What good is an olive branch
if used to start a flame?

What good is a dove
if its an enemy plane?

What good are hellos
when taken as goodbyes?

He lingered on in the cold,
her voice to his ear;
saving him
from the frostbite of a lonely earth.

All on her own,
all on that phone,
he heard her soft and
held out to reach her
against the bitter cough
of nature’s cold.

His heart his mind it
beats of it,
thinks of it;
them.
And therefore it,
because of it;

he speaks to sleep then.

I liked not knowing what to do
and doing it anyway,
without practice, with abandon;
imperfect kissing. Undeserved certainty
laughing out between sharp brace wires.

Did I cut you when I pretended,
for a second, that we were almost,
almost, uninnocent; naked
when I grabbed your leg, then
all of you. Again. Then
again. Then
again.

And then somewhere in that mess of hair,
you breathed
and I thought it was for the first-time
because
that thought made me feel nice,

just like you did.
Again.

Believe me when I say that I will float
with you
to eternity and beyond.

But life is finite,
and so are we.

I would
I wish
I could
I must

I cannot.

Though, if not,
may I have only
this last glance?

Glimpses into dual starlight, twinkling
milky effervescence with
rings

Of infinite, sonorous brown, towards
deep black holes which
cling,
        
To these imagined night skies,
          I utter my utter soft words
The sun in my closed eyes,
          I dream a dream of stars and hurt


Your skies have met my eyes.

There was a time when your lips were painted
bright red-

but this was not when you had painted
me goodbye in the car-park, and somehow
left me grey,

as your little red Volkswagen
rolled softly away.

Just as how a little stick-man could not perceive the pencil that drew him
I could have never seen God and didn't see him when he had molded me
from His depths of clay, profound as a rock- that is to say still, solid,
silent, cold, old, disquieting... All fancy words for 'not much.'

Here's the point: there isn't any, but
just as how this little stick-man cannot perceive this pencil that draws him
closer and closer to the last panel of his, this, comic or graphic novel:
beings of smaller dimensions know nothing
of those so much higher, smarter, and more poetic than themselves.

Does this have to do with why you disappeared onto an airplane
like a bird searching for her freedom...?
Am I, in this mess of metaphors, your little stick-man who couldn't
get out of his paper sheet and fly with you...?
Of course, in existing on a dried white flap, I could not, cannot, fold
my own two dimensions of existence into even one crumpled paper plane;
so I could not, cannot, follow you through your freeing air
and ask you, or beg you, to answer my silly questions...

Because I have both length and width, but no depth;
no depths of clay.

Though I figure the answers to these questions are the same.
The truth is that, in this mess of metaphors,
neither of us got to pick what we didn't want to be, bird or stick-man.
In reality we had only one choice: to hold hands when we could.
So we did.

And when we did- everything became dimensionless;
and Everything made sense because Nothing did.
Because the value of the distance between our hands
meant that Nothing was our Everything.
And from that dense Nothing our Universe was born-
Bang. Thus tiny strings of new Everything rippled throughout old Nothing...
making Everything matter, almost literally.
We then made our stars, our galaxies, our planets; our classrooms,
lockers, and lovers: each other. All of this brilliant Creation until
we only had one last choice: to hold hands when we could...
...so we did...

... again and again,
in the distant dreams of a troubled theorist
who chains together pages and birds of poetry,
looking to find you, again and again,
in the mess of metaphors
of our Universe,

and I did.

                    Almost.

Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference.


Already absent,
my heart already fonder
for memories we hadn't been able to make yet.
Time is slow. You can sleep, then wake up.
Because of that: I haven't even bat an eyelid yet.

Unblinking in these unholy stretches
of distant poetry where I am God, I  
watch our oblivious universe. Make something of it.
Fashion us a happy ending, if you will.

But you're there, and
I'm here.
So...


                               ...would you mind

                               if we talked

                               about infinity...

                                                               ...tonight?


Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
so tonight is meaningless to you.
You see the sun, I see the stars.
But who can say
one of us is more blind than the other?

Who is to say what is wrong
and what is right,
when we live in a world
where I, Romeo
and you, Juliet
can commit suicide
when it's both day and night?

Such things are preposterous...
even more so than I pretending to be God
with my pen of hormones and heartbreak...
Who am I to think that I could  possibly... make something of it.
Or fashion us a happy ending, if you please.

I am mere, and powerless before the rotations of the Earth
just as I am powerless to my impulse
to click the refresh button
over any one of your profiles,
thinking it's somehow better to read 'About Me,'
then to ask about you.


Refresh.


Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
and neither Romeo or Juliet are dead.
Though they never lived as nothing more than characters;
we are people. You and I are not tragic concepts;
we are merely circumstance to
an arbitrary mixture of romance films, evolutionary biology-
all subject to the Earth's curvature, the Sun's shadows,
and the mocking Moon's stolen light. Simultaneous.

But because I am self-aware
I can be the **** of my own jokes
rather than the ****-end
of God's lonely, bored cigarette...

...It always has to end with
depressing existentialist philosophy,
doesn't it? More reflections or rejections
of purpose or meaning
of heaven and hope
or whatever will close the golden gates
of happiness to me. It just always
has to end that way, even though I'm not a French writer...

... I could still romance you with my words
and hold you as comfortably as I could my favourite book.
Not too tight. Not too loose. Lightly, effortlessly-
that's how it felt
to kiss you Goodbye
and all of that jazz.

And now after all that, the blues.


Refresh.

I have never written a single poem
that my lovers could understand.

In truth, all my romantic verse is simple,
self-congratulatory applause

for not falling victim
to the virus of sentiment.


I am a gifted liar.

Gatsby's green light was orgastic, unreachable,
distant.
              Mine is a little dot on my chat screen,
also green;

your being in some corner of reality
that, perhaps, is also

                                   looking for stories,
  looking for me.