do you write her poetry or
did you let that part of you go too

she swallows coffee like she swallows pills,
leaving behind
some strangled
bitter lipped thoughts swimming in her mind,

denouncing prior dispositions,
innocence is lost
through trial, tribulation
emotion and logic dance crossed-
legged through this party of depression

hold on, hold, on,
i can't be your cure but can't i lead you to it?
we talked about going to Michigan, New York, can't you remember?
sat on my porch with wine and your pack of reds,
you know more than anyone that i just can't shut up when i'm drunk,
i can't shut up,
i'm drunk,
you said you'd visit me in the city,
or anywhere, i need you to wake up.

he starts swallowing alcohol and pills,
to numb out, to forget, to sleep,
it's not her fault it's not her fault it's not her

I woke up at a bar scene
fifteen years forward, you,
you stood the same way you stand
today and I recognized the back of your
figure the way I recognize the back
of my hand and
I wasn’t sure if the room around me froze
or I just simply froze myself, spilling
drinks like love and love like drinks
you wore the same shade of hypocrisy you
wore that day, that last day
I thought you were dead
I told myself you were dead
it went as imagined, you stumbled
over slurred words and wooden
stools and I remembered exactly why
our lines crossed quickly,
why fate didn’t keep us close for long
why I labeled you as ‘toxic’ and shelved
you in the back of my mind, for years
upon years upon years it’s been
almost 15

she's teetering on her own brathern image, her own contradicting existence. sitting, half-smiling, chewing on her sweet cigar who's tendrils of smoke are fully about you,
although, you could bet your last dime she'd never tell you
you don't quite know where she came from or wheres she going, she hasn't a clue either, she motions to her past with her eyes. you don't ask, you don't want to. drawn out, the color of polluted
icicles, the color of last winter when you forgot your promises. the room is silent, comfortable silence.
plywood paneled walls are stained with a raw throb of life
as if
as if
she wasn't so pessimistic about her love & the lack of it, no
the plot won't twist and yes love is lost, again
saddening? possibly, but frequent, similar to the way that she couldn't stomach a goodbye from him sometimes, to the point that she'd never say, to
the point where she'd break down in the front seat of his car on a thursday night screaming things weren't supposed to be this way.
she wants to know what runs through his mind when she's
talking circles and acting
heartless as always, but maybe she doesn't, maybe she liked the questions, it put her to sleep at night
she liked trial and error, mostly because every prediction of error was right, the ****** case
mystery, leaving without a single charge pressed or
a single trace left
she liked how love could transform from the fantasized fragment of a
slow form of magic to the painted tunnel on every wall
she keeps colliding,
her heart beat still falls
short every time she utters his name,
like the reminisce of a supernova,
in all the oddest of ways

every time i glance
out of my 4th story bedroom window
i see you
in the cigarette burn
that stains my window screen
tainted with the distant memories
of you

fleeting
the sound of my breath on the inner parts of your mind,
the back of your neck
the bruises of your ankles
the depth of your emotion
flat roofs, vacant hospitals, the wilting petals
of the mourner, Tuesday morning.
you awake,
screaming someone else's name
dismal ache, the gap for a heart
that you just had to fill

something snapped. i couldn't tell
whether it was my psyche or my conscious, my mouth or my
throat, my heart or my head, where is my home?
something between the degree of you and the oil i drop under my tongue to love myself
something between screaming at the ceiling for answers and waiting
for you like a child at a bus stop, the kitten in the window, the things we said we wouldn't let drop until
they did
they broke, it all went
to hell, sifting through old cut up love i found the
you's and the but's and the and's and the if's and
the birthday card you gave me on my fifteenth birthday,
the scribbled letters, the paraphernalia of the love i strangled to death
with my own bare hands and the
regretting of it a year later.

he's got sharpened nerves, although
he says he doesn't care much for logic.
his eyes distant and gazing and passing but whole-
similar color to the beer bottle he grasps in his left hand.
tighter than his grasp on the past, tighter than he remembered
says "God drives a dodge ram
he's the one who winks precariously when you walk by,
most days you pay little attention to, most days
you have little intention of meeting"
his veins real, they were the rivers studied and memorized
in geography in years past
he says "there's no use in loving shattered glass and broken memories and melted down candles."
"she said she loved me."
his knuckles fade to pale and white, bartender looks at me,
i look at him, quick exchange of glances as he mutters "Sir...."
his eyes a little more distant and detached than before,
he apologizes for his varying volume levels,
says "liquor used to subdue the pain. not intensify it"
tells me i'm interesting, tells me no one sticks around this long, why listen to the ashes of other hearts in the room?
tells me his wife used to have hair long like mine
his eyes fixed on the alcohol he's holding
swirls it around- looking for the answer somewhere
in the depths of his conversant bottle,
drinks it like water, creases and crinkles between the skin around his eyes tell me how long he's really been here
tells the bartender he's been alcoholic for twenty-some-odd years,
but he's never known what a happy hour felt like, says he never will.
tells me to stay in school, says he extinguished his potential like the fire did his home, crushed his future like his last five beer cans, couldn't care less
but he does.
there's wires under his skin and he's all broken radios,
says he meant to fix it a few years ago, says he never did
tells me she had a voice like a bar fight, like an open window during
the storm-
nothing was quite the same afterwards

nothing as reckless as a feigned indifference, reckless with a negative connotation- that is-
a pretended falseness and concealment of passion, obsession, a love….

inconsiderate of a universe’s ability to destruct, to ****** away any given scenario, to wipe clean the gravity between two souls, two minds, too much gambled. too large of a bet. high risk little return, no return.
none at all.

we bathe in sorrow hoping it lightens to laughter.
ashing cigarettes on our skin, dexterity
laziness in us all
leaving coffee black
leaving ashes paraphernalia of the love I burnt
with fists that turned cold, so cold, unclenched
a melancholy weeping for the sighs of metal breath.
an injection of remorse, what’s it quenching? what’s it worth?
what’s it asking? what’s it taking?
are we sinning? are we praying?
where’s the Dying end, where’s it stop,
tonic, what’d it tell you? did your analeptic 'screaming-to-the-ceiling' testify to the woes endured by a life on earth, a life lugged through, broken by its intricacies
we’re all on hands and knees
singing, sobbing, pleading, throbbing
it’s a beauty in the dead leaves, the Fallen I feel badly for, a reaching sympathy,
beyond what my hands express
we embody selfish bringings  
bursts of breath
balloons of noise of gasps of the lapse preceding death
is it hypocritical to enjoy the lack of closure, the abrupt ending, keeping bottles kept?
the myriad of leaving
the method to Drinking
heavy heaving
stumbling cross-legged through this party of contemplating Permanence, a greying breeding
i imagine a man heading a room ceasing noise not having to demand it no, rather whispering, whispering streams of thought of consciousness.... or the lack of it
on buzzing fragments of philosophy and rationale.....
or the lack of it*
the lack of a sounding foundation
the lack of a solid grounding of a planned pathway of a plan at all,
bottomless to the Bottom of the top of the

and you're stuck again, shivering
pretending to hear god
pretending he gives enough of a ****,
no,
no- there is no one.
the sound of your breathing is my salvation,
i've exhausted my resources. too many times.
some weeks i forget about your love,
last Sunday, and i showed up to see you with my neck bruised
as if i didn't know it'd lead to here,
now, reaching for someone something some high
it's always been you,
should i stay silent now?
rummaging through the heart ache, contemplating
a proclamation of everything i've ever felt,
or is it too late
tell me there's no deadline, no due date
loving each other is a ******* catastrophe
spilling emotions like wine, wine like hate
if i had one question, what the **** is fate?

breathe me in,
traces of love in my laugh
the calm you bring
something my words can't wrap themselves
  around
as silence's sound
draws me in, to crave
easiness in yesterday
even the water breathes
your name
finding way to within your arms
things i should say
but your beauty steals stage
so time gives, time takes
never wanting to break
shatter glass of this contrast
some hidden ache
retreats upon seeing your face
your hands arrive in all my dreams
dancing on skin-
rising something within
awakening some love,
some grace, i will sing

he's a two ****** drinker. pleads that maybe a bit more money would subdue him, a bit more leisure, a bit more love.
every sunday in secret he kneels at the pew, screaming at the alter "if only"
if only his mother never left, maybe things wouldn't be as they are. maybe he wouldn't wake up monday morning with the wood residue underneath his finger nails, the bitter after taste of wine on his tongue and the similar symbolic stain ringing in his head.
only resemblance of religion he's ever practiced, the only proof he's shouting at god for answers too.
but oh, the nights he drowns himself in liquor are the nights he said god responded once before. claims he heard his voice... he's all shaky hands now, blood shot eyes, spitting with every word... it goes unnoticed.
we never fully learn the meaning of being lifeless until we are, until we feel the bones nearing skin & the flesh between diminishing, until our marrow is blackening at a parallel rate to that of our heart,  until we've convinced ourselves the breath felt on the small of our neck is indeed god, is indeed death, it's then that we realize it wouldn't be so bad after all in the after life, if any

i've decided
i do miss the way you said my name
in the most innocent, casual sense
i dont even think you meant to say it
and i don't think i really heard it,
but i hear it now.
i feel my heart sink a bit closer to the floor once i realize
the sound of your voice is beginning
to transform into a memory, something foreign, something i don't know.
you spoke your tones through my name, sometimes your anger,
sometimes your apologies
attempting to vent what i feel through the bottom of my pen familiarizes me with what it was like for geologists to come up with words for how the continents fell apart,
and why planets can't be planets anymore.
your voice had varying volume levels just like my love for you and i'm sorry i'm bad at timing,
bombs come with warning labels,
and the nights i couldn't speak, i pointed
at mine.
and the nights i could speak, i told you,
you shouldn't await your detonation.
i tried

no-
what are we doing??!
i will not feel badly for you,
or pretend to.
yes-
it's true i hope you lay awake at night
resenting the constant reminder of your missing me,
each time a rain drop hits the roof above your head.
i will not be sorry.
when you told my friend you're empty, when
she showed me the messages of your admitting to needing me-
i laughed for a solid 9 minutes.
and i do not feel badly.
i told you, i told you i told you LUST DOES NOT PREVAIL LOVE.
i shouted it from rooftops, i yelled it into the phone, god ****** i tried.
' i told you so. '
this is not a math equation. and i'm no mathematician but
you didn't believe me. i wont lie
i hope it pains your heart to see me gone and alive and well,
i hope you miss me more than the horizon misses the sun each night.
i was your sun.
i know that.
now, wasn't it silly to think you could replace your sun with some star that attends the same school as you?
i'm aware we don't reside in a heliocentric universe but **** do i know
you need me.

do your day-drinking habits subdue the ache in your chest you're exposed to every time you find yourself sleepless for two days' length of time?
i sure ******* hope so.

something in you is shaking, even when you're still
it's easier to give up
and that's what they don't tell you
saltine crackers taste better than torment
and coffee better than water
whiskey better than coffee
the sunrise, isn't always silent.
sometimes it's hell,
sometimes it's leaving your ex lover a voicemail they rather sleep through than hear sometimes it's pacing back and forth on the sand,
lonely
it's waking up,
exhausted
it's gravestones taking place of land
and hearts and images and memories
blurred, fizzy moss
spreading over skin of the people we once knew
it's not so bad it's not so bad it's not so
is it the ashes that are smearing your past?
when we can't think straight
and you are just i's and I'm just somewhere
not here are we
shaking or is it the room

It was sobering;
His hands, the laughter,
The murderous sips of a love that wouldn’t last, yet couldn’t die
Just the same
All the same,
We drink on
Finding the barren path to be your saving grace –
As if I cared.
I don’t care.
I only want to bottle your anxiety until I see your smile again,
Sit on some glacier, pleading cheers to your cure,
To be your cure
To sing away your worry, delusion
To embarrass myself so much so that you may just forget your tiny insecurities,
Your teeth, hands
Without returning my love, of course
I never return
What would the wine taste of?
Love, or better yet tears?
The broken bits of your impaired heart, my awful mind,
A temptation to outdate a clouded daytime
My cold heart gets exhausting, misses our warmth
Your skin, lashes
With notes of your favorite fruit, my favorite song
It feels right, it feels right, I just want it to feel wrong

your skin was the bark
of my favorite willow tree
I’ve never lived in the same house for
three years but
your smell brought me home.
time and time again.
I whispered “you my friend,
are irreplaceable.”
don’t let the tires of gas-guzzling
trucks run over your fragile leaves but
let people carve their names into you.
you’ll still be taller than them.
the moss that grows along the rivets
in your veins
let it grow
it adds to your existence, I’d say
I loved you but
I still do

walking thru the broken garden of things you were supposed to heal,
people, you told not to rely
as if every cut stem wasn't a sign,
petal, as potential's ashes
burning away in seconds of time
drenching death in red,
quiet sky overhead, pleading pleads of why, pleads of please, pleads of try
trailing hopes you have to extinguish
never exposing tangle in vine,
essence of your core.
soul drips soil, drips wine
like every past lover you try to ignore

the same echo that resonates in my fourth story bedroom resonates in my soundless soul and in the ashtray that sits on my window sill
it shouts memories back at me from when we sat there
too dependent to care
before we turned cold and the marrow in our bones began to blacken
before we lost each other; to the ache of life itself
i shouldn’t have introduced you to cigarettes,
i shouldn’t have introduced you to depression or illness or satan himself
you claimed you had been there, you're different now
i’ve stained you with what i’ve been trying to run away from
now you're running away from me
too scared of pain and the void in your gut, i see you in everyone
i see you in myself
and i see myself in you
and i know that’s a cliché--
but it frightens me and settles me all at the same time,
something i don’t want to feel,
you were my home, i don’t have one anymore
i live on the streets looking for some sort of temporary house
to reside in
the homeless nights are the worst.  
i used to vent my emotions to you without using a filter,
my thoughts, my routines, me...
i closed the vent now and pour the feelings into bottles labeled ‘don’t drink,’
i store them in dark, dusty corners
of myself, labeled 'don't enter,'
near ribcages and organs and sometimes i hope that one day,
when you somewhat heal,
and your therapist tells you you’ve done well,
you’ll get drunk off of me all over again… but don’t.
don’t poison yourself,
you’re too good of a human for that and maybe i’ve always been empty
but you filled my void, and i wont pretend that anyone else can.
somedays i wish you craved the toxic drink that i am.

nothing hurts worse than the cataclysmic rot in your heart
ache in your head
this burden has lips and a mouth and can speak and can shout all the things you've done to deserve the bitterness in your breath
his bestfriend's bruises on your neck
gravel on the ground fades, a grey background
father gets out of jail tomorrow, always bad news
silence has a sound and the static you hear when I'm not around, running, always running to what end? where are we now?
why's it taken you so long this time to speak up, admit you miss me,
you always do. I make fun of the parallels in history only until
they're through

gasping
on the brink of death
and i didn’t give a ****
you forced oxygen into my soul
you gave me a reason for living
you didn’t care
that i wanted to die
you justified my existence
you fought me
and fought me
until i realized
i can breathe on my own
there’s plenty of reasons for life
(you were one)

the weeks after i stopped crying myself to sleep, nights became smiles of embracing my sadness. i learned to become whole with a part of me gone. i learned to be okay with not being ‘all-there.’ you stopped flooding my mind, instead; metaphors did. i asked god, why, would he keep me writing about something that wasn’t there anymore. “what is the ******* point!” i screamed to the ceiling, to view out of my window, to myself. maybe i have gone mad. haywire, bizarre, who cares. because the nights i turned my light back on and began to write are the nights i learned the most. about living. i’m questioning god like i questioned my father on the brown paper bag he brought into the car, full of something i’d later learn destroyed many things more than my trust for him. i’m questioning god like the scar on my left hand and why i don’t remember how it got there. i’m questioning god like i question my reflection, like i used to know who it was, how i don’t anymore.

lovers kept
perched in some realm above land,
land of black and white -
monotony -
we flow from -
to -
as grey,
shades leaking / love breathing
into body,
  but mind,
spirit - you are my heart,
collected fragments gathered thru out my day
whispering rays of light into laugh,
into cloud song
soars,
like the voice that carries, avec moi,
the one i love
something opens,
to reach him, us, ABOVE

i.e. such a ******* mess-- am i getting somewhere better?
i bottled my emotions,
then poured them on the floor
you slipped, you tripped, i laughed
I. i find notes you wrote me in my school planner,
this used to make me cry, today they made me laugh
II. i used to ignore your texts by opening them so you'd see but,
now they remain delivered
III. i used to get heart-pounding anxiety for going on twitter,
just to see your name. now, i've muted you
IV. i'm not scared anymore
V. i'm not scared

and i wondered who sat behind me,
staring at the back of my head while
i busily wrote emails and discussed life’s problems
with my greatest friend across from me.
while on his way out, he told me my hair was pretty
and **** do i just wish i would have said a more
heartfelt thank you.
maybe he pondered whether or not to tell me that,
who knows where he comes from.
maybe he's lived a long life and his wife has died
and that’s why he was sitting in this coffee shop alone
on a monday afternoon reading newspapers,
maybe she had long hair too.

they spit gold; expect
you to fall in love; maybe some do
they will, i can't
Raw is real, found between lines of silence,
not orders of gin & tonic,
not flashing lights but light of soul,
incandescent, all that shade lets in
all that warmth, in subtle gaze
we yearn for in winter
i yearn for you: most days

loving you is driving into circles,
far beyond the speed limit, like when
you hit 108 on the highway, before you know it,
you’re ending up smashed against the
hardest brick wall in town
nobody ever told me I needed insurance
the rates aren’t going down
**** I’ve invested in you and only you but see
talking to you is talking to the blank page
ive been staring at for far too long
you are my writers block some weeks and
others, you, the only
picture my pen ink paints when scratching surface
of empty paper, my mind dispenses nothing more.
maybe if I drink too much coffee I’ll become
emotionally vacant to the point where I forget
your name, see
i try to write about the sky,
sometimes recovery,
sometimes something. but
your initials float through
the thoughts in my head and
I see you in words, I feel you in the back
of my throat
youre gone, I left before closure
could concur but for some reason
youre still the spitting image of the word
home when I hear it

your liquid song of laughter, song of love,
returns me to your arms
I long to pour the nights spent by your side
into bottle,
as holy tide
to wash and feel again
my body
   in your seven seas of love,

I leave you only to witness my own damp words and salty letters,
my palms ache, my fingers
forget their place
as they long for your own
I watch them sigh, as my eyes,
   precipitate

Perhaps - out of joy, appreciation
as I attempt to love you without flaw
falling far too short often times,
to express heart's admiration

However
the continual task could be no greater
I feel love swell in my heart upon the mention of your name
flowing in and out of my mind throughout my day-
like turquoise waters
other memories; they decay
into desert
but you, your holy ways,
see me to the end
I'll prove again, again
how you turn my veins into rivers, running
as this faucet of your heart is unprecedented
how eagerly I look to your constellation each night
and pray it to remain
as you are
I pray your current is not fleeting
I dawn to keep your voice near always,
   folded in light

Will you take refuge in my shadows? or
will you wallow when day turns overcast,
will you still find way in these grey skies,
let love rain; allow me to live in mist of your
truths, wet with the glow of your embrace?
distance cannot strip this symphony of our love,
will not dismantle, dilute,
these sonatas and floods
   as time trickles on my dear,
   you have me wholly
   writing to you only, in blood
will not ruin these rivers and rhymes
   see me to the end, my dear,
   to the end of time

five shots later
and you're still my motivation to finish off this bottle;
get you out of my head
my vision is blurry but
i see us smoking cigarettes on my roof last july, so ******* vividly
my words are slurred but
i could still mimic the way you said my name, as if it meant anything
my hands are shaky but
i can feel you- worse; i can feel your absence; detonating my mind

the day rains
bliss eats lovers, swallows whole
the memories of the fallen,
  for,
     we fall again
  smooth edges of this path,
  sing in underwater love
  like tide,
  i
  surrender to your warmth, your laugh

the tops of our trees, the lack of leaves,
with a pulse.
there's eloquence in contrast. Contrast.
makes up the tone of our days,
the fridays we choose not to wake up for,
smelling the sweetness of our cigarette against the coffee we were far too lazy to sweeten,
but there's beauty in the raw. in the raw, throb, of a break in routine,
in analyzing the why and where,
why i'm stuck in Virginia, why father stopped paying child support,
where a drink turns to alcoholism,
where people insist on resisting to a permanence in memory. Or,
the opposite, a beg a plead to remain.
to stay.
why he begs me to stay,
more so, why i push the love in my life away

how it feels to stand under sun, within her soft and subtle reach,
her gently impressive golden cast on skin so alive one could see
beams of warmth and love, warmth that emphasizes
the shade we normalize time and time again.
Mornings to long for, breath of sun, grounding of earth: wholeness within

Pale orange glow bounces off buildings, their ashes, the past
Whispering clouds in delicate tones of sweetened contrast
between boys in black and white whirling wind that way and this
golden radiant cast we wish we could hold, keep, kiss,
Bottle into elixir and never risk to miss
Chance at distinguishing
A wind from the sun
All in knowing,
Love is light;
Unrivaled
Within  
One

scribbling lost jargon of love,
strung out on last weekend's blow,
roommate sleeps,
i contemplate;
wind in tunnel of the heart,
feeling life, digging whatever
happens to be next, no form
bottle freedom,
i want to feel as an occupation
cold is so old,
outdated is the mindset of feigned
intimacy, for the sake of what?
i preach catharsis to my ex lover
in his mid life crisis, pointing out my
hypocrisies,
we're all on hands and knees
we sleep on the thought of holding lovers
without holding back.
the Way you look at me,
more importantly how i look at you
Ecstasy,
how your mocha eyes thaw my loveless heart,
Beams, A cast i can see
if i try hard enough,
write hard enough -
i want to be the most natural poem you've ever picked up pen to write,
the most non-obligatory song you're ever to sing,
yet still do - in all freedom,
beauty,
light; that love's call could bring.

we're comparing rivers to veins and calling it a metaphor,
we're bending our backs to conform the circular shape of society but don't we eventually end up snapping? into something we didn't even know we had in us?
maybe poetry is just thoughts lost in translation of conversation between you & i, the things i wanted to say,
the things i never did.

like a tsunami you want to tuck into bed
settle down end the rage
leave the city for a few days
breathe in the air of these old ripe trees
and sing the song of frozen spring
a loving freeze
shake about in airy ease
dance again
let's dance

language spun in gold thread,
growing flowers in ancient worlds of love
I've lacked the feeling for,
for too long
your touch makes every other bed feel so wrong.
for years I've been cold;
yet you seem to be an exception -
in rays of unbiased love,
how could i deny your perfection?
in morning black coffee, your eyes form,
making return to new york a bit harder
than predicted,
No doubt i'll miss your warmth,
your breath, dance, song; unprecedented
See,
Bed always occupied with mere lust and
my lack of will to call back;
yet you were woven out of something other -
Radiance, light,
like wine i'd keep drinking; just give me another

I want to stain your heart
The way you stained me
But instead of cruel words,
I want the reminisce of me
To make you ache.  
I want to **** you with kindness
That isn’t so kind
5 years from now
When you hear my name
If you hear my name
I want your insides to crumble
Especially your blackened lungs
All that black
All from that terrible, cigarette addiction
That I sparked in you
(I hope you don’t quit)

looks like morning in your eyes
gentle light and easy love, hidden between lines of
sunrise and fragments of dawn,
singing some sweet song,
but yesterday's gone
i'll dream of tomorrows dressed in red
the moon's loving between all the distance,
in all its sun kissed instance,
we will dance and join hands beating
to this laced heart of mine
circling around whatever i once was
before learning these types of love
the lack thereof
what i wasn't cut out for
you light a cigarette and call as if it's 4 years before,
as if i should be yours
love rest assured
but ex-lovers perpetuate sunken habits while you awaken soul and mind
my subtle stream of sunlight
i dream of and almost accidentally tell everyone
even the sun
even my ex-lover before our call has seemed done
for a while now, and i'm still wandering chinatown as if it isn't sunday evening
as if i've ever known anything besides leaving
as if the sun isn't yet reaching dusk, slowly,
reminding my skin of yours & its gentle touch
as if you're like the rest, as if it's merely lust

how many times have you sat down to write a letter you knew you'd never send?

do you find them later, years later, in some untouched folder of your desk, some forbidden cigar box, some forgotten bin.
do you laugh.
do you cry? can you feel the impermanence of emotion you cemented in ink, feelings felt deeply, so deeply, that you sat down to write them in a letter you knew you'd never send.
do you still do it again, even though you're only left with more paraphernalia of unsaid words,
adding to your pile of feelings you felt so deeply you sat down to write them in a letter you knew you'd never send, and didn't.

jazz filled rooms light up with your words and even in my ******* haze i see you, bright, mixing metaphors to magic and bringing me to my knees for some reason i don't know why, your beauty your breath your mind is a solace for love burnt in the flames i led you to, death always knocking but i'd open with you,
sipping red on a sunday on any day
the day to be alive
kissing friends kissing lovers kissing fire, love is free but she's forgotten how to see light in the wind and depth in the dark,
did i dream of you last night, spinning language in drunk love?
or was it only an overlay of hope, tracing scribbled fragments of what's to come

and i'll pretend
that i am perfectly okay.
that every time i accused you of not loving me anymore,
and you told me to calm down,
my heart didn't begin to race a million miles per minute and my breathing didn't begin to weigh down my chest and my hands didn't shake like your voice speaking to my mother on a sunday morning.
granted, i may or may not have already finished half the pill bottle, but won't seven painkillers **** my pain?
maybe you'll see what you're doing to me when my vision is too blurred to read your messages

dawn breaks
settles
reaches out to whisper tones of brilliance
in delicate day to day
stillness i could hope to stay
but to keep on
is to move, love, toward light round as time
as some everlasting note some
beauty,
an openness, a sign
of,
my love,
sing to me
every broken bell still echoed in kept symphony
any beat, melody
every thought of heart
need not to dance thru beauty
for you already are

i'll pack my bags and my suit case and i'll run out of this ****** home faster than i fell in love with you and moved in.
will my absence mean anything to you? i guess we'll find out
i'll risk it.
i want to live somewhere where my prescene has a value
i want to be in a home where i'm wanted
i'm sorry i'm too insecure to appreciate your efforts, but
you've changed. i've changed too.

your hands are shaky and your mind is buzzed with coffee I can see it through your eyes-
they speak to me, tell me things about your prior life that you can't find the words to describe
it's okay, I forgive you. I'm on my fourth cup today anyways and well honestly the idea of life itself scares me, see, I'm not that courageous.
is abandoning you courageous? my friends think so. I don't, rather I think it was the cowardly thing to do- forget all emotions until I'm fully convinced I forgot how to love, no I just forgot how to need you.
I forgot that I want you more than anything and I forgot it's okay to feel,
I'm not human anymore and well that's okay

and when i miss you
i edit pictures of your coffee colored eye
taken from last summer,
laying in my bed when life was simple.

lastly,
we used to joke about
ending up in hell together.
we wouldn't mind it,
i used believed you could make hell seem like home.
you probably could've
but maybe you didn't want to be anywhere with me,
maybe you knew you were headed for the devil
and just wanted a friend.
maybe i was just your emotional support,
rock to rest on,
the phone number you always knew you could call.
maybe that's why after i lost my ****
you went running,
and suddenly,
i couldn't be the one for you anymore.
i hope you find someone new
to drag to hell with you

the drugs haven't worn off and neither have you.

i bask in sunlight **** as peach picked from vine,
je pense... for the rest of time,
could we align?
i've missed her hand this winter, as i've missed you,
she called to say she missed my skin too
juice falls from my eyes as i cry, they say love is blind as i long to see why,
bombs are blown into backyards by the rich world,
while we drink more and more
spring kisses me softly as i strive for my own liberation,
i thought your love would contribute to,
until pride stood in the way with his own agenda
i'm still trying to find
if it's love you sing and contain for me,
or something i mustn't fight
love is to conform to one another, not to dismantle
the other
to step down from ourselves and meet somewhere more earthly and pure in between
build the other from the pain we've produced by our own
two hands
saturday mornings are for love coffee and poetry,
analyzing our bodies for the points of stress and writing from the knots in our mind,
wrestling to relax and grow closer to our soul
i want to learn the language of the birds
perhaps we could talk over coffee if i could speak their delicate words
perhaps you and i could talk if my defenses could lie down to rest,
until the next wound
perhaps i belong only in this light
twirling my words like ribbons around heart's tension
singing along to french music wishing i were a peach in the rural east
swaying with the willows, licking sunlight, dripping into the mouths of lovers,
it is me on which they feast

the kind of dosage you swallow out of awareness
separation from your present state;
skidding, through the thoughts of
a golden wash of goodness as we
scratch at our minds for answers, pleading the back and the forth
as if it’d bring us closer to any revelation
any inner spot of fragrant, wholesome, peace
that we die for, try for,
dream about in dance
eventually coffee turns cold and you wake and you realize you’ve only been spinning language for ages and getting called beautiful;
it’s a trick,
like regurgitating our sins,
to squeeze the burden out from under the skin
and rehearse burning letters, along ourselves
the anthem to the liberation
from the coated and waxed framed guilt ridden pane of mind,
breaking a neck to watch the sky,
your vision is blurred, everything looks like its shooting this way and that and maybe all your wishes
are based on misinterpretations
still you dance your way to new york with lights as noose around your neck
strangled by life and its smooth bitterness,
the ease to unexpected accelerations,
not getting out of bed,
rummaging about a box of letters you were supposed to burn years ago,
ought to have,
else you wouldn’t be here contemplating permanence in jailed yellow paper with your cruel last name on all sides
******* my way through a calendar, how many years, just how many has it been,
crossing streets to shake hand with your burden-
your memory’s meanest friend

something about the way she said, maybe.
hesitant and airy. gloom.
hands trembling pouring orange juice at breakfast too late in the day.
that way.
but tell me do you know why her father left?
more so, why she left him?
do you know if the scar on her right side is symbolic to some prior injury or just a birthmark, tell me the story of why she's moved so many times. maybe you don't know her address or her favorite song but does she take her coffee black or with two sugars?
what do the colors of her sundresses taste like... what about when it storms?
is her poetry for you or about you, maybe
neither, maybe you'll never know
maybe she wants it that way.
when you tell her she smells like home-
what image dances along the movie screens in your mind?
if you could travel back to last summer would you erase the weeks she hooked you to cigarettes, did you smile or shutter at her angelic tone when she shouted "*******" for the last time?
why she learned to love plants instead of humans?
why her sighs sound like exit signs?
maybe, why she speaks in metaphors and breathes in monotones.

i do know the definition of gradual
and i do know that is the opposite of what we are,
what we were
we fell, thinking
it was all by choice.
love hit like you slamming down your
bedroom door in the midst of your temperamental
breakdown, and heartbreak hit even worse.
there was no choice in this cataclysmic equation,
we couldn't live without each other and that was something
we just had to accept