One day I'll be able to paint my mind
and it'll be that exact shade of eyes.

My love like a lone penny in the street,
Fell far from your wallet, claiming no trust.
Sitting idle where cement runways meet,
Black copper stained by love's untimely rust.

My love like the paper of yesterday,
Read over and then thrown away quick.
This torture you have given me to weigh,
Could make even the invincible sick.

My love like a needle of addiction,
Clawing at the vein of your youthful grace.
Mind and soul in a bold contradiction.
A hunger that no mere pill can erase.

My love like a burning candle in night.
My love denied by your ignorant sight.

Hopeless, yeah.
A little useless
and destructive

but ****, it made me happy.

The second could have been three times as long, but you'll always remember the first.

We didn't meet in the summer or the winter—
but I took off your clothes in the fall
and you first kissed me in the spring,
under a tree while we were smoking.


My heart doesn't beat anymore,
but if it did
it would for you.

the two second view of Jupiter over
the two hour night that I spent awake
with you

How my memory favors a
one night second over a
one night stand.

Was it selfish of me? You
have no commitment to
the world but still we
frown upon you as you
marry the only thing that
gives you happiness. Was
is selfish of me? For the
love of God, at least use
a sanitary needle.

when you took him out
from under my wing
and into the air
and into the lightning

was that really me?

i almost regret not introducing you to my friends
memories fall so separate
i squint to see overlap

so many minutes of my life in your apartment
i must not have lived them
if i cannot again relive them

was it really me on spotted counter top
was it really me against white brick
touch my palm to induction stove
hoping to burn but only touching magnetism

i almost regret letting it into my head

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.

my mind telescopes to
the stars that once lined your skin—
who now form constellations
on the rings of
my eyes.

Did we teach ourselves to see?
Do we imagine touch?
What do we strive to be,
Ask for so much?
Were we built with this instinct?
    To breathe?
    To sleep?
    Survive?

Or were we given it?
From our creators?
    Creator?

Are we their creation,
    That has created their own?
The forgotten plant planet,
    That has lived; grown?

Is it miracle or mistake,
That we cannot judge,
    Our creations,
With an unbiased eye?
No, we can only judge other's.

Did we make this up?

True, false.
Born by blood, live by pulse.

This is all we know.

Did we make this up?

Hate, Love.
A molten core, celestial above.

Directions are simply words.
Is time as well?
Is emotion?

Did we make this all up?

A beginning, an end.
Just to feel, just to understand,
    comprehend.

Grow,   apply,   adapt.  As  ink,  we
seep   and  sink   into   surrounding.
Bring  with  us our  virus,  desirous
as we  come.  Sum  up all  we  have
gotten  and  it  is  not near our goal.
Soul  of   good   intentions  but  the
weapons    in    our    arms     speak:
"Weak!     We shall conquer all that
do   not  adhere!"   Clear, we   have
a  slightly  strange notion.  Motion:
**** the parasite that makes us sick.

Oxymoronic,
we are the Universe tick.

I haven't held a secret in so long, but oh God, I can feel their ghosts on my shoulders still. I locked a man in my closet and the flesh fell off to show a skeleton. He did not open the door. I wish it could have been different. I went back years later and found bone-shaped holes in the floorboards. Oh God, I never knew what those taps in the walls were. When my lover is not listening I tap back.

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.

Of back rows, front rows—
Broken eye contact—Day dreams—
And quantum physics.

One day I will be six-hundred and four,
and you will be two-hundred and fifty—
but that is okay, because
you will still call me and I
will still have the memories of our memories.
*"He spoke with
a russian tongue—blue, snowy, and
cold.

We were sitting on your bathroom floor when you told me there was nothing worse than seeing people in the shadows—
you caught yourself because we both knew
that wasn't true.
we looked at our hands and thought of the times
we saw shadows in the people.

I could listen to this voice for decades.


I think I will.

Your skin is soft and mine is rough
to the touch—but somehow
you still let me taste you
with these rosebud fingertips
which have kissed pinkies
pricked thumbs.

but given the change in time
and the frequency of which
you came back into my life
so often
doesn't change the fact that
it ******* hertz

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.

If gravity is 9.8m/s², I must have been .294km in the +z direction because it only took 60 seconds for me to fall into you

—and then I hit the ground.

I will cut you a little piece of me
Slip it into your coat.
Let you take home to find
that little piece of me.

For all the times you never
Wanted it,
I will cut you a little piece of me.

only write haikus
for lovers. this one is for
me. i ****** myself.

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.

Amanda,

Do not become the spying rat,
Do not invade their habitat.
    Do not become a ****.

Do not do the scientist's evil deed.

He does not care for his fake plant,
You are simply a decoration,
He is using you.
Bought for beauty, thrown on the shelf.

Do not overestimate yourself,
fake a strong back,
and bluff about the things,
    you are lost in.

You will not win.

Amanda,
Chop off your synthetic stem,
before you grow into something so unknowingly fake.

Amanda,
Do not make people up,
and drop them like impostor petals.
Do not make excuses up,
or blame your actions on substances,
to salvage your pride,
    and save your lies.

Do not fake life amongst the butterflies.

Accept defeat.
Burn from it,
    Learn from it.
Regrow from your ashes,
    Like an organic phoenix.

Fall with the seasons,
    Nutritional blue.
We're living, we heal.
    We always do.

Amanda,
Save scars as reminders,
And only open the wounds,
When you are too.

Remember the things that we once knew,
put past us as we said we grew,
and lied to ourselves,
as we sprouted plastic leaves.

    Turned into information thieves.

Repeat this course, like a failed grade.
    Re-burn from it.
    Yearn for a different ending.
Like a request that is pending,
Flashing yellow, like the neighbor stoplight,
And it maybe, maybe, might,

      Change,
          Amanda.

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.

Poet, live melancholically as
A man with one eye and full vision.
Ambition but no depth
Perception.

Poet, live longingly as
A child in the corner.
Watching mother's wrist.

Poet, live remiscingly as
A bird crossing the street
Via sidewalk as a ghost.

Poet, live unconsciously as
A murderer, staring down at
A floorboard. Not blood but—ink
On your hands.

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

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.

"You know what's just as addictive and twice as expensive as a line of coke?"
You slip out of my vision like a fallen credit card.
Your eyes touching my thigh and
your nose a smoke carton's width away from the coffee table
"Two lines of coke."

If I were the words
that fall like crosses from your lips
I would flow from your lungs like holy water,
opening your mouth like double mahogany doors.

If I were the words
that fall like crosses from your lips
and float down on guardian wings from your tongue
I would carry no sound but still be comparable
to church bells.

If I were the words
that fall like crosses from your lips
I would have been glad
to have been nothing more
than a word from the bible of your speech.

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

my ***** heart is hungover
overdue for a kickstart
startled and *******
all for you,
all for you.

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

8 is sure bright.

everything felt a little bit closer
when it was farther away
*(because it was farther away)

Einstein was right:
Imagination may take you everywhere
But right now I am destination-based
And the road to the pharmacy can take me
From A to Plan B.

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

If
you had enjoyed the touch
of the grass on your skin
only a moment longer
than you did.

If
you had given into that
sweet street side indulgence
and walked but
twenty more steps into the night.

If
you had loved the lights
of the Paris city center
only thirty minutes more.

If
the sound of your opinions
fell quiet against
the sound of someone trying
to silence you with theirs.

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

i wanted sin and *** appeal,
but you were my achille's heel.
i singed my skin so i could no longer feel
what's real, unreal—
what's real—
—unreal

"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."*

I say it twice.
Not to enforce a point
but to give both of us
a copy.

i still look at the recipes you wrote about me.
you told me that baking requires trust—
maybe that's why my macarons burnt.

you were the most sobering experience.

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