officialism
and
verisimilitude,
lovelies,
the melody of summer
the hauntings of past halves and ghosts
anticipation for newness, phases
of seventeen numerals and choral capacity,  sweaters to survive cold classrooms
but the people never heal you
the scar stays the same

-cj

Isn't it strange, wanting everything everyone else wants?
Are they expectations?
If we didn't see what is so desirable, maybe we would want something else entirely

-cj

"The next time we wander near I want you to collapse."

Is she blind or simply blindfolded?
Remove the cloth from her searching eyes and move in to lightly press your lips to her forehead before the day is gone and love rumours to be dead

-cj

would you spare her the tears? (you drank too much)
what would she think? (you disappeared too much)
what would she write? (you said too much)

-c.j.

My lungs are a birdcage
I am sorry, little sparrow
Who incarcerated you, to begin with?
It was me?
But yes, now I remember
It was the only way to keep the winged beauty inside and try to protect from the vultures who wander around here
I am sorry, dear
Only a lifetime left to stare out from between my ribs

-cj

It is not a shock how very
liar-liar your monologue was
Filed with copied and pasted
reassurances
Don't you think the things I do
are for a purpose other than to
No, you're right,
I am confused, ripped in the
wrong spots
But everyone has a story I
suppose

-cj

your algebra is senseless, you know- we learned so long ago to carry the zero
maybe as the numbers add up, days, squares on a calendar, you're only thinking how it will be when she goes

what a blue monday it was, hearts trapped in a hurricane
scribbled scattered formulas flashing in your head, her eyes reminding you of the innocent laying on your bed
notes are in a windstorm, and in the calm middle, you hear her say
even the prettiest equations couldn't solve us

-c.j.

mad talk echoing round my ears
is giving me the bends, baby
courage melts in my pockets
hello my name is buttercup
mouthwash swisher and a real
bad washer disher

-c.j.

I wrote a haiku, like we did in elementary school
that was forced writing,
syllables counted and not meant
now they are the oars I row with
amidst this sea of gloom
and hormones
and worry

-cj

the night has opened my eyes
I see each symbol and number in my deck
from your pack of cards
when I'm small I count my total
and when I can't wake up I realise
love is not a dream

I truly fell for the boy with a thorn
in his side
I am rapt during our every car ride
"you don't have to wake up every morning thinking,
last night I dreamt that somebody loved me"

we breathe the truth without resistance
our clubs and spades and diamonds and hearts
are more vivid than before
the night has opened your eyes
please don't close them when morning comes

-c.j.

wander to the bench where i carved my sentiment
my knuckles write as i held that grudge and pen
to abandon would be too simple, it would not be right
the only logical way was to endure and suffer and cry and yearn
until the sobs subsided and a poetry book chided
my sullen face and posture
forgiveness was a target and the arrow kept slipping out of my hands
and it is still not on the mark
it is on the outskirts of "time heals all wounds"
and further, much further, from the petrified sadness of it
the words i engraved and dug into the wood
are ones i said i always would,
"he lives, he loves"
and he always has

-cj

Alas, the infamous ritardando
Where the outrageous and the mild concur
Brittle as the music was, each pulse sang with bliss
As quiet operas performed in our rebellious, shut mouths
Slow love beats with broken chords
and we partake shamelessly
We dance until we confuse stars
with lights on the low ceiling
We can kiss to the sound of cassette tapes rewinding
There is music even in our silence

-c.j.

This is the world without love, without lust
Without longing
Without tears, without screams,
Without secrets
And it is boring

-cj

Forgive me if I never unleashed some kind
of sheer persona
It isn't in my interests to overexpose the
quiet half-strengths of the wallflower

-cj

While the surgeon holds the scalpel
The writer holds the pen
Yet the latter might cut deeper
Into the hearts of men

-cj

Communication shoved in the eaves
Sustain me with little scraps
Mean it, please
Love me like I want you to, please

-cj

Back to that dark and cold place
Where there were black and white rumours
Whispered in the corridor
And austere paintings on the walls
Return to colourless candour
A simpler deity and home

-cj

You haven't stolen my heart
You've stuck a sewing needle in it
And run away

-c.j.

the wolf is the law
the symbol of attraction
of magnets, of
everything combined in madness

-cj

Treat me like you would your fingernails
Bite me without pause, a nervous, natural cause
Let me peel your fruit's skin, tear its precious flesh
Study me often, even when there are prettier sights to see
Press me into you when there's that itch
I become ***** and sharp, but you know how to fix me
Put me up to your head and run me through your hair
Attached to your hands, a naughty awakening you can't escape

-cj

as yellow metabolises to red,
I speed underneath it,
thinking,
intuition's dead

colour-confused yesterday, colour-wise, now
novel concepts you can dip naked in tea
if until slowness illness reigns,
the missing yield sign assumes power
green lights we have yet to prepare for

-c.j.

for your reflections
I dedicate a fevered reality
slammed into a picture frame

-cj

february was fairly pink-shaded rows of days
felt unloved
and april was blue, and i was drowning
january was icy, and your heart towards mine changed
and the poems we write, cling to our veins
pale hands crave to seize the omens and turn them into stanzas to mutter late at night
a last hope to remember that this won't be the death of you

-cj

Converging into one line
and the concept of fairness
mingles with the immature tendencies
above it all
I am divergent
I drift
and I am singly afloat
I jump from skyscrapers to survive
landing in that same spidery net
that I think saves me each time
I descend through the cruel air
Dauntless-
What am I
Did I spill my blood for this

-cj

I don't know what joy is and I don't think I ever did
I starved for the inches
And my lengths and widths became careless

-c.j.

sleepy stretching, currently
watch the opposition beneath
pack your bag with rotten stars
see the nova running, lost

perpetual wall in front of us
territory lines sense us
each line senses us
if you go, go in peace

your palm's a dam, I crave it
it flickers the sun, my part's a scarlet letter
see from above and soak your palms and
you'll settle on a sticking thing

it reminds of the perpetual wall
in front of us, a howling
I failed to bring up each past mistake
it's the nagging that compels desire
so be, so be, you're the blatant key

-c.j.

if only I were an optimist
half-full glasses and seratonin
by the masses
some days the light can blare
however today I think
I'll sit
and not care

-c.j.

Thin respect veils the difference
between dawn and morning
Circles of chairs watch the small
worryings emanate from my hands
and folded arms
Routine is fallacious, and I'm starting
to think, so are you
So, without further delay, adieu.

-cj

to paint violent torches, eat quivering berries bent on thorns
every quaint brittle poet is mighty, strong, zealous
at each full yoke aches pure whole angst
mussed tousled everythings, draped silently on green tables with merciless baby finches eating delicacies
sipping gin and whistling - the year that beauty blasted through our roof and crumbled down onto our floors
the last part is the poison - chase it 'til it's siphoned;
may it be swallowed by a foe

-c.j.

Admiring the clock, clicking my tongue
with the pendulum and ding **** result
Musing over mahogany
or whatever the time machine is made of
In a daze, minutes are the malaise
And before I can see it
I've got ecstasy in my face

-cj

Thoughts held me captive
I wanted to end it all
Happy, sick, in between
I was mess and only death
would clean

-cj

superfluous charm, only kept for a time to depart
but the mind, like a magnet, won't be freed
silence, nuance, plead
and sparklynothings oscillate in melodies' wake

-cj

taunt them with your ***** lips
kiss the calendar, each day will
taste your sheerness
sweet and wanting, alone in the room
tempting
let the tongues do the talking

-c.j.

rests on your tongue and melts all the while
even your eyes' movements make me feel like a child
sickly sweet, the salt tears I try to quell
mistake this youthful paradise with loveless hell
and i'll keep waiting for you
you know I will
I can't **** these restless bouts within me
nor can you
swallowing squinting hinting at kissing, all alive

-cj

surely these fallacies were borne from little freshman philosophy
from a petite ballet-image copy machine
old was the notion that freedom came from satisfaction
the new age, the breakthrough:
to suffer is to live

-cj

Mirrors bend, images send
lascivious shivers
All morality withers
Perhaps the negative,
the black and white,
white and black,
will reveal that
I am inverted and real

-cj

can I take a picture so I can stare at you
whenever I want
you can take a picture so you can stare at me
whenever you want
it's only fair
this attraction is severe and
becoming a ringing in my ears
and everywhere else
I guess there is no way to stop it
so why don't we just revel in it?

-c.j.

He asks
what do you mean
and I say
I don't know
I'm a poet

-cj

When she would lie,
it wasn't the truth backwards
rewound through the record player
But intermittent sounds from the original

-cj

Brushing up against me, except
a caress isn't as welcome as a whisper

Dragging prehistoric pills into my nose
with the pull of memories that
prefer to stay whispers

It's these desensitised nights
that remind me of what was
once so loud

And loud is quiet to me what is inaudible
to others under yellow spectrum
of silver-gloss, enough in god and
without loss

I swallow the capsule and taste the
nothingness and shake my head to
hear ringing and see other, rarer
colours- ones your eyes could hint at

And to be an ultra-deterrent that
kills without touching the lives it is
bluffing, I cannot suture the fracture
in my future
to be god, no

To be semi-real, perhaps
I am not as prolific as
I pretend to be
Each facet is another winter day
I wish wasn't sunny and mocking me

To be what you define reality,
you are a part of me
And a part of yourself is what
you have let me define
My harbouring hunger havocs soft

And if what I inhale makes me
become transparent, will you still
see me?
What's real isn't what I can reveal,
my dear

Isn't it broken, the alignment in our stars
To shift the glow, evermore
I determine the order
You determine me

Isn't it irreparable, the crackling phenomenon
existing between our gazes
We both know it is, and we love to
fall victim to it,
gracefully or not

-c.j. and Joshua Haines

pawns didn't do me much good
but friends do what they can
sure, the timing was a flattering element
but what am I
a useless chess piece
quick, your queen is calling
I'll be in the border between the
black and the white if you need me

-c.j.

this is my rescue song to you
amid the parachute
you float right next to me
I know I'm not the only one
to be blinded by your sun
or burned by your heat
is safety here?
this is my rescue song to you
amid the parachute
you float right next to me

-c.j.

You've got this rock in your heart
Thrashing the tissue
Less than a bullet and less than a clogged artery
But there's nothing to save you
Put up this façade-you're beautiful happy and fine
Despite how you're wrecked and helpless and dying inside

-cj

This nemesis recites it all
washed up
It makes me want to grab
the little black binder
from her and apologise
to the ceiling and sky and
what dwells above

-cj

Collecting words is dangerous
but losing them is more so
A fatal flaw, to let them get away
Yes, the ink stains, and love's majority
is unrequited
Don't obscure the beauty it breathes
in its time, young one
Allow the better things to stay once
all else has escaped

-cj

I'm a makeless nuance
Last week's murmurings
No one of consequence
I'm a mindless newcomer
Luckless while many
Never can even begin

-cj

Sheer heartbreak breeds **** good poetry
And without the pain, numbness occupies the corners that bliss once nestled in
He's gone
but he is never gone from within me,
for he is there in constant pulse
like a final mantra
I utter to fetch the remains of
this existence which spins out
moments of gambling fever,
like risky love affairs I hide
in my youth weeks
I will miss and pine
for his lips on mine
were the haven I resort to
in every hour, if only in longing retrospect
It's real, it's here
This is my poetry

-cj

hallowed and punctured
misshapen and desert dry
gambling for smiles wry

-cj

lose yourself in the taste of
fierce freedom in your mouth
yell from the rooftops
how we feel
isn't just another morsel of smalltalk

-c.j.

He never said goodbye, she never said hello
They exchanged talk, soundwaves from encyclopedia pages
Wandering into each other's doors and out, unintentionally
Noticing the chipping paint and bald nails but mentioning nothing to preserve the friendship
He longed for her skin, she pined for his mind
And in every spiral they missed the count or forgot to look
And now they read they sorriness of it all in a book written by no one

-cj