platonic autumn, I'll never forget it
the waxing cold and waning patience-
the other whom I thought was timely
and exactly mine
escaped his cell in a right way but
turned out to be a criminal, he who
stole my heart and planted his ideology
in, writing little novels recalling the start

he escaped because I let him
and you, you were always there
you were there when he wasn't
warning me against falling for the
notorious figure, the superficial god
letting me speak and listening to my
rambling about my stupidity once
it all became clear, the awful hoax
autumn became winter, when I was
with you most

the clock in your room reads six thirty,
never moving, but of course, time has passed,
and fooled and mesmerised and changed us,
and everything

-c.j.

desperate wings flutter and dance
hide in an oak till winter blows into spring
when we will hear all the hummingbirds sing

-cj

The girl who sees through their games
The lies thick like ash but fragile as spiderwebs
She falls prey to their snares
Because she is human
And therefore weak
And vulnerable
She is polluted with the alluring smoke clouds of harlots mania wine & gold
Her eyes are darker in this state of blindness
A trance, an illusion
Her heart knocks on her mind's door
And she swallows her pride like the spoonful of medicine & no sugar she is fed by reality
But her heaven, her home
Is truth & light & purity
And it is within her again
Returning
And filtering out
The toxicity of
Frivolous cataract-inducing filth

-cj

Even if it all is a dream
It is not just a dream
Not merely a vision of some sleepy sort
that vanishes when sunlight enters my
eyes again
I clutch the stories and they whisper
themselves back to me as the day goes

-cj

you could say I have an addiction
to obsessing over
every square centimeter
of your existence
but that's not wrong
it's no legal infraction
to be so immensely captivated
by the shadows on your cheeks
and the dizzying inflections of
your voice
surely I am not crazy
you are
for being so ridiculous
and impossible
to forget

-c.j.

The difference between ******
and socio
I play dictionary
Then saunter off to my
pre-meditated shrine
to become,
     become,
     become

-cj

deprivation and intuition-blue & white, until the bell sounds for the billionth time.
I will sit and not speak, companion to the wall, and enemy to the friend.

-cj

Chamomile heartbeats, wash ashore the memory,
It's bound to my brain
(He's cryptic)
Dreamcatcher captures, feathers speak of summer nights
and still I implore the definition of what our blood means to one another, on the eve of your cornered youth
It's ending, but halting in me, it's a screeching tire sensation, while I am myself there are dozens of others charading within
Cryptic love,
forsake me

-cj

chambers are stained magenta
and vivider dreams paint
themselves throughout
each moment is another vessel
and a chance
rose petals fold in and shield
from the thorns

-c.j.

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.

Who was this disorder
A nameless face
With such deep gravity
That struck me in hours
and pentagons
He's a man, she's me
Isn't it
Whoever it is
I'm brandishing a knife
for you

-cj

You just wanted to be able to cry again
Earlier you were at your most miserable
I take note
He hasn't cried since June
and tears stream down my face this very moment

-c.j.

The divine inevitable remnants of the past,
how we'd know them anywhere
we carry them every place we go, not a day
goes by without them
don't try to forget
it's not a curse
just a glimpse of miserable nothings
don't run away from them,
even if they at times hold you captive
for they turn your covering to steel
not lacking in feeling, but stronger than
the wool that once embedded your being
it is how we become

-cj

I collected my sins in a marble jar
They were ugly
But they were real

-cj

yeah there are things you will never know
I am not a crystal flask, dear observer,
queer onlooker (but it's not like I'm the normal one)
you can try to peel back the skin and inquire of my interior just what fun I've been having
they're daily dives into a miserable variety and disclosing the rest
deserves a warning of graphic material to come
if you can handle that
lean in close
much closer
now
do you hear that?
silence
a terrible nothing
and that is all that is left

-c.j.

Juliet on her balcony
me in my bed
Romeo in his knee
you in your chair
the books aligned
and stars shine
even if they are crossed
our papers shuffle amongst themselves
shying away from the inevitable morning

-c.j.

don't get all riled up
this is not a pipe
yeah, I said what I thought
I guess it wasn't fate's favourite
I am so confused but at the same time
you say it's not gonna work
implying that it's futile
it is not wise
and I know why not

-c.j.

I never understood what the other words meant but somehow they worked because now I stand out of breath looking around and I see thousands of ambiguities I had mistook for typos

-cj

Learning
A routine of early hours
Spent in the same place
Day in and out
With textbook patterns
And papers and exams

~

Learning
What is supposed to be
Working to make home lovely & clean
And running through fields
And skipping stones
And swimming in the lake
Pointing up at the birds that fly by
Reading the stories we want to
Sometimes only looking at the pictures

-cj

tomorrow, take me to the unfamiliar
until the months are blacked out in
the whites of my eyes

subtitles reveal:
the moon cried, but no poison
came to her rescue
because they saw the diagnosis
as a blessing and that's why
she ran away

and of course it was strange
she preferred quaking to waking
today, steal me away to anywhere
untangled spiderwebs tend to twist
their way back to the entwined
symphony of silk

-c.j.

I sent ships
and letters
with black ink
Return my
fleets and
pale sheets
My heart
longs to
harbour them

-cj

he was a sweet talker and I drowned in the honey
wrote songs about what we'd wanted, disillusioned me
with a one-sided duet
used to tell me it's ok to drink away pain, that it could
fix this damage done
I was stuck in the state of dreaming, hypnotised by his
unchained melody-
"wouldn't you want it to be easier, be with someone who
treats you well?" he asked,
drawing a deceptive halo above his head
when he was the one who only wanted to drag me into his bed

-c.j.

somehow you are entitled
and the rest of us
swear and scribble the notes
we are told to take

-cj

While I type to you about pigeons
and you talk about an article
with my subject's first syllable,
just spoken differently,
our walls crumble
a Berlin sight
Caught in the east, I am liberal
and arts
You claim to be only a sum of your parts
So here is me proving you wrong
Sending the lyrics to a trampled-down song
Eleventh hours soothe the night
Letting our minds get our breathing right
I'm sorry for my preoccupations
My lover, he was an alcoholic
I'm sorry for all of the poetry, too
Which probably only puzzles and bothers and unsanctifies you
It's the least, it's the most, it's the worst kind of best I can do
Underneath it all, my parts are few
So subtract and add and pull me apart
That way I'll know I own a tangible heart

-c.j.

Every night was a test
not to my artistry
but to my ability to
feel something

-cj

is it a second chance or the twelfth?
the stars around my heart are fighting again,
sparking up the little adolescent muscle in my chest
because the danger in metaphors caught up
with me and they convince me I'm not living

in the real world, I bite my lip
I walk alone

but when I think of you
my heartbeat-
you take it away

these faulty stars know ways to go and stop
and start again
but they are still only juveniles

the twelfth chance spins into the thirteenth
so I let go of my lip and slow down or
run ahead to meet you
and my heartbeat becomes me

-c.j.

yes, it was a mistake, not that
I'd admit that to you
but if it comes down to it
I'll sit in the chair
and I'll answer the questions
on Friday at five o'clock I was at Jenny's house
what time I left doesn't matter
I'm innocent, I swear
I ******* up before but the past
is in the past
can't someone see me?

-c.j.

The moon shivered
and said goodnight
You never said hello
and as we both know
That should never be
taken as a
loveless gesture
Only I wish I could
slice time out of the night
Just to spend it with you

-cj

It was an emerging phase that I couldn't avoid
Being a teenager was purely torturous, and I look forward to the end, but something vivid and cheaply plagiarised had showed up
It was the desire to stir jealousy within others, a cruel beauty and idyllic body as a symbol of what deserves bliss
It was fake love, mere attraction and the disaster it brings, it was being with the people who tell the best rumours, the most electric fragments of truth
It wasn't mean-spirited, just viciously fast in its attempts to infatuate the crowd, the individual, the tiny wishful inklings in someone else's heart
It was wanting to be superior, a want unlike the innocent ones from my earlier youth
Wanting everything to fill that space in my mind between the ideal and real
It was fatal, and I knew it; I knew it

-cj

What I cling to are wicked traditions
These ruthless rituals
Oh, they are merely
What I cannot live without

-cj

The dark is your enemy
Only the obvious and optimistic can be trusted
Say farewell to the subtle, the underhand
The bright and brighter sun and such will brush up the secrets once hidden and the mouth clamped tight will loosen,
Semi-transparent truths seeping out

-cj

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

She made a list of things to avoid
Cliches, alcohol, and cons
She made a list of things to embrace
Books, rain, strawberries
She made a list of things to do
Read books without cliches,
drink ****** strawberry drinks
and run home in the rain
to escape the liars
She rolled her eyes
and sighed
and thought
"by their fruits shall ye know them"

-cj

Let's make things fun,
I whisper
and pull you to my chest
Your breaths are getting heavy
as we slowly undress
Our lips, ribbons meeting
Our heartbeats, swiftly fleeting
Until the clock screams and I see
the white of my ceiling

-cj

Earthquake tremour in the body
like unexpected feelings they
just show up unannounced,
Imposing, it's rude
Seismic startledom

-cj

Contents of the lockers lay in a pile
A flask, a Marlboro box, a thousand
textbooks, pills in an orange see-through bottle
One item, unique to the others,
is a notebook
Full of confessions and Sexton and Plath
Sad yearnings and accounts of complete moments
This notebook
Surrounded by the cigarettes and concealed ***** and mathematical equations
Shows the other world
within this world
That spins in time with this world
But gives and takes
for lovelier sakes

-cj

How grand is the spectacular NOW
Its decibels and magnitude are
larger than the last and the next.
Oh, how fantastic is the present
Taunting and freezing and plagiarising
I'd **** for another grand NOW.

-cj

it's a **** arena, isn't it?
the contenders sense it, too
you spectate while I battle
this out
onto bad intellect swings
the blade
tracing scandalous imageries
into corrupt teeth
isn't it a devil's game,
one we cannot win?

-c.j.

tell me who your father is, or
who he was, who you know him to be
I want to know even the ugliest parts
of you
the parts that screech in your ears
when you say them, and you can't
block it out with headphones
how when old ideas blasted, courseless

you asked to speak to the girl who
walked like she had elegies written
on her legs
tell me about your home, she demands
how the walls don't know you yet
and the roof is still a stranger to
your shouts

the painful truths that split ice in
your echoes, whose spirits you conjure
with a blacklight, or in other words,
hell

how when odd interpretations become
compatible to your angles
you ****** the same girl to tell her
she was right, she was right about it all

-c.j.

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.

Original plans decay
sweat replaces the goosebumps
go, stay, with whom do I travel?
obstruction and the scare
a loss of innocence and oil
but watching him stand over
the hood, in the heatwaves
swindled by my hopes
cold water plastic
cards envy
lovely pretension
tears on the velvet bed

-cj

I didn't do it today
I don't know if
                          I should be proud
or
                          upset with myself
sometimes
                   the
                         easy things
and            the
                         hard things
get all wound up in one another
and that's okay

-c.j.

Our fates tied to
an omen pretending to
a plausible line of
old flavours and
drunken sunshine

-cj

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

We would sail as if there was but everything to forget
The anchor is the sugary mistake- clamouring for a second hour to recuperate
Heavier secrets to smudge into yesterday's eyeliner
If I happen to see something you echoed on accident, would you rush to cover it up?
I'm already having wicked visions of my own

-cj

when one boy kisses you and forgets your name the next day,
you can be sad that day
you can
but the next day, you find that other boy, the boy who looks at you like you are magick
and learn that you are not a library book to be checked out and shoved under the bed
he will love you, remember your name, he will be there the next day and the day after that and after that and after that

-c.j.

the good thing about love is it has this speed, so rapidly hemorrhaging the skin
to dye the eye take a peek in the scope
a prism, spectrum, cycle of bursting shades
it's no trick, darling, beauty is decked in these striped halls and passageways
fasterfaster now, light must go, to meet its fragile fate
(it meets your eyes and lives through you)

-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

suburban utopian nightmare
clutch to the strangest desires
if we give up right now
we know we're all *******
let's get out, go out
drive and not come home
no more killjoy, only the blaze
and chasing dreams
sour and put in the corner
don't be a killjoy, my sweet
the night's just begun

-c.j.

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