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ray May 2014
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)
ray Jul 2014
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.
ray Sep 2015
picasso shouted your name
i left my cigarettes in your car i think
Saturday night, all red-eyes and pleads for help
funny thing is, you hate me i think
funny thing is, you came, you found me, walking unsteadily, phone in hand head in sky mind on you
that's what mattered
too high to comprehend, I was home
they say when you look at the ocean - you feel it.
like being baptized all over again,
maybe this time you'll believe -
at least as much as they wanted you to
you'll hear what it is they say salvation brings,
like a resurrection to make you feel less alone
no honey, you are alone
but I swear you were my sanctuary
I swear you still are
what's a baptism? I'm still dead
mouthing responses back to my thoughts,
I woke up this morning from dreaming about you
only to read a text, saying, you were dreaming of me too
ray Oct 2014
my brain is dousing itself with kerosene, tempting thoughts taking
form of unlit matches,
yet to spark
how do i learn the art of
living under extradited energy of this fire?
the elementals of exhaustion, oh,
how it rests as the black hole in the back
of your head.
it smells like last spring break, you know,
crazed.
i began carving
myself into something other,
you began eating less and
vomiting more.  
i wanted to believe in god,
waking up at 12pm on a sunday to
slug the nearest bottle of red, maybe,
it'll get me closer, maybe,
maybe i'll taste him
i'll become so numb i'll start to believe
i'm living for a purpose,
that theres some drawn-up reason for
my little existence,
opening old wounds or
leaving without closing any doors, any at all,
touching stove tops,
praying to 'anyone' that this is already hell, that this has
gotta be the worse, this can't
get worse,
punching brick walls to break knuckles, only to watch poems fall out,
heaving at the sight of anything and
laughing when remembering everyone leaves, even 'dad,'
shaking hands with the reflection in the mirror, the person you don't want to be, the person you're claiming 'too toxic,'
the person you're afraid to see again
ray Jun 2014
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
ray May 2014
you were fundamentally
burnt out.
you were a ******* human,
not a machine.
i didn’t blame you.
as humans
we rot from the inside out.
the marrow of our bones,
blackens,
and our hearts freeze over.
i didn’t blame you.
you were breathing at a pace
more rapid than the ticking of the clock
on a sunday night.
in between dry-heaves you told me
“i’ll be okay, i’ll be okay,
i’ll, be okay.”
i wanted to believe you, but
i didn’t blame you.
i think the sound of your voice
on a tuesday afternoon
is conclusively what kept me going.
ray Jul 2014
did i ever tell you, your eyes tasted like my mocha coffee on an early friday morning?
drizzled with anticipation and dousing me with caffeine,
i needed you, to wake up.
i needed you to wake up.
          (you didn't)
caramel was your favorite flavor
and well, I grew to like it too.
          (I always did but… more)
your eye lashes were longer than mine and i was jealous
i adored watching you blink
i remember noticing that the more passion within your voice,
the more it correlated with your wide eyes, that was so human.
so real.
did i ever tell you,
your lips accentuated every word you spoke
and no matter what you said, it was pretty
          (more or less)
i liked your teeth because you didn’t
a secret hidden part of me hopes you’ll never get braces
did i ever tell you,
your hands were firecrackers, but
familiar fire crackers. the ones i set off in my own backyard.
              
it’s the twentieth day of the month and lord do i wish sixteen days ago
i was sitting with you on the sand again,
sipping my dark mocha drink
awaiting the sparklers in the sky.
           (i think you were with her)
see I told you,
you came along with anticipation
and i kind of liked that. but i grew to know you too well
i’m growing to think that’s why leaving you was so inhumane,
unreal, just downright painful
you were my left arm. and
no matter what i ever said to you,
no matter how bruised, broken, damaging you were to me,
cutting you off was not ideal.
the after shock was worse.
and if you ever have the opportunity to amputate your left arm,
don’t.
the things you need- you need for a reason.
no, things don’t get easier with time
the empty void just becomes a bit more manageable.
i'm learning to manage passing your neighborhood without turning my head
i'm learning to manage not opening your text messages
          (more importantly, to not emotionally react whatsoever)
i’m learning to manage with a large part of me missing
and, some days I still search for it
in hidden parts of my house but
i cant grow a new arm,
or a new home,
          (see, things don’t work like that.)
ray Nov 2014
i've never had time for cold hands.
when you left, all i could feel was the inner sides of my palms
burning, i swore i saw every “i love you” go up in flames along
with your letters and every promise
immediately torched into something i didn’t want to believe was real,
this happens too often to be sad anymore. the only
thing i'm thinking is that i'm not, sleepwalking is only a habit,
i tell my friends to smash their rear view mirrors, tell me
why then do i keep a collection of them in my bedroom, tell me
why i visit last summer every night
tell me why i wake up in the morning only to feel like swallowing glass is an evening routine
if you wanted to know why i don’t know much besides leaving without a sound, this is it, right here, alcohol tastes better than goodbyes.  
we never bet on it.
love was only phantasmagoria, why would you shake cold
hands on such a silly dream? torches were meant to be lit and
maybe we just weren’t meant to love,
maybe the only result is bruised hearts, broken bells, and burnt palms
ray Sep 2015
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?
ray Jul 2014
its only 11:09
and you're already drifting throughout my thoughts,
who knew pretending
to be okay
was so exhausting?
i'll come clean-
i haven't been the same since the day i left
or the day i stopped responding,
the day i changed your contact name and
the day i muted you on every social site.
it gets easier
to pretend.
everything else? the void just gets dustier,
more vacant, more longing for a fill.
i see more cobwebs and every so often,
i let the cigarette fumes air me out.
it's 11:11 and i can't pretend any longer
i haven't been the same without you
i can't pretend the distance between us
doesn't feel so wrong, in every sense of the word. wrong.
i can't pretend the gut-wrenching pain of knowing you miss me,
knowing you wonder if i kept your sweatshirt,
knowing you hope i still read the 'letter to him,' i can't
pretend this doesn't eat at me every moment.
knowing you can't hold down food eats at me every moment.
knowing i could fix you, & maybe you could fix me too.
it's mind splitting, and
i think the broken glass shards of my heart are beginning to poke again
ka
ray Sep 2014
ka
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
ray Jul 2015
your mind sweats from the thought of every lasting
lover i've ever touched,
every single being that's ever crossed my mind,
i'm loving my lack of transparency
everything we could be;
everything i want to be
i rather set my soul on fire than say a word
kerosene in coffee, lighters for breakfast, cigarettes
we're all crippled kaleidoscopes,
functioning in some broken type of way, some
decrepit-Sunday-morning-type-of-way;
feeling like a heart transplant
ache, it's the twelfth day
by hurting lovers we hurt our hearts
let's stop dancing with the safe side
break, they say
break, find the spare parts
ray Jul 2015
back-stabbing cynical-
crumpled sailors and crinkled cramps taking
root in your left side
an intolerable frame of mind
burning from the inside out,
the outside in
the stress doesn't die out, what does,
when will i
all bruised hearts and broken hands,
the insomnia that summer brings
spinning at the clocks' demands
breathless sighs, broken ticking, sleepless nights
ray Jan 2016
compilations of cold coffee cups,
dancing about in my candle-stained room
to French music from the 50's, today,
contrasting with the cacophony of construction
four stories beneath, below,
the day is blush.
rain as rosewater, fossilizes into flakes on the cheekbones, the lashes.
a quick reading of Kerouac reminds one to
believe in the 'holy contour of life,' whatever 'holy' means,
if it exists at all,
whether America is overrated,
whether i rather play in puddles of Scotland
or some foreign place,
how delightful it sounds, as Edith Piaf's
voice trances my loveless memory.
i'm cold. but we have to be.
ray Jul 2015
and i'm stuck shaking writing fevered poetry
with a broken pen between my fingers,
you're stuck dating a girl you don't love.
you equated your writing with some dark diary you
threw off the highway as if
there wasn't anyone supposed to read it-
as if i don't stay awake for long hours
coming up with questions
of what's in transit from your mind
to the paper,
we both know i wouldn't dare read it sober,
today you told me you loved me.
today i told you to stop
ray Feb 2017
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
ray Jan 2017
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
ray Sep 2014
i have sin written on the tip of my tongue,
i'm beginning to think i've been screaming for years
with the soul intention of committing to just something,
maybe anything, maybe nothing at all.
nostalgia takes its grip tighter than the way i imagine
the noose around his neck and tighter than the
first time you hugged me, god i swore i was meant to be there.
i think, i'm remembering things that took cover in my brain
things that didn't want to be seen,
possibly in mockery of me
i'm dripping sweat from thinking a drop of thought
could create an entirely new rendition of me in your mind,
i never cared to be okay, i never cared to stay
ray May 2014
you
youre the ink on my paper
that I cannot erase
no matter how hard I try
no matter how terrible you are
you
youre the scratch on my favorite record
that ****** me off
makes me cringe
everytime I’m ******* reminded
you
youre the plumber
I didn’t invite
who tried to fix the leaky faucet
but ended up flooding my home
you
youre the crooked frame
that hangs from my stained wall
youre the flannel I wear five times a week
the song I just cannot skip
the memory stitched in the scar
the wound never stitched

the addiction I couldn’t break
the band-aid I couldn’t rip off
the bad habit I couldn’t quit
the picture I could never
delete
ray Aug 2016
is it possible to miss the potential?
to yearn for what never was,
the possibility;
what seemed to be coincidental?
the passing by of two minds, two souls,
intertwined,
or a skew by my perception;
hope overlaying my scribbled fragment of you,
what you could be,
what you may be, underlying a connection.
by constellation you were made,
shaped by stars,
away from vein;
coated, in folk music and denim
leaving me to wonder,
what caramelized your eyes
to brown & delicate thunder
deep, soft soil; richest out from under.
ray Jun 2014
i want to say, i'm gone.
i left you, emotionless, that
i don't care about your highs and lows because i returned the stock i bought in your life and who knows when you returned mine.
i want to say the next time your grandmother takes you to play mini golf i know you'll think of me.
i want to reside in the idea that i left you missing me and
weeks from now when you stumble across love letters addressed to me but never sent, and
you make the elementary mistake of reading them, you'll cry, eventually so hard
you have to call.
i want to say i was ever confident in anything besides you and i, but
i'd be lying.
i'd be lying, because i'd still blankly stare at your text message for a million minutes wondering how to respond until I came to the conclusion not to.
i'd be lying because i'd still stay awake until six a.m. just to hear your slurred words saying
how much you missed me.
i want to say i know how to be a brick in your stomach, how to be your broken cigarette, but
i'd be lying
ray Jun 2014
12:15 A.M.
my emotions have turned
to liquid and they’re seeping through my pores.
please help.
you were my only anchor to any chance
of emotional stability, and you're *******
gone.
i jumped in the front seat of your car and i'm driving myself
insane.
i'm shouting at you, “just *******
come home!”
but months ago i shouted for you to leave me alone.
the sunrise is different, the grass, the people,
i need you.
i need your porcelain lips and the cigarette between them
laying in my bed because that was
my definition of home.
my fingers are cracking and my marbles
are all rolling away.
my yarn is astray besides one ******* string
holding me on to you,
and the satan on my shoulder is telling me to
let go, but also telling me to stay.
ray May 2014
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
ray Aug 2014
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.
ray Sep 2014
i'm standing on the science
of leaving without a reason
with every inhalation expelling
from my lungs, i'm learning,
closure is simply cliché and it's possible
i crave knowing that from time to time,
i strike your thoughts like a brightening
bolt, shoving your memory in front of you
like an eviction notice nailed to your front door,
like you didn't have a chance to explain yourself,
like you never will
maybe the decision to never again open
your messages was unjust, but was it a decision, or
did it just happen, the way i never again
opened another bible
the way i refrain from saying your name
or thinking of how you said mine
the trees outside my window are shaking
with the same vigor you bled when
you said that you'd change
the thunder that vibrates this house
screams at me, making up for when
i left you without a sound
the roads are flooding with the amount
of times i questioned my love for you,
i dont think i ever do
ray Feb 2019
do you write her poetry or
did you let that part of you go too
ray Sep 2014
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
ray Jul 2014
the drugs haven't worn off and neither have you.
ray Oct 2014
i have this reoccurring dream, it's me,
standing unearthly in the front of the altar, did god bring me to his home or is this just what they call church?
lonesome, that helter-skelter tenebrous loneliness, estrangement all around
pews blessed with the strange vacancy i relate with the open ended depth of my heart, as if people were supposed
to be there, as if people were
supposed to believe
i'm spitting up blood now, this isn't how to mend and no; who are we kidding, this is exactly how we knew it all would end
veiled with
necklaces, wrapping songs of Hail Mary around my throat,
the layered thought that god could look down in any given second
and strangle me with his own prayer,
you see i'm shouting at the ceiling but
tears only result in bent puddles on the floor
faith only results in a plethora of bibles, and the ashes of their contents.
slitting my wrists with every unanswered scream, every unlearned rosary
he's laughing at me, he's laughing at me, this ungiving god, furnishing a strange pigment to the room, staining a strange potency
transmitting this repulsive image- this memory, of this entity, of this effigy- we're all on hands and knees. withering, it's relentless,
tampering with the various degrees of energy and just what am i here for,
maybe that question is it, maybe
it's me,
maybe it's the way i was made and maybe it's the way i never called you back and
maybe it's that the day i was created was the day god cracked and
it's rumored my nostalgia-grade voice grips the air the way his hands hugged nails
i'm sifting through the times when these mumbling statues shattered, every rejected cross was found dropped,
the day i was created god became bilious and vomited for the next 16 years,
maybe it's today that he'll stop
ray May 2015
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
ray Oct 2015
they say write, say write, write
all i hear is 70's french music and static.
all i think of is you,
      last night i took shots until i couldn't hold a steady glass,
      remember thinking this is it, this has got to be it.
      this is how you forget.
contemplating calling you- dreaming that i did
      on, on and on
my english teacher said to write for poignancy,
i wrote on a coked out father,
sometimes i dream i see him at a grocery store, a church
he's all screams, i'm all "you have the wrong person, sir."
i've forgotten how to write,
maybe i'll call you in a year or so, maybe i'll forget
ray Jun 2014
i thought you told me i deserved more than my last?
i thought you told me i was too kind to be this broken?
isn't it true, you said you'd mend me?
i never asked to be saved,

(but did you really believe shredding my pieces would repair me?)
maybe I missed something
ray Apr 2016
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
ray Aug 2014
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
ray May 2014
i know recovery isn't a straight line
and i'd be lying if i said i wasn’t scared
when i look at my reflection.
life doesn’t get easier.
the desperate tone of your voice
explained that.
ray Jul 2016
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
ray Jun 2017
simple touch
sprinkle of dawn across this infinite afternoon
wasting breath and loving it
possession always too soon, not you
i want easy breath on this east coast
kiss the moon, dance to her tune
sing back the strings btwn other lovers in their losses and join in some silly sweet unison
stare into gently smiling eyes the gaze the face i look for, every corner
worn to be reborn
grounding not felt before
bring me back from the clouds in satan's sweet symphony,
don't want to can't lose her now, to this epiphany
ray Mar 2017
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.
ray Dec 2015
in december we break
it's traditional
learned patterns in history class,
there's no nice way to feign affection for
some stupid foreign love
you do it so well
by and by, i'd rather write about you as i
ignore your calls, watching you miss me
from afar,
is a hobby.
its traditional.
to bleed or to bottle up: i shout too often
even though you're gone, i smoke too frequently
every lavender vanilla latte sings your name,
all your love, the vigor forgotten
maybe we'll drown our sins, you'll pick up pieces,
but the puzzle is always ******
ray Jun 2017
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
ray Jul 2015
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
ray Mar 2017
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
ray Feb 2016
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
ray Jan 2016
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
ray Mar 2015
I need to stop talking about you as if
you were dead,
could it be this is the only way to cope rather than knowing you're
still out there, somewhere, bleeding
shards of glass, grabbing for
something smoother, something
more stable, but the months pass by and shred away any chance you had
you become further and further away from who you are,
from what you were,
you're a shaky resemblance of your fathers past, an embodiment
of the pit inside your stomach and you're too
afraid to be alone in the dark and
in the light and
I'm afraid there's nothing
quite as terrifying as saying you're fine so many times you scream it while
you sleep or noticing
the erosion in everything; your
ex lover, your father, the bus driver,
the mirror, the degradation of you & i
ray Jun 2017
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
ray Jan 2015
i feel the depression, crawling back up through each and every seam. regurgitating itself through my soul. wrapping its thin, sprawled, delicate-yet-violent, wrinkled fingers around my spine. slowly transfusing through my veins, transfixing itself into the roots
of my brain. it's taking me over, in the way the water enraptures a
vessel, slowly sinking to the bottom of all bottoms; a vast,
empty, nothingness; a hypnosis incomparable to any other.
tell me, how do i swim to the surface? how do i learn to find
my way? seemingly simple to those looking down upon
my wretched, decrepit soul. to look to the sunlight and
swim toward. but, what if a weight is growing over me;
something i cannot prevent. something dragging me back,
relentlessly, time and time again. a virus spreading
throughout my body,
the longer i live- the
worse it becomes.
so, further, and
further,
i sink. tell me, tell me, what is there to do now?
ray Oct 2014
the sound of a car crash, the sound of your ex lovers heart breaking,
knowing it wasn't meant to be
this way, i called you and every clock stopped
i don't know how long it's
been since the last time i believed
you, last week i wanted to
night creeps up on you like the ghosts hanging in your closet, you didn't think you'd grow up to be this,
you didn't want to
and i swore in the seventh grade
never would i follow in my fathers footsteps, here i am, saturday morning
slugging wine from the bottle
a pandemonium of sadness, these corrupting juxtapositions are the only thing i speak with lately
maybe "we" were an overture for what we'd grow into, you know
the nights you text me asking why the hell i won't get out of your dreams, are the nights after you haunted mine
this,
****** penumbra, i see it too often
it shows up in the dreams where i find you too
ray Aug 2014
i swear to god our second-hand smoke
came to life that night,
yes. i am personifying the fumes
that crawled in your lungs and back out again.
"power couple." ha
my mouth is a loaded gun, i've always had ****** aim.
is that why i've spent so long
trying to avoid bullets?
is it why i began gently touching objects
that were the same shade as your eyes?
maybe the bark we carved into,
the coffee we sipped in our best months
the places we met became cathedrals and
every love letter was an obituary,
i kept sipping the sunrise until i was fully convinced
i didn't love you anymore
i self identified with the dust
collected on your top shelf,
you loved books but what about me?
maybe that's all i was,
forgotten particles you choked on from
time to time
just maybe, we were, the mantra between
dark and light. you told me
i smelled good, like "home,"
really it was just the sting of cigarettes
and maybe i got too wasted
off early mornings
to remember we were just the mountain of issues
god swept under the rug,
the half-finished mixtape
with your initials as the title, you've
never heard
ray May 2014
You were never good at writing
The letters you gave me
Were ****
Because you were ****
You still are
And i don’t believe
You ever meant
A **** word you wrote
on any of those crinkled papers
titled 'love letter.'
In March
You told me you loved me
That i was different
Than anything before.
Special
You carved my name
Into your bed frame
You unknowingly carved
Yourself
Into me
In June
You kissed another girl
I found out two weeks later
I swear i heard my heart shatter
In August
We thought we would last
Forever
Invincible
You wrote our initials
Into a huge heart
On my desk.
By October
Things were different
We could both agree
I had changed.
November came
I liked another boy
You thought you knew
But you didn’t.
The day I turned 15
he kissed me
not my fault
(not what you thought)
2 days after i turned 15
I found out you liked
Another girl
I thought i had known
And now i did
And now i was done
Dealing chances
To a boy
That only spoke pretty things
And had ****** handwriting
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