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

the nights i lay awake
far past the hour society has began to sleep
i imagine the look on her face
when you first brought her to your room.
when she first saw my name carved to your bed frame
how'd that conversation carry?
did it weigh down the air in the room
forming a burden on your back,
how'd it end?
did you tell her you fell out of love with me,
did you lie and say “i didn’t write that.”
did it make you miss me,
did your heart drop to your stomach at the thought of
love once lost and did
your head ache with the thought i could move on,
i know it did.
you were driven crazy past the title of insecurity
to the point of hiding how you felt, now
you're a blur. but i could still
rewrite your atoms better than any
fragment of the bible, and every 9th day of every month
i look for you, for what you were.
the scar on my left arm from your cigarette burn
tells more stories than any novel ever could.
the letters you wrote me, did she see those too?
and tell me, what raced through your mind.
was it her?
these are the things i’d like to ask you, but
yes i’m guilty of letting fear stop me.
the fear of those five words that could stop a heart beat
and implode a building,
that could tear open the scars on my heart and
run my mind straight into the brick wall i’m staring at,
“i don’t love you anymore”

what is this...
your 45th year?
maybe 46th. who knows
i know that last night the scar in my ear drum
woke back up- shouting at me.
reminder of the abuse i've encountered...
[hey this is good and bad.]
you haven't lived if you haven't been
brainwashed a sufficient amount to believe in
your father to the same degree as your god.
to blame 'abuse' and your definition of it on
your 11 year old self.
i laugh at the people who pity you,
who fall naive to your criminal ways.
[i laugh at my old self....]
maybe i should say happy birthday.
and although you didn't give a gift
or deliver a card last november,
maybe i should give you the book i read about
humans like you.
[are they humans]
is it this year you threatened to ****** my mom?
oh yeah, thats right.
i'd like to thank you for the comedy,
you told my lawyer i've never seen your drugs;
i probably needed the laugh that day anyways.
i wonder if we have different creators,
and i wonder if yours regrets his 'masterpiece'
and if not, i wonder am i truly 50% you?
because that, my friend is a scary thought to carry.
is it this year your alcoholism crashed your car?
thats right.
i know your facebook post would beg to differ but it wasn't fatigue, daddy.
[your criminal record holds to be more true than your word.]
i'm just thanking my gods your son
wasn't in the seat beside you.
thankful your remorseless mind wasn't set to **** that night.
is it this year you'll discover what you are?
maybe one day you'll come to terms with
the title, "psychopath;" ****
maybe you already know.
[you wont manipulate us anymore.]
*happy birthday, daddy.
         love always,
              ray ray

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

it's about learning that love doesn't come with an address
rather, a skeleton you hung in the subconscious element of your closet
i'm learning the grey area that resulted in the clash of our existences is something i don't fundamentally need
three days ago i realized its something i don't want
hey i'm still writing to you as if it were my career and i'm learning that
with you, i never had to taste the metallic tone of closure
i just, left. you didn't know
my last "i love you" would be the last and
instead of writing you novels and sobbing in between
every page, i stomped my feelings into bottles and lately i've been busy imagining the emotion that comes along with splitting a fine wine thats festered in my gut for quite some time
maybe i'll share it with my mirror,
sleeping on the floor is becoming much too frequent as is getting drunk off of emotion, only to
wish you were here

the beckoning beauty in our flowers,
your lips
the softness in our dance, your hands,
my hips
sweetness in song as your stare steals my breath
I smile, forget
all our wrongs, reckless carnage
what was to come out of catharsis--
back where we began, the love never
dies, when will I,
in your hands
your whispers
take me back, laughing meadows,
your voice was my song,
your mocha eyes form in my writing
caffeine only lasts so long

i recall my first bar fight
all skeptical eyes and words i needed to spew out  
filled with hatred and abuse and
screams of a twelve year old's pent up anger,
this isn't okay- they'll tell you it is,
perfectly normal for your father to
take you to christmas dinner
at the local bar your girlfriend tends at,
maybe this is when i learned to argue
maybe this is when i learned not to flinch
at the sight of your temper,
no, i flinched at my ten year old brother
in the smoke-filled billiards room, playing pool with
forty year old alcoholic men
no, i flinched at the sound of my eight year old sister
asking, 'daddy, why can't you drive straight?'
see- CP shuckers doesn't suffice for a visitation  
and maybe i was twelve,
but if my torn ear-drum could talk
it'd tell you that hit wasn't discipline
explaining why it was mommy's fault for leaving
isn't the fatherly thing to do,
the pernicious potential of keeping you in my life,
see- the risk was exponential.
the rain fell in ropes that evening and
it wasn't coincidence your three were
the only children there,
i spoke in roman numerals and
maybe that was the last time we really spoke,
maybe three years later i am really writing about it

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.

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

maybe earthquakes are just god playing the piano and
maybe my anxieties are construed from the amount of times you said you missed me and i said goodbye
as if you'd ever stop seeing her,
as if i'd ever stop drinking
but when i see you every few months or so, it's as if the
planets are aligned again,
for that tiny speck of time,
only to part their ways and neglect
to recognize each other's existence
until gravity inevitably pulls them close,
the universe feels quiet. time could freeze,
things could heal,
but maybe i'm so terrified of you calling me to say the only mistake you made was wrongly defining the word "love,"
that each moment spent saying you wanted to love me again was entirely out of boredom,
i'll tell you how i watched love die in my hands,
the mistakes i didn't see until i had written them in ink

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

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

find me the right words right melody,
hidden amongst the lovers who don't know the ending,
don't crave it like i do
morning blue
barely awake, alive to feel the day
the songs of everlasting notes beating to their laid out script in the heart
let symphony play
let it reign
until destruction beckons for the stage,
to feel it's name,
it will crash like your lover's come down
your heart or *******
let it reign

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.

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

does real love require plan,
when to fall and feel and all
or can we just dance
under this moon that begs me,
this mist that moves me,
descends from mountain sways from skyline
filling every space
as liquid
as ink emboldening some drown up distinction
of love and lust
a shake from my regular cold, just trying to adjust
as if i didn't have to love too late
say the word - and i shall leave,
today,
but today
something about your hands that leaves me tangled in light
kissing same mist of the unspoken
across the stars of this distant night
i want to love you brilliantly,
watch you shine, sing in your arms
risk the feel risk the fall
if love is easy is love worth it at all

your'e learning to live out the reflection you see as if your only audience were the mirror, pointing out your third degree burns just to say you’re not the only one with bones melting in trust issues,
God is wondering why he set flame to things that gave a ****,
then he wonders why you ran up to him without introducing yourself first, screaming, shouting; questioning his existence like we question our own. we found answers underneath our skin like metal, you said we build homes in ourselves but that isnt what I found, not close
you’ve been knocking on god’s door and theres no answer, 7 years later and your heel is tapping against the table so violently driven by sole anxiety, your eyes are drawn straight ahead of you, the whiskey bottle on the table remains out of focus, the liquid nearly gone but it has a presence, its there, its shaking too. its then that you realize home was wet pavement, humid august days and cigarette smoke, maybe it wasn’t so chemical but maybe i was just addicted to sharing one with you. am i not supposed to question the reason behind my principal telling my i'm schizophrenic? was i not supposed to confide in my pen to teach me how to let go? i’m sorry i thought the bible was unnerving, i wasn’t meant for unclenched fists. i’m sorry for taking love for granted, im sorry im so numb now, i wasn’t meant for paralysis, or self diagnosis, i’m memorizing facts about myself because i’ve forgotten who i was. theres a reason why the phrase goes “god awful” and theres a reason i’ve always wanted to match thunder’s harmonies, why i’ve wanted to uproot my soul and plant a new one, why love hit like you slamming down your bedroom door at the thought of me with someone new.
you want to know why the clock stopped ticking? i dropped it. the weight you lost from not eating for a week became a new weight of burden on my shoulders, my headache convulsed itself into a full on, blood-pulsing, body-ache. why could you never pronounce the name of the abandoned building you chose to explore?
i don’t want to speak in metaphorical tones any longer, stop telling me i speak poetry, because tomorrow night when i’ve far too finished my bottle of ***** the creases of my bed sheets will be shouting and whispering your name all at once, something i cant tolerate, my back is too broken from sleeping on the floor too frequently, already. my mind is every burnt out match you've ever used, i want to send postcards to every person who ever thought i had a chance. every contraction of silence, i feel it, every movement of living its overwhelming, i see it, i hear it, there is no end. there's no resemblance to the way i should be living. i’m trying to familiarize myself with the way i used to breathe without the effort, it’s not like that anymore.
you're an alcoholic, living in a ghost town of who you used to be. i'm walking the dusted roads finding recollections of things you used to care about, i still haven't found myself, i question if i ever will. you’ve shattered all the street lamps, you’ve smashed windows of buildings you’ve built, you’ve personally kicked over mailboxes and ran through redlights and you’ve deleted the word hope from your limited vocabulary and i’m sick of mediocre people who think writing is for the weak.
next time you notice my ghost, **** it.
the other night i watched you sit down at an old piano, it refused to play, you began to cry, it reminded me of the way you loved me, it’s too late for me to turn the lights back on, don’t you see i’m dead? i’m navigating my way without eyesight, i’ve stumbled on two too many tables and now my poetry is only available in the form of bashing my head against the walls until they begin to speak.
our love was clockwork. silly, time-ticking abomination of something that fizzled out beneath itself, we said it wouldn’t happen, i pretended like i didn't see it coming, we wouldn’t let it, we did. i’ve spent too much time checking your astrological sign's forecast, predicting you, but how interesting to think i’m not even guaranteed another hour-
do i want to be?

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

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

lets throw ourselves from a bridge and call it love instead.
im afraid of closure,
so lets just go
quietly.
i’ll read your text and never respond,
never.
8 months from now you'll lay awake in bed
at 3 am
wondering where the **** i went,
and where the **** i am.
8 months from now i’ll wonder how you're doing
and where the **** we could have been
but baby I’m burnt out.
too exhausted to feel this much.
whats my mental sanity worth? i guess we’ll find out.

i’ve always preferred rainfall over sunshine.
maybe that’s why i preferred you.
but maybe
when this plane fell from the sky
there were no life preservers or
oxygen masks or second chances.
second chances was another way
to write paradox
second chances were inscribed
on to the back of my throat
like paintings i couldn’t see,
paintings i didn’t see until we
had been drowning for too long.
sketched in my soul were
all of the things i should
have said to you, all of the
things i could never say to you-
i wasn’t decent enough
for a second chance anyways
i’ll wash my hands instead.
this time i’ll use my blood
now,  
i hope every time you kiss her
you cough from my poems
caught in your throat
and every time you hear my name
a house fire starts in your lungs and
when it reaches your eyes you
have to pretend you don’t feel the burn
and every time you tell her ‘I love you’
you stutter from
the sound of my voice,
like an eviction notice,
nailed to your door
like the god you once believed in.
you used to plead slurred words saying
i made you okay,
i’d stand there in silence
wondering if one day
you’d notice the thunderstorm
that i really am

my biggest fear came true. before,
you used to see a person i couldn't find in the mirror, now
you see me the way i see me too.

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.

Today
I will sing my sins as if I
Hadn’t yet learned right from wrong
As if I didn’t recognize
The becoming wrinkles of my skin
The fading of preconceived thought
The fading of what we were
As if I don’t conjure up detonating
Definitions for what we depict as
Reality,
As if I don’t feel it
As if the wind doesn’t rattle through my
Bones and shake my soul and wither
Me away
You reach out your hand
I turn the other way
Chrome colored lines that intersected
At the wrong time, the wrong place in history
As if I don’t consider
Dying, intentionally
Projecting perceptions through this lens
Titled reality,
White upon the spine
Drawing images and you feel it,
The finality of your
Vitality

today my handwriting looks
as if it belongs in a gruesome ******
scene
i sorta feel like i belong
there too
the ice in my coffee is melting and im
considering all the ways in which love
can fade.
what if we didn’t try to move on?

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.

you strung my heart out
you brought me out to sea, to crush me again
i want out
i think i’m stuck- in a riptide?
yes, a riptide,
i want out
i don’t need a boat for saving
and i don’t need you to help
i want to turn around
i want to see my land
and i want out
i want to swim straight out
of your ******* ocean
before i ever let you tell me again to
‘stay’

pulse of this city in your presence, more alive,
as your eyes,
they sing back the beauty of every building scraping sky, gently- as you
pluck the strings of heart i thought had lost
amongst the midst
of olden day,
this polluted air will miss your wide smile of streaming light, the light i watch
in golden day,
filter thru your hair, as cloud, as in the only angel whose delicate voice could speak so loud,
resonates thru my soul in sound,
the silence of your skin i'll miss
as memory, begging me to replay
over and over until
the day
your big brown eyes again find my grey

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

a guilty wave of my past enters my mind
sloshing around, tidal emotion.
i see the man pulled over on the sidewalk fixing his bike for 48 hours and i see
the mothers walking with mothers, lonely but not alone
i see the ******* sun which i've been staring at for the last 20 minutes waiting to rise and i see you,
in all the ways we'll never be again
it's shouting at me to come home
but i've tried too many times
sadly missing you no longer comes in waves
i feel it in tsunami tides

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.

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

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

disappeared
you were gone
you were gone
the way autumn leaves
so quickly
where did all the leaves go?
the way your favorite song ends
i want it again
and again
and again
the way my last cigarette ends
i think i’m addicted
to *you

summer poetry kills us now.
Lemon.
like, lemon on your tongue,
but you love it
like, and you wish i wasn't so ******,
and i wish i wasn't so ******,
it's ironic in the way we keep living
i stopped calling
i stopped praying
cigarettes on my skin, that magic 8 ball, what'd it tell you?
stop asking me why i leave so often.
but hey, the last time your horoscope got it right- it hit you
along with every shot you took that night
singe, we singe our skin, chemistry converts calories and
today my bus almost crashed. almost
it goes something like, the unprecedented laughs we hadn't heard until its over
its over

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

trees sing, rejoice
in unoppressive love - A balance,
yet not plain,
i want to dance to your voice
light of morning, ocean of love,
grace of rarity i'd like not to lose
light straight to soul,
mind in moon's flow,
mediocrity in most inevitably leads
my trace of thought to you,
by hand, garden of fragrant & wholesome peace
illuminates the cacophony around me,
the loveless lack of you,
by pale warm sun body bathed
upon intertwining with your mind, radiant mind
    still felt in clouded daytime

I try to find a way to a calm,
an easy breath,
wash away, they say
come home. lay it down.
I ask,
where'd he go, where'd he go
it was only yesterday
three-minute cigarettes on our break,
mocha eyes on my greying blue.
yours the rusted pier, mine the capped water
beneath
a frantic heart I knew how to read,
elegantly,
with his quiet voice. quiet stare
into today,
I've forgotten our rhythm
you turn away at jokes about my present lovers
I turn cold at the thought of you, her, new york,
you said,
you said you didn't love her
what happened to the plead?
the casualty you couldn't let slip
the phone call from 6 hours away, I'm gone,
I'm gone,
I tell you to leave but I love it,
and once you leave I'm lost.
In a trance, not yours but the lack of you
is crippling
wrenching, curious,
as strong as my steadfast belief in lovers' telepathy,
you'll call, you'll call
I tell myself on and on
in dreams of you I was too tired to watch
hidden fragments you subtly show
show
show, don't tell

i woke up to stars fluttering around my head
and a strange operator of crude remarks,
protruding my thoughts as if they weren’t
real enough to see-
i feel dimmed. i hope you don’t.
yesterday when i saw your mother in
the grocery store, it tripped me up
my mind distracted from my sample cup of black coffee,
i lost all focus, i threw it out
i found myself 30 minutes later in the restroom
talking to the mirror
i hope you don’t, ever, yearn to be alone
every passing unconscious fragment
clouded away
i hope you still know how to sleep
without me, haunting your dreams from
time to time. don’t awake in a cold sweat
of memories glued to the back of your mind
you thought you amputated the things people
couldn’t see, the things you didn’t need.
i told myself once
i would read the dictionary
yet i never found the word that accurately
depicted the way it felt when i left you,
no, not even regret,
i threw it out.
my definitions are blurred, i can’t decipher
between heart and
head and
whether or not your name still tastes like home
in my mouth or
if it stings like the oil I drop under my tongue
to love myself and
i’m learning to walk, broken.
all bones cracked.
i left.
i told everyone i didn’t need crutches
and i didn’t need you either, i threw you out.
the irony was in the innocent way
they believed me,
i am bleeding,
i can’t walk unsteadily. a part of me missing
too sunken to scream your name any longer
a bit too bruised to pretend i’ll
ever be the same

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.

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

I suppose we're just like them now
our missing letters in transit,
love that didn't make it.

this coffee-stained desk knows everything
count back my sins
is new york as afraid to let me go as i am to leave her?
i don't see solace in suburbia,
no i crave her maddening grid
noise never will stop,
dont think it ever did
the symphony that bursts the mind but heals, the speed that tweaks the soul to reveal
on scribbled yellow paper
i want to dance within this frozen may
i'll miss her most in the shards of glass that sing back the worst of yesterday
in everyday
the light, the dark;
the lovers, children in park
we're all the same as we dance on
just different way into One
lilac expansions of this holy bronx sky
stealing breath,
kissing death;
to love is to try

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

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.

she skips thru meadows with halo on head
i smoke cigarettes under skyscrapers
miles and miles
from you,
from your wide smile that fills the day, some light i look for all the while
she, making love convenient
as if supposed to be;
held my tongue, tried not to run
to be vulnerable not all easy
but her presence here and there,
next door vs new york, i don't compare
only wanted to see you dance, see you free,
live your life of anything everything, breathed in ecstasy
as i'd love you all the same
thought this feeling could transcend titles,
myself only to blame
but baby, who was i to claim?
in trying not to push away
we forget to hold on, at all
listening everywhere for your voice, your call
i set up to watch it fall
i'll try to write without burning holes in this saddened black book
cry as paul reminds, love made is love took
as April now falls into May
i'll behold all things left forgotten to say
left sitting as idle as your abandoned admiration for me
only worth what's easy, right baby?
forget about your eyes, the ache
what's some love if not to break?

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

i never knew how
to reply
to the text messages
that were as large as your ego.
you told me
of the dreams that haunted you
about me kissing
other people
that weren’t you
i laughed
because that was your nightmare
while it was my
reality

i know that when you asked to drive to my house,
i told you to have a good day
and when you said you missed me,
i told you i didn't know what to say
but if only you could see the knots in my stomach
or the explosions in my head
i thought i just didn't love you, but
i forgot i miss you instead

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