I lost my mother a long time ago.
But you see, she is still breathing.
Still here.
But is she alive?

Bottles of wine stack up,
one by one,
on top of broken promises.

Pills are disappearing
but we all know
where they go.

"You call yourself a poet? A writer?" You said to me,
last night after I told you
how I feel.

So the poems I left for you,
I took away.
The book I've been working on,
I took away.

You said it four times.
The first time, I didn't actually believe you did.
The second time, my eyes ran cold.
The third time, I walked out the door.

The forth time, I realized you weren't
my mother.

If you ever fall in love with a writer,
Your days will be musical
The nights will have their own song
Not anymore will you look at things as regular-
The trees will seem to give you more than just shade,
The sunlight will trickle down on your skin
Bouncing off the window pane
The wind will do a waltz through your hair
Your eyes will carry the universe in them
All the things will not be the same again.

If you ever fall in love with a writer
I don’t promise that it will be easy
For, writers can be insane sometimes
What good is love if you don’t jump off sanity?
They are forgettful. Terribly so.
They will not remember anniversaries
Or to buy tickets for your favourite show
But, they will never forget how you smell after a bath,
The colour of your eyes,
Thoughts of you will never escape their mind.

Writers can be clumsy,
They will trip over their own shabby scattered notes,
Spill the ink onto a fresh piece of poem
But, the way their fingers will trace stories on your bare skin,
And how they will carefully settle
The baby hair on your forehead before kissing,
Will seem to you as their finest work.

If you ever fall in love with a writer,
They will never tell you how much
They love you back until,
Your absence makes it hard for them to breathe,
Makes you more of necessity.
They will, then, hold your hand,
Close their eyes
And cry like they have already lost you;
The tears will spread over their face
Like delicate words on paper,
With each one rolling down their cheek
Their clutch of you will grow tighter.
It is when they open their eyes,
Look at you as a miracle in disguise,
That each part of their soul will sing
To you their love
And the million “I love yous” you wrote to them
Will not be enough.

If you ever fall in love with a writer,
Kiss them in the stormy rain,
Drive them to a distant place
They have never been to,
And watch carefully their expressions change,
Build them sand castles
And let the tides wash it away,
Don’t buy them flowers
On Valentine’s day.

For every blown out candle,
every Mazel Tov,
every turn of the tassel,
you gift-wrap what a writer dreads most: blank pages.
It’s never a notebook we need.
If we have a story to tell,
an idea carbonating past the brim of us,
we will write it on our arms, thighs, any bare meadow of skin.
In the absence of pens,
we will repeat our lines deliriously like the telephone number
of a parting stranger
until we become the craziest one on the subway.

If you really love a writer,
find a gravestone of someone who shares their name and take them to it.
When her door is plastered with an eviction notice, do not offer your home.
Say I Love You, then call her the wrong name.
If you really love a writer,
bury them in all your awful and watch as they scrawl their way out.

If you sincerely love a writer,
They will carry you inside them
Till you are all they remain,
Hold you like the glint in their eyes
If a writer falls in love with you,
You can never die.

caution:
please don’t tell me I’m beautiful
because when you leave I will let the tracks of my tears stain my face for so long they will bear holes in my cheeks
and I will sit in front of a mirror and draw on it with lipstick all the features you loved but I now loathe
please don’t tell me you get lost in my eyes
because then I will have to dig them slowly out of their sockets and throw them in the ocean so I don’t drown in them
don’t tell me you love kissing every inch of my body
for then I will have to place an X on every space until I am covered in marks and no one else may ever kiss me where your lips touched that X
please don’t hold me too tightly
for when you’re gone I might have to wrap tape around all my limbs to remember what it felt like to not fall apart
don’t cook for me
even if it’s my favourite: grilled cheese
because when you disappear so will my appetite and my palette
don’t tell me you love my new tattoo because instead of a heartbeat I’ll see your name next to my heart;
the sharp and blunt sound of it causing irregularity in my rhythm
don’t tell me you dream of me
because when you’ve left I will try and sleep forever so maybe I can find you on a school bus or an amusement park in my dreams;
you’ll become a monkey
- mon petit singe -
don’t send me pictures of your face in a content expression
because it is tattooed on my brain and when you choose to go it will be a slideshow of your face gliding its way in front of my eyes
I wish you wouldn’t tell me you want me
because as soon as you said that
I wrote letters with all my stories and sent them floating to you on the lake you go to every night
and I documented my face in all of its varying emotions to assure you that sometimes you may not “want me”
and I called you – long distance;
the space stretched over miles –
while you were watching planes land
and with every word I said I felt like I was nosediving on that plane
I’m stretching my arm so far I can feel my bone separating from my muscle,
expanding across the distance to touch yours
even if I only feel your fingertips
I want to graze them;
feel the spark,
because when we met that spark was dancing around us,
taunting us, breathing us in, zipping past our faces
and I thought you wouldn’t kiss me
I thought maybe your face wouldn’t mould against mine
and I was foolish to think that this was what I had dreamt of
but you asked to kiss me
and when you did the reverb made me lose all thoughts;
I was emancipated from thinking
-- from thinking --
but caution:
please beware,
if you place a thought into my mind it grows roots and sprouts and branches and the leaves drift to the base of my skull
and I am filled with them:
you coming to me
you staying with me
you holding me
the branches grow stronger,
critters stay in there from the past
the birds carry the old memories and sit dangling on the tree,
bearing them;
new and old,
beware my thoughts
caution: do not read
but although I place this disclaimer,
I want you to rake the leaves and climb the branches
and water the roots
and sit by the trunk
and read the book of my thoughts
to absorb all my information, acknowledgments and table of contents
don’t flip through:
read
but beware:
do not plagiarize them to say to another
and don’t copy them word for word
and please don’t highlight them
my leaves are falling around you
smell the bark
and breathe me in.

I'm not a great enough
or terrible enough person
to be a great writer,
and neither one
for lack of trying.

The days just
barely even
inhale
&
the stains begin
where the night
may
exhale.

I did always tend to shy
to the side of life hidden by shadows
guided by mossy, abandoned walls
stacking bricks of one untold story after another to guide this life I lead
and all my favorite people come here
the mad and insane, the villains and vixens
smoking jokes with the jokester
like you want to play a little game
adrenaline ****** riding through the twists and turn of your brain
past the sleeze and the tease that you tucked between your sheets
all the times you denied lust because love looks better dressed
for the rest of the guests in your life
down and around the time you tried to lie just to please
some made up story that made life sound a little easy
say cheese
on roller coasters they always did take ******* pictures
and you chose the perfect spot between what you want us to see
and what you've fooled us all into thinking that you've chosen to be

but what's printed in a picture
is but smoke of what's real
real smiles feelings laughter drift away
when our lips make way to fake a buffet of happiness
its just a rush of blood to your head
to project the ideal scene from your pupils
melt into this pixelated reality like hey it can be real
you just have to believe me
that all this scenery wasn't result of sketching my cutest dreams
but in my head, the cute is starting to get dim
as its drifting further away from this mischievous grin
the cheshire cat was always my best friend, magic
like sleight of hand in a grin, fading in and out and in
this reality can be intriguing, disbelieving, a never ending day dream
like every substance to touch my tongue dancing in my words
to paint the streets and trails under my feet
its the clearest sense of clarity, and indefinite reality of everything that your senses think is a tease
like risk stained lips
sentences laced in ******* of persuasion
bones that guide your latest fantasy to take to dancing
like your entire world lost to the madness of *******
RGB slinging and sleighing everything ticking around this clock
its a melting masterpiece, sinking into the core
but theres more, beating down the door, vibrating the floor
sending the ground to clouds to float on
I bet you never saw that the clouds were but the smoke of every worry we've let go
I always wrote tales laced in gold when it was an overcast flow
when the grass blurs to floating snow, its an oscar winning show
dancing on your chest, coughing out all of the mess
**** it, forget the rest

im always preaching of the same thing
because society has changed our reality to gasping screams
stretching the grasp of sanity to something that seems pleasing
but minds have lost their soul when ghouls take to slashing
the hopes and dreams from the pleas
leaving them to dress the headlines in other countries
like we have to do something if we tell all the people
in new york times san francisco,
we'll leave our impact in a chronicle to find home on a dusty shelf
with every other mistake that betrayed our trust
you see, i've read the books of our history and nothing is really a mystery
its the biggest scheme in the 21st century, hiding our undying hypocrisy
and I went mad in a rhyme because I frequently test time
because I couldn't find sublime in the latest headlines but with each passing day, my reservoir is failing to drought as all these thoughts are racing out

If I could always feel the wind on my eyelids; feel moved like the leaves; sadness would be a distant memory, never reality.

I am not the leaves, she thought, I am not a leaf. The wind stopped, refusing to be her distraction.

I am a series of pieces learning to be whole; human.

'These feelings always throw me off -- you never cared' she howled to a God she didn't trust.

Ah, but the feelings are meant for people and pieces have a way of fighting just right, given time. I love you now, always have, always will the wind whispered.

She cried.

A collection of pieces, free to do as they please, residing in this one life together, not alone, but lonely.

The tears fell.

grinding gears lubed with tears, conks of fears
watching our lives in third person
cause one, I took the train
and second couldn't find his shoes so he never left the house
removed and removed
washing liquid down to feel something new
like maybe just a few more stabs of caffeine and my eyes will open
press the shutter release for just a few more shots
cause what the **** are we going to do
every step is emulsion on this best selling picture
throw the negatives in the drawers, junk
like if its not seen it doesn't mean nothing
like the junkies sinking into the street
waging wars with humanity and street signs
signs hanging when our streets change from alphabets
to bets with god for the latest meal
its a modern day last supper
like sup girl whispers through the table
drown the woes of dinner conversation in the chances to kiss her
because sense only reaches as far as our toes
walk with confidence, but our brains have lost it
what you see is what you get
put your best foot next, one in front of the other
trained at birth to fool our limbs
to contort to our latest whim
washed out like our denim washes
**** him

I  write because I want to shout

And yet I cannot speak

I want to tell some things in me

But I feel I am weak



I write because I want to open

To make all things so clear

I do not know if one will find

The same sounds that I hear



I write because I want to share

The gift that now I keep

To some it maybe ordinary

But  to others it  could be steep



I want to write, I want to shout

I want to open and share

I want to reveal, I want to help

To show that I love and care…