Say my name
Say it gently
Use your words
To caress me
Speak your thoughts
Speak them out loud
Confess your love
Amidst the crowd
Scream your wishes
Scream your dreams
Make your reality
Better than it seems
Whisper your pain
Whisper your fears
Release the tension
Wipe away your tears
Open your mind
Open up wide
Let my love in
Let me inside

Words are harmless, so they say,
That's where the problem starts;
Sticks and stones
May break our bones
But words will break our hearts.



Words are harmless, so they say,
And point you to their charts;
It's harmless fun,
No damage done.
But... Who will mend our hearts?



The x-rays show no damage
Where words have scathed across,
But it still feels hard to manage,
And leaves you at a loss.



Words are harmless, don't complain,
That's where the problem starts.
It's quite absurd-
A single word-
Enough to break our hearts!



But words are harmless, they maintain;
The subject of their parts,
No less or more,
So let them pour
From all our broken hearts

You don't have to remind me to listen to three AM school-night words that come out in the soft whispers you've been waiting to share with me in an attempt to shield it from the rest of the world
I'll remember the things you didn't say like engraved textbook lessons
when my skin starts to dampen and stick to my body like a raincoat
my head hits the wood desk so loud everyone stops pretending to pay attention
and i have to write
"he doesn't love me anymore" one hundred times on the chalkboard
and bang the parts of my past i wake up forgetting together
watching the chalk dust from the day my mother told me; they almost lost you fall to the floor
Every negative hallway interaction bubbles over in an abandonment issue chemical reaction
and I had to drop chemistry because I found none of the connections and formulas could fix the imbalance I carry around with me like i shouldn't be failing Psychology 101.
Maybe I'm clueless because I can't tell you why weather changes or square roots of negatives
But I can recite the lisence plate of the car my dad has never visited me in
and my sisters contact information for the 4 minute and 57 second call i can pay $6.43 to make to sit on the floor and learn about juvenile detention while history notes offer me cold faux-sympathy
Maybe I'm clueless because id rather memorize the way your hand moves down my back than the quadratic formula
and give up on poetry mid sentence
and change "moves" to "moved" because it's all in past-tense and the difference between present and present perfect and banging erasers and not sleeping and
forgetting how to function off of autopilot mode
and
there are lessons I will remember that won't come from staring at a projector screen
when to stop talking
how to look like you weren't just sobbing in the bathroom
the unwritten "give a stranger a ****** if they ask" rule
I'll remember every word you tell me like the test is next period and I'll study every syllable and drown in iambic pentameter
and I'll still fail

She weeps not for the shore
As distance creates a shadow
She embraces the current
Becoming the wave
And gently pushes her sea home

She chases not the sun
As the day is put to rest
She is the moonlight
That cradles the stars
Tightly to her *******

She yearns not
Her pain-streaked tears
That fall below her feet
She is the soil beneath her toes
Her pain now colors the tree

She worries not
The flowers' bloom
Or the leaves that fall like rain
She is the wind
That will kiss the ground
And sweep it all away

my fingers have become bored with
the quicksand of routine
they prefer to dance erotically over my typewriter
frolicking like naked ballerinas
over an ancient stage
spilling their secret thoughts
onto blank page,
after their day job
threaded together
over my lap,
or bending over to
reveal the contents
of my burlap sack

they have taken instead
to jumping over cracks
in the nothing of night
stifling the sound of silence
with assortments of clicks and clacks
punching in the perfect pitch of keys
to leave Beethoven blind
from this symphony of notes combined

and just like that at last
they have unfolded some rhyme
unachievable with ink and pencil,
without the stencil of time
dictating to work inside the lines