She was a person with a lot of punctuation,
wherever she went punctuation followed!

Periods never lasted long
since they carried resolution,

and she was a woman always
embarking on what was next,

to uncover what was beyond
the point of no return --

the flat earth made round,
as to run in perpetual loop,

commas and exclamations
were common guests

and stayed long after supper,
well into dessert and into
         run on mornings,

they commonly crashed on her couch
until they got soaked into her furniture,

and now whenever she tries to rest
her head in the ending of her day,

she is poked with the scythe of her commas,
reminding her there is still work to be done,

her YALP! summoning her exclamations
from under her favorite pillow --

falling baseball bats barreling out,
their effervescent presence bubbling

to the surface where they burst and
reveal how itchy they make her feel.

I think of all the times I have wanted to use you,
but chose your stronger brothers:
damp, muggy, soggy, dank

Or heard you pass through the slips of human lips,
and shuddered at your mere presence.
Damnation was never your goal in life I am sure,
you had greater ambition, despite your condition.

You never deserved the dank basement
of vocabulary, or the back of the bus.

I hope that when the sun rises,
some lunatic with a pen takes you up from the ditches
and writes a soliloquy about his lover's moist lips,
how they so gently move within his grip.

I hope that when the travelers sludge through mud,
they hear moist moist moist echo from their shoes
and are reminded of your being
as you stay lingering in their traveling heads,

across the mountains of Timbuktu and into Machu Pichu,
most likely streaming on a thread atop a skyscraper
dangling in the wind for no one to see.

I awoke this morning and
wondered if I was even sentient.
The curtains failed to close
over my lids once more,
forcing my mind's actors to
repeat their tired monologues.

They wax on about regrets,
and the lovers who failed
to pass the test of time,  
friends too for that matter,
recipes that will be born
in the upcoming week,
and the subtle noises
emanating from the
dark corners of my room.

Try as I might to pull
the rope of my velvet curtain,
there remains my lead actor
once more trying to
prove her point that
the road to success is
in the wee hours
of the morning,
right here and now.
The entrance on my desk,
where the muses like to offer
me cement for my tired bricks,

even though I have been
harping on about how they
have been doing their
timeless work of threading
inspiration into my flesh
in the afternoons as of late,  
amidst the heatwave when
the citizens of the world
recoil inside their homes
to escape the sweat and
throngs of people who
leave me weary during
the early hours of
the morning.

The great thing about being married
to my alone is how she is everywhere,

she is in the bathroom stall and
the never dialed midnight calls,

she sits under layers of conversation
when relation has left the dialogue,

nestled in my car rides where I
can truly soak into her aroma,

and sing her songs that sound
better only when she's around.

She's the same as she ever was,
and she hasn't aged a day,

open and expansive,
molecular and cool.

She knows herself so well,
and takes up space as if

she created it herself.
I envy her sometimes

when I am all places at once and
empty vessels are nowhere to be found.

But she finds herself back to me
so often I believe she never really left.

I dare to say we might be soulmates,
is what hits me as I take my walk to the kitchen

and leave you comfortable in my bed,
in your unhappy marriage to your alone.

i met a young girl
the other day,
and she wanted to
know if i cared to
read her book.

i was delighted at her
offer,
especially from a girl
so young as herself,

i agreed to take
her novel, slipping
it into my sturdy hand
bending the whole page backwards,
allowing it
to kiss the cover,
holding it up to the sun as
if i were to recite it
to the curious sky.

but
the little girl
could do nothing,
but stare and
ask of me
that i not bend
the pages
of sylvia plath,

and i knew then
and there,
that she was doomed
to a life of math.

when i met you
i didn't know id be
meeting all six of you.
your personas
spilled from your pocket
like rapid fire kisses.
little by little
trickling out
with casual coolness.
like perfectly stacked dominoes
shot out into the open
by geronimo and his rifle.
and the only thing you expected
was to expect me to not inspect them.
to not hold them up to the light
and investigate the content.

anyway my hands were
too shaky  
and small
to carry them all.
anyway you smiled.
with the same
smile you forgot to
take off from work.

you:
the angry
the riddle
the obstinate
the sweetheart
the confused
the drunk
the person you think you are
the person you are desperately trying to become.

for what its worth,
i hope to meet him
one day too.

i can smell a poet a mile away
who only wishes
to read their poetry to you,

who prods and pulls
away at your brain for insight -
what about this word?
and
let me tell you of the girl
who broke my heart enough times
for me to procure this poem!

i smile and offer
the best of my critiques of course
empathy running too far into my core
and the naive understanding that all
poets hold the same truth.

and as i begin to take the baton
to set out on my journey of recitement,
i see my comrades eyes glaze over
to the toaster where her thoughts now linger
and remain.

and not as i had hoped on the syllables
and motifs i had painfully extracted
in the midnight hours of my
bedroom rumination.

and there your brain remains
as i run my last lap around the
sweet syllables of my favorite words.

It is the army of children
who wake me from sleep
          each morning,
as they march towards
the neighborhood park
with their declarations
of freedom, their words
turned to song like
a carefree lark.

I thought I was them
as I awoke from my rest,
but my pasture of purpose
has changed from
      slide to desk.

I thought I was them
as I longed for
thrushes of green,
and the dirt lying in between.

I thought I was them
as I slipped into my vest
instead of my rugged
hand me down dress.

I thought I was them
as they laid out their quest
to plunder the deep seas
atop their sturdy jungle gym.

I thought I was them.
I could be one of them.
After all, I had a compass
and a map, longer limbs
to steer a mast.

I thought I was them
until I heard a cry like no other
from a select sailor
after an unfortunate
fall from the starboard side,

and my thoughts recoiled,
and I swam back ashore
to the serene silence of
my morning rituals.

i am growing more and more
into the person whom will be worthy of him,
and him of me
but i fear i will be marred with bitterness
wondering why he was never there to help.

in that second i gave you something
a part of me
like a poet scribbling words
a musician strumming a chord
a piece of my disorganized puzzle
spewed out in a midnight conversation

                                     those things that make a part of you
     bit by bit
small and insignificant
without the aid of time
to stack them into
importance

every thoughtful comment
a piece of truth
that rarely sees the light of day

its a very instantaneous exchange
it meant something
not alot
but it was a shrivel of life one's not used to giving
to just anyone

hope you felt it as much as i did
when you placed it up for bid

bad poems
never cease to
inspire me
more than the
greatest poems

and i don't know
if its because i feel like
i can do better
or if i relate more to
the state of ugliness
than i do of
beauty.

there is a little clause within
their contract,
a small fee
some people don't see.
and that is
with every minute spent
on this device
we will take five minutes
of your creativity,
of your ability to self love
of your ability to tap into nature
of your once keen sense of awareness to your surroundings
of your eyesight
please sign here.

I tried to imagine a city
without a cause.
Was it just the country?
Was it just James Dean
stuck in Indiana,
slinging shots of
espresso along
the main strip?

Imagining this city
without her cause,
felt like taking the
song away from the
opera singer,
or making butter
without the churn.

The city always needed
friction to run properly,
a soundtrack of gossip and
tire screeches making
their way to the surface,
an invitation for
us to step into
the womb of its
mortal coil.

We climb in,
with our desperation
and seek answers
to the meaning of
what is human,
adjusting smiles to
carry the weight
of what's expected of us.

While the birds remain
in their trees,
light as wind,
unbothered,
next to their babies
crying out,
look at the
mess you've made,
be still, already.

how many of you
do I have to ****,
to gracefully unravel
a written rose from
the depths
of my soul?

The high priestess sun
and the moon
sitting
on a throne
of space
were all
people could
write of
before
screens
took over
the face.

Galileo liked to kiss
his telescope with an
eye full of curiosity
jotting down notes
of invention,
while Monet stared
so hard at flowers
he came back as
pollen riding a bee.

The wind whispered
a different tune
back then,
it had a voice
and plenty a
listening ears
to land on.

I heard the sea
also slept with sirens,
who slept with sailors,
that slipped into stories
we don't know to be
true or false.

I wonder what it was
like when two worlds
knew how to coexist,
when humans
lived with magic,
and without
the need to
overtake.

But I believe
we have glued
our wings too
close to the sun,
we never got the
chance to fly.

I often see
our finish line
in the way
we treat
each other,
save for the
select souls
who can still
sing the
siren song,

who can sit
with silence
and heartbeat,
swim into deep
hours of nothing
and bring back
significance,
jotting it down
as verse or book.

Let us inch closer and closer
to this forgotten behavior, you and I.

i know there is a good poem in me
i can feel her
she's underneath a stack of  
recipes and US weekly articles
underneath the lined shelves of
unopened emails and spam,
buried deep deep
under the information
stored on my various tabs,
and daily stress and responsibility
she is there
dancing with the pelicans over a crystalline bay
singing the song of a siren
her hands gliding over the wind
i know she's there
that saucy minx
come out and play with me already.

I can't remember when
I started to see color,
maybe it was when
I chose you as
my lover.

Or when the delicate hum
of conspiracy wrapped its
violent claws around my waist,
and I learned how to speak her tune.

The grey landscape turned blue
when I chose to see my lens through you.

It is striking to believe how
little applause the morning
bird gets after her daily song,
as she sits perched on
her branch marking
her territory like
the dog and
his lifted leg.

But then again,
I dont believe birds
undersand the
nature of applause,
inasmuch as the
worm wiggling
his way out
of the dirt or
the cat's eyes
darting into
their direction.

These are thoughts
that overtook my
mind as I wrestled
with my coffee to
turn the key to my
mind’s engine already,
feeling as if I was
once again but
a fingernail
floating
inside my
mothers
womb.

I take off my enthusiasm nightly
like a cloak of bad behavior,
or a well-worn brassiere,
oh great sigh of relief.

I let my feelings melt onto the
***** floors where they feast
upon debris for their supper,
them wild things.

I let fall my voice and laughter too,
my propensity to smile thereafter,
dangle them on rusty hooks,
them ****** things.

Rid me of thee until the sun rises.
I enjoy my night straight up
without the decor of my day
holding me down like an
anchor to the parade.

The night always brought
with her a certain sensibility,
of ownership and reclaim.
I shall take back that
which the day has taken.
She fills in the cracks
the night has put upon me,
let me break in peace,
for that is all I wish to do.

There are lots of ways to
watch the babbling brook,

eyes closed fishing for
memories in a nook.

There are lots of ways to
walk along park trees,

a deep awareness of green
and the sound of autumn's breeze.

There are lots of ways to
name the sturdy rose,

white petal pearls  
and her iceberg clothes.

But today is for nature
and her in-between silence,

like a grey stone
tucked between dirt
we look to for guidance.

every day you must add a drip
to the well of creativity
flowing within you.

a word here
a lyric there
a small drip
no need
for the flood
my dear
breathe into it

drop by drop
little by little

i don't know
how many times
i need to reinvent myself
to eventually get to myself
with every milestone
that is a mountain
the hurdles i swerve over
taking a piece of me into it
at times a fair offer
a lesson for a limb
an eye for an eye
until it has swallowed me whole
and there is nothing left to learn
and nothing left of me
but the blank canvas to start anew

Sometimes you read a poem
and your glass becomes full,

more often you read a poem
and your glass stays the same,

Sometimes you read a poem
and see their glass is filled with wine,

and yours is filled halfway with 2% milk
or maybe it's an old milkshake,

which begins the endless journey
to fill your cup to the brim,

to become a caretaker of creation
an alchemist of thoughtful transition,

to turn your glass of cow mucus
into a glass of fine French wine.

Do you hear that in the distance?
It is your silence asking you
to throw her to the tides,
she sees you are overdue
for a lesson in sound,
she sees the people who
putter about yearning for
that unsung chorus tune.

Leave her with her compatriots,
doubt and worry, just for a moment,  
you can return to their measures of
circular comforts tomorrow.

Leave her with the ash from last nights smoke,
you built in your minds midnight eye,
the fraught furnace of your future fantasy.

Your silence will arise again,
as she does with every passing moon,
she is tied to you like an anchor to a ship,
or maybe she is your ball and chain,
one cannot presume a relation
that shifts in tune with the northern wind.

She will always be greater than you, accept it.
And she wants nothing more than
to survive in this loud world,
she claws towards it from her thirsty well
where the people drink from her,
where they drink her up and
never retain her hydration,
she's learned to put holes in
her infrastructure to
vacate the premise,
her well dripping dry
of all her subtle wisdoms,
so that when you hoist your
bucket down and pull it
back up, you hear nothing
but the echo of air and dryness,
for there is nothing
like sound that
fine tunes and
greases up her
stillness.

I dont want to
cradle your
head with a
soft pillow,
no more
than I want
to hear the
willow
remind me
morning
is here.

I don't
want you
to believe
that I am
particularly
good at
what
I do,
or have
a clue of
what it
is that I
do in
fact do.

I want to
nestle my
veins in that
there thorn
of your brain,
to pick
and pluck
to swim
in muck.

I want to run
blade first
into what
failure has
to offer,
a warm dinner
with fine dine silver.

I can make you
out with just
your cheek
and toe,  
there's a
silence in
your glow.

I never saw
the appeal
of applause,
or **** offs
mimicking  
waves,
a sycophant
and her
head full
of braids.

Two excitable lips
were never
better than
the funny
man's quips,
with their
flashy red,
and their
he said
she said,
I turn
my neck.

Shall I make
sense to you?
I am a train
without the
choo choo.
I am failure.
I am pause.
I won't do
what you
tell me to.

Going in
Can be hard
When you don’t know
If it’s
demons
Or angels
That inhabit you

and with your introduction
so begins my inability
to make to do lists
because all i want to do
my dear
is you.

I've never been to The Grand Canyon.

In fact, as far as canyons go,
I've only been to two or three.

And each time I slide into that mineral womb,
I am wrangled into a new identity.

I've become a waffling man
stumbling headfirst into his first love,

A child staring into the
smoky barrels of adulthood,

A castaway stranded at sea,
the center of a tornado,

A speck of dust on a speck of sand,
a decorative ring on a gentle hand,

And a dog lost in the woods
who has lost his urge to howl.

At this point, I have resigned
myself to fervently avoid you.

Seeing that smaller forms
can ****** me into a tailspin of identity,

I don't care to know what your grandness will reveal.
I think I might dare to give you my life,

before you decide to shoot me into the
dizzying preamble of my next form.

So for now, I'll make do with carrying your spirit,
as long as we are in agreement that you carry mine.

What good is a conclusion
without anyone there to hear it?
Is what I wondered when
I realized I did in fact
love the man who
asked me where
my smile was,
even though I
know I wasn't
supposed to.

I often ask myself
the same question,
strange man,
usually after I see
the sharp corners of
my mouth ache
for their lost soft.
and something foreign
has taken its place.
a slow settle
like the
thick fog
that sweeps
over orca waters,
usually right after
a month's long fight
with a pen or falling
too far from my
blanket of zen.

Maybe I'm not meant
to smile this year.
I am after all happily
engaged to my year of solemn,
another conclusion
I came to on my
road of conclusions.

And yet although
I have no one to
speak to on my
epiphonous road,
these conclusions
do exist and  
will persist,
despite what
the others
might
say.

he told me i was living in fear
and i thought i wasnt supposed to be here
a sign hangs above his living room couch
"the police ruin everything"
i want to disagree but i control my thoughts
i build a wall between them and my mouth
the same one he built
and her and them and we and us
i can tell by the furrowed brows and tell tall signs
by the words that come out only when we drink our nightly wine
i climb on top of him
in his room of american flags, broken records and leopard ware
faux patriotism and hipster runoff mixed with nonchalant dishevel
i kiss his sweaty neck  
my mind is always down south
even now
where my toes peep out of my socks
curious of the present moment and the theme of tomorrows thoughts

she sat in the center of her home
becoming the heart of the halls
the blood drifting in and out of
the corridors,
the clot that stood still in the living room
unable to move to the next destination
stuck staring at the dusty painting
that haunted her tendency
to fix that which does not
need fixing,

humming the delicate tune
which ascended into the aorta
of her kitchen,
all the way
to the apex of her attic
and finally folding into itself
like the towels in her
chamber of cabinets,
before unraveling out
through the long vein
of her chimney,

the housewife who
makes a living
with sharpened bread knives
and turning scones into
christmas trees,
who croons ancient love songs
in her infinite spare time,

and i wonder as i
stare at her
from underneath my book
of russian poetry,
how she holds up
when the front door bursts opens
and nature sings
a solo to her heart.

i had a poem once tell me:
shut up and get to work.
take the string of electricity
just sent to you from the heavens
and weave me onto your paper
this line will only be available
for a short period of time
until we get annoyed with your
unwillingness to devote yourself,
and like the last girl who was also idly
staring into the blank abyss of her walls
we will reclaim our line and
shoot it on over to the grandmother next door
who sits ever so patiently with her tea
and a first edition copy of that new stephen king novel
she has been meaning to dive into.
her pen situated between her index and *******
and i reckon in that moment
i will finally be birthed
in the margins,
in between the paragraphs
speaking of white robes and blood.

You are there
and I am there,
or maybe I am there
and you are here,
or you are there
and I am here.
We are just toggling
back and forth
through the lanes
of time and space,
missing each other
always by just a
few seconds.

i looked into the
depths of what i could
possibly learn,
hugging the night's silence
in replace of a crowd,
just to hear her secrets.

and she said

sometimes you
will leave the light at
the end of the tunnel
with a lesson
in replace
of your lover

sometimes you will feel
the agenda of a union
an intuition
a gathering of spirit
welling up in yourself
speaking of some dire truth

grab it

your time with such and such
is coming up, you can not take him
or her of them or you,
with you on your next chapter
leave the lover
leave your mother
father and your brother,
and take the lesson.

it's the intuitive embrace
leaving no trace for the mind
to confirm its approval

its the embrace that happens to you
on a blinding tuesday when
questions don't abound

you do what feels natural
open arms and wide eyed
heart hanging off your sleeve

blood oozing through your veins
wounds open like a possibility
this embrace has kissability

this embrace can fix it all
you say

for you are too encompassing to ignore,
too statuesque to mute with the strings of my guitar,
& so i find the only way to repel you,
is to write of you.
is to sit in the eye of your storm
and allow the thick blanket of your skin
to unfold into me,
as i attempt to describe this experience to a t,
so that your uninvited presence becomes familiar.

and
you
        --  treacherous muse --
can become
my ally,  

so that when you eventually roll around again,
which you normally tend to do at the
crisp start of a burgeoning evening,
i can welcome you
with my open arms
and an empty chair,
and we can
use our sharpened vocabulary
to battle
over the
meaning
of stillness.

Why does the cabbage
provoke such hatred,
unlike the sugar cookie
in an airtight package?

Why does the lover know
the way of the garden so well,
yet stampede off into
the path of daisies?

It is the same as why
I must contend with the
aftermath of my family,
and become the spy
amongst the shrubs.

It's the same as why
I must speak to my
uncle like a cherub angel
who knows nothing of
his place in the cosmos.

It's the same as why
I bite into a
strawberry to
taste nature's
emerald,
glowing with
answer and resolve.

It will always
be just a strawberry
      to them.

i killed a gnat on my shirt today
and now he sits there dead
next to a hole
which is starting to look
more and more
like his twin brother.
both black spots reminding me
of the ***** dishes and laundry
and the difference between dogs
in the city and country.

lean into it, my dear.

lean into your future,
even though your past
calls you with a
romanticized nostalgia.

lean into your new lover,
even though the warmth of
an old flame burns bright.

lean into the freshness of tomorrow,
even though the
chapters of yesterday
remain unwritten
and beckon for your words and return.

because my darling there is nothing
bolder than turning away from
the putrid pages of yesteryear in
search for a new self.

I lifted up the sky to
find a thermostat,
a small child fiddling
with all the dials.
And the clouds,
they were just the
soft heels of giants,
delicately managing
our inevitable collapse,
weaving the perfect story
to let us down gently.

Turns out we are just
a bunch of marbles
on the shelves of
champions who
simply enjoy our
sunset colors.

if i make a poem out of iphones,
people will actually start taking
a liking to the forgotten form.

i can make every phone sing
with a new hit song
at the perfect time
as your eyes glance over them
while they offer you a new promotion
to go with your completed poem line.

and as you are thinking about the confusing
symbolism between a flea and blood,
you can also get 50% off
your next purchase at Target.