I used to think I couldn't go a day without your smile. Without telling you things and hearing your voice back.

Then, that day arrived and it was so **** hard but the next was harder. I knew with a sinking feeling it was going to get worse, and I wasn't going to be okay for a very long time.

Because losing someone isn't an occasion or an event. It doesn't just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug, whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile.

I lose you every time I think of kissing you, holding you, or wanting you. I go to bed at night and lose you, when I wish I could tell you about my day. And in the morning, **when I wake and reach for the empty space across the sheet, I begin to lose you all over again.

The pain
Of hearing words
Of hate and violence
Spilling from the mouth
Of someone so beloved
Burns so hot it turns to ice
Within my chest.
The pain
From the words
That seared into my skin so deep
You could find them branded
Into the lining of my lungs
So that my very breathing
Was punctured by your anger.

If you tell someone
Something long and often enough
It becomes their religion.
Your words of hate become their prayer
And the doctrine one of self-loathing
And smile-covered sadness.

If you had one constant
It would be anger.
Anger that simmers underneath your love
And erupts with the fury of hate.
Kindness and understanding
Are in short supply in your world.
My love for you
Is the only chain
That binds me to you,
The only chain that keeps me
From flying away from
The spite and resentment
That seeps into your tongue.

If you tell someone you love them
Often and long enough
Your words take root inside their heart
and weld chains that keep them bound to you.
If you tell someone you love them
The dictionary of hate
Should not leak from your tongue,
If you tell someone you love them
Furies’ kisses
Should not rain from your fists,
If you tell someone you love them
The poisons of resentment
Should not spill forth from the dark side of your soul.

If you tell me you love me
You could tear me apart
But never lose me.

“I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak
And then **** my ex girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet
In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp… just to show me how painful love can be.
And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in Braille
And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless.
I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;
It’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended.
See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you.
About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared
But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.
You see, I’m not really a love poet
But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window
You see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me
Because if you were here, right now
I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to.

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific ocean
I want to drink the sunlight in your skin.
If I was a love poet
I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful
Even on days when everything around you is ugly
You see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink.

If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hop scotch inside of my chest.
Yo it climbs on to my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again.
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back into one of my ribs…
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you.

I swear, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love
My first poem it would be about you
And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me?
And I said, put it like this:
I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like… trust you.

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life.
And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer.
If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat
Do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time
Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James
I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain
Even though it never rains in Southern California
And together, we could be music.

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend
I’ll say no.
She is my musician
And me… I’m her favorite song.”


-by Rudy Francisco

There are times when I can eat the world alive.
The hunger in my veins
glows red-hot and consumes all logic.
The hunger in my veins
rushes to my head and burns up the facade.
The facade of innocence in my eyes
that collapses as the fire mounts and I'm alone.

It takes a special one to banish
the lies in my eyes,
to capture the fire and make it grow.

Darling, the hunger in my veins
it yearns for you.
The hunger in my veins,
it grows anew.

I dreamed of your touch last night,
woke up half insane.
Eros keeps teasing me
with thoughts of you.
Through sun and moonlight
your scent in my rumpled sheets
fills my mind.

Take me
rain hard kisses down my throat.
Take me
slake your lust on the softness of my skin.
Take me
offer up a sacrifice to Aphrodite's son.
Take me
drain the hunger in my veins.
Take me
in between the darkness and the light.

*Satisfy me.

You smile at me  
Across the way  
I can see your eyes  
Twinkling  
And I feel a vague  
“something” deep inside.
  
Ignore it. Keep it out.  
Don’t let it get a hold of you.  
Don’t let HIM get a hold of you.

You introduce yourself
Tell me your name
Little tidbits of information
That I take up and put away
A magpie hoarding shiny bits of you.  
That “something” is taking shape.

Stop it.  
You already know how it’s going to end.  
You’ve been through this before.

Days go by.  
Your eyes, your voice
Pass through my head  
More than I care to admit.  
For once, excitement gleams in the air,
Because I might see you again.  

It’s not too late.  
You know what’s right.  
You know what’s best for you.

Maybe I do but  
It all falls away  
Once I see your face.  
I can’t help it  
Your smile, your voice  
Has overtaken my mind
I can only try to hide  
The jolt in my chest  
The smile in my heart  
That happens whenever you walk in.  

*Too late.

The moon called upon my madness anew,
I closed my eyes and fought against the chains
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

You gulped down my world without so much a chew,
Enveloped everything with your scent, became my raving bane.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,

Alone keep me from going moonlight-mad, so they do.
The gentle ice face of the mother moon keeps penetrating my brain.
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

This is the stage set for the heavenly wars Ares loves to brew,
The battle fought over our love so strong that left it slain.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,

The chains, the chains made of silver came askew,
Like your hands in mine and whatever feelings may still remain,
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

My madness has awoken the moon-bird blue,
Soon it will fly down and cut through the silvery veins.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.