This is a bookmark from your life
a bookmark in mine
a piece of paper
briefly stopping time
bringing our together our stories
or else maybe a thorn
burying itself
within my heart
' Felicity', your name
means joy but can you bring me any
did you even know
he would give it to me
the glitter, single yellow feather
carefree yet placed calculatedly
upon the red background
red as your distant country's flag
I forget how old you must be now
six, I presume
you've not yet started to ask
about his life yet prior to you, your sister
& your mother
& why should you
my moon faced stranger
all fortune cookies & rice,
straddling two worlds
from birth, a similarity
that in any other life
would make me want to call you
' sister' & forgive everything
Your birth, he
did not deserve, not being a loving
man, as you will find out
once you've grown
out of being a toy
& start to rearrange
the furniture of boundaries
if you should ever find out
about us, my mother & me
& what he did
that will be the time to see
if your heart's worth loving
if so, just call me
I'm leaving you my number
in my mind

It's common knowledge that after getting a phone number,
one must wait three whole days before giving a call,
to make sure the interaction remains calculatedly casual,
as opposed to needy or uninterested,
which is complete cupid ****!
It's appalling that one's intense desire to contact an individual one is drawn to,
is not seen as a mere gesture of sentiment or affection,
but rather weakness and vulnerability.
Even in the darkest and drunkest hours
there will be no super likes,
for no one can afford to wear the heart on their sleeves,
in this world of left and right swipes.
The chase is so overrated not only does it never end,
but also overlooks the catch even when it's finally caught.
True feelings disguised by emojis concentrated into 140 characters
ridicule the ideology of love and romance,
when really we're nostalgic of the times,
we once murmured into brick sized cordless phones at wee hours in the morning,
"you hang up... nooo you hang up first..."
When did meeting the parents not become meeting the parents,
but rather the quick show of another chick to flaunt how well life is going at the moment?
When did compartmentalizing life mean pursuing romantic relationships over the weekends only?
When did to love, to want, to need, to show affection become such girly things,
those who are engulfed by romantic comedies and sensitivity did?
All I really want is to call you and tell you how much I miss you,
and just listen to you breath even if you don't have anything to say.
But, I guess I'll just wait for you to whatsapp me sometime during the weekend...

Muddy Muddy Monday

Cold air
Cold glare
Lurking on a window that shields our felt insecurity
Summertime we all come to
We all come together then unravel apart
I am a man for a short bit then I quit
And retire
Retire to regimented round the clock lonesome longing of money and a schedule, scheduled schooling of sorrow
Growing up I,
I'm utterly useless
I’m painfully plain
This become the real repetition
The depiction and depression in the U.S. Of A
It's simple
And simply it's dull and sad it's melancholy at its finest
And this carnivorous cancer grows calculatedly sneaking steadily and processing with prowess
And Lexus lingers after Lexus near our neighborhood of suburban sadness,
Sorrowful slumps stuck in sand
Succumbing to ******* the life out of myself muddling through murky days
And this depressive digression into normal no-thing-ness that does not know nothing
But private school privilege pressuring me till I press my heart and it pops
Mundane money Monday murdering my mind mother and might
Monday each day
Becoming Monday
My mothering Monday
My absent adolescence

Never really mastered the art of intrigue,
I sometimes wish I had that skill,
Of treading light,
Of being the diva
Surrounded by a mist of aura,
Controlled in laughter,
Calculatedly revealing,
Measuredly unraveling
Her inner self.
I stomp in love,
I bare it all in love,
I laugh with abandon,
I shout with animation,
I cry in immoderation,
I never really learnt to leave
Anything for the imagination,
And it's the greatest gamble,
The toughest game,
To tear your heart out and
hold it in your palm,
And show it to them,
Look, this is how I beat,
Not many can deal
with someone this real.

Every time it happens she can feel it breaking off,
branching out and reforming.
Every time she utters a word,
she is walking down a new path constructed a millisecond before she steps.
She is choosing her realities with no particular discrimination.
It isn't that she wafts through the wind without care,
it is that she calculatedly assembles her existence but fails at being an active member in it's design.
She could be,
though in doing so she would doom herself to a path of bland ever-constant introspection and would have to forgo living life altogether.
A billion or so versions of her move in unison so perfectly that even the most scrupulous judge would not find fault in her chorus lines.
However there is always something amiss,
even if it be nothing more than a hair they are all separate and un-touching.
Which of these 'perfect' copies is the 'real' one is an utter mystery.
I think it is safe to say that they are all the 'real' ones,
what is important here is the particular one.
There are trillions of paths that hold her,
but not quite the her that we are speaking of now;
not the her that moves her pencil to the left in such a way as to create a stray mark on the paper;
not the her that wrote this.

when i think of people like you
in my head,
i imagine sunglasses -
someone who cooly, calculatedly,
manipulates the agendas of others
until they better benefit themselves.

but you?
you seem to openly,
almost boastingly re-arrange your reality
until you have created your best possible circumstances.
until you have absolved yourself of any responsibility.
until you are the one with the drink in your hand,
but your bill has been passed to the guy across the bar.

and that's not even the worst part.

the worst part

is that everyone can see it,

but no one seems to care.

I'm sorry my words get jumbled
flailing off of my tongue as if
I've just learned to speak.
they're all so calculatedly stoic,
yet so simultaneously messy
with the secrets
that slip out of my lips.
and I'm sorry that when i say
the things I'm meant to say,
they aren't the words
you want to hear.

words...so many words.

too many words are not enough

too many words are still too much.

I cannot find a way to cope with my

too many words and your

too few words.

words that wall up any truth from ever reaching me

words so calculatedly cold

words that leave me bitter and empty;

like salt they leave me wanting more.

my words, too many, yours too few.

when did it come to this?

when did it come to this?

Ten and Nothing*
     or *the blades of karma

Lean not against my walls, push through.
I'm the patron patience you've been seeking,
and saint of the secrets keeping you. Scooped
from the ditch out of which you grew
and were cast back into, I found you,
drooped and slinking. I picked you up

and fastened your stinking habits to my brass.
Not for thinking everything I retrieve
from the pits and slicks and sinking eaves
need be carried or repaired,
maybe only spared or made aware
that being sick is far from being buried.

I should know a shifty snitch will only
trench and trudge to see glue used
in lieu of a proper stitch. The bench
was proof, too. My sister's chagrin
as you refused an outstretched clutch,
shillings cinched up, a clenched fist
calculatedly compassionless.

Have you enough tax-deductible tallies
on the slate that hones the blades
of karma's discriminating grate?
Uncurl your ornate petition
and show us all the stones you've sown
for admission through the pearl gate,

The finest few ford fortune's river,
spite shaft, shiver, and devotedly make
a living of giving just to be a giver.

The hills
Ever so high
Grow higher
As I lower
Beside the river
Beside the stream
And dream or see
A single leaf
Still caught beneath
A rock, stuttering
As if alive
On high bough
Not boundless though
Close for awhile
Floating back and forth
Until carried away
And gone on
Forever there
And then
The course of
Course but more
The desert
Dead and dieing
The stars some
Black and bending
Some gone some
Yet born what is it
That takes and gives
So calculatedly carelessly
So surely spinning
Almost reckless like
Then tbe mother said
Almost motherless like
Could be brain or stem
Does not matter.