I’m not happy.
I haven’t been so for a long time.
I look at couples walking hand-in-hßand down empty streets, and I feel alone
I look at Aphrodite and Adonis walking out of gyms, and I feel exposed.
I look at students everyday in the same library windows, and I feel lazy.
I look at my own hands, empty but for the pen and paper that compose this poem, and I feel lost.
I look at myself in every mirror, in every half-tint of glass, and I feel wrong.
I look at my head, my heart, my soul, looking for some speck of solace in who I am,
and I feel, unhappy,
like I’ve been for a long time.

I’m afraid to die.
There, I said it.
My greatest fear is dying.
What the hell kind of fear is that,
it’s like being afraid of a sunrise,
or of black eyes,
Something that’s gonna happen,
and something that doesn’t hurt after.
For years I convinced myself it was gonna miss me,
but this ain’t kickball, and gettin chose last is the same as gettin chose.

"I could die right now, I could die while reading this."
It’s terrifying, don’t you think, that we could die at any time?
There my heart goes on its Zanzibar drum solo.

And it’s crippling too.

Because you can’t move past that fear and do something else,
what’s the **** point of even thinking of anything?
We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die.
What should I do now?
Doesn’t matter gonna die.
What about my dream?
Doesn’t matter gonna die.
Will I be remembered…
… doesn’t matter, still gonna be dead.

It makes every other fear bearable, no, romantic.
Living alone, being unloved, being unremembered: how the hell is that scary?
Each offers insight into character, the beautiful motivation of self reliance and self understanding is what led to that deep understanding of humanity, these thoughts drove
Thoreau,
dead
Whitmen,
dead
Dickenson,
dead.
dead dead dead dead dead dead dea.
they are all dead!
and what the hell did they do to deserve it—what will I do?
Nothing.
I'm still paralyzed.

That American bandana in my closet?
I stole that.
Her mom liked me and let me borrow it for our fourth of July party,
and when we were giving our stuff back I forgot it was in my room.
Then I saw it and decided, this is mine now
I don’t think I’ve worn it since.
In the eyes of the law we call this an “adverse possession”
the intent to own and keep something that isn’t yours.
I know she’d roll her eyes if she saw me putting our relationship into legalese.

That stormtrooper nutcracker?  
That was a gift,
a Birthday gift,
an April Birthday gift.
Who the hell gives a Christmas present as a birthday gift?
She did.
I kept it.
And with gifts there is no “consideration”
which to lawyers means a bargain or exchange of promises,
a gift is a “I love you and want you to have this
because I like to make you happy.
But also, if we end I want you to look at this for the rest of your life
and wonder what would have happened
if we could have survived that last fight?”
You don’t get to bargain for that, you get the gift and the grief.
and she gets to know that you’re going to miss her every day.
Sometimes I wonder who the lawyer really is.

Some nights I wring my hands in worry,
thinking the same thoughts again and again
“It hurts to believe I still haven’t found
my purpose, my, calling, my reason for being.”
In a world where “I don’t know” is the Scarlet letter
and “not having a plan” is a badge of shame
It’s a load of crap to think, that at 23,
I got a ******* understanding of how any of this works,
where I'm going, or when I'm gonna get there.

Spent a year at a store, making some cash
then a year at school, dealing in trash
I found myself hating everything structured
found my critiques were full of self appointed experts
and my craft was to shape into their expectation of art
as if another twenty-something could possibly
know everything about how to structure my mind.

I believe there is a problem here
but it ain’t with me, it’s with how we write life
it all comes down to image of us
about who we put into the universe
about what bright shining star we want to be
instead of the bright shining star we actually are.

And I blame the twenty analogies of academia
I've come to hear every start of every year
“it’s for your future.
it’s about shaping you into—
When I was your age
When I studied
My college was
My theory is
My
My
My”

“Hey teach, I came here to learn
don’t preach, I didn’t come for the psalms.”
And there is not a doubt in my mind
that if you were aware of how little I cared
about your spiritual awakening
in Ali-Baba's Tomb
you’d give me this speech again.

“It’s for my future
it’s about shaping me into—
When you were my age
When you studied
Your college was
Your Theory is
Your
Your
Your”

I came to here to write!
Teach me to write!  
Tell me to write!”

Cause when I get of a taste of the verse, that’s all it takes!
It’s the kind of mood you can’t get with prescription
one hell of addiction and it ain’t the kind of drug you can just, kick.
I can feel the words gnawing at the edges of mind
and the hands, I got,
start shaking and twitching until the next time I find a pen.

So let me find the verb for this noun
and express my tension,
past tense,
as it moves from present to future
I don’t have the time to polish my grammar
I propose preposterous prepositions, purely to pontificate, a precious pittance of a second more.

I think,
sometimes,
of all the ink I’ve laid and erased,
I could tear down my bookshelf
and place a compendium of failed and tortured lines in its place.
It’s a memorial to how far I’ve come,
maybe that’s why I still dwell in the past,
I’m more comfortable with my failures so far,
and worry too much about my future ones,
that I can't know exist yet
I think that’s why I can never write a decent ending.

And we’ve all been there, me and my lovers,
we’ve all see our fair share of troubles.
cause Romance is Chance in the form of a Dance
and I’m sorry to say I still move like I did fifteen years ago.
Macarena with me and I’ll sweep you off your feet,
maybe someday I’ll learn to waltz and blow you away.

Until it all comes crashing down.  
Because inevitably it all comes crashing down
even the Flintstones died millennia ago.

My Anna Marie, I’m sorry you left,
Europe ringed and you answered,
I guess we couldn’t afford long distance
(is that even still a thing?)
and I couldn’t wait for you,
I was too young and too ready to love again.

Dear Jenna,
Darling,
as much fun as you are
we move at different speeds,
and mine’s stuck in the slow lane.
I liked *** on the second date,
but I wasn’t ready for the **** three weeks in.
God knows I’d never try and change you
even he doesn’t have the ***** to try.

And God bless you Tiffany,
cause it ***** to die,
but it ***** even more
stuck here saying goodbye.

Bachelor Status reaffirmed:

**** sites filled to capacity
with self-made men of audacity
come to satisfy their proclivities
“Dear phantom girlfriends,
you’re here to gratify
Please entertain us in our fantasies
and our impossibly similar tendencies.
Also, it wouldn’t hurt if it’s all free.”

You’re handed a pipe
it looks fine.
You’re told to relax.
You smile, too high to do anything but.
You flick the lighter, inhale and try to prepare
you can’t.

You’re moving
circling over some horizon that resembles the mashed combination of green hills at sunset
and the giant that lays across them has taken the only home base you could reach.

You’re twitching
you’re still.
You’re warm,
you’re not.
You’re cold,
you’re not.
You’re worried you are talking to the streetlamp through a window
you are.

You’ve lost all concept of time
but you’re pretty sure you’ve kept the same reality.
You’ve always breathed like Darth Vader.
You remember your first kiss
the dragon wouldn’t stop breathing fire and it, she, just felt too scaley,
thank god the pancakes were delicious.

You look at your friend and he is smiling,
but too wide.
His mouth grows to encompass his head, his body, the whole room.
His cat is rolling on his tongue.
lolling from side to side
never breaking eye contact.
You see the “meow” leak from the small hole in the back of a shrinking throat
and enter the cat’s ears before it shrieks and the sound finally hits you.

You hear “meow, meow, meow” on a laugh track that’s too loud
and it sounds like ears have hit the bass
because there are butterfly wings beating through your skull.
but the flutter murmurs to the back of your throat and the wings become whisps as they escape through your eyes.

You close your friend’s mouth and ask how long it’s been.
“Meow.”
Not long enough.

“Why, you think you’re coming down?”

“I don’t know man, but I hate your ******* cat.”

“Of course you do.”

Commit me in a relationship,
and liken it to an insane asylum
because the doctors all tell me my psychosis is named you
and my symptoms are a ****** up case of withdrawal.

It’s only been a month
but in that time I’ve discovered a whole new galaxy of emotions.
Tell me everything, and say yes if I ask to chart you across the night sky.
The time we’ve spent is accented
by just how few hours we’ve been apart.
Despite all of this,
despite every certainty that makes you mine and mine yours,
I can’t say I love you.

I want to say I love you but I can’t,
because I—I care more about the death toll in Syria
and I’m worried about the water crisis,
even if it is still half a century away.
I can’t love you because I’m scared for the world and what will happen when it’s not I in it,
but we.

This makes the whole situation ******* ironic, because you think it makes me a more compassionate person, but that’s not it at all!
It me a coward!
It makes me… unsure.

But in the two hours since you went home to see your folks I realized that you are the addiction that sends me over.
I want you so much it makes my skin itch,
I would tear it off but for the blood running red with passion beneath.
I would seek escape in sleep, but you are my dreams
and to awake away from you hurts more than a heart attack
Which I am sure I’m having because I’ve been unable to breath since you’ve been away
And I finally know why, because I can’t smell you, can’t taste you, can’t feel your pheromones jerking mine along the biological need that centers them.

And I SCREAM!
I throw things about and walk outside thinking my head needs a distraction.
But everything that could help grabs me and wants to know why you’re not here too,
and everyone that can help is so oblivious to your absence that it becomes infuriating.
I want to tie them down with your hair so they can feel it brush against their skin,
I want to carve your name onto their eyes so they know my urgency,
I want to have them long, long for you, and then tell me to relax.
I want to rip my skin off and show them how red the passion gets.

And I want you, and want you and want you and WANT YOU!
But I can’t!
I can’t say I love you because I don’t,
I’m obsessed with you!
And I’m not sure I want to be.