My arm for a pillow,
I really like myself
under the hazy moon.

PRD: What did you think of the dinner?
PREY: I really don’t know how to answer that
PRD: Did you get new glasses?
PREY: I keep having this dream where I go to touch you and your whole body falls apart right in front of me. I'm screaming and screaming but then you somehow turn into a lake. I swim in it for ages and I wake up crying because even though it was a dream there is no way to make the feeling un-real

shuffling is heard. A drawer opens and closes

PREY: What are you going to do with that?
PRD: I’m going to shut you up
PREY: please please do

whose heart beats the hardest
when you're just as crazy -
as homesick as an astronaut
floating in zero gravity
feeling lost and ungrounded as
you drift around and around?
full of confused energy
in a controlled chaos. just
imagine sitting out on the
front porch in the middle of an
electric storm and getting soaked
to the bone but still feeling as raw
as ever before. there's nothing
you can do to feel the same way again;
about anything. ever.

Reaching my third year in college and still remembering the past easily really means that time spares no one or no memory. We could all grow out of our old skins to realize that our new shells are just as hollow as ever, deeming hopeless in life and its travesty. Nevertheless,  that's what makes us so human, bleeding out our murderous thoughts and spilling it onto paper. The feeling of wanting to empty yourself to be a coreless vessel again, void of any emotions, unreadable to a living soul. Some of us get there faster with a pen, or even a blade, each of us digging deeper to our own little numb world, to ease the pain of conflict within or to put out the flames that are thirsty for oxygen, until the very wicker within us crumbles to dust. Back to where we started off. Fine as the dirt beneath our feet with no sign of life and no capsule of memory.

“I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak
And then **** my ex girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet
In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp… just to show me how painful love can be.
And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in Braille
And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless.
I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;
It’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended.
See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you.
About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared
But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.
You see, I’m not really a love poet
But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window
You see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me
Because if you were here, right now
I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to.

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific ocean
I want to drink the sunlight in your skin.
If I was a love poet
I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful
Even on days when everything around you is ugly
You see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink.

If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hop scotch inside of my chest.
Yo it climbs on to my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again.
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back into one of my ribs…
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you.

I swear, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love
My first poem it would be about you
And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me?
And I said, put it like this:
I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like… trust you.

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life.
And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer.
If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat
Do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time
Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James
I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain
Even though it never rains in Southern California
And together, we could be music.

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend
I’ll say no.
She is my musician
And me… I’m her favorite song.”


-by Rudy Francisco

For a few years now
I have awaken to the sound
Of my Mom's walker
As she moves around

It rattles a bit
Every time it strikes the floor
Then silence as she pauses
Before moving a little more

Of all the greatest singers
Musicians, classic composers and such
None have ever made anything
I love to hear as much

For I know the day will come
I'll not hear that sound
When she is gone
Never again in this life to ever be found

Though I dread that day
It keeps fresh in my mind
To always let her know I love her
And spend with her all the time I can find

And though that walker's a reminder of her
We all have people in our life
We need to always appreciate
Be it friends, family, husband or wife

For we just never know
When we'll speak to them last
And they will no longer be here
But only live in our past

So take every chance you get
To let folks know that you care
So you don't live in regret
When they are no longer there.

I make sure to punch my bf in the face
Just to let him know im not ******* around
Then i slink off to a corner
And pound the
Rest of the *****

Before they walk in to check on me
I backslap my tears from the darkness
" of course I'm ok, *******."
Then peer out into that song.

That song which beckons on the sea
Which makes me want to love and fight
I crunch a can , and squeeze a lung
And gasp An indeterindeterminate light