When we're sitting in the theater,
watching the movie of the day.
All I want is to take her gentle hand,
and lead her far away.
Far away to where the reasons,
she said we could never be,
give way to the connection,
between her and me.

But I can't.

I can't because she said so;
she said it will never work.
She doomed it from the beginning,
because of all the irk.
All the irk that might happen,
if the "inevitable" does occur.
She wouldn't believe what I tell my friends,
when they ask me about her.

What she doesn't realize about me and her
is that things will never go cold.
But for now I'll just sit back, relax,
and watch our film unroll.

Dear Sledgehammer Heart,

You are tough as nails,
        and you are also soft as silk.

You are wildflowers
         blossoming in the spring,
         and again in the summer.

You bloom more for yourself,
                                                     than for anyone else.

You are both student and teacher
           with fistfuls of love,
    clenched for those that hurt.

You taught me
         the importance of a good porch:
The Foundation Must Be Solid.
                              A Home can be built anywhere,
as long as the Foundation is Solid.

You taught me to announce myself,
and to be proud of the songs that come out.
                                       (Even when the sounds are sharp,
                     they must be set free somehow, right?)
      
And you taught me
         how to handle a heart
as delicate as mine
     pretends not to be,
                      with soft hands and gentle love

Stones smoothed into little pebbles
at the bottom of a river.

     I can only hope I have learned
               to hold your heart
with the skill and grace of bird wings
And to lift you
                           higher
                                        as you do me.
It is the only way I can think to return
the lightness
                       you gift by existing.

Please remember,
                                My Sledgehammer Man,
             you must simply exist
and the universe is lighter
                 for it.

lies wet on my lips
eyes set to the sky
ears keen to the sound
of your reluctant goodbye

the gods hold my silence,
as aphrodite sews my lips shut,
all the while your fading silhouette
becomes just a bit too much

for years i'll long for your touch,
but i'll forever wear this hue
of a red so strong
it brings back visions of you

am I even supposed to be in love you? your thick horn-rimmed frames and curly hair never cease to leave my brain and remains engrained in my thoughts from when I first wake up, to bus rides on my way to school, coffee in the foggy afternoons, and when I lie awake at night staring at the artificial stars spread out on my ceiling. I miss you so much and I am not sure why we had never spoken before you moved but maybe it was fate that led me to finding you through the internet and let us become lovers in such a modern age. it’s easier now with our computers and iPhones yet I know that we both still crave romantic letters in swirly handwriting or ten paged typewritten letters from across the country in the back seat of a bright mustard, gypsy caravan with a peace sign engraved onto the license plate. I wish you could just easily come back instead of having to wait for opportunities to visit during school breaks, since we are constantly in town when the other is not. do you still write passages about your childhood memories and about “love” because they were equally as beautiful if not equally true. what are you thinking about when you are passing through the golden gate bridge as the window is halfway open and a vampire weekend song echoes through the car, mixing in with the sounds of the sea? do you still hold your breath in the old rainbow tunnel we used to make wishes in? or do you not even bother to try. I hope we can make things work since this love is anything but unrequited, and I am craving your freckles more than anything in the world. no, maybe even more than anything in the universe. I am going nowhere soon so come back whenever you would like before time runs out and we head our separate ways. please, for your name is starting to appear in my notebook too many times and I am madly in love with the idea of being with you, even if for only one day.

I love your hands. I know it's a strange thing to say, but I really do. You were leaning back, drumming your fingers on the stage and I caught myself thinking how perfectly made they were, how every line was so important, so lovely and smooth. Long fingers, and surprisingly graceful in their movements, at odds with the rest of you at times. They are hands I could picture cupping clear water from a pure stream, holding that kind of liquid light in a very natural way. I could picture them parting velvety soil to coax young green sprouts from it, lines and creases made more bold by the clinging love the earth would show you. I could picture them, too, gliding along piano keys, although I know you don't play. I think you could. I think those keys would love your fingertips. They'd sing for you. In the safety of my mind, I sometimes long to hold them, turn them over and learn the valleys of your palms like braille, follow the paths the years have carved in them. Not in a covetous way, but in a soft, gentle way. Those are the thoughts that make me blush, that make me keep my distance.

Sometimes, I wish I had cameras in my eyes so we could look back on these moments and hold them and you could see how you made them golden.
Someone in the future could put my life on the screen,
cut scenes when I go to sleep, special behind-the-scenes of us making these memories
and I could just delete the ones I didn't want to keep.
I would never lose a second.
If my life was a piece of cinematic genius then I might try harder to keep this up:
I'd adjust my angles,
I'd check my volume,
I'd have the perfect songs to sing along to and everyone would buy the soundtrack CD,
if they were
just like me.

But you aren't.
See, I had a better opening verse but when my mind is made up of rhythm and rhyme, everything that isn't written down gets driven away in a ******* metaphorical hearse, the kind that you aren't allowed to ride in yet.
Your job isn't finished until mine is,
car crash collisions, underwater violence, silence, broken heart strings strung on a violin and a bass drum keeping us up to speed. See?
I'm a mash up of bad one-line poems and I'm not slowing down, not for anybody.
I've seen angels with broken halos and featherless wings, trying
so hard to fly but they're as successful as that extinct little kiwi,
who all died trying to fly but, hey, at least they went down swinging because we're
all
slaves
to gravity.
So these angels find spaces in their minds to curl up and sleep.
You've got your body on autopilot and don't you find it exhausting, to just stop trying?

Let's get back to the movie.
By then, we'll be living to infinity, like, for real, not just a symbol on the skin but a time to live.
Immortality.
So watching me breathe will be nothing in the wasteland of time that they will have to waste--
not currently, no, because currently our lives seem so short especially with empty promises of infinities and galaxies and light years away on another inhabited planet a kid like me is saying the exact same things because
there's no more originality,
not in this space,
not in the void of immortality.
And in My Life As A Movie, they'll see me:
standing in the street with you, holding hands and praising bands and feeling alive again,
because now we're aware--
of the angles,
of the volume,
of the sets and costumes,
of the film and the video rules
that I learned in high school.
Now that we know it's all a big production, we'll ruin the show.
Our voices will be whispers or shouts and the microphones will be too scratchy to catch what we're saying.
Our feet will fly like the angels once could, ruining any chance of an easy shoot.
My memories of you
are golden,
and I'd sell my mortality just to keep a good hold on them but I can't.
I don't want to.
Infinities are found throughout our galaxy,
but my only real infinity is you.
You, like a scratched DVD that sometimes slips off the screen because
we have our rough times, too.

I sometimes find myself wishing I had cameras in my eyes,
but then I think I'd rather be blind
so no one else sees you like I do.

The world isn't ready for that yet.

This numbness and this pain
It eats me away
She said it was just a platonic game
My heart aches and bleeds
Just like my whole world
Can’t you see that I’m freaking hurt
No matter what I say or do
You won’t love me like I love you

Tender curiosity
ignited something I never anticipated.

Your mind is a mass of knotted rope that I want to untangle with my tongue while our bodies are pressed against each other,
Yet I crave to hold you and know you in the most innocent of ways.

No, I will never be in love with you,
And dear Lord! I hope you never fall in love with me,
but I long to understand you in a way that no one ever has,
and reassure you that your trust goes unbroken.

Follow me tonight,
to the corner where lust and purity meet.

Strong and silent friend,
I have always seen such beauty in you.
Please, never forget that I am on your side.