i want to feel pink and in love,
i want to drink tea and watch the rain tumble down my window,
i want to feel the cool breeze and my baby hairs go flying,
i want to write poetry and feel good,
i want to write for others and for myself,
i want to be heard yet not too much,
i want to feel free but not too much,
i want to travel the world and be an artist and walk on wet rocks barefoot and sleep on bamboo-mat floors and climb mountains and i do not want to do my homework.

i don't know when it was but one day, my apartment began to grow
cardboard boxes. they came from

nowhere
and
everywhere

all at once-- a silent
invasion, i felt a faint ache in the back of my neck but
alas, what could i do? i allowed it to
continue.

now as i sit amidst the cardboard boxes, and hear their
rich conversations
and articulate speech, i cannot help but realize that the apartment is a stage. and the boxes have more stage presence than i have ever had. and suddenly i am the most pathetic, lowly actor on this cardboard stage of cardboard boxes and i wonder to myself, where did i go wrong?

the poet's words are terribly weak, and his mind so terribly sore and dry.

those words without luster do not pierce the thick act of life, and do not interrupt the rhythmic rotting of metro-corpses as they live lives thrice lived and lived over again.

words dulled and dumb, like word-plugs, deliver no pleasure, and those who try to force them into the tender pink cochleae of springtime azaleas are rapists,
the worst kind.

the poet's words are terribly few,
the volumes that once came forth, like falling floods, now spat with force from
fearfully pursed lips.

the words shiver and dissipate like glass upon contact with the broken floor, writhe flinch and eventually curl up into burnt remnants of clay "animals."

what once could have been a
zebra, dog, or sparrow takes no audible, tangible shape. and the pulse, if there is one, cannot be heard over the deafening croak of silence, for these words are as good as dead.

(i think) what you did was wrong,
yesterday because now
what am i supposed to do, and
say, what if i'm just not supposed to
do at all? what even-- how do you
love somebody? Hey Google...

(i think) you gave me your love, yesterday,
when i turned to say goodbye,
planted it squarely on my stupid forehead.
yet of course all i remember is the feeling
of the corners of your mouth against my forehead
as you smiled, and i wondered
what in the world was so funny.

'brownstone of my body,' i had declared
privately my first confession. somewhat
intimate. and as my voice quivered like
name-tags on teenage trees, i hoped you
found me endearing in your brazen ways.
i come off as naive, to your unblinking gaze:
passive, unimpressed, and mostly unfazed.
my small pink feet are soft and raw against
your weathered knees. and you say my belly
is too mellow with its paper-doll creases, flesh
too easily torn by your cut-brick corners, face
too childish for your middle-aged games. but
my thighs are like your alleys, leave no space
for nonsense, is my whole as is my part, if you
can love me for my thighs, i will be content with
something along the lines of 'my brownstone
loves me for my thighs, my thighs
have no alleys and i would have it no other way' and
I would ask no question as the blossom of my tender body is
pinched between your fingers and rolled into a
tiny pink cigar, stamped out before ever being lit.
and i would never ask, is this (ever) womanhood?