i. the curly, green-haired
leo with the cry-baby tattoo
on her left calf; fish net stockings and
loud guitar playing and
menthol cigarettes. driving through
the park at 9 pm, ***** shots,
the white house with the a-frame roof,
hugs that made your heart feel as warm
as she did

crying as i left my room again to be
intertwined with a girl who did not love me, but i wanted to;
months pass, lonely car rides with
one-sided conversations and
seven years gone,
quiet disconnection
that made you feel as cold
as i did

ii. brown eyes, brown skin,
round glasses and chicago streetlights.
holding each other close on the subway
lakehouse parties in the beginning of spring and
pisces season and tarot readings and
soft kisses on the train.
holding hands at the aquarium,
sweet poetry and calm and
a sense of oneness that made you feel
important

hurt for the third time
a panic, a loss
i held their heart in my hands and
let it fall
harsh
unimportant
i still carry the guilt on my fingertips

iii. short hair. freckled cheeks, i
fell in love with the way the skin
crinkled around her eyes when she smiled.
an apartment, a home built
around our lips touching
wrapped in blankets on the couch,
dense smoke and her hand on my leg while she
drove. chinese food and
waking up against her chest and
laughing so hard
my ribs hurt

crashing. her anger withering away my
heartstrings; pain and
crying alone in the bathtub
moving away
drunk tears on the interstate
punching my thighs
in place of the way her
words made
me hurt

I’m a  twentieth century baby,
  and a twenty first century man;
  Preceded by the definite maybe’s
  of a fickle generations attention span:

"**** the alarmist. Dissect the murderer.  
Round up the lost lot. Ground the ponderer.
For we are the witless wanderers”

We are born out of confusion and into anxiety,  
we swallow up old decades for a pastime;
they're digestible bytes to the digital society,
and their ideals oft’ so easy to mime.  

But we’re witless in our meter-less rhyme.

how easy it is to write a poem
of unrequited love
an ode to that insatiable hunger
that lives unwelcome in the pit of
my stomach
and slowly eats away at me
gnawing a black hole into that space
an emptiness i couldn't look at
its darkness burned brighter than
the eclipsed sun
who always called with the most
beautiful voice and promised that
if i simply stopped averting my eyes
i would most certainly become one with you
and i forsake my sight
to have your heat
your radiation from all parts of the spectrum
to burn my traitorous eyes right out of their sockets.

how different it is to write
of contentment and perhaps even
a love that i can reach out and touch
without having it sublimate each atom of my being
and reduce me to a radioactive ash
scattered to the wind.

it's a love that i can submerge myself in
it presses in all around and the
mega-Pascals of pressure simply reach
a placid equilibrium with my porous skin
i breathe it in and my lungs
somehow learn to pull the oxygen from
the molecules of liquid desire and vitreous joy
and it fuels my body
infiltrating and inhabiting every cell
feeding my muscles as i
sensuously move my body
fluid as the frigid water around me.

my heart was a monotonous beeping
a soft old grandfather clock,
background noise at dinner parties
and a focal point for insomniacs
it droned on, neither increasing or decreasing,
neither rising or falling,
a steady beat of a steel drum on a hot summer night

i moved an inch closer to you

my heart was a ticking time bomb,
still steady as clockwork
but adding drama to the movie screen
it was stippling and a connect-the-dot photo of a sailboat
if you wired me up to a machine,
the line of my heart would be a steadily increasing mountain,
closer and closer to the destination
which is you

three inches closer

my heart was alla turca on piano
and impressionist paint strokes
it was dashed-dotted-dashed-dashed
it was swift like wind and current
it was nearly hummingbird wing
nearly death defying

you are two inches away

my heart has broken metronomes,
the tempo reached over five hundred
and chatter flooded into it
speaking words so fast
it sounds like a language from another planet
sometimes i wonder if my heart is really like mount rushmore
but it's not the head of founding fathers carved into the side
but the way you look when you look at me

you are here, i am here

the love i feel for you is plotted out on graph paper covering my floors but it keeps running off the page and i don't have enough paper

*(a.m.c.)

We are critical.

We find flaws in
everything we see
because nobody
wants to write
about perfection,
even though sometimes
we wish we could just stay
staring into that
unblemished surface.

2. We are never satisfied.

We live our lives upon
mountains of
scrunched up
bits of refill and
ideas we gave up
trying to
express.

3. We never forget.

We write words about
eye contact made
three months ago
that we replay over
and over in our minds
even though it
stopped
being relevant.

4. We are fickle.**

Our emotions flash
from one
to the other
like strobe lighting that
disorientates us
until we feel as if
the world
will never be still.

5. We are exposed.

We don't know how
to keep our feelings
to ourselves so
we'll write them
down for
you to find
'accidentally'.

6. We are vulnerable.

We wear our
hearts on our sleeves
and won't lift a
muscle to fight back
if somebody tries
to break it
because we thrive
from the pain.

7. We will never stop.

We will never stop
feeling and
we will never stop
hurting,
we will never stop
breaking and
bleeding and
loving
even though the cycle
is endless
and we know what's
coming next.


We are addicted
to agony,
but we agonise
for the art.