Look left and pick me up off the floor.

Cause I slipped, just now
and thought maybe you'd catch me.
But it's fine you weren’t looking my way

What’s not is you still aren’t.

I’m the one who said let’s go to the place,
with the stuff,
where the people all tend to do things
and you said yes, well, "ok,"
"maybe," "you’d let me know later."

But you came, it’s been great
and it still would be

if you’d caught me.

I thought
“OK, this is fine, clearly I’m not the only thing on your mind.”
But when you still didn’t offer a hand,
It was only then did I understand,

We won’t be.

Which, *****,
cause I like you
and I like when you laugh, that you’re strong
and that you do this thing with your mouth when you smile,
like you think that you smile too wide,
and don’t want to.
Well, maybe, that’s only at me,

But it’s still cute.

So here I am on the ground,
while you still haven’t even looked ‘round.
I don’t think you’re trying to be cruel
I even get, you still can’t see
that I’ve been trying hard not to act like a fool
but I have been.

Can you hear the howl caught in the hollow of my heart?
Don’t think because I’m not screaming anymore I like it here.
This perpetual half-formed shout is always one missed exhale away from breaking free.
Anger roils in my chest,
crashing and breaking against the cage built to contain my emotions.
I didn’t want one there,
but I needed it.
It’s bars are build from the ruins of burned bridges and broken friendships.
Look at all the pain I’ve caused because I raged over the smallest sins.
Look at all the people I’ve hurt because I let frustration form fists of my words.
I still don’t like it here.
I don’t think I ever will.
But you’ll never know it.
Because I’ve trapped the howl, and caught it in my heart

I died.
Mommy, I died and I can’t tell you I did.
I can’t tell you that I’m sitting on the other side crying
because I’ve hurt you more than I ever knew I possibly could
I couldn’t sleep before,
knowing my heartbeats were numbered
so I counted them.

Sixty beats a minute, fourteen-hundred something minutes a day, thirty days for six months
60 times 1400 times 30 times 6.
I did the arithmetic so I could have one more math test to cheat on.
I ran laps and hyperventilated and did every upbeat thing I could think of to upend my pulse so
I could lie to myself.
140 times 1400 times 30 times 6.  
It’s twice as big.

I don’t know if I can sleep now, and I didn’t tell you, mommy.
cause I didn’t want you to lose sleep then,
and I hate you’re losing sleep now.

Go run like lost souls do:
up any path that looks safer than the last,
stumbling towards the next clearing, any hint of sanctuary.
Always to find that the forest isn’t ending,
it's cresting the edge of a mountain,
and on the other side are more forests,
and rivers,
and meadows to cross.

But for a brief moment, on this peak,
when every path is downhill,
each way is easier than before.
So go run like lost souls do:
In any direction you choose.

Heartbroken, I want to sip Bourbon outside in the thunderstorms.

There was dancing at the funeral;
wild, wind-swept and whirling.
A testament to a life spent unfurling sails and fighting for a better future.
"She was a doctor, your mama" as if I didn't know. "One of the first to say,
'Man, stop calling me a girl,
I'm a professional
and hell, I'll swear like one too.'"

She started her family in this city,
and made every borough within arms reach.
Patients were closer than cousins,
and my aunts spent less time here than the women's wing of the ACLU.

Black is not a way to mourn, but to warn.
A message shouting "Stand clear, this soul is moving on."
Best prepare afterlife, cause this one made a difference here,
and she'll sure-as-**** start something over there.

Once, in a long while,
I go somewhere new in my mind,
shapes take form where voice can’t affect
and my words become hieroglyphs.
It’s when pictures seem more natural than inky squiggles.
because, what’s more natural than shape?
What’s more poetic than an image words don’t capture,
can’t capture, never will—capture?

Despite the decades,
I still have not heard the perfect words
to describe summer skies on clear nights,
God knows I’ve tried,
he’s heard me whispering,
chanting phrase after phrase upwards
as they crash against the stars,
floating, fixed in open defiance of my calls,
immune to my attempts to trap them on paper.
But you can only try to define the infinite in so many ways,
before losing yourself to what is, ultimately,
indescribable.

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything new
actually, been a long time since I thought about writing
which is odd, cause it’s not like I don’t have a lot to write about

I just got over my first cancer scare at 24
lumps don’t have to be big lumps,
and they don’t have to be on any particulate humps
it can be a stump, little more than a bump that you don’t notice

until your finger hurts.

Then you can’t stop being scared.

My doctor calls it a tumor,
the radiologist calls it a tumor,
the surgeon calls it a tumor
the oncologist calls it annoying,
and not to call him again unless it goes malignant.
*******.

I just got over a thing I had for a girl I met
she was so, like, me.
Her favorite country in Europe was Germany,
her parents were former military,
she knew what it was like to move 4 times in 7 years
and lose 10 best friends before facebook was even a thing
she loved pizza and was fine with her curves and mine
and when I kissed her I felt happy.
Didn’t get to kiss her after that first night though.
Shouldn’t have spent the night.
I think I ruined the magic,
and I couldn’t get it back.
Then I couldn’t kiss the next girl because she was standing right there
after saying we weren’t there already.  
and didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
but i'm over that now, which sounds like a lie
it doesn't feel like one though
even crushes don't last forever.

Maybe I was too busy to write,
but probably not
maybe I wanted to see how the stories ended before writing
that's makes more sense
but it wasn't until I wrote it down, that I could acknowledge it happened.
and it happened to me.

Keep hold on the standing bass
and *** *** ba-dum us to a slow dance,
because the two step’s too quick
and I want to hear some sad trumpet improv;

The perfect impression of us in love.

It’s too humid here,
I can see sweat race down well-worn wrinkles
eroded into Ms. Carla from 30 years of cabaret.
She sways on the microphone,
while her deep voice hangs in the air,
fragrant, and ready to stifle the pairs
mixing love and lust beneath her stage

They move,
sweaty and close,
***** and dark,
familiar-passionate
slow,
but furious.

Another evening of Jazz and ***.

So this night passes,
a melody in my head
leading a world within my arms
as we rock,
ba-ba-ba-dummed by the bass.

Walmart doesn't sell Dictionaries anymore,
but they sell emoji stickerbooks.

I’d really like to stop googling your name
cause I want to be honest when I say I don’t stalk you.
knowing I’m the one who said “good-bye” first doesn’t make the distance less quiet
and it’s the quiet that really drives me insane.
I got used to the sound of your breathing,
the sounds of your odd foods
and ecofriendly chip bags were comforting,
it was calming to know you were nearby.

And I’d like to believe that what I’m doing isn’t stalking,
I’d prefer to think I’m just keeping track of an old friend
who I dated, and then left, is it’s complicated an option?
I’m probably crazy, but I’m not dangerous and I’m certainly not violent.
I don’t look for your address, or try to find out if you’ve got someone new,
I just want to make sure you’ve gotten along ok.
because as much as the silence toys with my brain,
I still believe it was better that I left when I did
because the silence from your lips would have severed my soul.

I made the right choice to leave
and I’m right to keep up the distance
but it’s difficult to ignore you,
when you’re still just two clicks away.

It’s warm tonight, and the lightning feels alive
one flash starts as another begins while two more crack the sky
nightfall reaches for the falling rain
and it’s haunting,
to see shadows shift and crawl,
as bolts race across the sky.

I cross my arms to the errant wind,
but its fists beat upon my face.
Try to brace for when the thunder's on me
but the crash still echoes up my spine.

I close my eyes and smell,
the ozone, as it explodes onto the concrete

I imagine my six senses work as one
and it’s fully engaged
each drop of rain is a moment
falling and ending a million times in each second and
I live in each of those beautifully short lifetimes
caught up and split apart all over the sidewalk
remade, at last, on a porch swing
with an empty seat.

And I am still there,
bound and breathless
my world caught in summer storm.

You wake up in the same place, every night
Sixteenth and Cass, a cramped studio space,
lying awake, listening to the city jive,
texting me moments you’ve lived through today
cause you choose to keep out of my arms

“Some distance may be the best way to help
combat the feeling we’re moving too fast,
caught on the same old track of committing too soon
and falling too hard.”

And that’d be fine if I felt it too,
but I still smell the shampoo from your hair tattooed on my sheets
I still feel the indent your head left on my chest
and I have to ball my hands into fists, because
letting go reminds me your fingers aren’t between mine.
But it’s for the best I guess, because I don’t believe in taking breaks
I believe in real love until someone’s heart breaks,
and it looks like its going to be mine again

She’s got the voice of a woman who knows her art,
she’s got the face of a mistress that plays with your heart
she knows, she knows, oh god she knows
that you’re not yours you’re only hers.

And that’s how she likes it
she’s in control
you’re playing with fire
of course, that’s the goal,

just for a night, one night, tonight
the need for a passion steels the soul
thoughtless logic in the physical
all betrayed by the morning light
time’s run out on our only night

It’s not because we stand alone
or that we’ve lost all that we own
life is sometimes simpler
sometimes all there is is shown.

Nothing’s that deep
Just desire bared
call us a liar
Well be prepared

Just for a night, one night, tonight.
fingers run ove’ skin and hair
thoughtless feelings gave through a stare,
all dissolved come morning light,
what an end to our only night.

I’ll take the left side, you take the right
cause I’d rather not be the one who broke your parents’
“genuinely antique” bed
I heard the wood give way just now
when we sat on the edge
and I know, tonight, it’s coming down.

I should probably be more of your gentleman,
but I think that’s what put us into this mess
when we got to the cabin I complimented your ma,
“Natasha is such a unique name in this age”
Her reply, flat through the grimace
“its an old and ugly Russian name, call me Nat.”
Your dad invited me to walk in the woods,
where I tripped over a root, ten feet in
and threw your father head first into poison oak.
It’s hard to tell through the swelling,
but I’m pretty sure he’s still scowling.
Then trying to help after dinner I knocked their
“two-hundred-dollar, honest-to-jesus, Napa Valley’s Best”
bottle a’ wine
onto their “ten-thousand-dollar, straight from Andkhoy.”
Afghani carpet.

So, I’m sorry
but I can imagine you’d forgive me
your boyfriend,
who loves and adores you,
for sleeping this day off
and letting the night drop out from under you.

Then, she began to sing,
her voice limped out'uv the speakers,
crossed 'round my half-empty glass
and slid into the open stool at my side,
each breathy word was a breeze through my fingertips,
enveloping the space ‘round my heart
she sounded like rust colored leaves drifting down onto unbroken ponds
of a thick morning frost slowly melting away
of the first warm ray from a low winter sun's
and it was all I could do not to love her.

The music echoed off the walls
and caught in the corners
each note its own explosion of sound
erupting from her scratched dream-blue-guitar.
her fingers didn’t just pluck strings,
they caught a note on the edge of its sound
and pulled it into space, sending it through the airwaves
to float on through this dimly lit atmosphere
only a heavy breath away from falling back to earth,

She sang like the last lines a suicide note.
each verse felt vital and final
only to be replaced by the next
feeling vital and final,
each line a beautiful declaration that she belonged on stage,
the only world she ever truly felt alive.

and how I hoped the song would never end,
each little silence scared me
because I had not known how to listen until words left her lips
and I didn’t want to know if it could end.
until it did.
and I suddenly felt like the world was very much alone.

“Hey, nice show.”

         “Oh, thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.”

“That was beautiful. It was beyond amazing.  Can I buy you a drink?”

          “Um, sorry.  I gotta show in Missouri tomorrow and we’re driving
           there, tonight.”

“Oh. Ok. Well, good luck. You really are amazing.”

          “Thank you, again…”

“The common law has always been the deciding factor on such issues, controlling law comes from “Icklin v. Hatchet, 234 F.Supp.2d 574 (1992), where the court ruled . . .”

You know who gives a **** about the oxford comma?
Lawyers
it’s required in making a list
I guess Vampire Weekend never went to law school.
and they do their ellipses all weird too
“space dot. Space dot. Space dot. Space.”
Ignoring the common normal condition of the punctuation, “Dot. Dot. Dot.”
it’s coming on infuriating

I learned to write where look and sound was critical,
but all of this is just literal
it’s not emotional
I can’t feel the words, they’re not tactile
pressured to write in the analytical
keep it to the factual
it has to be practical
applicable
rational
language bordering on puritanical!

But in betwixt the archaic form
there is structure
a logic emerges that is hard to ignore
it builds itself like a Gothic cathedral
beautiful, strong, bearing the full weight of the authority it presents!
Note the list of adjectives and its **** oxford comma.

You have a boyfriend.
At least I think you do,
at least that what they’ve told me about you
cause facebook really hasn’t answered if that guy
you’re hugging in fifteen pictures is him or not
and if he is,
****,
I’m *******.

I’m ******* because as much as I think I like you,
he already loves you
he already knows what your favorite food is
and if you like the left side of the bed, or the right
if you’d rather wreck his face in Smash Bros
or get wrecked downtown with his smashed bros

We had fifteen amazing minutes in a crowded bar
where you left me with your name,
stitched on the front of my mind
and cutting off air as the lump in my throat
I want to shout it into open flames
so the fire singeing my heart, takes hold,
and burns across the world to yours.

But I’m *******
because he’s got fifteen amazing pictures with you
his name's  already branded on your mind,
already gilded on your lips
and my embers of uncertain emotion can’t flirt with catching hold
when there is already a bonfire, raging in your heart.

I’m *******,
because you told me your name
because one spark started a fire,
and it’s already going out.

She said “Describe yourself in a sentence,
We want to see what you do with constraints.”
So I thought to be clever and said
“My sentence will extend eternally, bound by infinite commas,
and perhaps, if I’ve very lucky; a semicomma or two;
you see the shackles that you’ve tried to impose are only a barrier if you let them be;
but me, I see opportunities where none should exist,
excuse me ma’am this may be and admittance interview but I see it as an investment opportunity,
my future, your gain… oh and period.”
She looked at her collegues, not betraying any amusements, annoyance, entertainment, nothing.  As if I had given the same answer as the last four people who sat where I do.
She rephrases, “How about a sentence with less than 10 words.”
I smile “I am worth more than a ten-word statement of intent.”
Eleven words. She noticed.
Twenty minutes later I am released,
apparently I’m not the right fit for their program.

Catch me a bus to the mental Joint
cause this one is burnt
and my high is already way past the fade
I’m beginning to fall in love with my stupid head,
my utter innocence, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, it’s ok to feel dead.
Please, do not let me touch  reality
at least not until I’ve relived my dreams of the last,
no the first kiss,
repaired my past so I won’t regret the thing that was, us
and forget how to feel lonely, again.

Feed me shots like its Saturday night,
instead of Monday at 3pm
Let me drink before I come into myself
and remember the reason I chose to become a full-time alcoholic
Don’t leave me alone with my sober self
cause walls become murals of memories I long to forget
of you, of us, in this bar, on that table,
of 3am shuffles and noontime romances
and the more the scenes mix the less I have to pretend not to see.
I’m scratching initials into bar-tops,
in the hope the M.J. and D.G. really do share one heart,
and that is tiny fantasy comes true before my next drink.

I’ve decided not to live in the now
because the last heartbreak
was the last time I’ve give my heart permission to ache.
But that’s just marker one of my twelve step plan.
I want to drown out everything my BS degree
taught me in the BA of Political suicides.
Somewhere, there exist a combination of depressants,
uppers, hallucinogens, and narcotics that make existence seem pleasant.
But this isn’t it.
This is the combination that makes me forget about war and genocide
and condenses the whole of human experience into the hazy exchange of
hushed compliments and hasty fluids.
This is the combination that makes me forget the year we were happy,
or was that the year we were sad?
Either way, it’s doing its job.

Let me count the days since you left,
because I don’t remember the nights.
A whiskey aftershave, if I remember to shave,
and Mary Jane’s premium cologne are what get me from 7am
till 2 am when I pass out again.
Someday I’ll stop drowning in a little of this and some of that,
one day I’ll start loving, no start liking, maybe accept people again.
but today, I’m going to crossfade fast and thank God for the drugs
that make today, at the very least, bearable

I raised the thermostat in my bedroom so you’d lose your last layers.
It’s a cheap trick, but I cannot stop the lust we’ve brought into this place.
It’s not love, no no, it’s not the sweet slow tune that stretches towards forever
we’re the rushed murky club bass that leaves you deaf and blind
but I won’t say dumb, because at least we used protection.

It’s been a lifetime since I pinned a woman to my canvas
and painted a series of moans and gasps across my bed
gentle strokes down her thighs
building color in her chest
mesmerizing forms and shapes created by her body on mine.
this is an art form I’d forgotten needs no practice
deserving of its own spot atop the Sistine Chapel.

At dawn, when we both list and drift towards the door,
there is no lingering last look, no awkward pause.  
We’ve both given up on the idea of a truly immortal feeling
preferring instead that sensational build to a beautiful ******
and a gallery of gorgeous midnight memories.

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.

I’m not sorry we were in love,
and I’m not sorry we broke up,
but I am sorry we couldn’t stay friends.
There isn’t a mind with only happy memories,
but I find myself living in those the most.

at least now.

It took me some time to get over the anger,
and the sadness.

But now all I think about is Mac n’ cheese at 2 am.
Hockey nights, freezing my *** off so you’d feel alive.
The first time I thought,  I love this woman, while you cried in my arms.
The first time I said “I love you, my dear.” sitting across the bed from you.
Making fun of the stupid people on the bus and their “it’s called two-s-day because it is the second day of the week.”
Watching you stay upright for an entire run down the bunny hill.
Waking up in the morning to the cracking of your back,
Going to bed with your toes bundled up in socks.
Kissing your forehead, because I loved all of you, even the parts you didn’t like.
Taking your rings off just to pretend that someday I’d put a different one on.
Meeting your mom and realizing that you are the same person only 20 years younger and 30 pounds lighter
Watching the sun turn your green eyes blue, then blue to green, then green to grey.
Drinking that god awful mix you thought was *** and coke.
Showing you what an actual *** and coke should taste like, and laughing when you said “Too sweet.”
The nights you’d lure me from the controller to bed with a lack of underclothes.
The mornings I’d ease the tension the night built in your back.
Feeling you quiver and gasp for air as you reached ecstacy with me.
The first time we reached it simultaneously… while watching hockey.
Hearing you say something in a kid voice when you were being cute.
The first time you kissed me, instead of waiting for my lips.
Always feeling super lazy when you had papers for class written a week out and I hadn’t even started on.
The way you held me after the cave broke me.
The way you held me when I saw you for the first time in months.
Snowball the bunny, and his ***** stuffed ears, I’m sure he’ll hate me forever.
Watching you struggle through Spyro the Dragon and not saying anything cause you hated people to tell you what to do.
The last time we snuck out to make love holding you in my arms.
The smell of your hair against my face…
I’ll always miss those moments my entire life,
I just hope you’ll miss me too.

I wish I lived in a world without heartache, again.
this isn’t some wish that love conquered all,
or that pain didn’t persist,
but a plea to whatever gods exist
to help me forget the last two years,
replace loss with wonder
a hope that I’ll be loved
and an inability to comprehend  heartache

Before her I thought the term was poetic
I thought it spoke of pain and lost love
that it was a symbol of what happens when something beautiful has ended
I didn’t realize it was an actual feeling
Being stabbed is sudden and sharp,
being shot is quick and violent
but being broken?
its unique, because it shouldn’t actually hurt
emotions aren’t supposed to hurt.

No one prepares you for the reality of a broken heart.
No one says it feels like your heart is trying to fall down your chest
all the while being twisted and pulled apart at the seams
and it seems that the pulling is forcing each beat
to last just a little too long
as it pushes your heart
a little too out of place, out of place, out of place
until it’s no longer your heart that hurts, it's your chest
each tear that falls deadens the weight
until there’s naught in your heart but a hollow filled with remorse.

Hardened hearts.
they didn’t tell us that it actually felt like stones.
someone must have stolen my soul
because it was never this heavy
and it’s sometimes worse than the breaking
breaking can be fixed
but you’re not sure anything can replace the thing that sits
on the rubble of what was once a heart.

Would we love knowing that the first crack splits into a thousand shards at the end?
That love never ends in just unhappiness, but misery?
Maybe not, but still,
someone should have told us.

You told me about the time he ***** you
how he got you drunk first so you couldn’t fight  back
how he ripped your clothes off and covered your mouth
but he couldn’t block the scream that tore from your lips when he… when he… when...
When someone else kicked down the door and beat him ******
you finally blacked out
and woke up crying because you still knew it happened.

You told me about what came after
he named it Belle, after his favorite Disney princess
how she was going to be smart like you, and aggressive like him.
she was going to be his little girl.
you couldn’t stomach her, it, that,
couldn’t name it because giving it a name made it real
so you didn’t, you ended it, that, her,
and called it nothing, except “a grand down the wrong hole”
It made me cringe to hear you say that.

You told me about the drugs
how you forgave each other and found a higher power
******.
He dealed, so you dealed, he used so you used
he got in a beef with a rival dealer so you got shot
you tried to get out so he found you two a better god,
****.
You told me it lasted four years
before your brother found out
locked you in a motel room
and watched you writhe and scream and die
how when it was over you felt love for the first time in forever
and it was bliss.
          
You told me about the breakup
how he waited for you after school
grabbed you and knocked you out
how you woke up chained to a bed
naked, gagged, alone with him
how he spent the week torturing you
shocking, beating, cutting, hitting… touching
how he split town after.

Then you told me you lied
he never existed.
You spent a year convincing me I was fixing a girl scarred by the most damning of men
only to tell me that the only broken thing about you was your word.

I think it’s actually real this time,
That I'm waking to sweet bird songs,
not the cancerous “Cuck-coo” from some clock at the end of her hall.

When I wake,
I want to see sunlight burning holes in window ledges,
feel the chill flowing down my cheeks
fighting the warmth falling up from my feet.
I want to smell that sick stench that says I stayed out one shot too late,
taste the combination of this and those that feel like trash behind my teeth.
Forget for that brief instant between this and what comes next,

That last night wasn't really love.

That the girl-on-my-right used to be the girl-who-could-ride
that too many drinks plus too many winks leads to  "My place?"
No hers.
that too many drinks plus too little cash leads to "Taxi?"
Let’s walk.
That too many drinks plus two a.m. leads to, well,
You know.

Before falling asleep I feel ashamed at forgetting her name
turn on my side, close my eyes, and wait for the Sunrise.

Only to be roused by the of the **** cuckoo at the end hall.
I want to punch Daffy Duck in the face,
break the road-runner’s neck,
introduce Donald to rotisserie,
and tie Tweety to the tail of a cat.
All I think of is rage
I could burn the clock, burn the house, burn... burn out, and pass out.

This morning is real, it feels real, at least the hangover does.
Last night's emotions are technicolor fantasies, only as real as the beak on an animated bird.
The sun slips through the blinds and finds a rainbow trail of clothing,
starting at the door and ending with our own little *** of gold.
I roll out of her arms and slide down that road
turning it into a line of lacy wears.  
Sneaking down the hallway I feel the sun’s warmth
and hear the birds chirping, calling me to the door.
Behind me, I hear the cantankerous pretender
crying from his wooden nest on the wall.
His sound almost as sorry as his message,
lamenting he can never break his cycle.
never can wake up and feel
what's actually real.