Opia. Noun. The ambiguous intensity of looking into someone's eyes, which can fell simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

As you lie in my arms, watching the television, you don't notice that my undivided attention is focused on you. Something I've been dreaming of for weeks, and it's finally come true. Even better, from your angle, you can't see me staring into your eyes, so I don't feel the nervous compulsion to turn away. Whether directly or not, I could drink in your eyes with mine, for hours, and they would be among the best hours of my life.
Then there's the other hand, held tightly by trepidation. I love the prospect of your eyes staring into mine, but it's not without its fears. I'm afraid you'll see all the pain and fears that I've spent the past seven years working to overcome. I'm afraid you'll see all the insecurity and doubts I have about myself. I'm afraid you'll see all the words that I long to whisper in your ear, but can't, because I'm terrified of scaring you away. I'm afraid you won't like the fact that, behind these eyes lies only pictures and thoughts of you. But most of all, I'm afraid that, unlike me, who loves every detail, and lives for moments like these, you won't love the things you see. I long for the day when you stare happily into my eyes, but I'm frightened that you won't enjoy the secrets they reveal.

On my skin I wear the bands of shielded sun.
Commitment to the heart makes this skin colour run.
With one liberal hand, I tear down these branches being hung,
to shower in yellowed leaf confetti.

These forest roots ran like hair line skull fractures,
under canopies blooming red from the sunlight rapture
and now these trees leave their taller brothers to fall as ashes,
with ivy on my ankles, stifling hope up to my chin.

Living memories, my forest sheltered, scrambled for home;
small pretty beasts, unrefined, breathing caricatures with bones.
Screaming they beg for attention, inattentive to this situation as a whole.
Our own view is all we can consider.

This house of cards built on paper-cuts, from the trees before.
I'm now growing wiser to my winter freeze and your summer thaw.
I need all of these things I hate about me, and they can never be ignored;
a psychological pre-disposition, the only one I can afford.

while september cicadas
were singing my neighbors to sleep
i was up walking holes in my shoes
over love once lost
so many poems ago
that the only thing i remember
about the house at 38th & bluestone
is that it reeked of alcohol and is
as i'm sure of it
still saturated in perfume
and abandoned laughter
but that's not the point
give me a minute
what i'm trying to say
is i always thought god
enjoyed watching things leave me
it makes me wonder
what was on his mind
that night in september
when i stooped to cough
or tie my shoelaces
i no longer remember why
but i recall their trajectory
the way gravity cradled my hands
and brought them crashing back to earth like a 747
they landed inches away
from a scrap of crumpled loose leaf
folded in half like the smiles
of my relatives on a holiday truce
you see, lately i've been looking for scars in the newspaper
i find myself checking the obituary
for my former selves since the day i found your suicide letter
maybe that's why i can never explain my obsession with history
maybe archeology is just a funeral
in reverse
maybe hell is just rewinding home movies
or watching confetti
turn back into photographs
i never told anyone
the reason the doors to the gun cabinet in my family's house are locked not because they are afraid
i will take my life
but because sometimes
i sing them birthday songs
on the day you died
it makes me think
of how rooms only echo
when they are empty

*you know
i never echoed until you died

loped and curled the razor wire goes circular
in lacerating motions upon my reflections.
Like confetti of my thoughts descending
or ascending  upwards I cant distinguish I'm
blind to what I grasp on to as all is indistinguishable.

My palms sweats perceptions as I have no object to
illustrate the needing, so I pick up glass and torment
my wrists till I pen my musing on the surroundings.
It was disfigured emotions as every single word
was an ounce of pain to release speaking in silence.

I was a van gogh of illustration my pain painted my
words dripping on the wall. The paint soaked in each
particle of repressed anger and torment, the fluid from
my lacerated thought now like snow settled on this wall.
But this was snow urinated in blood I look blank at my words.

Tiptoeing in the shadows,
hiding behind a crusted keyboard
spewing raw threats in freak speak
dug up from the shallow realm
of which they are formed

Beneath a pink umbrella
where cowards lounge
Shivering like babes in snow banks,
tossing stones, targeting hearts
inflicting pain…expecting a laugh

Stand up, be a man (if you can)
Allow me my aim
Dance about if you like in your tutu,
pirouette in your disgust,
my hand is steady

Unlike yours...moving up and down
staring at a screen, pretending
someone actually gives a crap
about something like you…

I’ll find this circus
where tents are pitched,
cotton candy stains the sawdust
and you climb out of that tiny car
with a fake smile painted on your face

And when you feel it you will know
this ain’t confetti,
as you fall in your own stench, and the audience…
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages…
applaud!

his fluid being mimics that of cigarettes;
death chopped up and rolled
into a curious little thing

i could hold him in my hands
but that is a mere only;
his wonderment insufficient
my soul too mammoth

my lips crave the grim reaper's touch
my skin detests the flawlessness of
staged idiosyncrasy
this world has seen enough
of those
you yell misanthrope,
but you do not understand

i seek
the intertwining of
precariousity
intimacy marked by fluttering thumbs
tracing specks of golden
on his cheeks

galaxies splashed across the
bridge of his nose
he is everything i yearn
yet;
everything i cannot be
he is my exotic morns
and my sunday siesta
fingertips outline
connect-the-dot maps
i could only ever get lost in


freckles.

like a lacklustre silence
the end of sentences pinpointing areas
chipped fingernails have lusted to memorise

you only crave what you know cannot be.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

And if you are to love,
Love as the moon loves.
It doesn't steal the night,
It only unveils the beauty of the dark.

And if you are to love,
Love as the rain loves.
It doesn't wet the bodies,
It only washes the sad dirt of the souls.

And if you are to love,
Love as the wind loves.
It doesn't drift away,
It only cleanse you to the core by invading through each pore.

And if you are to love,
Love as the sun loves.
It doesn't radiates heat,
It only pours its warmth on you to enlighten your way.

And if you are to love,
Love as the star loves.
It doesn't delightfully twinkles,
It only reminds you that not even death can separate two hearts.

And so forth,
if you are to love
Love as the whole universe
& not just a part of it.