I was going to write you something
that embodied our love, some
infinitesimal prose about
your name click-clacking off of
my tongue or your eyes
when you're smiling.

I was going to answer all of
the questions that are silently ticking
inside your mind and scrawl
perfect prepositions across the page
so that your hands might
falter as they traced the corners.

I wanted to tell you about
the tug of your presence or
the way that your fingerprints
feel against mine,

but I'm writing this instead,
listing off the beauty that I feel
seeping into my skin and
it doesn't really make sense
but that's just the way it falls
onto the paper, bit by bit.
sad things, serenade me.

I'm only romanticizing
the madness of it all.
I never asked to be
a ******* poet.

To love a man that gives you the moon and all of the constellations,
                      this gift, I did not receive.

Instead, I loved a man who could create skies of jade and violet among any area of his choosing with his own bare hands.

To love a man that gives you a bouquet of twelve burgundy roses,
                     this gift, I did not receive.

Instead, I loved a man who could produce a field of golden pansies atop my right cheek with his own fingertips.

To love a man that gives you a kiss beneath a lantern string of lights,
                     this gift, I did not receive.

Instead, I loved a man who could shoot the most colorful of fireworks and streamers from the booming sound of his own voice.

To love a man that gives you a floral path from the door to a candle-lit room,
            this gift, I did not receive.

Instead, I loved a man who could toss a book through the air and before it struck my skin, it would burst into pink rose petals with a clap from
the same bare hands that painted me jade and violet skies.

self harm is not beautiful.
it is not wonderful to be saved
it makes you feel weak
and it makes you feel sick.

carving his name into your skin
is not poetry
and is not romance

mental illness is not glamourous
or fascinating
or graceful

mental illness is sickness
anger, disgust

stop romanticizing something
that destroys life itself

trauma is not
a beautiful thing
i'm not a bird
with broken wings
not a sick puppy
for you to save
not a white daisy
growing over a grave
i'm rotten inside
down to my core
grabbing handfuls
of guts and gore
pushing it back
under my skin
so you will not see
the condition i'm in

Two people, faces on
A screen, and two
Voices telling us how we should be
What’s new in the world, why we should
Avoid doing this, avoid doing that
What’s in, what’s not, what we should all do best

I see some nods
I see disapproval, approval
I see shifty glances in eyes
I see mouths start to move and talk
I see phones, many phones
I see the consumerism kicking in
I see unwavering doubt

I see lies, a mirage
I see the contours of deception
I see material eyes and material hearts
I see heavy minds and empty heads
I see people wondering about how they should look instead
I see people dreaming of a better life
I see people forgetting their own beautiful life
I see insecurity, stinging idiosyncrasy
I see flaming ******* media hypocrisy
I see romanticization of all things ugly
I see faces that look so young and glossy
I see big lights that cancel out all the imperfections
I see makeup that covers all the unwanted
I see ivory and I see bone
I see a curated life that I’ve never known
I see this image stitched up
And I never see it become unsewn

Collided with you on my way to work,
No, it wasn’t a sign, wasn’t destiny’s quirk.
A swollen temple and a bruised nose
Do not herald a date, a wedding, or even a rose.

Dropped my books on my way to class,
Our fingers brushed when you knelt on the grass
Music blasting from the dorm on the second floor
I nodded my thanks and walked through the door.

I know they say it’s divine intervention,
But it’s more just my lack of hand-eye coordination.
I know you believe we were meant to be
But I need spectacles more than a relationship.

Now my scarf’s stuck to your wrist watch,
My hem’s ripped, your buckle’s botched.
I knew I shouldn’t have bought the lace
Oh ****! Did you think this was decreed by fate?

Spilled my coffee on your shirt front
****! Was it Ralph Lauren? Peter England?
Here’s a coupon for a dry-cleaning discount
Just tell me you don’t think this counts.

Look, I’m not saying you’re reading too much into this,
Though that might be an accurate analysis.
All I’m saying is our future looks accident prone
So maybe invest in an insurance plan before a wedding loan.

god ****** she misses you

and god ****** i miss you

and im sorry, god, for swearing but i have run out of ideas on how to make this no good shapeshifting warm handed boy notice me remember when he said i love you

this is not a goodbye you don't deserve one this is not a plea for help see previous poems, twitter, my wrists, etc this is not a romanticization of your destructive ways and i no longer hear birds sing when you torch cities and i can't bring myself to see the love in your inferno so what the hell do i have left to say to you

i once wrote that you left love letters on my tongue and that you made drowning fun but i have come to the conclusion that those are both in fact lies and that the only thing you left on my tongue is the bitter taste of your name and beer and that drowning is ******* terrible and so are you

i remind myself everyday that you must have been a good person somewhere along the way and that there must have been some point where you actually did miss the feeling of my skin and that i was the only one you cared for- but i must also remember the day you filled my vacancy and turned on the lights and i still see you in the smiling pictures hung on the walls like your head in the hall whenever i pass by and i remember the day you moved out and on to nicer things and to this day you have succeeded in making the whole thing feel like an eviction, like it was me that wanted you gone and my peeling wallpaper has since revealed that the only thing holding me together was you

funny how every part of this poem ends with you and funny how every thought these days ends with you

and it's funny how when things ended with you you were the only one laughing

this is not a cry or a plea or an appology

this is a eulogy from me to you and i will not waste any more metaphors or adjectives or nights where i should be fast asleep on your whirlpool eyes and twisted smile

you once said, at 3 am, "you know when you're as close to loving someone as physically possible without actually saying it?" and i replied with "yes" and i love you i love you i love you

i hope flowers grow from your rotting heart and i hope you wake up some life and feel just a hint of remorse as you look into her eyes

i'm not a poet and you're not a nice boy and there was a time when i would devote my life to writing about the way you touched my cheek and you would devote your life to exploring the small of my back

that life has ended and i hope she holds you close enough at night

(my own hands will find comfort in the folds you left unnoticed and i will let myself hear the whispers of flattery upon every surface i touch. i will love myself and i will learn to not love you and i will find someone that i can love without pushing myself aside)

I. Midas

i like to look at your picture because it reminds me that you are just a man

your hands have handed me horseradish and hard liquor and you’re about as chatty as the women on the view but it's great because i'm totally into this view

and ohio was gray until out of the blue, you touched me and i turned to gold

---

II. Indianapolis

i want to rage so hard in this life

i want to be so exhausted from living that i don’t even have the urge to fight back on my death bed

and i’ll be too worn out to walk into heaven that the angels will have to carry me in

only to have peter push me through the drop door and i’ll plummet straight into purgatory

which i’m convinced is the state of indiana

where there’s inexplicable construction funded by taxes from the four people who live there

inconveniencing all the rest of us who are just passing through

peeing in your roadside wallpapered bathrooms and marveling at your cows of many colors

the loudest noise in indiana is probably me screaming

it’s like each telephone pole took two days off my life

but i lived it.  if driving through indiana meant giving life a chance, fine.  i found a vegan restaurant in indianapolis and i got lost in indianapolis and i hated the fact that i got overwhelmed in indianapolis

but god put it there.  so while the angels escort me towards the drop door, my legs will be too sore from LIVING my LIFE and i can turn around and look at peter and say have fun standing in the same place on your stupid pink cloud and before i know it i’ll land with a thud in a truck stop on I-70W surrounded by billboards advertising breakfasts and best westerns

I can spit out words in a matter of seconds
I can twist my thoughts into metaphors and anaphora and all this rhetoric they taught me,
they said it would make my argument stronger,
that it would make me a better writer
well
here I am,
am I?

I can do it all
I can make pain taste like sugar, granulate it so finely to where it melts on the tongue
I can cope my problems into understanding, make feeling alone no longer a possibility
I can even create something similar to hope with the way I form these phrases together
I can almost do it all, but
I cannot write you into my arms
I cannot place you in this bed next to me

I often wring passion into language, this pouring out becomes exhausting and
It doesn't matter how many times I rewrite this poem
Poems don't make people fall in love
People make people fall in love
I wish
I could make you fall in love but
I am not one of those who can

I've learned it doesn't matter how nice these titles are,
the stanzas, the formatting, the content is not important
Whether or not I bury my soul into the center is irrelevant when
you are currently the only thing living inside of it
Every time I pick up a pen or
a pencil or a page I hear you
My head has become a blank thesaurus, everything sounds like your arms holding
I search for inspiration and your name is all I can find
I want to say the same goes for you with mine but
that would be a lie more than
anything else

I guess that's what writing is more than anything else
deceit, fabrication, myth, romanticization
a reflection of everything we know to be false drawn into something it's not
I have been trying to scribe my way into your heart but
it's clear that I cannot let myself in without invitation
the welcome mat means nothing if it goes unread and
as much as I would like to get a call from you tonight,
it would be silly to wait up for fiction
I thought the rhetoric I've learned would help me feel better
I thought writing this might take away the aching, make me happier
well
here I am,
am I?

I've read so many things to try to comprehend the way I'm feeling.
Years of research.
Decades of those prior to me.
This extraterrestrial rush of chemicals flowing from different parts of my brain
It doesn't feel right.
I hate it.
I am concrete.
Earth.
Grounded.
Why must these things keep trying to pull me away from the soil in which I was born from and will return to?
From dust to dust.
Ashes to ashes.
I can't fall down.

Everything is ephemeral.
Me.
These figments of my imagination that claw away at me.
These thoughts that keep whirring,
grinding the gears inside the factories polluting even the most miniscule crevices of my mind.
But this is slowly warping my earth
My dust
My ashes
To mud.
Water.
Air.
The molecules change.
Atoms vibrate sporadically.

Dust to dust.
Ashes to ashes.
Fall down.

Do you know how it feels like to have a stomach that can only survive on intimacy and nothing else?
To be prodded to love all the things that touch your skin whilst simultaneously not being
allowed or able to tell the difference between the things that love you and the things that want to leave you barren?
How it feels like to see the solemnity and grandeur of an omnipotence within all the sinless intentions of the skin cells that you'll never be allowed to hold?
Well...
It feels a lot like the romanticization of an eating disorder.

Sometimes you fall in love and then begin to forget how your organs are supposed to behave.
You look in the mirror and realize that you're still thinking about someone else when you're
Analyzing your own body.
You clutch at your own skin,
your arms,
your hair,
your throat,
and begin to try and disassemble a mind that does not want to be associated with the body that it is working in.
Before you know it,
Every time you cross the mirror you clutch more and more parts of yourself and wish that they would not feel better in somebody else's hands besides your own.
You're getting thinner everyday,
you're losing sleep
you're forgetting how to breathe,
And somewhere,
out there,
There is a boy in a place far away,
giving to someone else what you are about to be killed
without.

You realize that you turn your own bed into an ocean everytime you think about his face.
You feel the hydration of the salt water from everywhere around you,
tickling into your senses and diffusing into your nose,
but you do not taste it.
Only sense it.
You're grabbing the sheets desperately.
Holding them onto your chest, covering up your shaking body, and
almost certainly forgetting the difference between imagining the embrace of somebody who does not love you and drowning alone inside of your own bed.
You look for a lifeboat in the form of a thought that has no relation to love or association to the idea of affection.
You're hoping to find a distraction that will either save you from your peril or help you breathe in a way where you can still be conscious when there is water inside of your lungs.
You're beginning to see dark shapes and figures and all of them are sprouted by the idea
of just having a little taste of the very thing that's about to drown you.
All of the dark figures are in the shape of your face,
And nobody is here to save you.
You begin to sink,
And sink,
And sink,
and sink
and...

You are empty when you wake up.
Your chest is not an *****,
but you find it funny that when it feels empty,
your stomach also wishes to feel the same way.

So you make sure it does,
Whilst yearning for a meal that does not wish to be consumed by you.

That is the only meal,
that you will never stop craving for.

a very prominent philadelphia actor is still asleep next to me
i can't find my meteor
construction lurks outside
bang bang bang
he is stirring
i was everywhere last night
isn't it bizarre how memory works?
images rushing back like waves on a shore
who were we last year?
who were we last night?
I was so moved by terrible art
masturabatory
over romanticization of the highest pain
****
i amaze myself by how nice i can be sometimes
i hate being nice
life doesnt imitate art
whoever said that was a ******* idiot

A murderer walks among us
Hidden by the falsities of friendship
Serpents lie awake
Hidden in the garden

I want to swim in the lucidity
Of immortality
As my words resonate
In the ears of unknown times
And imagined places

There has got to be more than this
I'm so sick of self doubt
Nowhere to belong

Can any hell be more real
Than the now?
Wounded by the sultry
Lips of love

Perceptual notions of
Windows to the soul
The romanticization of
Substance abuse and mental disorder
A constant state of revolution

Eternal unrest

Stranded in winter eternal
I've run too far from
The shores of the sun
Escaping the carnage of reality
A pain of your fiery tongue

Too far I've run
Too fast I've become old
An eternity of chasing
Has taken its toll

The grandeur and intensity I have felt recently has clouded my mind like a fog brushing the top of a mountain at dawn.
The romanticization of our shared aspirations and desperation has left me mesmerized and hypnotized like the effects of a magician performing a conjuration. Not meaning to sound as cliche or pretentious as I know this will, you are my idea of a vacation. What u mean by this is that, when I’m near you, I want to stay this way until the inevitable sands of time run out. But I can’t. I can’t because most of life is work and you are my relaxation. You are a cup of hot tea when the icicles reign supreme outside. One day, I will see you every day. Even then, I know I won’t want those days to end. But end they must. So we face the test of time, wearing infatuation and admiration as our weapons, fighting the clocks and schedules that trail so closely behind. We fight and we fight and we fight.

Our generation is the victim of deceit. Misled by the books and poems and movies that has seemed to become our diet. Our form of entertainment eventually becoming the subject of our daydreams.

I am so sick of this romanticization of suicide. This dark artistry that seems to allude this picture of choosing to end ones life. That there is love in pain and martyrdom in the death of someone before their time. And so we thought ourselves saints as we drew the blade across our skin. We envisioned a gallant setting of roses and candles at our funeral. We thought that the hanging of the noose was some form of metaphor, some elaborately constructed final act that we must abide to in order for the 'perfect ending'.

Through this journey of recovery, I had reached an epiphany. Calling ******* on this obscene lie I had been feeding myself since middle school.

There is no beauty in suicide.

Suicide does not make a saint or a martyr or whatever gold painted character you imagined yourself to be after you had passed.

Suicide is the end. That is it. It is death, and for all we know, you may cease to exist. Total abyss. You won't even be able to realize you are dead because your mind will no longer work. Just black.

When you draw the blade vertically up your arm or put your mouth around the barrel of the gun, you better be committed. Because once that trigger is pulled, there's no going back. El Fin. There is no hope of waking up in the hospital as you pictured. Your story will end right there.
There is no beauty when your parents or your lover walks in to find your dead body, trust me. I know. There is no beauty in this complete devastation, just inexplicable pain. And that pain will last them years. Even 15 years later, as she is washing the dishes, your favorite song will come on the radio. She will stop, close her eyes, and imagine the 'what if'. What if you were still alive. What if you were standing next to her, enjoying the little pleasantries in life.

Imagining your funeral is useless, because you will not ever know how it will be played out. You will not be some floating spirit in the back of the church, watching your mother weep over your corpse.

I agree that there are reason's to end ones life life, and that people are entitled to them.

I just believe that the youth today should not be fed this ******* romanticized picture of suicide.

no matter
how well i know that you still love me
in your twisted way that isn’t really love
i can’t help but wonder if that is a tale i’ve spun myself
to distract from the beautiful boy by your side
whose name is always on the tip of your tongue

i can’t deny that he’s beautiful
perhaps in the same way i was before my skin fell in love with my bones
and begun to cling to them like a lifeline
but when you put me next to the pedestal on which he stands
i want to break him like you broke me
because he is shiny where my skin has dulled
and soft where i've gone rigid
how could i possibly compare?

it does not help
that i think you really love him;
when i say you loved me, i usually mean the animalistic obsession you had with my innocence
you did not love me, not in a soft
and warm way
i almost don't recognize you when your eyes land upon him
immediately erasing me from your memory
my heart stops
because still, this is the hold you have over me
and i harbor more jealousy than i ever believed possible

i haven't touched you in what feels like decades
but i haven't forgotten your skin,
or at least my romanticization of it
and when your hand is on his cheek
my body aches
to wrench you two apart
and force you to see what you once loved about me

but this was never the type of hold i held over you,
in the same way i melt like putty in your hands,
you are hard and unmovable;
of your own volition,
you read my poems
but you don't touch me
you touch him

perhaps you find them laughable
after all, your poems remain masterpieces that carve my soul with pain
even to words,
i couldn't compare.

His illuminating personality is,
if anything,
But a thinly veiled facade for the pain that lies underneath.

When looking deeply into his eyes,
just maybe,
You’ll see something I couldn’t.

Some say monster, some say saint;
although unsure,
For all I saw was him,
In his entirety.

As I sit here writing about someone I could barely grasp,
yet he holds me with such force,
The red seeps into a frigid purple,
As my superficialities begin to fade and the real damage is revealed.

The man I loved.
Is who hurts the most, even on his best days.

It’s time for me to end my romanticization with a ghost of a memory.

Life is waiting.

And now it comes crashing
Again
It’s like clockwork
A couple months in
And for her
It does not work
A lot left to question
Like why the charade?
Was it all just pretentious
Emotions conveyed
Seemed authentic
Assurances
Future projection
Romanticization
I know it,
I felt it
This time it was different,
She listened,
She cared,
Let me speak
She would seek
To see more of me
Bared
Unaware as it went
By along
Seemingly
To be both what we wanted
Indefinitely
But it’s me
Who can’t seem
To be all she would need
When it’s all said and done
They eventually leave

Is this what it’s like to be young?
The constant feeling of doom
the romanticization of finding a groom
the constant need to grow and bloom

Is this what it’s like to be young?
does it occur to other people?
the feeling of being imprisoned in your own mind
the silly reassurance you seek and hide behind
to have a sweet tooth for death every day in your life
trying to move in quicksand against the tide

It’s all fruitless
It’s all helpless
we all dream about the noose while we stand rope-less

Is this what it’s like to be young?
filled with rage confused with angst
demanding better & being ridiculed to rants
while we watch our lives slip through our hands
made to believe a better world is beyond our ranks

Is this what it’s like to be young?
existential dread at tender ages
beautiful minds locked up in cages
spilling our thoughts into endless pages
of books that no one will read.
Our years passing by as we bleed.
unable to think of a world with one good deed
when everyone has paid us dust.
we live in a world run by greed, power & lust
and so our steel will to live starts to rust
now I sit idly, waiting to turn to dust

Is this what it feels like to be young?
I may never know for sure
but I know that I’ve loved and fought in wars
that still exist from lifetimes ago
and I still can’t see justice or peace.

The most damaging thing we've embraced as modern society is the consistent romanticization of everything,
by doing so we've convoluted love and lust.

This constant lustful romanticizing of everything,
it's ruining us.

We cannot fix hate in this world without love,
but we don't even know what love is anymore.

Love,
Real TRUE Love,
it's the most difficult thing in this world, but also the easiest.
It's hard.
Hard to find,
Hard to maintain,
Hard to keep.
Because real love is not an Disney movie fairytale happy ending,
it's a constant choice.

Real love takes effort, time and care.
You cannot simply swipe right on true love.

Lust and Love,
One is the most powerful emotion on the planet,
And the other?
A Kardashian worthy filter fake,
often not caught until too late.