It’s interesting how the
Shyer crowds manage
To communicate with each other

A silent eye conversation
Of pure flirtation
All the extroverts oblivious

A trail of fingers across warm skin
The teacher snaps at a popular pair playing footsie
And the two continue their game

The sneaky *******
Were never suspected, until!
One turned up with a love bruise

*Gasp!

Maybe I’m just weird
But it seems rather
Strange to me

That it is only I
The gay atheist
Will say the pledge

All the others around me
Cocooned in warm ignorance
Refuse to address rights only they have

She kept all her emotions
Monitored by a rather
Peculiar body part
Her eyebrows

They were
The distinct way
She used to communicate
I learned to read her impeccably

A sudden shift; low drop
Of dark blonde brows
Was displeasure and
Soon brooding

A quirk
Or amused twitch
Meant she liked whatever
Ridiculous pickup line I’d used

Those golden ridges became my
Guide to a mystery
I always tried
To solve

There is a boy
That I was
Absolutely enamored with
Awhile ago

I think part of what
Built up my
Obsession
Was our metaphors

“You’re so strong
Yet gentle;
So fierce but tender;
You’re nearly a lion”

“I can’t even stand how
Gorgeous you are
How you seem to know it all
My lovely, lovely Athena”

But the worst of all
What literally
Kept me up at night
Didn’t become a metaphor until today

We had a mutual love
Not of a typical interest
No; you see we were
Moon fanatics

He loved the moon
I loved the moon
And I have realized that I
Was ‘moony eyed’ over him

He is trapped within
A gruesome ugly shell
That hides his inner
Beauty; makes life hell

She is concealing
Inside a sleek skin
It’s too small and hides
Brains; she is worn thin

The long spindly legs
Of our Lord Centipede

Are raw and weak from
The way they’ve been dragged

Through unforgiving ground
It imprints them with sensitivity

Till each limb is trained to dodge
The earth that makes them weak

The slick land of jealousy
Or the unsuspecting pebbles of insecurity

If a single appendage trips up
On such emotional hardships

Lord Centipede crashes
Oh so brutally down

I’d like to name
My child
Peter
Parker

Then raise him
On Spiderman
Producing an
Intended coincidence

But it’d be
Alright
If he liked
Batman; too

This is a tricky game
Infatuation floods the chest
Instantly; but it isn’t water
Far too vast for that
It’s warm, syrupy and thick
Wreaking havoc and
Producing symptoms
Glazed eyes
Flushed cheeks
Formed through
Indulgent nights
Grinning
Giggling softly
Instead of sleeping
It all feels so good
Within your chest
You would never want to
Rid yourself of it
But infatuation is disorderly
Overwhelming and easily spread
A molasses mess of fantasy
Of everything you think you feel
Once those feelings
Curdle inside your chest
Into a hardened truth
You will not be able
To breathe

You reached my heart
Much like a worm

Crawled through inches
Of insecurity and flesh

Till you reached that
Precious pink sac

You stuffed it full with your
Disgustingly masculine company

Slimy wiles and wriggly larva
The size of my thumbs

Then once I was
Suitably contaminated

You pierced it
Without a drop of remorse

Maggots and sludge
Emotions and memories

Burst and
Spatter across

My ******* and neck
You made your presence

Well known in my
Dying and infected carcass

Hundreds of homes sit
Cookie cutter produced

With manicured red rose bushes
And fences painted by immigrants

The suburban white breads
Flock to these copycat communities

Eager to fit in with their pale skinned
Blue eyes babies and mother-father pair

It’s all pleasant and just a bit
Creepy; the lack of contrast

How are we to manage happiness
With such tasteless lives?

-x-

I’d like to take a hammer
To these mass produced homes

And hack their roses to mush or
Kick their fences to splinters

To make a **** original piece
No matter how bizarre or damaged

So that our skin color, our ***, would be
The last thing to be seen as ‘weird’

Maybe then we’ll be content with the contrast
In a home that just breathes our presence

Even if we’re out and about; living
No part of us, even our home, will conform

To the standards of society

I want to protect you from the storms of life
I want to be your umbrella in the torrential downpour we call tough times
Though my fabrics may be porous and the water I shield you from may cause splash back
I want to be there
At times it may seem that no one loves you
I’m **** sure that’s not true
But I am not always sure that anyone else has a good enough grasp on the word to know
That it by definition means you have to be there for the ones you claim to love
Otherwise it doesn’t mean a thing
Otherwise you’re just the dope standing in line at the store trying to get a return without a receipt
But why would anyone want to return you?
You may have come straight out of the package only to be a busted toy that fell into bad hands
But as a porous old umbrella I can assure you
In my life you are the best that I have got
I’d rather shield you from the rain than any naïve, gleaming package
Whom has no comprehension of how ****** life is beyond the store walls
And you are far more beautiful anyways, with those missing bits and nicks in your plastic
In fact I thought you were so beautiful I wrenched myself from my owner’s hands
So I could protect you from the pain within the rain instead
You were just a toy that had been trashed but I was willing to lose myself for you
Willing to lose my time inside my cocoon of ignorance in someone else’s hands
Just so that I could be blessed enough to call you my best friend
I wanted to bear the weathers over our heads so that yours wouldn’t feel a drop
And the only weather I can’t protect you from is the flood of your tears
But when they surge upon us in times of trouble I prefer to invert myself and collect
Allowing them to pool in the basin of my memories so that one day when you’re stronger than that
We can take the time to look back and laugh
At the broken toy that couldn’t see that her worst problems
Could be fixed by a leaky old umbrella

Pretty pink rose bush
Looks so nice from a distance
Up close is rotted

Why if you could see
The day’s bright blueberry skies
It’s like your blind eyes

I am not in love with her
Or lust, or infatuation
But nonetheless;  
She leaves her mark
Traces of herself all over me
Mahogany stains bleed through on my fingertips
Streaks of purple smudgings are left in my ear canals
Trickles of red wine are swept along my tender neck
Oozing down, down, down, down
And I cannot scrub this from my skin
No matter how many hours I waste
Lathering myself up into a foam of obliviousness
Still at the end of the day she is there, intriguing as ever
Trapping me again
In this foggy purple haze

Touches
Soft and feathery
The dreamy intimacy of
Some lovely golden haired angel

Touches
Soft and feathery
Begin to burn and
Sting like some twofaced ******

Touches
Soft and feathery
Sear my very skin
Till I’m melted like earwax

Touches
Soft and feathery
Lie

Really? You’re trying to write poetry about how
A girl broke your heart?

I thought you could at least try
Not to be so stereotypical

But I suppose even the wisest of the fools
Such as yourself have flaws as well

Yours is your heart of gold

My thumbs begin
To brush her skin

In loving care
Soft attention

Then she starts to
Burn up and cry

Insanity

I can still recall
The oddest things
About our embraces

The warmth of her blotchy cheeks;
Swollen like water balloons
Beneath my fingers

The scent of tears and perfume
A salty fume of womanhood
Swirling in my nostrils

The clogged up tone of her congested sniffles
Vaguely feminine snorts
Bouncing around my ears

I can still recall
The oddest things
About our embraces

They were all
So
Sad

You know how when you walk down the street
You can hear the whispers about everyone else on that street

That the frail, sallow faced homeless man with the rattling tin can
That man whose moaning and screeching weakly to himself can only mean bad things

Ought be locked away; shoved into a loony bin
Ought to be rattling his skull against a padded wall instead of a can

Well they all say he must have lost his marbles somehow
Well they must have fallen from his ears like gumballs from a metal chute

As if sanity is just a series of tiny glass ***** that you could lose beneath your bed
As if the memories and morality of some demented women are just collecting dust somewhere

But I doubt that sanity should be perceived in that fashion
But I doubt that our mental stability isn’t more like one massive marble

All thick and glassy but crusted in spatters of glitter
All shiny and glimmering with the memories of some tortured soul

Rocking back and forth against their skulls and chipping away their ability to cope
Rocking back and forth the way they do in the fetal position; alone in their bedrooms

Breaking off tinsel-y bits of their childhood, their personality, their purpose
Breaking off a kaleidoscope chunk of their minds

Perhaps we don't ‘lose’ our marbles at all
Perhaps they just crumble away

I am a sheep wrought with steel wool that’s coarse and painful to the touch
It erupts anything that touches me into a throng of agitated skin disease
So I habitually avoid anyone and anything that nears me with my terrified animalistic eyes
For fear of watching some curious creature bleed because of me and my dangerous idiocy
However as a sheep with sheep tendencies I can’t help but follow after the herd of my family
From a distance; trotting over trodden grass that’s easier on my hooved feet
Than other paths that are less traveled, more dangerous and more interesting
Instead staring at my family’s tail ends with an envy too poignant for my age
As they baa and cackle and coo over their own amusements and mutual understandings
And I find myself wishing woefully that I wasn’t just a sheep with steel wool
But a ferocious wolf, independent and beautiful; merely hiding within an ugly costume

I need you
I need you like oxygen
Or food or water or sleep
Though I’ve made it through stinted periods without you
I always come crawling back in withdrawal
I could call you an addiction, but you aren’t; you’re a blessing
Like I needed the razor I kept in my hoodie pocket
You cut through life’s ******* the same way that blade did
But without bubbling blood up through my skin
The crawl space I used to cry in could never comfort me like you
You pry open my eyes to harsh, enlightening reality
That space was a blanket of blissful ignorance over necessary truth
I could call you an addiction, but you aren’t; you’re a blessing
I always come crawling back in withdrawal
After stinted periods without you
I’ve made it without food or water or sleep
I’ve made it without oxygen
But I need you

Can I survive?
In your blood red world,
Of high expectations and meager lives.
With so many rules my mind cannot unfurl?

You would not endure it.
If were to see my blue society:
Days are not planned; hardly stitched.
And those awards you hold mean nothing to me.

Masculinity
From musky golden cologne
That lets me pretend

On my knees I am
The warm dusty gravel
Clinging to my knobbed knees
Watching with a sick fascination
The blooming love between
A boy and a girl
Harvesting their elementary romance
With sheer glee

I remember my shame
Glaring at my shriveled bud of love
Whilst surrounded by all these
Blossoms of love
When I feel like a
Mediocre Gardener in a patch
Of Blue Ribbon winners

But finally I come to bloom
A rose of my affection
If I so choose I can
Give to you

Now I see that no sprout
Can flourish or breathe
It you snip it short
At the bud

We flourish now
With brighter petals and sweeter appearances
Because waiting was the right thing for me
We flourish now
Together

(I mean it Ma,
Click back now
I’d rather not scar you
Or cost us even more money
On therapy)**

The first time I had ***
I felt horribly guilty afterwards
I can only guess as to why

Maybe it was because I was the ‘boy’
Of the circumstance
The one thrusting and holding her up

The one that didn’t get to ***
The first go around
The one to wash their fingers clean in the aftermath

While the ‘girl’ wiped up her nether regions
Put her pants back on
And remained in an ‘aftersex’ glow

Maybe it was because I was the ‘boy’
Of the circumstance
That I was the one that ‘took’ something

But whatever the reason
Is irrelevant because within days
This guilt faded

As did any taste of regret
Vaguely reminiscent of the
Taste of her ***

And replacing said guilt
Was love; strong and (now) poignant
Beyond my years

And she is gone; literally so,

Thus replacing said love
Was pain; strong and poignant
Beyond my years

Replacing said pain
Was another type
Quite common of my age

A madly bruised hand
To be exact;
Courtesy of my teenage idiocy

Replacing my physical pain and idiocy
Was another girl
One that could never be ‘her’

I cannot kiss this girl
It’s all so different
All so ******* wrong

I can’t stand her braces
And the taste of sour milk
That is always marinating in her mouth

I can’t stand this girl
But it is not her fault
It’s, to mimic a cliché,

It’s me, not her
And I am, genuinely,
Sorry for her


But I am so, extremely, pathetically
More sorry
For myself

I do not want you to
Enjoy my poetry
I want it to hurt you
My unbridled teenage rage
And angst
Don’t you dare smile
Or laugh at the times that I
Am suffering through
I want my words to sting your eyes
Till tears burn in the corners
Making your vision a foggy
******* mess so you can see nothing else
You do not know anything of
What I am going through
Do not try to empathize or relate
To these bruising words
Let them hurt you, maim you
If you want to help me
Let me hurt you
Poetically

Knowledge
Has called to my curiosity
Beckoned my interest
Summoned my attention
I have learned too much
Far too soon

Knowledge
Has found its clutch on my mind
Has wriggled into my conscious
Has weighed down my thoughts with guilt
I have learned too much
Far too soon

Knowledge
Has infested my thoughts
Has rotted my mind
Has eaten my innocence alive
I have learned too much
Far too soon

I love the ignorance
That so many can live in

How we can easily
Without even realizing we’ve done it

Categorize or stereotype
And make assumptions in mere seconds

Oh yes please
Preach your words of recognition

Then go on to label and typecast
Every single one of us without a second thought

True acceptance

Place the blade against your wrists
Let my metallic lips give you a ****** kiss
Murmur pain and pleasure into your bloodstream
Incisions of my cold stainless steel falsehood
Leaking liquid fabrications of happiness on your skin
Stinging your nerves at the reminder of your failure
Knowing that you will always tolerate it
Just to feel the razor sharp rush of it all
To feel anything at all

He and I
Are like lions
Magnificent golden fur
Clumsy oversized paws
Content to lounge
Warm grass blades
Or stalk prey
Under the stars
And the moon
Beneath feline pride
Is a ferocity
To keep us
Both forever safe

They say that there’s a silver lining
In every blackened cloud
But when will that lining come?
This rain’s taking its’ toll
I think I need that perfect sky
Because this rain’s taking its’ toll
I’m not sure how much longer I can
Stand so wet, drenched and cold
I’m starting to crumble under the
Pressure of these rain drops
I need some pretty sunset or
A silver lining right now

I think I’m going to
Slow down for awhile
I need to embrace that
I may be mentally mature
But I’m still just a kid
A kid with an unbelievably and
Obnoxiously mature mindset
But a kid nonetheless

So I think I’m going to
Slow down for awhile
God knows that I really
Don’t need to be worrying
About the dramatics
Of the adult lifestyle
And I need to enjoy that fact
While it’s still true

We sit in a café
Ceramic mugs of
Seasonally appropriate beverages
Wrapped in our grips

Surrounded by folks who also have
Ceramic mugs of
Seasonally appropriate beverages
Wrapped in their grips

But we are not here
To chat on about the weather
Our significant others
Or careers; no

We certainly are not
You glance at me
In a nearly
Conversational manner

“So you had your heartbroken”
You say, a combination of an
Unsurprised sneer and a nostalgic frown
Upon your face

“So I had my heartbroken”
I repeat, my lips cracked and my mouth
Blistering slowly from the heat
Of my seasonally appropriate beverage

“Are you, like the good little kid you are,
Doing the things
That they tell good little kids
To do in order to recover from such an ordeal?”

“I am, like the good little kid I am,
Doing the things
That they tell good little kids
To do in order to recover from such an ordeal”

“I haven’t even given into that
Deep, gut wrenching temptation
To do something terribly
Terribly destructive”

I state this in a mockingly proud way
Before pinching my chapped lip between my teeth
And gnawing on it until a swell of blood
Dripped into my seasonally appropriate beverage

“But what I have found”
I say, slowly, licking my coppery lips
“Is that despite all these
‘Coping Mechanisms’”

Your expression is inquisitive
Brow raised, eyes lit up
Like storm clouds with lightning
Stirring somewhere behind them

“I suppose you’re wondering why…”
I state slowly, before sighing an a
Somewhat irritated manner
"I’ve thought this thought too many times before..."

“Because no matter what
My mind refuses to even ponder
The thought that I am meant
For anyone but her”

I cannot really love
At the moment

But you know what I can do?

I can still
Appreciate

Women

And their beauty
Admittedly, their bodies as well

For their long dark hair
And big, round, soft…
Eyes…
And their disproportionate noses
Or baby fat laden cheeks

I can still appreciate it all

And every woman
Needs a little more
Appreciation
Doesn’t she?

I am here to serve
To appreciate
But not to love

Her face
Sour
A washed out ugly gray
Similar to that of dishwater
With greenish clumps
That closely resemble
Expired milk clods
For eyes

Her hair
Worn out
An expanse of stringy greased mess
As if she’d dunked it into a fry cook’s sink
With the occasionally highlight
Of a darker, muddy brown
Like Mother Nature gave up on a painting
And left her

Her body
Frail
A structure of porous bones and blood
A once pure white soiled with brownish red speckles
The devoured remains of a media wolf’s snack
Unable to really hold itself up
It shudders and shakes constantly
Sort of like a hypothermic deadbeat

So undeniably ugly
Disgusting feeble and poor
Yet somehow
Against what all the yet of you see
I see something gorgeous
Something that could be loved
What I see in her
I love

I have begun to
Stiffen up

When a particular word
Walks into the room

This word is an intimidating and
Curvaceous woman

With crimson red lips and
A horrid laughter that leaves me

With reddened, chafing ears
And misted vision

Have I fallen victim?
To Beauty’s dear friend

Insecurity, a wide mouthed *****
Whom manifests in every human’s features

The zit above my brow
Or the scar along my lip

In actuality Insecurity seems
Unaware of her duty to ruin me

Instead she has allowed Beauty
To ****** my subconscious

For beauty has crawled in my skin
And made herself quite comfy

She has reddened my lips
Given me corn silky hair and height

Everyone loves her and the
Glimmer that she has put in my eyes

That shine is actually the sheen
Of foggy tears

But what admirer
Gives a **** about that?

This beast; Beauty
Within my skin

She is all
That I am good for

I like to throw parties
Atypical of most sixteen year olds
With nice homes or
Any semblance of social lives

I like to throw parties
Without that horrid throbbing bass
Free of that hormonal chaos
That reeks on the furniture for weeks

I like to throw parties
The way that God likes to write our fates
Pulling strings to drag the misfits and the dorks
Together in one place

I like to throw parties
Where happiness is what is expected
Laughter is what is anticipated
Cause everyone there is meant to be

Who is he, Who is he
The broad shouldered
Stubbly chinned
Tired eyed
He is a young man

Who is she, Who is she
The sloping shouldered
Sparsely peach fuzzed
Bright eyed
She is a young woman

Why is he, Why is he
Squishing inside her small frame
Scraping his beard against her shaven face
Marring her youthful eyes with his tiredness
He is a young man

Why is she, Why is she
Crippling her stroll with his swaggering stomps
Darkening her skin with his brunette stubble
Masking his age with her dazzling irises
She is a young woman

Who is he
Who is she
Why is he
Why is she
Trapped

A part of me
Is going to be lost
To a white gold band ring

A part that flings
To occupy an entire king bed
All by her lonesome

A part that consumes
Cold bacon at noon
On Saturdays

A part that constructs
Towers of unwashed laundry
Taller than skyscrapers in Dubai

A part that represents
My disgusting
But honest personality

A part of me
Is going to be lost
To a white gold band ring

And that’s alright with me

Gender is not a tangible object
It is not something concrete
Which can be held like a hand
Or felt between your fingers
So why do we give it such
Hard edges and boundaries?
Aren’t the things we imagine
Meant to be limitless?
If in our minds we can fly
Or have infinite money
Then why is gender
Some moronic made-up concept
To go along with our genitals
So rigidly defined?
My biological *** may be connected to my junk
But my gender is not
It is not there for doctors to examine
For its’ health or girth
You cannot unzip my pants
Or the thoughts in my mind
To find my gender
Get that through your ******* head

It is rather easy
To let negativity
Bog you down

But you realize
That it really
Isn’t an issue

When it’s solved
By something simple
And Neanderthal style

Like your rather
Prudish girlfriend finally
Giving into your

Never fulfilled but
Longtime secret fantasy
Locker room ***

When she breathes in
Her ******* rise slow
As do my eyes
To catch a sight
When I breathe sin

She makes me feel
Like my bones are filled with air
As if I’m breathing helium

I’m drifting upwards
I think I would go to the
Stratosphere

To keep this perfect feeling
The lightness of all her love
For just a bit longer

The teenage heart
Is a stress ball

Rubbery and
Indestructible

It bounces back
From everything

Till one day
The slightest tear

It rips apart at the seams

My words wet; careless


But infused with love


To be soaked inside


Your parched, tender heart


Rejuvenate you

Oh look and see him
That fellow on the pedestal there
He’s the golden boy, Mr. Perfect, number one
How did he get there you ask?
What did he do that was so magnificent
It allowed him to wow you all
To climb to the top?

Because while he’s been there
On his ever glorious podium
Sitting on his fat *** and humming
I've been using ****** busted claws
To desperately try and reach that place
Through academics and sports and awards and things
As he got all the attention for no ******* reason


Why you all can’t just see my value?
Is it you or I that’s blind?
Can’t you see my use; the benefits I’d bring you?
Or at least, realize how fractured his stupid golden boy image is
And see the tantrum throwing *** that screams at me?
It must be me who’s blind, and not just that
I’m also worthless

Pond water life
So dark; so dim
With muddy rings
Of exhaustion

Glossed over blues
Hardly ripple
With signs of life
Or emotion

Dipping inside
The sluggish pool
Her body; now ****
Stirs the surface

Reawakens

I know I haven’t been
‘Around’ for awhile

(In more than one way,
but that’s a story for another time…)

My apologies for that
But I want to tell you

About a girl
That loves the world

She loves cats in silly costumes
She loves taking her socks off at the end of the day

She loves eating till her tummy aches
She loves the rain and the boots that it requires

Cheery, isn’t it?

But somehow those ‘loves’
Aren’t the right ones

They’re not the brand or type
Or whatever the hell

That she needs
And craves deep down inside

Which results in a little thing
I like to call depression

Which results in
Suicidal thoughts

Which results in
Blades and blood and tears

And all the effects in
‘Those categories’

Not too cheery is it?

My inspiration
Acts a fickle fickle ***
Woe is me; return

There is this girl
I used to know

I knew her long ago
Years and years ago

I was rather rude
Crude and immature

Now I meet the girl from
Years and years ago

She’s just so broken
A fractured shard of

That dorky but brave girl I picked on
Years and years ago

I can’t help but think that
That I was a fraction of the crowd

That broke her down
Years and years ago