We sing to the music from your car radio under a late sky,
Under the melodic excuse of keeping in harmony with you, under
Twinkling lack of light that hides our faces but cannot hide a sparkle I now notice
In your eyes.
Not reflected by a mirror or the screen of a phone or an old photograph-
An excuse for who you are, printed on a plastic sheet, is only lying to you through what you think you see.
To me, your beauty shines in the way you laugh, your silhouette etched into the cheap light of
fluorescent bulbs transformed by a daydream to a sea of glimmering stars.
November scratches her claws impatiently across the pavement as we walk, now,
And for a moment we become ourselves,
Not performers in a play.
A brilliant, unscripted, unrestricted breath of air,
And the peace in the confidence of the table we share.

Let me taste your sweet drops on my tongue
****** or thick as you like
Sharp and pointed with bitter fermentation
Dancing through the night
Lick my lips with your bubbly spice
And fill my mouth with the laughter
That comes after solid advice
Memories and late night talks
Of anything within the bounds of space
Energize or sap me but
Your anesthesia don't replace
I love your sugar high so lay
The sugar thick tonight
Anything but alcohol
To keep me from the light

You can tell a lot about someone from how they describe themselves,
Or what they tell you when you ask them about themselves.
You can see it in how much they talk about you,
Or the look they get when you perceive that they are thinking about you.
You can tell by how close they keep you whether you're an enemy,
Or a friend.
You can tell by the frequency of gestures
Or smiles in the hall
Whether they regard you as an acquaintance.
You'll always know when they give you their heart-
And then they give you their all from the very start of things
It warms you from the inside out.
You seldom think about the paths down which you will travel with the ones you love,
But when you look into their faces
You see a mirror of who you're becoming.
The past is in, it's all about the funny coincidences, the secrets you share,
When you first cried together and why-
Your love for each other isn't meant to be kept in a closet,
No matter who has come out (does it really matter at all?)
Just be there, please, to hold the door open for me.
The art of friend love is dying and I've been trying to keep us alive.
I just want to say that when I see a new face,
I'm not letting the good times slip away.
I'm trying to preserve us like wax in other peoples' hearts
Until we call catch fire
And we burn like a fire-
And when it's all almost over,
We can slow down together
And melt with eachother.
Love is patient, love is kind-
Love doesn't judge
Love somehow brings us together to judge,
Strange as it seems to the solitarily righteous.
Love is old, love is new
Love is all, love is you.
And love is being friends with you...
Friend love with you, it's all I've known.

I've realized that I seldom title my poems
With capital letter at all (or any punctuation)...
Maybe this expresses how afraid I am
Of truly committing myself to anything-
And how much easier it is
To write a story without a clear ending.

How tragically poetic.

staring through windowpanes at falling rain
the fog around my feet is cold and calculating and
daring me to make a move

my life is like a poem
stuck onto the side of a cold hard fridge
the way my body lays
on the cold hard ground
trying to put the pieces together
in a way that makes sense
so you think that im not hurt
by what im forming in my head
under the sting of the ray that falls
through your magnifying glass
shifting every now and then
to cover up the stains

My favorite language is sarcasm
Have you ever noticed how subtly it can be used?
And how much less of an idiot you feel when you can say that you've given a little snigger at a snide comment
It keeps you in the loop
It lacks the grace and elegance of Spanish or French
But for all it's supposed pushing people away from other people
I've just found that it brings a select group of the jaded
Into being the best of friends
You can't ask a girl for her hand
Or tell her you love her
With such a tone as a sarcastic jibe
It doesn't do to tell someone
How beautiful they are
If they question your meaning
And still I love the musical sound of isolating the idiots from the cynically inclined
Because it brought me closer to you

I want to feel my head on your shoulder
And your hand in mine
Not from the lust of some schoolgirl dream
But from the desire to finally feel
Safe and sound.

Every time I look up at you
I have to look away
I can't meet your eyes, love
Because I'm afraid of what you will see

I love the way I hate the way you wish that I would smile.
If only you could see that so much has been taken from me
That I couldn't love you for a while.
It took those awkward smiles through the camera to see
That I could love you the way you love me.

siento cerca de tí
esperando para que
tal vez me puedes ver
consiguiendo recuerdos
que todavía no han pasado

I remember
My second year at summer camp
Last summer
An eighteen hour bus ride into the mountains
I remember sitting and listening to the leader one night
Giving us a talk
I was barely paying attention
Until he told us all something
Something I will never forget
He said that the best is yet to come
So every day
That term at camp
I looked forward to the last day
Because surely
Surely then
Would something truly amazing happen
But on the last night, the leader told us something that truly lodged itself in my brain
And I can't think for a second without remembering what it was
I thought he was talking about fun here at camp
But the reality was
He was talking about life
That little sliver of the future that hangs in the sky
When you must look ahead
Not through the mountains, but over
Beyond the clouds that carry the storm
And remember when it hurts the most
The best is yet to come

I don't think of you often.
The days have long since ended, the days we shared,
The days that we were ourselves but not by ourselves.
But you come back and haunt me like a familiar song I forgot
That I used to love.
It's fun to enjoy for a moment,
Sweet and innocent and nostalgic,
But followed by a wave of nausea akin to the feeling you get
From eating too many sour patch kids.
And your sweetness filled me for a long time,
Then left me dripping out with a sour, bitter taste in my mouth.

i dont want to seem ungrateful for your love
or whatever it is you call it when your hands are all over me
i just need the space to grow and become who im meant to be
i just need the room to breathe
and to let "like" transpire into "love"

Compared to the universe full of stardust,
How small the spark is that lights a fire?
That keeps me up at night, that keeps us
Alive,
Keeps us burning bright.
Kindling for a kinship, a friendship, a bond more
Infinitesimal than we are
Little ants,
More chemical, more toxic in smaller doses,
More blazingly erratic,
More universal than the stardust
That is us.

Up in the morning, and pull your hair in a ponytail, brush the greasy strands out, block out the pallor with overkill blush. Sling your bag over one shoulder and give yourself more problems, more pain with every book you add, every line of knowledge you absorb through the osmosis of sitting bored and dull through seven hours. Walk on eggshells down the hall, numb like you're dead on your feet, and lace your sweaty fingers with his. Punctuate every thought you have with lol, to make it seem less serious in real life. Hold back the arsenic you taste in your brain. Sit behind a desk and ignore the sound of social lives blaring like white noise in the background of your life. You are not the main character of your own life. You are stuck in the static.

I had thanksgiving with my St. Lucian family, my
loud, unapologetic,
laughs-too-loud, generation-gap
homemade ***, heads in phones,
blasting dancehall music
old ladies dancing
clap-back
talk-back
family.
"Play us a song",
my cousin and I sent to my room to play jazz chords, I
finger along clumsily. He's in college and his dark eyes close, fingers
sliding up and down the frets,
frowning in concentration, cursing quietly at a missed note.
My islander family comes over and prompts impromptu drinking games,
"I'm not looking, I saw nothing",
I lick a bit of vanilla ***** from my mother's shot glass,
alcohol becomes a family affair, it
takes away the danger and the stigma and throws a friendly, lovely
light on a vice.
It's raining, it's cold,
islanders do not belong on a Kansas porch smoking cigarettes in the dark rain.
I light candles on the wall.
They all outlast their welcome, between four and a half hours of transition
from uncomfortable "i don't remember your name", put on the spot,
only-child-becomes-one-of-several to
discussing baby names and family gossip, they
all wrap up their food slaved over at nine am, they
all troop out the door, they
take their coats, they
leave their wide smiles with us until next time.

Her figure was slumped against the mausoleum
When she saw him standing there-
A stranger whose shadow covered her like a blanket
His figure tiptoeing on air.
"Come to watch" she whispered drunkenly,
And stared as he sat down.
He'd come to watch her die, of course
To sink
To bleed
To drown.
He made no sound, as he crouched down,
His shoulder grazing hers.
Her fingers numbing from the cold
Were warmed by woolen blurs.
He held her hand by the graves that night,
And she didn't pull away
"Who are you," she asked with trembling lips,
"Does it matter, as long as I stay?"
The tears fell down, and the bottle fell,
And she collapsed into the grass.
Her scars were ripped and opened again
With words and broken glass.
But he held there, he stayed, not making a sound
Just holding her in his embrace-
But when, the next morning, she woke in her bed
She had nearly forgotten his face.
He was a stranger to her, and she never found out
Who her savior had been that night.
But his heart had been damaged and bandaged, like hers
Nearly lost in the broken grey light.
But his voice was familiar and full of his strength,
When he gently lowered the knife
And whispered "this storm, no matter how rough, love,
It isn't worth taking your life".

Nothing worries me more
Than seeing your face and knowing that
You're not all there inside
You're living with a heartbeat but
You're barely alive
You are my beautiful wonderful friend
Torn down to start from the beginning again
And I can feel your pain wondering if it's worth it
To paint yourself into a red corner
Worthless
Not worth the time you spend ticking away
Counting the friends that you're missing each day
Missing in action and drowning in tears
And downing their miseries over the years
Spreading the doses to make it off clean
Not to be judged or hated or seen
As what they think that they see in themselves
Sitting, collecting dust on a hospital shelf
It makes me angry that they're going mad
Does it really matter that the pain is disguised
If they can't see the mercy that's not in your eyes
And a love with which they are never acquainted
They are forgotten and troubled and tainted

when i look at you i think of all the times you've given me.
you used to be my idol, and not only that
but my best friend
and my twin.
we shared everything from music to pain
and sharing that pain made everything okay.
but then you found another crowd
and suddenly i fell from the highest cloud
to hit the ground.
bitter and hard and cold
and you off with others that were cooler than me.
and with the cool came a chill that froze me.
where were you then?
why did you turn your back?
what made you leave?
there were no more secrets or midnight snacks or sharing pain together (forever, as forever was implied)
i was left to bear it alone.
call me an idiot for picking you up again when the new friends decided they were done with you
but maybe i felt sorry
because, well- now you know what i felt.
and as much as i hate myself for loving you, no one should feel what you made me feel.
not even your worst enemy.
not even your best friend.

Books
Portals to faraway magic worlds
And time machines to the past and present
Gateways to parallel universes
Made from the bodies of long dead giants
That lived and grew as far as the eye could see
Slaughtered by the thousands
And drenched in the blood of liquid night
In strange characters in rows one after the other
We are the hopes and dreams of the crafter
And the living embodiment of the mind of the user
We are the collective knowledge of a civilization
And the collective imagination of them too
We are the storytellers of eras gone by
And eras yet to pass
We paint ourselves with bright colors
In order to attract the eye of the user
We say what we tell on our backs
But we are dying
Our users ignore and abuse us
There’s so few left to share our knowledge with
And when we can't share our knowledge
We die
Once we die so too dies all hope for a better future

dark and deadly, you're the snake that lurks in the grass.
waiting to say something pale and ambiguous
with a question mark that hangs in space.
and it's beautiful,
mysterious and capitalized in all lower case.
the way you shy away from the light
reminds me of a child too afraid to have their say.
like the click of my heels against the cold floor
is too good to stay.
like a star-crossed love too toxic to last.
we cling to each
other in lieu of the past.
smirk and i fall to pieces
you're my terror
fate
my weakness.
breath on my face, charge in my veins,
the drug i can't replace.
you're only the latest in line i suppose.
another notch on my belt, i guess
nothing could change the way i've felt.
i can't feel it any less.
the pain is still there but it's numbed
with the thought of who we could be
and what we've become.
together we're only more twisted
but i feel like we hide a piece of ourselves in each other.
we're stranger to others
but lovers together.

This is a letter on account of that poem
You left in the hallway.
I was walking by, and I saw it on the floor
All torn into pieces, and well
I'm a sucker for puzzles.
Two nights ago, I spent almost two hours
Painstakingly placing the pieces in particular places on
The looseleaf
Well, I recreated your poem like the deepest lyrical anthropologist.
It's all glued and taped together now, and what an irony that it was only
Love poetry from ninth to twelfth grade.
The lines are not that bad, but a little trite,
Someday, the girlfriend and boyfriend you used to call yourselves
Will grow up and away and apart.
And I will never ask either of you why
You left your poem on the hallway floor in little shreds.
I could look you up, find you, I have your name after all...
But I would rather leave the story up to my imagination.
This is merely me expressing my appreciation for the puzzle
You left on the linoleum for me to solve.

Si no me quieres ver,
Te puedo buscar más facilmente.
Si me digas que no me quieres,
Me hagas sentir mas enamorada de tí.
Me encanta tu cuerpo y tu alma y
Lo odio.
Quiero morir
Pero tus ojos me digan, vivir.

does it ever occur to you
the second best
feels like last place

have you ever thought
that i smile
because its expected

did you ever question why i changed
my name
because im not beautiful enough to fit it

do you ever lie awake at night
and dream of me
like i wish someone would

do you play broken records too?

I am in love today.
But it is a quiet love.

Dissatisfaction is what you feel when you
Start to type out a message to him, and
Your fingers are trying to move to express what you're feeling...
But you have nothing to say.
So you close the window.
And turn off your computer.
And go to bed.

Thank you.
For making me feel like I have no power.
For taking away my voice, my ability to form thoughts, my ability to sort out how I feel.

My ability to feel.

Thank you, for making me a stranger even to those closest to me.
Unable to reach out, to ask for help, unable to accept kindness or love.

Thank you for making me a prisoner in my own body.
For making it hard to look in the mirror. Making me live in my head, as a being completely separate from my limbs, my stretch marks, the little white rolls of my stomach.

Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to feel my heart in my throat. For letting the ***** rise up in my throat, so I can let it out. It’s the only thing I can let out that gives me some kind of release.

Thank you for destroying my faith in a god, in others, and in myself.

Thank you for making me question.

Was it my fault?
Does God have pity on sinners who get hurt?
Was there something I could have done?

Thank you for breaking me.

Thank you for killing me before anything else could.

you know the other day when
you were reading over my shoulder?
my fingers were cold holding down the page
but my face was warm
next to yours.
we even drew the gaze
of everyone in the room.
if i were someone else
i would have stared too.

i hate you
i hate your hair
i hate the jokes i used to laugh at
i hate the pictures that i have
when i see you in them
most of all
i hate that he loves you

Did my affinity for
Bad guys
Give you the wrong impression?
After all,
No one loves a bad boy
Like the baddest girl herself.

Sometimes I wonder if
When people look at me
They see all the sadness and grief
That the mirror can't show

my words scare me as i take a leap of unwarranted faith
plunging into a world
of typing my soul
and uploading my heart to a world wide web
spun of slivers of respite i can barely reach out my fingers to touch
who will know my words
what will they come to know?
not the girl that sits alone
something different and unspoken
something caged until now

i wonder if you know that you are my hero
and every time i look at you i can't meet your eyes
and it's killing me slowly that you will never know
the pain and love and self i hide
and somehow in your shadow
i lose my ray of light
and yet i stay around you
because i cant imagine life without you
fading in and out of the forefront
crossing the lines you can't even see
like you haven't really noticed me
but that's alright, i think it's better
that i watch from afar
and think of what i wish we were
if only i wasn't last in line
to get a piece of your heart

when i look at you
no matter who you are
i remember a song
that brings us together
and i smile just
to see your face and remember.

it's hard for me to say the words
that may turn on me in the end
what seems like soul drawn romance now
may leave me with one less lover and friend
so at least for now i find it hard
to pledge that i'll be true
for fear that i will jinx myself
and seal fate for i and you

every time i see you
i wonder what it would be like
to be with you
and when i think of being with you
i wonder what it would be like
if you stayed

when i told people in my first block class at school, a science class, that my favorite movie was straight outta compton, they all laughed.
and i guess i understood why. im a little white girl that was wearing a skirt that day. okay, so thats nice.
i guess i cant like things because i live in a pretty nice neighborhood and im white and im a girl.
but guess what.
i like straight outta compton because i understand the people part of it. like oh god.
i used to love going to the movies because i could escape my reality, which ***** more than people know because i dont tell them things sometimes, but i havent enjoyed a movie in years because every reality in my life has completely taken over and defeated me.
but maybe i like straight outta compton so much because for the first time in years, i actually connected with something that felt real to me.
yeah ok, its just a movie.
but watching the movie, i got to meet these characters and they became my friends. i dont care about how lame that is.
this is a poetry site. look at all the angst. and my gosh, look at that fourth wall i just broke.
ice cube is my friend. ren is my friend. yella too. all my friends, and i watched them get shoved to the ground outside their own recording studio.
because they were black.
and sitting in the movie theatre seat in my nice neighborhood in my white skin, i cried.
i cried my eyes out, because those actors onscreen were telling me a story in the personas of these new friends of mine.
i cried when eazy found out he had aids. just when nwa was about to get back together.
it was like watching a personal potential victory slip right between my fingers. it felt so close.
and i watched his body shake in agony. eazy cried. he had months to live.
in my white skin in my nice movie seat in my nice neighborhood where ive never had to watch anyone die, i cried because in that moment, all of it was real to me.
you cant explain something like that, not even to your friends.
in my nice neighborhood where there arent streetwalkers and people doing coke and peoples houses getting rammed down by the cops, my friends dont want to listen to nwa because of all the cussing.
and i think, there is so much that you miss if you initially reject it because you dont like it, because you think that it hurts your character.
hear no evil, see no evil.
you dont want the cussing floating around in your head.
its bad. its sinful.
but my gosh, its only words.
i dont think that eazy wanted the doctors diagnosis in his head.
i dont think that he wanted to deal coke and get almost caught by the police. i think he wanted to stay in the safe neighborhood with me in the nice movie seats crying about some other character on the screen that had their dreams crushed and their life taken.
i dont think that ice cube wanted to be taken advantage of by his manager.
i dont think i would like that either.
i dont like that people think that my friend, ice cube, isnt as smart as the little white girl in her biotechnology class. people might look down on him because hes black, or because gangsta rap made him do it, or because he didnt come from the nice neighborhood with the movie theater that i was crying in because my friends were being beaten.
maybe im crazy for saying this, but....i think maybe the movies arent supposed to always entertain us or make political statements or educate us or wow us with light shows.
maybe theyre meant to give us new perspectives we dont get because we live in nice neighborhoods with our movie theaters and our friends nwa that dont get to live here because they came from compton and got thrown in jail because they used their right to freedom of speech or got aids and died.
my friends werent all good. they did drugs and abused women, and im not okay with that, but i love them anyway, yknow?
because theres just one type of folks. not real or fictional, not actors and audience, not black and white.
just folks.
just friends.

Words are strong enough by themselves
But when they come from you
They are like Samson tearing down the roof of my mouth
When I try to whisper, to negate what I've said
Because now the feeling's dead
Is it my fault that my clock is set a little bit ahead?
I can't control the voices that are telling me
That no matter how close we are
There are always sharp edges
To press into me, to leave your scars

Yes we were friends, and that was then, but-
You were the one that left,
It was not I.
You never even said goodbye.

I could say that you and I
Were love gone wrong.
But we started as the truth,
And ended as a lie.

No reason for me to be jealous
Of the love that I could see in the ghost of her
That was in your eyes.

It was too familiar to be my reflection.

I can't express all the hurt that I felt
Even when I said goodbye.
You couldn't begin to try
To imagine what you started.

I was the one who started and ended the love affair
With a love that even I knew wasn't there.

But the truth of the matter is-
You had me all along
But I never had you at all.

as autumn leaves are falling
and green things turn to gold
so you and i must fall together
from innocent to old