Life is a tiny black x on the calendar,
Wedged between play dates and rescheduled doctors appointments.
2:00 floods into 4:00, until the entire day lies crumpled at the foot of the bed,
Lifeless except for the coffee stain memories of yesterday.
Nothing happens here.
Self questions self, and we all sit criss cross apple sauce on the linoleum floor;
Is this what it means to be alive?
Red and blue parachute above our tiny shoulders,
Mixing with green, yellow, and orange wedges
The same as pizza or convenience store cheesecake.
Outside, noisy blurs of grey and black whir by
Full of passengers too preoccupied with routine to venture
Into the far off world of innocence
That softly plagues everything detached enough to feel it.
Covered in paintings of a reality that's missing all of it's fingers.
Nothing lives here- beyond the faint ripple
Of three o'clock snack time:
Rosy cheeks and small, stubby fingers concealed by apple sauce,
The preservative of youth, it slowly takes on the texture
Of dad's lung cancer-
Dying pigeons rest nostalgically upon city rooftops,
As strangers stop to admire their stagnant beauty,
Crying out acclaim for the regal presence of those
Who can bear to sit still amidst the chaos of an hour:
Cigarette and polyester feathered Madonnas of the modern world-
Installation art at its finest.
Face paint and spaghetti hair
Are only tangible until replaced with something a little closer to
Reality. The American dream sinks to the bottom of a hollow mason jar, as preservatives soak the bones
Of every tiny heart, alive enough to give out at the faintest malfunction.
Dilapidated, our heavy feet tread over spare Lego pieces,
The tiny rectangles push up against our translucent flesh-
Leaving abstract indentations of a city that never was.
Images of the earth projected upon tiny marble surfaces,
Fallen from a cardboard box that was once on isle five,
Impress upon the weary feet
Of strangers, running to throw up beneath the red, green, and yellow windows
Of a Target grocery store.
Nothing grows here, yet we eagerly pluck our wilted produce
From the clammy hands of a metal machine
Programmed one, two, three
To dilute our logic with an even mist of something
Almost like water, but with more promise.
Until, we can easily swallow the bitter pill that
Holds the secrets of the world.

When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.

My friends complain to me
They tell me their sorrows
And tear filled litanies.
I nod along and offer advice
Scowling inside.
Oh so now finally the guy you like doesn’t like you?
So no you finally get hurt?
You dare complain to me who would ****
To feel that pain to feel that love burst?
You finally feel rejected huh,
Left on the street?
Welcome to the real world *******.
Welcome to the meat.
Rotting and corroding,
sick filled heart,
That we call rejection.
Beating furiously
As a thousand bulls on the range
Feel our pain.
Now you’re alive.
How does it feel when you’re lucks ran out?
But still you have fond memories.
Kisses to look back on nostalgically
What do I have…
Well I have you.
What a friend you turned out to be.

I would laugh every morning
At how the right combination
Of words would cause an ocean
Of nostalgia, big enough for me
To drown in.

Simple sentences like 'I miss you'
made me nostalgically homesick

Only now my home had two legs,
a heartbeat of her own and called me 'baby'

Sentences like 'I love you'...

Sentences like 'I love you' only seemed to create an earthquake inside my chest.
and when the earthquake had settled there were always whispers of 'I love you more'

Fall into her hollow cheeks
what is left of her helpless hands
bleed her until there is nothing left to bleed
climb upon her neck until she cannot stand

Roll your tongue in and out of her mouth
Plant your lies securely in her mind
leave her without a doubt
until herself she cannot find

So you move away and tread on water
cannot mistake the ripples
like cracked egg shells you break them
so loudly they echo in your mind
these friends once dogs
scatter off to a better find
no more loyalty in the face of fresh meat
I don't blame the hounds the smell is too strong
and the ***** too good
My fault for trying to find solace with
guitar boys in bands
I will always be a once lost sister
they speak of nostalgically when they meet another sister
someone they used to know
I havent changed; they have this place has, it is no longer home.
It just smells like it.
find bullet wounds in my guts
I am spineless
I ride myself on cowardice and pride
I have blood alcohol of 0.5
Theres nothing left but
pride pride pride
Oh Theresa you carry your bible so well
your hands haven't aged in this golden state
the orpahn by your side could use a meal though
the smell of dead animals and garbage trucks and burning
nothing like smoke that has lodged its way into your throat
you cannot un-lodge the dark black sticky stuff
its poison
gun blasts
I thought I could face it
I am a child  of nowhere

The old man sighed and jammed his freshly rolled, freshly lit cigarette into the ash tray.
"Too many cigarettes before bedtime oft' keep an' old man like me up all night."
The young man put out his cigarette as well, gently weeping inside over the wasted tobacco.
"Aye, a youngin' like myself as well."
The conversation had been going slightly south ever since the young man made the mistake of asking about his counterparts first wife. "She died," he had said "One of them December o' 2012 suicides that plagued the big cities such as this."
The young man remembered how he had looked out the window at this point a bit too nostalgically.
"She was crazy," he had added "I knew it the day I slipped the ring on and I know it now."
They dropped the subject and began talking about The War, coincidentally another touchy subject.
"Most of my friends died, and if you've read your history books you know it was not courage or chivalry that killed them but the ignorance and fear that our country breathed when drafting all the young men."
He had escaped with his life, which he believed was garbage. he told of how he had hid in the sewers while the long thought peaceful Canadian's swarmed over the East coast. While his friends died he ate rats. While the war machine chugged he was cowering.

"Aye, I see how you looked at that stoke, though."
"Pardon?" The young man had been deep in thought of the conversation they had been having.
"How old are you anyway?"
"19 on the 9th."
"And still not a whisker on your chin, aye?"
"Aye."

He told of many more battles. Some he fought in, others he cowered under.
"And one, that I cowered over. I passed out in the helicopter, do-it-please-yah."
He told of his second wife, a bit more fondly and romantically than his first wife.
She had passed away not 8 months before the young man visited him for the first time and that was 6 months past.

He showed scars, from the prison camps.
He rolled cigarettes from his poke pouch.
He admitted forgetting the face of his father.

Some things are sadly poetic
Like the cougar whose boyfriend
Won’t come back outside and she’s alone
At the only table in the cold
smoking a pall mall,
Having a beer.

Some things are refreshingly poetic
like leaving the office for a bit with the boss
and going somewhere
where there are domes made of pure gold
and priests who pour milk on them from
helicopters.

Some things are interestingly poetic;
like the poet, turned novelist, turned artist,
who does landscaping to cover the spread.

Some things are courageously and nostalgically
And hurtfully poetic,
Like not seeing your family for nine years
Because the money’s good where you're at,
And plane tickets and passports are outrageous.

Some things should not be
poetic, but they are, because they are truthful
And that is verse;
like the waitress who was *****
when she cashed her check at a grocery store
after the night shift
and she wasn’t the only one in her car
when she got back.

Some things are poetry because they come
Into this world quietly
And bleeding internally,
and yet they survive
Even though their lungs are full of fluid,
And they can barely breathe.

Some things are poetry because they happened
And nothing can change that.

And because
Poetry is
unchangeable, immovable, and
grotesque, beautiful, uncomfortable, calming,
disfiguring, life-giving, ****** up,
Possibly ******, possibly a nectar
That God
or whoever the ****
allowed to be put on paper,
Possibly a way to talk about pain,
Possibly roided up with someone else’s words,
Possibly a way to talk about
the pure dream of a girl’s body
Without being  a ***** *****.

Poetry is love in the worst
and most unimaginable ways.

~ the director

one woman in particular became trapped in a man’s body and he married her.  a child they tried not to have soon arrived and brought with it a list of demands from the others.

his peers double crossed each other in small houses.  he himself was able to get away with punching a young girl for the right to drag a sled.  his child began to accept talking toys in exchange for keeping quiet.  

he was in love with his sister, always had been.  after she was mauled by the dogs meant for his father, he made walking his home until it called itself a hotel

of running.  last year, he caught a movie one had made of his life and though he missed the dedication

he did not miss
the death row scene, the saw his brother took from the cake, the plain basket
as it moved
with his mother

from bike
to bike…  

~ transmissible

the stomach remains dumb

the way she finds this out on a school bus

the way her mother
after losing
a child  

~ ephemeron

cornfield visionaries, they sat around the ball as if it were fire.  I myself was tired of magic

so we played four short and the ball was a fact.  a hard period planted in mud

or a long quote
buzzing the ears
together.  

~ alleviant

of all places a park bench will do for the man not yet reading but planning to the children’s book with its cover of mother and child and kitchen and some kind of batter on the child’s face.  presently the man is alone much as his mother is alone in one of his fingers.  two men nearby are drinking from a water fountain and in turn are each palming the low **** for the other.  they are friends but only by length of service and the man can tell one is aggressive and the other allows it.  the book itself is disappointing.  the child is just ***** and the mother is just angry and they learn only to be themselves.  the men at the fountain become two men on a bench and the reader scoots over to hear about the voice of god as ****** children take the park.

~ amends

your house in foreclosure and you leave it and you are holding two bags of cat food.
  
sometimes a tricycle is a particular tricycle
trying to clear
with its back wheel
the low cinema
of your bare
foot.  

I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both.

I hope we can meet without talking money.  this story my mother gave me
about the world’s first invisible man
is a keeper.  he was born

that way.

your mother I saw her setting the patio table for two and I looked away but could hear
no one
beating her.

we can talk about your cat.    

~ homology

the empty raccoons by their emptiness have kept the priest awake.  the church dumpsters wheel themselves into the world and he watches.  he tells his mother it is the silence of god.  she shrinks from him more and more and eventually fits through a door he cannot see.  his house fills with garbage and he becomes convinced he is wearing gloves.  we do not argue.  he raises them with his hands to take them off with his teeth.      

~ fiction

my age, father paints an abstract jesus.  mother has the kitchen to herself and sits.  mother watches my brother lift a chair and leave.  my sister lets a train pass and bites at the shoulder strap of her bra.  not my age, I draw a violinist.  draw a dog at the neck of its owner.  at my age of apple and rope, I prefer god’s early work.

~ monodist

online, I pretended to be writing a very long obituary.  in house, I dreamt not of my wife but of a grape being rolled by a palm gently toward a grape the dream could not see.  as it is in heaven, I was not all there.

~ signage

I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs.  my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened.  soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I startled that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad.  I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of the man who’d fathered the boy whose fist had found so recently fistfight heaven.  the toad was dull save for its hop from water and save for its courage and save for a sickly orange spot on its back that was a star when the toad paused and a mangled star otherwise.  everything had been planned and my body wanted to be generous to the toad and it was hard not to run or use my hands or ruin this paradise that I knew then as vengeance but now see as existential plagiarism which is nonetheless vengeance.  I told myself I would not rub the toad over me and I had to convince myself repeatedly.  the boy was no doubt inside the house as his dog was not to be seen but his sister was sprawled on two towels as she was very tall and her sunglasses were cocked enough so that her right eye could see mine.  the toad was in her mouth immediately and then her throat bulged but went quickly back to its original.  I lost the toad forever then but its orange star surfaced on the right and then the left of her belly button.  I told her I would see her at school and I would but this was the last time I would see her in anything but an overcoat and that boy would try and come close but never again pin me down.      

~ discipline

somehow sweet in his want of no trouble, the unwashed man goes hand in hand with your father to the backyard where they wrestle as if hurt were people keeping them apart.  your father’s jaw comes loose, the man’s ear seems held by too small a magnet.  at window you a sickly child with overbite and a scarecrow’s pipe stroke the puppet-corn hair of a sister’s doll and walk it cloud to defrosted cloud.  amidst this bartering of vanished weight your mother is being made to balance on her bare stomach a glass of lemonade.  in three days the man will come back, your father a bit healed, your mother less angry about straws.

~ the rabbits

the head of a shovel enters the earth of this southern field.  there is no more give here than in the northern.  the burying boy has been long facing the wind and will be longer.  in walking toward the boy, the old man’s knees have locked.  the old man is seen by the boy and the old man waves upright in the wind’s gnaw.  the tops of the boy’s legs reach his stomach.  

~ archaism

a man carrying his dog stops to kneel.  for my distance from him, I am disallowed any inquiry that would flower.  he sets the black dog in front of him in the manner I have imagined god at the simple chore of placing those first shadows.  I am holding my son nostalgically, almost forgetting how my tooth would ache and his tooth would ache and both would be things I knew and he didn’t.

~ sincerely

the males had in them a sloth and a jolly fog of sportsmanship

and in the females a mistake was made.

against frogs, and against the dim leaping
of frogsong

I had this friend

broke his arm
while *******  
at the wheel.  

I put my arm in the grief of my arm.

casually breaking your heart

i was walking the line,
inside those guideline confinements you marked out on the pavement in chalk all those years before.

I still see them x ray vision,
when i sneak by nostalgically,
less and less as the years go by.

I didn’t know at the time,
but it seems I was casually breaking your heart.

Gradually time heals real wounds and feelings,
exposure to the pain grows alongside the overgrowth greenery.

Picture the scenery,
and all that you mean to me,
as i’m casually breaking your heart again.

So long to the honey drip,
another quip yet to come.
We emerge ensured bacteria,
surrounded in the Somme.

Reminiscences of our future
Things to be, perhaps nostalgically
Who is wishing star's shooter?
Presently mind altering pendantically
Subconsciously forever no honesty

Someplace we never were together
Vicariously our algorithms meet
And I in my mind, with you forever
Though self-hypnosis not complete
Perpetuum delirium I greet

Infinitely brief occurrences
How we do so, what's not sought
Repress outer conscious past tenses
Hidden innermost thought
To table, it is never brought

Who could know the unaccomplished?
You and I, sheer mystery
If it weren't, I so astonished
And you and your word artillery
Slight chance we could change this
history?

Selectively mines,  on conditions that I don't step out of line, don't dare ask too many questions because it makes you answer with more questions where I'm turnt into the bad guy,

the one who doesn't understand, it's all my fault somehow, it's because of me, I failed to give into to ridicules accusations or allow defeat, I was pushed past the point of breaking ,

I even lost me a few times, I've been insane for as long as I can remember but this time it's completely different, I wake to walk in fear every hours of the day,

I'm made to feel ashamed for loving you, told I'll never be as good as the one you're faithfully into someone whose not even known you not the real you not as I do,

seed after useless seeds polluted a once healthy womb, drop after drop tears fell ******* shadows passing me up,

leaving me for what may become a happy ending to this fairytale nightmare,screaming myself away flinging covers off of me, laughing as I cry  out darkness, so dark and the scents nostalgically unpleasant, the many times her scents lingered on you

even in thought I conjure up the smell of lies, the musty deceit, the filthy metallic accusations thrown at me

Selectively mines when it suites your ego and when it's not inconveniencing you, I'm turnt into the bad one the person whose always to blame,



                  the one who
doesn't understand,
                it's all my fault                        
                      somehow,
it's because of me,
           I failed to give into
                           to ridicules accusations
                                                       or allow defeat,    
                                                  I was pushed
                                                     past the point of breaking


the reason you need her - where I no longer have a place, I had no choice too, I had to move on.

Hardest things to do when your reaching for a hand but end up with  straws, darkness and no help, dreams unpleasantly real, craving a touch a kiss, to be notice.

        Knock knock,    
              
                          whose there?
                                  
                                             No one....
                                  
                                       Just your
                                        
                                                  Wife of 11 years.


                                  Always Me Ayeshah ®
Copyright 1977 - Present ©
K.A.C.L.N ©
All right reserved ®

As I drove through Vermont
where a ****** only south in Elizabeth
that I would come upon her scenery
and there it made me dream nostalgically

Where she was as divine by candlelight
and we both liked to chat at their In Corner now a pitch so shrill
that adulation was entirely blue,

this deep
stabbing stake
wrenched in my chest
feels so nostalgically familiar
i welcome it with open arms
despite the hurt that comes with it
i am a self *******
and shove it even deeper
until it feels like i am choking
desperate for air
the stake turns to poison
falls into the depths of my stomach
and curls up there, forcing
the contents inside out
into a porcelain bowl
3 am and nothing but a wrecked mess
pale and shivering
cheek pressed against the cool tile
of a beige bathroom floor
shaky breaths spill out from
terrified lips
frantically wondering
if they will be my last
yet day after day
my eyes seek you out

self masochism is my only talent, i say
as i watch you kiss her
bullets riddle my chest
yet i still smile and say i am fine
self masochism is my only talent, i scream
because if i am not happy
the only thing that matters is you
even if i fall at least it was for you
self masochism is my only talent, i whisper
it feels as if i am dying
with every step i take i wonder
if you hate me for what i did for you
self masochism is my only talent,
but i cannot speak no more
for i bite my tongue and drown myself in self pity
this stake that emerges from my chest
is just another heartbreak

Oh we loved once,
You were there,
I gave you myself
And you dissappeared
Off in the mountains of Spain.
I'm lying here,
Writing lyrics on my computer,
Singing about your apathy
And my heartbreak.
I reminisce nostalgically of the pressure of your lips,
That burning friction that aroused my desire,
Infatuated love.
Red turns blue,
Fire washed by rain,
Water mixed with tears,
River flowing endlessly
I'm a trout, going against the current.
Reaching for that dry place,
The fire flame.
It'll dry me out but I seek closure,
I seek to find the burning embers
In the cavern.
I know cavemen lurk within and will spear me,
But maybe, from death is rebirth.
From rebirth is debt,
From debt attatchment,
And I'll find that love,
That resurrected unsevered love that crosses
Multiple universes and lives.

red taillights graze the asphalt,
                                                           shaving off whatever we thought
                                                         ­                                                   was now.
the violent bloom of neon sanguine
dissolves into the thick darkness,
                                   the dense night sky that the moon slices           through      
                                                                ­                                         straight onto you
                                   (so piercingly it could spark a fire)
                                   just as the silence envelopes me into
                                   bitter and total solitude
                                                        ­                                     I forget to let go, I forget to forget.
Time wraps itself around me and ribbons me with memories, maybe this is all you see when you look at me. Maybe you are waiting to unwrap me. Constellations uncoil and stars dance on the polished marble floor
freely.
effortlessly,
closer.
                                                                ­       Closer now.

Just as reclusively as the moon, watching the stars occupy her room
as undefined as the horizon swallowing the foggy spheres of red light
and as nostalgically as the night
I wait for you.

Two friends and I
spend part of the night
hanging out.
It last about
two hours
till I excuse myself
feeling bad.

Cards, and anime,
once or twice a week
but I can only hang
for an hour or two
before I need to leave,

Video games
And Netflix;
Nostalgically
we reminisce
my oldest and dearest friend
but I can only sustain this
energy for an hour
three tops.

Godfather to his two kids
take them both to different movies
barely make it through the second
tell their dad I’ll be over after I take a nap
but I sleep a little past four.
I apologize, but it is not the first time
most likely will not be the last.
He gives me what I ask,
says he understands.
I still feel bad
for breaking plans.

It is just who I am.
I need the quiet time
to recharge
after a couple hours
of social interactions.

Tell me what it is
About the trees
Dusty grey and gloomy in October
That resonates so dearly with a heart
Melancholy and somber
This rain is soothing
Like the soft white I line my walls with
A golden haze playing through my veins
And flames to match the essence
But not the calefaction

You can watch me drift into a paralysis effortlessly
A debilitation cold and lingering
Like lifeless trees awaiting the worst
Some sun
Does not change the course of nature
And I wonder what flavor of future
Nature holds for me
I feel like the trees
In the middle of a foggy autumn afternoon
Comfortable

And content
Living in the shadows of a world
Too engulfed in regurgitated highs
To contemplate or appreciate struggle
A world utterly ignorant to individuals soft spoken and inherently
Harmonious in the ways of authenticity
And naturalism and realism
We have the endurance to undergo lifelong tempests
But lack the energy to speed through
Trivial phases of Insatiable beauty 
Our growth is goddess enough

Tell me what it is about the moon
Majestic and nostalgically haunting
A calming through night's terrors
And unforgiving traumas
Silver whisps of validation shine into a heart
With love looking a little too much like silhouettes
An ebony void seeping into the cracks of joy
And pain becoming an obvious pattern
And the moon is there always
Watching the molding in a resentful awe

What happened to the life of the young
Happiness looking like summer nights
And chrismas lights and vintage pop bottles
Fading into an uninviting outline
Through that type of half reality
Half fantasy version of time
Months feeling like hours
But unrewarding years all the same
Childhoods disappearing into insomnia
And I'm not very hungry
And I don't want anything for my birthday
Kind of aloof answers
We get it
We're all just tired

Tell me what it is
About the stillness of autumn
That induces a numbness in our hearts
Watching our desires blow away with the wind
One by one
They sing their remorse through aeolian howls
Uncanny and ghost like
Or the early nightfalls
That strangely feel more intimate
Than our last touch did
A type of familiarity rather profound
And lacking in any form of resentment
Maybe it's the significance in vulnerability
The stripping away of irrelevant priorities
To see the real
To see the roots

Tell me what is is
About the trees
Dusty grey and gloomy in October
That soothes a tired soul
A vagabond in search for more
And a heart a little too in love with loss

We live on the same street

Sometimes when I lay down
At night
Snuggle with my pillow
In the frozen air
I hear a car **** by
And I wonder if it's you
I always
Always
Wonder if it's you

And the strange thing is
Inevitably
Sooner or later
I'll be right

And I'll be thinking of you
Driving past my house
Thinking of me
And all the mistakes we made
My hands are just as filthy
As yours

And you'll be wondering
if I'm home.
And you know what?
Maybe just once
You'll be right.

And for just a moment
We'll be thinking of each other again
Sharing a second in the dark
For a moment
We'll be nostalgically alone

These nights  are so bitter now
It's so hard to sleep
With you living down my street.

I am a mess. I am a ticking bomb. I am an empty broken bottle of ***** on my kitchen floor, a collection of dying stars ready to explode. I am a wallflower, an insecure bundle of fear, a shy girl who rarely talks about her feelings. I am a grey induvidual with strands of orchid ribbons frayed at the tips. A moderately pale lanky teenager whose friends are few. I am my past. A quiet girl who refused to eat, who carried razors and trinkets in her pockets, who rarely spoke but broke down and weeped constantly, who was afraid to speak out, for fear no one would listen. I am my present. A young woman who is lost in every direction, who strives to be perfect but won't actually achieve anything, who is only somewhat antisocial, who is deeply afraid to love someone, for fear they'll break her heart. I am my future. A loveless woman who has a decent career in fine arts, who goes home to her empty, stuffy apartment and nostalgically looks back at her teenage years while sitting in front of a bright screen, who secretly wakes up early on weekends to drive to her support group but gets pulled over for the ***** in her hands. I am a potential alcoholic, a misunderstood whiny teenager, an overdosed blackout, a late night trigger. I am the queen of insecurity, who sits on a throne of judgement. I am an array of colors bursting at the seams ready to bleed on the ones they loved. I am a listener who wants to comfort others but can't quite grasp the idea. I am a pair of torn lungs clogged with dafodil petals, sticky black tar, and what ifs. I am a girl crying out for mercy but my throat has been surgically removed and is replaced with quiet bruises. I. Am. A. Mess.

a man carrying his dog stops to kneel.
for my distance from him, I am disallowed
any inquiry that would flower.
he sets the black dog in front of him in the manner I have imagined god
at the simple chore of placing those first shadows.
I am holding my son nostalgically. was my tooth would ache
and his tooth would ache
and both would be things I knew and he didn’t.

We sat
Me and him
A table between us
Its funny how we weren't
Even next to one another yet
I felt closer than I ever
Had before

We shared
A million memories
Childhood's present and past
Danced vividly, alive in his and my
Nostalgically saturated eyes
I thoughtlessly giggled
Carelessly happy

He spoke
Out words the
Colour of a beautiful rainbow
I'd never saw in him before
He smiled and for the
First time in years
I felt safe.

Lips kiss carefully
leaving me craving for
the carvings dug deep
within your undeveloped brain

I found carnations
pink as your Italian cheeks
left on my dusty dashboard
in the midst of summer
when I climbed back in heels over head
after the jeep flipped over

There they lay
limp and lonely
telling me stories stuck within their thin throats
and warning with their petals pointed towards the sun

but I’m bleeding nostalgically from my nose
licking the beet red bath from my upper lip
speaking with no teeth left
salty says my tongue but
I see bubbled blotches of someone
I used to call “baby”

Maybe I taste the bittersweet bouquet of
stale rain after all,
Maybe I can hear the clouds gaining weight
when I listen close

The rain outside her window seemed angered by her persistent tears, as if it were almost insulted by her deep remorse. And in protest of her sadness the drops mercilessly thumped against her window pane, sounding more like fists of rage rather then liquid from heaven. She stared blankly into the misty grey of water vapor which now blanketed her glass bedroom window. While nostalgically remembering the beautiful point of light ascending gently towards the stars above. "...come...back..." She whispered to herself, hollow words that echoed slightly along the walls of her lonely room. She needed him, and she desperately longed for the warmth of his arms once more or the loving sound in his hypnotic voice whispering in her ears, which caused a minute sensation of joy to run up and down her quivering spine. Raising a trembling left hand she slowly traced a heart into the condensation along her window. "Where are you?...You promised me remember!?" With her sweet words now seeming more like an endearing cocktail. Who's ingredients contained hope,love with a dash of desperation.  Closing her eyes slowly she recalled the feeling of his warm NASA space suit rubbing against her finger tips. Or the smell of the stinging jet fuel emanating from the SLS rocket nearby preparing for launch. "I love you Octavia...I'll love you while I'm traveling faster then the speed of light...I'll love you from across the galaxy...and I'll love you forever..." His last words pierced her heart like miniature daggers. While his voice seemed to haunt her mind causing Octavia to close her eyes tighter as a result of new tears forcing their way through her eye lids and down her cheeks like a dam now set free. Her only response was to squeeze the heart shaped locket she clinched in her right hand with a painful grip. While slowly whispering to herself through relentless tears "I love you to Shayne...forever..."

It was the night we laughed and cried
We promised forever,
we knew we both lied

While rain pounded against our naked souls
Exposing the drift amongst our goals
Washing away the concealer of holes

Further and further we moved apart
Nostalgically dreaming of our start

11 o'clock on a Friday evening
I walked through closed doors
Into the rustic old bar
I sat in the faded bar stool that creaked like the floorboards
on the stained seat cushion molded to fit my *** like a glove
From the regular nights

The bartender walked by twitching his mustache, cleaning an old mug
I slapped my hand on the tarnished bar
He nodded, filling a patchwork glass with the same old beer
That swished frothily in my mouth with the taste
Of old gym socks and dog ****

I stared into the mirror reflection  before me
Examining people while sipping my taint of a beer
The waitress reciting play lines devotedly between  orders
Still trying to get into her new life on Broadway
Stuffing tips in her mismanaged pockets
that wanted a college degree, but chose fancy clothes

A lawyer and a teacher in the corner of the room
No one likes drinking alone  
Sitting in a battered, splattered seat booth
Lamenting about their dreaded work
Wishing in their heart of hearts
That the paths they had chosen at 19 were switched
One found he loved kids and one loved the justice system
If only it were simple to swap uniforms and degrees

Two destitute prostitutes lingering, smoking wispy cigs outside
Waiting for work
One wanted to be a dentist
Till the ****** that protected her dreams broke
And she lost her baby regardless
And the other wanted to be a politician
Until her dreams were beaten down by
A man, a level below Neanderthal, who viewed her body
As a conversation where his fists do the talking

The bartender stalled at the TV between drinks
Observing the young sports analyst on the TV
In a crisp, tailored suit with slick black hair
Nostalgically imagining himself talking emphatically about his passion
Mouthing the comments of what the analyst should've been saying
But he served drinks filled with faded dreams

And I turned and saw myself in the glossy mirror
Holding the poor excuse for a drink to my lips
And I saw the people around me like spirits in my eyes
I worked 9-5 in an office that’s as fun as feet being nailed to the ground
The only thing I changed in my routine whether I did my
Laundry on a Friday or Saturday
And I twitched my hand to ask for a different drink
But I kept it down and sipped on my beer

Time floats with the dust
And hangs in our silence,
Mulls in our laughter,
Hides our reliance
On trust.
Oh say it if you must;
We can watch the
Metal rust
On our support beams,
Grow old and
Talk of dreams
Unattained nostalgically
But it seems
Like we'll always be
Stardust
Blown together
On a gust of chance.
And if it's true,
Let's entrance
Ourselves in
Harmonic wanderlust.

I promised you that I'd scour the darkest planets in our galaxy until I found you again. I swore that I'd search endlessly through the shadows of existence until I felt your warmth again. But here on a world nearly devoid of star light the courage I thought I possessed inside me, even my very will itself begins to waiver. You told me once you loved me more then every star in our nights sky. In my minds eye I see the times I held you closely to my beating heart, and you promising you'd wait for me even in the shadows if you had to. But now staring through this piercing night I realize I'm the one who's..afraid...plagued by a fear so incredibly daunting that it grips my very soul tightly under my space suit. Nostalgically I harken back to the days we embraced each other on neon green grass while under
crystal Angelite skies. Remembering these moments causes a smile to creep slightly around the edges of my mouth. This being I could still feel the softness of your hair running through my fingers. I could still see the angelic look in your eyes as you stared into mine. I remember back then you would always ask me what did I see when I stared into your beautiful haunting eyes? I would never answer, I would just kiss your loving lips gently and hold you closer. Yet now as I stare into the distant star partially illuminating this dark and desolate alien world. I realize now what I saw in your eyes back then, I saw..eternity..

Tick-tock the hands of the clock plock
the pendulum swings to the immutable
rhythm of hypnotic seconds measuring time,
the soundtrack to the great oeuvre that is

our life. An existence we perceive
ephemeral, thus instinctively preparing
suitcases since inception, on an earthly
sphere we interpret merely as a vestibule,

be it a pretty one awaiting to embark
on a journey to a destination unknown,
neatly folding experiences one by one,
hiding mistakes between the nethermost

layers, shameful feelings, regrettable deeds
tucked under blankets of tears, loving
sentiments nostalgically stowed as valuables
in secret pockets where fears glow.

Achievements meticulously placed in side-
compartments for easy retrieval, references
just in case, identity printed in capital letters
on a stateless passport holding the blank

ticket stretching ears to heed announcements,
last call for immediate boarding, hopefully
after blowing on candles times enough
for departure to be tolerable, desirable. Yet

the bell tolls every so often unexpectedly,
rendering the baggage of a life time instantly
redundant, while climbing the invisible ladder
naked, slowly dissolving into the ether, a rapid

transition between who we are, have been
and will be once more, pure energy melting
to recompose, metamorphosis in tune not
with the pendulum but with the mute

timeless cosmic flow encompassing all,
the solemn moment the weight suspended
from the pivot ceases to swing.