I wanna look as different as I can
Than the girl you fell in love with.
The "girl next door,"
With the frizzy brown curls
And wide eyes -
I don't want to be her anymore.

I want to dye my hair dark green,
And get the kind of nose piercing
You said you didn't like.
I want to get a beautiful tattoo sleeve,
Or
An old bald guy smoking a cigar,
Tattooed somewhere on my stomach.
I want to get some boots and overalls,
And maybe start smoking.
Hell, I wanna get my **** pierced,
As scary as that sounds.

I want to have scars
That are visible.
I want to wear mascara that runs.
On the weekends, I wanna get hammered
And bring someone home...
Even though it'll make me feel empty.
I'd like to quit my fitness center job,
And make 20 bucks or so a night
Doing drag king gigs.
I want to ruin my family's opinion of me
By coming out.

I don't care if
I'm seen as wild.
All I want is distance,
Pushing the life I used to love
To the other side of the globe.
I want to get lost if I go looking for it,
Unsure of which wind will take me there.
I need to launch it so far into the void
That it stops existing.

I've got to get away from
The life I used to love with you.
Otherwise,
I'll be drowning in my sorrow forever.

He wants her
      to smile.

He wants her
      to be calm.

He wants her
      to be happy.

He wants her
      to enjoy life.

And he wants her,
      and only her.

He wants her
      to be his wife,

But the two can't
      go together,

And he needs her
      to be fine.

The opposite of end-stopped
Poetry; the trick with enjambment
Is to never complete a sentence, phrase, or thought
Within a single line of verse; but instead allow
The syntactic unit to run on
Unexpectedly, like a distracted self-drive tourist
Attempting to navigate a multi-lane freeway
Without indicating

Barnaby hands me my daily
  cup of coffee, but this time, it's night
  time, and the coffee reminds me of the war
  but not the allies annihilating the Germans or Japanese
  but the war between me and him every time
  he confesses his love to me, the words pierce
  through my heart
  I will never love him as much as he loves
                                        me, I'm disgusting
  like the taste of the coffee
                                        just beans in water.

Dis ease
It seeps beyond your body
Into our shared lives
Makingsimplethingsdifficult

We are in a  
L          o          n          g                g          ­o          o          d          b          y         e
Embrace
I want to hold you,           push you away

Arguments
Your tongue liquid in your mouth
You convinced you said mortgage
Me convinced you said month

Communication
Copulation
Caring
Down
The
Commode

We are in a  
L          o          n          g               g          o          o          d          b          y         ­ e
Embrace
I want to take your disease, dis ease, and swallow it

It
Eats
You

Instead

you straddled
my mind with
the way you
drew a narrow
line between
what i knew
about you and
what i have
come to find
but you raddled
my body with
addle-brained
designs, never
once drawing
one of a benign
kind.

© Matthew Harlovic

I keep the tears in my head just for the night.
It's past the hour to be sad and I might
Feel the urge to set them free another day.
So I seal them tight, quite tightly away,
Until the time returns again for salt
To run and burn my cheeks because
This bucket of mine has a lot of leaks.

I can't seem to patch them up well
Enough to hold the product of those sixty minutes,
So the bucket swells and overflows its lip.
It's why my thoughts tend to slip, I think,
The days too long for just one hour,
That time spills and becomes a scattered shower
Full of my ills and my unpleasant days.

Can't you see how
it's a long way
down
from the haunt of the
stars stop shining
when you shut your eyes.

I sometimes
break my lines
blur between happiness
and being awake I
can barely feel anything
when you speak.

It's not quietude, nor
speechlessness it's
the way my mind grows
into a cancer of memories-
how one potentially harmful
dies everyday like clock-
work can't make time
stop the way you
do.

I break between
my lines some-
time pours into your eyes.

We can speak in fine tongues
and drink wine older than our hours
but when it comes to you I
let my tongue tie
itself in a knot.

I tend to
break into my lines
which is why you could never
know that after I said I love
you never came.

My father is a lion with his mane cut
                               and slicked back, learning to walk
                   on hind legs, back arched high.

                                          ~

             ­         My mother has a wolf in her chest
             howling for light, for the
                                          lantern hanging in the sky.

                                          ~

                   ­                            My brother has a cage
                                                            ­        for ribs
                                                        but so do I.

                                          ~

I am a wild safari:
             a bathing elephant, a sleeping
                                               tiger, a brilliant peacock fanning its
                                  feathers, waiting to
     **** its head and release
          a warrior cry.