You asked me to throw it away just as i
finished lighting my cigarette.
The tip burning the nicotine as the fumes
turn us to a mere silhouette.
You love me, you said. You only don't want these
**** things take me from you.
I believed you then as much as i want to tonight
but i learned you're something killing me too.

"We merely coexisted
almost met but always missed it
spinning around like two sides of a coin"

Why can't we be together?
I love you
How can we be together?
You love him.

Being happy and having no right to be unhappy are two very different things.

Oh heavenly bodies, what secrets do you keep?
What enchantment do these bright entanglements hold?
Do these stars from afar keep tabs on the rays of the days of faces i meet?
Do they watch over me, rooting for my story waiting for my fate to unfold.?

Oh heavenly bodies, what whispers do you hear?
Of silent prayers, mournful cries, oh shooting stars, tell me what you know.
Of lovers’ lies, of strangers’ love, of unsure promises made clear.
Oh cosmic bodies, hear me now. Tell me where to go.

I know your name, and i know a fraction of who you are and what you carry.
Yes i know your name, but not quite aware of the whole story.
A mystery all to familiar, a mystery I've grown quite fond to think,
grown rather fond of not understanding on how my emotions start to sink.

How can you love what you cannot know? Where affection seems to dim down.
Why could my emotions be sinking in the reality I am trying to drown.
Breathing in the fumes of uncertainty, I exhale my last breath.
A mystery between happiness and grief, a life in the brink of death.

What lies behind those enigmatic smile remains a mystery to me,
as I realize the sad truth I only fell in love with the idea of what we can be.
I loved the idea of you, despite the fact you were never who you've been.
I've grown fond of the person I have never even seen.

Now I ponder on the great unknown, a mystery from afar.
Within insanity, but the Enigma seems all too familiar.
A mystery I'd rather not uncover, I'd rather not find on the gems above
since the mere knowledge of not knowing is enough for me to have.

The Enigma too taunting yet too precious to be known.
The mystery keeping me awake at night.
My beautiful enigma, better left unknown.

I was never impressed by people
Who enjoyed puffing out smoke.
I hated the smell. It made me choke
And made me cough.
But when I had you
Between my lips I simply
Could not get enough.
I was in awe by your softness
Reminding me of my first kiss.
My teeth biting into the filter
As I pilfer through every wheezing
And every hiss.

I inhaled you in.
Like the phantom you are,
Dancing inside every lung.
I tasted you. Fumes crawling
From my lips to my mouth and
Resting on my tongue.
You made me feel whole.
Like the fog filling up a hole inside
My mind so I can think.
My body taking its toll as my soul
Go into the clouds and sink.

You burnt me.
Your tip red hot with embers
Flying out into the air.
Remembering the heat of my
Frustration and ashes returning my
Deafening glare.
You were no more. All that’s
Left was a red part of you between
My lips and the fire inside me you set.
I snuffed you out. Tossed you to the ground
And stepped on you.
Time to light another cigarette

I wished to be born as the moon.
I wanted to control the tides as it comes and goes
Wanted the ocean at my fingertips through the highs and the lows
But instead I was born as a field of grass.
I would look up and gaze at the moon.
Right there out of reach as it came up and bring the tides to the beach

I hated every second until I saw couple.
Both in love as they mutter three words to each other.
I may not command the changing of the months
But I am here to witness why some days are worth remembering
-something the moons is too far away to see.

For my next life I wanted to be a mirror.
To look back on people as they stare at themselves
Pouring out every bit of emotion they hold within.
Instead I was born as the bed.
I couldn’t understand why I was there until one night,
A girl came and rested her head on the pillows, wrapped herself in a blanket
And cried herself to sleep.
I may not have been there to see her watch her reflection and point out flaws
But I am here to keep her safe from it until the morning.
And I felt contented.

Next, I wanted to be a star.
I wanted to burn brighter than every other being,
I wanted to be admired from afar.
When I woke up, I was a lamp post.
I pitied myself until one night, a moth saw my light.
Flew directly onto me and burned itself to give my a kiss
-a luxury even the stars will never live.

I heard:
One of the houses on my block was broken into.
Glass shards everywhere, broken locks on the floor, the burglars knew what they were doing.
One of my neighbors called out to me when I moved in -
"Keep your doors locked at night, there are thieves in this area"

After I heard that, my mind went straight to the thought of owning a gun.
Needing to own a gun.
My house would feel much safer with the gun in the safe.
I would feel much safer with a gun.

Pointed to my temple.

I've rehearsed it over and over in my head
I have no idea who I'd need to convince but I managed to convince myself.
It's like a silver lining to this entire situation.
I'd keep it hidden in a safe or behind the books on my bookshelf.
Owning a gun would let me fight off intruders in my home.

Or blow the voices out of my head.

6 out 10 homes have a gun.
I would feel much safer with a pistol somewhere in my house.
Just a means to an end.
An equalizer.
Something to grab in case I really need to.

End it all.

I thought I outgrew it.
It was just a phase fueled by teenage angst,
and I just turned 24.

I figured it wasn't gonna last.
The strong emotions were good writing material
but now I don't know what to use these emotions for.

I have a job now.
I have a house to pay for, bills to settle,
I don't have time to feel sad.

Does every person who took their life feel this?
A brief sense of comfort in feeling a familiar thing
tying you back to every thought you once had.

I told you its nothing,
I'm fine and there's nothing wrong.
But how I wish I could tell you
I've been lying for so long.

I've always thought of it as a dance
As we prance around the sound of our stares against each other.
But what would I do when I knew there was just no music to dance to when we're together.

If love is art
Then let me be your canvas.
Caress me with your brush dipped in lies, mark me with the things you wish to do.
Wound me with the expectations and limitations you envision and I will bleed all the colors for you.
Be my artist and I'll die a martyr to be your masterpiece.
As I cease to be myself, cutting my life piece by piece until you can look at me at ease and find me beautiful enough to please.
Beautiful enough to please you
In your artistic hunger for something stronger, as you ponder upon what to do with me.
Call me your artwork,
Set me aside and let my heart work on the broken pieces of myself I tore away for you to see.
You've left your mark in my skin and your colors in my blood within as I struggle to remember who I was before your artistic touch.
Being myself felt like a sin with you around as you bound my hands to keep me from being such.
Keep me from being me.
Keep me from being such as myself as I shelf away all the pages that you no longer wanna see.

Love is art
And you were an amazing artist.
I just wish I was your favorite masterpiece.

I was an observant child.
I learned a lot of things growing up.
Things kids are not supposed to witness are tattooed on the back of my mind.
I learned the importance of discipline as fear was used to keep me in line.
I learned that lying is only bad if you get caught and the truth can be bent as far as you'd like to make your stories align.

A lot of my parents' lessons made me learn things like love is earned not given. A cruel truth they taught to a kid who was only seven.
I learned that I do not deserve their love or attention unless I do something, unless I accomplish the things to make me worth their affection.
I was a smart child. I was admired when all I wanted was to be loved.

My parents raised me. Growing up all I wanted was to be like my dad but now I'm worried I see him in my rage whenever I get mad. I learned to throw a punch before i learned how to apologize, I learned how to act strong when all along no one told me it was okay to be weak, I learned how to smile before I learned how to be happy and I learned to shout before I learned how to speak.

I am not a child anymore.
People would commend me throw compliments at my way as if not knowing a candle kills itself faster the brighter it burns.
I open up about the things I learned and they tell me it may be wrong but it made me strong. It made me stronger and it helped me become the artist I am today but I was a child. I did not want to be stronger I needed to be safe.


I learned a lot of things growing up. I learned that sadness felt familiar so I'm relieved when tragedy happens. I sometimes purposely set myself up for failure to at least have a reason to be sad. Self sabotage became my language and boy am I good at speaking. I learned I wanted to **** myself but still learning how to make it easier for the people I love when I'm gone so I slowly make them hate me.

I learned that I am not a good person,
I learned that my parents tried to be. They're still trying.
When you are not fed love on a silver spoon you learn to lick it off knives and maybe that's why every poem I write hurts me more than it hurts anyone else.

I did not pick myself up over and over again from the damage they have caused just for me to inflict the same to you. I did not bruise my hands and dislocate my fingers to break the chains that bound me only to use the same restraints to keep you down. Candles were lit to burn but what do I do when the very fire inside of me no longer gives light but only serves to cast a shadow over every person who ever loved me. My lips are a hollowed out auditorium for every word I chose not to mutter. Wanting you to stay became my greatest fear and it took every ounce of my fiber to teach myself not to yearn for your voice. Love is a beautiful thing but my love feels like an unstable bridge suspended between the shoulders of the past versions of myself I am not sure are alive. When I say I Love You, I mean I will force myself to forget you even if it means saving you from drowning yourself to save me from the vast ocean of hate and resentment I have unwittingly built and called home.

I am falling into an abyss filled with every bit of hate I have for myself and I’ll be ****** if I bring you down with me.

The first time it all made sense to me was the moment I laid my eyes upon you and I prayed to every god in this world to let me keep at least one good thing in this life. I wanted to love you the way I have never been loved before but how does a person born blind attempt to reinvent a color he has only heard about in stories. How did I expect myself to love you when my whole life that ******* word has eluded me, has been the subject of every poem I’ve written every time I put ink to paper - what the **** was I thinking when I regaled myself with empty promises of loving you when I have never felt it. Christ's mass and the nailing of Jesus was not told for people like me to feel loved. Being a ****** person and feeling bad about it afterwards does not make me a better person - it just means I am a pathetically self-aware ******* and the earlier I accept that, the easier it is for me to save you from myself.

I have accepted the fact that I cannot be loved. I am unworthy of love but please tell me I am still capable of loving someone because if not, then I don’t want to consider myself a liar every time I have said, with every fiber of my being, every inch of my skin, every crack on my bones and every breath in my lungs the words “I love you.”

Anger and rage fueling every word
Escaping my lips as the cage of my bird
Silently and willfully flapping two wings
Taking on two very different things

We were watching a movie.
I was staring at her
while she was dreaming of
You.

You were freezing and i lit myself up to keep you warm and you woke up only to blame me for the smell of ashes. I heard somewhere that love is the most violent act and I hate that I perpetuate this belief with hurting myself the more i hold on to you.

You are rose in a field of daisies - you showed me how sharp your thorns can be and i held my hands out wide open to bleed for you. Your thorns digging into my flesh the more I  held on - the blood bathing both of us in this sanctimonious act of brutality I call love.

I was good to you.

Treated you as the last molecule of oxygen in an atmosphere i cannot breathe in. Sometimes I count my steps whenever I leave your side because every day that passes feels like a suffocating nightmare I cannot wake myself up from.

Is this what it is to love? To break yourself over and over again for a chance of building something together? Then I shall willingly cut myself off limb by limb. To get so enamored with the feeling - to build an entire temple to yourself and only leave the walls to pray.

I have a deep sense of hate towards myself and loving you hurts more than anything i have ever felt before and maybe. Just maybe - this is my way of punishing myself. To chase after what hurt most - You made me feel crazy for wanting to be loved as if it wasn’t the thing you promised to do.

Her canvas was drowning with blood;
As her paintbrush slices open her skin.
Paying the price for showing the world
her beautiful art from within.

She strokes her paintbrush in colours
Reflecting ripples of repetitive repulsion.
Her canvas covered with colours and
Succession of the glitters of her imagination.

She’s trying to escape, don’t you see
the struggle riddling her eyes?
She always hated her life but
you never realized what’s behind her lies.

Her mind was the most beautiful explosion
of vivacities through collision of galaxies.
The colours of her canvas masking her
tears from the ever growing mental atrocities.

This is the price she pays to show the world
The beauty of her mind.
For how can you write your beautiful poetry without the
Dark void of emptiness you feel inside.

I'm a writer but lately everyone's been telling me to write something i can perform.
In front of an audience, in front of a crowd, head held high standing proud, my written verses said out loud cooking up a calm before the storm.
In my best suit on top of a stage performing written word, slurred stanzas revolting in my ribcage painting you a world in black ink.
Listening to the clink of the sea of beverages served for everyone here to listen to me lessen my verbal baggage before it makes me sink.

I'm a writer and I'm writing something I can perform for people to listen to.
For fifteen years I've been writing poetry to be read privately and it's the only thing I have ever known to do.
Spoken word poetry and written poetry are very different things if you start to compare the two.
Written poetry captures the intimacy of reading the three main words for romance while spoken word lets you hear the voice of someone saying I love you.

I have developed a genuine fondness for reading poetry alone to myself in the middle of the night.
But spoken word gives me this new feeling of affection for that one person performing verbal art in front of the spotlight.

Written poetry reminds me of Shakespeare's "parting is such sweet sorrow" read from a letter and knowing things will no longer be the same.
While spoken word poetry is Edgar Allan Poe's raven visiting me at night but instead of saying "nevermore" it croaks your name.

6pm. Dinner with you has always been the opposite of mundane - we both couldn’t eat without watching a show so we had yours open in the background. A contingency - a safety net incase the awkwardness between us overshadowed the fact that we’re spending time with each other. This was when it dawned on me - the inevitability that I will someday hurt you.

I read somewhere that sometimes, people form trauma bonds. It’s like a sick sense of belonging to a situation that keeps on hurting you and the only reason you stay is because it feels familiar. Stockholm Syndrome should learn a thing or two from me because I have unconsciously mastered the art of making someone stay. I am constantly at a stalemate between wanting to spend the rest of my days with you and wishing that you someday realize what I have been whispering to our pillows every single time you’re asleep - I DO NOT DESERVE LOVE. LEAVING ME IS THE BEST THING YOU COULD DO FOR YOURSELF. SAVE YOURSELF FROM ME. I have grown accustomed to loving you, i admit. Loving you was like my first time riding a harley. Terrifying. No helmet or elbow pads so in the future, my scars can attest to how i fell for you. I love you enough to sometimes want to **** myself to give you a better chance of survival.

6am, You are the first thing on my mind. Like a ****** awoken by a higher power I wake up everyday excited for another chance to love you better - love you the way you were supposed to be loved - love you so much that even cupid would be jealous of the amount of love one person can offer. Instead I hurt you. I’ve heard somewhere that hurt people hurt people, that you can’t love anyone until you learn to love yourself. *******. I love you so much that sometimes i forget to hate myself. Like a singular lamp post in the middle of an obscure road, and I a moth scorching myself every time i try to get close to you - I would burn for you. Nothing else matters as long as i love you but how can a dog born deaf learn how to howl, how am i supposed to love you when love has never been a feeling I enamored until i met you.

Is it kindness or cruelty to make you want to leave? Is it mercy to accept the fact that i am a lost cause and you are much better off loving someone who deserves it. I gave you every piece of me and called it love - created an entire ocean from my broken pieces to offer you love but failing to realize i never taught you how to swim.

Don't tell the others
but it's all getting old
I mean how many more times
must my story be told?

i wanna die

I wondered
what we'd still be
if we didn't

You say you know me yet you’ve only ever seen my smile
And not the letters I’ve been sending my skin for a while.
The hieroglyphs I carved to let out the screams I’ve been hearing
Like fogs clearing out and about to filter the words I’ve been saying.
You’ve heard my laughter going softer as the days turn to an endless night
As I recite these verses repeating curses killing the lights ‘til I’m out of sight.
You don’t know me, you never wanted to.
You had a clue but what could you do? Even I never wanted to know me too.

I’m a kitchen sink clogged and overflowed by my own tears leaking.
Feeling hopeless and dying as I let some more spill out through bleeding.
Overflown with emotions, I motion it with caution slowly across my skin,
Overthrown by this notion, this knife giving life to the Me I’ve held within.
Inside the four corners of my room my locked door seems too out of reach
As I give my wrists red ink on each to write in light what I truly beseech.
You know this, I know you noticed. You just wish you didn’t.
And I wished I hadn’t let you but I wished for what I couldn’t.
I’m alive and I just wish I wasn’t.

You know me better than anyone but you choose to look past through.
Now I’m rebuilding these walls taller and stronger just for you.
My sleeves covering up my screams as it seems to keep them back in their den.
I couldn’t stand knowingly showing you my insanity. I  don’t ever want to hurt you again.

I’m sorry.

We played tag and I was it. I was chasing after your whim. I ran and I sprinted behind you tho i knew my chances were slim as you were too busy running after him.

I lit a cigarette
in hopes of washing the taste
of your lips away.
I exhaled fumes of hate
as I try to hide what
I wanna say.

While the nicotine fill my lungs,
itching and tickling
every inch of my teeth.
Only you make flowers grow
in my rib cage and although they are beautiful,
I can't ******* breathe.