I pulled back the thicket
Brambles and thorns
Bordering my mind
Inch by inch
To let you slip inside

Hi

I hope you don't mind
The pestilent storm of neuroses
The angry winds whipping around
Eroding my cognition

(They all say
I ought to stop overthinking

They don't know the half of it)

Pardon the mess
The litter of apprehensions
Flotsam and jetsam of rumination
Tangles of tangents
Smog of chimeric thoughts
Sticky rambles festering in the corner
Acidic drizzle
Of obstinate wayward tunes
Insecurity and fear
Eating into the pillars and foundations

If you don't mind terribly
The clatter of sleet
The noisome fumes
The skittering vermin
The sheer clutter
That would make packrats shake their heads

If you don't mind
At all
Would you stay?

Which is better

To feel nothing
But a halcyon calm
Like a fine summer morning,
Or to be ****** to and fro
By the ice, spray, and lightning
Of the tempest?

To stroll the meadow,
Or to climb the mountain?

I've gone through both
Yet the answer still eludes me
I remain as ignorant as I was
In the days of my youth

But what I do know
Is how my chest tightened
How my breath caught
When you sent me a message
(Your very first)
And how my lips impulsively purse
As I peek at yours
And at the speck of a mole
Resting right below

What I do know
Is how I couldn't keep my eyes
From straying towards your corner
(Still can't)
And how my hand trembled
Just as I squeezed your shoulder
Bidding you farewell

Or how I've worn out my iPod
Replaying Jay Chou's ballads
As I sang my heart out to my steering wheel
Numbly crawling through
The maddening, seething traffic

And how the breeze eats my cigarette
Down to its filter
As I stare up
Dumbfounded
Mapping out
Tracing your face among the stars

How my neurotransmitters **** me
Closer and closer to a heart attack
And how my soul weeps and bemoans
The yawning chasm betwixt us
While you sit there infuriatingly oblivious
Chattering away about Warcraft and barley tea

All these things are
The few of what I do know
The last of which
Is how I'll never have you.

Fleeing
Tail between my legs
From the ravishes
Of your lashes
I take refuge in the ramblings
Of madmen long dead
Seeking to tap the will to power
That I may refute
Your imposing master-slave morality
Compelling in its distracting hedonism
Beckoning in its languid ambiguity
Suffocating my
Dizzying, radical freedom

Oh, noumenal world
Take me now.

One look at you
And I abandon
My categorical imperative
Doomed to the fate
Of a being-in-itself
Powerless to recreate
And renew its essence
Too busy being caught up
In your scent
I see what you are
And scramble to
The conclusion of
What you ought to be
With me

For you are beyond
That which empirical validation
Can encapsulate
You are
My Prime Mover
And life without you
Is nasty, brutish, and short
And Rousseau was full of ****

I flee
Because inner language
The beetle in the box
Can never be shared
Not even with
The most symmetrical of soulmates
And what we may share
May not even be authentic
What we believe
May not even be true
Nor justified

Are you not satisfied
With the power you already wield
Over me?

Please
My geisha
Do not let your lips
Be the antithesis to my pen.

I hate you
For who
And what
You are not.