A cliched love story
Fable told throughout the ages.
Conventional meeting,
By chance
Absolute chance.
Feelings switch on in moments
Without any forewarning.
Its not fair
Never fair.
Looked around all night,
Discouraged.
Found you in front of me,
Completely reassuring.
Every love story is cliched.
But that love story is cliched
Unless it has a twisted middle,
And an inevitable end.

Spring memes
Cuddle under iced sheets
Seduced by frigid lies
And a burberry scarf;
As snow ploughs rule the runway

Glazed rosebuds,
Thimbled thorns,
Strawberries wrapped in cashmere;
And a carrot-nosed character dressed in white,
Play the fiddle

Naked limbs creep
Into the sky,
Seeking green accessories
For fashion week in June
Amidst global miles of warmth

Grandfather's  clock
Ticks wisely ahead,
Hands free of politic;

And the memes of Spring delayed
Propagate through verse
And cliched controversies...

Eclipsed by tweets from the Black Sea.

~ P
(#TheMemesOfSpringDelayed)
(3/7/2014)

Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
Pudgy HANDS bunched on layered hips
Where bones idle under years of fatback
And lima beans.

Her jowls shiver in accusation
Of crimes cliched by Repetition.
Her children, strangers
To childhood's TOYS, play
Best the games of darkened doorways,
Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
Other people's property.

Too fat to *****,
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
Into a den of bereaucrats for her portion.

'They don't give me welfare.
I take it.'

2 years, 5 months, 19 days.

That's the last time a man
Looked me in my eyes
And told me
He loved me.

Nearly one thousand days have passed
Since someone looked at me
Like I was his whole world.

And now I'm at the point
Where I wonder if I'll be alone
Forever,
Not like the cliches,
The woman who chooses a career over a family,
Or the crazed lady who clings to her cats...
No, just a girl
Growing into a young woman
Who doesn't even remember
What it feels like to have someone
Love her.

Not sure if I've really ever even been loved,
At least not like it happens in the movies.
I've continued to pine hard,
Chasing the affection of conflicted souls
Who never bother to appreciate me,
Those cliched types who are
"Too damaged" to really love someone.

Sometimes I wonder
If I'm gonna be able to accept love
If I finally find it,
My fragmented soul having grown
An allergy to kind gestures,
Compliments,
Or anything that actually might be deemed
Indicative of affection.

Slowly sinking down to the baseboards,
Rotted and gnarled roots
Clinging deep to the underground,
My body dissolved into an anterior realm of
Cynicism
As I grasp the realities of my own
Unrequited love,
My yearning to demand more,
******* and twisted with my
Fear to stop settling
And actually obtain
"better."

2 years, 5 months, 19 days.
I'm just hoping it doesn't take me
As long
To look at the
Golden brown eyes that I
See in the mirror and tell me
I love me
Enough to not care who
Else might.

I know the cliched answer;
good is more powerful than evil!
Yet, a newspaper filled with positive
will not sell a copy
standing next to an article
filled with drama and bloodshed.

Same in life -
try and toe the line,
good and sacrificial 99% of the time.
Yet, for that one small mistake
I'm crucified and left to the dogs

Chastised and unforgiven.

Why the hell do I even try?

Should
never have to
face the
thickened
sticky
white and
creamy
cheesy
cliched
wrath and
terror
of her
mother's smile.

Should
never have to
flinch
inside
behind walls
made of
bricks
behind
barricades
of
stone
wrapped
in
bubble-wrap
at her
mother's
glance.

Eyes
should
never
hold
so
much
power
within
the
flash
of
discontent.

She should not
live
on a boat
always
biding time
waiting for
storms to pass
for
waves to
curl
and crack down
upon her
head
down into
the sand
that
holds her
down into
the dark
that
kisses her
goodnight
down into
the brutal
flick
the tap on the
glass
clench
of
the fingers
twitch of
the jaw

should never
have to
wait
for the
mother's roar
to
echo
through the
chamber
of her heart
until
silence
envelopes
her soul
and she
can sleep
without

fear.

Should
never
fear
her
mother's
evening breath
the
gentle and
stilling
exhale
a sigh
a brittle
and
glassed sound
that shatters
against her
tightly
pursed
lips
locked
mouth.

Should never
tell the heart
to
quiet down
and let
her run
like a
good
child
ignoring
the warning
bells
which
everyone else
seems to ignore
the words
that leave
her
stubborn
lips
in the
joke she
tells
the story
she
preaches
the hesitated
eye
widening
limerick

the expected
story
to tell
her
friends

her
mother's
wrath
tastes like
fire in
her belly
sulphur in
her throat
and
metallic
lingerings
of
biting
her tongue
to
suppress
the
screams

'what can you expect'

'my mother gets like that'

'she attacked me'

'but its okay'

'I was stubborn'

I read a story today.

Like any good story it was layered upon the premise of the love between two perfect strangers.

Like any good story it was about romance that blossomed... and then flourished as quick as it was fierce.

Like any good story it spun a far-reaching web of hope and longing whilst still holding on to the uncompromising nature of responsibility to one's dreams.

Like any good story, there was a spot of intimacy. The gradual build up of physical and psychological attraction that culminated in the merging of two, was nothing less than tasteful.

Like any good story there was conflict.
But it was not the cliched garnish that involved oppressive parenting styles nor glaring racial differences.
It did not rope in the overused notion of "we're so different, we're two parts of a whole".
It was... a beautiful conflict.
One that does not allow the audience to choose sides.
In fact, it encourages you to think inward and root for both parties - be them together or apart.
If anything at all, it boils down to the pursuit of each individual's happiness.

Like any good modern day story, it ended with a breath held in a gasp. You hold it there for the longest moment and you have to close that breath with a heavy sigh of loss.
It also leaves you with ample room to deliberate the "what if" factor.
Happy endings last a while but sad ones... they rip a hole in you that almost never closes...
and you cannot help but go back to read it over and over again in the hopes of finding the elusive right answer or the best alternate ending.

Like any good story it was tailored in my fit. Because I envisioned myself in it. I got consumed by it. Overwhelmed by it, enough to almost break the pipes.

And like any good story, it's worth keeping...
In heart and in mind.

So I read a story today. And I didn't want it to end.

We used to be so uncompromised,
Our words didn't have some double meaning,
Something deeming,
That we were more than we were willing to admit.
I could look you in the eyes without that feeling,
Without my thoughts wheeling,
Away from the possibility of having to commit.
You and I were not some cliched affair,
But now we are something I thought I could not bare,
And I fear,
I fear that we have been compromised,
By those double meanings,
Those feelings,
Deeming,
That we are more than we are willing to admit.

the body falls soft
curves collapsing on the edge of
bedspread tangled in cliched prison
escape ropes
tied loose like old tendon,
we are all but used.

I feel the force of Fibonacci
spiraling between ribs
and pelvis, golden ratios
divining skin,
1 to 1.616

Cult popularism overtakes my brain
Conformity rushing unwillingly, stiflingly, down my throat

The literature of the mind taken from me
By my own devices
The lure of the cliched mass' is oblivion
Fufillment of an expected mold
Individuality of thought drains away

May my overthinking of all be lost
In this teenage stereotype

I look longingly at the sky,
As I wonder what it would
Be like to fly.
As the birds do.
I laugh at the thought,
Full of silly cliche.

Then I pause,
And think to myself:
Life itself is full of cliches.
If life is so simple and
Childish, why does
It captivate so?

As I sit wondering
and pondering.
I come to the conclusion:
Who cares...
Life will go on
With or without
A few cliches
Along the way.

For the record, I suppose it should be stated I lost my soul in Vegas.
I would love to go back there and find it among those glittering lights and buffet tables of never-ending artful desserts.
It's funny that all I really remember are those pretty desserts and fried mashed potatoes.
I want those things back.

I'm like a raver with those lights.
I want to consume them.
I want to glow in my pores.
Not the cliched glow that wraps itself around the impregnated many,
but the glow that comes from sitting next to neon for too long.
That it could somehow stain you.
Rub off like fairy dust on skin.
That I could fly away due to its energy or wishful thinking.

Take me back to Vegas,
where they still hand that out for free by the boatload.
I need not gamble.
I need not glad-hand.
I would simply sit idly by the buzzing of pinks and blues and greens and reds.
And me and those cheap 1920's lights will have a moment,
a moment I can share with the cocktail waitress who asks me for the third time if I'm sure I don't need a little refresher drink.

I am in cold. I watch that garish ward brimming with false light. Bleached air from his lips touching hers. He hides in her mane, sterile and alone. Why is it so hard, such an insurmountable task for you to see how I lather my face with paint each day just to smile at you?

My face, my heart, my mind not a blank canvas that I hide with these diluted pastels but a deep, rich chorus of colors and oils that were never meant to be hidden. But the ward will never know.

There are thoughts and opinions rolling like a torrent behind this mask I call a face. This world was against me from day one, don’t you dare say I’ve given way to cynicism. Nor optimism, pessimism, or God-forsaken realism. Can't I think the earth is beautiful, God is good, I am right, and people are wrong without someone putting an -ism behind me? Of course not. That's narcissism. Egoism. Egalitarianism.

It is what I unknowingly wrote across my mask. But I never chose to attend this outdated ball, masquerades are cliched. Pure romanticism...surrealism, the kin of commercialism whose visage is a polychromatic wheel of logotypes that you just have to know en masse.

What if I stop believing that compassion Himself can hate me? No, no that's atheism. Agnosticism. And if I'm better than someone because He said so then that is monotheism in all it's delicate flavors.

Can't I breathe alone in a quiet corner? Isolationism. Can't I want to simply be a follower, and think about life, literature, and art? Incomprehensible, that would be totalitarianism, absolutism, authoritarianism. What if I want to give God all the power He gave us, and watch the world change? Fascism. Revolutionism. Extremism, because releasing the wheel is extremism. Existentialism.

And what if I choose to remove the mask, break the levees, release the floodgates,    my thoughts and opinions, never watch my tongue, and speak the world as it is: A capital M-madman's schism of logic and faith. As it has always been, and always will be. I will always be in love with the counterfeit ward. And yes, there's a label for that: Catastrophism.

So I watch Beauty and his Beast touching in fluorescence. Bleached breath, save for the smoke of his lungs in hers. Sterile and alone; I am in cold, and cold hurts me.

The sun shines on us all, as well as the rain

Torrential downpours of pain, we lose and we gain

We veer into cliched territory to verbalize our response to more tragedies that a lost world continues to offer

The signs of the times the Holy Text forewarned becomes ever more visible...except to the blind and the Scoffer

Why does the blood of the innocent and unknowing continue to shed for the next man’s awakening of his own imminent flatline?

At times I, picture myself in someone else’s fate, how would I have handled myself in that same place?

How would I have responded with bullets suddenly flying around me as potential dead bodies surround me, in that unexpected moment of truth...which characteristic would have ultimately found me? cowardice...or courage?

I find myself at times discouraged by my struggle with self-assurance in knowing that my demonstrating answer would have been in the latter rather than the former

How many times have we entered into a school, mall, concert venue only to have a passing or pressing thought enter into our conscience only to ask “what if I’m not supposed to make it back out alive”?

I often wonder if Rachel Scott struggled with these internal inquiries in the years, months, days, hours, final seconds before she stepped foot on that columbine soil destined to receive her call to became a maytr for the Gospel she lived...and died for.

What exactly are we dying for? Are we dying to self? Or because of it?

Whether our final earthly breath is due to a natural cause or one unsuspecting...what are we dying for?

Many people will not be able to answer that question…until it is forever too late...

As long as there are teenagers extant,
Anomie and alienation of
an unripened generation
Shall spill upon this site in cliched cries,
Dabbling with threats of pills and lies,
The endless pain felt gives one fright.
To this old soul who wonders silently,
Will these thousands of pained children
Make it through to their next incarnation

So much angst, so much anger,
I wonder if God created poetry
To salve their wounds

Their unknown futures loom,
But all I read is  hurt and doom.
You shall survive, children.
Awful poetry, some good,
you will write.
But write and write
till your heart be calmed

For even ancient kings felt the anguish  of the soul,
And we profit even today by King David's psalms.

This wizened fool has his hands full,
Mouths to feed, bread to earn and bake,
As midnight is almost nigh,
He rests prone and adds a verse to this old poem
He long ago scribbled down, grimace-smiles now,
Realizing there is little difference tween him and the
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland.

For poetry salves his wounds still, even now,
Unashamedly, he thinks, quiet like, praying,
Hallelujah, spoken in the original,
The tongue of his ancestors

A tear is shed
For those who are blind to the beauty of this world
Who can only feast on sarcasm, writhing in irony
        *It soon evaporates.
Pictures of a future dressed in ribbons and lace, cast off and burned
Pictures of the future carrying disdainful dystopia, infamous for invalids
Hung to admire in sublime distaste by those that seek knowledge
And see the repetitious antiquities of time that come to pass
        But others care not for plans and the imminent
Those that keep to the light of the gas
And carry the past to the present
Hoping for trends to try again, reliving what they had never lived
Laconic and loquacious in emotions and words
Against the gossip, but paradoxically
Pushing for the creation of their “ritualistic social Golgotha”.
Those who abuse the glory of their munificent, malicious mentality
Pathetically unable to procure authentic happiness
       A tear is shed.
Inside the recesses of the soul where emotions dare not dwell.
       It too evaporates.
Trapped in fear and the “cliched harlequin speech of suicide”
Begging for the masses to cast them out and find each other
       A tear is shed.
Never seen but felt as it evaporates.
Felt by those who envelop themselves inside themselves
Those who plagiarize their sick self-conscious souls
Those who bring about the very misfortune they strive to devour
Those who are effortlessly envied as they exploit their habitual recreations
       By those who wouldn’t dream of falsified euphoria
Those who bastardise and deface the name of creative individualism
As waters of the soul are purged and discarded
       They are felt by those
And are quickly washed away in doubt and regret
Keeping to the light of the gas, dangerous and warm

I’ve been thinking about hands
a lot lately and how fingerprints are like
permanent, foreshadowing tree rings
etched onto our beings; I wonder if
the number of rings on my palms have any
correlation to the number of years I’ll live or
the number of years he’ll live or the number of
years that she lived. I’ve been thinking a lot about
        life lines        and        heart lines
and if there is any stock to be found in palmistry;
I wonder how my fate line got to be
so muddled with my luck line.  

I see my life the way a clairvoyant would:
in cut-up and choppy strips of film—
I should have seen the omens,
I should have read the smoke signals,
I should have recognized the cards.

Act One began on a waning crescent moon
and continued until its gluttonous belly
had swollen with light; I thought to
myself that craniums made of gallium
often melt the quickest, that blood filled
with plutonium often flows the slowest.  I would
have given my body up to the pathologist free of charge,
would have let him dig his hands into my entrails for
some sort of divination, some sort of revelation—
I was never told to beware the Ides of June
nor the Kalends of November.

Act Two began with the birth of Jack Frost
and has been continuing without intermission for
the past four celestial cycles; I thought to
myself that heart valves made of sodium polyacrylate
often love the most, that sinkholes disguised as
fingertips often feel the deepest.  He whispered
in my ear cliched words about not believing in
God, but how I made him feel blessed, and in
that moment I knew he was the oneiromantic being
that had been shadowing my dreams since 1996—
I guess you could say that, sometimes,
I believe in love.

There is an art to fortune-telling
there is an art to hands
there is an art to bones
there is an art to dreams, and over the years,
I have found them coinciding more often
than not.  In my sleep, in notebooks, in
irises, in mirrors, in poetry, in small little sighs.
I do not know if I believe in fate or destiny, in
God, in auras, or in the Blood Moon Prophecy,
but I do know that I believe in you.  I find myself writing
sappy verses and smelling your shirts and I do
not know if it is because I miss you or if it is because
I’m bored or if they’ve somehow
                       mergedintothesamething.  

I’ve been wondering a lot lately about
where you show up on my hands; about where
he showed up and where she showed up.  I want
to know which lines bisect and which lines fall
short; I want to know if the resemblance between
        mother        and         daughter
continues into that of my palm lines.  I want to know
if my life line matches hers and if my heart line
is even worth giving away—

find me in your crystal ball, make me
your sacrificed animal, look for my body
in the stars, and we will know that
        it was all made to be.

Oh your face it does haunt me like all cliché lines do. Circling in my thought process as they find paper in reluctance but utter truth.  Destine as is the rain drop is fated to find the earth. And although its home is made for a short while, its energy is forever lost to the world around. Oh how I wish to be that rain drop. To carry weight and energy into everything I touch though my boundaries remain limitless. Unaware if I am to turn into a soaked sweater, a splash on a running shoe, a man’s’ blinding annoyance, or just another drop in the ocean. And though my clichés may never change the weather, I am praying that you and I might end up together. Hoping that my energy remains limitless and finds sought after boundary in your presence. Hoping to be a damp spot on your sweater is my comforting relief from the separation of the swirly storm I’m in and your forever distant shore. But I am a lowly drop and you sweater holds no warmth for me as our once connected past becomes nothing more than flooding memories now. Passing by as did the running shoe in puddled ground. Flung from disapproving eye and forever to remain amongst the waves of the unforgiving ocean. Prayer holds no weight here. Hope as important as the sand we all overlook and pass by without second glance. And though my present tides throw salt in past wounds, I look to the horizon in search of your coast. I look to the sky for my dove holding an olive branch and the sun to elevate me from my watery prison. With the belief that as I move closer to heaven, I move closer to you.

In my life I have had the very unpleasant experience of being attached to two manipulative, insane, selfish *******. Of course, these people I was attached to simultaneously so I was a bit of a crazed mess during that time. I was so desperate for attention and love I took it from people who would ultimately use me for their own personal gain. **** those two, specifically, thank you very much.

One I had a crush/****** attraction to, the other was my best friend. **** me, right? Well they certainly did. I may have put myself in those situations, but **** them for still taking advantage of it.

The first, I was fascinated by. He was a year older than me and seemed nice and funny and had my same humor and liked the same movies. i thought we could be compatible, who knew? So I tried it out. I hung out with him more at school, got his number, all that. We started to text a lot, and at first we just joked around and talked about things we liked,  then I started talking about him about my feelings and serious things and we got quite close.

I should have known something was up when he started getting ****** all of a sudden, and started asking for **** pictures, and trying to convince me into ****** things.

I dodged his ****** advances for some time, but eventually I caved and when we went to get ice cream once. I took off all my clothes in his car and he called me beautiful but it wasn't the type of beautiful a girl wanted to be called. He liked my body and my big ***** and my willingness to do this, not me. But still, I sort of gave him a half-assed ******* before he dropped me off at home.

Funny thing is I never even kissed that *******. Not even once. Kind of happy I didn't.

A week later, I decided to disclose to him that I was bipolar, so that he understood me better, and maybe our relationship could develop. But the second I said I was bipolar, he said he had a girlfriend. Of course the one second I'm not even caring about any romantic relationship with him, he decides to jump that on me.

I stopped texting him. I was ******. The girl he was now dating was someone he pretty much had told me was only his best friend, not anyone he was interested in, but that was obviously a lie. And the whole time he was getting closer to her and pursuing her, he was using me as his ****-talk and eye candy. Worst thing was she was a sweet girl who had some similar features to me, and I didn't want to ruin her world by telling her that her best friend and now boyfriend was a manipulative *******.

They're still dating to this day, and I know at this point it would be fruitless for me to try to stop it. She'd probably say I'm a liar or that I'm making stories up or whatever. I guess I just wish her the best of luck. The only good thing that came out of it was that he never became my boyfriend, so I didn't get lied to. I just got the occasional request for nudes or odd being hit on text that are easy to brush off. She wants to spend the rest of her life with him. I truly pity her for being stuck to that, and truly thinking he's a good guy.

Now the other. We collided as kindred souls who like writing, the arts, music, and are a little crazy. But hell did that go out there fast, and of course I didn't realize I needed to get the **** out until three years too late.

It wasn't long before the friendship turned into a competition. I'm competitive, so I won't say I'm not to blame at all, but she pretty much was the one to instigate most of it. By telling me she was better. That she was wonderful. That her work was revered by everyone, or she got special training, or that she was just so much more than me.

The girl honestly thought she was the second coming of Jesus sometimes, because she was so different and special. But also, she was tortured and misunderstood and needed loving. **** that, you needy *******. Everyone has problems. Get help and deal with them. Its cute and understandable for a few months. By three years you better get off your ******* *** and do something.

She always was the 'better' singer, because she was more trained. She was the 'better' romantic entanglements because she was so 'well-versed' in ****** things. She was always 'better' at being mature because she had gone through so much more than anyone else. She just thought she was better at everything, but at the same time would hate herself. It was awesome. She was basically saying "I'm a complete piece of awful ****, but I'm better than you!"

Sounds annoying, right? Well it was.

The one that really got me was that she always professed she was a better writer. That her writing was beautiful and poignant and tortured. Every longer story I read of hers she basically wrote about herself, used pretentious names, and every one of her protagonists was some madly tortured person who no one understood. Their lives would drastically change once they met this magical person that changed everything. That hit them just the right way. But honestly most of it was about being tortured and misunderstood, but somehow better than everyone else because of it. Ok, whatever, please sit down pretentious writer number 3,467. It just drove me nuts. She wasn't bad at it, but it was always the same thing. Being tortured, or bitter, or being grossly in love with someone. It was just so horribly repetitive and outlandish I couldn't stomach most of it. To this day every time I read some of her pretentious work i want to set her on fire and slowly watch her burn. She may be a better singer, she may be a better tortured soul, she may even be a better starving artist or whatever.

But actually writing variety and real people and not repeating the same thing over and ******* over again?

Please, honey, I got you beat.

I guess I'm just sick of them. I'm sick of what they did to me, what I let them do to me, and who I became with them. I was selfish and meek and competitive and always trying to prove myself to them. I know who I am, and they don't deserve my attention or even me. **** them.

I know writing will get me somewhere. I'm not the best writer ever, but I know how to write. I always have. I have finished novels. I'm working on more to come. I have the drive and ability to do this, and I don't want to be the cliched ******* starving artist. I don't want to be poetically tortured or whatever the **** pretentious ******* strive for. I just want to be a human writing stories for other humans. And maybe it'll mean a lot to someone one day. It already does to me.  


I don't need flaky ******* who want nothing from me but to use me for their selfish gains. I'm me. I'm happy. I can be a writer and artist without being a complete ******* about it. And I don't need them.

I got this.

You planted galaxies inside me when we met
and now they're pouring out of my mouth,
stretching their curled limbs skyward from
the abyss of my stomach; they travel
up and up across the expanse between us
and down your throat like some sort of
invisible (and magnetic) parasite.

One:
Brown eyes remind me of Chernobyl,
                        but on you,
I see the Wilson Park Ice Skating Rink where
my mother first taught me to skate.  I see my
tiny hands wrapped around my first dog, Kelly, and
the Beluga Whales at the Shedd Aquarium
in 1999.  There’s a six foot deep hole between us
that makes me wonder if cataracs eclipse your
perception of me like they do for everyone else—
I wonder if you worry about
teetering over the edge
                                          like
                                                   I do.
Two:
If I’ve learned anything from math class it’s that
a negative times a negative equals a positive so
I guess it’s a good thing when it comes to you and I, because
how else would two equally bashful people ever work
together in harmony?  But then what about science—
positives and negatives attract, so I must
be the latter of the two in this electrical charge
         electrical attraction
         sparks fly
         fires rise
other cliched forms of saying that I just like
when your hands are on my hips and your
lips are on my neck and somewhere
in the back of my mind, I hope to God
that this new age romance is not all for naught.

Three:
I met the devil when I kissed your lips.
God was pushed out when the space between us
shrunk and shrunk until there was not enough
room for air nor biblical commandments nor morality nor logic.
We fell together, tumbling over the clouds like the
awkward first steps of a child, unsure and panicked;
our clipped wings, like birds in captivity, did nothing to
prevent us from ripping the pages of His thick book
and mixing and matching His words—
“burn[ing] with passion,” “two shall become one flesh—”
we folded them into fortune tellers.

Four:
When you first told me that you thought I was beautiful,
I did not believe you.  You looked so unsure of yourself—eyes
downcast, bottom lip tucked between your teeth—that I thought,
“How can this this wide-eyed boy think that he can
spot constellations that the Greeks and the Egyptians overlooked?”
Then I realized that the words that spewed from your
blood stained lips were stars of your own creation.  Somehow
you compressed and fused your perception of me with
interstellar matter and birthed a new stencil in the sky.  You
created a cynosure of me.  You look at me like you’re
gazing at Polaris, a perfect doll like Helen or Marilyn;
something I am not.
But I like it.

Five:
We make up Sirius, the Dog Star—
you, the primary, and I, the companion, we are
the brightest in the heavens.  Canis Major would
be nothing without us.  Circling one another in a far,
spread out pace, we take our time in dissecting
one another’s intentions.  You are my horoscope and
I am your zodiac sign; both born in the year of the pig
we display the raw, open wounds of altruism to one another.
I wonder when you look in the mirror,
if the reflection that you see is that of the Milky Way;
the barred spiral that contains
our solar system
our planet
my
      home.

If being with you would mean spewing galaxies
from my lips for the rest of my days, I would
gladly regurgitate a whole new universe
just to hold your hand.

Orbs with many layered shells.
Floating around, interacting, and multiplying.
When one Orb meets another for the first time,
It's sweet and endearing.
They are shy and awkward, Unsure of how to act.
Communicating using cliched questions and sometimes answers.
Small sparks of energy transferring between them,
Slowly dragging them closer together.
Cracks begin to appear on their outer most shell and
Tendrils of multicolored energies seep out.
The tendrils find each other and a bond is formed.
It's a scary moment, for the bond doesn't always last.
However the two Orbs struggle to keep communicating,
To keep the pure bond that has been formed.

I don't need clever analogies to love you,
and if you say you love me to the moon and back
I may just go there,
because the idea of loving someone
is already painfully cliched.
But
have you ever considered
how beautiful everything is if you take poetic license?
I amp up the significance,
romanticize every move and symbol I find.
Note
how you gave me a locket
and the clock inside stopped on the day
I realized that I wanted to stay with you forever,
because no amount of time could be enough
so why bother keeping track?
See
how we had the same friends but didn't truly meet
until I was whole enough to let you care for me.
And I think
about there being something wondrous
in the way you know the sun rises for you each day
as you look at it in awe
and I want to write you a sunset
and be your sunrise
because I hope that my eyes shine as brightly as yours
just once.
Remember
when we were on the beach climbing rocks
that no one else recognized as special
and the sunlight
in our eyes, our hair and our hearts
kept us warm in the sea spray?
I think of thunderstorms with you,
looking into your eyes
and seeing rich dark skies
pierced by electric wonder.
And how when we sit in darkness
white, fervent light shines in those eyes
and the contrasting darkness
makes it implausibly more immaculate,
and I see your innocence.
Remember
that first night on the rooftop
where the moon emptied into our souls
and my body shivered
because I knew what was coming.

But then,
there's this other side,
this poet's curse
where I can't help but brood and metaphor our lives.
See the flowers,
a symbol of your affection,
wilting and withering as they die,
leaving an empty vase and crumbling petals.
And they are new love growing old
and I ask
am I brittle,
worn from dried affection?
And should I, do I,
feel like those bouquets?
You see,
I feel something morbid about love,
and something wildly romantic about ******,
and in death is a beauty so complete
that I think on how
my toes are half turned up
when they curl at your kiss
and how
you're running me in circles
as we circle the drain
and no matter what I'll hold my breath for you,
even as I imagine my beleaguered last.
But which one of us will die first?
These paradoxes spin spirits round
like twinkling tops wobbling to a halt
as I question what I'm sure of
because of imagined signs
and morbid thoughts.
I can't see a thing of beauty
without wondering what its faults are.
The facets of 'us' shine out at me as a plethora of stars
and it's killing me to dissect them
and find each supernovaing core.
But it's better to be killed by a lover.
To finally combine the morbidity of love
and the romance of ******.
The beauty of death can take me
after this metaphor ends
and I have a use for time.

I sat down to write a love poem,
A love poem about you and me.
A poem that would surpass all those before it,
That describes our love down to the smallest detail.
One that has everything I love about you,
Condensed down to a couple lines of lyric.
And yet my pen is still,
for all the phrases that come to my mind are cliched,
And reminiscent of so many poems written before.
But our love is unique and new.
It is not the love of old love poems,
Written by dead men to dead women.
Our love poem is about me and you,
The boy who stole my heart but,
Instead of running away you stayed.
You never left my side and I fell for you.
I'm still falling in love with you,
And I will keep falling in love with you,
Every day you make me smile,
Or laugh or kiss me or hold me.
Here I go again with my cliches,
Our love feels so unique and new.
But maybe it's not as new as I think,
Maybe our love is like those dead poems,
Written by dead men to dead women.
Did they sit at their desks and ponder,
The perfect phrase to express their love?
But they were free of all cliches,
Free from the pressures to explain love in a new way.
And here I am shackled by their poems,
They form irons on my mind and cast doubt in my heart.
Maybe it isn't unique or new,
I have hope though that we are different.
That our love is something different,
And that I will one day find the right words,
To say I love you in a million different ways.
But for now you must settle for the simple but cliched,
I love you and I'm falling deeper in love with you every day.

Well
not so sure I think or feel
but it was a hot day
the kind to make your skin melt
and you want to take it off
so your bones can breathe
but ****** is illegal
in Kalamazoo
so we must be polite
to the locals
eat the bacon fat like good people do
love air like lemonade
bitter and delicious
refreshing in the right circumstances
loving the smoke
so sensual
in and out
controlled and contorted by lips
pillars billowing
cliched
but so **** fine
thick and formless
it disappears
but for a moment
it's yours
theirs
yummy
wrists crack like silly skeletons
jumping around
clowns in the heavens
what are you saying
my dear boy(s)
you think you're in love?
I think you're in
for one hell of a ride
if you're into
cremating your dignity

You spend lone enough waiting tables
or washing cars
or standing behind a register
and you feel a part of you
that played thumb wars and jump rope
die just a little
yeah I know the plight of the proletariat is cliched
but that doesn't mean it's not there
you feel the disdain grow
and even more so
you get hungry
and no ham 'n cheese can fix that
hunger nor nutrition
but for any small sign that all of the toiling
might just pay off.
Well if I go another day without eating that meal
I might just crack
drive my car into oncoming traffic
take as many suckers with me
then they might remember my name

Some faded curtain sways in a phantom breeze
      and air swells in the old duct behind the bed
Cowboy Junkies play
        Salted meat stench, tobacco and zest linger
The misted road on the outside
                                                     refracts moonlight through a crack

it's all too disjointed
but also clear, all so clear

The cliched call from anonymous houses, screaming; drunken screaming
                                  I  t  '  s     F  r  i  d  a  y     n  i  g  h  t
You're invited

The notion enters in eerie silences
                                                        ­and wood-frames creak
and the curtains still dance
       and green leaves look black in that middle point between the lamp posts
              and a stray car buzzes along a sultry surface; it is the moth, brazen in search of light
                                                           ­                                                                 ­                                  
and who are we, if not moths in search of light?                                                           ­                    
                                            ­                                                                 ­                                                  
              ­                                                                 ­                             Can you hear that ocean swell
                                                           ­                                                     or do you roar in unison too
                                                             ­                                        Would you change as the weather
                                                         ­                                                            and embrace everything
                                                      ­                                                                 ­                     everybody
                                  ­                                                                 ­                  and life
                                                            ­                                                              
                                                                ­            to reach transcendence

you always made me beg for it
thought i was special when made me work for it
but now u spread your legs to the whole world
like them white wiggas and muthafuckin gayfishs
the fake *** muthafuckas hit it and quit it type riddas
buffalo wild wings muthafucka, laughin to the bank
cuz he hit the jackpot and went runnin from u, u *****
muthafuckin bros thought he was
but now i know that faulty is all it was
what the **** were u thinkin
choosin to ***** your friends ova
not thinkin bout nothin but yourself
whos gonna want u in the end
to think that "I"...
used to love you,
used to let u spend
used to hold your filthy hands
now i know it was just pretend
handed u stacks cuz i cared for you
made u dinners every night and i swore to you
that i would love you foreva
and now i'll let u know its my pleasure
to say ******* but now who u gonna run to
cuz in the end its only you
all by yourself...
so cliched but chillin with all your cats
is all that you'll ever have
and when i say cats
i really mean cats...meow *****
see when u called i came runnin
to make sure that you'd be okay
i see now its only a game u play
now that i know what i know
now i know your just another **
so bite your face off and slit your wrists
cuz the game of life is full of twists
u stupid *****, thought u were sav
i tried to give u the world to have
glad im not associated with u anymore
cuz to me now ur just a trifilin *****

I am bored with love,
and it's passionless limbs that drape over my bed
and it's lethargic state of impotence
while it still idiotically wears that same red heart.

There we were alone in togetherness,
trying to build dreams with two by fours and glue,
but even a home wouldn't bind us
when our hearts lived so alone...

Poetic vows cliched into nothingness,
like all words eventually do,
and we allowed our bodies to become
another pair of hollow shadows
that made love to walls
instead of to each other.

And still we wondered why
the roses were dying.

heavy faces
like rainwater
on tarpaulin ceilings

sinking into the meaningless
prose of daily life

cliched, cafe, journal writer
asking for someone
         to answer

the why.

and everyone is wearing earphones
         everyone

's an empty magazine
cover
stories
photos
colors, forms
edited,
          taken
from somewhere else

          we are no longer

ourselves.

thin, fat,
black bars
trapped
in a white box
          we willingly enter

reluctantly leave
           to feel
the joys of coming in
           
again.