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You probably understand. Or maybe you don't, after all. Either way, it is jumping around inside me and if I don't let it out soon all my carbonation will fizz up and run over the side of my glass and I don't want to waste all that sweetness.

I want to kiss you underwater.

I want that kiss to be the only thing keeping us alive. Down there we are foreigners, aliens. Grasping, I want to feel your flesh in stark contrast to the smooth wetness all around me, like a secret.

All that life where we cannot live. Exotic, forbidden, so lovely. I am sick with love.
Someday you’ll fall in love with a broken boy
who you’ll find as golden as they come,
and in a couple years it won’t be the same, as it goes,
when you'll be jolted from sleep to bug-eyed loneliness
in the witching hour of the toughest nights,
tear-stained and screaming his name,
but you'll feel alive,
you will feel live now more than ever,
because the capacity to love stems only from loss
and the coolness of the unwrinkled sheets beside you.
sometimes you just gotta throw yourself out there because it'll be worth it, right? ...right?
 May 2013 Tomás Kelly
robin
i heard a girl once say,
if i could
i would drown
in poetry.
i would throw myself
into a sea of verses
and sink in splendor.

oh, no, i thought -

no you wouldn't.

if there was a sea of poetry
the coasts would be ringed with barbed-wire
and electric fences,
and signs that yelled warning
keep out
undertow

and swim on risk of death -
the beach would be littered with broken glass
from all the drunks that took their last drink
on the edge of a stanza.
the water would be turbulent
and *****
and cold,
and you might admire it one twilight,
when the sun is drowning and turning the sea
red,
and you'd say, oh
that's beautiful.

and you'd take a photo of yourself
grinning with the sunset at your back
and leave.

i heard a boy once say,
if i could
i would drown in your poetry.

oh, no, i thought.
no you wouldn't.
why is drowning such a common theme
in the minds
of readers of poetry?
i imagine it seems
romantic,
in some twisted morbid way -
but i think seeing a bloated corpse
pallid with seawater
missing a limb
or two
would put these delusions to rest.
i imagine seeing
the corpse of a poet
missing a heart
or mind
would put these delusions to rest.

you don't want to drown in poetry.

you want to watch me drown.

i heard a boy once say
if i could
i would drown in your poetry.

so says the boy who calls himself an artist
because he can play
'hey soul sister'
on guitar
and will prove it every chance he gets.
you don't want to drown in my poetry,
and even if you did
i doubt you could -
if poetry was bodies of water
you would throw yourself into a hotel swimming pool
miles away from the polluted lake
where i wash in stagnant water.
if poetry was bodies of water
you'd have someone build a koi pond in your backyard
and call yourself a poet.
if i could
i would drown in your poetry,

he said
and i told him to prove it.

if i could
i would drown in poetry,

she said.

the only people who say
they want to drown in poetry
are the people who don't know what it means.

the only people who drown in poetry
are the people who have no choice.
 May 2013 Tomás Kelly
raðljóst
try to capture the moon
and it will shrink away
from you

try to swim through the sea
and its waves will run away
from you

try to figure out my heart
and my veins will tear away
from you
its not very early in the morning
but it feels like sleep-time
off to work!
I won’t sink anymore

She was breathing in the drastic darkness
as it gulped us down.

I’m in a good place

Wandering the passenger seat for someone’s noisy sobs
before finding them in her own throat.

I’m so tired*

So she flicked on the lighter

No, happy

and drew it toward her eyes
until her face began to melt behind the flame’s watery haze.

Pretty tired

I turned my head and
the cigarette I had seen tottering
between her teeth had become a rolled up
page of Silverstein with Where the Sidewalk Ends
curling slowly toward her lips.
inspired by a distraught friend

— The End —