I am giving up on the thought that you will ever give me as much time as I give you honor.

Every time I try to grow a flower, you hand me a bomb.

The world is a dark place, and I am a mere candle, trying to hold it together in the wind.

Because it rips out my heart to hear you grow the courage to say those words to a girl, when you would never even notice all the love in my eyes.

And people forget how much love can hurt until that familiar hand comes to slap them again.

You ripped me up from the ground, roots and all exposed, then snipped them with scissors without a second thought.

I am tired of making myself whole, only to hand you the knife for you to slice me open.

It is exhausting, and fruitless, and soul-aching to hold so much for someone who would never hold you again.

And him, with his bright love and strong-holding mind, loved me from afar only to drop me when I gave in.

And him, with his unexpected arrival in my life, so aware of our wavelength, yet choosing to deny.

And him, with his tender funniness and joy, brought me to his bedroom, then kicked me out of his door.

And him, with his dark eyes and ridiculous smile, almost saved me, just to drown me right after.

I am tired of giving myself to people who cry for me, only to push me away as though I forced myself on them.

And you, you are the worst of them all, my never-ending crucifixion who I could never regret.

On a gloomy Sunday, when everything falls apart, including myself, all I want is you next to me, but all I want is you gone.

I want to feel your teeth so close to my veins
I can hear the hickeys you're about
to leave on my neck,
and
I want to feel your mouth so close to my heart
I can feel the kisses you're about
to plant on my body,
and
I want you thisclose to me so that
I can feel your soul melting
into mine,
and
I want you.

You are the bloom of the
starlet sea flower and when
I swim down to smell you
I drown and drown and drown;
I would swallow the ocean
just to feel your petals
rise towards my face
and kiss me goodbye.

Love is unselfish. Love is unconditional. Love is wanting their happiness, even if it does not mean your happiness. Love is being awake and alive and wishing they were here to experience this with you. Love is being ******* furious, taking a deep breath before you twist the knife in, and instead stitching them up. Love is holding back their hair and rubbing their back while they throw up; drunken mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of, babe. Love is feeling blood and hormones rush through your body the moment you realize they're here, they are here. Love is birthday cake, Christmas lights, spotlights and dreamboats, breakfast for dinner, and making anywhere home as long their arms are around you. Love is moonlight ***, morning kisses before you've brushed your teeth, their hand sliding down your pants under the table. Love is craziness, insanity, being so fueled by emotion that nothing makes sense and you can't help but act. Love is singing it all at the tops of buildings, kissing them when nobody or everyone is watching, being not only unafraid but proud to claim them as yours. Love is wanting nobody else in the world except them because nobody else is worth it; nobody else could hold even one-tenth of their value to you. Love is meaning it, every word. Love is ridiculously long letters, hand-painted cards, drunk text messages, and forever-blurred vision. Love is a slip of the tongue while you're high, playing guitar on a back porch at three in the morning, and wanting someone with every fiber of your being even if you'll swear to the death that you don't. Love is choosing someone, knowing that although it's going to be difficult, and painful, and sometimes ******, you are willing to take on any challenge as long as they will be there when you wake up in the morning. Love is deep, deep, deep down, sometimes small but always glowing, ready to spark a fire again at any time, if only you'd poke at the embers and let it burn.

Back bent, arms out,

I cannot contain my spirit's desire.

I will dance if there is no music,

and roll with the punches,

even if nobody is throwing them.

I am heaven-sent, hell-born,

purgatory-living in its finest form.

If you dare to laugh, I'll laugh along, too,

Because it feels good to hurt so bad.

You don't seem to realize how much I know

without saying a word, with just a look in your eye.

I am glimmering, reading, illusion illustration,

staring into the greatest galaxies I have imagined for myself.

And you, with petty marks and pretty scars,

have ventured out into the cold without shoes on.

As I look both ways to cross the street,

your pinky swear pulls me back in.

You are the sea turtle's deep, slow, sleepy veins,

and I am a hummingbird heartbeat.

It’s all spinning in my head, burning with friction and fire. Your name is etched all on my lips, all crossed out with a scar. I’ve been trying to erase it, but it’s so strong I can taste it even now. I am so ashamed and so alone and maybe that’s why I can’t think of anything else. I am so high, I’m out of my mind, but I can’t come down. I’m unsure if your heart beats just as mine. I can’t say now but something’s brewing, boiling up with time. I ******* miss you and it is hurting every fiber of my being; I refuse to wonder why. I can’t come to terms with what’s lurking under my bed. I’m afraid that this is all in my head. I’m afraid that I’ll never see you again… if I tell you any of it. Because I know you’ll just blame me. Because it is not what we think or what we have, it is what we do. The choice is clear from you. I still miss you.

Blue clouds and soft notes and fingers down my spine,
The wood grain looks like thick rain and your taste is fine (so fine.)
Let the wind blow wherever I go, I’ll lead you where it’s safe.
On the long grass, off the stone path, we will wander until it’s late.
You will hold me up, by the bull’s horns, by the headstrong heat in me,
I will push back, until you realize I am trying to make you make me bleed.
Ghosts will skip out from the closet, try to play with you and me.
Skeletons will rise out their graves, try to trick you so you leave.
I am so afraid of you but if you leave, I will cry (cry, cry, cry.)
But if you walk out, I will lose it, I’ll join those skeletons and die.
Hold my gold ring, while I go sing, kiss the doctor under your nose.
Don’t get mad, dear, this is poetry, you’ll know we’re real when it’s prose.
I saw an alien in my bed once, he whispered the secret of life.
He told me life is but a chess game and love is but a knife.

You were born
Inside the old letters
I wrote when I was nine.
I dreamed of you slowly,
Pushing patience as you
Took your time.
You were warm,
Lying still and quiet,
Beneath my lonely mind.
I waited for your sweet eyes,
Looking past others as I
Waited in line.
You woke up
In my heartbeat,
When you held me that first time.
You were gracious,
So darling and spacious,
And I spread out this soul of mine.
You burst open
In my bloodstream,
When your skin melted into mine.
You were nesting and hiving,
Became scarred handwriting,
Hot to the touch on each freckle.
You fell asleep,
Stuck in a bad dream,
Where the real you walked away.
You were flailing and diving,
So unsure and crying,
And running away from me.
You are here,
You will always be here,
Stuck hopelessly in my heart.
You keep leaving and coming,
And my heart is always drumming,
I will always be humming for you.

Undeniable draw with a
taste for the taboo,
my world is sparkling
all over, all over.
And he is all over me,
warm weight and bad jokes
and I just can't stop laughing.
The world is my oyster
but sometimes I clam up,
so afraid of how strong
all my emotions are.
But I'm not scared long,
or I'm scared and I'm smiling,
because it feels so good to
look into his eyes.
I'll wade in the waters
in a big pink pool tube
laughing at the riptide as
I'm carried away, I'm carried away,
I'm always getting carried away.
Dip my toes in the gold for a moment,
leaving twenty little prints in
the wake of my day.

I cannot stand to feel because my ocean heart suddenly comes to life beneath the full moon of someone to love. My blood changes, my skin changes, my life becomes a series of goosebumps and the swallowing back of the urge to cry. Alone, I am a strong wall whom very few can climb; but those who make it within my fort make me paranoid my stones are crumbling to pieces. I love to fall in love with every waking moment of someone’s existence, and to know what it is like to touch God’s face because it’s when I’m touching his. But I hate the monster it wakes within me, one scarred and scared that this one, too, will climb in only to walk away, leaving only ruins of what once stood so proud. This time, I am different; my whole fell apart, leaving me to resurrect the foundations and start all over. I have built myself back up, growing towards sunlight like a plant, my pride growing brick by brick, so sure I was leaving the beasts behind. But a higher wall, rather than making me stronger, has left me looking down at a much larger possible fall from grace. I’m so aware of my own ridiculousness that my shortness of breath feels like I’m drowning in frivolity, and when I step outside of myself and look back in, I know I am merely an old man in a bomb shelter waiting for a disaster that may never come. But it all feels so real when I am with him, that I feel stuck in this what-if nightmare fantasy when I am not. It’s been so short a time, I can hardly believe how wrapped up I am in my own thoughts, how much my fingers bled as I wrote this, how hard I had to try to remember who I was just a few days ago. I am a strong wall, but I am scared shitless.

Hungry, reckless, nasty,
Bursting, burning, babbling,
The youthful heart beats on and beats itself up
For the sake of loving others
And the selfish joy that hurts so good.
So bruise me, cut me, slice me open,
Gut-wrenching love of twenty-something’s,
That breaks glass ceilings and my own heart.
I will gladly swallow all the scars your teeth
Leave behind upon my greatest instrument.
This is merely the overture, but it feels
Like we are toiling in the crescendo;
With heavy breathing and a thirst for life,
My heart, the drummer, sets the rhythm
For everything alive in me.

Falling in love taught me more
about faith than any priest ever could.
When I look at you I know
all the ways my soul touches the earth.
I look into the mirror and see my eyes,
so old and deeply grounded,
yet with roots shy of twenty years old.
I am wrinkly hands and impulsive actions,
I am missing teeth and the belief in the tooth fairy,
I am the wilting rose and the shiny dew-coated seed.

If time is a concept based upon
distance, then my soul is
as old as the distance between me and you.
And I can dive deep down in my pockets,
and pull up, in my hand,
all the worlds I loved and lost you in.
And I can swim 10,000 leagues
under my anatomy, and pull up,
from my gut, the feeling I know
to be true when I see you.
And I can't tell if the lesson I
am meant to learn is that I need
to stop loving you, or that I need
to love myself more than I love you.

But when you tell me to give up on you,
the hair on the back of my neck stands up;
no, no, no, it's not supposed to be this way.
And it is with jagged fingernails and red lipstick,
that I dare you to prove me wrong,
but all you do is smile,
and give me less reasons to miss you,
and more reasons to cry,
and more doubt to drink in,
and less hope to have,
and, finally,
another life in which I loved and lost you.

I am a flower
on the broken bridge
and you are the hand
that places me in your hair,
behind your ear,
and you let me whisper
all the awful reasons
I was broken off
from my stem and
from my garden,
and you let me cry
about why I am a bad, bad,
bad, bad, flower.
And that is when you tell me
that no fingers deserved
to pluck me down to nothing.
I have not lost my stem,
but found a new one.
You are my stem.
And I am your flower.
Some days, I will be
your stem, and you
will be my flower.
And we can learn
to grow ourselves
our own new stems.
Because it's not about
the baggage,
it's about who helps you
unpack.

Waiting for letters
in great, wide envelopes.
Waiting for someone
else to decide
if I am worthy
to try for my dreams.

It all comes down
to letters
and how they
translate into a
number
and how that number
translates into a value
of you.

I wrote about how
I pulled myself out
of my own early grave
and how a pill
and a doctor
and a God
ignited
a fire in my heart
to live
and live
and live well.

Today, I am not a flower,
I am a seed,
who only wishes to be a flower;  
but fears nobody
will give me water.

I could be a garden.

A strange mixture of lust and childlike adoration hits me like a ******* truck when I look at you. The way you make me throw my head back and laugh, the way you say my name. Just the way you ******* are, oh God, I can't stop smiling. Last year, you kissed my forehead and said you never wanted to see me cry. This year, you kissed me, hard and slow, and everything stopped spinning. I denied it for the longest time, but, I really think I love you. It's too bad that time and distance are going to break my heart.

All I see is silver linings and it often leaves me burned, but my eyes still search for glimmering when my sight returns. I think the reason I always only see the good is because I have so much darkness chasing me. I run after the light to avoid being swallowed by all the black that creeps and crawls like an eternal tide, an all-consuming pain. Because when Daddy holds a beer, I start to cry, because I think of all the times it made him hurt, hurt, hurt us. And when I feel it all spiraling down, and feel myself spiraling down, I remember the year I was eighteen and how much I always hurt, hurt, hurt. I push it all backwards into oblivion, and shut the door, and hope it doesn’t burst open. All I want to do is love and when I run after the light, I can pretend the darkness is gone, and was never there at all. I’m okay, I’m really okay, in fact, I’m truly happy. I have never felt so sure of my own soul. I feel in sync with the universe, but have no idea where I'm going. March is magical and its pixie-dust is soaking through my skin and into my blood. I am breathing deeply and exhaling it all. But when I tell myself that an open heart never hurt anyone, I remember that it hurt me.

They all have such pretty minds,
And long hair, and pretty eyes,
But I hold you in the back of my heart,
And I think when you love someone,
I'm in the back of your mind.
They don't know the way your fingers
Grasped my hips, so in love.
You give them your lust, they give you their all.
You walk away so easily, because you find love too hard.
Did I teach you things had to be that way?
When people ask me if I still love you,
I smile and drink my wine,
Smudging the glass with lipstick,
Because anybody who has to ask that question,
Has never been in love.

You are white like a bone;
And also an eggshell.
You write in permanent marker,
But your letters make you cry.
You are a key that opens anything
But crumbles with rust and time.
And you sing in the shower
But when someone catches you,
You shut up silent, mouth sewn closed.
You come in tides like the ocean,
But you are scared of the sea,
Even though you are a wave always crashing into me.
You are a bone and an eggshell;
white ambiguity, wrapped into one.

the human body
has three hundred and fifty bones
when we are born
which fuse together
as we grow
to two hundred and six;
further simplifying
down to condensed calcium
and summated marrow,
growing our skeletons down
to simpler beings as we grow.
if only the human soul
was not the opposite;
******* into
spreading stardust
particles so quickly that
we cannot put a simplified
finger on exactly who we are.
black & gold.

i want to swim in your psyche
and drown in your soul.
knee-deep, toes like raisins,
head below the surface,
tumbling onto shore with every
crashing thought.
i'll scuba dive through your every flaw
and take souvenirs in memory
to remind myself i love each
drop of water you think scars you.
i can hear your ocean in your heartbeat
and when you tell stories no one knows.
and your sea slips through your eyes
sometimes; saltwater sadness.
i want to touch the very bottom floor,
ten-thousand leagues under your heart,
where your humanity rests and cries and loves.
let me sing and swim, let me in,
for i am so thirsty for that salty clear blue abyss
you grow into everyday.
i will willingly ride out each wave
until your tides subside and you are calm,
flat lagoon with moonlight right on top.
i want to plunge into your persona and
submerge myself in your mind,
breathing in the sweetest water
my lungs and ocean have ever known.

Through the clock's burrowed bounty,
And the timeless starry gaze,
I ventured into writing
In a warm and hazy daze.
With God's hand on my shoulder,
My lover on his knees,
I wrote the only truth I know:
Love changes, never flees.

We
were growing
so much and
nobody even noticed, not
even us, and it was
a beautiful pull from innocence into
true feeling, like a chasm or a
black hole of magic; one day you look
around and realize nothing is the same
and sometimes that hurts but do
not worry for things won't
stay that way for long.

Don't forget this feeling
Like love letters torn up and set aflame
In your belly, your heart, your brain
The world has broken, disappeared
But you are still stuck here
That reminds you love has a price to pay
Because your heart falls apart
Into adrenaline and anger
And the deepest sadness you've known
All explodes into your bloodstream
Until your hands shake
The single spark of hope exhausted
So now so are you
Because everything hurts but there's nothing to say
I guess I'll wait for you forever

You are such a heavy note
caught in the back of my throat,
can't dig you out of these bones,
maybe I'll be someone new;
since I can't be me without being you.
You are just such a trip,
Miss you more than I'll admit,
can't purge you out of this soul,
maybe I'll just love you;
since I can't seem to love anyone new.

Cold September night
and for the first time
in a long time
everything is alright.
Somehow it feels like
everything is falling
into place
instead of apart.
And even if it's not,
I still know I'll be okay.
I used to be a firework
and then I was a graveyard
but I have found my spark again.
All I can do is love what I have
and pray for the Universe
to bring to me what's right
and hopefully end up happy,
flashing through the night sky;
golden, sparkly, and clear.