we may be the generation
of the next
shakespeares,
curies,
vernes,
einsteins,
akeleys,
sagans.

h­ow can we be boiled down
to a 'standard'?

and when we refuse to stomach
this diluted broth you have served us,
it is force-fed:
teargas for forks,
riot shields for spoons,
tasers for knives;
until our tongues are so awfully burnt
that all we may say is this:

'we are the standard generation.
we are the future for the past.
we have standard answers to extraordinary problems.'

leaders say change will come in
2014,
2015,
2020,
2030,
2050,
please ensure that the numbers on your booklets
match those on your answer sheets.

we will bubble 'a' for global warming,
'b' for the debt crisis,
'c' for war and famine,
but this is a test we didn't study for.

Can we just pretend that today
doesn’t exist?

I’d like to go back to yesterday
where you recited Shakespeare
and I kissed you every time
you replace Juliet
with my name.

I do not want to think about
how I have cried since then.

I’d like to take us to a space where
water flows up into the faucet,
all the wrong words are unsaid,
the door swings back open.

I’d bolt that door shut, then.
143 locks up and down the frame.
Then you’d never leave.
We’d crawl into bed
and morning would
never end.

I don’t think the inventor of cars
ever loved a sad girl.
Because if he did
he would never
have created
something
to steal
life

from beautiful boys.

And the inventor of stairs
probably never counted
the steps one must
take in grieving
the loss of
a loved
one.

Who left the 143 locks
unlatched?

Was it you or me?

there's a boy in my bed
who was not there before.
i left for a short while
and rushed back to find a rubber band
boy stretched from my headboard
to the foot of my bed.

i'm afraid that he will snap
or maybe i'm afraid i will
because i've been wrought so tight
my chest is collapsing in on itself
but the sight of the boy in my bed, well,
it loosens my strings.
(and rubber always bounces back.)

this rubber band boy has played
me before; he knows all the melodies
i will sing to him and he will croon back
and it is the duet i have always wanted:
the one where neither of us make a sound.

i let the boy in my bed stretch
his rubber band arms around me,
rub up and down my back
because i am wracked with sobs
because i am panicked and broken
because i am the scratched record

i can only play the first few lines
of the same song: 'wise men say
only fools rush in';
the rest of it flies over my head
and hits rubber.
so he finishes the song for me:
'i can't help falling in love with you.'
i can't help but think
that i would **** this boy senseless.
(i'd **** him up too, i always **** it up).

they call condoms 'rubbers' in North America but
that's wrong. (they're latex.)
they call erasers 'rubbers' in the UK. (correct.)
Our culture gap reflects us well.

I need, ache, to prevent mistakes from happening
but I have ******* myself over too often;
even latex cannot save me.
He is there when the mistakes are made,
over and over again,
rubbing them out until they're nothing but
shavings, little bits to be blown off the sheet,
cut out from the final piece.

i can only hope i prevent myself
from becoming the mistake
he must erase from himself.

if i never get to be the opera,
let me be a song,
a verse,
a single note.

perhaps he won't remember me at all,
just the bed he's stretched himself in.
maybe what i'll be in his composed works
is a well-placed
rest.

there is a time
and place
for everything

there are times
when i want to steal
your breath from your lungs
greedily, like a wolf,
just so you’ll have to
breathe through mine

but there are places
like the freckles of your cheeks,
the palms of your hands,
the flat expanse of your chest,
that remind me
of how beautiful it is
to breathe through you
as well

i love you like a book of poetry.
specifically the one that sits
upon my book of shakespeare’s works
because your passion and mine
will always kiss upon my bookshelf.

i love you like the pages
of that old dusty thing:
1935, it was printed.
2013, a girl cradles it’s words
in the crevaces of her spine.

i have loved you for 78 years.

i love you like it’s cover,
tough and tan,
it has lived
longer than our years combined.
it has held together the whispers
of love and loss
of happiness
or grief
and it has yet to fail
the story it holds within.

i love you like a book of poetry
because that book will never hurt you:

you can cut it off right when it is at it’s best
but it will always wait for you to come back,

you can throw it across the room
but it will still fall open at your touch
and let you in,

you can leave it on a shelf never to be read,
but it’s verses will still be there
when you decide
to love,

and i love you like a book of poetry.

I think I like museums so much
because they are just beautifully lit graveyards
and I like to feel
one with the dead.

It’s two in the morning
and I am wishing landlines were more literal.
I could pull you across the distance that spans between us
and the shocked silence wouldn’t need to stretch so far.

You could have died.
He could have died.
But you’re still here and Damocles’s sword
swings like a pendulum

and that’s all that’s left to show for the fight.
That, and the shattered glass across asphalt
and the split second you couldn’t tell which grey
was sky.

Your knees are bruised, but they’ve been so before.
Old wounds make way for new ones.
Damocles is a myth.
You are a legend.