i won't pretend i'm fluent in remembering
but maybe if you put me through some
stretch of missingness
i'd forget why i'm alone.
i could fight to end up in your head again
but it wouldn't last for long, unless
you started to want what i got.

but if we're gonna do this, you better
stop breathing like that
i want to bury my heart at the sound of you
tell it to sink a ways away
so i don't have to ask you in its morse code moan
do you lo...... never mind, it wouldn't have rhymed anyway.

i have a friend who said don't hate yourself
if they want someone else
but we don't ever listen to ourselves, so
maybe that's why i ****** in a withheld farewell.
i don't know where you've been
or who you've been
or who you've been with
but if you asked me to i'd be there soon
i could be fluent in misremembering, but
excuse me for asking, voice trembling, noise severing
but i'd ask you to please pick up the phone
if it meant anything close to bettering
the crooked tangled ways the wrong roots went in deep grown.

I feel those seasons changing,
flipping into brand new pages
it's a yearly arrangement.
Dear Summer,
I miss your warmth.
You're up on the sun,
Hid upon us, or anyone
and I wish I could join you.
The way you blew through August
made this December come in harshly,
and I feel dizzy, heavy, topsy turvy, homespun.

Dear Summer,
I miss your laugh.
I liked it when you liked my jokes.
Untouchable, your voice had sounded,
Built on passion, fire, and highest hopes.
Hey beauty, how did you get so twisted?
and gifted in drifting away from me with distance?
If I whispered "please" for your sounds or silence,
would I get a response?

Summer,
You only spoke up once since and told me
"Be strong," but, with all the trees
Upending, falling, rearranging,
how can I not too?
their wild roots are digging deep,
looking for you too.
My brothers said this would happen
and they meant it, they said
this would happen if I let it.
And I did.

How can I miss the heat like this
when what you really gave me was
God knows what, but it wasn't real
Love. There was something hiding in it.
Summer, where are you?
Are you homesick?
I am, but I don't know
what home is, or who.
My hair's grown long I wish you could see,
Or feel, or be
Right here next to me.

I know I shouldn't miss her warmth,
When everyone said it would be reformed
or transformed, and malformed into cold hearted
winter storms, an absence of
painful pining love horns, hugging me tight.

I guess that's what moving does.

here's to the ones
who live past the pain
here's to the hearts that ache.
here's to the ones
who swim through the stains
of lonely past-framed loves.
here's to the ones
that dream.

here's to the ones
that hope for a future
a dance with the day
that takes toes from the ground.
a ballad with air
an air-struck floating found
in romance.

here's to the ones
who look for the heart
leap without looking
for the girl
and the mess they made.
i'll always remember
her flame.
here's to the poets
who dream.
here's to the words
they leave.

i'd fall without looking
and tumble into her
again.
her heart was so freezing
i spent a month sneezing
but i think i would do it again.
here's to their hearts
and the mess they made.

bring on the rebels,
her rubbles,
and both of our devils.
bring on her smile,
and how she dared to
dream.

here's to you
for daring to extremes.
here's to me
capturing our feelings
foolish as it may seem.
here's to the future.
and here's to our hearts
for living their dreams.

Some addictions don't follow your parents' definition,
Or tuck into a textbook nicely.
Some addictions don't follow pills or bottles,
Or chase them down the drain.
Some addictions follow places or people,
Always and forever, again and again.
But one thing's for certain
An addict's an addict
And a burden's a burden.

leave all your friends behind,
abandonment.
but adamant
leaving was only an accident;
you miss us.
what took you so long?

you keep coming back
and back and back
repeating the past.
i'm growing attached again
mismatched against
your flighty love in the aftermath.

it's funny you say you love us
selling it like a snake oil pitch
but we're the first to feel the itch
of fresh baked blame
branded across our bodies.
you're always on the attack
then falling away from us
a deadly one-two
the back-to-back.

i laughed when you said you missed me:
you didn't stay long enough to mean it.
you leave your mark by
stealing places and people
or else sleeping with them.
it's your trick, it's a staple.
clutching onto numbers, waiting for sequels
but not as good as the first, right?

if playing with the world is what gets you high,
what am i?
what am i?
am i your favourite toy?
am i your favourite

you keep coming back
and back and back
repeating the past.
i'm growing attached again
mismatched against
your flighty love in the aftermath.

don't think of me like that.
a toy, a drug, a god-given fact.
a hit and then a month of silence.
and i wish i could pretend
you weren't coming back.
if you love something, set it free
or at least let me be.

you've stopped coming back
and i've unpacked the past.
like fleeting memories
falling off pages
i've grown attached again.
mismatched against
your flighty love and it's aftermath.

what took me so long?

we can pretend we’re jack and sally,
simply meant to be.
but really we’re joker and harley,
a disaster bred to leave
or else just fall apart.
babe we’re always playing games
but never playing as ourselves
and in all honesty i’d keep playing
if you too are so compelled.

i remember when you called yourself
alice, strung out and imbalanced,
riding from one edge to another
with a half-hearted intention
of having your whole life tip over.
i remember replacing your self-imposed noose
with that grey scarf,
because you needed somewhere new to rest your neck.
i’d break into that old school with you again
without breaking a sweat
just to have your lips part like the red sea,
breaking apart for me.

my stomach always squirmed when you said
“London,”
always scared of your need for running
and being stuck in the mundane,
the past life of past-you,
a constant re-run, when you got recast
or maybe killed off, or our contract didn’t hold fast
and i watched you walk right out of my TV
i watched, frozen, when you passed by me.
i wanted to play peter and gwen
and follow you, fight jack the ripper
and swing from big ben every now and then
but beautiful blondes were always fated to fall again and again
as stan lee said.

do you remember
the year of dev, me in suits
and lots of la dispute?
a rough spot, i’m sure,
but worth it at the end
when i caught up your heart
as the credits rolled
dedications and dead roses
blossoming another season of love.

sometimes i think of cliched times
like prom or new years eve
and I had hoped, maybe finally a halloween
i hold old memory lane tight like its my job
i go 60 down my mind, and with my brakes, i can’t stop
the days where your smiles keep coming
never-ending,
up-end me.
i earn those split lips and some teeth
like currency.
but those days dance around my calendar
falling like rain in a California-dry July:
uncertainly.

the thing about me is i come saturated
with sorry’s and mixtapes
and i don’t think anyone’s every quite ready
for all of that.
but my mixtapes, like me
like to tend towards a surprise
every now and again.
like how you’re nancy from now on
or maybe that’s me, i’m convinced
you have to be reading my poems.
rhyming’s everything
gotta get that **** right
“she’s a wolf and i like it when she bites me.”

one more remember when
before i rhyme you to the end
remember when
we played ***** king and queen
at high school prom
i was always good at spooking the scene
but you were only really good at ever scaring me.
you aren’t the nostalgic type
so i guess that duty falls on me
here it goes:
dear diary,
my dear is as far as the late solstice sun
and the distance is far enough to wrap my arm
around the other side
of the earth, and tap her shoulder
or i would, if it wasn’t so cold there.
i wonder who she’s playing now
i wonder who she is today
i wonder
i—

’m not ready for our year to end, yet
but summer left
like 500 Days said
and we’re bonnie and clyde again
falling over each other trying to run from time.
at least we’re not sid and nancy
well, one of us is
but which one’s which?
it’s always come as a matter of circumstance
trying to pick who’s been vicious.

but you’re still my november girl
and i don’t want our fall
to end, or start.
this was both of us at our best.
leaves are counting down the days till
the sun stops burning so hot and the trees stop working so well.
on daylight’ savings do the clocks stop ticking?
and do we stop ticking too?
or just you?
can i stop ticking until winter’s bringing
spring again?
or am i busy living
in my memories, like a has-been?

snow is here and you’re not.
the winter forever.
but no broken plea for my honeybee.
the birds are far and few between
and the trees feel as naked as me.
i guess having them is a little less lonely
but it’s not fair we call them leaves
if every year they come back.
what should we call you?
you have a million names
but none of them fit on tight enough to stick.
i don’t know what they’re calling you now
but i still want to.

i wanted to be more than life stuck in these bones,
but they're intent on running.
i thought i'd be content with settling down
but i think they are hunting for something.
i can see myself moving from city or town
though its hard to feel more than motionless
when about a month maybe more
is all you'll make an appearance for.
i'd like to feel more than simply life in these bones
but right now they're only good for aching.

matching socks hide away my weak feet for a while
but it doesn't take long for the absence of skin--
reminding me my brittle feet are breaking,
creaking, wary under the weight of heavy bones.

my hands feel empty.
but doctor's say nothing's missing...
i know i'm losing something to distance
you can hear it if you listen.

i keep replaying the sound of your whole life splitting
its way from mine
a misgiving sound for a while i'd been wishing
not to listen to, but i
decided to make it into an alarm clock instead
to keep me from dreaming too big, because
nothing scares me quicker from sleep.
i'm relearning how ferocious
your memory could be.

and only when you look you will see
inside your reflection--half of what you should be
not a would-be, but a could've-been
stuck with ******' half-life personalities
singing for their expiration dates,
cracking under your empty gravity.
breaking, fading, floating away from reality.
it took too many broken bones
to realize how unbroken we weren't supposed to be.

myself personally, i think there's no sense in
looking in the mirror
when i see no more beauty there.
i could let loose these slippery bones
and collapse on the floor.
and i figure to stay here a while, because
i can't sleep inside silence anymore.
city sounds don't cut it, so
i let your memory whisper faintly to me
but not so gently, more in line with a taunt
composed of words like,
"you are the thing that carved the me
out of me
so of course i had to set myself free."

but you can keep talking to me
and choke out all the mystery
this is near to death--
it's half misery, half meant to be.
it's all left me.
you haven't been living the right way
and it's left my body empty,
boneless.
it's let my body empty-out;
crooked tendons pining towards you.
a sorry skeleton, crawling,
unable to keep it in the ground.