I want to get married, I say
and I want to run across every corner of the earth without stop;
but I think I have a soulmate
somewhere in Italy, sipping his after-dinner espresso
and I think I’ve probably got another, sailing around Greece
F_ck, I heard a Columbian’s accent for the first time last night
and—-though I’ve never been to South America—-
I’d bet there’s a few men waiting there for me too, and
How do you pack all the lives you want to live
into just one?
…

In one of our lives, we got married / bought a little house, down by the sea / played music in the mornings dancing wild through the kitchen / nothing but two sets of boxers and breakfast sizzling / retreated to our single studies in the evenings / slow jazz notes tumbling through the quiet hum / I gave you a couple of kids, so I could watch you be a father / and you were the most beautiful thing standing on two legs / teaching your son to ride a bike / cradling your newborn daughter / and every single day was enough / reason to love you harder
…

And still another, we were Old Gods
Intimately entwined of the infallible energies
Birthing entire planets and star systems
  of our chaos and of our joy

And time would pass
and we would grin
just watching
__

Burning incessantly like a rabid fire,
As I stand and reign in this colossal tower,
With no soulmate in sight, not in any hour.

Though in this land, I am beaming with power,
My words get sharpened like a lethal dagger,
Valiant and rigid, expect me not to cower.

Somehow, somewhere, a shadow drew closer,
I thought to myself, what a daring wanderer!
And then welcomed him with a raging saber.

Day after day, ambushed him into crossfires,
My traps and theatricals never seem to expire;
Yet despite all these, he just found me lovelier.  

With him, I have learned to enjoy the flowers,
For he filled me with such devotion and desire;
The kind of love to cherish and admire.

What is love, if not a form of suffering disguised as ecstasy?
A poison sweet enough to sip willingly,
even as it corrodes the soul from within.
Love does not uplift—it devours.
It tears through a man’s defenses,
leaves him trembling, bare,
stripped of the armor he so carefully forged to guard his heart.

To love is to become a slave.
Do not be fooled by the poets who speak of its beauty—
they know nothing of its cruelty.
For love does not ask; it demands.
It seizes the soul, drags it to the brink of madness,
and whispers, “Jump.”

And yet, we obey.
Why? Because to live without love
is to wander a barren wasteland,
where the silence is more suffocating than the pain.
A man who has never loved
has never truly lived,
but a man who has loved and lost—
ah, he knows the weight of eternity.

But the true torment of love lies not in its presence,
but in its absence.
For even after love has withered and died,
it does not release its grip.
No, it lingers—like a ghost haunting the ruins of the soul,
whispering promises that were never kept,
taunting you with memories
that burn like embers in the dark.

And so, we love.
Not because it saves us,
but because, without it,
the emptiness becomes unbearable.

Each and every single day,
Doesn't matter what I do,
You're always here to make me pay,
For all the pain I've put you through.
A shallow shell of long lost love,
A vengeful scourge with black tar tears,
You're always here to give more of
My memories, regrets and fears.

You've cursed me, shackled me,
Forever with unyielding chains,
That won't let my heart go free.
My heart bleeds in its constraints.
It yearns for you, its own maltreater,
A masochistic kind of love,
"I don't want life. I only need her!"
It prays and begs to up above.

The chains grow spikes, the blood is pouring,
Every day, a hard fought battle,
And through it all, my heart's imploring
For one last day when it could have her.

No matter where I look,
No matter how much more I run,
Even as I write this book,
I know you'll be my only one.
And even if you've ever cursed me,
I'll accept my lonely fate,
A punishment for all my wronging,
One that I could never hate.

We were meant to be together—
was that not the cruelest lie of all?
Fate tied our hands with silken threads,
only to sever them with rusted steel.

You and I, two halves of a shattered whole,
grasping for each other through the fog of time,
only to find our fingers slipping,
our voices drowned in the silence of the inevitable.

Love did not save us.
It devoured, it burned, it bled.
And yet, even as we walk separate paths,
even as the years carve distance between us,
I know—deep in the marrow of my bones—
that I will never be whole again.

one day I'll find my soulmate
I'll marvel at their eyes
so blue and deep like the ocean with waves that brush up against the damp sand
or so green and mysterious like the endless forest with echoes of birds calling out to each other
or so brown and bright like the earth that brings forth life and beauty
I'll write poems about their smile and their laugh
like the sun shone from their lips like the sound of ecstasy
I'd write never-ending ballads about their heart
so abundant with love
a kind word to say about everybody
one day I'll find my soulmate
and I'll love them like they've never been loved before