My heart is pumping
   On the floor.
The blood it cries
   Carries my life away,
      Dripping down the steps.
The memories I hold
   And the love I bring
      Cutting deeper and deeper
         Each moment.
These new wounds
   Have even broken scars
      And revealed the pulpy muscles
         Down below.
Nothing is left now
   Except love.
Light shines through all
   Because there is nothing left
      In shadowy cover.
My heart stopped
   Pumping
      In my hand.


And instead began to glow.

My kiss burns like a brisk day in fall
When the leaves all change
And everything is dying
But apparently it’s beautiful
Even when plants are going to sleep
Because the world needs to be different now.
My kiss burns in the way a shelving unit is frustrating
All the instructions are in Japanese
But you took high school Spanish
That should’ve helped
But it didn’t
And neither will the IKEA hotline when you call.
My kiss burns like an empty room
Where there’s just one naked lightbulb
And the light is too harsh
So you squint a bit
The walls are white so there’s not much to see
But there should be.
My kiss burns how empty tuna cans smell
The whole room reeks like it
Your roommate judges you for eating it
But you’re too poor for real food
And cans are fun to open
Though you really need pickles with this.
My kiss burns as badly as middle school photos
When pucca shell necklaces were cool
And baggy t-shirts hid the fact
Yes, you are a girl
Comb your hair
Because this moment will consume your memory.

Your heart is a clock; each beat a tick closer to midnight. But what happens at 12:01 when the world doesn’t stop and the clock’s run out but you keep hearing it beat and beat and beat until there’s just a melody? Just a melody floating in space, no time to guide it, no heart to keep it, no body to dance with it? What happens when you’ve perished but are timeless, half life over and radioactive all at once?

I’m sitting on a shelf with an old expiration date and yet buyers are still looking, still considering. I could go. I could move today, right now, this second, with this breath. But I am not now ripe, yet ancient and withering. Youngest of them all, older than the rest. I am the moment between waves, when the water flees the shore and the sand and shells believe they are dry and safe, but I know, I know, the wave is coming, much stronger, but no one believes me because I am too young to know, too young to have seen the previous waves. And yet I know. Because I am eternal. Midnight passed for me; It’s 12:01 and the stars are still shining and I’m waiting for dawn, even when no one else believes in dawn anymore.

There is a body beyond the door next to me. He listens at the door, he peers from the dark, and he watches and he learns. He is the buyer considering. I am the expired ******* that has no brethren to follow, yet will never mold. I am always viable, a cockroach among mammals. I am different. This does not make me valuable. This makes me dangerous, this makes me another rat in the race, because the paw prints next to me also belong to a different rat, but he is not dangerous. I am dangerous. I am eternity in a cell, screaming with insanity because I know, I know, there is a melody floating in space without any time and I hear beating, beating, beating all around even after the clock has stopped and it’s 12:01 and midnight was supposed to be the end but I found the back cover of the book and kept walking.

Your heart is a clock. Mine is a time bomb.

Tell your gods we call for blood
We're stirring hurricanes in your teacups.
It's an instant headache cure at the end of a barrel,
Though a worthwhile gauntlet to continue to breathe.

We’re stirring hurricanes in your teacups
It might be easier to crash and burn.
Though a worthwhile gauntlet to continue to breathe,
We should never measure our breaths to our steps

It might be easier to crash and burn.
Children die from the painful things they learn.
We should never measure our breaths to our steps,
But the dignity in life is too beautiful to regret.

Children die from the painful things they learn
It’s an instant headache cure at the end of a barrel
But the dignity in life is too beautiful to regret.
Tell your gods we call for blood

What is love.
Can one just walk away?
"Sometimes."
Sometimes?

It seems a bit familiar
This feeling
And expected
Even though I didn't see it coming
But what more can I do?

And what better place to compose poetry
Than behind the wheel of a ****** car
Going twice the speed limit
And half off road

And what better way
To celebrate
The scars
And the fact that God won again
Than to cry tears without feeling
Anything at all?

How can I even be mad?  
You cried, too.
Less, but that's given -
That I expected
Not that I expected anything at all.

But what about Thanksgiving?
What about the place set for you?
And that date to Barnes and Noble
I asked you on months ago?
Who am I kidding, that wouldn't have happened
I only remember it all now
Kissing in the rain
Baking cookies
That money she owed you
Bringing you hot chocolate on the first day it snowed
The way your hips moved against mine
How ecstatic  you made me
And the way I thought I could make you happy too
And the way you seemed happy, in the apple orchard
And when we held each other under the fireworks
On our first date
And that time we talked about the universe and philosophy
And how excited you seemed
That you found someone who understood
Another INTP
A lover worth giving your body to,
Your mind,
Your soul,
Being one with.

I must've imagined it.
I'm crazy, after all.

Such a delicate specimen should not be as humble
As to refer to her own talents with such nonchalance.
As though they are none more passionate than that which
I had allowed to spiral out of control
And lead my mind to an early grave.

Such beautiful words must be just only reflected
By any mirror which she glances away from guiltily;
Or perhaps by the glass, having been shattered,
And having been spread along the path
From which she simply refuses to stray.

I have heard her stanzas; her lines; her words,
And yet isolated they lose their bite.
The truth she speaks is far more prominent than that of my own,
As though the words have been ripped from he mind and laid raw,
But far more artful and complex.

Her beauty I can not even begin to fathom
Although she speaks of it as though it is simplistic.
She calls herself a realist, but she's anything but real.
Not in my mind, at least - nothing so ideal could exist;
Nothing so worth living for could waste its time on me.

Every fault she has, every word she's spoken out of context;
Every word she has neglected to speak for lack of time;
Every sound she's suppressed for lack of understanding -
It's enchanting to me - much more enticing than it would be
Had she articulated it to perfection and engraved it on her skin.

Nothing I pile on paper could fully describe her -
Not my harsh words; not the dulled mutterings in my veins.
Credit could only be granted successfully by her own hand,
And yet she does not see it - she is blind to her own brilliance.
So perhaps my only purpose is to show it to her and make her understand.