As school comes to an end, I decide to
spend the summertime with my instrument.
I read music theory for two hours,
but my hands yearn for the touch of six strings.
Fingers position themselves to stroke bliss.
But my phone’s troubled with recurring rings.

****, it was mom telling me I have class!
I raced for my backpack, and I told her:
I will not slack. Papers grew so lonely
without their folder to cuddle them close.
I couldn’t care to organize them cause
usually, I’d lay in my seat repose.

Ionic bonds? What do they even mean?
And what the heck is “double replacement”?
Okay, I should start paying attention.
I grasp the pen. I notice the tension.
As soon as I write, my hands start to shake.
I start over. Now hands begin to ache.

What in the world is happening to me?
Two words: I scream. Head jerks, and my legs shake.
It has to be a dream. It has to be!
Don’t want to move, but I have to take notes.
Why are random words bursting out my throat?  
I’ma be real. I need my mommy!

Class is over. I exclaim to mother:
my fingers refuse to stop tremoring.
And I’m getting these tics. What set it off?
First thing I do is reach for my guitar.
I can’t hold it. I can’t ******* grab it.
Eyes of terror stay written on my face.

The next day I was in a wheelchair.
I cannot look straight- straight up to the sky
or look in front and into people’s eyes.
My right-hand curves to the left. A tendon
sinks into my flesh, and my left fingers
cramp up from being intertwined like vines.

They are stiff. Hideous. These are not mine.
But it does get much better with some time.
I can walk again, talk again, and write.
But all good things come with downfalls, don’t they?
My brain disease will come at me with might.
And I refuse to give up on this fight.

There will be a time when I reach stage five.
And I know it won’t be a pretty sight.
I’m ready for what will happen to me.
Dearest guitar, please know you’re my heaven.
Why bother to fret? Cause’ when the time comes
I’ll see you again in a few seconds.

The moon lays a long horn,
of light, on the sea.

Tremoring, ecstatic,
the grey-green unicorn.

The sky floats over the wind,
a huge flower of lotus.

(O you, walking alone,
in the last house of night!)

Smile so haunting with devilish
or fiendish
or that of charming aesthetics,
the slender creature of a man
parched flesh of paper
would flick his eyes bright
and stir crazy as embers
about the stage,
his hair a mat of threads,
ancient and animalistic,
yet of thick wafting softness,
he appears so gentle,
so timid
child eyes brushed by his bangs
yet confident in that grin
cut so lightly across his face,
he would disarm your distrust,
carry you to his attractive gentleness
as he cloaks the stage about him
and then as the lights dim,
the audience edged on their seats,
your sheepish and sugar laced eyes
of curiosity linger at the heels of his lips,
as he slaughters your precious innocence,
with My words,
smile ever increasing
feasting on their fearful stares
my poem a muffled shotgun
at the back of the audiences head,
their tremoring bodies scream
as he constrains the straps constricting
their legs and limbs,
all the world’s a coroner’s table
he stoops so lovingly over them,
snow white raven of a boy,
his words of glinting blade dive,
their eyes a mess of soupy white and tangled red
surgical increments ripping their ribs and sternum wide,
they scream with blistered skin,
straps beginning to burrow and feast into their limbs,
the boy labors diligently,
effortlessly he worms his fingers about blood drenched organs
twists and plucks them free,
the victim’s body squirming,
skin wriggling,
as their eyes stare and gasp upon
their organs strewn next to them,
shock ripping through them,
crawling within their hollowed out body,
he laps up their gaping wound,
cut and carved from sternum to pelvis,
licking up blood soaked soul and kidney,
my demon of timid grin spills out the final phrases
his victims have long lost resilience,
they watch and lie as a mess of human,
half corpses on the table,
the audience a funeral procession,
the lights suffocated,
no one wishes to speak,
silence is the only reverie to my poems darkness
the boy or man,
demon or fiend
would softly grin
the audience just as cold and dead as him

So sensitive we are
Deeply sunk in our love
With it we keep each other afloat
Through this toxic river of life
Even though we both love another
And recognize the depth of our feelings together
We still experience tremoring fear
In the face of the other's other

it gave the impression: sudden aggressive
butterfly booming iridescent fluttering river
rainbow raw god rough glittering eye lids
hot tremoring air. constant blaring.

drown drown lovely staccato cacophony
beat swirling violence electric ***
rains off sudor soaked cotton skinned
burnished bodies ill-lucid contracting
senseless sensual pit decadent children

                 (in all this sticky love: truth is cleanly executed)

To me she is a name and an image,
the moral to my good intentions,
A face to a feeling of my own invention.
She's a lingering lie in the back of my mind.

Fingers and lips stand highlighted
as ghost-like etchings in my abbreviated memory.
Romanticised moments of your hip-bones tremoring
on Winter nights, alone and together in the dark.

Our long lasting days in-doors
played out like "the way things ought to be",
with the most perfect view of the movie
through faded strands of hair

These days, your girls make you up unfamiliar,
Indian ink applied over the original sketch,
the shivering girl brought down to match,
a floating feather dipped in black and
made part of a Hot Topic handbag.

And even now I wonder if the dripping wet girl
with the stiff shutter smile
ever even existed, at least,
the drunken emo kid staggering on the cobbles whispers rumours
she was mown down by telltale scripted kisses and silent exchanges.

So she remains a name and an image,
a memorial for better or worse,
an epitaph that eases the hurt,
the difficult first album of my heart

Somewhere between my subconscious and hypnotized reality
I sleepwalk down the memory lanes
Amidst the darkness of a lost cause
I move in circles searching for something I can't remember
Is it the perfection personified or just my memories of you
A soul so pure and a heart so warm
A beauty so rare and eyes so expressive
A touch so caressing and voice so soothing
A fragrance so sedating and a presense so completing
And in the shimmering lights of your glow
I move my tremoring hands just for a touch
For a belief I would trade my chance to be with thousand angels
That you are real
But it was just a shadow I was touching
You vanish like the ripples in the mirage of uncertainty
And I keep following you in circles till eternity

Threads of cotton
corkscrewing
through blankets,
blending flesh
with fabric.
Flicking rain
drops off the
surface
of window
panes,
penciling my
name over
your skin with
my teeth.
Tremoring fingers
tracing your
silhouette,
sensing your
rapture wrapped
in
apprehensive
heart beats,
hanging on the
fibers folding
over our
unstitched
bodies

i.

moon bird,
fire song,
tremoring desire,

dreams of love
soft as a cloud
carrying the grey rain.

ii.

a gorgeous winter sky,
the deeps tattooed
with light,
the sea a soft
shanty waiting
for the summer
breeze.

iii.

sharp breath of air,
lips like soft petals
of rose,
legs loud with longing

carrying love
like a cloud carrying
rain, crazy in love
with your heart
i'm your shiny mistress
all gold like the weak
winter sun.

iv.

i melt with desire,
black rock and
sighing sky,

i ache in your arms
a storm cloud before
the blowsy wind.

v.

iron sea,
breaking waves
in a watery harbour
of light,

kisses and sighs,
slow dance,
loving you
like the blossoming
light, like the
sea sweeping down.

violent You are like a biggest sound
cloyingly honeyed on my mound of massed
and singing chords
                                         (you are a rose most thorned and beautiful
    i clutch idiosyncratically
strangled scarlet petals bursting
                     a foal i;ve nursed with tremoring pits of bold
gangling and accurate stench

             violent you're a tedium
a lush and decaying growth
         so lightly cancering my cell
and I breath your daily blood                and i whimper first glowering fist

      my hand to take that penitent shape
                                                                            

                and i"ll whisper it



to their chins:
                                   they who art most a mortal folly
as to wade in my
                                        quaking presence


         andi


'              
           ;ll



     sleeep               them                           quickly rushing rushing



               oBliviOn)

The woman, she was the catalyst,
She sat beside me and lured me in,
All concerned nods,
And a single, delectable cookie.

Anyway, it all started
When she asked the fatal question
"Are you all alone dear?"

"All alone in the world,"
I reply, voice tremoring,
"My family, they died
Just over a month ago."

"Oh dear," she
spluttered, clearly
disturbed.

I go on, inventing
blood baths,
poisonings,
diseases,
gruesome ends
that only come to mind
With youth.

After I was neatly done
killing off family members
One by one,
Or three in the case of my
imaginary aunt's
still born triplets,

I sighed.

"It's just so awfully hard.
I don't get very many treats at
my foster parents.
Could I perhaps try a piece
of your cookie?"

"Of course" she replies,
"Here, take it all."
thinking she was helping
another lost soul.

After scarfing it,
(it was delicious, absolutely perfect)
we reached our stop
I thanked her,
the kind, misguided soul,
I stepped off

Into my loving parents embrace.

"Don't you know,
I had the worst trip.
Sat next to this fussy old woman.
I could really use a treat."

So spun the next web.

the broad back mountains of there is some dust of mellow light a failing day
milked and honey dewing the tremoring gardens. i tend them with my
mouth, are they well?and i ask the shop keeper what isle may i find some
cotton tubes. he seems a man slightly shocked ears crinkled in the veneer of youth chipped clean
an man oldly. am i odd here, and outside the lashes of air break on trees
the leaves muttering a basic pleasing sound

the light is angry in stark dress that is up and i see its nakedness on every
item languishing on the shelves. but here and there is some shadows, it
's not new. this place. like the man. it waits for silently some patrons who
might find it amongst the hills. cleanandwaiting. he walks it every day
sifting the echoes with some boots leather creaking. startling the empty
air with his generous presence. generally i walk about and look. and i
found them. "seven.25"
ok

make for me a glimmering speck
in the folds of scarlet chambers bruised beating
capillaries splitting puddles of purple
writ on its sleeves; i it seems (and strangely iam)
oddly are. more different is the cool love of sun
for earth. his wife. whom he does pleasure every day
a tongue of infinite light wrapping her every
curve and sin. s
                           o
to is this how i shall love your delicate mechanism, every cog
placed lovingly in balance to bound deftly upon my eyes inall
your correctness; you piece of lightening affront death with
the majesty of tremoring *******. hot tingling fuzz shocking
my fingers: you are neatly piled blooms of ancient fruit
who doth etherise my sanity with the pushings of your sinew

You make me think in poetry
The world becomes a rhythm
A cadence
Ticking along to the beat of our
Synchronized hearts
My name is a song
When it comes from your
Tremoring lips
Every silence is full
Of comfortable emptiness
Nothing is ever void
When I'm tangled in you
I'm drunk off your
Presence
My head spins when you
Trace constellations
Across my collarbones
You play me like a piano
Touch my body like keys
And control every
Shaking breath
The world is a wonderful place
But it is poetry when I'm
With you

you weren't doing well already. your skin was falling from your face in yellow-skinned sunken smiles and faint snores that used to roar as you napped. my tears were hidden behind my computer screen when i saw you lay down to rest. always scared it would turn worse.

and a year ago today, it did.

i was in biology and the boys in ihs when i got the text. i never expected it would be me. i never thought i would have the 'expected call' sort of life. it was the speed walk from biology that i remember. the people passing me who i had to ignore. the sob i tried to soften. the lump that made it impossible to smile or speak or recognize anything except for my siblings and the sun outside. of course it was sunny outside. of course nothing in this world led me to believe today could be a bad day.

and a year after that, it was the same.

i couldn't stop the tears from coming. back then i was emotional in different ways. the heart i never imagined to be broken i wore on my sleeve. the smile that dressed my face was sincere everytime i met eyes with a stranger. i was excited about things i didn't know, and my sadness was consistenly superficial. so the tears came quickly, easily, as if i was surprised by the news as i hid them behind our bronze suburban.

and a year ago today, i had been.

it was the uncertainty of the situation that had me breaking. it was the fact i had no knowledge of what was going to happen. it was the idea that the only moments we had had together had been paper thin hands holding mine and music that spoke to our souls at the twilight hour. i did not want to be there, as much as i felt i should. but the night time drive and frozen cookie dough calmed my tremoring hands.

and a year after that, they do the same.

a year ago today i lost some hope. i felt a dynamic shift in the way of our house. where eight o'clock pm the door would open with a flurry of excitement and dog nails scraping over our hardwood floors there was silence. a cold and sad emptiness to the home that had created the childish laughter stored in me.

and a year ago today, it is the same.

how does the universe know
i love frozen fountains?
and church bells
and jet trails
and popcorn clouds
and boys with bright eyes?

travelling, patio, windows
door wide, arms wider and, "hey!"
i have to swallow the phrase,
"it's been so long"
because the air quit being cold
and the street quit being loud
and my mind quit caring which way my hair was blowing
and every speck of me has been held by this man before

behold, comfort at its finest

i want to touch him again
not that i need to
i can't help but feel like we are
already interwoven
and right away, language fails me
but maybe that's okay
maybe it's enough to be silently amazed
for a second, or several

how come the nickels shook as i took my change?
why couldn't i thank the barista before clearing my throat?

alas, we savor the saccharinity
in how cinnamon compliments cream
as pb&j suddenly goes with oreos

still, how can i sneak a glimpse of those eyes
without parching my windpipe again?
and how does he laugh at my jokes
and clap to my tunes
and how come i haven't known this precious soul for all of my life?

of course, how can i be certain
that i haven't?

salt and pepper bricks and broken glass
graveyard tales and a christmas tree in february and,
"we should go star gazing sometime!"
although i swear i've already seen the stars with this man
maybe even numbered them, named them
may have very well visited each and every one of them, too

"look at that light streak in the sky!"
because it's cool, but it doesn't amaze me
because i'm coming to realize
i could watch the moon rise up purple
over a lagoon full of lightning bugs
and it wouldn't be a lick more extraordinary than strolling across an empty parking lot
alongside this man

my chest sinks and soars synchronously
i've been here before
not this bench
but right beside the other heartbeat
upon it

trunk, guitar
treasure chest, citrine
instant homecoming

how can swapping songs resemble
taking an oath?
how can nineteen years amount to a mere ode to this moment?

scorpions, lions, and a pom-pom dog
he mentions his grandmother's passing
and his uncle's illness
and my chest wrenches like it did when
daddy mentioned mama's cancer
all those years ago
albeit, time does not drag
only dissipates into the freedom
that follows
after some puns and dumb questions
about antique bean grinders
which don't feel so dumb after all
because he doesn't seem to think so

i'm not nervous, not really
just in awe

i hate to admit, i lost track of the lyrics
for his song felt like a lifetime of its own
and the butterflies quit tremoring about
so my existence could hitch
with his cadence
for each chord he strummed
struck a nerve and
stuck more arrows
through my heart and
i'm sure
i've come to a
conclusion
one of which i can't express in the moment
one of which i have a feeling
will put words to shame anyhow
but nonetheless,

i have heard this song before

perhaps, i used to live in it
and he in mine
perhaps, this is what resurrecting
sounds like

the strange isn't so strange anymore
my nose drips, my finger bleeds
courtesy of winter
and i could kind of care less
because he's speaking french over there
he's sharing stories of karaoke and concerts and kangaroos
and i'm getting drunk on every word
he's saying my eyes are pretty
and i'm blushing and struggling to imagine an adjective that tells him
just how much prettier his are

mirror shattered
before we reached it
maybe we don't need it anymore
not when we can look into eachother
and just know
i want to reflect him, i want to shine for him
and i want to wonder why
yet i don't

there's no time
it must have slipped and died back in the coffee shop
somewhere between the first hug and the first sip

somewhere between muddy creek cafe
and low gap
and ireland
it starts to feel like less of a small world
and more like fate

somewhere between the second hug and the see you laters,
the sun set in sheets of ocean and heaven
and somewhere between the gold and shades of blue
i saw it
so this is what his eyes are made of

how does the universe know?

how do you miss someone you do not know anymore,
someone who does not exist anymore?

let me evict you from my mind!
stay away from the whole of me who you've never met
let me cherish myself to the fullest extent and do not come near me
do not linger in my mind,
reminding me of my youthful lack of progressiveness,
reminding me of my lack of choice and education
I was just a child
I did not understand what was happening or even who I truly was

And
please please please,
do not call me a victim.
Your voice is poison,
and you fetishize victims to feel like you're a better person.
They are collectables, yes?
Do any of them know about me?
15-year-old me, constantly tremoring?

times replay and I can see, that I've cried some bitter tears, remembering the fear of losing you
I wanted you to be near. I say its such a cliche to be inlove and when you left i can feel my heart tremoring cause the feeling is so frightening.
I have no choice because you force me to leave and like a leaf falling to the ground I keep swaying to the wind blowing me towards you, that's why I keep coming back to you.

I know you'll comeback because sometimes goodbyes aren't forever and I promise if we will be together I'll be with you through thick and thin.

Among the scattered granite
Kneels a concrete angel
Watching over the stillness
Of the sacred place.
Crows gather and I
Undisturbed sit
Under an overcast sky
A slight chill will every wind
So fitting and so welcome
Leaves spurting their way along the asphalt
Moss -laden oaks standing in reverance of the dead at rest
And yet there is much life
Bees in the low cut grass
Moving about the daisies
Crows playing games in the clouds
Blades of grass tremoring with the breeze
The ground appears to tremble
But it would never dare
Not here.
Not here where alone feels nothing like loneliness
Where innonence has endured
In the only place where tears can fall without scrutiny
Peace takes precedence here
Where the dead listen
As God speaks