I was shooting spitballs at the stars in my eyes,
difficult to do,
but anyway it's a Saturday and
who
was to know.

Not the beggar who sat with his hands wrought in iron.
I have my eye on him,
he sits there
quite prim
like an old English gent,
but I sense the pent up frustration
the doggedness of situation,
if anyone has an algorithm for that, tell him,
he's sat by the stairs on the Jubilee crown which was placed by the Monarch on her way down to the palace,
a place he'll never see.
'Coppers for me,
coppers for tea'

I just shoot spitballs,
I'm getting quite good, but it won't pay the rent,
if only it could.

Sometimes,
I think my conversations with You
pick up
when I put down the pen.
Other times,
I think You only communicate
through spitballs and passed notes.
I squiggle tick boxes
on college ruled lines to check
“yes” or “no,”
but You always end up eating the answer
when the Teacher is in ear shot because
sound carries faster than my sideway glances.
You say Your notes
are too loud for me to copy off of,
but I still can’t hear Your message
when we’re playing telephone at recess.
You avoided me on
the playground in grade school,
the hallways in junior high and
the cafeteria in high school,
so You can imagine my shock
when You asked to move into a one bedroom
with me in a concrete jungle gym
several miles away after graduation.
I have a four-year lease for this new place of mine
and You used to have a tendency to not stick around
when I needed You there the most,
but here You are now,
waiting patiently on the couch
holding two cups of coffee every morning
and two cups of wine every night.
You have left me with questions
that my tuition can’t cover and
that rent can’t afford,
so please understand that when I kick You out,
it’s not because You ate my groceries
or didn’t clean the bathroom;
it’s because the mess You made
for my parents to clean up
was too big to incorporate
in the chore list I left behind
when I used to live in blanket forts.
This is all hindsight,
but my vision gets checked annually
and optometrists say I’m going to be blind by thirty
if I keep wearing my contacts
during Marco Polo.
I keep telling them it’s impossible
to match where the sound
of Your voice is coming from,
so I keep my eyes shut
and my arms stretched out wide before me
to feel for Your presence.
They say that
keeping my eyes closed for too long isn’t safe
and that I should invest in glasses,
but my insurance doesn’t cover
another lens between Us
and I can’t afford to be separated
from You any longer.
Maybe someday,
You will gargle up all those
chewed up love notes
and questions
and I’ll find them below my tax returns.
Maybe someday,
You will pay me back
with more
than just a book fine.
Maybe someday,
I won’t need your change
to feel like
I’m worth something.
But, for now, I wait patiently,
writing with a pen
that ran out of ink
since the day You gave me hope
with a hushed
*“maybe.”

in the dark of the classroom you can't see your scars
and neither can anyone else
which is the important bit

the teacher droning on and pointing to the big screen that dominates your life

you hope that it gets better
idly scrawling notes and drawing images of what you imagine to be
a less painful existence

it's not that you're depressed
more disillusioned
because the teacher doesn't stop
and the assignments don't stop
mountains of work that you don't plan on completing
and students whispering either insults, or-
you don't know what
you don't know them
you don't want to know them
they're all empty eyes and spitballs and legs that trip you in the hallways and fists that have made their mark on your mouth and eyes
bruises that take weeks to disappear
and that teachers ignore
they ignore
your sleepless eyes
your swollen lips
your bloodied cheekbones

the boys that trip you in the halls
that call you a freak
a ***
that pin you against old metal lockers
and choke you
whisper in your ear and force you down on your knees
you don't know their names
they don't know your names
they know you only by the terms that you've come to know as endearments

(you hate them
you hate them but you can't make it stop)

Eternity wheezed,displaying its shortness of breath.Orange orbs whizzed in its' originalpath of vision due to a completelack of oxygen.Stirring stars shot rubber bands at each otheracross the universe. TWANG!Comets were slung like spitballs. Black holespainted each others nails whitewhile biting into a crunchy planet like a Dorito.®Salt of the earth was lost in dank darkness.An Mp3 player came crashing through the stratospherewhile playing my favorite song."Sitting in the morning sun,I'll be sitting when the evening comes,watching the ships roll in, and I watch themroll away again".

.

Raising his hand
moving from the desk
as spitballs fly
and notes are passed

Chasing his tale
in make believe endings
with a princess in pink
draped on his arm

snickers and snorts bellow
his train of thought
traveling off track temporarily,
temporarily  

Dancing at midnight
drifting the seasons
on a feather boa mattress
pearlescent skin and fingers

silence gathers around
heavy breaths float
eyes squint, trying to focus
not his, theirs

Drawbridge openings explored
present tense heartbeats
sundown desires drip
saturating the scabbard

Homework is sidelined
jealous boys, intrigued girls
as curiosity peaks and biology
is not just a subject anymore

at the front of the classroom
writing in black chalk
so the rest of the class
cannot see

but he can

*oh he can

This poem is a story about me. I'm writing it at 4:30 AM because I can't sleep and it's better than smoking cigarettes.

I'm 19. Male, half korean, half American mutt. For some reason, I have this photographic memory. I remember too things like they just happened yesterday. I get flashbacks to events I shouldn't remember. Things I shouldn't think about. Other memories never get past the tip of my tongue. I have PTSD with the dumbest triggers you could imagine. I live every day on the edge with pent-up feelings even though I tell people I do not feel. It's hard to make me laugh, and it's hard to make me cry, and I feel awfully lonely.

I remember elementary school. Age 5... I'll remember the first day I rode a school bus for the rest of my life. I think at least 8 kids asked me if I was Chinese on my walk to the back, and some disgustingly fat kid across the aisle was begging people for paper scraps to shoot spitballs at "the *****". The next 13 years weren't much easier than that day. As I grew up, I found it necessary to grow my wit. I disguised my sorry feelings behind clever jokes while people began to like me. I made some friends, but I felt so alone. I always felt like nobody liked me when it was probably only me that didn't like me.

Senior year of high school, I fell in love with a girl, and this is a really long story too except that I can sum it up that I just ruined her life and now she won't talk to me. But she was the sunrise to what had been a dark, dark life. She was my safety and my warmth. It wasn't about how cute she was or what she looked like. I fell in love with the person inside of her. We did some stupid things, disobeyed her parents. Her parents then damaged me for loving her... and I made mistakes I'll forever regret. I never meant to hurt her, but ... Everything I did to her - and what she's done to me, the guilt I put on myself before she ever left and the pain that she brought on me after she did... I cried to myself for 200 straight days and even though my friends have picked me up, it still makes me feel like the most pathetic being on this planet and I'm sure just like she knows now not to waste any her time on a waste of human life, that was nothing without her.

Today, I am a pirate ship -
My heart, the red and white sails of a head-hardy
*** spilling
Caribbean bound me
With men marooned to a land of
Salty wood and salty seas
Knowing nothing but the sun's devilish smile in
The morning tide
Or an Atlantic storm
Tossing them about like
The horizon's spitballs.

We will brave the whims of now,
The rapid tonight, the slow coming tomorrow
With a voice in the wind saying,
"And I swear to the gold you will find
Or the breast of that distant thing called land
That my fibers will catch the air,
My fabric will not tear.
Unfurl me under cloudless skies
And the charcoal memories of an
Ocean-stripped-to-the-Heaven's-above alike -
I will take you to places you could never even fathom."

When I was 10 I had my 1st crush
He had everything a 4th grader could ask for
He brushed his teeth and never threw spitballs at me
It was love, until he stuck gum in my hair

When I was 12 I thought I was in love
He was the hockey player with a glowing smile
I didn't care if he would talk to me I just wanted someone to find me cute
It was love until he decided to tell everyone how big of a loser I am

When I was 13 I thought I had found the one
Red hair, slight lisp, and an amazing smile
We'd stay up till morning wondering if the stars shown for us
It was beautiful until my friends told me he was a year younger so it's not allowed