She left traces of herself
in the air.
The oil she dabbed on her wrists
smelt of wind through trees.

And sometimes when I inhale,
I can breathe her back in
until I can’t hold it anymore
and let her go.

New Years fell
like an alarm clock on my head
Sparkling champagne clinked
I swallowed down the ennui

Some drunkard stumbles
on cobblestone preaching the
apocalypse I ask him for a light  
he scolds my disinterest

At midnight lovers kiss like
its some sort of last minute promise
I toast to what I know as fate
and dawn rises just the same

Some kids lit fireworks on the beach
the noise crackled against the houses
sitting quietly on the dune.

The white flashes looked like stars
that burnt out too early,
sorta like you and me

“There’s a museum of *** around the corner”
“A what?”
“A museum of ***.”

A lady hums a melody on the bus to Queens, I lean in and listen to her quietly, but don’t say a word.

Crowds choke avenues as protestors call out the police. The police surround them. The irony of being protected by the same force that destroys is not lost.

Rain puddles on the black cement, I notice how soft the yellow water is in contrast with the harsh taxis.

A stray glove sits lonely on the subway stairs, useless without its other half.

“This entire factory used to be covered in graffiti, the city keeps painting over the art”

A snotty waiter recommends watery wine that costs an arm and a leg, he snorts when I don’t tip.

At a flea market a lady assures me this moonstone will “cleanse me,” I lost it rushing off to midtown.

The lights twinkle like flecks of gold against black stone and I realize night is never night here.

My guy tells me he doesn’t like me in the city, I tell him I’ve never liked myself anyways.

You can't give love
only to take it back
but I swallow words
like pills these days

and the side affects
have no warning label
and overdosing is
too often fatal

Rather than grow up
she grew into herself
finding more alleyways
of her imagination to follow
and more tangled thoughts
to comb through.

It was too hot the first day we fought
roasting in a cramped parking lot
“record heat since 1909” they said
those who were smart had already fled

Rain hit the windshield
as if God himself, asked you to appeal
We made love with the windows cracked
love is many things, but mostly abstract

So I held on for as long as I could
not caring if it was just or good
heat can drive a man to do much worse
and love is just a misunderstood curse

A blind man asked me
what i was looking for
sobbing on the kitchen floor
I blinked and saw oblivion

A deaf man played
the sweetest music I’ve heard
the notes feathered and frayed
it was more than I could ask for

A mute woman spoke
of a black sort of peace
that’s louder than words
and softer than fleece

Men have feared much greater things
of colossal serpents with devils wings
but I only fear the greater good
and if you only knew, you would

I found you between touches on screens
through swiping on pocket machines
and I met you in the long shadow of sunset
you smoked a cigar and I a cigarette

We put the stars in our eyes
and found ufos and Russian spies
and gave ourselves to the not knowing
but knowing this wanting to keep going

So at one am we kissed at Chevron
with a smirking cashier looking on
and I did so without a second thought
because, honestly, how could I not?

I fell in love with you
the same way I fell out:
slowly and then all at once

I promise to stop loving you tomorrow
but for tonight let me put my head
on your shoulder

I promise to forget you tomorrow
but for tonight we can get high on
the velvet porch

I promise to stop loving you tomorrow
but tonight let’s pretend
it isn’t tomorrow

First, find yourself being told: “constructive criticism can only help your writing.” Climb on top of the table and scream at the top of your lungs, this will help release some stress and usually insight fear in those who dare to criticize your masterpiece. Sit back down and nod knowingly. If the critic chooses to continue, assume a defensive position such as standing on all fours with your back arced as if to pounce.
Instead of listening to the incessant ramblings of the critic, opt for singing the lyrics to “Dude looks like a lady” in your head while staring at his overly feminine features. Note to yourself that you will write a story about a man who is ridiculously critical as a means to compensate for his lack of masculinity. Smile to yourself. When he asks why you are smiling just say, “Oh, your advice is just soooooo enlightening” and then give a little giggle. Leave the workshop immediately and locate the nearest Starbucks. Buy one latte, nonfat of course, and sit in the corner hoping someone will ask you if you are a writer. No one will. Pout.
You walk to the bar to meet your friend because you are too broke to take a cab. Ignore every word she says; she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. So what she went to Yale and is a well paid, anorexic tax attorney? That’s boring. You are a writer. You’re a poet.  It’s a misunderstood art form. When Shelby suggests you try to get a job in journalism, laugh in her face. Take a cookie and savor it in front of her. Maintain eye contact. Note to yourself to write a story about a woman with a Yale degree that gets so bored filing taxes she dies.
When your father starts to say, “I just can’t pay for you to ***** around in NYC anymore.” Compare him to Osama Bin Laden in hopes of getting the point across that he is about to annihilate your dreams and, probably, the dreams of thousands of girls who have yet to read your unpublished masterpieces. When he says you are being ridiculous, tell him you wish you were adopted.

She wore forget-me-nots
in her hair, but every morning
they only called her darling.

They say, "good things come if you wait."
I've fallen in love six, seven, eight,
but somehow I find you worth holding the door for
God laughs at my girlish delusions
love is a trap door.

We stared out the back window at the painted lines making patterns on the highway. I got lost in the flickering of a broken headlight barreling towards us, but you only focused on the red brake lights of the cars that passed us by. We never turned around because we were too afraid of what might be right in front of us, so holding hands we stared out the back window, and watched the industrial river flow away from us.

Won’t you slip into
the drapes of my collarbone
and nestle kissing my throat.
I’ll breathe a quiet moan
you’ll unbutton my cotton coat.

Close me inside the walls
that are dusty from lack of use
locked from adolescent abuse,
and dimmed inside we’ll retreat
to kiss where our eyes don’t meet.

She stopped eating until she was nothing but right angles and sharp edges. It was if she couldn’t understand the math of the world she lived in, so she sought the neat geometry of the curve of her hollowed hips, the bend of her wishbone elbow, and the measurements of her rag doll ankles.

Let's fire up that last joint 
in hopes of getting higher 
Boy, I hope you see the point 
the beauty in the fire 

Cigarettes and coke 
I think my mama thinks I'm broke 
I’m a juiced up ****** know it all
and I’ve never met a glass too tall

Afternoons on balconies 
Where the sun don't meet the streets 
It's me all all my phonies 
Just hitting sound repeats

Lately poetry has been
scraped off my consciousness
and smeared across the page
like a three year old
playing with watercolors
forcing shades together
that were never meant to be blended
in hopes of seeing some pattern
or understanding
in the blind expression

pink roses
dragged themselves
from the linoleum floors
to die plastered against
the black cement of the driveway

You passed me a white lighter
and said, "here's to bad luck"

I thought,
“her nail polish is chipping”
that one I bought her
when we got lost in rite aid
and she stole a bottle of wine
and offered me my first line
in the back of Robby’s Volvo.
Her nail polish is chipping
and she’s digging the polish into my chest
I hear her breathing moisten
and I close my eyes to her light
as if it hurts to look at her straight.
No one has ever accused me
of being a man
so I sit back and let her lips
make me feel like one.

Squiggee the doubt
stuck against my glass soul
like the insects on road trip windshields
at a gas station in Oklahoma

Smooth your iron hands
over my wrinkled thoughts
hang me up to dry
on telephone wires

Seep me in your tea pots
add sugar to my bitterness
let your tongue undo the knots
I tied like cherry stems

Catch me
like rain in the desert
cup me in your fleshy palms
and pour me down your throat
so I can cool your fireplace chest

Let me in
past the threshold of skin on skin
and I’ll hold the boy underneath
without the brushes of careful words
I’ll listen to your muted chords

We got so caught up in antics
We forgot time for romantics
So caught up in tomorrow's jig
We forgot how the stars got so big.

So why don't we burn away the stress
and re-teach our hearts to fluoresce
With the friction of a constant embrace
I'll inhale your exhale, we can survive in space

I take glances
away from my existence
by pulling back to a distance
I can see the whole picture,
so I can touch the texture
of waxy goodbye petals
that rotted on my counter,
or melt the cool metal
of your tepid indifference
to me taking off to the city.

Your made up mind
about leaving any trace of us behind
because even if the stars aligned
for us to be together
you’d just feel confined
by me, wouldn’t you?

Mama once told me
if he loves you, he’ll wait
I know she was talking about ***
and I know we’re past ***
but isn’t this suppose to last?
Or are we as fated as a soggy cigarette
that has just another puff left
before it’s smothered against concrete
and left to itself in the street

Tomorrow, the phrase
“I love you”
will belong to yesterday’s lips
my feelings for you
will belong to yesterday’s words.
Soon I won’t remember the chords
of your madness
or the taste of your sadness
sitting on my tongue like chocolate mints.
So in these last few weeks
we pull at the strings to rip
at the seams of us with ****** fingertips
cause in a slice of time
your name won’t belong in my rhyme.
You’ll be another past lover
that lives at the bottom of a shoebox
shuffled together with the love letters
of other men who swore themselves to me.
When my daughter fingers through
the pages dedicated to your eyes
I’ll softly remember you
throwing rocks at crooked pottery
from ceramics class. I’ll remember
that dark December and
your flimsy reflection through tinted glass.
I’ll remember what it felt
to be young, naïve,
and madly in love.

I want to crack your ribs open
to see if your lungs
are scorched black
from dented memories
you don’t understand quite yet,
from misinterpretating documentaries
and mellow cigarettes.

Moloch and I made a fort last winter
with fallen branches and broken splinters.
It started to rain and he cried
said, “this is what it’s like on the other side.”

The sky shattered and the pieces
fell to Earth. The empty spaces
poked holes into the ground.
He was weeping, but there was no sound.

Fallen angels in notorious graces
rose from the mist to kiss our faces
lightly they tugged us by the wrists
towards empty spaces and grey mists.

He followed them, he floated down
wore roses and thorns fashioned in a crown
I watched him die and started weeping
my mother found me alone in the forest sleeping.

Wake up to me wrapped
around you like wool.
Keep me trapped
in the gravity of your pull.

I want you to want me
like the waves long for shore.
I need you to need me
down to the lava of your core

There's a distance
in the closeness of our embrace.
When you lean in to kiss me
all I feel is the space.

I want to want you
like the waves long for shore.
I need to still need you
down to the lava of my core.

I.
Today I read I poem
I write next year
about how love gave way to fear,
how goodbye still replayed in my ear.

II.
You called last night
to ask me over.
I warmed in spite of myself
and, by dawn, became your untimely lover.

I clattered into the room still reeking of cologne and tonic when he caught me. He rolled his head back and yawned, identifying me as the menace of his perfect Sunday morning. He was sprawled across the bed and had probably waited there all night for my belated arrival. In daylight, his eyes were almost human, a shade of blue usually reserved for smoothed sea-glass or a Montana sky, but I remember there was something particularly startling about the way he looked at me that morning: as if he had stood witness to my actions and disapproved. I shook off the feeling; what use is judgment to an animal? I closed the curtains and pulled him close to me, “I’m glad you have no voice to tell my secrets.” His tail twitched.

Old pub
Out in the suburb
Broken men
talk about way back then

Cigarette stained fingers
amber residue lingers
a record scratches
about way back when

I’m swaying
decaying
As night pools on
dawn

My lover grips my hips
Calloused fingertips
I lean in closer
“I just need some closure”

Tick tick
I hear your teeth click
time's going
and gone too soon

Ballerina tip
embittered lip
Degenerating mentality
rippling morality

Love tipping
fraying and ripping
asking quietly,
"did you Ever love me?"

Like me in the morning
Holdin’ on to the phone
while the message’s recording  
Just so I don’t feel so alone

It’s you silent and fuming
about a fight I lost last week
Late night questioning, assuming
nothing I want to say I can speak

I want more of you
but I tell you I need to be apart.
I hold you to another view
but never let you see the art.

So I’m drunk on a Sunday night
in a shroud of darkness, color hidden
Trying not to start another fight
Sometimes I wish we didn’t

But I wake up in bed
to that freckle on your lip
and rise like a doughy bread
only to fall back into love’s trip

The smell of forest lives in the tangles
of her hair. She smells of thrift store candles.
I can taste strawberry jam on her lips
her low rise jeans hang too loose on her hips

She wraps herself around my existence
and sways me back and forth in dance
Counting the freckles on each of her fingers
she leaves her lips on mine and lingers

She smells of a burnt sun
Her skin’s golden when her shirt’s undone
When she sleeps I listen to her heart
and silently remember, she’s just a piece of art

Mix hormones, sprouting hair, and teenage angst  in melting ***

Add 2 cups of Varsity Sports

Blend in at least 3 leadership positions

Sprinkle AP & Honors classes liberally

Acquire obscure talent such as playing a Theremin

Add long-term anxiety disease

Brag constantly about how you helped Jakito, a small African child, on a mission trip

Drain all traces of possible love connection

Substitute sleep for academia

Bring stress to boil

Add spoonful of “legacy”

Separately mix “White Guilt” with a cup of diversity (Native American if available)

Marinate in SAT classes

Spread 2300mg of SAT on top

Shake Well

Ice decoratively with essays about Jakito

Most batches must be rejected

I was standing in the airport this morning
and thinking of our first kiss,
When I realized I should write you this letter.
I’ve bought a ticket to somewhere far away
a place I know you won’t follow me,
where no one knows my name.

It’s best if you forgot my name
since by next Tuesday morning
you won’t know where to find me.
You’ll know it’s gone, that kiss
and that I’m even father away.
That’s why I’m writing you this letter.

I imagine you’ll burn the crinkled letter
and curse that you ever asked my name
curse my blush when you asked to go out with me.
How you woke up at dawn that morning
How you brushed chocolate off my lips with a kiss
You’d curse you ever fell in love with me

When you escaped to San Francisco with me
you saw all my writing, the poetry, the letters.
You read a poem about dove’s kissing
and you said you loved me by name.
When we woke up in a hotel that first morning
The world couldn’t have felt farther away

But I had plans to fly away
My future wouldn’t make room for you and me
I couldn’t always wake up to you in the morning
I knew one day I’d have to write this letter
That one day I would try and fail to forget your name
That I’d always feel the pressure of that kiss

God, if I could go back to that first kiss
I would push you away
I would tell you to forget my name
To forget everything you would love about me
So I’d never have to send this letter
and wake up so  a l o n e  in the morning

Kiss the memory of me
away and touch the flame to the letter
Sincerely, a nameless girl you loved yesterday morning

Caterpillar afternoon,
mom and daddy are home soon.
I stretch out on unkempt grass
a cat counts its claws,
I count clouds through blue glass.

A hairy man looks over my fence,
I feel my stomach tense.
A crooked finger says, “come here”
the ground grips me like a vice
Muscles ice with fear

I run towards the screen door
stumbling on a muddy marble floor.
A screen, lock between me and the lawn,
I peak through a curtained window,
and he’s gone.

I noticed the shadows
Your eyelashes display.
Your spine the string of a piano
Wound too tight to play

I noticed the words
You never let spill
I could hear the chords
Before you froze them still

I noticed when I yelled
You loved me less
In the distance bells knelled
You watched me undress

I sing along to the radio
tapping at the gas pedal,
as you finger-paint murals
on the foggy windows.

There’s nothing I’d rather do
Than watch TV with you on my lap
Sleeping the afternoon through
As the raindrops continually tap-tap

There’s nothing I’d rather kiss
Than that hollow of your throat
When your breathings gone amiss
Cuddling under a cashmere coat

There’s nowhere I’d rather be
Than sitting on the roof at midnight
With you and a cup of pepper tea
Carefully tracing dawn’s first light

There’s no other I’d rather
Than you right now, right here
Even when we lose hold of together
I’ll love you long after We disappear

Coffee shop discussions
Your faith warms my heart
Theology of love and reprucussions
I’ve always felt spiritually apart

Yet you sew me back together
With the patterns of your theology
Smoothing flaws in my skin of leather
I drink up your faith in ideology

And even if I can’t believe in Him
I believe that love like that exists
The kind that bubbles over the brim
A constant stream that forever persists

I suppose we’ll get drunk
Maybe that’ll drag me out of this funk
Of television screens and cheap food
An oh, so unforgiving mood

Fretting about the smallest things
Of raw chicken & bankrupt kings
Avoiding sentimental ties
I’ll settle with the unkempt lies

Can I be close to you?
Hold you the whole night through?
When the day is engulfing night,
can we strangle a ray of light?

In the morning when I wake,
there will be nothing more of me to take.
Will you still want me then?
To rediscover where you have already been?

Can I still be close to you?
When you’ve had what you pursue?
Is there a piece of me, some fragmented part,
you can love with a sightless heart?

I lit a cigarette
& saw the end in the flame
I haven't told you yet
But it's probably all the same

So I smoked 'till dawn
& thought about pearly gates
Nothing left to dwell on
I need a touch of grace

I lit a cigarette
& I saw how I'd die
I haven't told you yet
But I'm no good with "goodbye"

She leaned in so close I could smell a trace of that fancy tea she sips every morning, and she whispered “What does falling in love feel like?”
I laughed,
“Have you ever spun around and around so fast you lose track of e v e r y t h i n g if only for a moment? Arms outstretched. Laughing. For those precious moments nothing else in the world matters; you take flight. You think, “maybe I don’t ever have to fall.” But of course you do fall, helplessly, to the ground and just lie there as the world spins around you. That’s what falling in love feels like.

I feel your lips
Pressing against mine
You running fingertips
Along the contours of my spine

I see the shape
Of your calloused palm
Sprinkled freckles across your nape
The shiver behind your calm

Your scent lingers
In the tangles of my hair
You ensnaring your fingers
Robbing me of air

I hear the rumble
In your haunted chest
Of the nightmares in your slumber
That keep you from rest

But I can’t understand you
& the depth of your sadness
I wonder if I’ll ever know
The taste of your madness

At a funky record store
We found on a corner
I sat down on the floor
& chatted up some foreigner

At dark
With cigarettes and warm beer
We stumbled to Alamo Park
& watched the lights disappear

At dawn
I woke up wrapped around you
You kissed me and yawned
& then it hit me, and I knew

Can I lose
What I haven’t had?
To sing the blues
Before it goes bad?

Can I mourn for
Something I haven’t lost?
But for what might be in store
For fear it won’t ever last

In black and white
We are flawed with perfection
But in the tinted daylight
We could fall in any direction