You know that I want you. I'm sure of it.
But still the little tortures come.
Your cheshire smile glowing brightly.
Your hand holding mine to your side.
Your unbridled compliments and playful digs
Each with their subtle symptom of love.

But you don't love me. You just love being loved.
And I'm tired of writing poems about you
And screaming to the heavens that I am yours.

Crossing this path for the third time. God, I hope it's the last.
Sometimes I wish I knew what was in your mind.
Other times I just laugh.

Bethany, we have such a hard history. Childhood was a brawl.
I wish I had more compassion for you.
We were both so small.

Now here we are for the third time; oh what a shameful act.
Is it that we have too much pride?
Or perhaps it's a lack.

Oh, the horrors of family relations.
Oh, the binds that wound our salvation.
Oh, the lack of any sense.
Oh, the death of innocence.

Back at church camp, we did not know. We were caught unawares.
I ****** his **** (I had never before).
He kissed you on your nose.

I hear now he's engaged to a girl. I guess you won in the end.
But we both lost so much dignity.
He's still my Facebook friend.

Oh, we were so gullible.
Oh, it felt so horrible.
Oh, the lack of any sense.
Oh, the death of innocence.

Score number two was my fault, I guess. I loved him very well.
In middle school he called you his girl.
Now we're all going to Hell.

But in my defense, he was my first kiss.
He might have been yours as well.
I'm sorry, my sister, for liking his hair, and all the lies I tell.

Oh, now I've gone and hurted myself.
Oh, I can never ask for your help.
Oh, the lack of any sense.
Oh, the death of innocence.

Three days ago I discovered the third, which you confirmed in a text.
Did it have to be with my Paris love?
It was the first time I had ***.

Still, I win. If anyone can.
You'll date him in Ohio. It's mean to say, but it's the truth.
You're just his beard and a smile.

I want to say this, little sis. I wish that we could be friends.
But secrets breed secrets, which breed some more.
And we all die in the end.

We are told to "make lemonade"
As we inhale the bitterness
Of wages and rent and hunger,
Student debt and job insecurity.

We are told to squeeze ourselves
Tighter and tighter
Until we are made of bones
That crack like whips to the time-stamp tune.

Flesh, they say, is the enemy.
It is weakness and untamable.
It does not fit neatly, and so must be destroyed.
It belongs in our beds, not the workplace.

They give us lemons so **** they burn,
And tell us that we're lucky to receive them.
They say it is the natural order of man and machine.
But the fruit of our labor is a lie!

Today I learned that lemons are not fruit.
They are not found in nature;
They have not fallen from heaven for us.
They are engineered by a snake in the garden.

Lemons are like wages and rent and hunger.
They are like markets and stocks and *******:
A human invention we are told is better for us
Than the Apple we once killed ourselves for.

Today I realized lemonade is the enemy!
It's not the cost of bread or the breaking of backs;
It is the dismal comforts we construct
To tell ourselves that we are free.

This dim haven of the past,
Covered in cloth,
Like tired children playing ghosts
On Halloween
You won't be there.
Nor Christmas,
Or New Year's ever again.
But this dusty room will serve
As a coffin for your memory.
That chair and lumpy sofa
Will haunt me more than a spirit could--
With its raw physicality,
Thinly veiled
With greying sheets.

I love you
Long after your last breath.

Well, baby, I've been here before,
Jonathan snuck out my door.
You know, I never meant to ***** ya.

I loved him good and I loved him well,
There's nothing more that I have to tell.
He's nothing like my brother, hallelujah!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah.

I've fallen in love with a hurricane
With death and danger
A natural disaster
I've tried so hard to make it work
To calm that storm
Raging in him

But today I let it go.

Tell me about those future tides
That move within the crinkles
At the corner of those green minefields,
Which stare with such intensity
That love has wrought
And pain has sharpened
In the lakes of corn that hold
Too many graves for you,
My sweet.
Your sorrow crashes down
While you look up at me
And marvel at
How many times you call my name
And how many times I answer.
Still,
I wonder if it is enough
To understand the sorrow without
Having felt it in my bones
Everyday-- a lack
That cannot be filled no matter
How softly (or rough) I kiss you
Or how badly I make it known
That you are mine.

We are hidden in public.
Safe for maybe the first time.
Away from home and friends and ties.
And you say my eyes are beautiful.
No one else has ever noticed.
I think yours are sweet like a honeycomb,
But I'm not brave enough to say that yet.
I am brave enough to kiss you,
But you beat me to it. Again and again.
You're all over me.
Are you the victim or am I?
I think both. And then neither.
And then me again.
But you say the deepest words
Flushed with Patron and sincerity.
You say you love me.
I'm compelled to say it back.
I do again and again and again.
You say it more, but that's not all.
You say you would kiss me every day
I almost want that to be true.
I almost want this all to be real.
But all crowds part eventually,
And soon we will be home.
We will be found.
And the honeymoon will be over.

Yesterday he gave me that look.
He furrowed his brow with deep concern
To tell me how proud he was
Of me.

Yesterday he drunkenly hugged me
And when I pulled away
He grabbed me again
And whispered,

"I'm not done with you yet."

Yesterday I wished he would be
Done with me yet.
But only just
Yesterday.

you spend your life smiling. sleeping. unfeeling.
you dream away the days without notice
you think yourself out of reality

and then
just for a moment
you don't

you discover the rich desire of being wanted
and you crave that **** carnal curse
and you let him in and you let yourself out

suddenly
you stand there
exposed

and you can never ever ever go back.

Such power does a porchlight possess
That it lures a thousand insects
To fry in the dewy-white comfort of its glow

Where we see the mundanity of a helpful object
Moths see beckoning beams of moonlight
Like Icarus soaring too high at midnight

Perhaps God in all his alleged wisdom
Could never have imagined the horror wrought
By positive phototaxis and the electric lightbulb

Perhaps this whole **** world is the unintended
But deadly consequence of a God who could not
Predict the ways that lightbulbs and moonlight
Merge to Mock him.

Love is something given
Freely
Not something you earn
Why
Do I struggle remembering
That
When I'm with you while I
Try
So hard to be what and
Who
You're looking for.

I'm a little rusty on the incantation
That allowed you in my dreams
We just crossed paths in a different dimension
Now beg you please to leave

Caroline, what a sorry explanation
For a visit from the dead
The girl I knew is still halfway 'cross the nation
The girl I liked lives in my head

Visits from you have never been a good sign
That my life is going well
If I'm so desperate for a phantom's recreation
I'll walk backwards into hell

Caroline, what a sorry explanation
For a ghost of a best friend
We had it all and you threw it out the window
It's been five years since the end.

I'll admit that it is tempting
To accept the spell you've cast
Laughing, crying-- all the good times
But then why did it not last??

Caroline, what a sorry explanation
For a frauded history book
Five years ago we had a chance at reconciliation
If you ask me you're still a crook

Let it entomb you. Let the thing inside you rot and grow and brown. Let it fester there unencumbered. Let it chip away at your very being. An ocean against the weary foundation of your mind. A cancer in the soft flesh of your soul. A drought in the storm of your imagination. Let it well up within you. You are not a Man. You are not a corpse. You are not a tomb or a stone or flesh or a storm. You are only this. For a moment, give yourself wholly to sadness. Let it be.

If the world was right
And all was just,
Our souls would be conjoined
Without any choice of freedom.

For what good is freedom
When feet must leave,
And lips must part,
And hands grasp only to let go?

The earth spins 'round
And orbits and tilts.
The winds whip and continents shift
And nothing is ever still.

The universe itself is locked
In a rush toward infinite expansion
'Til one day every atom will subside,
And all will freeze alone.

What good is freedom?
What good is Earth?
What good is this whole ******* cosmos
If leaving is all there is??

I do not want to move.
I do not want to walk or speak
Or disconnect your hands from mine.
I will be totally still.

But it is not enough.
The **** universe conspires
To draw us to our knees,
And wish for one more hour

Just. Like. This.

My arms are aching
Not from excess, but from a lack
I do not touch

I do not touch you
Something stops me every time
I do not touch

I do not touch you
But I can't stop wanting
I do not touch

I do not touch you
I do not touch
I do not touch I do not touch

But my arms are aching
I am sore from a lack of reaching
I do not touch.

In a 2013 study, human scientists wished to know
The depths of the heart of the common rat,
And devised an experiment to prove that
Empathy can exist even in the smallest of creatures.

The scientists, in their logocentric wisdom
Born out of centuries of Western philosophical tradition,
Metaphysical assumption, and scientific methodologies,
Trapped one rat in a tightly confined space and watched.

To their small-minded astonishment, the rats performed,
Again and again, the role of savior to their fellow rat.
They did this without need for compensation or compulsion
And, if given, shared the reward with their de-caged brethren.

But what the scientists failed to realize is, as is often the case,
That they themselves, with all their complex cognitive capacity,
Had failed an experiment which the rats navigated with ease.
For it was them who had caged the rat, and rats who set them free.

Save your gravity
For the fragile bones
That tread your mountainous rock

I will not fall again.

That slippage comes too quick
When weak men crawl
Like ants upon your surface

I am the fallen angel
Whose wings were too burdened
By the golden kiss of truth

I have fallen to this world
To this mountain
To this cliffside coffin

I have torn from the stone
A house and a life and a lover
I have risen beyond the curse that binds me

And I will not fall again.

The moon is akin to you -- and I
I follow your brilliance through the night sky
You draw up my waist with your high tide
And the love we share has only one side

For you're a million miles away.

I swore I'd do a life cleanse before I saw you again.  But here I am at your door.

Your laugh quick as a flash of light

But moods dark as the sea

And always with that biting humor

You bit too much outta me.

This is my ode to the nation I hate. Gluttons for war. Haters of women. Priced out and maxed out and imprisoned and impoverished.

Here's to the wide open spaces that make my heart sing and my soul fly as I ****** the earth in a two-ton death trap waiting to ensnare me. Here's to the freedom to spit on the homeless; accuse the downtrodden; shoot the black. Here's to limitless dreams forged in minds that don't know any better.

God bless the open road. God bless each and every freedom we ignore. God bless the Dow and our hopes of a better life.

We will never forget the names of those
Who should have been known for so much more.

Sandra Bland. George Floyd. Tamir Rice. Riah Milton. James Scurlock. Rem'Mie Fells. Breonna Taylor. Too many to name. 400 years.

We remember them for all they could have been.
Not martyrs. Murdered.
People living and then gone forever.

White supremacy is not poetic. It is a blunt instrument.
We must fight it every day.

I never understood the color hazel
Until I looked into his eyes

We don't want the world.
No one asked for this.
There's only so many walls,
So many scales and shells
And piles of warm blankets.
So many deep breathes
And shallow pursuits.
We can only scream so loud
And quietly dread
And wait for the ending.

It is a very human tragedy
That we can name more lengths
Of waves of light than our eyes
Can or will ever comprehend

To know that something exists
And is very likely beautiful
Just outside our grasp, forever
Is the most human thing of all

At least to me.

Nothing is more than you imagine,

For truth is everything.

Nothing is more than she says,

For silence is the answer.

Nothing is more than she appears,

For black is her pigment.

Nothing is more than she seems,

For who are you to judge.

I'm a weak and anxious man, prone to insecurities that I only dare mumble to myself and my god and my therapist

--But mostly just myself, for fear of losing the others to the mayhem.

The brain is not a perfect vessel.

But you are. And still, the whispering comes at times

When we are far away or you are in my bed or we need a moment's space to breathe.

The wait is never long and we return to be as happy as sunshine

But periodic clouds cast a longer shadow

To those of (me) who lived in the darkness and learned to crave the bitter truth -- even when it was only with my eyes closed.

And isn't it sad? How I cannot hold tight the thing that I have more faith in than god? (Or even, often, myself...)

To see you smile up at me--perfect--and not be forever content??

Strike me down for my sins against you! **** the rooster if it squawks again; my denying days are finished.

Oh love, will you forgive a weak man in the eye of a storm?

A judge too beautiful to conjure has stolen what was once in my head:

The careful oddities of an amalgamation that apparently included you

And me and my childhood nanny (who was transformed into a dancing Jane Fonda).

Like a raging sign of my heart’s discontent; a honeymoon I refuse to entertain;

The sleep-sewn cloth of a dying emperor’s last adornment.

Where are you outside my pillow? Why have you come into my dreams?

Explanation be ******: get out! It was you who scorned me on your birthday,

And now I must kindly, failingly ask for your removal from my rotation of isolation.

Even if the times we shared were golden and last night was a dream!

I remember when touching you seemed impossible. When kissing you seemed the most exotic thing in the world. As if "no" was a dare I couldn't refuse.

And I couldn't refuse it nor could you.

But now we're here and I'm lost and I've found you. Found you to be something else. Unexpected even for you.

And I can't pretend I haven't seen you. I can't.

There is no truth but alcohol. It's all we know. It's shed your skin. It's shown me flesh.

And I cannot return. Cannot return. Cannot not stop knowing you.

Rust splinters off my fingers
As I once again grasp
For that most sacred and desperate
Solution.  Salve.  Serenity.
My poems are cracked with feeling
I am longing and needing.
Needing to be heard again
And to hear myself remembering
That most ancient, intrinsic
Scream. Scorn. Salutation.
It says hello to me again,
And threatens to destroy me.

His arms feel strong
But they make me so weak

Grev ca the loqi el
Fel world sitram onj
(Is vetr yil eff)
Uner random eeja na
Wickreta and ilst
Unjust oli scon

Half a world of maps unfurl
Across the empty table of my misery.
Who allowed these seas to part us?
Who enabled this continental crawl?
How can the expanse of my suffering
Be so casually drawn on a thrice-folded page?

Let me collapse the space between us
Like the crinkle of a map:
Ohio, Louisiana, and Nebraska now one;
New York City meets Seattle;
Las Vegas crossed with Columbus
All gloriously fused together and merged.

Space and time and geopolitics
Aborted for their troubles.
We have no need for boundaries
(We have enough of those between us).
Release me from this isolation!
God of winds: ******* forward in all directions

Just let us not be parted One More Night.

Slither away from me, my love
Run and hide and slink

Your yellowish eyes
Cool under the rock or couch
From which you perch

And never say a single word

Climb the stairs, quickly
While I'm at the door

Come down for dinner
And nothing else

Be cold and silent
And maybe I'll forget you

A manifestation
Of what we have lost

Every morning I microwave myself

Reheating stale words on my lips

As I shuffle toward the inevitable

Sleep that never quite takes

In the vain hope that tomorrow

There exists a new "me"

Who is finally ready to become

Sometimes just leaving
Is easier than saying goodbye

The world of your body
Is the air I breathe

Right now in the Arctic Circle, it is twilight. The sun has hidden from the vast fields of snow, and it will not return for months and months. Not for all the love in the world. No kiss can conjure it. No hug can replace its warmth. No secret whisper or extended hand or careful laugh can reverse the orbit or adjust the tilt of a rock hurling through space at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour.

I am frozen, my love. I can no longer see the light. The months stretch out like an abyss before me; a semester's worth of sorrow. You cannot save me, no matter how sweetly you try or how desperately I want you to succeed.

We cannot fight the sun, my love. So let me go.

Dey’Veon,
You cowardly lion,
Sink your teeth into me.

Is my life isolation or a space for creation;
A gilded cage or a hideaway?

Shall I claw my way out or embrace desolation?

I live and eat and work alone—
There’s no one else who’s coming home.

I dare not dream to let one in
For fear my sliver may grow thin.
Best to keep to myself and rule it all,
And forget that my kingdom is unbearably small.

Late in the night, when crows flock and moon swells,
You arise from the dead to haunt me.

My room glows with an eerie blue
My crystal ball turns black and rectangular--
Still cloudy and shining, but now with technicolored lights.
And sound! Not with voice or a ghostly yawn;
But the pin-***** "ding" of a message from beyond.

It tells me that heaven and hell cannot contain you.
That you will not be silenced by the end.
There IS no end because you will not let it;
A corpse too stubborn to die, too cold to live.

The crushing consideration
That maybe I wasn’t meant
To survive this storm

Or the scarier thought
That maybe the storm won’t come at all
And this will all have been for nothing

Time stole so much from us
Don't think I could forget
The way you wreathed and swayed
While dancing in my bed

I think of decades in my future
When I revisit you in dreams
And seek to find your face
On my Apple spy machine

It's a special kind of sadness
To know that she won't be a he
And I'll always sadly wonder
If I ever could compete

And while I'm glad you're happy
In this distant future sleep
I'll be angry that I let you go
And even moreso that I creeped

What the boastful fail to say
About “a man at every port”
Is how a soul can crack
Between the vast distances

One beloved in [redacted] who feels
Like smooth liquor and cries
So softly when I rub his back
Because I cannot touch him much

To be greeted by the too-slim smile
Of another in [redacted]
Who screams my name with a vigor
As if to remind me I’m still here

A third to the West
Who I visit too infrequently
But whose spark is still bright
When I darken the door

One more is a ghost
Whose visage travels with me
Who’s made the living look pale
Since the day that he ghosted me

A painful plight to be totally free
To hold someone in the night
And to flee by late midday
Never whole or fully held

We all take shelter in the shade of ambiguity that only poetry can provide. With words, I take a candle toward the darkest reaches of my heart and let you determine the nature of its shadows. I hope and pray you are not as wise as Plato, for I am Icarus. One day I will forge that candle into a sun, the cave will glow, and all of you will run.