What can we expect but to be hurt by love
After all, that which is good must end badly
A truly terrible law
So run from the one who makes you go weak
It will save you time and give you mystique

-cj

I grab your hand
and lead you to
where we stand
between the shelves
Do you hear that,
I ask
What,
you ask
It's the books talking

-cj

you're full of dread, I'm full of wonder
we use our veins as portals, resembling
blue shades of happenstance

back then they were hues of black,
fierce antimatter
now I'm shuffling my cards to
surprise myself

-c.j.

Give and take
For October's sake
Blink out salty tears,
Hallow my name,
Dust off the have-nots
***** me with an ultimatum

-cj

December shifted me
Of all the aspects to change
My dignity remains existent, however feeble
January was the enemy, the one who fought ***** in disguise
Patterns composed of days and weeks, but
moments more vivid than time itself
Unseen, unheard, untasted yet experienced
nonetheless
Only two months from two different years
have we been entangled
Two months, nine weeks
Confused hours of some number, too
broken to count
"all you need is love" once rang so true
Fake is a name that I cannot slap on it
A slap, in the face
Leave behind red stripes
Even so in the past
The stripes, similar to a rainbow's,
colourless after shining the shades of
childhood toys
Trumpets sound happy
But "you're in my veins" resulted in heavy
tears, "every teardrop is a waterfall" screamed through the sleeves of the thick
shirt hung on shoulders weighed down
"apathy" is the answer given, perhaps taken, too blurred glassy eyes whose
brainwaves behind work in overdrive, or
was it just the incident, coinciding?

-cj

The music was in my brain
How keen it spun its figure eights in my head
It was a nice gesture, for I had smoothed the ice for a skate of notes from within and from the mountains and department stores and black skies

-cj

are you mine or should I give up that fight
this alienation seeks to press in, it is eager to bite
jilted lovers, if lovers at all
fading like old photographs hung on the wall
whatever the oblique harangue put on,
little frames adorn anyway
lightness into lightness

just before the empty,
I ignite, I paint the stars-
and the feeling that usurps grace is suddenly over me

-c.j.

I am staring at the bottom of this well
there is nothing to tell
I am sure of that as hell
I am staring so hard my eyes start to hurt
my bones are shaking and my case is breaking
what I really wonder is
are you convinced that this is all I'll ever be
are you convinced
are you
don't take me down
don't say it's off
don't be convinced

-c.j.

I'd walk around the neighbourhood alone like I was out of reasons to stay inside
The night never shunned me, and we became great friends
As I'd stare up at the pearly moon
and dark blue universe
and wonder how this has happened
in this strangely beautiful way
Concepts batter my heart and
mar my chest, and
inevitably, I cry
And when I get back to the house I sleep in
Wipe the tears out of my face
and open the door
to close it on the nocturne

-cj

Most of the streetlights have been broken for years now, but a few hang on, flickering every now and then
While we slept the clocks ticked a little bit too loud for our liking, the stairs creaked like little screams every time we made a step
Mornings were rather sullen, with the moon still out and Dad snoring in the room across from us
There was a fog, too, one characteristic to where we lived, that came no matter the season, and we had to squint or cut holes out of it to see the street in front of us
The school bus was very yellow and the windows were like aviators and we sat in the same seats day after day, chasing the scenes outside
We and our friends were poor, but we were alright, wearing the same jeans for three days in a row without anyone saying anything about it
Mom and Dad fought alot
We went outside when they did and didn't come home until after dark
We'd ride our bikes around the neighbourhood, see the older kids smoking under the bridge
We'd climb the old tree by the elementary school and throw dares
When the streetlights came on we started to go back
It wasn't like we were thinking about the fighting or the liquor bottles on the kitchen floor or anything, really
We just wanted to go home
And when we finally went to sleep after scrubbing the dirt from our feet, the broken streetlights went on a few hours later, and another day was happening

-cj

Words drown; a watery vengeance, I'd say
Resuscitate the poet, wring out the lungs
all splattered with ink; paper confetti bloodstains
Save the denied artist, try a little tender humanity, something to quench your thankless thirst

-cj

A day refuses to go by
without punching at my flesh
and cursing my silhouette

-cj

Do you have wild theories about existence
Have you ever cried because you were so happy

I don't know-

I just want to know more about you

Maybe

You taunting creature

Goodnight, beautiful

-c.j.

you have to stop yourself and ask
if you possess the power to write
something true
and also something false
and if you can only do one of those
*******
you are not a writer

-cj

plenty, I'm free, I'll do it myself
this strand is an obscured veil
I'm towering like a queen of combat,
I've become unshakable

so, sketch, let me write you,
send inspiration
you crave it all, I'm aware
what do you seek in me these days?
maybe it's due that we partake

this, in this moment, the cold breeze
it becomes profound
just hide your lips for a vivid fabrication
scream music and lift up the mother warmth
the hunger won't cease until the light flees,
these days

the diagonal is luring an unfilled bottle
confidence that the muted can supercede
I'll take a quill to the creature

so, come, let me reveal the world
outside of your comprehension
your hold, make it real
I'm dragging you to the café

the atmosphere, the ground,
the diamond planets, and
mother warmth
we'll dig them down with
mountain rivers
I want your eyes to get big again
they're weighed with insomnia,
sleepy with stories
your hold, make it real
I'm dragging you home

-c.j.

"take me to church," the con man said
and I agreed to it, as I was yet to see
his feignness, his shrouded cloud cast
over the sunny afternoon
I thought I was moving on, getting somewhere,
but I was chasing reflections of someone
I thought I knew,
trapped in a mirror's maze until winter

-c.j.

human:
an insult, an excuse
a beautiful reason

alive:
undead, fevered and pulling on IV's
grinning in spite of the news

it's a wild way to live,
with a function

-cj

we defy the cold times
tethered, crowned, together, deep winter
a kinder resemblance, I say
severed illusions ricochet,
kindling a watercolour
distance tightens caresses tonight
to creep, to dance
we will do it all
remembering every dim light

-c.j.

men in white coats call their valentine, asking,
"are you there, sweetheart? I'm in london, watching your videotapes,"
while I sit on the cold patient's bed, wondering if I could
capture a phone call with my boyfriend, find out how the party was,
if his father has gone up in the business
but then I am chemical dizzy
and then the doctor whispers to hush my teenage mouth, that I'm only in high school
that all I do is go to the dance hall and eat lucky charms the next morning like a child
I used to believe I was a prodigy, even if all I could do was tie-dye
the medicine puts me to sleep and the white coat clad man tells my parents it's not serious

-c.j.

seventeen candles
and a calendar of semi-regreta
prancing on the table
amidst the pure emptiness of the moment
talent bleeds for nothing
(abide with the sky and all will be fine)
red shutters on the houses
and violets in the green by the road
numbers blur into a mirage of senseless digits,
the air reminds why
days spent in fear, months wasted on heartbreak
that made everything come into place
so blow out candles, you're too old to be so shy
that boy you love is october's favourite medium
until the midnight smothers the embers,
breathe in the quaint dozen plus five fires at your lips
it's seventeen candles, not seventeen knives

-cj

While father comdemns socialism
and mother thinks I am doing fine
I lay awake like the pattern goes
Rewinding my lies
and rubbing the truth out of my memory
until all I know
is the need

-cj

Drive all night, only pause when there's a light
Look to your right and the blaze from their being is gorgeous and blinding
It's fun and it's games, except in here where the magnet force pushes our bodies apart
Lick the skin and tear into crimson fruit
Until eventually,  there's nothing to dispute

-cj

Storytelling has always been hard
It's a difficult undertaking for me
Are they even listening? And is this fact or fiction?
I don't remember

-cj

come near me again?
yes, that is what made me heal
or maybe I am too naiive to realise it caused my wounds to fester
how you ran your fingers through my hair
and kissed my neck
that august night
a breaking within
and a stitching of our threads
just the minutes concoct
this poison that will infuse my blood with the death of those willowy weeks or
an antidote, whose amber drops numb
then sway my bones to the sounds of
pure love and brown eyes in the dark

-cj

Who is god anyway? I've never heard
his voice or seen his face on the streets
He might as well be a silent ghost
People always tell me that he loves me
but I don't even know his name
Sometimes I wish he'd leap out of my
closet and scare me just to show me
that he's real and I can stop writing
of unsolved mysteries

-c.j.

you quarantined us
we'll be released soon
and hand you a single moment
the genius of the era

the villain who hinders
we'll be released soon
and destroy your methods
you draw a grin from the start
your palms become blades anew

drafts, unparalleled
you chase the sequence
and colour it yourself
simultaneous fortunes
simultaneous establishments
when nothing is simple
only the sharpest remain

this is how it happened
but these are our treasures to seize
what resulted from civility, from justice
nothing reveals another "else"

-c.j.

Now everything is then: the black and white and scuffly soundtrack of it all, showcased between the rich curtains
The smiles, are they real? And all these people, do they feel? They dance and drink and their dreams are in their very hands
Still, the sad violin reality cascades on the scene, wrecking the chandelier beauty of it, leaving a single glass behind, with only a few drops left

-cj

My love is gone to war
Against himself, the past
How soon is your last day?
Letters are not contraband
And I thank each star for this
Because, you know, before you
I knew not bliss

-c.j.

Eyes trembling,
I feel the floor with my soul
And sense the madness begin to take its toll

-cj

She is bad, sleeping with the enemy one night, the friend, the next
Never to feel the nausea of eating too willingly, secretly
Beauty is a sin
Luckily her whispers are covered by the sheets of the witnesses
Moaning and cared for, the mirror is a mere extra character

-cj

they say there are forces beyond our control
that reside within us
oh, how their whispers escalate into screams
it's worse than it seems, this need
heart insists, "touch every inch of me,  touch oh touch please,
carress and hold, tender and sweet"
i heard through the grapevine
then diamond rhombi on notebook pages climb
over each restless thought
surrender, this is war, touch oh bleed into me,
i will lose so gracelessly
no, stand up, free yourself now
(there is a force within that knows you can win)

-cj

Fumbling through the darkened lights
The room knows you so well, the secrets
whispered into the walls
The books don't hold grudges
Not for too long, at least
Unlike you they don't want to be
anyone's ghost

-cj

rather not say what's on my mind
but I like honesty I guess
you ruin everything you know
each hope you smother like
an unwanted flame
make me want to scream
you're the frustrater
I'm sick of being the victim
you're the perpetrator,
my twisted lover

-c.j.

The sky mocked yesterday with its pastels, holding back the stories of the heavens and hells only right behind the blue and the frothy clouds

-cj

everything you love, led by their magic
surrounding them, security kept
wind your selfish limbs through it all

coast, don't strive to drive, just coast
you can be the absolute with the trigger
to a shattered heart
because you know I am restless,
I've been hunted down before
the sinking metronome returns, afloat
it doesn't tick anymore

did the child only receive demands
from his own voice?
did the earth spin his average façade?
Sally has screams within her mind, midnightly
the mum's sad eyes that he's carrying back,
waste from the hill

you know I am restless,
I've been hunted before
the sinking metronome returns, afloat
it doesn't tick anymore

lover holds onto thoughts of the unbearable
lightness of being
did the child on his throne and Sally, as soon
as the screams subside, did the earth and the
mum's sad eyes drop the light behind the curtain?

the white knuckles never darken
and utopia is just a hoax and you
should have spoken up
and you should speak up, because in
two decades you'll be silenced

-c.j.

If I ever wrote a novel
I'd dedicate it to the person
who snuck into my brain
as I slept
Convincing me that this is not
a hobby, not a chore, not
leisure, nor fun
Telling me that once I think
I've finished
It's only just begun

-cj

Everything's different and yet the air is still too quick and my head continues to spin
Becoming, freedom
My relentless ambitions
Yet becoming free was the last thing I'd ever be

-cj

that summer I set fire to the books I had read before
I felt hungry and filled my body with meat and sugar and anything else good
that summer I slipped my old journals into a box, which now collects dust
I make my own memories now, they do not make me

that summer the hunger showed me so many things, I could not begin to explain them
I ate and slept and walked and read new books, and saw new people
that summer I met my love
I make my own travels now, and they complete me

-c.j.

kid's gooey t-shirt can go through the wash
no need to pull the panic cord
one must kick their blues to the side and do
what they know is inevitably best

maybe you only want it because you're lonely
in the inner city, craving a way to calm down
laundry detergent kills the peanut butter,
***** it into the sparkling void, making libraries
look *****
messes are divine;
when made together, they are not for naught

-c.j.

my hands are diminutive
yours, stately
your strong hand, your left, can shift mountains
(in dreams)
diminutively, I am gathering stories, one by one,
I am building my own kingdom
knots of my bookmarks are in open basements,
open systems, getting another injection done

daringly, you motion the seas to come
loathe your home, soak your dead
ancestor's heirlooms
my head aches, darling, yet soon you shall have
your life changing sequence, making it difficult
for me to draw (aliens giving some often-buried opulences in a breaking mug)
oh, **** the nerves in my small hands
yours do the work, I say, diminutively
but you turn to me and say
you are the work

-c.j.

why is it that when we sit down
we hate to stand up?
grab tuning forks to bang the table up with
making music, honey
a ravished sense of peculiarity
will ensue, you'll see
this is the way it's supposed to be

-c.j.

we're hollowed out and it's blissful
perfection in ice-cube form
the credits are rolling and you speak as if
words burn your tongue
take me to those places you used to only
like going to alone
oh, vast and relentless is our trouble,
and we love it

-c.j.

A message in a bottle
Tossed amongst the sea
Mystery, raw intrigue, and romantic script blare
But it is always quiet near the peaks
The ocean's mountains, mermaid coves
A nestling home for the glass and parchment and cork of wood
The words are sealed within to pretend to drown in the flask's dwindling air, saying
Of the meaning of me does not one being care?

-cj

Was it really just a matter of association? Because every word felt like a mistake
I wanted to walk down an alley with my coat buttoned up, paradoxes running wild in my head
Like the axioms and jilts of time, each wish withered, went good with grime
The simplest ideas went to waste- since there was a full moon, only washed up regret to taste

-cj

where is the place that the soul meets body?
my spirit yearns to know its home
why won't you tell me where the soul meets body?
paris, london, rome
the vigour in my layers will not die
until I know

-c.j.

Theirs was a love anyone would envy
It's a shock when he tells me about a hiatus, and I hold my breath
Apparently the past isn't so put away
Disorder will follow, there are few exceptions
You decided to go to the hospital, the hospital for your head
She feels no empathy, your type calmly shows
A sociopath, she may be
It scares me but artists must look for artists
Especially when collaboration has kept both alive a little longer
It's hard because I can't say, feel better, be happy, she is coming back
They are lies within truth I thought I knew
The letters you wrote her, I received, as well
To see and hear your pain and voice was the least I could do
Only months ago were poems that made even a stranger swell
Like lights going on, inside
I'm not sure my advice was any help, but you asked for it anyway
We're alike, my friend, and not just art can show that
We love so hard, so deep, that our bones shake
Our rhymes get flustered, we turn to collection for safety, a series of undeniable sadnesses, histories
Feel better, be happy, she may be coming back
After all, hell is long yet love knows how to attack

-cj

it was fall yet I dreamt of february air
and the waters of march
I wanted to play it right, become an animal,
obey the generals and run a marathon in roses, a garden race
before the cafe is a cathedral,
where midnight starts a waltz, hints at more modern times
the times that hold bedroom eyes, every holiday, birthday, funeral, every beat, city, every kind of splendour
that sends our hearts running wild
the times that hold such strangeness and charm, fiction,
even pigeons, even demons
I wanted to cling to the bravado; be no one's girlfriend; in a coma for six weeks; see science and visions and multiplication like a movie script, ending
I wanted to decorate each plain verse, make the grey into pink, tessellate the shapes of its inherent hearts and knives

it was fall and you asked if like empty bottles, we float
if I would change my name to ingrid
if all our weekends could echo of pleasure sighs
I wanted to embrace the atlantic, climb to new heights,
come awake

but could a schoolboy help me do these things?
could he lay beside me in the snow and call it paradise?
would he make me stare into mirrors all night,
waiting by the phone? would he make me feel like I was nothing ordinary?

-c.j.

say you need me like lepers need miracles
like houses need foundations
say you could not live without me here,
brushing your hair out of your eyes, telling you
a song I love or a stupid joke I make up
because I know I need you, for life
I will be your miracle worker and solid ground
just tell me that you want me to

-c.j.

once, my mum and dad told me to stop writing
writing is not something to stop, or cause to be discontinued, it still happens, whether or not the hands are working
apologies for rebellion are futile, since words and meaning circle me, leaving no reason to preserve the lack

it only stops when you're dead
and then, it speeds up

-c.j.

this poem is not about angels nor demons,
but humans and their faulty stars
how they sleep with a pile of words
on their head,
which gets tossed to the floor when
the alarm clock screams six
how they seek refuge in an arcade,
playing each game to the end,
leaving empty-pocketed
how they think, I can't rest until we
start to kiss
when lips only beg for more upon meeting
so yes, this poem is not about gods nor devils,
but people, breathing, heartbeating people
who sleep and play and wonder
when it will cease

-c.j.