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Feb 2017 · 473
Backup
Mars Feb 2017
My legs are purple
where your frustration
curled its way around them,
greed of fleshy vines,
sore and sorry.

Lay alone out of necessity,
your arms around her,
my stomach heavy,
presented proof of
my inadequacies,
tell me I matter;
I'll lap it up
like sweet cream.

You hurt me better
than anything,
lies tying me
to your bedposts,
how lucky you are
that I'd rather be
wanted than loved.
Aug 2015 · 525
Driveway Romantics
Mars Aug 2015
There’s something so sweet
in the way you cradle
your cigarettes, the moon’s face,
bright, opaque, as it strays
behind you, not quite full,
a tilted, gilded halo.
Your fingers, long and steady,
ash setting into the tips
of your calloused skin
as I fall in love with the way
you mumble, lips thin
and eyes wide,
laying down these pipe dreams
so I stumble in
and I can already tell
I’m a goner,
I want to be between your teeth.
You’re tonguing my filter
each time we meet,
and I’ll stain your insides,
sure, but these bodies
are composed of dust,
I’ve heard. Return
to damp Earth,
someday, She must miss you,
on nights like these,
incinerate me, cardboard
crust and sinew,
and rust,
and I’ll burn for you
while we still crave heat.
Aug 2015 · 465
Thoughts On Mistakes
Mars Aug 2015
We didn't work
because my brand of love
is bargain-bin CVS romance novel,
there are no fairy tales in which the prince battles addiction,
the princess starves herself all day to make the two beers left in the kitchen
last longer than they were meant to.
Nothing was eloquent in the way we sat on her mattress,
anger seated deeply in our stomachs,
bugs hiding in the curtains, buzzing invisibly,
comforting to me as I felt invisible too,
the sun trickling anemically
through cobwebs and window panes.

We didn't work
because a picket fence will never feel like home to me,
I don't drive so well at night, she smiles
so pretty when I'm not around,
I've heard,
all teeth, and laughs gutturally
in that way she used to
when my fingertips gripped the edges of her
ribcage, before my skin got so rough.
Her eyes are bluer
than the chemical cleaner I use to scrub pots
for rent money, my tongue
just as harsh as she folds into herself
like origami and I ask
what the hell kind of shape it's supposed to be.

We didn't work
because we craved the pieces that were missing,
it made the puzzle hard to look at straight-on,
and I speak in clichés,
and she barely speaks at all,
and that silence broke my bones.
Aug 2014 · 371
Thoughts on Black Holes
Mars Aug 2014
I speak about temporality as if it were some
beautiful, foreign monster,
caged and docile,
and I spectate safely from behind the glass.
It feels better,
somehow,
to romanticize it,
pretending poetic sadness is lighter
than its less eloquent counterpart,
namely, sobbing under shower heads
and clutching onto my arms like
I'm trying to keep my organs inside
my skin, rocking in tempo as if the inertia
of it will stop my cells from scattering
across your bed,
when my veins flare up
like gasoline on train tracks.
Nothing gold can stay,
can it, when you find a boy
with a silver heart
who starts to feel like home,
and home has never been
a place you can go
when you need it to be, and
his fingertips, the way they weave
cheap beer and cigarettes into a
safety net, *******,
and the way he says your name
like it was meant for his mouth.
The observable universe
is comprised of atoms moving
away from each other
at constantly increasing speeds,
we theorize, and
never have I been more aware of the
space between our
particles, and I wonder,
if we move fast maybe
time will slow down and
this feeling of falling
will stretch out to eternity,
and it isn't my fault that your tongue echoes,
and you never meant to be a singularity.
Jun 2014 · 380
Thoughts During Data Entry
Mars Jun 2014
My heart had learned to forgo depth
Instead beating across a breadth of broken others
Splattering its matter into sanguine stars
Against a violent violet sky
Gazed upon by tattered lovers
May 2014 · 579
Saturnine
Mars May 2014
Knowing her has taught me
we love stars with such intensity,
and our longing for them surpasses
the depths of oceans,
because they are a fire our fingertips
will never know.
Apr 2014 · 355
On Ghosts
Mars Apr 2014
My mouth can’t recall
the way my lips curled
before they met hers,
when kissing was
something people did, then
something that lit me on fire, then
something people did.
The thought of her
no longer loving me
is what I try to drown in gin,
cut free from my skin,
smoke out of me like bees
made a home of my ribcage,
caustic, burning holes
through my eyelids until
my irises spill heavily
into my palms like the
egg yolks we separated
on Sundays, when
breakfast came at lunch time and
lunch came after we
made love, lying lazily
on her newly washed sheets.
We loved with the
full force of naivety,
ravenously, brazenly, but
nothing gold can stay.
Mar 2014 · 613
Thoughts on Pointlessness
Mars Mar 2014
Look, another kid,
hungry for a metaphor;
taste of what its like
to make a point,
but it’s stuck on the
tip of her tongue.
Lack of inspiration,
from Walmarts to broken hearts;
world in black and white,
not even gray
enough to be sung.
Oh, how great the world
would be, if rainbows weren’t
only tricks of light.
If promises
meant something more than
give and take.
If words were said
with a sense of conviction.
Teach us what it’s like
to make a point,
if there was ever
any point to make.
I wrote this a few years ago, and my teacher called me an existentialist.
Mar 2014 · 688
On Missing the Boat
Mars Mar 2014
Her eyes remind
me of mountain tops,
blue, pale like apathy,
speckled summits
dotting amongst her irises,

and I climbed halfway up,
and I looked down.

Have you ever dreamt of how

content
you might be
to observe the world,
its luscious waves
lapping at its shorelines,
from the top of a mountain?

It keeps me up at night.
Mar 2014 · 430
Parapraxis
Mars Mar 2014
There are some days when “us” falls out of my mouth,
heavy and hearty, throat opened fully
to expel an airy hope for the future,
instead of “I”, which begins similarly
and ends with the back of my tongue surging upwards
to stop the air flowing outwards,
closing my throat off to widen the sound.

“Us”, with guttural UH,
rooted firmly in my chest, its silky S
finishing off strong, hissing
like sea foam
washed up on the sand
shortly after softened waves slink back
from the shore.

“I”, with its AH like a sigh of
relief at the freedom of singularity,
its ending EE like the creak in the floorboards
when I’m home alone,
like the squeaky back door
that no longer calls out to me
as a precursor to your footsteps
on the kitchen floor.

I correct myself. “I”.
Jan 2014 · 858
Commuter Thoughts
Mars Jan 2014
My life became a series of Just In Case-s
Strung along and hung like paper lanterns
Arranged on tables like flowers in vases
Dec 2013 · 1.4k
Late-Night Bar Thoughts
Mars Dec 2013
“You’re beautiful,” he says,
his voice a gin-soaked amalgamation of every
listlessly aging boss,
lonely husband in the shoe department,
loveless 3a.m.-hard-cocked stranger.

“Why don’t you smile?”

I widened my eyes
in an attempt to appear likable,
yet felt my mouth
straightening,
my upper lip sealing
the bottom like
a Tupperware lid.

I willed them to curl
upwards, unassumingly;
I wanted to smile the way
women seem to smile
while masking
ill-fitting intentions.

My mouth remained
firmly rooted,
obstinate railroad tracks running
the shortest distance
between the two plotted points of
left cheek and right cheek.

Behind these pretty lips lay
two rows of crooked teeth,
a cigarette-stained skyline
against the starless horizon of
tongue and epithelial tissue, ugly
and wholly my own.

To smile
would be a betrayal
of my own trust,
and if any man
were worth that
it certainly wasn’t
this one.
Mar 2012 · 796
Restless
Mars Mar 2012
Let’s sit,
the grass is damp.
Hands steady,
lighting up one cigarette
too many.
Let’s smirk
and sob and scream
and throw up
empty beer bottles -
we dream
in starry skies
of shattered glass -
because we’re young enough…
let’s love.
Unbridled, rampant,
a river of
lustful glances
and constant validation
and words in mouths
and second chances
never taken.
Let’s walk,
us filthy animals,
until we reach the
end of the world.
Mar 2012 · 1.0k
Honey
Mars Mar 2012
Let’s drink
in our apathy,
thick and sweet like
how honey left too long
up on the shelf, behind
unopened oregano
and the mix
from when it was a bad time for cake,
forms a crystalline structure:
creamy, glassy bubbles,
so beautiful, but
it takes some heat
to make it clear again.
Jan 2012 · 688
Things I Tell My Coffee Cup
Mars Jan 2012
We’re quiet,
feeding the fire
of shy curiosity.

I notice your hand comes to rest
on the round, wooden tabletop
and mine flinches
in response.

If only I could allow it to
fold over yours,
let our fingers intertwine and
our palms discuss
how sweet this feels.

Your eyes meet with mine,
glazed over, glacial, blue,
dousing the flames with
icy indifference.

Play it cool.

I look around,
muttering a lie.
Time to leave,

before my heart grows too fond.
Jan 2012 · 657
Drunk
Mars Jan 2012
Low on life,
I’ll pull you in.
I’ll breathe your breath.
I’ll warm your skin.
Drunk on love,
I’ll drink you in.
I’ll hold you close.
I’ll be your sin.
Dec 2011 · 1.1k
Attempted Ars Poetica
Mars Dec 2011
They say to play with words.
I see each page is a slide and we
smile
          while
                    we're
                              going
                                        down
.

We're make-shift,
Doctor Frankenstein,
            piecing               together
words                  that
             would             lay lifeless
without our spark.

We're other people, dress-up,
with our lens-less glasses,
pens in hands
that can't quite reach the tallest shelf.


Through our words we rebel,
show the world we are more than naïve.
Just because we don’t think
in refunds and rebates and 401k plans...
Doesn’t mean our futures won’t be bright if


we only hope to gain
a sense of ourselves, in that
moment when the tire-swing
goes so high, you try
to touch the sun.
Dec 2011 · 803
Making Soup.
Mars Dec 2011
They say
"live with empathy".
Yet this anger,
it boils
like thick,
heated tar,
bubbling, black
beads of rage,
seething.

Empathy is me
holding the lid down,
keeping the broth from
boiling over, as it
gurgles beneath the surface,
trying to break through.

To respond
with anger
would be me,
blindfolded
to the world,
tossing out
scalding water,
until everyone
is burned,
including
myself.
It would be
adding too much
pepper as we all
scorch our mouths,

while empathy,
cool, milky, sweet
words of compassion,
is the creamy reminder
that every suffering finds
relief. While the soup burns
us, we can always add a
little extra sour cream.
Dec 2011 · 786
Hello, Dollface.
Mars Dec 2011
This cold seeps into my bones.
These war-worn bones...
these putrid bones.
Hold me up,
the puppet I am,
so willing and eager to take your hand.
I’ll kiss you with my painted lips.
I’ll press to you my plastic hips.
My button eyes will steal your fire and soon
I’ll be what you desire.
I’ll let you feel my woven hair and soon
you’ll need me more than air.
Don’t
play with me like
I’m your toy,
then
simply leave me
lying there.

— The End —