When you kiss him,
You taste Blistex.
A million drops of envy
Glistening in the summer light.
You taste his cigarettes
And girls in cotton,
Polka-spotted dresses.
You taste the fractured spine
And shattered mirror
In his skull.
You taste Incubus
And Brand New;
Music you aren’t into
But for a while,
Pretended to be.
You taste his torment,
Years of the abuse
He suffered
At the hand of the infamous innocence-taker.
The brown, caramelized
Hand of fate
Reaching down to wring the neck of justice
And all that is right.
You taste the hypocrisy;
How he tells you that he loves you
And then takes photos of another girl
In her bra.
You taste David Fincher.
Fight Club, Zodiac,
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,
All coming to a head
To come and strangle you.
When you kiss him,
The fairy tales are gone.
All that’s left…
Is the taste of Blistex.

black crow bird

pecks poet’s lip.


cold sore

Beautiful brown eyes
The kind you fall into
The ones you get lost in
And realize you never want to escape from

Those dark lashes
Pulling you in
Luring closer to the eyes
Until nothing else exists

Eyes crowned by
Jet brows
Exquisite curve here
Complimentary arch there

Light, but deceivingly dark
Your skin's warm glow
Freckles
Abound.

Down an elegant nose
Dividing perfect from perfection

And here is that smile
That brightens my day
Effortlessly
Two beautiful rows
Beaming white sunshine
Back into my world

Inbetween
A subtle pink dart
That playful tongue

Silk
Soft
Lips
Slicked in Blistex

All framed
In ***** blond hair
I love it tousled.

01:39 on a Wednesday and I realised no, it's not like the way water effortlessly flows down the window shield just to get swept away by the wiper

my love isn't elegant, and there's no point in me pretending to reshape it; think a hurricane, a tsunami, a natural disaster; think beds collapsed under the weight of too much love, think lips so raw blistex wouldn't stand a chance to heal them, think new memories being made everyday so that eventually you stop living in the past because your brain tells you this is it - this is what it was and what it will be [even if just for an hour]

put into context a shade of red somewhere between maroon and magenta and then throw it on a white canvas, see how beautiful it becomes only when it encompasses everything, when it becomes one with that paper holding it up; do not fear my love, please; let me spread around and let me be the one to give you colour, let the bleak melt away

don't let your mind wander to tape because i won't tape any holes I see or scars I run across; I'm not a doctor and never learned to be one

BUT, I will help: I'll be there with your favourite beer, there with neosporin in handy just because I've learned a little sting in the beginning is worth a lifetime of infection, standing there in your favourite shirt and purposefully letting you see that height is just a number and bruises are just colours of memories once lived

01:40 and I think I realised that somewhere in between being a hopeless romantic and being numb I've lost myself, bits scattered in blankets and sheets long laundered after me; I've realised that I don't know what I can and can't give, and I've realised neither does he

here it is: think. think the earth and the moon. think gravitational pull and how the moon is pulled back to the earth if for nothing else because there's some kind of connection it can't control. now think us, and tell me: is it not we're the Galaxy?

flame to the woods in the back
Gorilla glue held us closer when weather would make our lips crack
No blistex
No fear
If being law abiding was cool we’d be the lamest people here
But as the time steers
So did my tears
My pain was ignored
Later you would walk out my door
Continued pursuit that’s what the archer would do
Now your running in circles
Searching for someone’s love that has nothing to do with you

in white

a mirrored door

all tidy in lockdown

and though it was bought expensive

placed inside it is lost to me now

so use one of the others in the morning

and throughout the day

felt something amiss as we banged into fatigue and slept one hundred years

crusty lipped we search for blistex

then

traditionally use the vaseline

Some days smell like years
like the dinge of sprung sheetrock
when the rain came in
the cricket loose against the chimney
and the attic floorboards
expand with the frosts
of every winter spent in this house
insulated with cardboard and crates
ransacked from the floorplan
and catalogued renderings

And some days smell like years
like the blistex on your lips
when the rain came in
and we kissed this tired old place ours
and the attic floorboards
velvet pine underfoot
whispered tall rooms in this house
and the stuccoed walls spoke
of a lost craft revived
in your freshly washed hair

I can smell in your eyes
the brine of a ceiling
when once we dreamed
beyond the rafters
and collar ties
beyond the shingles
and the familiar maintenance
of our lives