The switch is welcomed
with arms open
like a soldier's homecoming.
—
—
It's not love,
but it's
certainly not hate.

*** and Radiohead
We are high and everything but dry.

Separate beds and shades
Of reds. Intimacy is
A ****** handprint.

I don't miss you—I just think of you

You are not defined by your fading photographs.
Your personality does not have a white frame.
You are a Polaroid *******.

Snowflakes and fingerprints
We are all 'unique.'
But if we account into this,
the law of probablilty
and an infinite amount of time.
Will there ever be two identical snowflakes?
Will my DNA ever be replicated,
or am I already a copy of someone else's view
And even in
one billion years
will there
ever
be
another you?

I saw you in Tim Hortons for the first time in three years.
You told me I had grown and
I congratulated on you on your weight loss.


She is my best friend.
You didn't raise a child,
You raised an ironwork frame.
You threw a girl into reality before she could even spell the word.

And I would love to look at the other side, but I can't—
it always loops back around like that little girl
doing circles around on her ten-speed as she pulls up
to the convenience store to buy you cigarettes.

Hey, at least you called her an ambulance—
On Thanksgiving Day when she passed out
from lack of nutrition because you spent your last welfare check
on something I don't even want to hear your excuse for.

I remember my mother, coming into my room at eleven pm on a Wednesday, telling me to put some shoes on because you snapped a pool cue and placed it to a guy's neck.

My pajama pants ripped as I broke into your apartment to wake my best friend up and tell her that my mom was parked outside and she had to spend the night at my house.

You spent the night in the drunk tank hitting on officers.
She spent the night beside me crying and asking for any other mother but you.

We were in grade 6.

When she was 13, she had to live with me for 3 months because social services deemed you, "unstable."
When she was 14, she moved away to the city because she couldn't handle you anymore.

I went to visit her last weekend and she didn't say a single word about you.

You came, you saw, you conquered.

Ripped my flesh off to reveal my internals.
Walked out wordless;
     left me to wonder...

What   just   happened?


Your memory is a stale reminder of how I will never find another
     just quite you.

We were two halves of a broken heart,
but our torn and serrated edges willed us not to connect.

When you left, it
was tough.
     Is tough.

I think in statistics,
and you in heartbeats.

I am. You are. I am. You are.
I am chemical-based, you are a meaningful scar.

You explore,
covet,
and hoard,
anything near you.

While I am
stuck,
looking at my addiction,
through a lens.

I am forever cursed:
to skim for importance,
to look only at the bigger picture,
to glance only with logic's borrowed eye,

but you are here beside me, and you take in every little detail.

To me, blood is but a fluid,
yet in your eyes,
it is the fuel for lovers and the ink for poetry.

You are feather pens, I am erasable chalk.

The insomniac that is so filled with dreamer-talk.
So enticed by the world, that you couldn’t close an eye.

My mind is logic, reasoning, and your complete opposite.
Every word has a different meaning in your perspective
and every syllable holds a secret—
     one you must find out.

I am textbooks and punctuality and schedules.
But you, you are the only person I can wait on.

This is a cycle with ragged edges, bizarre.
I am. You are. I am. You are.

We are combined; a marvelous oxymoron.

For long, I've had a pen
And at the beginning of that time:
I used to write fantasy,
With set syllable and rhyme.

I gave it to the public,
And they gave it back to me.
Told me it was bland,
Somehow, I could agree.

And then I changed it to
First person—

Wrote about my troubles
Gave up on punctuation
And that ******* filter.

To write about my fight with needles,
A cyclic session of depression and regression,
Is release.

I am,
the butcher who chopped apart her soul
Drained blood into words.
Ground the bones into a bag and
Fed it to the birds

I won't dwell upon the rhyme scheme
Chime whenever the hell I want.

I hid my words in shadows
Did not care for
The world's gaze

And suddenly I found myself—
Showered with honest praise.

Your words were so sweet—
I bet that when you lied through your teeth—
You got cavities.

chemical cocktail—
serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, etcetera.
i'd write you a poem but i'd rather
spend my time in bed drinking
this chemical cocktail
with you.

Little blue, little blue.
Picked up in the night.
3am may be black but

8 is sure bright.

******* on sale at the supermarket
Boxed in warning
But still
You got out your credit card

(Twice)

reality is fleeting
sanity-insanity, seen-unseen
i slip from meaning to mean
mean to meaning

We   cut    and  shook
our    hands,   formed
a  bond   as  you  told
me,   "I will always be
in you as your blood."
But now you have dis-
appeared and all I am
left with is a  scar and

anemia.

My physics teacher told me;
we never quite touch.
The electrons don’t allow it,
or something of the such.

It would be fun to say a sentence,
idealistic,
enigmatic,
cliché,
and trite.
Perhaps a little something such:

“You touched my heart, you gave it a chill.”

But
you
never
did.

And
you
never
will.

I am the narcissist that
fell in love with my own
mind and sadly found out:
It's an abusive relationship.

Failing class because I'm distracted
Impacted by your body extracted
Mine reacted with you.

There was nothing I could do.
There was nothing I could do.

your apartment is a glass bottle of ***** and we're drowning in the bottom of it
and the only way to save ourselves is tip the world over
and sip.

tired because of the things he does,
always remembering where i was.

these fickle things nostalgia brings,
icicle fingers touching ribs—stings.

"Nice guys finish last because they always let the girl finish first"
Taking that advice like a shot of fireball,
I still wish you would have
kissed me.

He asked me when
I started writing so I
turned to him and
frowned. "Have you
forgotten my
birthday already?"

Fond memories are used as gift wrap
for the simple ideas
in the complex times—

I wish I hurt you.

My birthstone shudders as I
Hit the sky's floor.

I think of you. Your ******-touch that crosses my eyelids
with chlamydia fingernails accenting in all the
wrong places. The white powder trail leading like a
highway to your right nostril—the unemployment rate
like a dropped lit cigarette in the ******* apartments available. I think of you.
I think of you.
I thought of you.

Sorry I can't
hear you any
—more.
I think we're

breaking up.


I think we're

breaking down
each other.

Quickly cunning,
armed with a witted tounge.
Eyes of a murderer,
    with the rope already strung.
Coat of copper,
lying sweetly as it promises,
the appearance of a dog.

The fox feeds once again.

He runs through the brambles,
reminiscent of an open door.
Eats all the farmer's poultry.
His mouth waters no more.

As quickly as he came,
the bushes he now does part.
He has stolen a living.
He has stolen my heart.

That double crescent moon bite mark
That Thom made on my arm
To show me he was, "*****."

Those five purple fingerprints
That Riley left, to remind me
My pants? Gone last night.

That weird, mysterious oval
On the inside of my thigh.
...Was that Kelsey or Nyssa?

That tiny yellow mark that splotched my eyebrow
From when I ran into a telephone pole
—completely sober.
Tyler still mocks me about that.

That blood red under-eye
That made me realize
We all get hit.

That Texas-shaped purple-to-yellow transition
That screamed to me,
We all heal.

All three lights were red
but we kept going—
afraid of the silence that would settle
between us if we
were stationary.

In silence
there would have been truth:
We have no common conversation.
Do not read between the lines—there is nothing written there.

When I was little,
My dad used to drive my mom to the airport on Fridays
And everytime we passed
Cliffe St Apartments
An old man sat eternally
Looking a thousand miles out the window.

And now
I know
Why.

I am nothing compared to your past.
You are everything, even with your flaws.
I love all of you.
Every problem and addiction,
makes my love dig deeper another foot.

My favorite is your insomnia.
How we stay up talking—
albeit on the phone.
Hours go well spent as we break the midnight barrier.

I am not your lover.
I am not even your best friend.
But I love you.
I love your random fits of ADHD,
and your strength through your past.
I love your drug addiction and insomnia.
They make you, you.

And you, you are beautifully flawed.

Boy of my dreams,
On the night of my life,
Offers me my first,
"Cigarette?"

You've got
A campfire-made halo.
Such a beautiful smile.

I carry only one around,
So when I see you once more,
I can offer you (not your first)
"Cigarette?"

And use
Your beautiful smile
And hope
You feel like I
Did.

"I quit."

And this cigarette goes,
Back into my pocket,
And I do too.

The history of your heart strings,
The singing of angels,
Stained glass, church bells.

You call my name and I am found:
Retracing all of my steps until I find
The ones I took beside you.

Look at that *****
swallowing pills
like *****
because the people endowed to her
this poem
and she only bothered to read
the title.

.

This is the Wednesday's one am.

A song I don't know and eyes I
have yet to look into.

You remind me of my first acid trip.
Of all the quirky people in the world
holding handfuls of trees

You're the one I would like
to wrap in ivy leaves and
take home.

Can you believe me?

I will unwrap you in a year and we will
find god under the sea.
Swimming like seagulls, fishing like carpenters—
we have no skills but we will build a house.


It will be a simple house.

who told you that you could say that
there's blood and ***** and drunk tears on the neck of your sweater
and in the corner of your eye.
substance lettering not making any sense.

who told you that you could say that


Christmas lights are beautiful
But only out of season

I sure as hell didn't.

Komodo Dragons don't stop
to pick off the skin and gut
a ****. Eat the liver.
Eat the kidney. Eat the jugular
vein. Eat the
Cardiac artery.

Love is fickle
but lust isn't—
so come over here and
I'll fix this rift
I created with words

Kissing, supporting—
then sniffing, then snorting:
Xanax, ******, Tylenol.
Alcohol will never expire
dealer, buyer—
you're getting higher and—and—and
Louder, louder—
you're drowning in prescription powder.

You're given ***, speed, salvation
It's not love, it's medication.

you were the greatest catch of my life
but i am no fisherman
i was never meant to reel you in
i was always meant to throw you back

-
-
you are not special
you are not special
you are only
my imagination.
you are not my foundation, fixation, frustration.

you are fire flirtation.
pupil dilation.
tablet temptation.

closed circuit consideration.
and this is all you will ever be.
you were never my medication.

you are not special
you are not special
the mantra is *******

You fade away like the borders of a country I will only ever visit on a map

(A world government:
Takeover—
Dictatorship)/'


.

Turn off your electric
revival.
Fold yourself into
flesh origami
Undress into blankets
In you, I find
eternity yearns.

Let us sleep forever
Wake up when the past returns.
Through war and dystopia we shall
sleep forever
and wake
at every
day.

I am
plagued by this—
recurring dream?

And ghosts in the closet
They howl and moan
And make it hard
to stop the nightmare.
And make it hard
to fall asleep.