I want you to understand
How long two years is
Seven hundred thirty days
Longer than five hundred, but less that one thousand
Two years is the chorus of Seasons of Love,
Sang twice.
Two springs
Two autumns
Two winters
And two summers.

Two years is the curving and twisting path
That leads up
To the crests and valleys of triumph and frustration
Which, ultimately,
Leads back to your eyes.

The summer breeze used to smell of you
But, in these two years, it smells like defeat and
Regret and remorse and
Climate change and my sneezes.

Winter used to take me back
To your penmanship
Your bold faced, shouted, loopy cursive
Declaring that yes, you love me
And that you hope that I like this book.
Winter now, is cold solitude
That seems to never fully dissipate
Not even for a moment
In two full years.

I don't remember spring,
Or autumn
You were never in the liminal.
You were black, or white
Unstoppable, or silent
Hopeful, or bitter
All solstice
And no equinox

Two years is as long as the strands of your influence
And the reach of my memory
Which I try to hold out to and touch
But it is intangible, and vague
So I flinch away

Two years is the quiet ambivalence
That penetrated all the levels of my consciousness to no end
All you, you
Always you

Two years is the pain of recall
The suffering of unforgetting
Which cannot be drowned out
By bitter alcohol in the throat
Or burned out
By fire in the back of the tongue

I remember you told me
That you were scared of pain.
I told you I live for it
And you called me Optimus Prime
So when you wonder
Why I never called
It is because I am Optimus Prime,
I will die, if you ease the pain
As I have lived for two years.

I want you to know
That I am not sorry.
At least not today
When your name is mentioned in the TV,
I switch channels
Because they almost always say that you are dead
Which is half-credible.

How long is two years?
Long enough, I guess
But not nearly long enough to forget your words,
Or find someone new.

Every time I see a Map,
I look for your island.
Your lovely, rustic, historic island
The island which you shall escape
And I touch it,
As though,
To pluck you from the sky
And hold you close.
Five hundred fifty-seven kilometers
Is simply too far,
Even in peak route efficiency,
For me not to miss you.
I miss you
Albeit knowing
That mere inches of distance
Between you and me
Would not really make a difference

I am sorry if
My weary eyes threaten
Your idea of security and
Peace of mind
Those things are exactly
Exactly what they lack
They drift around book stores and
Train stations and
Grassy meadows and
Sooty avenues
Looking for what
Is unturbulent and
Understanding
Because these days my
Eyes need hands
To wipe them and
To close them and
To give them rest

You are having 4 AM breakfast with the girl of your dreams sitting a few meters away from you. You glance at her, intently focused on her paper, crumpling her forehead in frustration, and you realize that she is real. Real, with her stupid brown hair, and her impish smile; her eyebrows, arching up to look at you. Yes, she is not the girl of your life dreams. She is the girl that haunts the blissful world of your rest - she is the girl of your sleep dreams.

On our estrangement's eve,
After all the emotional gymnastics,
I pull from my sleeve,
The last of my tricks:
I want you to know, before you leave
You are the Higgs-boson to my Physics.

We share a relationship that exists only when the rest of the world is dreaming. It makes me wonder: is our relationship but a by-product of the overactive hormones and chemicals and imagination of the soundly sleeping world?

We are an old story.
Lumbering and spent,
Cliched and tired
Yet
Every tedious retelling
Never fails
To change something in me.

I wish I could let go

And fall for a summer
Just a summer

Recklessly falling in love
And breaking my heart

Like what happened
With you

I wonder how you are
Because my Mom asked me about you today.
She misses you, you know
I told her,
We live in different worlds.

You,
In your glitter-filled, amplified, distorted, boozed-up soiree,
And I,
In your memory.

And in case you were wondering,
I miss you, too.

The crushing sadness
Is trickling down my veins
And I am beyond saving
Even by my own brain
Which tries to make me happy
By recalling our best moments.

It makes me so much sadder.

And I try to move sleekly
As before
But the pain is fighting back
Making everything so trivially tedious and difficult and

sad

I am looking, teary eyed
At an origami Triceratops

Clouds of smoke
Swirl around my head
Like the thoughts inside:
A foggy sludge
Making mocking faces
Mimicking my ghosts

'You are a lush'
'You are a rogue'
'You are a pain in the ***'

Ashes falling to the floor
Pulling me along
Cherry red fire sizzling
Burning away my resolve

I get up
And I fall farther

Face it, said the smoke
You're no phoenix


My eyes close


I agree.

I looked at you pleadingly
As you walked away

And I hoped

That you'd say
'No, that's not true
I'm going to stay'

Because I would prefer that

Over you, casting me a pleading glance
Over your shoulder.

He thundered with anger
'Choose now, or nevermore!'
Pain shooting through his wounds
And scabs
Reflected through angry eyes
Gray eyes

She cowered in fear
But had enough resolve
She mustered all the love
Which is not for him
Pooling in her lonely eyes
Brown eyes


I watch it again
And again
And again

I still don't understand why Christine kissed the Phantom.

I loved you but you are Jackson *******

Too erratic
Too abstract
Too beautiful
And too free

For my structured entropy

The truth is that I'm scared that I'll come home one day
And find you gone
No note
No letter
No trace
No goodbye
Like you were just a hallucination
That lasted for 13 months

The truth is that I liked that girl
Because she looked like you
Talked like you
Thought like you
Cursed like you
Laughed like you
Only a lot less passionate
And she is not you.

Because I have trudged through this Earth until I found you
And now I stride with purpose
Because I thought the sky is either blue or grey because it is sad
Now I know that it's simply Rayleigh scattering
Which has nothing to do with our lives
Because I saw, in the mirror, a sad someone who deserved misery
Now I see a smile that reflects in my eyes

I don't want to lose you.

Poetry is the prose that is produced by the curve of your smile and the twinkle of your eyes as they defy rhyme by line every **** time making visual couplets and sensual pentameters which are as iambic as the way your words float every time you speak in that lovely alto that creates a sestina and a haiku and a sonnet and an intrepidness in my hands as they run through your hair smooth as Bukowski ******* his working class ****** earning protests from Sylvia Plath heard through the oven door which you hog so often and I laugh when you do so I sit you down and say I'll get your breakfast baby don't worry and you smile that prose poetic smile that seems to be the indefatigable source of all these literature and damage to my soul which is not mutually exclusive

I constantly feel cold nowadays
Because the passion that kept me sweaty
Is all gone
Or maybe because the rain won't stop
And it washes away my resolve
But your eyes are awash with the warmth
Of laughter and interest
I thought you dropped me
Like what you do with all your gym classes
Apparently you picked me up again
And to tell you the truth
You're the only thing that keeps me going
In this winter of inspiration
When I feel like all the elements are conspiring against me
And the cold is tearing through my sweater
Through my shirt
So you take my hand when you see me shiver
And you pull me into your embrace
What comforting warmth lies inside your arms
I wish I could stay in them forever
I am reluctant to leave and face the outside world
So you just smile at me and kiss me in the forehead and tell me
'There, so you could keep warm'
I'd feel okay then and prop my collar
It's freezing but I'm ready now.

I shake and stumble
Knock down cans of pens
Spilling all over my desk
Grab a purple pen
To fumblingly make a note
A better one
That you can tuck again to your corkboard
One day.

I will try my best
To not argue with you
About

things

But we're so
Inherently dissimilar
That we

*must

There exists a brand of sadness
In watching you move

hot knife through butter

Twirling along the faint, wispy paths
Toeing the lines of my desire
Pulling me close to your mystery
Enclosing us in a cloud of intimacy

Then you smirk at me
And release me to the abyss

*hopelessness and confusion

There is nothing more painful in this world than realizing that the sadness which you are drowning in right now is irrevocably inconsolable.

I wait for you
In still coffee nights of wonder
In early morning bursts of perspective
In half naked mornings and silent torture
Which are not mutually exclusive.

I still wait for you
Among the faces, in between streaking strips of asphalt and concrete
Among the entropy, in dark gangways of nervousness and catharsis
Among the noise, in impulsive shortcuts and Jack's Mannequin
Which my muddy shoes do not like very much.

I still wait for you
Through the fuzzy vision of late night, walking on existentialist angst, struggling to find the meaning of suffering and life
Through the haze of alcoholic pain, stumbling across residual memories, pleading that all the 3 AM visions would stop
Through the nicotine fog, falling away from depressive reality, building a method heavily dependent on addictive escapist solutions
Which reduces my life span short enough,

To stop waiting for you.

You're all the suffering I long to endure and I swear by your deep brown eyes that I'm going to try my best to make it through you because it is you I remember when I'm walking down these paved roads with streaking strange faces and I miss you really because I wanted to kiss you when you tucked my stupid note on your nostalgia corkboard and looked at me like I was all that matters but you did not come home and I hope you're not in trouble or hungry and I was supposed to see you because it's a Thursday but apparently the Universe does not feel a need to consistent today except with me still longing to kiss you and you still not being aware.

A bad poet
|                  Is
|                  one
|      Whose
| poems Are
|                  not
|              For
    anyone.

My guess is that
I will love you forever
Even after the darkness

The pain

The lies

The betrayal

Because you can take away
My spiritedness
But you can't take away
My love

The desolate terrain
Of yellowing book paper that was once pristine
Of blood, sweat, tears, and innumerable cups of coffee
Is sad and lonely.

Yet I can only hope
That I will be enough
To stay here.

Truth, they are all dusty.
But they are the best.

My world is populated by me
Only me
Until you came along
And took my books from my shelves
Like they were yours

You left with my books
And I felt empty
Because now in my world
There is space for one more
And you are not here

You rarely smile.
You do not listen to me when I talk.
You think I'm being pompous when I tell you about my day,
When I just want to share it with you.
That is all.

You do not make time for me.
You insist on hurting my feelings.
You do not say goodbye to me,
And you call me emotional,
When I complain.

You dodge my gaze.
You flinch at my touch.
You become irritated at my questions,
When I just want to know you.
That is all.

It is because,
You like someone.
Who is not me.

So don't ask me,
Why I don't say hi when I get home.
Why I refuse to answer your questions.
Why I didn't greet you on your birthday.

It is because,
I like someone.
*Who is you.

You are the kind of literature
That makes more sense
Amid ***** streets
Smelly creeks
And crowded trains.

I'm dying on my bedroom floor
Your hair blowing away on my sheets when I realized
I couldn't let you go anymore

I still see you leaning on the frame of my door
With the words you spoke in my memory, I realized
I'm dying on my bedroom floor

The look in your eyes which belongs to ancient lore
The tears in mine as I recalled and I realized
I couldn't let you go anymore

Your hand on my face, my lips on yours
The phantom feel of your kiss as I realized
I'm dying on my bedroom floor

Your non-hesitation as you bared your core
Foolishly disregarded and swept aside, then I realized
I couldn't let you go anymore

I've never felt anything like this before
The love drilling in my chest and the emptiness it bore
I'm suddenly dying on my bedroom floor
When I realized I couldn't let you go anymore

I owe you a poem.

From that moment, you asked me to stand up,
And we walked to the ice cream stand,
I've never written you a poem.

I am the worst poet in the world.

How do I find words to describe,
Your tantalizing eyes,
Or your secretive smile?

How can I put into verse,
That time we filmed your project?
We were laughing hard, then.

We talked until the wee hours of the morning.
You told me, 'We're so awesome!'
Are there words for that electric feel, in my veins?

I remember the time I held you, unwaveringly.
You were crying on my new shirt.
Then you kissed me, on my cheek.

You taught me to meld dreams and love together,
To be patient, and understanding.
I am a new breed of person, because of you.

All of the lost love, that lingers.
My heart misses you, terribly.
It is stupid to make poems out of this.

What I owe you is an apology.

I thought you were different

You thought I was naive

I guess you were right

Let me write you a poem
Between blue lines and red crosses and silly hairstyles
A poem that will eloquently tell
How you shone like dim stars on a pitch black beach
Figuratively
Full of HYPERBOLES! and synecdoches
About your misaligned teeth and your roaring, cackling laugh
It will drown you in allusions,
In perfectly crafted hybrid adjectives
That will tell
How you got caught in revolving doors
And how I laughed.
I hope you have seen the Spolarium
Because the poem will use it to denote
How I knew you were fine
But I never knew you'd be so huge
If you haven't,
We can see it together

The poem will trump Poe and O'Hara and Bukowski and Neruda
They will call it God's gift to Poetry
Studied and deconstructed
For the next few centuries

It was found taped under a desk they will say
And they will scour the world to find
That lovely mysterious beautiful person in the poem

Let me write you that poem
So that when they find you
Only the greatest people on this planet
Will read it to you.

Oblivion, is your breath-taking smile
And mud on our shoes.

Baby, I hope you realize

*You could have it so much better

I want you to know,
That I am not sorry
At least not today
When your name is mentioned on the TV,
I switch channels
Because they almost always say
That you are dead.

Which is half true.

We are stuck in a volley of whats

                  Frustrated non understanding

                          But then

                                                   You laugh

                          And I feel home.

The poetry doesn't come easy lately
From the time you asked me why
In such a frustrated manner that I recoiled
It used to be so easy, you know
With the distance between us
Bridged by your crazy laugh
And my smug smile
Perhaps because poetry is not the words
But the emotions that mandate enjambments
And fill the spaces between the verses
The space is now too big
The lines too abruptly cut
That it ceases to become poetry
And it becomes emptiness.

You, of the quiet consternation
And barely discernible presence

You, of the smooth disposition
And ragged dreams

You, of the floundering eyes
And expandable conviction


Your roguish smile
And your twisted games

Your striped shirt
And your quaint brilliance

Your strongly-lined jaw
And your oneiric glances

You chase my adjectives away.