then,
I watch the orange light
disappear into darkness,
and once this is finalized

so is this feeling of craving the crash and burn.

This is how it always ends.
Dissipation - like the smoke against my lips.

2:57 AM
and I dance in the moonlight's depression
while waiting for this again, tomorrow.

Life Is Strange

Will you be my chaos theory?

Life is currently linear.
I’ve never been great at math either,
so don’t count on me
because I can’t count.
I have added and subtracted
to this equation,
yet I feel like I can’t control
the multiplying divisions
between here and then,
here and to be,
because the chimes
against the wind
have stopped whispering their grace.

Everything comes to an end,
as harshly it began.
The juxtaposition
between pieces of paper
laying next to one another,
one soaked, the other burned.
What misfortune
brought two opposites
within each other’s reality?
How does the butterfly
fly into another dimension,
leaving a storm behind previous realities?

Because if I could go back in time
I would change all the decisions,
every universe existing
and **** myself off
because you do not deserve
this suffering I constantly write about.

Normally I would end it here,
but this is merely the surface.

How naive am I to think
I have searched for you in myriads
of different lifetimes, when the truth is
despite all the little details:
my hair colour,
your either clean or bruised knuckles,
my scars and on which patch of skin,
your arms and how they stand as towers or cabins.

Despite all these minor additions,
we are constantly dividing ourselves
for pieces of the story that cannot be changed,
because in every alternate reality,

we are supposed to die young.
I am so fearful of this knowledge.

The stars must be able
to witness all these realities
at once, so it only makes sense
that they are already dead
by the time they reach our universe.

The guilt. The knowledge.
The calm before the storm.
Is there a calm after?
Hell is empty,
and no flames,
just ice winds and
darkness.

This is the aftermath.
I still don’t know how to
tell the ghosts
when the light will finally escape.

I leave here
with nothing
but a burnt down poem
drowning inside these tides
of my mind’s eye,
and there’s a hole in the earth
waiting for me.
They say I have a way with words,
so why am I speechless now?

Friend, make sense of all this
in your own turn, in your own turn.

I have forgotten how to write.
There are only feelings, and too many
personal pronouns to even
consider this
poem.

I write this broken
as sentences
scatter orthographically
across oceans of white,
how sailboats coast the shore,
eventually
blown away from the wind.
No captain, no shipwreck,
just disappear.
As if it was never here.

I wonder
which islands they find,
whether riches or crumble.  
Is the ocean fruit still fresh?
Do animals wait with soft eyes,
or shall beasts follow forward?
How does the sun cry?
Sometimes
I hear Him.
Between clouds
and raindrops,
despite all the grey
He still shines
like these stars
within nightly kisses skies,
except all I taste are dead bodies
falling from clouds like lies
seeded against my lips with their lies.

I know not to trust.
Take it from school for example,
they teach about constellations
while hiding the biggest truth of all:
some of them are dead.
But since they still shine
inside kaleidoscopes,
does that make the lie more truth,
or still a lie?
Regardless we are blinded by the beauty,
and I’d rather sit in darkness instead of a lie.

He calls me perfect tonight
and I have not shown him
how much dried blood
stains soft hands, and maybe
he is blind to the ugly of me
or maybe, I should borrow his eyes
and see what is so beautiful.

I’d rather be lost in him.
Sometimes
despite all the thickle and thorn,
you will find a rose
with no *****
of the skin
when touched.

I would never let you read this,
I would never dare to write about this.
I will not knock on your bedroom window.
I will not kiss you as a skipping stone against waterfronts.

You never hugged me goodbye.
I never lost my breath for you.
You never went out dancing with me,
I did not travel by your side.
I was not a show,
only for the night you lived next to me.

No need to worry,
I will not go crazy,
I will not think of you
as I've been doing better,
now its only every other night -
and the nights in between.

I know you will not invite me for brunch. We will not stay to sleep together.

You will remain a beautiful man,
and I will not want to see you again.
Never, will you undress me with your eyes.
I will not be your husband,
I will not have your children.

This is not the life you chose for me.
It will never be the life you chose for us.

I remember with disdain your hands on me,
I do not remember being excited.
If once you destroyed me
it seems more a dream
than something I lived through.

There is someone who blieves in a love
that appears, that lasts forever.
And it is love.
But you and I are safe
from that perfect illusion.
Because that someone is neither you nor me.
Because that someone will not be you or me.
Because that someone is neither you nor me.

Between my kryptonite,
and beautiful men

I cannot help
but wager myself
between broken and replaceable -

I have become numb to compliments,
and reclusive to the world just means
keeping my bedroom curtains closed.

I sleep with sunlight,
and shower in moon dust:

Oh God,
hold my hands within prayer
for I tremble, shake, this body
an earthquake of this eclipsing depression,

and I am so tired
and I am so tired
and I am so tired.

Where do I go when
two roads diverging ahead
become one, and the west coast flames
disguise insecurity and reality?

I cannot begin
to explain
how black these
night skies tremble,
as if somehow
I sleep the sun away
because I cannot bring myself
to trust the light.

I am so withered.
bring me back to life
with rose petals and broken vases;

I am accustomed
to tending broken gardens
as I am a butler
to the trivial rituals
that is the current cascade
of exile and hate -

please
please
please
help me find
home
home
my heart.

I mistake it for gravestones -
whats a heart worth if left all alone?
Leave it long enough, and watch it turn to stone.

Why must we always be untrue?

I am so sick of trying.

I stay faded,
within days of coasting
through smog, green tufts
of paper rolled into precision.
I am not happy.

All I’m good for is flicking a cigarette.
Tilted head while a drag ensues
dancing lip
and smoke,
and it is
disgusting.

The view is numbing.
I look out beyond balconies,
and I tremble.
I am so sick.
This constant human failure
of relationships have really
****** me over,
and I am to blame.

This heartbeat must be a bomb.
Explosions of sickness.
I can’t enjoy being alive.

Sometimes.
I do though.
Joy comes through
the cracked curtain,
sunlight setting on my morning skin,
between watching a puppy play
and the way
I look outside windows
only to close my eyes again.

There are times
when I want to
wander into a forest,
rope in hand,
and find the perfect tree,
a sculpted branch
beckoning noose,
to paint limp body
and carcass with
crows waiting to feast.

I cannot.
Fantasy is always distant.
I am not strong enough to live,
yet I am not strong enough to die.
What a ******* life.

Why?