i wear the scars on my wrist
like a painter glorifies
the acrylic under his nails.
both are quiet masterpieces
that gain
more
appreciation through
time

drove up the coast
to set foot once again
in San Luis Obispo
took acid, played a digeridoo
felt like an ******* when
she gave me a present from Spain
and I left her book
hundreds of miles away
then drank and drank
jungle juice, Jameson
whatever was in the keg
bruised my legs
and maybe my heart a little too
because now that I'm
back in Long Beach
I don't know what to do
I feel so...empty
like I've been pouring myself out
since I left home
and the last drops
have been dashed
on the
sidewalk

I remember when life was all about
    soft edges and incandescence

        ( subtle timbres that echo )
         (                                          )
           (                                      )

until that stillness shattered with the
      blunt force of
            thirty thousand wandering souls
                              scurrying back to safety in their
                              respective books

i didn’t know she
existed outside my dreams.
i’d never been good at keeping
my hands empty, or
my cup watered, or keeping flowers
alive, until my knock-knock jokes
bloomed and ran over the edges; until
I became more
forever than
funny.

i (tyou th) e
sound

uhv waves
the

cool
and trembling

breaks white capped

little oblique distinctly

)sighs

emit(

moonlight

and all these years later
i still have a tendency to wander
to spin
to dance

and you watch me.
you watch me drift from foot to foot just testing my own stability
(i'm a lot more stable than i used to be)

i'm finally used to me

He was a frat guy.
he spoke loud at the dinner table across the room and I listened
Someone touched him as a young boy
And daddy's expectations and denial of homosexuality fueled his sons speech
Speaking hypothetically about the colloquial term for jacking off two dudes at once and if that name increased quantitavely what then was the appropriate term for jacking off 100 dudes


His friends laughed

Your name is the loveliest word
I've ever said. In my life
I've never known someone like you.
Your aura is a quilt
that I could spend all day in
if you'd let me.
I think the chances of me meeting
another you are absurd
and I find the whole idea
to be terrifying.
I could make so much room
for you in my heart.