what kind of love
do i think i deserve?
a thing that yields poems
sweet platitudes and flowery words
but no romance
a loveless and lonely
kind of something?

and sure, love can be elating
wouldn’t be such a popular topic
of poems and songs and ballads
if it weren’t

but an unforgiving love
can be such a hollow feeling
like having my chest opened
and emptied
and sewn up again

and i know what that’s really like, too
but this kind of love is more numbing
than cut nerve endings
and the scars that that leaves

glad to have never been in love
since there are only so many ways
to say that you’ve made me cry
and make it sound appealing
but a bard with a broken heart
is something no one wants to see
a broken heart yields no coin

but my heart is weak
my heart is wanting
and i am helpless
in the face of how i feel
how i ache
how i yearn
for you

singing your praises
like any good bard would do
even though you’ve never liked poetry
and isn’t that just my luck,
my love?

unrequited love is all well
and good in songs
written out as a poem
a sonnet
a ballad
but the reality hurts

the only heart i’ve ever
broken is my own
which, i guess that’s not
such a bad track-record

and what kind of poet
a wanna-be bard
would i be if i didn’t
think or speak with my mind
but with my heart
my love?

but i have grown tired
of licking my wounds
always hoping for hands
that are more steady than my own
to take this hurt from me

and i am so full of love
yours for the taking, always
i’d give you my heart if i could
better with a knife than with blood
but that’s a risk i’m willing to take

i ache, i ache, and i ache
not entirely knowing what for
maybe out of longing
something akin to wanting?
an answer only i can give

but i still don’t know
what the question could be
and so words die on my tongue
afraid of smothering you under
the weight of whatever
this is

does the melancholy come
before the sorrow
or is it the other way around?

does being a fool make
me a poet
or am i a poet because
i was first a fool?

if my hands were steady
enough to hold an instrument
i could be your darling bardling
and sing you into immortality

but my voice is as shaky
as the rest of me
even when you’re not around

and there’s nothing poetic about
a bard that can’t hold a note
without going all to shambles

is there, my love?

i wonder if this is
what love feels like
your hand ****** in the collar
of my shirt

our faces so close
i could lean forward
and kiss you gently

or bite your lip
make you bleed
like i have bled

instead, i bite my tongue
tasting copper
but nothing i will regret
having said

like all these apologies
stagnating in my throat
maybe a broken plea
but i don’t know what for

i’d ask you
if i could find my voice
putting the pressure on you
to fix this

and that’s selfish, isn’t it?
wanting you to hold me
like one would a lover
without the other iterations
of that silly little word

but that’s all i have
ran out of ways to make my sorrow
sound poetic and palatable
long before this infatuation
blind-sided me so cruelly

and maybe right now
this is okay
your hands rough on my skin
but your voice so soft
when you look at me

i wanted you to touch me
was eager to teach you
the curves and plains of my body

baring all those scars
on wrist and chest and knowing
you’d only look upon me
with adoration and something
akin to love

and maybe that was selfish of me
putting so much trust in you
but you were selfish, too

you wanted more than i
was willing
was able
to give

and maybe you didn’t know
what you were asking of me
trying to put a time limit
on the years upon years of
****** trauma i had
yet to work through

and if my own hand was
sometimes too much
how would i react to
both of yours?

i was trying to save you
the burden of
my choking on sobs when you
touched me
over the shirt and below the belt

knowing how quickly pleasure
can turn to fear

and would you have been able to
talk me down from the brink of
being a scared little boy
and back into the body of
a young man?

and it’s not that i didn’t trust you
not that i didn’t murmur your name
not that i didn’t want to know what your
mouth would feel like ******* hickeys
into my collarbones and shoulder blades
i just needed you to wait

that’s all i ever asked of you
giving so much more than i ever
expected in return
and it still wasn’t enough

maybe i wasn’t enough?
maybe you were unfair
trying to pressure me into an
intimate act that was a precursor to more
to something i couldn’t handle

i wanted you to touch me
but now i’m drinking away
how your hands felt
held in my own
in my hair
on my body

the memory
the ghost
of your touch is just one more thing
i am trying to forget

am i a young boy
or a young man?
the only answer that
i have is i am alone
and i am afraid

night is closing in
i want my mother
i want my father
but does my father want me?

another answer i don’t have
cold seeping into my bones
feeling both too small and
too big for my skin

my wrists and hands look like his
the lights are on
but the house burnt
down long ago

and i sit at a table
made from charred and twisted wood
waiting for my father
to eat with me
to even look at me

but he never shows
because of course he doesn’t
and i sit at that table
until i am a young boy again
waiting for my father to
carry me to bed and tuck me in

and still he is not there
just me and empty plates
full of rotting food
and all these broken promises

the broken heart of a young boy
still beats within my chest
wondering what i did wrong
when it never was me at all
just a selfish man
that never should have been a parent

and i stop waiting then
packing that particular wound
with cotton and whispered apologies
promising to never let it happen again

and my knees creak
when i stand
fitting my skin like i should
an old heart in a young body

and the lights are on
but the house burnt
down long ago

and and and
i tell the remains of this house
that never was my home
that i’m just stepping out
for a smoke

with no intention
of ever going back

1.....
there is a rotten smell
permeating this particular instance
of public transit
and i wonder if it is me

is this the aftermath of
what i never coughed up for you
in the midst of my unrequited love?

it wouldn’t be flowers for you, though
i think clovers would have been more fitting
like the one that you gave me
hand-crafted pendant on a leather cord

and i really have to be more careful
with my heart, don’t i?
all these pretty things i can write about love
can’t hold a candle to the real, reciprocated thing

and i realize now it was unfair of me
to ask of you something you could not give
but i love you just the same
albeit it with less heartache and tears

2.
that rot must be coming from me
and the roses
pink like the sunset and downy soft
i planted between my ribs for you

did you see that garden?
how i tried to give you everything i had
the way i allowed you to take and take
and asked for little in return?

but what is a garden
when it is trapped behind towering walls
with no one to see the way all those flowers shine,
and what a lonely thing that is

i choked myself on roses for you
and that wasn’t enough
was i not enough?
hard not to feel like it, if you must know

but i have better things to do
than make my throat bleed
with all these words and love
with nowhere to go

i think it’s time that i plant
some flowers for myself
no more roses or clovers
but maybe dandelions this time