isn't it strange
the names we give our pets?
the names they'll never know?

It is not too late
I can back away now
I will back away now
I must.
is it too late?

being demisexual is like
a soulmate alternate universe
in which my heart connects with just one person at a time
and their name is branded on my skin
and my lips only desire theirs
and nothing matters except them
it is like I can't make myself love anyone else
and I can't look away, I feel like I'm drowning
there is no other device that can keep me afloat because once I'm stuck,
I'm stuck- I cannot keep my obsession at bay
there's nothing I can do about this- my hyper-intelligent mind
gets caught on an idea and repeats and repeats and repeats
and that is all there is-
it is like a cute little alternate universe where true love stays forever
except, well, it's this universe
and more often than not, they don't love me back.

I wish I lived at home,
rather than
whatever-it-is that here-is
because this whatever-it-is
feels strange and smells like
I am not here, and I should not be
anywhere but home, where-it-smells-like
my soul is welcome, and my heart
will be held gently in someone else's' hands.

it burns, but it is a heavenly kind of fire

is it a kindness that I have pined so many times
that my mind has learned how to be refused
and my soul has been taught a lesson from each new person I have loved
and my past has been dotted with scars when my heart broke in half
is it a kindness that I must suffer so
merely in order to grow, to understand the nature of a human person?
maybe there is something that is wrong with me,
that I can never find a healthy love, a good love,
that I do not bend myself over backwards for-
in all the loves I have experienced, I have broken myself
and beaten my own soul black and blue and hot red
over and over against a wall in my bathroom
as usual, the hardest part is sleeping alone
maybe I am not meant to have another, maybe
I am meant for this, forever.

if all love is from God, then God has been especially cruel to me.

I refuse to succumb to this again, and spend
weeks and months in hopeless misery
and excited adrenaline- I refuse to topple
heels over head, obsessive and unfulfilled,
this is unacceptable, I cannot, I will not
feel like this again, help me- it must not be real
I will deny and refuse this time-
I recognize the signs, and I can stop myself,
I have to be able to stop myself,
I will end this now.

I love the smell of waking up early
because it reminds me of a time
when I loved none, and all
and even though I knew I must eventually go home,
I would never again have to feel alone.

I have never been so *tired

I don't want to fly off this cliff again
*my heart can't possibly break when it
was never even whole to start with

can I taste the sky?

I do not want to marry a poet
I do not want sonnets written about the way
I take my hair down-
I do not want endless verses about depths within my eyes
I do not want descriptions of my lips
and metaphors about my pulse
for one who is too focused on the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss me
and no woman worth my life would ever
spend time alone, writing about me
rather than spend time with me,
making rhymes with our lips and
meter with our feet as we dance together,
alliteration in the way our hands entwine
and assonance in our limbs colliding-
letting our soft animal bodies love what they love,
because the only metaphor I will ever need is not a metaphor:
you are really here, we are really alive
and all before you has been a dream.

parenthood is the scariest thing, to me
the ability to love something to the point
that you know it better than it knows itself
seems nearly impossible and very easy to ruin
its chances for fulfilling its dreams
and guiding it through storms while it constantly pulls away
is the bravest of the loves, I think.

how much flannel do I have to wear
and how much leg hair do I have to grow
until my friends match my spirit
and how many hoodies can I wear
and how many girls do I have to kiss
before everyone knows I'm gay
without having to tell them
and how many hiking trips and how many
fields of flowers would you be willing to walk
through with me? and in how many waterfalls
would you like to swim? and under how many stars
can we sleep before we fall in love?

Lord, I am tired of working
how long do I have to hold my back upright
before I have permission to lay down?

nothing is as **** as a cello
and nothing is as excruciatingly distant as a violin

I mostly want to get ****** up
because I'm tired of thinking rather
than feeling. so please,
what would you do if you weren't in your right mind?

I would like to feel as though a hole was cut into me
fully, deeply, and intensely
so that I cannot repair it and I do not
have to think hard about it before it breaks me
and I would like to be kicked in the gut with tears
and have my throat choked by something I can't escape
because the only sadness I have ever felt
is love or the lack of it- never anything permanent,
always a hope- and I would like to learn
how to deal with an absence of hope
so that I may help others who have none.

everyone seems to have a dream
a poet that must occupy their time
weaving words through the weary seams
an artist must dance their brush in line
with the natural beauty of rivers and streams
a dancer spends their evenings alone
forgetting who they are, at home
and can never be forgotten-
a violinist feels their fingers hum over the strings
and the far off mountain's distant thrum
calling to their soul-
everyone seems to have a dream,
a plan for the future, divine-
planned out by heaven before them
but the hard question is: what is mine?

how desperately I would like to be a failure
and for someone to take me away from here
for I have never had a great sadness
and I do not know how that feels
I would love for nothing to depend on me
to let my poor sorry soul heal
for people to command 'just be happy'
and at last I can think of what's real
so take me, drive me in a car
to the west and east in our wheels
with nothing but you and my heart
and nothing but wind in my ears.

why not just be for each other

am I good enough?
the answer is not
'I must work until I am'
or 'who am I to tell'
or 'but everyone else is better'
the answer is just 'yes'.

I feel sick
sick of you, sick of most everyone
sick of being tired and sick of being sick
I am fine and I am alive but there are corrosive chemicals around me
I am the most beautiful, unique creation, the summit and foundation
of this Earth- as a human person I am limitless but
I feel a poison eating away at me and I know exactly what to do to avoid it
for there are only a few who make me feel whole,
a few people, a few situations-
and I do not want to be fixed, I do not need that, no mortar or
molds to repair, all I need
is to stop being eroded- bit by bit,
and to stop crumbling into the deep-
and from there, I can repair myself-
I am good enough now
stop tearing me down,
I would like to shake off whatever chains have been laid on me
for though my body is restricted,
my soul is deeply, unbelievably free.

it is not about me
it has never been about me
and I am still, still writing,
about nothing else
but my own soul

what do I do
what can I do
to make a difference and show people that they are loved?
There is a void in the world and I cannot save it or fill it
with pretty words and creative line breaks, I cannot help this,
all I can do is sit here and keep recording in a silly backwards
attempt to romanticize the earth
and the people around me,
as if they weren't already beautiful, and I can't
sit in my car and cry
because I do not have a car and I cannot fill cliche
in real life, only in my mind,
I cannot save your soul or heal your heart,
no hands can hold love, really- only in writing
compassion only works on paper because people have to save themselves,
in the end,
I am so helpless
all I can do is throw myself in the grass and scream my lungs out
and try and get to you.

it is a true fact of a human person that, when
they must confess something that has been on their heart a long time,
they do not tell you it in the moment- it is planned, predetermined,
so they are not following their feeling or even watching your face
it is as it is in their fantasies- for they are not really there
they are reading from a script-
for they are as though they are dwelling in dreams
and you are not real. The words they say after mulling them over
are not there. They travel to their ancestral homeland and,
after the long flight, step off the plane and feel the harps
thrumming through their veins- there are no harps,
it is all in your imagination- your heart does not pound stronger
in the rolling hills and you need to behave as though you are actually there
you must be actually there. You are alive.

as the sparks flew I felt my own helplessness
and naked, numb fear, and ignorance
at having smoked a cigarette in the only lonely
place I knew- what I had not considered
is that my secret place is full of dead leaves and dried needles
just waiting to be lit ablaze.

**** **** **** **** hell ****
not this again **** **** what the ****
why does this **** **** happen
every ******* time and why can't normal
****** love happen normally like a ****
real life story

"I could get any *** except the one I want."

those who do not think like me live and feel blindly
they say, 'I am who I am and you can accept it or not'
they throw their own person into the world and let fools
and scavengers prey and ****** and bite but they will not draw
back their hand, they will not change, for they are proud of
the very fact that these wolves gnaw on them, for it is proof
that they are worth eating, that their hand is brave enough to stay
those who think like me adapt and mold their hands based
on the type of wolves that desire them, we shall change and choose
to withdraw when in danger, we know when there are wolves around
and we are not ashamed of our cowardice, for what virtue is there in pain?
We are not knights, nor dark knaves in the night who steal from the rich
and give to the poor; we are not the poor nor the rich, we are
the faces you see when you walk down the street and do not see them
for we do not raise our flags high over our heads, we are the shrouded
figures that do not stand out for being shrouded, for we do not
advertise, we do not seek to excel or fail bluntly,
we only wish to maximize profit, to work the dynamics of the system
regardless of how we are affected in the process, for we are not proud of who
we are completely, we are proud of our own good souls, but we detest
our vices and we shall not hesitate to alter our very essence if it so suits,
for we know that there is no inherent value in stability,
and that stagnation is the ultimate weakness.

cut me down to my bare bones
and I would burn my flesh for you

those around me want to be in a storybook,
full of fairies and magic and dragons
I do not want that type of storybook- I do not want to live in one either
I want my world to follow the plot of a novel, and it does
I do not want to leave- I want a heightened version of this
I would like to be someone's Alaska,
someone's Augustus Waters
someone's Jace, Will, or Sam,
I would like to be so enormously interesting that volumes could
be written on my eccentricities
I want you to record the first words I said to you
and I want you to notice the way I capitalize words
I would like you to value that I eat my Cheetos with a fork
and have a passion for driftwood
I want to say enlightening things but only once,
at two in the morning,
smoking a cigarette in a parking lot
I would like to be so comfortable with *** that you would never dare touch me
I would like to burn down the world and raise it up again
and know that it was never my fault and I could not have done it alone
I would like to have secret passions that I do not share,
use hobbies rather than partake in them
kiss lots of people, have a mysterious past
I would not like to be in a storybook and watch it happen around me
I would not like to be taken on an adventure
I would like to be the adventure, and make spiced the life
of those around me, be the character in the series of their lives
that, because there is no one even close to similar,
they cannot help but fall in love with.

and I would love you
until you *broke

I am fire in love with ice
fire to me is exhausting, ice is full of vice
but it is pure, and I chase eternally for something
that could only put me out
I am claimed by desire for the cold, constantly crushing
what is is that I am, it is a sad, forgettable art
when the beat of your veins are drumming
at an erratic pace to someone who looks at you like a science experiment
their highest love is to be set apart
they thrive on the silliness of sentiment
your last will and testament holds evident to your thought
of them when you last close your eyes, you are never quite as elegant
as the coordination of the fractals and the elements
your battle will be consistently fought
while they watch, aloof, shattering and shattering your heart.
and ice is forever lonely
it thinks fire is foolish, devout
to a Lord that knows nothing but only
the sins of his people, whose minds sell out
as a conductor of bad decisions
illogicalities and blurred precisions
and whose souls have nothing but room for doubt.
I am fire in love with ice,
for other fire tires, and I seek to change something,
to make a mark on the world, and tell
my story over the glaciers, a glorious pulsating hell
but the ice is no place for a fire
for the ice does not want to melt.

I would ask to kiss you but I don't want to destroy
anything more than I already have
in this life

is it too much to ask for some joy?

i desperately want to not care
and i want to be around people who don't care
save for caring about having fun
and caring about each other
i do not want to care about rules or responsibilities
i do not want to care about school, the world
i do not want to care about issues
i do not want to care about death, or life
i cannot, i refuse to spend my life focusing
on things that only deepen and darken it
i do not want to spend hours discussing metaphysics
when i could be dancing.

I used to be afraid it was written on my forehead
and now I want to *shout it from the rooftops

it is morning time
and the world is good to look at
i am lonely
but maybe not- i think i am just alone
i think i am fine with that

would anyone like to kiss me?
i feel there is something i have not paid back
and this ring does not fit me the way yours did
everyone i have kissed has told me they don't know how
and i guess, even after a few times, neither do i,
but my room is cold at night, and my back hurts, and the sun has set
and even that thunderstorm has passed, so now i sit
to delay the inevitable roll of my sleep, and i delve into my own mental fog
but your picture next to me makes it clear again-
when i think of you, i don't feel so alone.

am I trying to avoid feeling
or am I trying to drown myself in it?

I feel most alive
when I haven't slept much
because it is then (or now)
that I am least in control
and it feels as though the hard calluses have been worn off
and the softness of my hands has lost its skin
and now the world is gritty-
now it is wild, now it is free, and the morning air is fresh
dawn dew brushing over my hoarse throat
my sore feet gently held by the grass blades
that do not cut- my soul and body is raw and stinging
my memory is impaired and my mind transfers slowly,
the filters have been removed and the neurons fire in all directions
if you ask me a question I shall respond with a nod, a hug, or nothing
for I do not know what I should do to elicit a reaction
I only exist objectively and cannot change to fit the subjective
this is me, take me as you will-
I shall never be more free and alive than I am now,
for I have forgotten how to keep control.

everyone believes they are the best at something
and I used to think I was the smartest,
but as people started getting higher and higher grades
and I stayed at my comfortable 96, I realized
that I am second, or third
I used to think I was the most athletic,
because my mile time was the fastest in my PE class,
but maybe I didn't realize that my class was at
Sacred Heart, and I was the smartest in middle school,
and that in Theatre I cannot make up for my lack of feeling
and I cannot let go
and I have been so focused on myself that I am lagging in the dynamics, I missed something
I missed about a month of moments and glances
and I am not as involved as I should be-
I have failed in latching to the people around me
and they slip by, waxy now, for I cannot catch up
there are secrets I do not know, glances I do not understand
I have been in survival mode for so long
that I have not been able to live-
I am not the best at speaking, or making friends,
or working group dynamics, or basketball,
or school, or math, or violin, or acting-
maybe my mom is wrong.
Maybe I am a B student.

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
It has been a cold, cold river of hope and desperation
the greatest glories do not die, they are as young as the dawn
and yet- the night will come, and your name will be shortened,
for we all view things as outside of ourselves and we view them wrongly
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
and we even think of our own lovers on a pedestal-
we do not allow them to think alone, but if we do,
we ignore them and pretend that they do not- our brothers impregnate
our wives and we love them anyway, both wife and brother,
for neither is any tarnished in our mind- a man exists alone and
can work the machinations of others and play them,
stripping them of their freedom though they still believe themselves
to be free-
“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”
we all believe ourselves to be good, we strive for good,
but who are we? what is good? how can we be good when we are not sure
what that is, who we are, or where we strove from? it can be measured,
certainly, by our glories, that are God-given,
it can be passed through blood and at first we think,
once you have it, you have it,
but that is not true- Cain was not given an order or an ultimatum
he was not given a promise, he was given an opportunity
“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
Timshel- Timshel- Timshel-
what it is that is given to the human consciousness that gives it the right
and the ability to soar- we may or we may not, that is all
you are not what you are born as and there is nothing you may hide behind
“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
you may never escape the truth, the lies are what hold you back
but they are ugly, they are false, they shield you from encountering your own life-
your wife, a monster of a *****, who demands the worst of all
and cannot see the good- but you see only good in her
“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.”
and your life was illuminated once again- for you have been gray
your whole life and have forgotten that the joy of the Irishman is false,
you have lost the name and mind of the Chinaman
but no longer-
“But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”
and it is not that you 'shall' soar and it is not that you 'must' soar
you can. you can. you can. that is all.
“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”

if I must die, I don't wanna die before I see you again

He asked me why I didn't 'dig' him
and I said, 'you're not my type'
but what I meant is,
I don't even like boys
and he said, 'who's better than me'
and I said 'a lot of people'
but what I meant is,
'have you seen Emma Watson?'
and adolfo wants me to be exactly who I am,
with a gut reaction,
every time
but for someone who has spent their whole life
hiding and lying and creating machinations
for someone whose every motion is watched and
analyzed so as not to give anything away
for someone who developed social skills because
she needed to conceal who she was
that is hard, it is hard, it is nearly impossible
because no matter how many times you tell me to 'say whatever I feel'
I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.
there are some things that must remain hidden.

the first time I saw her,
everything in my head exploded
I have never been more or less
than I was then
and I shall never experience more
than I am now
and all my little tics and rituals become absolutely necessary
for without them I shall not be able to keep her.

why do I still feel like a walking corpse

we are not for each other
and maybe I will never be for anyone
or maybe
no one will ever be for me