Live like an unappreciated stranger
in your own house.

Become the careless talk at family dinners
about the disappointing child
and pretend like it was all a joke
and slowly lose yourself with every
echo of drunken laughter.

Look into the eyes of someone you love
and realize how you can't feel anything
other than dread.

Become the lustful thoughts of someone
you can't love
and watch them cut themselves
into pieces for you, when
in the end
all you can say is a pitiful "thank you,
but I'd rather be a lonely wreck
drifting across the sea."

Ask yourself to be found
in a map with no direction
and with nothing but your
faulty heart to guide you away
from home.

Pretend like the music
disappears into the background
of the screenplay your life has become
and the screen slowly turning black.

Find the dread
in your own heartbeat.

Take off your clothes
and see how you sewed every misgiving
into your skin like a story you
never want forgotten
and marvel at how bad your stitching is-
can't even hold yourself together.

Hear the sound of the rain
and wonder why
the grey clouds of your heart
never go away with the same.

Touching you was like static electricty in a dark room,
a makeshift thunderstorm in your fingers,
you had more noise in you than a little heart could handle;
so you came bursting open:
screaming, hands punching the air and gasping
for sanity; they said if you hear God it's probably purgatory
what would they call it
when I hear the windclap of your hips a sonic boom
and the quiet of your eyes like blood rushing to my head
in an anechoic chamber;
would they call it madness or delusion
or a mix of a little bit of both; could be alcohol,
could be love
because when I lit a match
in your darkness,
it burned the whole house down.

The heart where once
love resided fell too cold.

Now the flesh turns
an uneasy grey beneath
a thin layer of dusty frost.

When touched,
the fingertips stick and the cold bites.
Few dared to warm
the space with their hands
and now neglect has my heart forgot.

There's an uncared for path.
An overrun piece of forest
nearly hidden in the brush
that leads to a cave.

There's a cool breeze
that staves away my curiosity.

If I could put to words
what this year was,
I would say--
****.

**** this ******* year.

Thirteen years into
the second millenium,
was as unlucky as the number
said it would be.

This year was about
being on my own,
being sad,
being alone.

Yet I found,
poetry, and that death
could never be the answer
to questions I'd rather not ask.

I found friends
in people halfway
across the whole
world.

Love from the people
of my kind--
poets--
who loved and despaired.

This year was not
the one I would remember;
because new beginnings
are often disguised
as painful endings.

So here is to
my new beginning.

"I'll wait for you,"
when we were kids,
you had said.

But Jack's still comatose
and Jill is dead.

You never came.

It was not in the road
that took me there
but the way my heart
always remained the same
rushing through college corridors,
open dissection tables,
woodwork poetry breathren.

Indestructible construction
of these cerebral plates
left me the mind of a surgeon
and the heart of a poet.

In the cold operating room
they cut open his chest-
blood gushing out and I could
see why sometimes a little hurt
could cause a lot of noise.
Ventricle, atrium.
A nick that ricocheted,
a word that spelled
goodbye.

There was a rhythm in his heart
and for once I could feel
synchronicity was never so beautiful;
almost teary-eyed
I could find those verses
lost between the veins,
quietude pumping out slowly.

Lost in the mistranslation
of his chest
till the nurse said

"Doctor, your patient's dying"

Please don't play
with my heart,

I only have
a few pieces left.

This is not
hiding away,

I just don't want
to take any more of your crap.

Allow me to slip
into the darkness you created.

Let me
chase shadows.

I once used to run
with both my legs tied together.

Now I just lay down
wherever it is that I stop.

Please don't play
with my heart,

this is no longer
yours to keep.

Today I wrote a song about your teeth.
They are crooked and imperfect.
Just like this. Our hands. And these
songbirds are all liars. We haven’t learned.
Flesh memory is overrated. Last night
I felt the linen, and it whispered to me
nothing. Not even the shape of you
reminds me of happiness. What is the use
of these metaphors if they can’t
beautify you anymore. No longer as fierce
as the inferno I allowed you to become.
Drowning in bedclothes, trying to understand how streams of consciousness
are becoming bodies of water. Today
I wrote a song about your teeth. And I
read it aloud to the voiceless, and now
they know what love tastes like.

There's really something in the way
you breaking my heart ends up
sounding like a love song.

I watched as you
cast yourself away
one step at a time;
with my gaze fixed
at your dauntless irises
how could I have known
that with every breath
you were drifting further away.

The clocks ticked away,
and all I have is the last of
second chances.

I watched as you slowly,
very slowly,
with such grace,
effortlessly,
faded into the horizon.

And all I have to thank
is the image of you
my eye lids were able to retain.

I went looking today.

I put on my red boots
and my blue pants
and I opened up the doors.

I went looking today.

I went through the parks,
the streets, the empty hallways.
I got lost looking for a lost you.

The crowd carried your scent,
carried me,
and I was six and a half miles from home.

I put on my smiles
and my cloak of courage.
My watch ticked away the time my heart drove my feet to you.

I went looking today.

I went looking for you.

I searched the corners of boxes,
under the shade of rose petals,
and in burning letters.

Because I had to.
I had to find you
before I lost my mind.

My bones ached for the home in you,
my heart refused to keep a beat continuous,
my skin began to come undone.

I went looking for you today,
only to stop before your door
and walk all the way back home

still in want.

Maybe it is numbing cold,
the weather there,
as you taste the snowflakes on your tongue
and picture us making angels on your porch
while still stealing the warmth from the breath
of one another.

Maybe it is not so white until December's wake
and when it rains, it pours.
Your car is probably stuck in the snow
when I was busy making a snowman
that I couldn't wait
to destroy with you:
we don't need anyone else.

I cannot wait to see
what winter is like in Utah.

Till then, I will just reminisce
of salt mountains
beside the oceans.

I'm not sure if it was a drunken idea,
or one of ecstatic stupidity,
but finally, from indirect jokes
we took to the alley,
greasy and haunting in itself,
we crossed the deathly narrow lane
to the tattoo place.

Neon-lit and consumed in the atmosphere
of alcohol and some illegal drug somewhere,
we picked out the incomplete chain--
one for you and one for me--
so that when our bodies came together,
we completed each other.

We completed each other.

You got yours and I got mine.

And now a year later,
you have had yours removed,
and are now thinking why you got one in the first place.

But you never knew, did you?

I didn't just love you,
I loved you for who you were,
for all you were,
for all you had been.

I wasn't just a stupid girl,
filled with the butterflies of first loves.
I was in love with you.
Fallen, completely.

You left your scars.
You left your scars.

You would never know, now would you?

That while you were looking away,
I got mine
in permanent ink.

**We completed each other.
Now
I can barely complete myself.

She says she can
make the sky change into
the colours of shame:

but how could she have known
that I already walk
with a cloud over my head?

Can't you see how
it's a long way
down
from the haunt of the
stars stop shining
when you shut your eyes.

I sometimes
break my lines
blur between happiness
and being awake I
can barely feel anything
when you speak.

It's not quietude, nor
speechlessness it's
the way my mind grows
into a cancer of memories-
how one potentially harmful
dies everyday like clock-
work can't make time
stop the way you
do.

I break between
my lines some-
time pours into your eyes.

We can speak in fine tongues
and drink wine older than our hours
but when it comes to you I
let my tongue tie
itself in a knot.

I tend to
break into my lines
which is why you could never
know that after I said I love
you never came.

I was the one who swallowed the sun
and yet it is your touch that burns
on to my skin like an insignia of shame;
halos of quiet desperation,
a footprint on the welcome mat to our own
little hell.

So the next time you cry for your skin,
remember
I scar for you.

Today if you had asked me
what love still meant to me
I would look at you,
diving in the abyss
of your brown eyes
and look at you look at me.

I'll tell you that I loved you
before the first spark
ever hit your armoured heart
to light an everlasting fire.

That the words which escaped you
cascaded down on me
like a million rivers unfolding
to reveal their anger they kept
hidden long enough
to allow the heat to die down on their own.

That the truth in things
didn't exist in the ways,
in people like we wanted to.

If love was an inferno
to walk through
you know I would.
That with every burning touch of the coal
beneath my feet
would be another step closer to victory,
closer to you.
That this was the painful esctasy of love,
and every ember was like the ones
that burnt in me for you.

And I would tell you
that you were worth it.
You were worth it all.

I hear some music
muffled away
in the dark
evening sky.

And I get the feeling
that I want to
love more
than hate.

We will forget the times I breathed your name into the sky
and made it rain.

The thought of you will become a ***** verse in the anthology of
apologies I figured in my sleep.

I will forget the touch of your skin
in the way you forgot how to love.

I am caught up
amidst a drama.

Your father is arguing with your mother,
the noise is penetrating from beyond
the locked doors,
while I am standing outside your door
witnessing your surprised reaction.

A glass shatters and you shut your door
and ask me to come with you.
We ride on my bicycle to the lonely field
behind the school.

My heart beats louder than ever before,
so loud you can probably hear it.
You are trying to explain the situation at home,
the noise and the apologies,
while I am biting my lips,
trying to tell you why
I drove you out your home
at ten in the night.

You stop and laugh,
and tell me that your best friend
broke away from you
and you tag him--
that *******--
and I swallow nervously.

You suddenly rant of how
he always says the wrong things,
was always a bad friend,
and did the worst.

You tell me of how your parents
are so sickening
you are thinking of running away.

You
look
at me
and tell me that you are
sick
and
tired.

Between the lines of fear and blame,
on a very cold winter night
in the deserted field
you and I are caught amidst a drama.

A drama yet to unfold.

A sweat beads on my forehead--
I have something to say.

Your father is no longer mine's business partner,
my mother hates the dressing style of yours
and
I am in love with your best friend.

I cannot tell you that,
because this is not the time for a drama
to set ablaze the floors of our minds--
we will need it tomorrow.

We've got our math test.

My mind is a tinderbox.

Only awaiting a reminder of
the taste of your breath and your many loves
to spark up and light a deadly fire.

It is vulnerable to hate, jealousy and other
fiery emotions,
and more than once have you deliberately
caressed the ends of this box
with an emery touch.

It feeds on past sensations of the skin,
forgotten beatings of the heart,
and promises only skin deep--
they are still just the sensations
from crosses you made on your chest.

It is a bubble, waiting to burst.

But make no mistake,
it is very powerful.
Do not, and I repeat, do not
let yourself be swept away with fuzzy emptiness
and homely tempts.

It is awaiting only a weak moment.
Like a swish of warm breath
on a stack of old dry grass,
to start a fire so bright
you have to squint.

Under the clouds of hope
I married your kind eyes with the faith
of a million flowers bringing
back the spring
to the wild gardens
of my left atrium. I swear
I did not know that you were born
of rain and alcohol, because every one
of your touch could douse the flames
your kisses light on my skin.
I tried to write more about how every
time you said the word “halo”, your mouth
would curl like a serpent waiting to attack;
how your hands always were a warm
reminder of thoughtless touching;
how your feet are tired from all the walking
down flights of a paradox of stairs
and still wanting to run
away with me.

I am leaving scratches on the ground; dragging
my feet: they no longer take me home
if there is one.

The tree in the backyard fell during the storm
and with it went the young years of my life
torn in half by the lightning

and took from me the shade I sought
in your hair and the thoughts they often led me in
and some belief in fantasies.

Even my dreams won't cross the threshold of the room
I confine you in; you haunt me
like homesickness and runaways.

You gave your life to the birdhouse
and waited for the wings to reveal themselves; flutter
and fly away.

The night unravelling,
caught in the moment of the earth's
dance on its tilt

when it's just as day
as it is the night; like light
appearing behind shut eyelids

who am I to trust
when the earth turns and dreams
turn into daytime reveries

will I wake up and forget
or will your elbow slide off the table
and break the spell?

This time is a perfidious lover,
so tell me,
whose side is it on

tonight?

You can tell his hands have worked to the bone,
***** fingernails tracing art in the dark of the room.
Dust scattered on the floor, the desk, the lamps.
He hasn't been here in a long time: seven years
to be exact. What he left behind was a book
filled with love and somewhere two weeks after
he dies, a twelve year old girl will find it.
And read it cover to cover until she became
a love story in herself.

You can ask the sky
how many times she's sighed at the passing
of someone she's never met, and feels she knows
everything about.

Love means never being forgotten

You once said,
sleep is for the weak
and I feel like Achilles
limping across the battleground of your
subconscious; eyes half shut
are eyes half open.
How long will it be
before I too drift into
the limbo of your nights
and forgotten
when you awake?

Take a long look at the road
you walked past and wonder of
how many stops you made
and how many you had to take.

(Was the meter still running
when you had me waiting outside
your house waiting
for it to become a home you
would have never built with me?
But become a visitor in a gallery
of art I could never understand.)

Live each day like a sombre white
and watch over your thoughts
as if you had a limit to how much
you could hurt yourself
because there is only so long
the Father could hear and only so many hail Marys that can keep you

sinless as the day you were born.

Plant a tree for every heart you broke
and watch someone else carve their stories
in you.

You fall out of love like a habit.
Nobody told you that even when they say
'there are no wrong answers',
there's always one that rings all the wrong bells.
You say, 'Maybe strawberry ice cream is my favourite',
and suddenly alarms go off in his head
'How? What? Nobody likes strawberry icecream!
This one is defective! Return to Sender!'

This one is defective.
You were mass produced
on a supply line for antsy, lonely nineteen-year olds.
This was their best year yet; the whole world is aching
but we're sorry to inform you but
Models made after 1995 are no longer supported.

To the scrapyard, then.
You fall and tumble and crawl out of love
like it's out to get you.
Like it's got its teeth in you,
nails tearing into flesh,
holding your ankles and begging you
to stay.

Find coastlines along the edges of your body,
mark your territory
and invite gallant young men to try their hand
at crossing a huge wall made of crystal glass
and steel verses.

Let them be afraid of the tombstones gathered
at the gates; tremble at their own risk
because your heart can't handle an unsteady hand:
it's filled to the brim.
And as the tourney dies down,
as the men scratch the surface
and leave with pieces of your arms,
your eyelashes, your cheeks,
there will be one
who is there when the dust settles.

Allow him to love you,
in a most consuming way; let him
take your body a shrine and let him
call it his only home.

Finally,
break his heart,
and watch as the poetry
spills out of you like
an angry river, from a spear
he wishes he'd hit into your chest
not cupid's arrow instead.

You become a handsome ruin
in the hands of the glass God; an imprint
of your presence on the coffee table
makes more hurt than the sound of you
almost putting your key in the door-
the dangling of keys, the pins shifting
like sands; I'm burning so bright now,
I think I'll turn these sands of time to glass.
You kissed me with such shards of love,
the blood in the mouth is the only memory of you left.

Fifteen years since I was safe.
Six years since I had a peace of mind.
One year, six months since our first kiss.
One year since our last.
Ten months since I last felt your touch.
Eight months since we had a conversation.
Seven months, five days since were were together.
Two months since it rained.
Two weeks since I last cried.

Three seconds since I last thought of you.

*My memory is my greatest enemy.

This is where the heart lies:
softly in the hands of rhyme
and meter; we've made a shrine
out of syntax and code.
We tell stories and we sing songs
about life and love, and this
is where some of us grow up,
this is where some of us die a little
each day.

This is our home, not your playground,
so keep your fights
out of here.

Fine, I will confess.
You have me.

You have me smiling at
the perfect shape of your perfect words.
Though half the world
create the distances between us
you map them with
the mere presence of you.
And I feel lonely no more.

You have me awake at night,
combing the depths of my half-awake mind,
searching for pieces of you
to go to dreamland with.

I sometimes blink twice
on a perfect moment,
as if to take a mental picture for you.
I sometimes rub my hands together
to feel how warm your face might feel like.

You have me.

You just do.

I die small deaths at the hand of remembrance.
Wear me like a red poppy on your lapel;
I want you to remember me like this:

in the rain, my summer dress
sticking to my body, cutting a figure
you've never seen: sadness.
She looks like sadness, she looks
like a tired box of bones with her arms
outstretched
calling out for love.
My eyes running with the water,
and repeating your name like some
******* prayer
and your arms like anchors and holding.
Nobody is ever going to love you like I do,
I said and you listened.
You listened then,
in the broken opus of rain hitting tin roofs,
and the ground melting at the touch of something
so pure.
But what of it, anyway.

You're going to need a bigger bunch
of flowers than this to make it right
this time.

A shout from across the dark,
you are impossible.

People are trying to sleep;
you are trying to keep me awake.

Please stay awake
You must stay awake.

If you fall asleep, I will be forced
to awake you from your deepest dreams.

Please stay awake.

You are shaking me and speaking not
in whispers into my ear.

Your sweet voice is humming into my mind,
singing to keep me awake-- cheap I tell you.

Please stay awake.

*I'm afraid of the dark.

I walk these roads as
if I had known that
letter boxes are more like
an ice-box for transplant hearts-
you must move quickly or else
time tames the rest.

Words were like the map of veins drawn
on the back of my hands; I
thought that maybe if I
keep on walking
my heartbeat like a siren beating very fast
could guide me home.

And I am home.