His "I love you" came swiftly.
Like the monsoon pouring down on a leaky roof
Those three words broke through my defences.
At first they were an ambrosia;
They sustained my life and our relationship.
At least for a short time.

Then "I love you" became an excuse;
For absences, and purpose-filled accidents.
And I ignored the warning signs, the flashing lights.
I pretended like "I love you" was enough...

...But it wasn't.
His "I love you"s were like band-aids on bullet wounds;
Like using play dough to fix cracks in concrete walls.
But I rationed our good memories,
I held on as tight as I could to our love
And watched as it slipped through my fingers.

His "I love you"s became poison,
That seeped deep into my bones,
And turned blue skies grey,
And turned light into darkness,
And slowly killed whatever semblance of love
I fooled myself into thinking we had left.

Captured by a passing gust, minute petals dance in the warmth of the heavy air. The sun rests overhead; its blinding, piercing rays, malicious in warmth, scorch the innocent earth. The air is hot and heavy – suffocating, if not, stifling. There lacks any existence of life in this barren wasteland. It is a dry and it is dead; the depleted desert stretches for miles and all that could be seen is but the dry terrain – the earth and sand engulfing everything that was once there. And still the minute petals dance in the blazing heat; their owner, a withered flower, suffers the harshness of the burdened terrain. Whether it be the blazing heat or the heinous droughts, the flower struggles for survival, its florid beauty, withered, but it continues to exist and play the role Someone gave.

I was born – their first baby.  I had inherited all my precursors’ failed dreams and was burdened at birth by their expectations and goals. I was to achieve what they failed to achieve, be what they failed to be. I was to walk in their footsteps and finish their unfinished business. My parents were the first to set foot on American soil; hoping to succeed in this new society, they had set valuable goals for themselves – which unfortunately they failed to complete. And knowing that their desires were no longer achievable, they bestowed their past dreams to the next generation.

Did I first hate their burden blaming Someone for placing me into the heavy shackles of the past. I felt their goals, a mountain of failure, upon my shoulders. I was drowning deep in the ocean of my precursors – their dreams, their desires, a treacherous wavefront upon my chest. I was a vassal made to fulfill the dreams left behind. I was a culprit perished in the barren lands. But above all, I was blind.

My mother was burdened by my birth; her dreams, a shattered mirror, were no longer a reality. In order to nurse my toddler self, her desires were put aside, as she worked multiple jobs to support not only our new family, but the existing family consisting of my father and his siblings, due to the death of their mother months before my birth, and the abscondment of their father to flee financial issues. She had sacrificed her livelyhood and personal dreams for the family's posterity. She had forfeit her wishes to a foul hindrance, one whom abolished her hopeful dreams: me – my birth, an anchor upon her merchant barge.

Yet, numerous times have I waken in the midst of night to find a glaring beam beneath the door; its illuminating glow, penetrates my room through the confined entrance. It was my father finally home. He was never someone to talk to for he was always at work; he was never home for his restaurant never permitted; he was never present at my birthdays but cake was bought from his sweat and soul. And often would I not see his face for months due to our disarranged schedules. Had I hated him for his absences. But now do I love him for his sacrifices. He had trusted the next generation with his heart and soul, and his absences were solely to support his loved ones.

Had I not understand, beclouded by the mist of Why me’s and I cant’s, but now do I find their bestowment a gift. Slowly, have I grown to understand; their pain, their suffering were merely a token for my success. They have gambled their livelihood solely for my efforts; it is something simple I love you’s will never equate; their debt, I must attempt to repay – sole gratitude will never recuperate the wounds of a broken dream. Their wounds tears my eyes when I envision them. Their ideals yields a weight upon my chest. Their agony crumbles my heart like an unneeded paper. In the past, did I not understand their ways but now have I realized the blessing they bestowed upon me.

Therefore, I was granted their heritage and must fate drive me to abide by its path. Do I now understand the pain they have suffered and the sacrifices they have made. I was born into a family of high hopes and expectations – I was their withering flower. Have I grown to accept that role – to shadow my precursors hoping to shatter their traditional defeat; it is the role Someone gave. And He will never be blamed again for He will rid this blazing heat and treacherous terrain so that this flower will cease to wither but bloom in the autumn air.

xvi. where do you go when your house isn't home?

i ******* crawl out of my body, swim infinite miles of the ocean, stretch my neck to the skies, replace my head with the moon. i ******* yearn for your presence, try to break the mirror with my weak stare, can't go further, fitting room doesn't fit whatsoever, all the buttons escape from my ***** and hair falls like tiny dandelions in a rainstorm.
i grow potatoes in my mouth, when i speak i smell of my root, when i am on my period i talk about stomachache at dinner table, when i search for space my tummy is the balloons at pingkan's 8th birthday party which i couldn't bring home. blow the candles i forgot to make a wish for a moment the fate seems seamless, bright red lipstick, brown mascara, outfits i can't ever wear to school, or to be honest, not anywhere because when i try to walk, every step is a ******* hysterical cry, when i use my toes every cell in my body violently shakes.
my house isn't home. my house isn't home. my house isn't home. my house isn't home. my house isn't home how do you know that? how did you barge into my clichés? how dare you claim something that even i won't bring myself to think about?
i ******* crawl out of my body, not as soon as possible, i do it right now, right ******* now so i know the years i've spent trying to nourish the flesh i don't really own are worthless, the years i've devoted myself to my worldly lover are the ones that have been consuming my tiny soul, if you ask me now of course no one is satisfied, no one is satisfied until i don't want to call you mine anymore.
i ******* crawl out of my body.
in a desperate attempt to make the hideous pleasing to watch, i sell blindfolds on the street, i light the matches in the rain, i dream of dead grandmother and christmas feast. i turn into a cold statue, i left the tenderness for stupid microorganisms, my divorced bones blame me for everything i did not do. i used to do the right things now i just do nothing, it's ******* useless anyway, i can blink five thousand times and still believe that time is what the clocks and calendars say. (my grandmother was a buddhist.)
i ******* crawl out of my body. i don't want to experience this anymore, i am not into this kind of thing, i long for your presence, all i've got from this building is an infinite count of absences. my body is a building, it has no level, no room, no door, no window, no furniture. my body a giant concrete boring box, i do not even live there anymore, nobody lives there anymore, they are all gone to a poppy field in the middle of nowhere (actually somewhere, only that i am not invited). i ******* crawl out of my body, did that answer your question?
i ******* crawl. out. of. it.

Your absences felt like
A gun pulled to my chest
Knowingly that she's sleeping
By your side
Naked while your two bodies collide
And exchange heat I remain untouched.

Absence of nothing
Full of everything
Who I supposed to be
While I´m writing here

Absence of pain as a joy
Trading on ambiguity
Absence of a nonentity
Still a proper entity

Absence of darkness as a light
Darkness or absence insight
(Un)consciousness always fight
Nonexistence invites

Absence of existence as a non-existence
Unicorns don't exist
A square circle essence
Dangerous mental twist

Absence of unreality as a reality
Into an absolute nothingness
In any universe timeline
An insane tragedy

Absence of demolition as a building
Existence is not a negation of negatives
Feeling absolutely nothing
Sharing words as a sedative

Dinner table,
Bowls of light,
Stage fright, lilies,
No appetite,
Dark absences nibbling
Right through my eyes
Like black rabbits pulled
Out of Truman Show skies,
Provoking the question
From those sat up front –
Is this a trick you’re pulling -
Is this one of your stunts?
But no amount of smiling
Will do –
Nod all you like.
They’re onto you.

Christmas Eve,
Sister’s house,
Black eye,
Ulcerated mouth.
Divinely tickled-
By Miss World!
A pinecone and mistletoe
Christmas hurled
Down en suite toilets
Porcelain pink,
My face makes love
To the bathroom sink.

The most squalid Little Lord
In the county, me,
Summer blooms hold
No charms for me,
So I try to apply my
Favourite smile
And travel a few more
Country miles
To a chemist that doesn’t
Know my face.
I browse a bit
(Condoms, spectacles case)
Then I try to
Convince the pharmacist
That I need two
Bottles of
Gee’s Linctus.

The cruelest boyfriend
I ever had
Gives head to a toilet roll
And his fingerpads
Are bordello yellow
From greased nicotine,
This ******* in Primrose
Exhales smoke in a stream,
And I try to remember what
Buttercup said,
His baby’s breath whispers
Wilt in my head,
Something about purity
Something about loss
Something about cleanliness
Something about God
Something about something
That I should tick off as regrettable,
But one flower can make everything
So *******
Forgettable.

I would like to be a teacher
despite the fact that I never want to be a teacher.

All things could fall within my curriculum of wishful thinking and zero
fulfillment, of empty promises and unwritten letters and missing parents.

We all have absences within us, empty spaces where something should be
but never came, or left a long time ago.

This morning’s breakfast, self-love, memories of Disneyland, dead parents,
ex girlfriends and boyfriends, nights lost to blackouts.

We are all sewn together with voids, the missing parts which stitch
the rest of us together.

And I would tell my students—the young children, the angsty teens, the bitter old men—
that absence is always an infinity, an incalculable blank space of nothing.

To say that one person possesses more absence would be incorrect,
all you can say is that some infinities are bigger than other infinities,

But they are all limitless anyway. We all
wake up reluctantly on a Monday morning and feel that empty pit

Deep in the caves of our stomachs, growling softly or loudly
and announcing whatever it is we want most to fill us.

I would turn toward the chalkboard and bow my head and announce sadly
that we will always appreciate most that which is missing from us.

And admit that occasionally I go to bed early in the morning and dream of myself
as a teacup, slowly being filled up with the warm chai of lost love.

I wake up feeling not just sad but cold,
as if there should be a flowing, bubbling warmness within me which isn’t.

“You see class, nothing will teach you the truth quite like
contrast. You will never notice the cold more than when you forget your coat,

And you will never feel more tired than when you get up at 5am on a Monday morning
after the longest night of your life, with a full day of work and class and meetings ahead.”

Perhaps a young man who still has much left to lose will raise his hand one day
and ask, “What makes you so qualified to teach this class?”


And I will say that I am not especially qualified, but just as worthy
as anyone else.

I have walked north on Broadway, watching the shops around me get richer
and brighter, and feeling the emptiness of my bank account with every step.

I have stayed up late on Friday nights, doing nothing but sitting at my desk
and watching my phone out of the corner of my eye, waiting for it to buzz.

I have stood alone in a room full of people, watching smiles and kisses
and sadness and joy while feeling nothing but static.

I have opened up letters from universities and colleges and tasted
the combination of postal glue and bitter chocolate over and over again.

I have walked away from a woman I love, knowing that all the things I shared
with her every day will now never be within my reach.

I have watched the clock beside my bed reflect sunshine, then moonlight,
then sunshine again, all without ever closing my eyelids.

I have slapped my grumbling stomach after leaving the gym, hating myself
for my hunger and my appearance. I can never seem to take care of both.

I have sat down in front of a birthday cake, surrounded by people I love,
and begged my ****** muscles to do anything but frown.

I have held a rickety pocket knife against my forearm, wondering how
I ever felt like a normal person.

I have shouted I love you over the dead body of my father,
unwilling to leave until I received a reply.

And I have written a thousand poems, taken a million deep breaths,
waiting after every one to feel something shift inside me like a closing door.

I’m not interested in whose absence is bigger than whose,
I only care that we learn to see our emptiness in the people around us

And understand that pain is never an isolated incident,
but a universal language, which we all learn to speak whether we want to or not.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities, but they are all limitless
anyway. We are all endless blackness, surrounded by light.

To those men who are always behind us, though sometimes we may not see them.
To those men who are too busy flying fighter jets to teach their daughters to make paper planes.
To those sons who will point at every aeroplane that skims the horizon to proudly claim, “that’s my father!”.
To those women whose hearts will return wrapped in the tricolour and chipped aluminium; Who will place dented helmets beside faded polaroids of days gone by.
To those youth who will break solemn promises- “I’ll come back soon.”
To those families that will stare out of windows, refusing to draw down curtains as they hope against hope.
To those men who can truly say the sky is the limit.
To those men who fly above us yet are so rooted to the cause of their motherland.
Those brave hearts whose faces are lined with sweat and determination as they kiss the ground beneath their feet before they embrace the heavens for the last time.
To the men who take every sortie with a last salute.
To the white saris and navy-blue shirts stashed away and medals hung on rusted nails. To survival and martyrdom and the presence of absences. To commodores and flight lieutenants and wingmen. To parades and memoirs and sacrifices and soldiers in the sky.
The Eighth of October is for them.
To those men who are always behind us, though sometimes we may not see them.
To those men who are too busy flying fighter jets to teach their daughters to make paper planes.
To those sons who will point at every aeroplane that skims the horizon to proudly claim, “that’s my father!”.
To those women whose hearts will return wrapped in the tricolour and chipped aluminium; Who will place dented helmets beside faded polaroids of days gone by.
To those youth who will break solemn promises- “I’ll come back soon.”
To those families that will stare out of windows, refusing to draw down curtains as they hope against hope.
To those men who can truly say the sky is the limit.
To those men who fly above us yet are so rooted to the cause of their motherland.
Those brave hearts whose faces are lined with sweat and determination as they kiss the ground beneath their feet before they embrace the heavens for the last time.
To the men who take every sortie with a last salute.
To the white saris and navy-blue shirts stashed away and medals hung on rusted nails. To survival and martyrdom and the presence of absences. To commodores and flight lieutenants and wingmen. To parades and memoirs and sacrifices and soldiers in the sky.
The Eighth of October is for them.

Five times I went through the revolving door to be spat out in the same room over and over.

Once I was in the flooded maze, seeking the ramp I could see in the distance to escape, but I saw faces amongst the plants in the water.

Once I was on cliff, sitting, whilst the darkness was congregated in the gorge below.

I can no longer explain the sword in my hands or the giants I am to soon face.

All I know is Death draws the curtains in my room whilst sharpening his teeth, and I no longer know the man in the mirror.

I thought you were the exception
To my curse of sour apples

It didn't take me long
To notice a difference
The lack of affection
The absences

The sacred crimson
Of which we were bound
Meant nothing to you

You loathing brute!
You thief!

You came in like a phantom
And out like a March wind

Did you ever think about me?
About my love for you?
All these things I think of
As I think back on you...

Salty, bitter tears
To end sweetness
With another hateful word
All because of you...

She kisses the boys and girls
that pay the most attention.
The boys play with vapor
and her girls play with tension.
I wish I was the only one
that she will decide to touch
but I am who I am
and, in a way, that is too much.

Sawblade-sunflower petals
wrap around an earthy cushion,
and the humidity hangs in the air
as her beige body is crumpled
and I feel too sober, pushing.

Baby yellow falls apart,
in her hair the flower starts
to trickle onto sheet and pillow,
decorating the absences
that define how hollow
she and I have felt before --
******* like an endangered species
on the killing floor, I whisper once,
I whisper sweet, "Don't you wish
that we didn't meet?"

She kisses the boys and girls
that give the most attention.
I played with vapor
and she played with tension.

a certain morning stiffness
in your joints

you find your face
in the bathroom mirror
and wish you hadn't

the puzzled wisdom
    of middle age
wavers from your eyes
deepening wrinkles
   of many laughs
   many frowns

   how many more?

   nevermore ?!

the room becomes aflutter
with poesque ravens
the presence of absences
fills the void
your life is on the brink
of deconstructing itself
to the periphery of the universe
a discourse of silence
forever becoming ... becoming ...
what...?

   nevermind!

so

you close your eyes
   hard
for a minute or two

when you look again
you meet the stare
of a not-so-bad-looking
man in his best years
  
   graying sideburns
   receding hairline
   20 pounds too many
      BUT
   a firm decision
   to work them off
  
   still a bit sleepy
   yet determined
   to shave
      get dressed
      have breakfast
  
   and teach
   that wonderful seminar
   on 19th century poetry
   to eager graduate students

Was Set, created to establish God, or God, Set
Do we live, to justify death, or die, to exist
Is life filled with experiences, or is life the experience
Does our good, amplify bad, or our bad, the good
Darkness or light
Darkness, shadow, absence of light
Good, defines evil, or does evil make good
If black, define white, what then, makes grey
Does cold, give pleasure to warmth, or its absences
Which was first, which one exists?

A thin white dust of snow littered the concrete path like an overspill of Styrofoam *****. Summer had her hands buried deep into the lining of her coat pockets and her chin pressed tightly within her pashmina scarf. It was the first bite of wind she’d felt in a while. She had been holed up with her friends for several days and the concept of loneliness was already foreign to her, much in the same way as privacy. She could feel the cheap red wine rust in her veins as her body told her “too much” and in truth she was ready for the crackle of vinyl and the promise of fresh sheets and a shower. The week had been fun, she guessed, she’d certainly felt closer to her friends than ever before, even though they all went back for as far as it was worth remembering.  ‘She guessed’. She’d been guessing for a while now, living in absences with everything held at an emotionless distance – whether or not this was deliberate she could not decide.
It wasn’t a particularly long walk back to her house, enough to take the bus - but she guessed she wanted the walk. The cold air made her eyes glassy and occasionally she had to blink furiously to catch the water forming along her lids. The din of distant inner city traffic consumed the airwaves around her but the path that lay ahead of her was surrounded by parkland, and within eyeshot there was a lazy brook where children would often be seen playing, though they’d be at school at this time of day. She guessed. She wasn’t quite sure of the time, but she knew it was the 15th of February. She couldn’t always be sure of what year it was though, her head was often stuck back in the 1960’s, before she was even born.
Summer could feel the claustrophobia of youthfulness shedding from her every angle and with every insipid step she took, the world took on a more familiar feeling and she took her first real breath of air for days. From out of nowhere she felt overwhelmed at the breathless ease of the faint snowfall and the slate grey of the sky. The clench in her stomach – Summer often found herself weeping for no real reason, and she could never quite work out whether she would be weeping for beauty, or for sorrow…she guessed that there was some compromise between the two. All she knew is that she was very sorry when she reached her front door that her walk was over and that she must again disappear into the walls.
The heating had been off for almost an entire week now and Summer could hear the house groan into action as the radiators cracked back into life, and she felt much the same. The kettle jittered on the spot as the water steamed and bubbled welcomingly and soon the kitchen was greeted with the smell of tea. Summer retreated to her room upstairs. A wide room with white walls meant that it was often brighter than the world outside and it often appeared to unadjusted eyes to have a ghostly glow about it. Summer thumbed through her proud collection of second-hand LP records until she settled on listening through Pink Moon for what was now an uncountable time. “Saw it written and I saw it say, pink moon is on its way”. She let out an exhausted but contented smile and fell onto her bed. The sheets were cold from privation of use but the coolness on her cheek was welcome and she closed her eyes and imagined she was still outside on an effortless walk, with the sounds of Nick Drake overpowering that of the exhausts of one thousand cars.
After several moments of another world, she reluctantly sat back up and began to take off her clothes to get a little bit more comfortable. It felt good to get out of her clothes, she’d only meant to stay for one night so she had not been able to change her clothes for days and she’d appreciated the idea of clean underwear in a way she never considered worth noticing before. She unclasped her bra and felt it fall clumsily to the floor and just sat there for a moment, bare-breasted in the pearl white of the chilly room. She couldn’t help but feel like an illustration, of pastels or watercolours. Her mind was still a convoluted collage of the past few day’s events – the haze of alcohol and **** still occupied a small corner of her being, despite the cleansing walk and the wonderful clunk of a familiar guitar bouncing across her walls. Her ******* were hard from the cold so she threw on an extra large male t-shirt that fell to just below her upper thigh.
She slid off her skirt and underwear, which fell limp at her pale thin ankles. Looking at her thighs, she could still make out the small thumb-sized bruises scattered across them from the distant and removed *** she’d had at some point last week. At least she guessed, it could have happened back in the 60’s for all she knew. It felt as if the past week was not real, a familiar feeling. She was almost certain that man who had shared her bed did not really exist and her bruises contested her own existence. At least that’s how it felt.
She turned over the vinyl and remembering her tea, slid between the covers and warmed her hands against the steaming ceramic. The tea was perhaps the most wonderful and delicious thing she had ever tasted and she felt it nourish her metaphysically. In a way beyond words, she felt herself heal with the rush of warm past her lips and the sweetness on her tongue. The room was slowly warming as she skimmed her legs back and forth against the mattress in complete comfort. Once the last of her tea had been drunk, she let the empty mug rest on the bedside counter and almost immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.

“poetry choose you for us to sheaf through and find love among your words” (Pradip)

did you think that I forgot your message,
which is more than mere message, more a significant missive,
****** upon my shoulders, again, even more, a mission,
an owner’s responsibility that I choose to herein bare,
but a charge, too onerous, too awesome, to willingly bear

what skilled knowledge of this in my possess is narrow based,
more gained by loss or absence, or even conspicuous struggle,
than any vast success, thus, to be viewed with skepticism,
rather than any glory gained through a vanquisher’s scepter

more and better have essayed and assayed the
requisite sheafs that may give forth results useful to yourself,
this itinerant investigator’s ramblings are not to be deemed trustworthy or investable

that poetry hath chosen me, if correct, woe-betide me
this be more curse than blessing, for the secrecy of love
yields not its clear and present insights to my declining sight

the sheafs of which you speak so numerous
that a whole lifetime such engaged could not dent its
maidenhood and here do I both confess, here I do plead guilty
to trying and to failing, and in the confines of words,
honestly advance to all the proposition that I know nothing

to recognize and diagnose the symptoms almost too easy,
thus I designated myself foolishly as onlylovepoetry,
but recognition does not yield easy the cure of real cognition

nearing midnight and it is easier to pen than to sleep,
even a dreamless sleep, the great restorative,
make not the pen mightier than the wounds love inflicts;
both my scars and my many smooth, unused unpierced skin patches
speak only of the abscesses of true trials and
the too long absences of emotions that make
life unbearable, bearable and the happy exhaustion of near misses,
the try in try, try again

finding love in words a fool’s errand, though words offer us
seduction and definitions to our errant emotions, words
are just words and by definition, a hallmark of failure,
a precursor to cursing failings

only this I know, that to make love occur, do not hope to
stumble into it, or to find or mine its riches, for it requires of you,
both somber preparation and wild optimism,
and this contradiction controversy so inherently embedded,
will provoke more pain infusions and more poetry in
a human chain that came from the smithy new and yet, nearly broken

pay attention to thy surroundings and thy attitude and altitude
love is above ground though deep buried, the mystery scent
so faint it missed by most, myself a chief of mistaken mistook

meanwhile the pile of sheaves grows deeper and despairing

what I thought I knew I mistook and what I thought I felt,
well, let it suffice to say love can n’ere be found in thought
but lives in deed and actions and happy disbelief

put down the pen, gown thyself in coats of many riotous colors,
banish ‘never’ and ‘hope’ from thy lexicon, and begin with a smile always a smile as you walk the streets as if to say
open open says me, open sesame and let the
good works begin, for having found your captains of the muses,
your Calliope, your rosebud, lucky you,
you will need not write another word


11:37pm  January 14

When I think of how much I sleep
I want to lie.
When I think of how I hardly run,
I want to go back in time.
When I think of my absences at school
I want to cry.
When I think of walking to someone's house
I want to fly.

One day I'll be seen in code....
&....
you'll see me as the one....

I propose we take a vote...
Let us call this vote Democracy...
Majority rules all you smaller Minorities...
The perfect concept for all equality..
Peaceful slavery for those unlike we..
Unfortunately the Minorities are reproducing rapidly...


Some things you just cant control. ..

I'm a temptation....singing songs that satisfy....but lust is so tempting...ain't it love....I've seen you drift into pleasure...without me....

I feel like I don't even know what substance is
In my own substitution... replace me...
I'm chasing something I don't know...Love...

If God never gave me the spirit of fear.....What is it that makes me weak???
For I fell from grace long ago....
I'm following a star....traveling far....I'm so close to it...but I'm unworthy of its power...for My flesh is weak...and my spirit is weaker...for I keep losing to something that can only do what I command it to.... the visions have already been seen...but the journey may never commence....the internal eternity....that I fear will never end...who put this here....where did I find it...or is it prophecy...that I suffer from my own poison....with no cure...I wanna break what I Know to be perfection...because somethin's missing..and this high...is not the same level of enlightenment that A wise man once thought it'd be..

Looking for something brighter than tonight
At the mountain's peak I'll jump
Life is the perfect untold story
Through heavens eyes I'll see imperfections
The absences of everything but light
Spectrum, I see nothing but color....


What was life before a Christ?
Heard Jesus was born in summer
Is it really tax season already...
Oh I forgot the same struggle...
Now I just have more hope...
Even Christianity had a human sacrifice

I've died before, Life ain't new...


I'm so shallow looking for beauty ended up with a bunch of *******.

Baby I don't want that ketchup, that mustard you can keep that.. no condiments for this hotdog. Just a tall bottle tats soaking wet. I want that grape fruit that ocean spray... I'm the burger King I wanna it my way...Bermuda me with a landing strip...a lil peach fuzz leading to the trip...cuz I'm a dive in I'm going deep.. like 20,000 leagues inside of her sea...
Would you like to hear Honesty
Honesty, I was lying to myself
Through Honesty we are set free
Tell me how real Honesty is
I'll give Honesty nothing but love
But love give me honesty Please

She tells me tales of Ex's
Those seven evil Ex's I despise
Ex's are placed in past conversations
I'll Ex anybody that does otherwise..
I too have become an Ex
Now it's 8 of us Ex's

Where most souls find there sanctuary.....
In front of wells of Poison...
Let me drink this till death...
Juliet you were my only reason...
Let it run through my veins...
Done in the name of Love...

I am all ***** and pens
Deadly combinations form my unwanted sins
Got uncharted pain in my veins
Cause, I'm great at the game
Diabolical schemes Never tried to explain...
What happened to me I'm enchanted


The Jones...I mean I wanna be a cool J...nice clothes, fancy cars I wanna live the Rich way...but I only dream in color...my clothes borrowed from another...so I just sit back in jealousy...trying take the things I see..I hate you for you Jonesish ways...For all the things you did today...I'll never get the things you have... so in my anger I'll sit back and laugh...while I sabotage your good time..while I hate on that which ain't mine...I know you do the same things too...Its envy that's just what ****** do.... #sevendeadlysins #

I feel so terrible.....yet so alive...
There's no feelings in goodbyes...
Just thoughts of lies.... that may have been truths....but not in your eyes...  


baby it's cold outside
but I've been awaiting you.
may we freeze apart..
or melt ice together...
because the fire we create..
burns in any weather...


We were meant to light the world..but a blizzard came between us...and if we don't press on..we can't save the souls that need us...don't let fire go out...don't let our souls burn cold...I know I put snow on the ground...but together we can clear the roads...let us burn in each others arms...then freeze at the feet of snow...

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

How can principals say,
"It's important that you are in school,"
when they give us numerous half-days and excuses to stay out of school?

The world is fast and reckless
Like a stampede of beasts and
Teenage ***.

We traded smog
For the roar of the city and
I am then reminded of my mobile life
Before atrophy set like plaster
In my bones.

Similarly, I lived above a bar,
And the roar of the crowds
Was compensated for
By the free drinks I would receive
To placate me,
To deafen me.

I remember heading out to the office
Already half-cut
Even before the banks had opened.

I remember everybody walking,
Not because the roads were too crammed,
But because it was so.

It was so, it was so,
And now that excuse is just not good enough
Anymore.

Neither am I.

I still walk the streets
And stop by outside windows.
It takes me a little longer these days
To read the signs and labels,
The mating rituals of the merchants;
Buy me, buy me, buy me!

They remind me of the girls I see these days,
The ones who live in semi-agony,
Lactic acid in their muscles and
A lack of sugar in their blood.

The way they walk so consciously nonchalant,
Impostered hair dragging in the wind,
Just living for the double takes
As they pass the men in the streets.

Nobody courts anymore.
Hands are held far too easily
And intimacy seems to me to have become
Just another commodity.

I remember my sweetheart.
The years we lived in absences,
Sleeping between lies and compromises
And lying awake at night,
Our bodies spent as our cheeks sunk into our pillows.
Our eyes staring past the darkness of the room
And beyond to something, somewhere,
Far from where we found our lives had laid.

I remember her so well, my dear coffee bean.
How desperate the years were
When we were apart,
Living out our lives and
Exchanging platitudes for company
In our loveless marriages.

I remember how bitterly disappointed I was,
To be bounded to the forever decreasing circles
I had to move within each day.
And I remember, so exquisitely remember,
The day I broke from them.

And we met.
We met over letters,
Recited by our eyes and written by the hands
Of our desires. Oh, the saliva of the stamp
Bringing us to a closeness
That was unbounded by geography.

These days,
Nobody understands the thrill of the postbox
And the dependent trust
You had to invest into the postman.

Nobody.

The welcome mat is now nothing
But a place to wipe the **** from your shoes
And to kick the bills away
From your footfalls.

It was once a pigeon hole,
An inbox and a faceless meeting point
For all of your dearest allies.

How I recall the excitement of the morning,
My sleep thinned to prepare for the slap of papers
And the return of my silent darling’s words.

Yes, today that has all gone
And so has she.

How I miss you, my dear
And the snort of your laughter.
How I miss counting out your imperfections;
Each another reason to love you
And to love you more.

Now that you are gone my darling,
My life is little more than an emptied school
In the endless weeks of summer.

I lie in wait, coffee bean,
For each time you appear, a phantasm
In my day. I wait for those special moments
Where I assume you will be sitting there,
Ageing with irrefutable brilliance
In the chair you so stubbornly frequented
Every day of our retirement.

I’ll take the hit that comes with it.
I’ll accept the come-down
When I enter the room
And realise
That you are even less than a ghost,

A passing thought
That decays instantly in the air.

And the air darling,
The air is filled with noise in these streets.
Do you remember when you and I would stop
And listen to the busker by the bridge?

I do.

I think he is gone too now,
Though sometimes I still hear his music
As I pass above the river.

Now, I live on in near-silence.
It has been weeks since I last spoke to somebody
Who did not rush me through my sentences.
And so I’m learning the patterns of today
And instead bow my sad head
And just pay up for my goods.

I avoid home mostly.
It is okay once I am inside it,
But it is the returning that I am afraid of.

So I mostly walk the streets,
The same route each day,
Until darkness or hunger delivers me,
Confused at my door.

I stumble lethargically to the television set,
The one we bought together for our first apartment,
Do you remember?

I turn it on quickly to **** the breathless silence.

Now, whenever I do get to talk to somebody,
I feel my eyes blur to tears
For some inexplicable reason.
Oh! The ache in my guts

How often I must swallow panic
And all of those pills that do not work.
Instead they just fog my mind
And distort all of the anchors
And features in my life.

Even the television will shout at me.
Everything I watch is an advert,
And the news is getting uglier with each day.
Sometimes I will turn on the radio,
But music isn’t music anymore.

And so I’ve learnt to read above
The din of gameshows and the gunshots
From dramas full of anger and devoid
Of love.

I’ve learnt to read again,
As we did together in the warmth
Of the crackles that interceded
The crooners that used to play through the grooves
That my life is once again set between.

At times I feel I am the only reader left in the world.
That all authors write for myself,
Vying for my attentions.

Nobody reads anymore.

Though the depravity between us
Made our love all the more sublime,
I must admit I regret those absent, wasted years.

How wonderful it would be now,
To see your features mixed with mine
And hidden behind the faces of our children.

I would give all that I am,
Which admittedly is not much anymore,
To be able to see the pigments in your eyes
Again, in whichever form they took.

How I would kiss our daughter’s hands
If they resembled your’s.

How I would weep into the shoulders of our son,
If he resembled your heart.

And so now my darling,
I wander these thoughtless paths like a machine.
And though I look out at the opulence
Of the city streets, I am instead
Just walking through a memory,
Or some old doctored flicker show,
Where I cut out all of the ugliness
And leave just us.

Being The Shortest Day


’Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
  The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
  Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
    The worlds whole sap is sunke:
The generall balme th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with mee, who am their Epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
  For I am every dead thing,
  In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
    For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse:
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;
  I, by loves limbecke, am the grave
  Of all, that’s nothing.  Oft a flood
    Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two Chaosses, when we did show
Care to ought else; and often absences
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown;
  Were I a man, that I were one,
  I needs must know; I should preferre,
    If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne
  At this time to the Goat is runne
  To fetch new lust, and give it you,
    Enjoy your summer all;
Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall,
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this
Bothe the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.

The screen is a madhouse
of body-building, ego-boosting,
and bad gig recordings.

I see her bronzing in the beach,
applying lotion and laughing
with a new friend.

I'm still stuck in the snow,
watching her skirt in the breeze.
I chain coffee in the morning

to counter sobriety,
to show that I know her more
than just by the light of the moon.

In sunglasses, we'll meet somewhere
neutral; an escape route to run
if the patient becomes lunatic again.

She'll administer the pill
from her pockets to ensure I'll flat-line
through her absences,

and then resurrect when she's lost her
appetite. Far away from this
selfish depression, I dream

of us painting a wall. Nothing dies
when it is made into memory;
nothing lives without your early morning call.

This is not a poem.
This is my dedication to a man who touched my soul and gave me the gift of the most valuable knowlege I have ever gained in school.
I do not know how to explain Mr. Fowler in a paragraph and I feel as though any representation of him in just one small paragraph would be inadequate.  However I will do my best to share with you how he impacted my life my ninth grade year.  Ninth grade is a major transition year for everyone.  New people, new school, and still a little bit of that middle school juvenescence.  I was no exception to such awkwardness (as much as I'd like to believe I was) and Mr. Fowler inspired me even on the first day.  He had a passion for biology and even more than that he had a passion for dispensing his knowledge (as well as his own meandering thoughts) to his students.  He expressed his love for his work to us often; mostly just sprinkling it over his enthusiasm for a lab or whatever we were doing that day.  I may not have had an ideally left-brain thought process as you would wish for an honor biology student and yes I did struggle but Mr. Fowler would not have ever left me behind.  However he did not only touch my life academically.  For three weeks at the beginning of my second semester in high school I was absent due to depression, cutting, and bulimia.  My mind was at war with me and I told my parents I needed help.  They checked me into a rehabilitation center for the next three weeks. While out of school North Springs was not easy to get in touch with. In fact they didn't even answer my mothers calls to get my work until I was finishing the program and coming into school the next day.  Due to my school's lack of organization and incompetence I was three weeks behind and kept falling further and further.  I was supposed to be put on a plan by my school to make my recovery less stressful and to help me catch up.  That did not happen either.  My school didn't even count my absences excused despite the hospital notes… Two months passed and I was even more behind and growing more fearful that I would have to repeat second semester until I went to Coach Cushman and Mr. Fowler.  Mr. Fowler offered me support and I will never ever forget how kind he was too me.  He told me we all have health problems but that doesn't mean we can't move forward it just takes a little confidence and work.  He let me come talk to me whenever and gave me passes to stay after class.  He has a beautiful mind and a caring heart, and although it was severely hard for me to reach the level of understanding of the material that I had missed not only in biology but in every other subject I passed.  I cannot express my gratitude towards him for I may not be a tenth grader this year without his help and patience.  My condolences go to his family as well as the family he has with the North Springs staff.  I would also like to say that though Mr. Fowler may not be with us in a physical realm he is still here with us in spirit and one of the many lessons I believe should be taken away from his time with us is that you should love your work.  If you do not live for what you do, you are simply doing the wrong thing.

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
     Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
         The sun is spent, and now his flasks
         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
             The world's whole sap is sunk;
     The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
     Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
     Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
     Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

   Study me then, you who shall lovers be
   At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
       For I am every dead thing,
       In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
           For his art did express
   A quintessence even from nothingness,
   From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
   He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
   Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

   All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
   Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
       I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
       Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
           Have we two wept, and so
   Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
   To be two chaoses, when we did show
   Care to aught else; and often absences
   Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

   But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
   Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
       Were I a man, that I were one
       I needs must know; I should prefer,
           If I were any beast,
   Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
   And love; all, all some properties invest;
   If I an ordinary nothing were,
   As shadow, a light and body must be here.

   But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
   You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
       At this time to the Goat is run
       To fetch new lust, and give it you,
           Enjoy your summer all;
   Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
   Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
   This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
   Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

It was the winter my mother discovered her identical twin sister was dying. It was a season of falling into knowledge of another's body failing; the body you were born with. All that had been sculpted in a body was slowly being chipped away at day by day by day. It was a season of maybes. Maybe she tasted Ohio snow instead of morphine. Maybe behind her eyes lies another world no one has access to. Maybe she is already gone and what remains is pantomime of living. Maybe she will die before Christmas.

It was the winter I saw my mother touch someone on a regular basis. She smoothes and strokes her sister's arms as if they were soft sheets. Through sunset in the eyes to moonlight in her hands, she does this. Maybe she even whispers "taste the snow". How literal we take our lives when they are taking us on our final journey. Where do we receive direction on what to do. We don't. We go on nerve endings and will power and love we contain in the corner waiting for moments like these.

These are contained, constrained paragraphs - no combustibles here. Precise and to the point. What snakes beyond the lines that are laid out? That is the real saga. It is winter and there are a city of birds outside the window. They flock when my sister-in-law arrives with her bread crumbs. This is a parenthetical detail to the main narrative. But surrounded by family and hospice workers. Women brush their hair, people buy tickets to movies, fill their cars with gas. She does nothing but walk towards herself. Sometimes slower than before. This is her task. The dark wing she flies under and the walking, walking, walking, walking. No cold ash in the mouth here. Yes, Ohio snow and the scent of flowers in the room.

It is morning and she lies in her bed. It is afternoon and she lies in her bed. It is evening and she lies in her bed. Some say "resting" but I prefer ruminating in a roomful of memories. You are thinking that death is delicate, soft and slow and nothing dangerous about it at all once you have decided it is the road you will meet yourself on. This is no abstraction for you nor art one must be taught. Instinctual, the I in you meets it full faced. The moon glows from the bulb in the ceiling, silver speckled stucco are the stars you peer at. You do not question it. A thousand windows ago were birds water rock sand desert wind. Now there is your own pale reflection where once there was the world forever, I shall not entirely be emptied of beauties, the gift of your small breath, the drenched grass, smell of your sleep, lilies, lilies ...planetary wanderings through the black amnesia of Heaven. You touch still remember still feel still. Ambivalence rests in your red needle slammed arms. But there is beauty in blood too. The pulsing, veins and rivers of it. The deep underground river you sleep in. You there on your back eyes to the moon lit room, not a relic but a woman avoiding death's lip to her ear, the shadows on a face, the abyss of absences. The moon mingles with the image of a woman warm and flushed with life and history and future.

My aunt remembers names lucidly. The keeping of names is sacred. Before naming things and people was wind stone snow.

How to explain there are the perpetually open graves. One need not give oneself over to death. Fluid in the brain circling like liquid around a planet need not destroy you. Your bones might turn to tin but it still does not claim you. Creaking when you breathe means you still breathe. Yours is not the stone face of the woman who does not feel. The mirrors may seem to fail you, but you face them anyway. You live now in a ponderous house, with strangers, family, friends, co-workers flooding in. "Where am I"? you ask. In the citadel of love.

In the hard and cold city
There were no
Two a.m. train whistles…
Sometimes
Window rattling hip-hop woofers…
The occasional
Tequila soaked domestic dispute… and the like…
Leaving me now
Laying in the darkened silence feeling
Vintage…
Imaginary whispers of Brook Benton
“…feel like it’s rainin all ova the world”
Subliminal theme music
Setting the ambiance for
Trying to think of something
Not cliché to say about the
Two a.m. train whistle in the distance...
Cuz I still
Often wake to the
Absences of
Warbling sirens of high speed chases … and
Fusion of passing dialects beneath my window
That I never really heard…until I didn’t hear them …
Replaced with
Fat plops
Of nocturnal rain drops…
Far away clack-a-lack of iron wheel on rail…
Silence…
...and that lonely
Two a.m. train whistle in the distance…

The world is fast and reckless
like a stampede of beasts and
teenage ***.

It constantly reminds me
of my once mobile life,
before atrophy set like plaster
in my bones.

Everyone used to walk
to where they needed to be,
not because the roads were congested,
but because it was so.
It seems that excuse is just not good enough
anymore.

At times I think:
neither am I.

I still walk the streets
and browse the shop-fronts.
It takes me a little longer these days
to read the signs and labels,
the easy mating calls of the merchants
standing under bigger names
and brighter lights.

Nobody courts anymore.
Hands are held far too easily
and intimacy seems to have become
yet another commodity.

I remember my sweetheart
and the years we lived in absences,
sleeping with a lie
in a life of compromise.
Our eyes stared past the darkness of the room,
beyond to something, somewhere,
far from where we found our lives to be.

I remember her well
amongst the ruins of my years.
How desperate were the days
before we met,
exchanging platitudes for company
in our first loveless marriages.

How bitter I was,
bound within ever decreasing circles
of routine and passionless chains.
I exquisitely recall the day
I finally broke from them.

You and I
met over letters,
our eyes scanning and reciting
each other's loneliness
and fear of never finding a place.
The saliva of the stamp
brought us to a closeness
unbounded by geography.

These days,
nobody understands the thrill of a postbox
and the welcome mat
has become nothing more
than a place to wipe the **** from your shoes,
as the day nurse comes to visit,
kicking pizza leaflets
to the edges of the hallway.

There was excitement in the morning,
sleep thinned to prepare
for that slap of paper
and rattle of metal.

Presently my life feels little more
than an emptied school
in the endless weeks of summer;
a sugar paper lantern
left to bleach in the sun.

I lie in wait,
for the times you appear - a phantasm
in my day. A moment reserved
with the assumption you will be sitting there,
ageing with irrefutable brilliance,
in the chair you stubbornly frequented
ever since our retirement.

I’ll take the hit that comes with it.
I’ll accept the come-down
when I enter the room
and you are not there,
if it permits me a moment of belonging.

The air is cancerous
with the noises of the streets.
We used to stop and listen
to the busker by the bridge,
always pleading upon bended knee
for someone to validate his melody
and make his callouses worthwhile.

Now, I live on in near-silence.
It has been weeks since I spoke to someone
who did not rush me through my sentences.
I am trying to learn the patterns of today,
a way to bow my sad head
and pay up for my goods
in the blink of an eye,
in a way to defy that I am old and slow.

I avoid home mostly
and instead, I walk through
the same route each day,
hoping for a friend
or else never to be noticed.
Hunger will eventually deliver me,
confused at our door.

I turn the television on quickly
to **** the silence that forms
in the spaces you would have spoken in.

On the rare occasions
that I talk to someone,
my eyes blur with inexplicable tears,
a kind of tension grips me,
as if I have missed the last step on the stairs.

I swallow panic
like all of those pills that never work,
instead fogging my mind,
distorting all anchors
to a meaningful life.

The television shouts at me
across the room, patronising like
the cold-callers and politicians.
Everything seems to be an advert
and the news is getting uglier.
Sometimes I turn on the radio,
to give my eyes a rest,
but music isn’t music anymore.

We  never wasted our moments on kids,
but I have grown soft in old age,
and perhaps I would like
to have the comfort of your features
blurred with mine, bestowed upon
our trial-and-error attempt at a legacy.

The money will dry up.
I have started smoking again.
Though I still smoke on the doorstep,
because I know you never liked the smell.
These are just the thoughts of an old man,
some doctored flicker show
Where I can cut out all of the ugliness,
and leave just us.

standing the foot’s placement,
standing firm upon ground –
inner part of the firmament.
lasting two days, feet free’d in
levitating affects. mind, the
utter blank canvas. color
me complacent, color me adjacent,
color me a complete loss. irreparable.
two feet in place of a once four.
foundation, strength to build tall
some structure of love for my
blonde-hair’d beauty of the Midwest.
saw in ‘er somethin’, more nothin’
than anything. and this foundation’s
anchor stripped. two feet in place
of once four. irreconcilable, color me
a complete loss wanting all the
little honies, in the raw. healthier
that way, what with the better part
wanting no part. wise men, the one’s
seekin’ their own wisdom. their words
are ‘high-holy’, their ears catching err
syllables. feign deaf if their syllables
are not the ones being annunciated.
pushing past yesterday,
hoping this force can turn perpetual
motion, to the county line. away from
prying eyes with hundred reasons
to ****. don’t stop till the cops come
in, and don’t stop till the cops come
in.
–if you’re Jesus Christ, man,
  i’ll be the ******* anti-Christ.
then coffee nulling images of shotgun
splatter. trying to rise. blasting now to
obviate noise of the morning coming,
–came here looking to be a pastor.
  kinda fell off the deep end since.
right, right.
–zombies back into the picture.
  better by the side.
back into the picture with life, with love,
with an eighteen car garage. lonesome,
something like that. to be awake when
the sun rises again. rising to explain a
hipster’s crystal sky. the eyes never
lye, don’t forget what’s been done.
don’t defend the trailing fallacies or
absences. and we’ve become un-
welcome, become destined, being
unfriend’d. but even these cats may
look at a King, though they’re in
some disgusting race to the end.
cops comin’ in, cops ******’ on
everything adjoin’d the scene. truly,
they’re some different form of hipster.
hip sir?  nah, sir.  nothin’ at all, and
don’t get got. smash those erry day
low prices with a strange fascination
for fascism. play it, play from the
******* heart, play to tear the *******
sky apart. to set out in tearing to destroy
the welfare ghettos. true Americana,
this welfare culture. with powder’d
nose and quivering lungs. reflections in
the pupil, a vain mirror for the souls
of others. a feel of miles, a feel of being
lost as its own adventure. nothing more than
a kid from Califax, a kid pushing onlys,
a kid smoking Marlboros to cure
hangovers, a kid with enough life for
years worth of days.

What My Heart Knows

There are many questions but my heart knows...
While I was walking I stopped for a while
And thought of the things I don’t have in life
But I suddenly realized I have you and I feel complete

There are many questions but my heart knows...
Sometimes the love we are looking for
Is right in front of us-
Too close for the eyes to see
Only close enough for the heart to feel

There are many questions but my heart knows...
True love doesn’t have happy endings
Because if it’s true love
It would be never ending

There are many questions but my heart knows...
Love has its time, seasons and own reasons!
You can’t ask it to stay
You can only embrace it as it comes
And be glad, for a moment in your life it was yours

There are many questions but my heart knows
The tears shed over the heartbreak are the words left unsaid
And the deeds left undone
For absences does love like wind fuels a flame
It extinguishes the weak and feeds a blaze

There are many questions but my heart knows
The difficulty is not dying for love,
But finding a love worth dying for.
Much harder...
Finding that love worth living for

There are many questions but my heart knows
You can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see
You can block your ears to the things you don’t want to hear,
But never could you close your heart to the things you feel

There are many questions but my heart knows
Never say goodbye when you still want to try
Never give up when you still feel you can take it
Never say you don’t love a person if you can’t let go

There are many questions but my heart says
Don’t ask the sun to keep shining on you,
It can’t, the clouds exist
Don’t ask the leaves not to fall
It can’t, the wind exists
Don’t ask me to stop loving you
I can’t, you exist...

                                                      -Vas Bismark

i. How the weathermen can predict happiness. Especially my mother's. Especially Swiss weathermen.
ii. I am glad that winter' is here, for finding warmth in the itch of wool, hat around ears, socks over knees.
iii. I am trapped in between walls and other people's walls and my bookcases and their bookends that may not ever end but can look like ends and ends and no no ends to the layers built in brick, all boxed in beyond this building. And my words are trapped in my mouth. They escaped from my mind to my mouth and now I don't trust them on my tongue.
iv. The strangeness of Roman numerals and the study of such numerals.
v. Is there a word for the study of numerals, specifically those of the Romans? There must be, as there is one for the act of eating whilst lying down, a fear of having fears, and the delusion that one is a cat.
vi. My wrists. No watch.
vii. Watch out for what you must keep a hold on, but know there are some things you need to just L.E.T.G.O.
viii. Morse code, S.O.Ss', plurals on top of plurals, mnemonics, anagrams, one blink for yes, lasts longer for no.
ix. Photoraph of my cousin on the day I found out she was going to die and we are kissing at the camera.
x. X for the kiss I need from the right one, or for the answer, and something telling me I got it wrong.
xi. Thinking is counter-intuitive when I'm thinking too much of absences. Silences. My thoughts don't know where to go and neither do my eyes and I can't look up because the photograph will look back down.
xii. Look at yourself. Steps: reflection; dissection; cut. it. out.
xiii. I cried harder than I have ever cried since I can remember a while ago and it's wasn't even a Wednesday or a Tuesday then, and those are my crying days.
xiv. When I get touched, I go back in time, sometimes.
xv. Transformations.
xvi. Condensation. Where do clouds come from? There are things we see everyday and we say we know exist with not a clue about how they work. How does a ball find its bearings? Where did the train begin to lay down its tracks?
xvii. Questions. Questions. Quote: Indecisions and revisions. Unquote: the more you cut it up, the more divisions.
xviii. How many parts am I divided into now? How many incisions? I can't keep count.
xix. The sun sets early in winter and the comfort of darkness is something you can count on. It stays longer, and you can count on that too.
**. Kiss kiss, one for me and one for you.
xxi. This doesn't count.

The absence resonated pure and true
the way it swept over you
distance was a state of mind
miles were merely lines
sketched across a map, tracing directions from you to me
ink now filling the gaps were we used to be
lines non-discriminantly cutting towns in half
as we chart and graph
every possible angle to reunite
bicker and fight
over the most plausible neutral ground
eyes feverishly searching a map, with no home found
the absence is my companion, the only constant that remains
fidgeting hands writing your name
again and again
until the ink from this pen
becomes strewn across the lines of latitude and longitude
that originally created the thoughts of you
your hands slowly fade from my memory, the empty sheets engulfing me seem to take your place night after night
the absence turns out the lights
forces these wandering eyes to rest once more
perhaps time was our deficiency, unrelenting the clock runs without pause
as we pick apart the flaws
that chip away at the building blocks of a life's base
I only feel the shortages and absences when I struggle to recall your face
your voice now just an echo, drowned out by the daily clamor
the incessant ticking of a timepiece only silenced with the hammer
breaking the reminders that your lack of presence eats away at me over time
I sit silently in the confines of my own mind
tracing and erasing lines
all leading back to a memory of your face
the absence merely resonates within me, echoing in the empty space...

Sometimes, You don't have light
Where light should be, Its gone
Only Dark remains

But, When this happens, Make your own light.
Fill That Absence
Turn on the lights

i don't want to read your curious looks
your casual tones, or anything they hint of
i did that once, and look where it got me

i don't want to read your eyes
or the crinkles that come with them
forced happiness hurts both ends, you know

i don't want to read your sighs
castoff glances, held breaths
waiting for something neither of us can place

i don't want to read your anger
the clenching of fists and jaws and hearts
interfering only backfires on me

i don't want to read your absences
how you don't seem to care until you're back
but i always do

i don't want to read your glares
frustration through avoidance, that's what you do
this game's too foolish for me

i don't want to read your heart
it's not written in a language i'd understand
and such is for the better

i don't want to read your scars
i might remember who caused them
and wonder why that who still exists

i don't want to read your memories
they're not the same as mine
maybe they never were

His dead wife used to spit. He tells me this on a hot July day on his porch. “Yeah, a whole fifteen feet,” he boasts. He’ll laugh, but I am noticing his large golden cat with her eyes half closed, dreaming in the summer heat behind the open screened windows of his old house.

He collects newspapers, and they lay in yellowed stacks that I can see beyond his open door within the stillness, still ******* with thick cord. Some of them rustle lightly at the corners, swaying up and down as his electric fan rotates this way and that. I momentarily question how fragile they’ve become with age against the hum of blown summer air, but his slow almost-southern-drawl takes me back in and I shield my eyes from the sun with my arm, keys in my left hand, sweat at the back of my neck.

The roof and trees have offered limited shade, and I’ve leaned against the side of the concrete steps to feel the coolness of the bricks against my knee. I’ve meant to go for an hour now, but he keeps me here with a, “Hey, y’know—” and another story will follow.

About his son sometimes, who he always says is also his best friend. I’ve never met him. He’s like a ghost of someone I think I could know but he remains unnamed and I have never questioned it. He’ll continue on —how he wants a new dog but he doesn’t know how his tired self would keep up with a little pup, and his fat old cat —oh, could I feed her this Friday and Saturday? “I might go out and see my son.”

I say that I will with a small pang of jealousy. She curls around my legs in her eagerness, unaware of her master’s weekend absences, purring at her first few bites of small, orange fish-shaped kibble.

When he is tired and doesn’t feel like driving he’ll take the city bus out for his errands and call me with his “cell-you-lar” to see if I can pick him up. “If it’s no trouble,” he says. It isn’t. I’ve taken him home on several other occasions.

His thank yous are quiet, but I feel them anyway. He is nothing like my father but some part of me hopes that when he looks at me he is seeing his son just as much as I am seeing all the years of neglect and false hope all wrapped up in this lonely man.

I guess it's
Been four years now
She turned up here homeless
She was old
Even then
Those used teats
The grey on her jowl
Lonely. So loving.
She's followed me
Like my shadow
Ever since
And don't believe
A dog can't smile
In my absences
She'll sit by the door
Until I come back
I'm 60 now.
Just had a birthday.
And this black Labrador
Beauty gave me the honor
Of crawling up next
To me as I went to sleep
She rarely has done before.
And it made me wonder
How I want to die before her
I don't think I could stand
Losing her
But thought
Of what would happen
To her
If I went before
And this isn't poetry
It's a love story
About two lonely orphans
Who found someone
Who loves them more
Than life itself
And how
Much love
Can mean

You constantly fight off these words,
Like it's something on,
Your beauty is as deep as your cuts,
If unmarked it couldn't prove more,
Nothing could duplicate the necessities that pull me to you,
Still, sprint, drag: My actions are clear,
I Move,

Tomorrow starts the same but I count the days,
I'll litter my memory so I don't have to miss you,
Please define what I can't seem to find,
And let anxiety wade and absences fade,
Bear me with your threats so I can feel,
But omit my pain like you omit your happiness,
I Trust,

Maybe I'll sink into you as lovers often do,
And re-create your thoughts if you are so bold,
It could only mean the future that I want, so bold,
If emotions contradict, then it won't unfold,
My lonliness argues as you speak the truth,
No need for conviction and desperation,
I Create.