I tremble at the thought of

falling in love with a

tiny part of someone

and mistaking it

for the whole

-rupi kaur

do you know what it's like to have a pit in your heart? i can feel it right now i can hear gymnopiede playing in the back ground filling me with a sanity but not enough remember what Rupi said " it was when i stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself i found there are no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole" but instead i fall in love w the little things that i mold into big things to make myself feel important. when people see that i'm stressed and deprived of sleep and love i feel significant to their daily lives.
i want to be the rose in the garden that everyone wants to tend so they can revive the gold medal for the best green thumb. i want to be the bookmark of every bibliophile on the planet but little do they know that rose wants to die that's rose has thorns inside poking her every hope. rose hopes for love but not just any love. rose hopes that a dandelion will come who will be intelligent enough to pull the thorns out and so beautiful she will gasp for another breath just to see their petals. on weekends rose absorbs enough sunlight to get up for work. she tends to the clothing at the retail stop at the local mall and as she folds the endless piles of destroyed denim she admires the many flowers that tend to one another.she can smell the scent of the flickering candles upstairs and she makes her way up to the candle shop on her break she never sets foot inside, she worries the flicker of the flame will catch her petals. rose doesn't want to be alone when it happens she wants a dandelion to come and save her from the flame she wants dandelion to roar as loud as he can and blow the flame out. and be there ready to sweep rose off her stem. rose wants everyone to be happy she try's her hardest to make sure her garden has enough light and water and that everyone's petals aren't frowning. rose has tried too hard she ends up being the loneliness one her garden. she returns to her shop after break she goes back to folding the same endless pile of denim and she admires the buttercup walking with the california poppy looking at the lights hanging from the ceiling. the dutch iris and the crocus intertwining their petals. honesty and honeysuckle are pursing the petals together under the mistletoe. rose gathers her tools and makes her way to her wheel barrow parked by the restrauants she passes the children frolicking in the lot and she catches the heart beat of excitement of the little girl who's eyes are glued to the ipad that is playing alice and wonderland and rose can hear the garden scene and she cringes and feels like she's been swallowed by a world who doesn't know what passion is. rose wonders where the little girls mother is and she catches her mother sitting on the lap of the magnolia and she longs to be a mother but a mother who watches alice in wonderland with her child and frolics with her kids in the parking lot but pays attention to the cars coming just in case her motherly instincts have to kick in.
rose returns to her garden and flips thru the channels hoping to find a romance movie on. rose does this to her self. she absorbs her self into all the love she can get because deep downside she fears she will never find her dandelion. rose finds her self drowning in an ocean of tears. she crys out to the garden are my petals not light enough? is my stem to thick?. rose wants to dig herself a grave and burry herself there with the fake petals of a dandelion so that one day when the walkers in the cemetery hear the clanking of her stem crying out for love they will dig her up and see how much she coveted the love of a dandelion and they will find the real petals and place them next to her.  rose will tear honey because that's the sweetest thing she knows she will wipe her tears and lick the honey off of her petals. rose doesn't want to hide in her sunken city of petals she wants to tell you who she is. hello i am rose.
i've been trying to get rid of the file cabinets in my brain that i have been organized alphabetically. A- aster i love you and i promise your prayers for a new kidney will be granted. B- bleeding heart i want you to know i will drive you in wheel barrow to the hospital so you
can be sewed up. C- carnation please don't fret the world loves you and im so sorry you have a price tag that will eventually be ripped off when the children at the elementary school down the street buy you on february 14th just know that you're so much more to me than a valentine's day gift. D- daffodil you're too precious to feel unwanted your lover will come soon.i can hear the crys of them but please go back to the bed and sleep. i'm able to open my pedals up and hear the weeping of a dandelion "thank you for being there for them and just know i've been hear all along, rose. you're tired i can tell by the wrinkles of your palms please promise me rose that you will baptize yourself into the ocean of love that you keep drowning in. " rose pulls the dead roots that are pinning her down in her grave and gasps for another breath to see dandelion before the roots come back from under and tug her back down she is able to string her broken english together and whisper " dandelion i already have"

I giggle in pride writing the obvious, the ******
Kindergarten feelings
I feel sad, mad, happy, sappy.
Rhymezone, songs, and great works stealings

Roses are red violets are fine,
My poetry could be written by a child as young as nine
Punctuation is still a mystery?
Ironically, I teach Shakespeare! 

I will say, love poems and alcohol do not make good bedfellows
Sophomoric mumblings about a sunset's yellow
I take solace knowing even Rupi wrote bad poetry sometimes.
Yup, I compared myself to Rupi. Also, F**K this last line.

So That Others May Live

My son and I go down to the beach today
And lay claim to a small square of sand
Where we ***** a blue plantation of shade
Inside a red umbrella city founded by dermatologists.

Slow cooking like a pair of pork chops basted in SPF 30
He reads a Jack Reacher novel, myself the LA Times
Occasionally, he looks up from his book and shares a passage:
How about I show you the inside of an ambulance?

The girlfriend his from Kentucky has never been to the beach
She is ensconced in the best chair eating watermelon
Reading poetry by Rupi Kaur god bless her
She should have the best seat if she’s reading poetry.

People form Iowa and Minnesota you know the ones
In the parcel of sand between us and the ocean
Have lain towels and blankets far too near the tide line and
Come noon we enjoy their Midwestern diaspora to higher ground.

We body surf in waves that are bigger than they look
He wears the right fin and I wear the left
I bounce off the bottom and get my *** sand papered
Then tumble into him like a forgotten dollar bill in a wash machine.

In the parking lot laughing and spitting salt water
I pour a bucket of sand out of my wetsuit onto the hot asphalt
And realize it will never be this way again and it won’t
The lines in his face a perfect nautical map of the future.

honey

you looked
like honey
sweet
i wanted to eat

-but you were sticky

*insert poorly drawn photo of *******

It's like Rupi Kaur says,
"You should have known."
You should have seen me
as a candle,
you should have felt
me as a flame.
You should have never
tried to hold me,
should have never
changed my name.
I was never merely embers,
I was always made
for pain.

He sees me as a candle
soft and light and
smelling sweet.
Or he sees me as
a wild fire and he
marvels at my heat.
He's the wind and so
he tests me
and I
burn out or I rage.
He's the wind and so
I need him,
to clear away the haze.

He can quench the
flicking candle,
he can feed the
blazing flare.
He can touch me
without burning -
I can't breathe without
his air.

{Stay i whispered, as you shut the door behind you.}
-rupi kaur

All I ever wanted was for him to stay,
stay and never leave, I
believe that we were toxic for each other. When i whispered
into the night. Walking away as
if it were the only thing you
knew how to do. “Shut
up and listen to me when I talk to you.” The
anger that poured out of my mouth, as if an open door.
But you did go, and you left me behind.
I never thought I’d hate someone, the way I hate you.

I never wanted to stay
with her, all the pain that i
caused her. The way she whispered
in the night. As
if a warning. “You
never loved me.” The last words I heard before I shut
it all out. I needed to escape the
one thing that was good for me. I put up a door
and left it locked. I left you behind,
I will never stop loving you.

Saffo, antica maestra e disperata
portatrice d'amore,
Saffo di viole incoronata e altera
rendimi sciolta e in volo poi che accolga
la tua grande parentesi nel cuore.
Le mie notti deserte io le conosco
già dai tuoi grandi, morbidi giacigli
ove amore avventava alle tue labbra
mirra e miele. Anche io non sono sazia
come tu fosti ma mi aggiro eterna
dentro anime aperte ad ogni lutto.
Anche io ** l'amor mio che mi disdegna,
Saffo mia grande e inutile maestra
perché mi lasci e impoverisci il seno
delle tue offerte? Giacerò infeconda
anche stanotte e intorno a me i costanti
fedelissimi aspetti
di cupido apriranno dentro l'ali
rapidissimi inviti cui rifuggo
rimpiangendo e scoperta e innamorata.
Saffo rendimi pura e innominata
Come le parole, ove non cada
lacrima e tempo, ove non misuri
religione i suoi passi, ch'io non crolli
come crollasti tu dalle tue rupi...

rupi kaur writes that loving with the knowledge that you are not good enough is selfish,
and to that i say let me be selfish,
just this once.
i have suffocated my joy and buried my despair for too many men.
please let me try to show this one
how much he means to me.

some people think
writing a sentence
and hitting enter
a hundred times
is poetry

but poetry is
that on-the-edge-of -your-seat rollercoaster ride
that only goes up,
that ending ******* all pretty with a bow,
that washes you with a wave of emotions,
the crumple of paper and the smell of ink
that hits your nose as you sit on your bed,
dreaming so hard you can see the stars in your eyes.
No, poetry doesn't just scratch the surface,
with simple, shallow words,
poetry makes you feel emotions
you didn't' know existed.

“most importantly love
like it's the only thing you know
at the end of the day
all this means nothing
this page
where you're sitting
your degree
your job
your money
nothing even matters
except love and human connection
who you loved
and how deeply you loved them
how you touched the people around you
and how much you gave them”

― Rupi Kaur

you,
talentless hacks,
crave more of the words (the same ones)
that make you feel as happy
now as they always did.
how bland and naive.

{You may not have been my first love, but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant.}
- rupi kaur

When I think of you,
I get this overwhelming feeling in my chest. May-
be you feel it too. I am not
crazy, for I have
searched for something like this. My
third attempt, and here you are. First,
we must “get to know each other”, my love.

I hear what you’re saying, but
I cannot love
you, it is not possible. Were
you really that dumb? To think the
handsome boy would love
you? What ever you felt, that
was not real. See, I made
you. I made you love all
that there was to see. The
other guys that chased after you? The others
would have been a better choice. Loves
a funny thing, it’s really just irrelevant.

what does love look like the therapist asks
one week after the breakup
and i’m not sure how to answer her question
except for the fact that i thought love
looked so much like you

that’s when it hit me
and i realized how naive i had been
to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person
as if anybody on this entire earth
could encompass all love represented
as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for
would look like a five foot eleven
medium-sized brown-skinned guy
who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast

what does love look like the therapist asks again
this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence
and at this point i’m about to get up
and walk right out the door
except i paid too much money for this hour
so instead i take a piercing look at her
the way you look at someone
when you’re about to hand it to them
lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation
eyes digging deeply into theirs
searching for all the weak spots
they have hidden somewhere
hair being tucked behind the ears
as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation
on the philosophies or rather disappointments
of what love looks like

well i tell her
i don’t think love is him anymore
if love was him
he would be here wouldn’t he
if he was the one for me
wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me
if love was him it would have been simple
i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat
i think love never was
i think i just wanted something
was ready to give myself to something
i believed was bigger than myself
and when i saw someone
who probably fit the part
i made it very much my intention
to make him my counterpart

and i lost myself to him
he took and he took
wrapped me in the word special
until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me
hands only to feel me
a body only to be with me
oh how he emptied me

how does that make you feel
interrupts the therapist
well i said
it kind of makes me feel like ****

maybe we’re looking at it wrong
we think it’s something to search for out there
something meant to crash into us
on our way out of an elevator
or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere
appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore
looking the right amount of **** and intellectual
but i think love starts here
everything else is just desire and projection
of all our wants needs and fantasies
but those externalities could never work out
if we didn’t turn inward and learn
how to love ourselves in order to love other people

love does not look like a person
love is our actions
love is giving all we can
even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake
love is understanding
we have the power to hurt one another
but we are going to do everything in our power
to make sure we don’t
love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve
and when someone shows up
saying they will provide it as you do
but their actions seem to break you
rather than build you
love is knowing who to choose
           -Rupi Kaur

I prepare my pillows
To align and be a fort at the center
Of my bed, snuggling into the covers
1:12am, I meant to jot down some thoughts, emotions
I dipped and guzzled
A chocolate Popsicle I covered in peanut butter tonight before red wine
With my new women of the now
Because it's the closest thing I'll get
To romantic and ****** fulfillment
These days.

Could ponder all day long
Why it went this way or that
Or why he looks at my snap chat
But can't cutely retort back
I read and engulf Rupi Kaur's
Poetic words, feeling the weight of
Such authentic vulnerability
Goodness, on trains, before meetings
And I hope I too, can do that
For women
For men
When they need it most.

Tomorrow, X marks the spot
30 days.
It takes 30 days to break habits
And to create new ones
Let's do a thing, we should celebrate
My best friend and room mate exclaims
I come home to her alone
I come home alone
3 young women in their 20s
Close their eyes alone
On Campbell Street.

I worry that my Philly ladies don't quite understand
I try to illustrate it with both hands
Not sure if the support is so inexplicable
No need to showcase it
But sometimes I feel like a butterfly
Caught in its cocoon.

Chicago IS what you make of it
Indeed.
I remember panicking and feeling sadness
I need to go out into the world, I have to go places, meet new people
I lamented so desperately to you
Peter Pan
I write about you Jess and less
And I know it's just a healing scar.

I wonder if you keep the L in your wallet still
Or if the swans sing their lullaby above your bed
And I ponder what would we do if we encountered one another
You riding up the escalator
As I ride down
But I never see you
Though my heart feels confident
You have caught a glimpse or two of me.

Because I know you look
But my head is buried in my book
Or looking out the window
Or talking to a loved one on the phone
That somehow doesn't lose service
Underground
I move and I move
This is the tip of the brink

So be indifferent
Don't respond
Ignore me
Choose teams
Let it be

I sleep in the center of my cocoon.

It's a shame these are a “writer's diet”  
I have always dreamt of being a well-known author
Being on the New York's best seller
Even directing my own movie based on one of my books
To release a book of poems
That is just as effective as Rupi Kaur
I don’t smoke anything
But
I do drink black coffee
Like right now
Its 4:17 in the morning
And I’m up writing about you
Well us
To be completely honest
Most nights I can't sleep because the wheels of my brain are too preoccupied  
On coming up with ideas to do for you
Spending most nights up making you bookmarks with yarn as tassels
Writing poem that are completely inspired
By the way you curve your lip when you smile
Or the ways your eyes light up when you’re about to laugh

The small grin that appears when I make the dumbest jokes
The way you cover me when I’m being to scandalous  
Poems dedicated to the way
You make my heart compete in a race
And oftentimes win
The way you hug me so tightly when we were at your place in Alamogordo the morning before you left
The time you told me about the time you ran over that tall curb while leaving Walmart
Poems that are dedicated
To the fact that we get the same order at sonic
Or that we both thoroughly enjoy the perks of being a wallflower
Black coffee and cigarettes
Are for the greats
All I need
Is black coffee and you
And I can write a whole book of poems in a month.

Our knees
pried open
by cousins
and uncles
and men
our bodies touched
by all the wrong people
that even in a bed full of safety
we are afraid

- Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur is so entirely correct.
I'm not sure if writing is healing me or destroying me either.
I get to say what I want, what I think.
But from this writing comes those sleepless nights
From this writing comes those silent screams in my brain
From this writing comes a roaring, a deep, deep set roaring
From this writing comes these bags under my eyes
From this writing comes so much of my effort, my brainpower, my time
From this writing comes her
From this writing comes thinking, which is to be alive
From this writing is maturity
From this writing is growth
And I'm not sure if this writing is creating me or destroying me.
:;,
,;:

rita lee cantou que mulher é bicho estranho
todo mês sangra.
adélia prato lançou Bagagem.
rupi kaur escreveu sobre amor
e dor em seu corpo.
ijeoma umebinyuo criou versos que ainda não li,
mas que ouvi dizer vão desabrochar lindas
rosas dentro de mim.

àquelas mulheres que inspiram e respiram:
vocês são cada gota do gole de água que
preciso beber pra seguir vivendo.

i will laugh with you
at rupi kaur poems
but i write them
about you

i envy the winds who still witness you*

-rupi kaur, the sun and her flowers

Rupi Kaur once wrote
"Your absence is a missing limb"

and there are sharks,
again,
around my bleeding heart.

“You took the sun with you when you left” -rupi kaur

reading a rupi kaur poem is
probably the most heart-breaking
"thing" in the morning -
on the play store bestseller list:
because afterwards
a sylvia plath poem:
somehow isn't -

                       somehow she managed
to pluck at a geisha garden
and has become all porcelain all
             crystalline ivory & frailty...
but that's not about my reading
habits in the morning...            
   it's more... more about...
how "we" could get away with
writing all our onomatopoeias in
katakana:

                        unless of course
there's the "problem" of C, L, U, Q / CK...
that's hooves on cobweb streets
trotting...                                        
     ­                  nonetheless:
                        i give you
          マンナ              ダンナ
    (manna                    ­      danna)
            i guess: imitation
                          games of a madonna
in a brothel -
which is not a brothel...
and everyone's favourite
             Berlusconi's take on
                         castanets & maracas i.e.
                  ぼんご                 ボンゴ

otherwise a narrative in three parts:
a. my grandfather died
b. i stopped drinking
c1. and i started walking marathons
   c2. from 118kg
                down to 106.5kg
                  circa 2 months...

otherwise a further narrative of:
not because i'll gladly go into
the necropolis with a bouquet
of fake carnations / chamomiles...
  although "in manus tuas" i could
sit crow esque pensive,
hunched: a shadow for a globe of
atlas (etc.)
            and **** that fickle
creature that's memory in vain...
thereby making love
sound like a breaking
                           of an accordion...

or i could like i already have
"play a game" of       ここ / そこ
                                               ソコ / ココオ
no necropolis...
    just the remains of a forest...
bedfords park...
            a healthy stick for the purpose
of knocking on trees...
an dry-white skull-yellow-morbid
obelisk - i.e. a dead tree...
homage - three times:
           thunck-plonk-pluckpug
no echo...
      thung-plong-plugpuck...
a minute of silence...
                evidently...
                      in searching of meaning:
beyond in havering county park
horses grazing -
        "once upon a time"
they'd be work horses on the till
  of the land...
            now sometimes saddled...
not even bothered to gallop...
          while we're still...
                   under the tyranny of
the thumb...
                 or thereby some "relief"...

perhaps just walking through
east london toward st. paul's
seeing so many pilgrims (i.e.
that's what i'd call lunatics)
                        talking to pigeons
                                      at stratford in
                    the morning...
one might do what i do
teasing augury -
       notably because of the crows,
notably because of swallows;
at least for the former -
when hades stirs -
                 and a yawn breaks
rank from the pits of crunch &
                        harrowing tooth domino...
there's me procrastinating
before the altar of a name, date(s)
but no epitaph...
    or there's me making said
pilgrimage to a dead tree obelisk
  with a healthy stick in hand...
knocking three times...
            perhaps to let the forest know
i'm there, i.e. "here"...
alas... exasperation is not:
a need for "haiku"... it's also not
some snobbery when...
you're actually not given much to
"work" with e.g. -cemetery

       better a fascination with
                                  japanese text...
e.g. 緑 (green)
                         ミドリ
      / hiragana is probably a misnomer
                 みどり
  / why wouldn't green be in kanji?
               but how midori:
                       either squiggly or squint-
                                       -ting          
                                         squin'
                                                          ­T'ing
is not in either katana / hiragana
set up the following primer, braille:

                                    ⠛⠗⠑⠑⠝
       ⠍⠊
       ⠙⠕
       ⠗⠊   (hangeul esque)
                          
is probably the only latin equivalent
i'd ever make a comparison with;

   p.s. ⠝ braille's N
          ל - a hebrew L"ament"...

at least it's more than a bothersome
post-colonial rhyming ****** & scheme
or a wannabe haiku /
                        writing toward hiatus;
or a ******* ron padgett prose poem
                     about drinking coffee...
for that matter: any poem about
drinking coffee;
                                          sober *****
morning gits,
            insufferable loved up 'toons.