How have you been?
I think I'm forgetting the touch of your skin
on mine and it's similar to the feeling of an ocean in my ears
water blocked my hearing and nothing is as near
as it should be. I might be hit by a train
because my senses are telling me it's far away.
I have time
to let you go like the monkey bar handles
don't want to fall beneath so I'll cling to the candle
lit bedroom I once had with my first lover ever
wanted incense and kissing and hands moving slower than heaven.
With you it was quick
like a pin to my chest
and you pulled away too early
so I bled and I bled.
It's healed over but I'm so tempted to pick
that little hole back and let the blood run thick.
At least then I'd know that I bled in the first place
instead of wondering if it was a stomach flutter
and not the lightning bolt
I wasn't looking for.

I look in the mirror, what did I expect to see?
Age lines? Sure signs of dramatic aging?
I see me, just 20, one year older than the day
before. Nothing more, just me the same person
I use to be, just me with frown lines and a wicked
personality. Just me.

You are a ferris wheel operator because
you keep guessing why.
I'd like to tell you
that you've taken me higher than ever before,
made me see what I couldn't
don't know if I can anymore.
Because I swallow too many pills that are sweet on my tongue
listen to the same songs he showed me the summer before love
making it to the middle is absolutely good enough for me
if you can use me like a ladder and get higher than the lows of the sea
we are polar opposites.
Balance each other out,
we're the flat planes of Kansas and we're going down.
It's been said that a person is only an atheist until they're dying
I say everyone keeps loving until they're told they're lying.
Only the truest keep fighting to hold onto the middle
and never let their love weep like the tree of willow
said every single person deserves a second chance
until they use that one to pull a gun
and blame it on their parents.

Thump Thump
Said the beat of my heart.
Perfectly synchronized with the
Bump Bump
Of her heart.
Two sets of lips inching up either side of his thighs,
Spread wide apart.
The melody of his respiration lost in the rhythm of his inspiration
Rhythmic
Swayed two tongues
Twenty fingers
Two bra straps undone.
Two heads of curls
Curled around one head
One hell of a baptism
Christened upon the holy sheets of the bed.
Two trails of saliva...
Describe to me the sensation of tongue on skin;
Offers of salvation for the sins that lie within.
Her eyes are alluring.
Bright eyes .
Chariot to heaven
He's got an Angel on each thigh.
That's two tongues
Crying,
One to devour each side.
Mesmerized
Spread wings and fly;
Hypnotized.
When you arrive at the pearly gate, we told him
Just come inside.

Now,
It's been so long,
Arms branching out to you
Fossilise waiting to be filled.

The hair on the head has grown to the knee,
Changing its colours on the way down,
Bleached by the sun,
Stolen by the clock,
Left to grey.

Could the joints still move,
- if ever they wanted to?
So long frozen in commitment.

"I'll wait." - he said.

Aiming his arrow carefully,
So the two words would pierce though all barriers,
Exploding perfectly in the heart.

Shrapnel flies everywhere.
Duck and dodge the pieces of unworthy flesh!
She left. He waited.
Waiting for the time when she'd return from looking for something better.

The garbage man came
as I drank my coffee, flavors mixing
with my cigarette and
The Great Gatsby.
I watched him pick up the dumpster,
overturn it in his truck
and I thought of asking
what he could do about
my garbage, my treasures;
a torn bumper on
the corner of 11th and Montana Avenue,
a broken lucky cigarette,
proving my superstitions to be false, maybe,
and a half-full soul
trying to find its way
back into my heart,
that I gave to her
many years ago
but it wasn't my heart I wanted back,
just her, because
she at the time, was elsewhere
and that I couldn't handle.
I stayed silent as
he drove away
with things unwanted
wishing he could too
pick up the things
I so greatly miss
and return them to me.

Everyone always told him life was beautiful
No one said why, though. Nonetheless he knew it.
They, all of them, all of you, were preaching to the choir.
He could tell you a million and one reasons why life, the earth, everything
Was beautiful.
He knew them now by heart.
He'd start with the sunshine hitting his skin in the summers, and somehow move onto the rain in June on his windshield.
Then to the way the cold flirted with him in December...
Nibbling on his ears and kissing his cheeks whenever and wherever he went.
He'd talk about smiles from strangers on the tram, at the market,
And, his personal favorite, in the library.
There he'd read words from rebellious souls who, like him, understand that life was more beautiful than anything or anyone that came out of Italy, Brazil, or Spain.
They'd say, and he'd read, about how life was beautiful in the way that a child with a gap between her teeth is beautiful.
In the most perfectly flawed way.
Life is beautiful because of the way a clock chimes every 15 minutes, and the way everyone depends on it.
It's beautiful because of the sound a pencil makes as it vandalizes a blank page of a journal.
It's because of the way everyone knows it, and falls madly in love with it.
He knew it, but they didn't. And they never would.
They just told him that life was beautiful.
Over and over and over again until he was sure he didn't deserve to live in that light.
And he ran away from it into the arms of tragedy.
Still beautiful, but all the more flawless and terrifying.
And there he went, and there he stayed.