I've written too many poems for too many people. something about you, I know, is different. even the image of your cold eyes skipping across the words I'm creating is nothing short of a miracle. the thought of your distant mind holding a blurred depiction of me seems impossible. you deserve more than a poem- more than standing up on some balcony thinking, just for a second, you loved some girl you never met. and maybe you loved her because you saw the best of her. but, she loved you because she saw some of the worst in you. and you made her see it in herself.

how can I miss someone I've never met? someday, you'll just become another insect weaving along the streets. a heavy look, yet somehow empty, stained on your face. it will age even further than your mind already has. it will flash on TV screens and billboards who advertise a man they think they can define. just know, I'll refuse to say your name- and I'll still miss you.

this is not a poem. it's not a sonnet, nor a song, nor a love note. this is something to remember on the subway. something to hold on to when the sting of fluorescent lights loses its luster, and the smell of the city is deemed no longer potent. it's easy for me to believe in a years time, I will still be the face you never laid eyes on and the body you never touched. it's harder for me to percieve this as truth.

wherever it is that you go, I know it will be with confidence. I don't have to worry about your success or stability. I will worry I have been forgotten, just as swiftly as the thoughts I've told you when you're the only one keeping me up deep into the pit of night. you teach me more than I have ever learned in a textbook; sometimes, even more than I have learned as I walk amongst the pests inside this anthill. I cant make you feel: I can't make you miss me and I can't make you love me; I don't want you to. I can't make you touch me, and you shouldn't. I can't make you accept the warm embrace I'd willingly give you, hell, I can't even make you give me the chance to try.

I can't make you do anything, but wherever you go, whatever you do, I will always think highly of you. I'm sure you'll live wearing gold along your knuckles thats worth more than my life, and chatting with strangers I can only read about in novels. maybe someday, you'll reach back and taste just a hint of nostalgia from some scrap of me that flickers in your mind. maybe someday, you'll long for endless nights of voiceless conversation. and maybe, someday, you'll miss me too.

this is about the boy
who wrote a girl a poem
she never got to read,
who sang to her before he kissed her,
and loved her before he touched her.
a beautiful boy made of constellations.
with a chipped tooth
from kissing concrete
and a head full of curls,
spirals strewn across her pillows,
stars in a sea of satin.
this girl he loved wrote poems too,
and he never knew that she also has
a cracked tooth tucked behind
her lips (that he liked to call thin)
pale pink against porcelain.
she, like him, had thoughts that twisted;
the Devils fingers knotted in her hair-
this is the story of two lovers:
one sailing a foreign sea,
and one who knew each inch of the ocean.

we were all born crying.
wailing, raw pink lungs
gasping,
choking, on new filtered air.

but maybe, we cry not because
of a cold chill
and fluorescent state of confusion,
but simply because we've been born once again.

maybe we cry because our past lives
will never repeat themselves-

no more grandkids, the splintered back porch with the hissing screen door,

no more ten day vacations at the spare house in Spain,

no more dates at a drive in, the 1981 firebird where the windows would always steam,

no handprints along glass,
footprints on the subway.

no more
"welcome home" kisses from your dog,
"goodnight" kisses from your wife.

when we are born,
maybe we cry because
in that simple movement toward new light
our hand lingers along the wall behind us,
and flips off the switch.

every painful lesson,
heartbreak,
first times,
failiure.
all of it recycled;
repetition that never comes to end.

maybe, we cry because
we have forgotten the words
of the song we know we've heard.
the one you once danced to
at your wedding;
the one they cried to, at your funeral.

maybe we cry because
we have forgotten the color of the ink
scratched on our past suicide notes.

maybe, because
we think the gunshot did not take us
to heaven.

but there are angels
and they don't wear halos and stroke harps-
they roam the earth.
instead of showing you the light,
they teach how to form the flame inside yourself.

we were all born crying.
and it is not from loss or fear itself;
not because our soul is homesick
for the house it can't recall-
we cry for the warmth of our mothers worn hands.
the new rhythm slow in her chest,
amber hair falling
from the foreign ***** of her shoulder;

we are just one soul on this journey
body to body, heart to heart.
maybe we cry because
in that moment, we ourselves realize
that each life is, a miracle.

they say the mind is most active at night.
maybe this is why you plague every passing thought
when the earth turns its face
far from the kisses of the shuttering sun;
and the black skies sweet breath
fogs up my windshield.

there is a moment in my mind
for every star in our galaxy.
with you, I can lay with my back to the street
and never worry of approaching cars,
because even if they were to gnaw
at me with their steel teeth,
and crush me with black rubber feet,
I wouldnt mind dying by your side.

with you, I can defy the laws
that have bound me to my bed.
you give me the strength to let the light in,
to set sweet fire to my skin
and - instead of burning -
I only admire the glowing left behind.

I always needed excuses for
Why I Loved someone, or How.
how could I cling to a force that
ground me into nothing but ashes,
littering the carpet beneath my bare feet.
and how could the world see me as a child,
with a freckled face and starving eyes,
and batter me with hatred, betrayal, fear.
confusion. until, it consumed me.

but all of this seems lost now;
it has risen like mist,
rain from the cracks of the concrete-
vanishing into oblivion.
with you, there is no Time.
there are seconds ticking, trying to
rip us apart, but there is no past.
there is no evidence of a shred of misery.
with you, I have hope for the future.

our child will laugh just like you,
not only in sound, but his eyes will squint
and his nose will scrunch up like yours.

our child will have her mothers hope.
she will view the world
from the eyes of a beggar-
but touch the earth with the hands of a God.

our child will reach out with boney fingers
and grab the soul of every baggy eyed, dead human, filling them with sweet fire.
and you and I? we will admire the glow.

how can it be that the only person
I hate on this earth
is the one who released me into it's arms?
you know, you can't be taught to love.
you can not ride a bike
the moment your raw skin touches
it's hard, torn leather seat.
there are no extra set of wheels
to guide you home,
especially when you don't have one.
love has become a sticky bag of green
tucked beneath my waistband;
a song from the 70s I will never hear live.
a white aerosol can that smells how winter
once felt, but only lasts in flashes of memory.
"it could always be worse"
is what they'll tell you.
but the fact of it is,
this is my reality:
a pound dog with it's collar too tight-
pink scars from the weight of the chains-
wincing whenever an arm is raised.
I wish I could drive a mile without
wanting to bury myself
in a metal grave, without a tag under my skin
marking
my
every
step.
signs are just an option.
countless turns too quick on the highway
in the car my parents let me use,
but never taught me to drive.
this pain, they dug it inside,
engraved in the roots beneath soil,
so deep that the sun can not leave its burn-
and then they locked up all the rusted shovels I could have used to find it.
the matter in the world is constant,
never made nor stolen away.
materials will fade and be born anew.
but emotion is infinitely expanding,
knowledge is control.
and love?
love is now only impossible.
on this earth, life is all I was given,
but I don't want a single part of it.

long ago,
I could tame a lion with the click of a pen,
watch the teeth burn to ashes in his jaw,
and his gums bleed, dripping with every word.
drip, drop.
funny how lions are a symbol of God.
funny how, I used to glance into the
cold black irises of my strongest demon,
and tell myself I loved him.
every boy I've ever written for
seems to vanish before the novel ends,
before the sun sets, before they think-
maybe,
"it's safe to leave her before she falls in love"
little do they know that love was my oxygen,
love was my unused journal
from a lost friend,
love was nothing until I met you.
you cannot be another night
without razor sharp stars in the sky.
you cannot be the hundreds of songs
I can no longer ******* listen to.
you cannot be another Willow Springs-
another road I think I've traveled,
I've seen children pray on the corners of Italy;
I've seen mountains breathe
and thought it would be my last time
kissing their snowy tops.
I've seen straight into the
amber eyes of the lion
as I lay under fluorescent lights
with sixteen pills rattling in my stomach,
thinking maybe,
the King of the Jungle will release me
with His jaws of life.
but the truth is,
you are the only god I believe in.
you are my savior,
you are the King of the Jungle
and the closest thing to heaven
I will ever know.

I once said I wished we were in love.
but it's only a daydream.
it runs through my head
in every moment that you hold me
and I feel love seeping through your veins
like light sneaks between the blinds at dawn-
I don't believe in god but I think
you were very right when you said
thunderstorms were his tears
at the sight of our intangible bond
that he will never get his hands on,
and only he knows his own angels
would try to strike me down
in jealously that they themselves
could not cling to you like I do.
I am stuck in a vortex of unfortuante
pain and dull days and bad luck,
but in a single moment you manage
to pull me from the depths of my grave-
untangle the roots that have grown
around my bones-
all with a single smile.
I love you, so much in fact that nothing I do
or say will ever begin to explain
how I wish I could give you the world,
because I know you could fix it.
I wish I could keep you here,
and maybe you would call it home.
I wish we were in love,
but it's only a daydream.