i’m pretty tired of beautiful things
looking so small in my hands
my worn, tender hands
they want to finally become the home
of things that my severity can’t crush
i am a ruiner in my own right
it’s just that i really only ruin
what is just out of reach

i’m not a confrontational fellow
i let myself get pushed to the ground
and i get up without a word
never demand an apology because
it was my fault that i was ever in the way

i rarely sleep when it’s dark out
when everyone is asleep
there’s no one to treat me harshly
and stare as i lose myself in another round
and another photo
and another song lyric

i’m so pretentious
this poem doesn’t even mean anything

i’m excited for sunday
as excited as i can be after
19 years of learning to be let down
i’m embarrassed to say that i gave up
before there was anything to give

i’d give that little number in the mirror
the entire world
if she’d just tell me
she loves me too.

Lick my lips
Cradle my face
Gaze into my eyes
And tell me I'm safe

the cookie is in the cookie jar
the cookie is now a picture
the cookie monster tries to steal the cookie but

the cookie monster is now a kitchen appliance
loading the cookies into it, and pouring the jar
of pictures out into the sink

the cookie monster wants to scream
but his eyes are now made of cookies
and the stars now descend upon the earth

outside the kitchen window
an old man weeps while his son watches
the cookie sun set upon the hills

we talk a lot of it
i'm afraid i'm as empathetic
as a piece of damp paper

slept together and then talked
about pokemon and programming
yeah, i wish i went back
to the way things were before
i messed it all up

but today is different
i'm not the one messing things up
on the sidelines trying to be a good friend

Love's ideas, two becoming one
two halves of a whole
what if one's not in it all the way
not like the love of olden days but transient

latched on like a love dart
an antibody flooding in an antigen
placing its little locks with its little keys
closer than two genders - a swell

August 2017 brings the apartment together
but hubris and October 2018 tears it down
if there's one hole in the puzzle
it will tear us down with its incompleteness

don't love me like a girl; don't call me one
when that ghost sits at our banquet
rips the swell apart leaving
nothing but blood and dregs of love's dark wine

all over the floor