My uncle killed himself and the only kind of suicide note he left was a grocery list.

I am the scientist sitting on the pew
Holding a textbook bible.
I don't question you.

You are the bullet.
I do not see, I only hear,
We connect, we cohere.
A split-second moment, we are kin,
As you skip across my skin.
You leave a mark, a life-delay.
You are a scar,
A ricochet.

Love hurts
Is what they have been telling you
And you thought that they meant
when Morgan told you that engineering was more important than you, or
when Michael didn't recognize you
In the grocery store, or
when Matt didn't talk to you after you had *** in his fourth floor downtown condo.



Love hurts
When your father would rather
Put a cigarette into coal asthmatic lungs
Than catch the 14:23 train to
Roma Termini station.
Your head was in your mother's lap
For each and every of the 32 minutes
Of countryside crossing.

tHERE aRE pLENTY oF fISH iN tHE sEA


i swung a bat and hit the ball—

and the ball kept talking to me until he found someone a little cuter at work. or that's what i assume.

you keep saying, "at least you played the game,"

but i would rather have missed the ******* match.
crane my neck like a swan. hang my head. give up good, give up so good. canadian geese.

it happened again. it ******* happened again.

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

I wish I hurt you.

She is England, she is.
Long, commanding-of-colonies legs, with
Eyes of volatile fire.

Spits records of the past
—we repeat—
To the face of confusion.

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.

What are you doing eleven months from now?
I want to take you on a destination wedding to
the seventh circle of my
mind.

Wordless,
She says
she loves me.

Worldless,
she does
not
breathe.

When we were nine, you left your mother's home and told
the world you were going travelling. I still wait—
Hoping that maybe one day you will return with your sanity.

I have been waiting twelve years for you—and nineteen years from now,
I will be nineteen—because today is the day I start living,
sanely.

Who* did you trade me for?
     (Yet you were never quite mine.)
What spurred you to do this?
     (As you stepped across the line.)
Where are you know?
     (Are we thinking the same thing.)
When will you come back?
     (Your absence brings a hollow sting.)

And I would trade these past four questions,
for the answer to but one:
Why did you leave me?
Why did you run?

Love starts out
                          on the run.
Or so they they—
          They say
They're crazy.

Promise ring made of
                                      gold.
Or so she's told—
          She's told
She's crazy.


They said they'd
use your skin
for fun
'Cause since they said
Love starts out
                          on the run,
And ends on
Lust's warm highway
       (Runaway, runway—all the same, they say)
Or so they say—
          They say
I'm crazy.

Hazy, maybe, a little
                   fickle with the memories.
But they told me it was made of gold
    I swear, I swear.

They could not lie on love's runway, no—
My plane takes off in five
     I thrive,
     I strive,
     I derive,
from you: the root of
                                    a negative.

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

The sun doesn't shine in December
The sea doesn't sway in fall.
May nor June didn't open their eyes and August never loved me at all.

I have been wishing
for smiles
in sleep.

For sleep in smiles.

Sanctimonious.
Sacreligious.

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

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

On Saturday night
My friends went out,
and I did too—
alone.

At two in the morning
I walked passed
a resounding dance hall.
Into trees.
Hoping a bear would
hurt me.

At three in the morning
I went home
And found a bear
In the mirror.

I sprinkle the salt of sadness over the steak of my life
because salt brings out the flavor
salt brings out the flavor

You called me "loose"
and in a way you were right.
I can feel my screws falling out
one by one.
The thread of my seams
getting tangled as they spread apart—
like legs on graduation night.

companionship, not compatibility.
i have chosen immobility.
once i lived in instability but now i live
in his advice.

so water melts to ice,
my science trusts the imprecise,
thus in this world,
such comfort will suffice.

thus in this world,
that i created,
my latest, unadulterated:
i will live in shallow vice
i will allow
such comfort to suffice.

You asked and I told you.
Seven is pretty high for eighteen but
It's my lucky number.

He comes
and goes.
He comes
and goes.
There's always marks
and always traces.
I make
the same mistakes
in different
places.

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

are drugs lips? wit. harem. ember in glore

a red rug slips with a remembering lore.

The proof is laying next to me in the morning but
I still find myself wondering
If September 2nd ever existed at all

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

we are both blind and sometimes we forget that
there is nothing written between the lines

I dig the guilt out of my rib cage with my fingers and
embrace it.

i long for that hip-held vibration.
secret shower/ *******.
you're a product of my imagination.
only temptation. lonely location.
find me in my blind elation.
waiting. waiting.
lost in translation.

you told me once
that sleep deprivation
is the equivalent of
seven shots of whisky.

so i drank your words
on tuesday afternoon
and slammed down
seven shots of whisky
on wednesday night
and watched the sunrise
on thursday morning.

the whisky wore off long ago
but i am still here hoping that
if i stay awake long enough
i will stop dreaming
of you.

seven candles
look a lot like seventeen lines
you never thought you'd be doing
a year ago

paining, pining
i am refusing to branch
onto your spokes i am vining
touch me soft—***** your hand

the only thing university taught me was that you can get away with anything if you say it the right way

I have a lust for fire and a taste of ice.


We are the humanity which created a cunning device
called, "language."

It is not wrong vs oppositional right
Opinions change, and rock, and sway

We are not black and white;
We are shades of gray.

You came as a friend,
Twisted into a lover,
and left a stranger.

Like passing seasons in a year.

She, only exists in the dusk hours.
Clings to the breath after April showers
The Angel sings with a halo and wings made of lust
The bust of his lover still hovers in his hand
Meetings unplanned but demanded by both.
An oath meant for growth and simply no more—
Purely to adore his virginal *****, who never gives
What he lives for; only a taste for the lonely.
His mind is reeling with the thoughts of thieves.
     She leaves, and he waits.
Plans dates with weights made of steel on his back
Soon to crack from the lack of a meal,
His stomach filled with a ravenous zeal.
Thrilled with the build of his lover now returned,
She is burned by the flames of a snake spurned.

Heat from you ignites the fuse,
to spark my static thoughts.
An explosion in my black night sky,
adorned with unimportant dots.

You are the only star that matters.

My needy being owns these feelings
that my mind cannot control.
Gravity of 10 black holes.
    The closer, the clearer.
    Burn me when I get nearer.

You are as rare as a supernova.
    So bright.
    So vivid.
    So far away.
Through a million lightyears delay,
I will watch your reflection in the sea.

Shine for me.

Let me bask in your chemical composition.
Hydrogen and helium in nuclear fission.
Soak into me,
    poison me.

You are the reason for my lack of sleep.
The reason I pray to the stars.
Not Venus, nor Mercury, nor Mars.

I am relaxed with only you.
You are divine.
    Even if you don't realize.

Cloud cannot keep me from you.
Lightning and all the others
are nothing when your glow is mine.

Shine.

I had a home
and I hid a
secret in the floor
boards. I would
like to say I was
bored but I know I
was only lonely and
tired of drinking. If
you can hide a
body in a closet—
you can hide a
memory under the
bed. I like to think
I did not mean for it
to be this way.
But now, his
skin has fallen and
he is a skeleton in
my closet and his mem-
ories have spawned a
monster under my bed.
I like to think I
did not mean for it
to be this way.
I am hoping my
husband never
taps on the walls.
They will
tap back.

-
I wonder if wise men ever existed in the first place
because they certainly didn't in
the last place,
last night
.

[poem]
W0r1d1y th!ng5 are f1337ing.
          
[/poem]

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.

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."

A slate cannot
be wiped clean
if sins are
written with a
chisel.

canaries, doves, pigeons
in your image they made religions

pigeons, canaries, doves
both in seventeen and in love

doves, pigeons, canaries
scholars devoted to you, libraries.

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 setting your soul on fire
Like that pack of Player's Light
I will burn on in your mind.

Because the fire on the horizon
Was brighter
Than any light
You could have given me.

I love you no more than I love
my credit card and left nostril.
Not a single gram more, but
not a single gram less, either.