Even though I had lied many times
and there was nothing which you could offer my youth
to make it take you back—
we still both agreed:
for the first of March,
it was a cold day
with colder air—
the freshest kind of close.

*** was a card game—
and you were the player
holding three other queens.

the memory of you is a warm comfort
a sunday morning community chapel
preaching your name so loudly
you'd think i was possessed
the sun sneaks through my windows
i'm alone in bed

Life handed me two boards of wood and a bucket of nails and now I can't tell if I am suppsoed to be Jesus or Huckleberry Finn.

I am a cocktail of spite and melancholy
sip me slowly, my percentage is high
and my intoxication will sneak up on you
like children's ghost stories

i am sorry for nothing
except knowing you.

the world turned and
turned and you put
it under your 4th finger
on your right hand when it
was spinning on your
coffee table next to a
carton of canadian classics with
one left in the pack. you stopped
it like a quarter and you put
it in your glass and you raised
your arm and drank and
you made me repeat myself.
and you raised your arm and drank and
you made me repeat myself.  i kept


going until i got dizzy.

Walking backwards
Past Israel and Politik
Trying to find
That post-
time era when
you hadn't yet met
the sickness.

i scroll through names to count numbers


*AND THEN I REALIZE THAT I'VE FORGOTTEN YOU EXIST
but then you're there again
here again

It was the brightest side of your clever mind
That, with mine, did intertwine.

It was the brightest side of the sun that sways
The grassy plains in which we lay.

It was the brightest side of your darkest day
I saw your sanity slip away.

It was the brightest side of my heart that died
When you left.

I am not mother, just lover,
to legs never met. Housewife, I once dreamed
of sweat over ovens, oh only to love in,
places I was told not to go. I am wet for another
touch, weak knee for ****, low self esteem,
I am student supreme.

my heart bursts
with the beat
of all my blood
pumping at once.
not bound.
not bound.
but bouncing back to
basics.

Hell froze over
The Devil stolen in ice
Now I've got nobody
to give my favorite advice

We were walking on the lake
trying to get to the mainland—
(Your cabin had burned down)


*"the road home
isn't paved
but the highway to your eyes
is."

Nostalgia wasn't a liar, neither was my mind, but we kept having dreams of better times while in the best time of our lives. The golden girl was the girl next door. The golden girl next door. You're too young to feel like a baby again. You're too young to feel like a baby again.

The golden girl next door, behold, a pearl, ex-*****, and a diamond.

Even though the touch of your skin will fade away,
Wrapped in mahogany curtains,
Your mind will linger on in mine.
Like the smell of gasoline
In the city we were raised by.

I WANT YOU TO LAUGH LIKE YOU USED TO AT THOSE CAT VIDEOS AFTER I MADE YOU WATCH A HORROR MOVIE. I WANT YOU TO LAUGH LIKE YOU WERE WATCHING YOUR OLDER BROTHER FALL OFF HIS BIKE. I WANT YOU TO LAUGH AT ME BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HURT AS MUCH AS IT SHOULD HAVE. I WANT YOU TO LAUGH LIKE YOU FORGOT WHAT WE WERE LAUGHING ABOUT. I WANT YOU TO LAUGH LIKE YOU WERE LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE THE ONLY TIME YOUR MOTHER WENT TO THE HOSPITAL WAS TO HAVE YOU. I WANT YOU TO LAUGH LIKE YOU FORGOT YOU DON'T TALK TO ME ANYMORE. I WANT YOU TO LAUGH. I WANT YOU. I WANT. I—

your face was familiar when i first met you
we traded words until noon the next day and never touched anything more than our fingertips as we passed a plate of ******* between us
i guess i've known you forever if i were born this morning

love a bit
love a bit

you look so good,
look so good,

the eyes relay to the mind

I watch Magic Bullet infomercials and
fondly think of you
and how you would
laugh at every line
I recite
from memory.

Some say they can't remember
    the details of their dream.
I think I can.
They might be wrong
    and fuzzy
    and a little plotless.
But I adore them.

They are what my mind
doesn't think
    in waking times.
    They are strange.

They are so beautifully strange.

Love preservation—
On the metal of the time capsule sits:
a seed.

And for a whole
          year—
                    the world spun
          for you.

The world spun
                             for you—
          and you stopped it.

You stopped it like
                                 a dime
                         under
                    your
                                  ­                                              thumb.

if i am          fine
you are          fine
like words written on the lines of your lips
i will taste the way you heard me speak
and watch the home videos of our time together
in the reflection of your eyes.

penciling in our heights on the walls
trying to see who could reach the ceiling first
if i am          fine
you are          fine

I believe in something greater than I—
Which throws men back to the birth of their skies
and pickpockets labor from the sweater of a women's religion.

I believe in something greater than I—
which gives four dimensions a chance to be visualized
by eyes that have only seen three ways of life.

I believe in something greater than I—
Which was born 14 billion lifetimes ago
but was alive before that.

I believe in time.
And time, and time again.

I wish I could remember those digits on your dorm room
—of the third floor of a building
I only visited twice—
Because I would have written
three-hundred-something reasons
of why I wish I could have forgotten them.

We went for soup and I got salad.

I was always lost
in many thoughts, and many glances,
other beaches, circumstances—
Ravelled in, a set of hands, of another man.
Oh, all with the same name as you.
Oh, all with the same name as you.

I wanted oranges.
I wanted reds.
I wanted to sit with the setting sun.
I wanted sadness.

If you've cheated on every lover you've ever had,
It's probably you.

Actually, on second thought,
It's probably me

taste me, oh, i taste like god—
upon your tongue and we spoke a new language,
together.
waiting for
that apple
to fall.

I lean but never fall in love,
because broken mirrors are even harder to repair the second time—
the third,
the fourth,
the fifth,
the sixth,
the seventh.

You told me that unrequited feelings are not real

So I will walk the five-thousand kilometres
cross the twelve borders
Appear on your doorstep
with my bones about to crack.
When you don't even love me back.

This, like you, is made only for 3:37am.
Not 3:36—not 3:38.
This costly minute
which slips under my tongue
and into my bloodstream.

It took only a minute.
It took only a minute.

I must have median.
Hurt, lust. Peace, and war.
Vast ocean and her shallow shore.
I wish for balance.
    I wish for you.

Thrown coffee mugs and movies on a couch.
Reliving hugs after petty fights.
    I want lonely nights.
Feelings of spite and that of adore.
    So in the morning I need you more.

I'll scream out "****", you'll shout out "*****,"
and when you turn and slam the door,
I'll realize how badly
     you can break me.

I want you to see my bad side.
    I want you to learn how to cope with it.

I want hurt, lust, peace, and war.
    But I'll always want you in my core.

i only wish i could esc the thought of you

I wonder how many
solved games of solitaire
are equivalent to
an ******.

How do I break you like a bad habit
Flesh addicted.
Future/present
Tense conflicted.
Past predicted
the future depicted.

My body betrays me.

Blood comes to the surface of my skin
—in a testimony of visual court—
where another lover has bit me.

III
your third eye opened when you stopped telling people to align their ******* chakras

II
if you only ever stopped to look at me, if you only ever opened your two—

I
never loved you.

You said you used to love writing when we were young
but now you sit here in your sadness
putting God under your tongue—
rubbing those prayers into your gums

I couldn't uphold a job and I couldn't afford gold so
I sold my soul to buy you a chalkboard

and with one hand under tongue
in the same writing from when we were young
chalk on your thumb, you wrote—

Salvation never comes
Salvation never comes

I inject venom at your words
yet every syllable is still a password to Heaven.

It's easier to hate a lover than a stranger.

We split ear buds on
the smooth rhythmic train ride of
my hips against yours.

In dreams of night and dreams of day
I dream of concrete where we lay
In rays of sun: the gaze we weigh.
We stay and wash away the grey
We stay and never fade away
Only in dreams do we ever
               Stay.

i want *** with love
but last night we ******
and i felt nothing—except for
the hardwood floors

you called me liquid because my language is fluid
i didn't call you fire because between water—there is a winner
and with us there is no loser and also
no champion.
you are oil
so close, so close—
but we will never be the same.

too broke to travel the world so you travel your mind instead.
you can put beautiful words to bad decisions but
it's still a ******* bad decision.

Sleepy sunset.
Fiddles clicking
keys
into locks
of hair
breadth apart.
A part
of something
much more grand
then we had ever
planned.

You're not my first or my final
but you can be my favorite.