glad I got to see you

Without the space, there’d be no

echo, no room for reverberation of
the heartbeat.  

Separation fosters
longing, and longing lengthens like
our shadows towering into dusk
until they touch.

comfort

And we can sit up until the candles die, suck on hard candies and count imaginary stars (I’m sorry we can’t see any from here), and you will bring your ghost camera and take pictures of our shoes lined up next to eachother to remind me that we lived just now- what we did was Be Here. You’ve made my teeth show and my cheeks scrunch up in that crinkling smile I think you asked for. It feels better, comfortable here against your back. You know there are people, strangers sometimes, I see walking around and I want to bring them close to me and and tell them over and over again how perfect they are.

Your Words

I like your words. The way they curl like cigarette smoke and insinuate themselves as I breathe, or how they smolder like adolescent coals in restless darkness, or the way they drown out all the other discord, all the uproar and fanfare in my heart, until I’m rendered sated and slick, a charred piece of toast, or the last drag of a cigarette.

Home

Serpentine swirls
billowing beneath
my will
stretched past forgeting,
forgiving allowances
made for each
confused wave,
each glance at the void,
each simpering truth
that wouldn’t be gilded.
We wished for more
than drifting bliss
we pined for
connection,
collisions that
might leave us bloody
in our dissonance.
Friction is welcome,
exquisite scarlet scraped
into understanding.

analogy

writing is like
fucking
i want to do it
all the time

it gets you to a
place
away
from 
people talking about their
successes and failures,

away from
crowded places,
pestering thoughts,
repeating yourself,
or whatever makes your
stomach hurt for no
logical reason

it gets you up there
with whoever’s running
the show

i guess
its kind of like
drinking
too

Precision

ever the architect

he measures the vellum between my vertebrae,

and draws comfort from his calculations.

Good Morning

This morning, as the sun perforated the veil of night and cast its silken cloth of brilliant reds and rustic oranges across our mortal shells; I awoke from dreams with your shallowed breath rhythmically caressing the nape of my neck and the subtle beat of your heart permeating skin and bone, to converse with my own.

Exhaling, my body melded further into yours until the only space between us was the pause between breaths.

here I go again

I always upset myself. I think way too much to begin with. I contemplate different situations in my head, over and over again until I believe they have occurred (or about to happen). I find myself (at this moment) wondering if I am ever thought about. Not by a specific person, just anyone really. I wonder if I am on anyone’s mind or if I am just known when they see me. We (at least I have) often feel small, insignificant even. We are ants working for something unknown and the magnifying glass is burning our chances to concur or mission. Maybe it is loneliness that makes me think? Loneliness smothers me. Every time I think of being forgotten my throat closes on me, making it impossible to even think about breathing. Maybe I am selfish? I don’t want to be in the limelight, I just want to feel like I belong. I don’t want to be this puzzle piece that is mixed in with the wrong puzzle for the rest of my life. Maybe it isn’t attention I crave, more like familiarity. I want something to fall back on. To know my ground is solid. I want tangible, palpable and every other word which describes the capability of being felt. I just want reality.

foreplay

it’s the memories

of anticipation

the tease of the coming attractions

that i think of today

the scent of breakfast wafting through the hallways

and foreplay

christmas eve and

the lick of the bottom lip before a kiss

the build up

before the let down

the memories never quite stack up

compared to the excitement of creating them

so let’s fumble in the dark

but leave our clothes on

and this way come morning

you’ll stay

Eyes on the Prize

If I keep looking at the horizon, then I’ll never see that dark side of things, right? Then I’ll always feel joy. I’ll be the wildest optimist living life’s adventure without regret. But it doesn’t feel real that way anymore. Reality should have pain in it. Reality should have hurt. There’s thorns in the jungle; there’s cliffs; and rock bottoms. But I’ve been casting all my worries within the orchid that slithers silently across the vineyard. Left untouched by the storm; unwounded by the fire ants. Self sustained by the polluted water that flows through it’s stamina.

I’ve been storing words and unresolved puzzles behind my lips that never seem to open during those days that end with ‘y’ or ‘why’.

And despite my sugar coated words, it has left a bitter taste.

I’ve been storing any sign of disdain or anger, underneath the surface of my eye lids, so that they are only real in my dreams. Or nightmares. And I wake up everyday, trying to find what is wrong with me. When I’m looking straight at the horizon, I'm blinded. I keep seeking the reasons for my absent mindedness and omnipresent emptiness, but never dare look at the dark side. Because if I keep looking at the horizon, I’ll always be happy.

I’m happy. I’m always happy.

best piece of advice ever received while crying:

"you are the cool kid and you are the smart kid, quit feeling sorry for yourself and act like it."

A House Inside You

I can’t see you. You are in a house inside you. I can’t see. You wet your windows trying to clear them up so I can peer in. But it’s not the windows. You’re just too far. I can’t see. You can shout to me all the details of the corners and furniture. I can only piece a picture out of watercolors. You can switch on every light, trip the breakers. But I’m still outside the walls. And then you can’t see.

And I’m just the same. You’re outside. I’ve fractured my fingers, against the walls. You can’t see

Sunday Rain

Breathing softly, trying to capture
racing thoughts I chase in vain

Questions deep, answers illusive
and fleeting as the Sunday Rain

Wind and water kiss my window
shutters creaking, dance and play

The moment’s beauty mystifies me
perhaps I’ll know such peace one day

Enlightenment is Sex

Enlightenment is like sex

At first its unknown,
when it’s known everything changes,
then it’s all there is to life,
when it’s felt, its over soon,
then it really is life
when its a steady habit,
then you begin to want something else,
when your at the next one
then you begin to long for the last,
when you don’t know what to do
then you start to believe in an ultimate one,
when love has your heart in its hands

More

Prophylactic measures to protect a heart prone to falling is the key; but, let’s be honest, falling is what we live for.  I don’t care what you say—the catharsis born by reading Notes from Underground, while smoked on heroin in the quiet candle-light, while blanketed by the curved shadows of the girl whose brains were just completely fucked by you, pales in comparison to the free-fall gravity refuting high of “falling in love.”  Mundane things all of the sudden become carnal and profane, and you’re carted back to Jane Austen times when fingers touching inner wrists was considered to be taboo.  Every text message from the object of your sweet affections is like foreplay, titillating to the point where pleasure becomes pain, and long before such missives turn to cheap sexts and unforgivable come-ons, you’re left literally panting for more. 

Therein lies the danger.  By “more,” I don’t mean more heated exchanges or fingertips grazing bare knees, because in such exchanges, what makes it fun is that “less” is “more.”  No, I’m talking about a naked that entails being fully clothed.  Notwithstanding the lurches induced by restrained flirtation, it’s when we bare our fears to the voice on the other end of that cellphone while your digital clock blinks 3:33 a.m. that “more” means “more” and not “less.” I’ve found that when everything becomes quiet but for your dripping faucet and errant traffic, truth becomes irresistible.  He is dope manifest clad in Siren reds—impossible to ignore or turn away.

The Candle in the Mirror's Reflection

I watch as the candlelight licks my shadow as our hands move furtively passed each other, never able to touch; a game of cats cradle is roped between our lethargic hearts and soon the night will carve us up like abandoned jack-o-lanterns.  Hollowed and ensnared, I’ll listen when violent stars give voice to my exquisite pain, as solitude glides into me and tells me I will always be alone.

Under Your Covers

Remember the time
when the covers
on your bed
were the only
shield
and armor
we needed
against
the terrifying
everything
that surrounded
us?

It's Okay

Everything is absolutely and unequivocally okay. There is no truth beyond this.

Yet there is also no human truth in this, no truth that can be lived.

Failing

I am flawed; deeply
gashed with bare
adulteration. Scars
climb me like vines
gripping concrete, and
I will fail you, again
and again, until you
feel as crushed by
my weakness as by 
the weight of everything
you dreamt that I was,
falling around you
in unforgiving demolition

Broken

Being strong is none too easy when the

Reality is; I am and will

Only ever be, fractured and fragile.

Knowing not when nor how nor who could

Ever piece together, the tiny shards of

Nothingness your absence will leave in its wake

Smiling Eyes

Smiling eyes disguise

the sighs of pain

that rain upon a 

soul so weak

they cannot speak

emotions weep

into a heart

that once burnt bright

now every night

when out of sight

those smiling eyes

break down and cry

till tear ducts dry

no more to weep

they welcome sleep

how to breathe

that moment you’re brushing your teeth and rubbing the dreams of hoary slumber from your eyes and you realize that there’s a poem somewhere that you can’t quite remember or that perfect line out of a bit of prose that sits like a drop of sweat on the tip of your tongue or that little bit of brilliance from Neruda or Foucalt that sums up everything you’ve ever felt in your entire life and what you’re feeling right now this very second as you watch yourself in your bathroom mirror slowly morphing into the person that everyone expects you to be—that everyone absolutely completely depends on you to be—this morning but you wish you could just crawl back into bed and find that poem or prose or bit of brilliance because you know that back between the bed-sheets is the only place that you can find the pieces of the soul you leave behind, the words that are the DNA to your life’s rhetoric, the brokenness you have to shed in order to face the harsh morning sunlight and the inevitable brutality it leaves inside your quaking heart

Summoned by conscious recollection, she will be smiling. They could be in a kitchen talking, before or after dinner. But they are in this other room, stillness felt except for the rising and falling of her chest. Embracing he holds her tightly. She buries her face into his body. Morning, maybe it's evening, light flows through the room. Outside the day is slowly succeeded by night, succeeded by day. The light in the room does not change. So they rub against each other, their mouths dry, then wet, then dry. They feel themselves at the center of a powerful and baffled will. They feel they are an almost animal, washed up on the shore of a world, or huddled against the gate of a garden, to which they admit they cannot be admitted.

dopamine in my coffee

I wonder, what goes on when we stop observing? Why is there so much of the world we don't see? What's behind the closed door, even though I've seen it a million times? Why do we only see the visible spectrum? And why is there dopamine in my coffee?