the storybooks never prepared you
for someone like me.
i am neither knight nor maiden
but i can try to be both,
can try to drape myself in
armor while i wait for you  
to rescue me.
you’re digging through me for
your hero and your beacon
but all you’ll find is questions
and contradictions; a game of
mix-and-match between
what’s pounding in my head
and coursing through my body;
a constant war between
what i need and what i’m given
and baby, this is no man’s land.
watch where you step.

1.
it was my first cigarette
in weeks that i hadn’t found
half-smoked on the asphalt
and it still tasted like something
leftover from somewhere
i don’t belong;
its smoke drifted through
the evening city mist like
how our voices used to harmonize
but only when we weren’t trying.

2.
on the blue line through
south central i heard someone
say “i could’ve been president
of the whole world, could’ve
taught y’all something about
success” —
she wasn’t talking to nobody
but the whole train listened
and in that, she taught me
more than any textbook
ever could.

3.
when you stand on 5th
and san pedro you can’t see
nothing besides the cliff
at the end of the world,
but instead of clouds there’s
puddles of ****, instead of
waterfalls there’s shopping carts
filled with people’s whole lives
and everyone down there is
shaking their heads at you —
leave, leave unless you know
what falling feels like.

I found some grammer of the universe:
Not easy to catch, but easy to find,
as it is simply everywhere.
In the navel and in the fridge.
In a teacup and in a dream.
In a memory and in a grain of dust
as much as in a withering biography.
Sometimes I mix up prepositions,
so that I my beloved feels demagnified.
But I will take the effort to spell lovable meaning in that language.
And it happens that I use wrong keys
- and I don't get the meaning of sentences
that couchsurf my mind - but it's all furnished
with such a beautiful mess. Oh dear,
let me play on you(r) combinations.
And embed the failure in the long run of light.
I know, everything is meant to glow.
Furthermore there is the challenge of silence,
t h e   a b s o l u t e l y   s u p e r c o n n e c t i v e
muting the noisy pain of opposition.
Let us meditate on that.

You look at me,
salt stung eyes full of lies
you cannot bear to hear.

The rippling emotion of our love
has never had enough power
to break the barrier of their words
and your sapphire veins bleed into
more bodies of water than even the
most skilled scientist could ever discover.

Your body hovers above mine like
a moon lacking enough gravity
to bring in the tide and I wonder if
you can see the words written in
my mind like unsent love letters
sealed with the eternal promise of
a kiss that could never be properly executed,
even though we could have been-
because people didn't agree with our love,
still don't agree with our love,
and days like this,
sometimes you wonder if everyone ever will.

They see blasphemy in the beauty of our
fingers intertwined and speak hatred against
the connection we never thought we could find.

They put oceans between our instincts,
built dams around our feelings,
tore us down to nothing,
and called it religious necessity.

They have taken our love and
put it under a microscope,
held a gun against our heads,
and a knife across our throats.

We never called our love conventional,
but how the hell is this "unnatural?"
They are standing with armies against
our weaponless bodies and claiming to be
offended because I asked to hold my lover's hand.

They deny us our rights holding the book
of God in their hands, forgetting that not
everyone follows the scripture that not
even they can understand.
This God they speak of is not the God
I would like to know and even if He was,
I wouldn't be afraid to show the world
of my love  - just like they do with His.

I do not wish them a fraction of the curses
they have laid upon me and yet,
no one is asking them to put down the book they read.

Choosing my battles carefully
should be more of a metaphor
than it is a reality and I'm beginning
to question the possibilities-

No, I will not let them win.
I will not down to a God I don't believe in,
I will not sacrifice something beautiful
for the sake of your agreement -

**I will not allow them to pretend they are Him.

*** is a hell of a drug.
Panic is a hell of a drug
Suicide is a hell of a drug.
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
Gossip is a hell of a drug.
Art is a hell of a drug.
Fighting is a hell of a drug.
TV is a hell of a drug.
The internet is a hell of a drug.
Cigarettes are a hell of a drug.
Drugs are hell.

There's a really heavy typewriter on the shelf above me.
It's old. It's broken. It's beautiful.
"I wish I could use it." is always my first thought when I stare up into its under-carriage of prongs and teeth.
It doesn't fit on the shelf, and it surely doesn't belong there.
My first thought should be "That may fall and **** me at any moment", but I think I avoid that thought because I kind of hope it does. What a way to go out. Not intentional. I didn't put it up there with the intention of it becoming some sort of Medieval time-bomb, but the symbology behind that accidental death would be enough for me to be satisfied with the ending of my life.
If you manage to banish the senseless fascination with your imagination's speculation of what people will think of you if you do THIS...or when THAT happens...then what's there to fear about failure? Failure just becomes progress at that point.
There's a really heavy typewriter on the shelf above me, and a part of me hopes that it falls and bashes my skull in.