I could decipher your writing,
Every loop, curve, and line.
I know all of your secrets,
and you know all of mine.

I picture your past
as if I have lived it instead.
Your voice is my conscience,
Guiding my head.

I know how you died,
On that night, all alone.
But your favorite color,
I never have known.

Scent is nostalgia
when I sprayed you around my room
in the days of september
(of church doors closing—
of burning love letters—
of tipping heads back—
and swallowing)

you spoke the words and they came true—
heaven had a crush on you.
they placed you on that cold bronze throne
as "gold dust rained down in sierra leone."

you were made of
good intentions, thin hips,
and soft shoulders.

i was weak,
with bruised knees,
and thought with my lips.


if we were to ever agree on a god:
he would be physical—and he
would know our secrets.



he would be made out of them.

carved you out of me
and the cancer is gone.
i'll deny every word of it but
(i know we both look at the holes)

Will you create with me?
Silence says what silence speaks,
Not what your worries tell you.

I could live a lifetime's worth of lifetimes and still never meet anyone
Just
Quite
Like
You.

A millennium from now when
I am buried and you are alive
through the pages of the poetry and letting your voice live through songs or speeches.
You will still cross my mind like our local mountain paths.

Time heals all wounds, but
scar tissue is always visible in light
and feels smooth to fingertips in the dark.

Time heals all wounds. Time heals all wounds.

Time has never healed me—
And I was never wounded.
Yet my entire body is smooth in the dark.

taking time captive,
my future tightens
his hand on his own
throat. he acts like a
mother after birth.
i learn to follow steps
once pressed into me,
now fading out.

In past I have met a man,
Who sold his youth to sea
Now withered, before old age began
Tells tales of only memory.

I've also found a girl in ache,
Wronged by a single soul.
The past, tainted by a single break—
A future taking toll.

However many memories do invite—
I see no calling in yesterday's light.

My best friend, you
At three in the morning,
You asked me to sing you to sleep.
All I could do was sit; think. Silence.
What to sing,
What to sing.
My best friend, no longer.
A year later, and
I am still thinking,
Of what to sing you.

i keep a secret
on the inside of my bit-
ten, ****** cheek. ow.

I tried to push you away;
to deny your voice.
    You make my mind sway.

New phases came,
and I got hooked.
    I forgot your fame.

But then I heard you, from her.
And I remembered us.
    You make my thoughts blur.

The last time I heard you, I don't know when.
But now I've tasted your song;
    and I'm in-love again.

I listen to you, as I go to bed.
Your rightful place,
    is in my head.

they are ashamed when i am finally happy
"but it is the only thing i look forward to"
they are happy for me when i am at my saddest
"you're better than that.
have some self respect"

"how can you take away my happiness
because it differs from yours"

"why do you do this to the ones you love"

i stay up late, lately
waiting for the day when i call you the wrong name—
the wrong syllables in the right mouth.
because that's the way i was taught
and this is the way i will teach you.

Ah, the standard of life,
which comes in threes:
Education, career, wealth.
The likes of which we have welded together into a closed circuit.

Oh Ruth, you left me in a scattering—
I hit the gold foil
and I was gone.

THE SEVEN-SECOND GENERATION.

White plastic hanger, previously molten molecules, bleach additions and thermodynamic repercussions. I use the word thermodynamic because "chemical" has a falsely truther connotation to it. It hangs the shirt I choose to wear for tomorrow.
A hanger is a hanger is a grocery bag.

There were actions behind every reason—but not reason behind every action.
And you don't talk about it, but you think about it—because you don't want the whole world to realize that it's loneliness hidden in that shirt. You were only trying to tell yourself that maybe buttons on the other side was for the better.

I forgot which words to capitalize in a title so I took capitol on them all.

There was a world once, out there, somewhere, that cared for more than seven seconds. They hung up the power button, asked the tide to come closer, and walked until their hair was wet.

Kept going until water kissed water within lungs.

We were wrestling in your bed
And I grabbed your leg—
Seven others wrapped around me.

I drunkenly wingman my dreams to my realities.

in the middle of the road,
you said you wanted to be a canary—
"because God doesn't have eyes
in the coalmines"

I wish I could have told you before—
That all of your problems stacked up
is less than the distance
you jumped from.

oh hips, i'd gather all them,
(your spine i deserve).
i'd much rather call them
a coastline than a curve.

so we pour salt on slugs and watch them shrivel away
'cause you used say, "let's be human here."

disappearing was never our forté
but we could make it his.

i am still waiting for the day you wake up from your three-year sleep

three circles will linger
in my grave when i die
one ring on my finger
two under my eyes

i welcome lows like highs
you bit my ear and then laughed—
*"if your entire life is peaking
you're nothing but a plateau"

I, right again.
Wrong.
I, write again.

what much affection
believe you earned-her.
once loved to learn-her.
help-her, hurt-her,
oh baby, choke-her.

people die when we forget that they're alive in our minds

We head to visual court to give our testimony.
Blood rush to the podium of my neck
where another lover once bit.
I keep these bruises for you and I
to remember why we can't be together.

"Run. And never stop."
She didn't say it,
She wrote it.
On an old platform we used to
cross our competitions
and
She won.
She always won.
And I told her as
she got on the plane
"Run. And never stop."*
Later, again,
I didn't write it, I said it to her
as she called me from the hospital payphone.

I drink away my problems
I drink away my happiness
I drink away my wallet

This new friend, who showed me
New ways of thinking.

She came much too often.
And then her eyes started bleeding.

I thought she only came when I was bored.
So I went out and bought a book.
But then I heard her over my shoulder.

I thought she was chained to my house
So I went out Friday night.
I saw her in the theater.

I thought she hated school
Where all those social butterflies gather
But then she sat with me in English.

I thought she only came out in darkness
But when I flick the lights on,
She is still here with
Bleeding eyes. Smiling.

Your third eye, your two eyes, you're I, you are I, I,

Tears—from, or in front of, or in the arms of
My mother, oh God, do I love her,
Breaking down faster than gravity can act on salt water.
The words dissolving under my tongue—
quicker than I can spit them out.

It hurts.
It ******* hurts.

You   feel   it
coming. You
can    always
feel   it  com-
ing.  It's  here
again. Maybe I would rather be low. Here it is, again, the plateau.

i am cold without your eyes in my sockets. do you still look? i still look. do you still see? i don't.

i don't.

"but you're so beautiful"
we kissed in the alley off burrard
"shut the **** up"
by the bush where i hid my *****
"touch me"
it was raining when you told me
"i love you"

When you get off work
—remember to brush
the quiet ghosts off your shoulder

I need you to
Hate me
So you can live
cageless.

I will always find
yellow feathers
in my bed.

The skylines, the cruise ships, the water in every window.
From the sixteenth floor of my permanence—
I do not write to you.

You mistook rock bottom for a mountain plateau, but you were happy, so we decided not to tell you for awhile.

I do not know why the caged bird sings,
nor why I chose to stay inside on
the sunniest day of the year.

There were no birds, no songs, and no cages.
Only shadows of your house on the backyard.

i wanted to say "i love you" last night (more than once)

but you are fading, i am opaque
and words will slip through you
like water in butterfly nets

God's firmament: only
a child's planetarium projector—
If only I could project my
vows in a sphere of light
with even a handful of batteries, all the
eyes in the world
could see how ******* thin
my gossamer guilt is.

My conscience is silky smooth
like Venus-razored legs.