After having been raised and drilled into the ingrained wood
with the politeness of
"pardon?"
"excuse me?"
"come again?"
his calloused and critical "What!?"
brought out my cancerian nature
and shelled away my voice,
I breathed out a muddled/clumsy rendition
of my witty/quirky comment
and I instantly became aware that
my timid nature wasn't cute but cumbersome.

Your pupils are black holes
and they tug and they tug at me
like how a tornado tugs at the gutter on the side of a tin roof house
in the middle of Oklahoma.
But instead of a gutter and rain
it's blood funneled through my veins
and instead of blood,
it's liquid love.

You're broken
and I like that and how I can just
wedge myself into the valleys of your cracked up porcelain skin
because I am, I am liquid love
and its a simple fact that liquids spread to fill the space in which they are.
Even a river.
But here's a little disclaimer: I never cared much about science.
I was only really interested in our chemistry.

And here is a little exclamation: I don't know anything!
Except that your bruises are actually interstellar clouds
and that spot right under your fingernail is the most comfortable bed of all.

I like how you're covered in speckles like a knock-off Jackson *******.
But instead of freckles they are constellations
and I am a quasi-astronomer artist who believes more in zodiac compatibility
than Attiyah's Sun theory.

I think this poem is unravelling
like that sweater I left in your house once
and I think and I think and I think
these last few stanzas are the loose string.

But that's okay because we're falling apart anyway
like the pages out of my old sketchbook from ninth grade.
But that doesn't stop me from pretending that
you're a Gothic cathedral and I'm a hopeless romantic
in the middle of an architectural revival.

And that doesn't stop you from getting drunk
getting drunk off that fermenting liquid love.
And that doesn't stop our hair from growing or
the universe from expanding or
people from living in the core of tornado alley or
you from lining my heart, my heart with the pages
you ripped right out of my diary.

Slice me in half,
find the pulsating medusa inside,
glowing like hot coals.
Tips of the tails--
coils of capillaries
send shocks of life
throughout my body.

Tip me over to the side,
pour me out onto the floor.
My aorta--the spout
of a stewing teapot.

She had a Frida Kahlo look,
an honest beauty,
and too much innocence for anyone with half a history.

With streaks of ore in her tangled hair,
and gold paint brush flicks in the geography of her eyes,
She was a miner's delight, Oro Fino.

There is nothing more attractive than a hardworking man,
except when they resemble hoarding dragons.
Their fiery passions, searing.

There is nothing more tragic than asphyxiation,
either from the dense, smoky fumes
or in the hands of a thick-lipped Moor.

You will only die once.
So, you might as well really feel it.

My greatest fear was of falling,
not heights.
Fall from grace, fall in love,
the fall and its seasonal memories
of tragedy that coalesced into
gusts of sticky pollen
that scratched my face.

Oh what a graceful death then,
plummeting like a lead arrow,
hair feathered, arms spread.

The violence of the rush
cauterized my zygomatic wounds
and blew the dust of my crushed bones away.

I met two strangers on the internet, it was a casual encounter.
One threw tirades of capital letters that punctured my screen,
ricocheted off my eyes,
and bounced back through to the second.
One saw the other as "illiturate", which he had no shame admitting.
The other fired back a passionate counter-argument.
So zealous he was in asserting his qualifications,
he didn't even stop for breath. Or to punctuate.
I find it rather prickling that one who could afford a laptop
won't purchase a dictionary instead.

The duel pressed on, 2 a.m.
****** words and harsh assumptions.
One's heart sank, the other's I.Q. paralleled.

We build these walls up so high between us,
and pretend we can't hear the neighbors
who have built their walls pressed against ours.
This is a problem, oh we have so many of those.
Let's make one more and build them up higher
in hopes that the overbearing altitude caves in on us...

I know that my problem is much more dismal than yours--
Just look at how small the opening to my cell is!
The sky looks gray from down here.

We all imprison ourselves into our own self-pitying ignorance
and call it shelter.
We are so unique and different and beautiful
because we are humans.
Humans who know ugly words, and do ugly things
when our originality is challenged.
And even when it's not challenged
because no one dares to admit
that we all plug into the same electrical grid.

I think
there are knots in the cables
connecting my brain to my hand.
It's tying up my creativity.

Your chest against my sloped back.
Wind kissing my face,
tips of my feet grazing the sides of those wheels and gears.
I grip you for dear life...

I feel your rhythmic deep, deep breathing against my ear.
Wonder if those are the sounds you'd make if we made love...

Riding on your handle bars,
world spinning, your presence dizzying.
Thoughts of falling...
This is what makes me feel alive.