I tell him about the 90 year old that made a home in my body.
Say "I feel more than the nineteen years, I feel more than your nineteen years."
He takes it as evidence towards what he calls my "superiority complex"
makes a joke about thinking I'm so much wiser than everybody else as I stammer with arms crossed trying to find the words my nineteen year old vocabulary does not know.

This has nothing to do with being wise you sonofabitch, its about an exhaustion that paints the dark color around my eyes and the sigh that lives in my belly you ******.

He interrupts, laughing "What do you mean? Your bones ache or something? haha hahaha." Loud, obnoxious, not the first time,
not the last. I want to say yes

yes
yes they ache ad they creak
and they burn and so do my eyes and so do my insides and so do the words I say and the way I say them and the way it scares others when I say some profound ****, I almost sound like Gandhi, like Bukowski, I just never learnt of a beautiful way to disguise my pain. Not enough so It could sell.


I was better off alone when the ice made a security blanket around my heart-better off with no pain.
He shines a mirror on all my missing parts, calls me ****** up.
Stand next to me just to lean over in his height, superiority complex runs high among privileged nineteen year old straight males.

The ice thawed but he came with no gloves
I found the bruising less tolerable than the cold this time around
Less bearable than the lonely beat my heart learned to sing.
Its the same story he just repeats himself as another boy who says the wrong things and makes me feel
exhausted for every having opened up my icebox full of secrets.
Every conversation is an emptying out and not the cathartic kind.
The kind that leaves the ninety year old in me shaking with nothing left inside her but rotting gums and eyes that have seen too much ****. Nobody is supposed to make you this unhappy. This is not what I asked when I asked for you to make me feel something.
Every time I say your name Matthew, it almost comes out Nathan, in my head. Nathan with his accent, and the same humor, same jokes. Nathan the boy I emptied myself out to just so he could leave bruises on the uncovered parts. It was so easy to to leave somebody I never gave a **** about.

Matthew, I only say your name so often so I remember it, so I say it right, so I remind myself you are not the same person. Matthew sounds allot like Nathan when your drunk or sad which I am most of the time these days, you sound allot like him with your laugh, sound like your gonna leave bruises on all the parts I lift up to show you. I know this.

This is a fact. Like I know I wont ever cry for you until I'm all thawed out.
Matthew, for  your painstaking insensitivity, for your lack of understanding
Matthew for you not understanding all the creaking in my bones is just screaming

Save me
Fix me

Give me one reason why you're good for me because I cannot think of any and
*I so desperately want to

My mind
my poor mind
is swimming with thoughts
Swelling with oceans of heartaches forgot
Waves of regret rise and break on my shores
But in search of that bliss
I dive back in for more.
I rock
And I tumble
All alone in my head
Contemplate if I've known
what it's like to be dead
I've been numb as a ghost,
I've been colder than ice
yet my heart beats on still in its pale morning light
As dawn breaks on my waters,
what the waves whisper of
is whether or not
i have known how to love.

And I wish that I could write you off
as easily as I feel you do to me
but all I seem to be able to do
is write ABOUT you.

A spittoon!
onlookers
look confused;
it speaks
a dead language.

The wind hits my neck
And I shiver with the mixed emotions
Of pleasure and coldness
But I love it
Because it reminds me
Of your suckling kiss
That always gives me
Goosebumps
And that always
Tickles
And excites me
Oh I don't mind the cold
Because it reminds me
Of your warmth.

the moon is hiding in
her hair.
The
lily
of heaven
full of all dreams,
draws down.

cover her briefness in singing
close her with the intricate faint birds
by daisies and twilights
Deepen her,

Recite
upon her
flesh
the rain’s

pearls singly-whispering.

1)
this part sparkles -- like your smile
which sparks a grin in me
to heat the heart and ribbed
adore
the laughter waiting in the covers
from our wink and whisper
beds of personalities
spring and comfort, stain and dust
but love, sweet love to swoon away
and lust the anchorage of speaking
as we do each tone and syllable
a light, touch, tinge to waken flames
and dancing light
familiar of my origins
a conjured shape in what you single out
each focus frame of sentence what
to what we ought to do
what sunday shall we both approve?
in sync we dialogue
in mood of dire wrack of blah
in boon of happy overflow
our musing 'tra la la'
ideas, toys to turn and pirouette
or taunt the sun to match our beaming fun

2)
this part sparkles too,
but gives itself to me
so i might quench the burning
brightly lighting sultry flesh
i gaze, and overyearn
to tumble in the sheets
that billow layers--layer-winds of time
you tug and pull i toss and tear away
to open bare the inward soft
that peach-like drips from chin
in breathless constantly
voracious tonguing whim
an asterisk for starburst flick delight
salts deeply into savor sweet
the ****-surge powers me in your embrace
to deep, deep clenching ahh
our skin undone as with a solar flare
across the earth a flood of radiating us
lips and bones
coalescent sense
no match for 'bliss'
or moan moan moan
unending veins traverse to toetip axon
ancient crown of hugs from two to one

3)
this part Is the whole
unknown we meet again
again, again from words
to trusting vasts  poetic patience
chance to sound the voice of
yearning manifest from tips to core
and back again we plan on more
in hoping wonder possibles revised
the real of you too natural
to rebuke the care beyond
the searching for
to inhale sight of being there
to step from cab
and offer kindness
mystery of universe
transmuted into meeting once,
twice, every moment new
you bring an often baffling array
of sublime other than i knew
you reinvent me too

a confessional screen
chambered in opaques
                        the pearly gates would sport
checkers sovereignty with grime
between myself
               and the other side of this poem

another acolyte had founted
             from our species-widened narthex-maw
                              the answer to the test
                                    the answer i have tested since
despite the veto of a roshi's sleeve

while adults justify in frowns and threats
commandment-etched
i am a child still
           aghast at drawing lines in sand to mark the living
                                           from the soon to die

one i knew who drew such lines                                  
             for whom a line was drawn to mark himself as well
not just in votes and homeland hate-speech
you see
he crossed the line
                        no unadulterated childhood can cross

he shot  his  own  face
                              or at least his face was shot
                when he was found
who can read the final lonely moments of another
                                                 when mistakes are easier than ownmost acts ?

bombing bullies politicking death
                 can sanctify the safe
unpunctuated traps
                     dividing moods in swallows
pills
swilled with undigested fear
                                   of nozzled death
mercilessly sudden





.

i might continue on with that trauma
i might subside.
violation carries with it sensate boons of empathy
blue sky overrun with thanks
arched-back breath

you're afraid to ask me
are your tears painful
but i spear your question with a surplus love
shouting joy
as if there weren't a plea
tremulously groaned
share with me

it isn't just release
sweet freedom laughing out of doors
you and she regaled in bursts
iridescent meaning
hung in curve of lock
nape and open palm