Cry me a river
of joy,
she said

I knew she meant it,
by the silence
by the memory of her laughter,
how she poked fun
how she rubbed me down with giggles of mirth,
bellies gyrating with angst
and rambunctious
passion

I knew it

It was not the idea
of her
that scared me,
not anymore
would I think of women
that way

What
it was
that scared me
was how I knew we'd say goodbye
and I'd be okay
for once
okay
and happy she said goodbye...

Happy we didn't shovel moats & forge keeps,
establish plans of attack & surrender
belabor, humming & hawing, over broken treaties,
over civilian casualties
the banishment of civil liberties
and the proverbial
dictatorships of,
"I'm not the problem, so, it MUST be you."

Reply with,
"Yes, it is me."
I knew it,
"I'm sorry!"
Jinx!
Not this time.

This time,
she said goodbye.
And so did I. At least, inside.
And she meant it,
and it was honest.
And so was I. A small comfort.
First of many...

Her goodbye was a kiss that could rival
daydreams
of memories that are
more remixed than the splotches of oil
on a painter's palette,
and,
more dibbled and dabbled, than ten playlists of slow jams,
in my arsenal of hopeless stratagems,
bearing the desperate subtext of,
'park your rear end
where I can't begin to ask honestly.'

Because,
honestly,
if this weren't goodbye,
I could only trade this goodbye,
for ten thousand "Hello's"
whose end and beginning are lost to the tides of status quo,
of forget me nots
and anniversaries,
and picture frames
of days where we forgot what 'goodbye' meant,
because we learned to speak the truth...

And isn't it the truth,
that goodbye,
was so much sweeter than,
I can't stand,
how much we fought for a t-shirt
that eponymously said,
"I cried over spilt milk, and all I got was this t-shirt."
because none of us know
the name of the game,
but we know we hate playing it

When we offer
a sacrifice of praise,
our lives as living psalters,
are our hearts altered?

I was a dead body, decaying in decades of wreckage, buried in my tarnished land. Shape shifting into a muse that acquires its sunday best to stand tall, relentlessly.

And yet life is much wiser than to all of my whims, molding my heart as a vessel of my misadventures, and veins that bears my broken dreams. I still dance on a hard wood floor, memorizing the creaks on it; memorizing the fear of falling.

My skin and bone grows in unfamiliar love, shaped into a misery, it is morphed on my own garden of heaven and abyss, relinquished its life in romanticism and death.

I can feel my body breaking
in the tiredness of my bones
I can feel my body breaking
in the heaviness of my clothes

I can feel myself letting go
of what I used to dream
I can feel myself letting go
as the apathy rises around me

I can feel my mind shattering
as he tells me what he thinks
I can feel my mind shattering
as our friendship starts to sink

I can feel so much
but I still don't seem to care
I can feel so much
in the distance that is there

I can't let myself feel this way
in the long-range
I can't let myself feel this way
it's time to make some change

My heart sought a home, even when I was in one,
I moved here almost 9 years ago, I gave it my best,
To settle, to adapt, to overcome, to thrive even,
Instead I corroded, I mangled, I survived choiceless;

Through all your lush green and the rain,
I never found real comfort, just a respite,
I suppose I was stupid to expect it at all,
How does one find home in a war?

Nothing has changed, I don't expect it now,
I was just a city boy abandoned far away,
In an land, where I couldn't speak or relate to,
I'm supposed to belong here and I don't;

It's amazing how far I've placed my mind away,
I rarely live in that certain aspect of my existence,
I'm somewhere I don't belong and can't go back,
Where I used to belong no longer belongs to me;

I'm a nomad in a place I'll never understand,
I've grown accustomed to it's people and things,
The tailored familiarity often backfires into me,
I can't be in tune with them or them me,

I'm a child of the Earth, nameless and unbound,
Perhaps there is hope after all, I'm undefined,
Tried to fit in their boxes, gracefully broke all of it,
Maybe I don't fit in anywhere, the wildcard;

I do take great pride in that, it's a badge of quality,
The untamed among the tamed, blessed with chaos,
A mercurial maverick who desires rest and calm,
I'm only a person after all so I hope, I hope, I hope...

If it were mine-
I think of the past, time
Unpauses, and I'm brought back.
I'd never have;
Factors weigh too heavily, those
Strings that keep me attached.
Choose to come back.
Waters fall, the stream cascades
Flowing into itself
Over & over again

a celestial body
lesser of age but
brighter in composition
was found to be
unexpectedly disarming
in its distorted form
unable to maintain
its expected shape
it was drawn in by
the voracious needs
of the other's gravity
a starry beckoning
that caused these
entities to draw forth
towards one another
this sharing of energies
a merger however
seemingly not unlike
those observed before

and yet something
about this pairing
steals the attention
of the experts and
the admirers alike
this rotation of one
about the other
guarding devotedly
from perils unseen
in the midst of
this stellar pirouette
there continues a chaos
pulling from all directions
both together and apart
defiant and undeniable
fluctuating with unknowns
eventually to become

It’s only natural
When you cut out impurities that
A bit of you comes too

When you cut a splinter
From your palm
Using a pocket knife
You cut across the top
Of where you see the splinter’s shadow
And pick it
With the tip of the knife

Now
Ideally
That’ll pry the splinter loose
One shot
Maybe a bit of blood
No tears

But if it’s a stubborn ******
You could pick and pick
And pry up chunks of skin

The blood gets going
And the splinter digs in deeper
Just because you won’t let up
And it’s a whole ordeal

But you’re determined
Not to let it get the best of you