Like you were a first trip to NYC,
or a perfect view of the cosmos
from that clearing on Sylvan Avenue,
I was agape and fawning while you sauntered
out from your double doors, to the end of your driveway,
to where I rocked on my heels eagerly
on Allen Dr. at 6:23

Come 7:15, we bedecked your body
with stripped and frayed Armani
in tribute to the Walkers we've seen;
cool-white fluorescence drew emphasis
on the harmony between your ivory simper
and each cobalt marble that rolled
and flicked beneath your tuckered eyelids
by some sort of beatnik artistry.

Frankly, my chest swelled with fever
when I noted the scrunch of your nose
askance to liquid-latex applications,
or the way black cherry sap wept
from the corners of your mouth
while dislodging the blood-capsule
in-between your molars
and your stately, hollow cheek at 7:50

And I noticed around 8:00,
when I had slowed you to a halt
near the crosswalk on Montauk
between Coastal and Le Soir
to fix the scar-tissue on your chin,
that if I ever knew there to be one,
you made a most stunning zombie
with my Tom & Jerry cap lining your scalp;

Which made the stain left by the makeup
worth the trade of my hat
in exchange for your company,
as we picked up a twelve-pack
at the 7-11 just down the street
before we returned to the party.

you take my love
when you take your leave,
leaving it by your doorstep
so you could get yourself in the house
before the weather got fickle,
forgetting it there when
you'd turn in
under warm covers.

it spent so many nights
getting rained on
despite my best advice,
in hopes that you
would find it in the morning,
see it for its sun and flowers,
and want it to be
your daily reminder
of what the rest of your Springs
could feel like.

and I never had it in me
to disappoint my love
by telling it
to just come home,
knowing it would spend
the night fidgeting between
those four chambers
to forget that it was alone.

but that poor thing,
how tired it would get by daybreak,
pulling the petals from its daisies
with eyes swollen with their own rain,
blubbering about how all it wanted
was to tickle the hairs on your chest
until the strange and new
felt warm and safe to you,
and how it wished
trying this much
didn't make it feel so pitiful.

because my love knew
whatever it felt, it shared with me;
and though its judgment was better
than to sleep on wet bricks
until it got itself sick,
it was just hoping to bring me back
something beautiful,
it didn't mean
for me to get hurt.

and it's a thought I've entertained, because
there's something intangible about the way
you let my name slip from your mouth,
and if I could hear you smile when you
feed into silly jokes (that I sometimes
never know how to finish,) with
a sprightly riposte and a laugh—
well, no man would know as charming
of a night song as I would.

so I often smooth out an endless atlas
of all the routes and maxims that would
escort you to the comfort of my being;
and I find myself ready until I remember that
I am guilty of never carrying a compass most days,
and counter every instinctive emotion
with a thought and a doubt, and I keep forgetting
to not travel about with the shaming fear of mistaking
moments of selfishness for those of tenderness.

which explains why I've pinched my tongue
with my teeth every time I think to admit
that getting enough sleep hasn't really done much
since some nights, I am lonely, and being able to let
every tired limb wander and stretch across
the entire bed makes other nights a little tougher.

I swear I don't mean to adore you—but I do,
and I think it would be nice to see you again;
I've been thinking about that most days, too
(because it does sound nice,) but if you didn't know
that was where I was coming from, I'm hoping
on the next chance we get to meet somewhere
in the middle of the lives we zip through so briskly,
that now you do.

you can give me a call, it doesn't have to be soon;
and it's only if you've been thinking about it, only if
you been meaning to catch the sound of my smile
behind an eager hello before you ready your compass
and ask...

“It's been a while, what are you doing next weekend?”

I meant for you to think about it
on the next train-ride home
how I would have said it
if I illustrated how remedies
for a lonely Tuesday evening
come in the way you wake
the little hairs in my ear
through transmission towers and
soft-breathed cues.

but my moxie doesn't come
in a big enough wrench, so I remain
wherever (if ever) I operate
in the mechanics behind your smile,
at least cherishing the reassurance
in seeing that you get to know
the best parts about your happiest days
(because it was long overdue.)

and as I do, I mean to
so that you could see
within the inarticulate man
that where I adore you,
I instead let your feet
take you as you please,

knowing better than I let up
that I meant to say I don't really
have any plans for the summer,
but I'd rather be sitting on your stoop when
June rolls along and my feet are
twenty-two years exhausted,

and my heart another year swollen
from hearing how you say my name
and keeping it a secret between me
and my fear that it is not
how you intend to say it.

You don't have to talk
about breaking my heart
like you were just pulling weeds
from the front yard garden,
like it had to be done
before you went about your day
without a **** to give
about what I had to do
to salvage the flowers
that you thought
weren't worth watering.

so you have somewhere to cocoon
your tired body and somewhere
to weave another dream within
your nest of sheets.
I've had enough dreams
to not mind taking a night-shift
(or three) to keep vigil over
the shell where you curl into yourself,
and count the hairs you leave
on my pillowcase where you retreat.
and when a night-terror's ambush
tries to pull you from your reverie,
I will lull the madness to sleep.
I will lull your madness to sleep.

the day is going to break upon me
when I'll have to leave behind
the last reminder
of the dedication put into
all the years worth
of skin I've shed,
and I just want it to be remembered
that all I wanted
was to let my heart
find safety with the sun,
and sleep outside my sternum
every morning
without the vultures
coming to claim their feed;
and although existing would
become absolutely unbearable
whenever better seemed to take forever
to do, to love, to find,
I have always tried
so hard
to take it easy on myself.

Chelsea would be yours to rule
by night, and the fools of the bars
would lift their liquored skulls
from every bar top, cheering the anthem
of your glory, from the 13th Step
to Clandestino.

and when we take all of Angel's Share,
I'd follow the resplendence of your
staggering figure along concrete carpets
while the traffic-jam parade
flashed their headlights in praise of
the Urban Royalty and his timid right-hand rebel.

oh, how we are adored! and even if
we are mistaken, what care could we give
when the streets are ours, and every footstep
turned the pavement to gold,
and each mechanical cart propelled us further
in our conquest from terminal to terminal.

I wanted to make you King—
but the Blue Moon in my hand
does not match that of the one that shines,
(nor do I shimmer as it does...)
besides, you already are the King—
all I am is timid and left-handed,
and I'm longing to be adored.

You are urban delight, New York debonair,
and you don't need to be grandeur
to set a trend or flutter a heart;
not when you brush your thumb against
the beard you maintain with apple-pie order,
and quickly flash your howlite teeth
with such modesty, that man has to
stop and wonder if it's really true
that the most endearing, do not have
a notion of how sublime they are.

and I love how the sun still catches itself
upon your burnished, rust-painted
locks, slicked back and parted,
careful not to hide a single fleck of
the honey-gold scattered in the jade
of your eyes that still flicker warmly,
even when we're passing under the
shadows of the skyscrapers that
try to swallow us whole with 8th Avenue.

take me to Amorino,
let me fix the collar of your shirt
while you order me a lemon gelato,
and I'll tell you on the walk
to the carousel on Pier 62
how it's all your fault that my cheeks
have been matching the pink
of your shirt since the afternoon-

and you don't even realize
you're doing that to me,
but I love it as much as I love
reminding you of the reasons
that I could think to adore you,
because that just happens
to be one of them.

And the other is because I would love to.

love is taking a walk
through the woods,
and setting off a trap
that swings you
as high as the oaks,
and all you could do
is just admire the view
since you left your pocket knife
at home, and let the blood
rush to your face
as you hang by your ankle
until the rope finally snaps.

in regards to where we would find
our hands and elbows entwined,
you never did guarantee that
you could answer with certainty.
"Anything could happen
in five years, Vin-
we could be the last two people
on Earth," you told me,
"how's that for an answer?"
well, it's a shame that we weren't.

it's a shame our love had to share
so much in common
with the stars that we swore
were living with us
when we'd ******* in the car,
forgetting how much light years
play tricks on our eyes.

it's a shame that our love
had to be the canary that
never made it out of the coal mine;
though we reassured ourselves
it would come about before night,
the last echoes of those birdsongs
only came from the walls of our minds.

and it's a shame that
when we speak,
it's seldom that we talk,
so I may never know
just what you really wanted to do
with all of this-
whatever it was,
I just hope this wasn't it.

so you disappear with the night
without much of a goodbye,
let alone an apology,
before I could speak
whatever magic words
it would have took
for your hand to find mine
for another day.
"I ylno reve detnaw ot
evol uoy reverof,
I ylno reve detnaw uoy ot yats,"
I've run out of tricks,
and you've just ran,
so I guess the vanishing act
is the best that we both got.

even the dreamers
need to be called on their bluff;
we talk about endeavors
together
across the states,
and taking a weekend
to go some place
where we could tell a different life
at the parties,
and share the same last name;
I would leave the bedroom door open,
and you wouldn't need to knock
for an invitation to fill my bed
where we could finally leave
our chests most bare,
as we should.

but still, we speak of it
as more of an "if"
rather than a "when,"
and smoke on our ignorance
until we can play like
the "when" is "now".
and silly me,
I get so caught up,
only to be dashed when I see
none of it is happening
as it should.

you see the door ajar,
but you don't cross the threshold,
and it's been for so long,
that I certainly am no longer sure
which of us is the one
standing in the hall,
waiting to be beckoned
to listen to the blood
pumping through the other's chest.

Every wallet I've owned has seen
more dust and identification cards
than an abandoned asylum.

and if I were to measure my wealth,
it would be in three appointment slips,
ninety-two Chinese fortunes,
and a single Press-a-Penny
tucked behind a folded note
documenting symbols from
a dream I had at seventeen.

but if you were to ask me
to measure my worth, I could tell you
that ninety-two fortune cookies had
a lot to say about me, and the penny
reads "Lucky," and lucky I am.

because my heart has more space
in just four chambers than Trump Hotel's
penthouse suites, and my mind
is always at work to keep it running,

and my mouth eagerly waits to offer
conversation over boxed wine,
a laugh for every clever line you speak
in regards to the inconvenience of rainy days,
and a cordial invitation for you
to enjoy any of my four cherry suites
any day of the week, (even when it's sunny.)

oh, could you adore a broke man?
I can't make any reservations,
but my heart is always expanding,
and you don't have to pay any rent
to keep warm.

you're Woodside's Arcanine,
and it took me five years and an hour
to finally find you,
and by the time I got to your door,
my skull was already rolling
off my shoulders,
to catch every angle of your rakish design
until my heart burst out from my neck.
and I wish the cold shower
did enough to quiet the fever
and calm the bones,
so I never missed every curveball I threw,
and would be wise enough to tell
when it's time to fold.

If you ever lifted stoner eyes
to catch the swank of a star
in the azure vaults leading to paradise,
and hoped it wouldn't fleet
to another party in the cosmos
where the men have enough
of a spine to reach for it—

then you'd understand
what it means to adore you;
but life has made me a funny young man,
and I don't know how to boldly transmute
my thoughts into cosmic tongue as to
draw you in the gravitational pulls of my affection

just so I can enjoy the way you polish
my sable tresses in an effortless manner,
all the while hoping that consecrating
your stateliness would entice you
to indulge in the leisure of orbiting
around my galaxy, branding my waiting palms
with the heat of your open, fiery hands

except I am petrified of being misunderstood,
and it can leave a man fumbling over his words
when he fears that—in fawning over stars like you—
he would only be carelessly scaring you off
with egocentric dreams.

and I am sorry that I wait until the very last minute
to grow the backbone it takes to shorten the distance
between our smiles and energy—when all I want is a night
to pick you out of every constellation, and know
that you will respond to my inviting gestures
with a beaming smile and say:

“I know you don't got much—
but there's something about
how you're looking out for me—
and I'd like to stick around for a while.”

if I could trade the face
I came with,
I'd pick one that you
would adore today,
love tomorrow,
and keep
in the back of your head
over the weekend in
passing thoughts
on your way to work
every time you
drove by
something beautiful.

and noticing that much
is enough to remind me that
all of this only amounts
to meteoric chances and happenstances,
so even the worst of it will come to its end—
and maybe that just has to do
with the optimistic sap in me.

But even then, you greet me
“Good morning,” and I hear you,
and you sound like you're of the Sun
touching through the barricades of Woodbury,
where the undead ******* can't touch us.

And you buffer the cold of the wind
and the wet of the rain
when the kindling is too soaked
to start a fire big enough
to counter the draft
coming from under the doors,
or dry our jackets by the fireplace.

Which probably sounds like naivety,
but even after Woodbury rots from the inside out,
and we lose the car and our last can of beets
somewhere during our escape, and the rest of the way,
we're joking about the way things were
before they got worse, while hypothesizing
about the fall of man, epidemics and expiration dates
to forget the endless hills aching our feet, I could tell you:

“Sure, I mean, there are ten-thousand ways
the world can go to **** (and it probably has,)
and I might not live to one-hundred-three,
but if the world's gonna burn on me now,
it's always better watching with you.”

when gravity breaks the wings
clean off your back,
hit the ground running,
and collapse into my chest.

we could move back to The Cul-de-Sac
when we're ready to visit
the simpler times,
and you could be Kevin,
revving up your motorcycle
in our driveway every Friday night,

and we'd enjoy the boiling stars
on our walk down The Lane,
and you'd tell me that it took
a few years to appreciate it,
but you love how the aroma
of my Krankshaft No. 5
has grown on you,
"'... fresh cut spring flowers
strewn across a babbling brook
with a hint of lemon.' isn't that
what that one dork said
it smelled like, back in 1999?

Funny how time flies, man,
how about when we get home,
we watch some cartoons,
and you can scratch my head,
and we can watch our tongues
change color from the jawbreakers
that I've been saving for us tonight?"

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?

I find that
there are nights
where I think so much
of hearing the morning alarm
snap the neck of a dream about
dancing in motel rooms
with the phantom of my affection,
just to wake up to see
it's my body alone taking up the sheets
and shedding hair on satin shams,
that I become reluctant
to turn every light off.

I felt my pulse stutter when I spoke of you
long before I met you, back when
I was marooned on the Island
with a bunch of sourpusses some years ago,
who told me it would have taken
a pipeline chilled on dry ice (with a faucet installed)
for all the people in Hell who want iced water,
and a meteor the size of Mauna Loa
tearing through every layer
of realistic expectations to discover you.

and that the meteor would still end up
the size of a gumball by the time
it hit the pavement, and the first drop of water
would get to the ****** warm as ****,
and they almost had me convinced,
crossing fingers and predicting meteor showers
before I learned of you by name,
swore Hell's patrons could stay parched
for all I cared, and headed west for forty-two miles
until I found you in a part of the Island
where those sore losers must've never bothered to look.

since then, I've made a list of reasons
why nothing's felt more profoundly simple
and beautiful to me than each instance
where I could have sworn your signals synced with my pulse.
and they're all worth explaining, but I've grown
more timid at twenty-two, and mostly stare
at the bottle of Magic Hat, the roof of the shed,
the scruff on your upper-lip or the creases in your shoes,
just to avoid making eye-contact
(though you don't seem to mind it.)

speaking of then, back at the shed,
when you were tapping your foot
to one of Twain's records, I was going to mention
something about how I love the sound
hard-heeled shoes make when they click against vinyl,
tile and hardwood floors, because it's soothing to me—
the same way the tone in your voice was
when you saw the Sour Belts on the candy rack,
when you thanked the gas station clerk
on the way out, told me you were having fun,
and softly brushed my hand
before you asked to borrow my lighter;
it's just a sound I adore.

though I wouldn't clarify whether I meant
the click of heels or the sound of your voice,
because I know it's going to sound silly either way,
so I speak to you in Morse code
and send the signals to myself
to remember there are things that
will always mean more than
they probably really do—

to you, to the world, to the psychic
who guaranteed simplicity and tenderness
for me when I was nineteen, and
probably laughed her way to the bank,
bought a gumball-sized rock on a silver ring,
and will be in stitches by the time she gets to Hell
to buy a round for the ******* underground
who are placing bets that I might be wrong about you,
and that I'll lose your signal soon
whether or not I want to.

if the body is a temple,
I am just a barren chapel,
a tired frame caving in
under the weight of time
time and again,
and for most days
and most eyes,
just coming short
of grandeur and lovely.

I protect my heart
because I don't trust my sternum
to be man enough to take the impact
of circumstances such as car crashes,
or rejection, or crippling disappointment.
and if there's a pain to be felt
from never feeling vulnerable—
I've thought about it time and again,
but mostly I keep busy, feeding my heart
lemon meringue and poetry,
to distract it while I fortify the ramparts,
so I don't have to pay attention

to whether it hurts or frees me,
to make that first move,
that the stories say lead to a kiss
or a long-awaited confession
that's probably never been more
than a stupid pipe-dream anyway
that's made Hollywood trillions of dollars
selling false promises and popcorn,
and has made fools like me
embarrassed and dizzied on their loveseats

ignoring the sight of the vacant spot
in their peripherals by waking and baking,
over-polishing apples, and counting floorboards—
tuning in to old jazz and blues
to counter the dead quiet of the living room,
pinching sugar between their fingers
to counter the bitter taste of the coffee
that they ******* hate drinking,
but it gives them something to do,
something warm to cradle in their palms
when Fridays alone start to feel pathetic.

and while I make plans to hear a voice
or see a face that I miss, and let my hair
fall over my shoulders tangle-free,
polish up my smile, and freshen up my favorite jacket
with a shot of dragon's blood and sandalwood,
my shoes stay where I left them a week ago,
and I never follow through with that phone call.

I'm the protector of my heart,
because I know no one else
is looking out for it more than their own,
and it's worth the risk of being unkissed,
as long as my sternum stays whole,
and that small, red empire not left jaded,
and my pride still intact.

he told me,
"the problem with our flesh,
is that it doesn't do so well
as to protect our bones;
you may prefer your heart to be bare
for the sake of calming the wolves
that you let slick your throat
with their rabid tongues,
but I know you know
that it's better to be the iron you taste,
than to be the polish for a man's gums,
and the wax for his teeth."

he painted my forehead
with the vermilion broth
he brewed from the throat of the hare,
and mopped his fingers clean
with my tongue
as we watched the vermin
give one last kick.

"but if you insist,
then I will be your cage
as I am your hunter,
and nothing will chew through
your pretty collarbone
before me."

you came to me
by way of thunder or hurricane
and by the dandelions
you left in your wake, I knew
it was summer when you rained;
so much so, that I am still
wringing you out of my hair
and out of my t-shirt
in yards of November,
my damp sleeves reminding me
I could never entirely whisk you
off of my flesh.

I wish that our tongues would finally match
when we spoke from our flesh,
that you would brush my shoulder
like you do when
you aren't a machine,
and when we'd look at each other,
that our eyes
would actually meet.
but you can't get under
keeping it simple,
and I still end up over-
explaining.

I think of the way I felt reborn,
into something a little bit more,
when I heard my name crawl
and curl out from your teeth
and between your lips
as we said our first hellos
when I want to think that, maybe-
maybe not everything's gone wrong
so why should it have to now?

I feel with shy hands
and speak from a shy mouth,
and I wish I knew well enough
before I threw myself in the woods
that there's no chance
of being sure as bone
and tough as day, not when
your spine is made of white willow
and you bleed lotus and amaryllis.

In learning we don't have to always share a bed with fear,
it's those flashes of chance that bring out our poetry:
when we abruptly trip over the words we hastily collect
to sound off a feeling so explosive, that
even when it's mumbled with restraint,
it still sounds like fireworks.
and I wish I knew just how your stare looked
when you'd find the moment to strike your match,
and ignite whatever you've readied yourself to say,
but smothered the flame out of worry that you never could.
Just so you could know that you don't have to sleep tonight
with the fear that I'd never want to hear your poetry—
I love the sound of fireworks
when they're coming from your mouth.

I'm such a hopeless romantic
that if you cracked me over the head
with a tire iron, you could see love
bleeding out of my skull, and
the first thing I'd say
is something about how
I like the way the moon
catches your face just right
from the view I'm getting
while my scraped back
kisses the ground as I doze off
in the middle of the street.

We noticed the ******
soon approaching the places
we took years to accept
as our home, to see how tough
our meat stuck to our bones
against their barrage of teeth,
rotten tongues, and pus-dripping nails.

and when you packed the last
of the matches and saw me hiding
all our stillborn dreams inside of
the basement's drop-ceiling tiles,
you told me, "Along the way,
we're going to be picking up
more, I haven't decided
when, but I am sure we'll find
some good ones when we're
digging through the pockets
of those dead ******, or in
one of the jammed cars
sitting on the interstate,
or in an empty Jack Link's bag,
**** if I know.

so I hope you're putting those away
to make room for more,
not because you think there
aren't any to have after this.
You don't have to pack so lightly,
I'm here to help carry the weight;
just remember that you're in charge
of grabbing a carton of Marlboros,
if the gas station didn't get
entirely ******* ransacked,
and remember to smile
every once in a few hours
so I know I'm helping you do all right."

If it wasn't clear, I've come to be okay
with the fact that the world's plans
will always reach an impasse with my own,
and call off all the dreams
it swore to bring to flesh and bone
for me, because I've heard what they say
about that thing called infatuation
(or romance, or some loose translation
of that) and fools; it's easy to tease one,
hard to love one, and it's a life sentence
to let yourself be loved by one;
I was just hoping it would be worse
to never feel the love of a fool at all.

I call the men who have ran off
with my affections
phantoms,
and rightfully so;
for they often say my name
as though it was another
way to sigh and let
a little breeze come into the room,
and they press their hands
against me so gently,
that I couldn't tell the difference
if they had never
touched me at all.

yet I still find myself
whispering their names
against my pillow
in angelic tongue,
waiting to feel their flesh once more
beneath my sheets
when I am hoping for one night
where it isn't just me
lying in the dark.

you give me half-hearted winks
that seem forced
out of obligation,
and you spit my name
into your sleeve as if it was
the flavor of last week,
like you want both of us to forget
you used to have fun with this.

Well, the bets were placed,
and Hell's patrons are raking in the dough
since I lost your signal some months ago;
the pulse I felt was just my own,
I just thought it would've felt nice
if for once it wasn't mine alone.

for carpet-burns along my spine,
for tender lovebites served with
holes and tears in my t-shirt
that I'll shyly play with in the morning,
while deciding if I should stare at you
or my empty coffee mug, or the ashtray
sitting on the railing of my backyard deck,
where so many times before,
I've guarded every part of my body
I wanted your hands to intrude on,
and held my breath when I otherwise wished
you'd seize it from my lungs with your mouth.
And I'd warn you that I might wake up mad most mornings,
if you knew I meant that I wake up every morning
absolutely ******* mad for you.

you call me your fire,
but, honey, I'm burnt out.
and if I had a mouth of
sawdust and kerosene,
I'd spit on my flesh
to make up for the way
that my flames licked themselves
to ash and ember,
so I wouldn't have to
beg you to bring
your hands
through my hair
and over my chest,
so I could still keep you
warm.

I think it was that moment
between the look and the kiss
that triggered the highlight reel
of a thousand seconds
broken up between some years,
filtered through a kaleidoscope,
vaguely narrating familiar tales of one
of the world's strangest phenomenons
by language of wet mouths,
pools of dead stars swallowing our irises,
and the sensations left behind from
the brushing of hands so subtle,
you could never tell whether it really happened,
or if it was just the anticipation;
and I guess the best excuse I got
for why I can't remember any of it,
is because I never really forgot about it.

I was looking forward to letting
my hair fall from my shoulders and
spill and curl along the pillow
with such lithe, you would swear to me
that you saw dark lily and poplar
bloom from my tendrils.

and you would have showed me
how your demons had twisted your back
and placed it backwards, forgetting
you weren't a contortionist, asked
of me to push the knots out,
and in melting curls of words,
slurred to me a string of purrs

coated in breaths of gin, how the light
catching my face from the ceiling fan
in the motel room makes going away
feel a little sweeter than you expected,
but it's the feline-like grin I give when
I am trying to be cheeky but meek
with my hands contouring your lumbar,
that gives your spirit a little more life.

and there's a chance I would have
scraped the pride from my teeth,
tilt my head over the end of the bed,
and let you eat my heart
out from my mouth,
had I learned sooner that
even the hungry for adoration
have to feed it, too.

And it's true, I mean to be brave,
but I worry everyone knows,
that behind these bold monologues,
I am really just a sheep in wolf's clothing;
but sometimes it helps,
to pretend the skin fits.

Something of another realm
appeared before me some nights
on a small break to Brooklyn;
he was crooning by the bar
some love songs dragged out
of a wormhole in the cosmos,
and he saved my mind.
and the funny thing about
finding Heaven, is that you never
really do, until one day you catch it
swigging a beer from the corner of your eye,
and the lights in the bar
start to look warmer than they did
when you first walked in.

though my demons
no longer live in me,
they still live with me,
and I'm sure of that
because they always remind me
that they come along for
the drive to work; they are there
to feed themselves in front of me
when they make me too sick
to eat when I'm hungry,
and they still jump from my bed
and around the walls,
making so much noise
when they know that,
all I want to do,
is ******* sleep.

I could never hate a human
as much as I revere them a hero,
because I love my heroes
for remembering their flesh;
I know that you are not your demons,
because if you were,
you wouldn't be trying
to shovel them out of your head
to install a window in the cavity
so the sun can come into your skull
to greet all the angels that you know
are still somewhere
in your mind.

you carry yourself
like the foliage and summer calm
that make your home,
as they do your soul,
and so you are beautiful to me.
how I hanker to be
like the willow you bed down beneath
and smile at with your eyes,
or the beer you sweep from your lips
with your tongue
to savor the taste of a good day;
how I hanker to be
something
of your world
that you adore.

Well, if you're going to rip my heart out,
I hope you plan on washing off
all the ******* dirt you're rolling it in
when you get bored and feel like
putting it back in my chest.

The Tortoise has spoken,
it seems it may be wise of me
to consider my Cheshire Cat roots,
disappear in the air in the woods
and lay low for a little while
before my smile becomes such a pest
that even I want to punch my teeth out
and punt my heart through a few rounds
of croquet until it stops rolling back
into my chest.

I wanted to draw myself
so close to your mouth
that your words blew out my eardrums
even though they sounded like
they were being whispered.

and the poets?
we're the saddest of them all,
because even though heartbreak
is a universal language, our ache
never translates well enough
from our minds, so we eventually
come to mumble to ourselves
into silence, praying our death is swift
when our heart becomes so swollen
that it starts to bleed out from places
where it shouldn't.

I will never pay off the debt
that comes with being a silent lover;
and I can't tell you all it took
to be all right with that.