---

I still remember the first time you stated
that you weren't afraid to hit a woman.
I can sympathize with the reasons you might fear to;
we are made out of back-breaking steel
forged in the factories of Heaven
so that we could bear the burdens of patriarchy.

It's ironic how I found the same kind of love
in the way your fingers caressed my face
the same way that your iron-clad fist
struck my jaw with your upbringing,
but there is a tongue that I will never quit preaching
beaten out of aurum hiding in my mouth,
and I will never stop speaking.

The Destructor

I am not your foundation.
The last time we tried to build forever,
you tore down the walls of our home
and replaced them with Graham Greene.

Destruction was written
all over the floorboards
as if you had a love affair
with the inverse of creating optimism.

I wonder if you realize that someday,
your anger will pave the road straight to nowhere
the same way good intentions
pave the road to perdition.

jot down streams of consciousness

Baby, all our souls hail from small towns
that God made somewhere up in the heavens.
He summoned Norman Rockwell to paint in the outlines
of your homely jawline, but there is nothing
but beauty in the worn-down, farmer's tan
body build that He carved out of perseverance.

(Your diction is amazing.
You could change my descriptive word choice
in a second from "stubborn" to "determined".)

Sometimes, I find myself terrified to ponder
the concept of eternity and the Holy Trinity
when I trace the lines God carved so deeply
into your trembling hands (you always told me
how nervous being around me made you.)

I remember the night we ran out all the way to nowhere
so you could take me "real stargazing". You mocked me
for being a country girl, and promised me the moon.
Next time, you said, we'd need to go when it had waned
so you could paint the night sky better
in my star struck irises, but much like eternity,
next time has not quite come yet. I retain hope
in your ability to keep your word like time;
since punctuality was always the middle name
you inscribed right next to "Owen" so proudly.
It's one of the few things you can call your own
that your parents didn't forcibly shape, but even so,
I can still see the remnants of their pedagogy.

The first time we broke out of your monotony,
we dared ourselves to climb the fire escape
all the way up to God's front doorstep.
I reached up for your hand in good faith,
and you grasped my fingers between yours
and kissed the tips so I could always remember
how it felt to be loved by you.

and baby, I still find myself nostalgic.

Dating a Catholic

"Who are you, God, to make me [Catherine]?"
I lost paradise long before you ended the relationship,
but we will never be done wandering the moors of our souls.

The first time I met you, you wore moonshine for irises
and even then, I could see how bleached-white-washed your morals were.
Heaven rode in right behind the words we exchanged,
and your diction is still so beautiful it breaks my heart.

You keep my phone number in your back pocket,
and underneath it, you wrote down:
"accountability, punctuality, and perseverance"
as if those three words that outlined your lifestyle
could somehow redeem your hatefulness in my eyes.

Sometimes, it worries me, because you hold others
to such unrealistically high standards, I become concerned
you will fall off your perch the same way you found
religious doctrine harder to follow when my body
was caught underneath yours.
I remember you pinning down my arms
the same way you crucified my friends on your false cross;
burdens too heavy for you to carry that you externalized
because you believe intolerance is a Thompson virtue.

I must admit I have days where I want to build your character;
because the foundation of our relationship paints prejudice
all over your face as if the the color of our skins blended in our kisses
could redeem your judgment of others, and baby,
I know you try so hard, but I can't stress enough how painful it is
to be in love with someone who hates the core of my being.

I can see you straining my soul through your constricting pupils,
as if there was some pedagogy I missed out in childhood,
and it sears my soul to see you try to accept me despite my flaws.
My pain is not beautiful, and I make no claims to martyr myself
at your hands, because all I can do is try to kiss away your hate.

They say tolerance isn't acceptance; it's simply bearing
the weight of the guilt you feel every time you hold me in your arms.

john the savage

I never thought that God could shake my soul
like a back-breaking sob rattling through my chest
as if the sacred heart of the yet-unborn Savior
touched the insides of all my veins and traveled
through the labyrinths of my capillaries.

I have fallen before,
and I know I will fall again.
My conscience birthed itself
into a life of original sin,
and sometimes, my breath
is too short to reach for redemption.
I am weak, and I must admit that
there are days where the feeling of duty
weighs down heavily like a calling
I cannot answer.

It's late at night.
I have found myself restlessly
re-reading Job 6:11
because babe, I swear;
I know am not perfect,
and I know that will fail you,
but the Lord knows how hard I try,
so it makes me question
why you still put me on trial.

It makes me want to ask Him
why He disfigured your beautiful soul with skepticism;
marred it with pessimism worthy of atheists,
because every time I see your jaded stormy morning irises
contracting around my optimism, all I can bring myself to do
is desperately try to kiss away your negativity.

There is no greater tragedy in this world
than attempting to bring hope to a cynic
irreversibly set in his ways;
someone who claims the right to be unhappy.

Sometimes, I wonder if you know the reason
I run my fingers gently over your shoulderblades.
There are feathertips on your back,

and gorgeous,
I know your wings are as broken,
but all I want God to do with my life
is make me your splints so I can watch you fly again.

a country boy and a city girl

They say there are some
who are born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

I grew up with platinum-plated teeth,
dreaming about grandeur
and breaking down your amino acids
in the same way I catch your ear between my lips;

nibbling softly on the edges of redemption
coyly just in case you listen too closely
and you can hear my enamel
chipping away at your moral standards.

I love the way my mouth can lock to your neck
when we're gazing at harvest blue moons so stoic
I can see your reflection in the skies
where God painted the feeling we have
when we gaze at each other.

I can feel the skepticism etched
in the grooves of your callused hands,
but I am proud to love them anyways;
those digits tempered by blue-collar labor
raised deep in the soul of Texas
blessing my eyelashes with your butterfly kisses.
I wonder if we can catch the etymology
of our entomological makeouts,
because I will continue to rest my eyelids
next to the sparkle of your old worn out navy irises.

this is not a tale of star crossed lovers.

Heathcliff, I tire of using allusions to describe
how the chill of your wind haunts me at night
and sends shivers down my vertebrae
when you breathe on my neck,

but I tire of Linton's feeble advances,
and his blandness makes me miss the wilderness
of the rooftops we ran around on top of;
tangled limbs woven together
with whatever our souls are made of.

Somewhere, I know you are out there
and even if you are on the other side of my aura,
I can feel you conquering my heart so hard
I swoon and can't help but be reminded
how spineless he is by comparison.

I miss your chivalry; being wound up
in our antagonistic arguments that echoed
the same way that your gasps resound in the canals
of my aural sensitivities like a synesthetic high so elevated
I can hear your lips nibbling on the edges of my ears.

There are moments where I despair,
watching how you are caught so desperately
in the death throes of your fervent addiction
to the denomination that grips your throat so tightly
you can't help but stray from faithfulness to me,
so I remain choked-up on nights like this
where I paint your face with my words
so I can see you when I dream.

bonfire

I love the smell of Bonfire in the morning.
There is not much like the feeling of running your dirt-caked fingertips
over wired camaraderie stacked together near 6 in the morning
as the sun rises. I worry that someday, Aggies like us
will become a lost cultural relic, buried beneath a diversity
that sacrifices unity at the price of tradition. There are days
when I pass by the skeletons in Sul Ross' closet and wonder
if political correctness is not a little overrated in favor of
the genuine nature of the 12th Man's family.

I miss his word choice.

I remember you draping rose petals over my shoulders one night
when I complained of being chilly. Our feet hung off the ledges of
roofs as if our souls were too big for the buildings we climbed,
and your fingers shyly found mine interlocked between your calluses.
You grew up a working man. I can tell from the creases
on your forehead that I trace so gently with kisses,
and your hands are worn down and tired in the same way
that I can tell how your boots loved the Earth by the dirt on them.
There are libraries in your cerebral cortex I explore at night;
dancing through your synapses as if your mellifluous diction
could somehow sing my poor insomniac soul to sleep,
but nowadays, all your aura does is haunt me like a ghost
filtering through the slats of my blinds like blue moonlight.

Emotional Secession

When I have days where I wonder why I fell so hard for you,
I let your Southern drawl lull me back into sleep.
It's only been hours since I last let your sweet talk
draw me into a false sense of security, but even now,
I am wise enough to realize that even the Devil can quote scripture.

I want to ask God if the fact that you consider me a charity case
can count towards your tithes, because your kisses taxed my lips of moisture
and I can do nothing but thirst for an emotional connection to something
other than your Stonewall irises that are too pigheaded
to reflect upon how you make me feel.

We have come to the point where we pit camaraderie against camaraderie,
but this isn't our first Bull Run, and even your imminent defeat
isn't enough to justify compromise. I have become fatigued by this battle;
lost all respect for your Southern civility towards those of us marginalized
by your faith, and to this day, I still don't understand how someone can call
themselves country and not understand the poignancy of Hank Williams.

Dorm 12

I have nights where I pace the corridors alone,
staring up at slapboards and wondering
if you will ever find the strength in your heart
to love someone. Burn and death are both tomorrow;
it makes me wonder if the reds were self-aware
when they scheduled the day for stack to fall.

Perhaps I will see you as I pace the grounds
of elephant walk, tracing past my steps that I followed
in the same way I learned to embrace camaraderie,
because it is not easy being the bastard child of Bonfire.
I have spent the past lifetime wide eyed, eagerly
learning about chivalry, brotherhood, and bonds
that I am never truly a part of.

Maybe that is why you find it difficult to summon
the strength to look into my inquisitive doe brown eyes
and tell me why you cannot care for someone as broken as I am;
why your hands shook like trembling sails holding onto
maelstrom lovers as she wailed out her soul onto your masts,
but you are full of hot air, and thus, you will never fly.
It makes me wonder why you pretend to give a shit about chivalry.

Job 6:11-17

To this day, the only Bible I keep with me at all times
has been a Catholic one. Occasionally, I find it ironic
that its verses haunt me like original sin and inherent guilt.

Your professions flow like excuses
through the membranes of my valley,
but your love has worn me down
by draining past in an evanescent flash.

I am tired of being tried; exhausted
by the silt carried in your undertow
sanding down my soul and willpower
as if you were never taught the virtue of patience,
because you always show up ten minutes early for intolerance.

You locked your lips to mine
amidst gravel that bit angrily at my elbows and your kneecaps;
pebbles that we kicked off the roofs of buildings to stone the infidels
of our past sins and the heretical nature of your emotional repression,
but there is no calf I can cast out of brassy gold or bronze
in order to redeem you as an idol for my faith's foundation.

too face(d)

I have days where I wonder if you read my poetry;
if the lines that grace your eyes and crease my forehead
mystify you equally with their roots and future intentions,
but I wrote about you in past tense before I ever met you.

You smeared your tongue sloppily
like an emollient on my cheekbones,
but the acerbic nature of your calcified karst topography
grates at the edges of my being

and makes me wonder about your purpose in God's plan
as if I am privy to plans from a higher Being.

We had moments where I traced
the arch of your nose gently with my lips
leading downwards in a spiral like figurative imagery,
but I have found that pulse beating so gently in your jugular
is too weak to sustain me.

Job 1:21 (the part the bible never mentioned)

Sometimes I think that God is all I have,
but I thank God all the time for what I have.

He blessed me with your flaws;
the same ones that I wake up to every morning
when we gaze out from my window at early dawn.
You bestowed upon me a renewed sense of faith,
and I kiss the lips of devout nature personified
because I found my blue moon standards
dwelling within your irises.

It makes me wish our night could last forever,
but I cannot stop a sunrise in the same way
that I cannot fight inevitability or comprehend eternity.

I find that my favorite place to incubate my kisses
is at the base of your spine, where I move to extract a sample
of the venom implanted deep within your soul like a spinal tap.
There are days when I press my lips to your forehead
and worry that the fever is rising; times when I can feel
the virus coursing through your veins like a death sentence,
but we always had an expiration date stamped firmly on our faces.

Sometimes I feel the velvet of your tongue
run over my cracked and dried lips as if I thirst for salvation
you are far too close(d) off to ever bring me.

Senior Boots

Sometimes, you look at me with mismatched eyes,
because God was unsure what expression you needed
to bestow upon me at that moment in time

but we content ourselves to kicking gravel off of buildings carelessly,
because we perched ourselves so high above the ground
the Heavens grazed the bottoms of our feet.

Someday, you will slide past those arches in your boots;
I will not be standing by your side to watch. I avoid it,
but I can't help but have days I count down until sapphires
become once-in-a-blue-moon irises I will not be able to afford to gaze into.
Meanwhile, all I can do is content myself to sleepless nights.

2:42 AM

We loved the 12th man before we even knew what the hell it was.
We wake up at 5:30 for camaraderie and we march on towards the woods
until our feet grow so sore from the brush that we pluck at the skies
for comfort and fallen trees. I will miss tradition.

While I confess to not knowing intimately the feel of an axe handle
next to my fingertips, burn is engraved in the backs of my irises
as firmly as the War Hymn, in the same way that carrying logs
with strangers builds character as much as connections.

The clock is ticking down to the time that those red brick arches
close down around our future like renovated memorials.
I'm scared of the bulldozers; watched them tear down concrete
as if those iron jaws gripped graduations, commissions, and my future
but I will summon the strength in myself to walk past the remains of ol' Army.

I have moments where I grasp desperately at a spirit slipping away from me,
juxtaposed between innovation and respect for those who came before;
but I hope that it remains difficult for my alma mater to completely forget
the angels that were caught between a fallen stack that clipped their wings.

No amount of candlelight vigils will send those souls
back to their hometowns in those portals, but we remember.

slowly learning how to be happy

It's hard to bring myself to write about happiness,
because I spent so much time sifting through bitterness
that I forgot what it felt like to care about someone until I fell so hard
in front of a red brick building that I completely forgot how to hurt.

It's been ages since I've been able to walk past
Academic building with a smile on my face
when I see Sully and think of camaraderie.

I admit that I still have moments
where I find myself worried that
I have forgotten how to be happy

but there is a contentedness that I am able to detect
when I am just vulnerable enough to let you hold me.

I lost myself picking stars out of the gleam in your eyes
somewhere between acoustic guitar chords
and lying peacefully in country hillsides
just far away enough from the glare of city lights
to see you bathed in the aura of the moon.

We climbed the ladders of the fire escapes while interlocking fingers
and for once, I didn't have to worry about falling for someone.
I fell backwards into space amidst the gravel on the top of Doherty,
and found that contemplating my day by myself was overrated
when I was finally caught by you and entangled myself in your arms.
Rocks bit at our elbows, but I didn't mind running my fingers
through pebbles to caress the side of your face.

Although it's difficult to admit, I find that companionship
on top of buildings has served me well, because perching alone
under the Century tree has only served to deter my fate.

The Quad

My acerbic bluntness outlined your pupils today against a dreary sky,
and I was hesitant to fall into your arms if only because sometimes,
I worry that trust is simply not enough to make you happy with me.

Although I have determined that I am fated to marry camaraderie,
I find myself lacking enough faith to walk under those arches
because that ring encased in brick in the center still ain't enough
to convince me to renew my subscription to a higher presence.

The path I chose for myself has beaten and worn me down
so many times that I am losing my grasp on the comfort of Bible verses,
and redemption is several cancerous wheezes away from the slow drag
of the carcinogens, tar, and chivalry that you offer as comfort
when the rain is torrential outside at four in the morning.

I still find myself terrified of 90 degree angles rigidly inscribed
into concrete bricks that line your conscience and remind you
how your seniors raised you. I still hesitate to step on the cracks,
because childhood adages have become so ingrained in my subconscious
I worry constantly about breaking the backs of the people closest to me.

two of us

1. me
i have moments where i can see the grey-blue moon in your irises,
but tonight, I suppose you will be too tired to read the poetry
i scrawl into your memory as if chickenscratch can make sense of your psyche.
lately, i've noticed that your eyes have been so clouded over
by hazy skies and maelstroms that you've simply forgotten
how to care for me. no amount of innocent doe-brown
can save you this time around.

sometimes, i wonder why you kissed me with one fell swoop
amidst glittering lights then turned around to leave me to walk alone
outside red brick that encased you like a defense mechanism,
but I've learned to not take anything that passes your lips for granted.
i am curious as to see if you realize that i keep the words you say
stored in my back pocket like trinkets i keep around for good luck.
the nostalgia makes me nauseous.

2. you
did you know i inhale your indeterminacy and hurt
like a carcinogen late at night?
your bitterness curls around my alveoli like a cancer,
but no star sign can save you from the fate you designed for yourself
& the astrology i use to prescribe a better future is archaic
and no amount of alchemy can turn your suspicion back into trust.
your misdirected anger crawls under my skin
like crabs looking for a way back out to sea,
but you have long since forgotten how to swim,
and my broken lifeboat ethics have capsized
because there is only room for one of us.

Justin

You let me down so gently from my perch
my feathers didn't have time to ruffle. There are days
where I tire of singing your song like a broken record
because my voice box has forgotten how to warble
the syllables in your name every night like a hymn.

Sometimes, I grow tired of the metal bars
surrounding my body that dig their talons in so deeply
they carve your soul into my flesh, but I remain confident
that someday, I will fly again. (If I concentrate hard enough,
I can count the twelve steps towards addiction and rehab.
I can't help but wonder which one you bring.)

However, I missed the herald angel that descended upon me
sending good tidings my way while I was delicately perched
on your arm because my wings were clipped by your bluntness
and your pleas fall on tone-deaf-song-bird ears
that are too tired of aural persuasions,
so all I have left to do is wonder why I still sing.

match tips

Tonight is not the first time I have heard country songs
written about people like you. It is not easy,
but I have finally found the time to admit to myself
that heartbreak has taken a toll on me. There are days
where I burn camaraderie like bridges so efficiently
I use the flames to keep my worn out joints from aching.
My body has become expendable between your fingertips,
because the tips of my hair are coated with brimstone
& when you rub me between heartbreak and trust issues
I have no choice but to ignite. I confess to growing weary
of being your emotional crutch guiding you like the moon,
but although I am weak I have found the only thing to do
is hobble, so I keep walking. There are times where I find
my subconscious searching for your pathway, but the souls
of my torn up feet are tired of searching for your heart
amidst the briars and I hope someday I can content myself
with waking up alone.

I hate the taste of caution in my mouth.

There is a road less traveled that I nibbled
into the nape of your neck like a cliche,
but the fictions I wrote with eskimo kisses
can't recall the dead space she created.

Sometimes, I want to apologize for my innate hyperbole
when I see your inability to understand my caustic nature
shooting through your corneas until color deficiency
destroys your technicolor dreams.

Last night I found myself wanting to swear by
the sparkle in your star-struck irises
that reflected fervent hope so desperately
my pupils shrunk instinctively in fear,

but I am learning slowly how to let you hold me
while your trembling digits cautiously wander
the lining of my broken soul as if it was the first time
you learned how to trust.

midnight yell

You terrify me. I have nights now where I find myself pacing
the newly minted gravel road that is so meticulously lined with concrete
and the souls of fallen stacks and angels it makes me wonder
if I can burn a portal to my hometown in the backs of my corneas.

There is a burning desire that lies deep within my heart for tradition,
but I find the struggle upwards towards my faith in people
slipping on the edges of fallacies that lie in my path like good intentions.

I showed up at dark thirty and wrapped the midnight sky around your wariness,
but I remain suspicious of your claims about your lack of emotion
because I have spent my life shedding away disloyalty
and wearing the scars of abandonment on my fingers
like gold rings symbolizing camaraderie.

That night, the field was too bright to register coherent thought,
so I dragged my heels along the yard lines & curled my toes in the grass,
hoping for a moment of darkness when I would become brave enough
to close my eyes. My throat ached from yelling so loudly to calm my nerves.

I remember how terrified I was when you swept me off my feet so quickly
the battle fatigued me, but I found it impossible to camouflage the sparkle
in your icy-blue-moon-stony eyes that left me so breathless my heart forgot how to hurt.

Ever since your lips grazed my apprehension,
I have found myself constantly worrying that I am better off waking up alone,
but you carved insomnia so deeply into my cerebral cortex
that daylight has lost its context in the natural rhythm of my life.

Nowadays, I find that he thought of you grasps the aura of my soul firmly,
leaving the scar of your talon. Twelve hours ago, we encased ourselves
in between red bricks and locked lives like mouths that knew better than to ask
the alchemy of our chemistry to clip the wings of destiny,
and so all I can do now is learn how to fly on my own.

Doherty

Sometimes, I wonder if I dig deep enough with
abyssal gazes into your soul whether your
existential-bordering-on-Nietzschean
nihilist rantings that pave the concrete we follow
late at night can learn to embrace your suffering as a joy,
but I am not naive enough to think that you
understand the philosophy behind my poetry.

Tonight wasn't the first night I felt your third eye
peering into my soul curiously, but I am tensed up too far
to let you hold me without fear of you slipping away
the same way that concrete edges ate at my shins
when I scaled roofs so high I grazed the floors of the heavens.

I counted seven-four-twelve flowers
in your irises like a locker combination,
and I sometimes wonder if either of us
can ever outgrow the maturity of high school,
but I continue to remain confident that come springtime,
our ability to communicate shall flourish in the plant beds
I painstakingly dug next to where I found your soul.

There are vines that snake their tendrils up your red brick walls,
and I have moments where I yearn to reach for the tops of the leaves
on trees lining your sidewalk, but my growth towards the sky
has been stunted by your pessimism,
and so all I can do is look towards the stars and wonder
if I will ever be brave enough to kiss you.

Dorm Seven

There are moments
where I can hear the echo of your boot heels in strange(r)-passerby,
but I have learned better than to acknowledge such curious presences.
It's amusing to me that such jaded cynicism in ice-blue-moon-stony eyes
that reflected the stoicism of gargoyles has been replaced
by such eager inquisitiveness, but rest assured
that no doe-brown-fawn-eyed boy can convince me
to stray from bitterness. However, I find a sort of magic
in having come 'round full circle a year and a half later,
wandering into the paths of alleged hopeless romantics,
but I have learned that sometimes,
life is safer when dwelled as a homebody,
because the outdoors has left me lovesick
with desire for optimism just out of my reach.

thompsons

In a lot of ways, I resent my ability to pick out scent like a hound
because I have moments when I pass by your cologne
and it knocks the wind straight out of me, but I figured I had developed
enough willpower to resist the urge to fall for another one of you again.

There are moments when I can recall the way your heels
clicked against the tile when you paced the hallway in your boots,
and the noise resounded against floorboards and echoed
in slapboards hanging on the ceilings, but I have learned
from my experience with ladykillers, and nowadays, I am wise enough
to avoid your red brick walls that still sting me with a vengeance.

I remember promises of semper fi and silver linings that gently caressed
the sides of commissions, but your second coming never arrived
because when I tried to remain always loyal, I found that seizing opportunities
ended up closing doors and shattering windows for me.

One night in particular, you bled red, white, and blue
and drew the edges of our intertwined mouths,
but I will never forget waking up
crunching glass between my teeth.

Recently, I found that your shadow lies closer to 12 than 7,
and I have had enough of Pyrrhic battlefields, because combat fatigues me,
but your namesake haunts my memories like a calling duty simply cannot forsake.
I found his engraved nameplate and traced your last name
over my inability to trust a new beginning with an old memory.
Even now, I can't help but be leery of mistakes I have made in the past
digging their talons into my soul and overshadowing my aura.

He stalked towards me amidst a crowd of desperate, reverent lighters
and cell phones in the background, and twirled me around his finger so easily
that I didn't have time to recover from the realization of vertigo.

I fell deep into naivete and wondered if royal blues
could whisk me away into skies that painted themselves sapphire
with the optimism of doe eyed pupils. I spun around like
all I could do was hold on for dear life during a nose dive,
but there was no bald eagle to catch me just in time before I hit the ground.

However, I find myself fortunate enough to have stared into
icy blue moon-stone irises that seemed, for once, more apprehensive
about me than I am able to be about my own insecurities.

when you were young

i can't help but find myself love-sick-stoned
every other time i blink my eyes,
wiping away the film from last night

and opening windows of opportunity
i peep at through camera obscuras,
but no amount of underdog championing
can convince me to reign on the silver screen
that we meet on in my technicolor dreams

but hope sneaks up on my ankles
and stays steadfast, hoping to cling to
the remnants of my naivete

beck and call

I firmly believe that God made me so tiny
because my personality announces its presence so easily.
As a result, my heart has never learned how to forget naivete.

Ever since I was a little girl, I caught rays of hope between my fingers
and stubbornly clung onto its fading light the same way I did with fireflies.

Nowadays, my heart aches a little less every time
I watch you slip through my fingers like quicksand,
because my feelings have become karst topography
and I am tired of trying to patch sinkholes you make.

I admit that I still have days where I fall asleep
with your memory tucked firmly underneath my pillowcase like a baby tooth
so an angel can take you away and replace you with a quarter-blue-moon,
but the lunar lady was full tonight, and I'm not sure that God
is willing to wax and wane the same way your inhibitions do.

Even now, there are grooves of optimism carved into your dimples
and worry lines on your forehead. I can't kiss away either. I find
the only thing I have left to do is lay my mouth on your eyelids
and hope that you don't remember how my lips taste when you wake up,
because I am sick of writing you love poems.

military walk

i met your ghost today;
traced his reincarnated footsteps
as if twin namesakes
could

free me from
a predisposition
towards hope

but i find myself walking
behind tap-dance-soles
that wore out my feet
so long ago that my aura
can't find the time
to save itself

from people like you

apples to oranges

i will be the first to admit that I know nothing of your plight,
never bothered trying to be the girl next door, and settled for
being tom-boy-skinned-knees-muddied-skirts
until i grew up and realized your irises were my mirror
so i contented myself with granny-smith dreams
my forbearers would tell me about true love

this morning, I woke up and ran my hand
over the craters carved into your face like karst topography;
caressed the pits and bumps underneath my fingertips
so I could read your expressions better
because I was so unused to the variation in texture
and all my life had been up until you was smooth

your acerbic nature eats through your smile
like calcium deposits and I am tired of biting into your neck
to find an un-ripened tartness because your skin curls up
the way I am entangled around your finger
like dried remnants of good intentions
peeled away until all I can taste
is the cloying aftermath of your nutrition,
but you leave bitter acridness in the back of my throat,
much like the way I am sure I would choke on
your affectations disguised as affection
and that confused me, because all I wanted
was to hide secret sugar pockets in your cheeks
the way that fujis surprise you because I understand
that it is difficult to see past my skin, even though
I keep trying to convince you that while my sweetness
is exceedingly rare, but it is there

but i am fucking sick of your apocryphal properties,
or perhaps i am just tired of buying from alchemists
in an attempt to heal virus flowing through my veins
that gnaws at the inside of my veins the same way
I find myself falling for you

because I am done with your jaundiced complexion
bordering on ruddy-red-delicious cheeks;

finished with being
second-best
silver-lining
fairy-tale
gilded-age-pyrite-dreams
that sparkle in pupils reflecting back at me
proclaiming that all you want is to be loved,
but it's unfair to compare apples to oranges

acid tongue + silver lining

i find myself
attempting to tuck
the corners of your life
under the mattress neatly,

as if i could somehow
fold up your problems
and that my harried actions
could lay good intentions perfectly
over your sleeping body

because all i wish to be
is that silver outlining
traced so delicately
in the corners of your smile

but my argent-based soul
shines pyrite when reflected
in your pupils

and i have worn it thin
attempting to heal scars
even cobblers couldn't patch up

stream of consciousness

if i look hard enough into your starry-eyed irises,
i can see the reflection of lightning fast reflexes
aimed at defending yourself from women like me,
but baby, my entire existence has been
stainless steel you spent the past eternity slowly
gnawing through with your willpower, and i have
lost the strength to battle against supernova pupils
that warn me of impending storm clouds, so baby,
please hold me 'til the maelstrom is over because
i am sick of weathering the monsoon alone, and I
have taught myself to be afraid of waking up to see
another person's soul lying next to me, as if your aura
could give away my location to my apprehensions.

prying open my third eye

>I grew up hiding bibles
in my closet instead of
skeletons; danced with
incorporeal whispers
about saviors
around grassy fields
instead of finding my soul
stuck in between the bricks
encasing the elementary

and I had moments
where I (came out to watch you play)
with your shadow vanishing
towards the hills as your
legs carried you further
than our dreams
ever could

but today,
we shared split lips
and eskimo kisses
while the butterflies
in my stomach
searched for the way
back to summertime

so I searched your (bright-
blue-shimmering) aura
that sparkled in the
reflection of my existence
like the way your pupils
contract around my
heart-skips-a-beat
whenever you're around me
while I find myself (chasing
the tail of dogma)

fender bender

he left

the cloying
putridness
of intentions
paving the road
to perdition

in the reflection
of your gaze;

painted the
outer rims
of your irises
with stainless intentions

and wound up your nerves
with nickel-plated steel

but baby, I ain't here
to bend your will-power
a half-step up towards
my manipulative nature

because I have learned
that even broken people
don't want each other

and my strings
have rusted over
heart-sick
guitar chords
with time

good old fashioned loverboy

darlin', I have moments
where your optimism
makes me want to
swear to you
that your storybook ending
is out there, but I must confess
that I find no magic in bohemians,
and I can capture no rapture
from lyrics that flow like Mercury
because all I have left to be certain about
are steely-grey-brown eyes intertwined
that don't know what to say
in response to hope
that rocks a body
like cliched guitar chords
but I promise waiting
for peace pulled through
a broken sigh exhaled outwards
the same way carcinogens
surrounded our auras
during smoke breaks
is all we can do

once in a blue moon

I have moments
when I pass by your window
that the arches remind me
of how you curled my back
around your forearm

and this isn't to say
that you leave
the same ache in my heart
as the way that writing you
love letters on a stranger's sheets
causes my thighs to be a little too
love-sick-heart-sore
the next morning

because I have given up
on feigning normalcy
when lying in bed
next to your soul

and sometimes,
when the sweat kaleidoscope
blurs your face together
and shines in just the right light

I can see optimism presented
in a flash-bang-in-the-pan
sparkle in irises pool blue
and so clouded over by
grey blue-moons

but baby,
I tire of astrological metaphors
that you scrawled with muddy eyes
looking back into in my black-hole pupils
because it has made me yearn to change
our predicted future

slow dancing with fate

I learned what hope tasted like
the first time I two-stepped with myself;
stepped out on the hardwood floor
of emotional vulnerability and kept time
with my heart palpitations

And still, I have days where
I recount the way my soul flew
over grassy knolls that bit into my knees;
hills that hid between brick buildings
encasing tradition

so I stepped forward;
marshaled together my will
to be vulnerable

and fell for you

christian

I have moments where
my fingertips breathe out your name
onto loose-leaf sheets so loudly

I can hear the letters bleeding
into the paper like a synesthetic high

but our synthetic passions
ring false on lye-stained soapboxes
I can't wash myself clean of

because your saccharine
leaves a cloying aftertaste
and though artificial comfort
is all my heart can care to buy

I have long since paid my dues
to your existence

southern romance

I have moments where I hope
if I listen to country songs long enough
its processed pop-banjo twang can convince me
that I want to fall in love with your image
because I have walked the dirt roads
of your eyes until my feet blistered;
sifted mud seeping between my toes
until I discovered that your
grey-blue-moon-stones sparkle
like lost gemstones in the rough
that got tossed around one too many times
in my callused hands because I
have forgotten how to be gentle
but baby, I am learning
how to feel safe in your arms
and I swear someday I will figure out
how to kiss away the bruises I cause

---

I find myself whispering pleas(e)
of salvation when you arch my spine
until I bend so far backwards
I can steal a glimpse of heaven

and there is a divine immaculateness
in the way your callused hands
carefully cradle my body as you
lift me upwards towards redemption

because frankly, I love that you don't
even bother to bestow
a canonical look of guilt
when I gaze into
the impending storms
of your irises

so I will sit through the thunder
until I can kiss the rain dancing on my lips
and baby, we can watch the sun rise together
afterwards

Psalm 14

I've always been determined
to find a bit of God in everything
which is why I revel
in the cloying sweetness
of sulfur of your breath
and fell in love with the aftertaste
of fire and brimstone on your lips
because you linger in the back
of my subconscious
like Catholic guilt

and it has been too long
since I waltzed down
the road to perdition
encased within
the jugular vein
I tried to chew through
to get to redemption

Marshall

I have moments where I wonder
who you are to question God's will
as if I am some omnipotent interpreter
of the way our tongues spoke a foreign language
since I haven't been held like that in over a year;
but I find a hint of nostalgia
in how you shattered my self worth
the same way he did

because I spent the weekend
preaching on false-lye soapboxes
trying my best to make sense of
accidental miscommunication
turned deception, and perhaps
I am wrongly denigrating you,
but I am losing the willpower
to fight against your professed truths

so I will self medicate on despair and opiates
as if I could prescribe myself a mental escape
from this misery because I have learned
in the past, that if I mix equal parts
hydrocodone, heartbreak, and alcohol,
sometimes, I can finally summon the strength
to stop struggling against loneliness

An Apology to John Donne

I must admit that I grow weary and restless
due to sublunary love because my base mind
found no solid foundation, save hubris,
to build commitment on top of

Nowadays, I can do nothing but glorify misery
through technological innovations you'd blanch at
because our fast-food-shotgun-love world
has forgotten subtlety

so I write him no valediction,
no preemptive farewell to mourning
because I am determined
to follow Love's diet
as if I could train my heart
in an emotionless marathon

but I have grown tired of running from myself
and I confess a concession to cheating
by indulging in emotional vulnerability
because my will to starve is long gone

spent too long waiting

although I will always believe
in love like a mustard seed,
I have grown so sick of life-like parables
about empty heartaches and broken promises
that I find it bittersweet to repeat after Job 1:21
as if I can get comfort from monotony--

which isn't to denigrate religion,
but it's difficult to flourish
when you start out
beginnings ablaze at both ends
and I am finally fading and flickering

and while my faith remains strong
in modest beginnings,
we burned out so quickly
my heart can't even find
the time to break

black clouds and silver linings

on muggy days after thunderstorms,
I sometimes manage
to work up the courage to walk past your door,
wondering if I can let the warmth of your sideways grin
soak into my skin
like sunshine
that breaks through rain-clouds
because your touch is my silver lining
on the maelstrom of my life,
and I would haven't it any other way
because I've recently found myself
caught in cliches; waltzing with optimism

and it would be a lie
to say I am not terrified of happiness,
but there are nights where I sit by you,
watching your eyes weary with sleep
refusing to give into exhaustion
so we stay up 'til odd hours of the morning
talking about nothing and everything in between
because you have taught me the wisdom of simplicity,
the beauty in simple-chord-progressions;
taking things slowly,
and the joy of finally stopping to savor
the brightness of the future
that seeped in when I met you;
cracked my defenses open
the way light shyly peeps through your blinds
like a reminder that it's already morning because
we've stayed awake together too long again,
as if an excess could never be enough

but I am at peace
with wanting more :)

what is this demonry

I have been love-struck-so-sick
that this amoration
could be a venereal disease

but I do not intend to subjugate
this to dull sublunary lust
that Donne once scrawled about
in candle-light, staying up
'til odd hours of the night
much like I do when I can't get you off
my mind, so I can do nothing
but let scrambled word-play
frolic on-text-screen
because I haven't heard from you
since last Thursday, but I can still feel
your smile's effect on my ruddy cheeks
painted so rosy with your warmth

and i have feelings now this is gay and i don't want to finish it why am i listening to taylor swift fml

Psalm 3

although I can imagine
empathizing with emotional ineptitude,
I have survived through far too much
to expend sympathy on lost causes
that deserve a far more righteous wrath
like a divine sign from the Heavens
that I am in the clear

and I offer no condolence
or contrition for finally finding
lucid pathways leading me towards positivity

and I refuse to be dragged down
the road to perdition paved with
your supposed good intentions
because I will not wallow in pessimism

so I have nothing to spare you
but virtuous vindictiveness
lest you get in my way

love like a self-inflicted disease

it would be denigrating
to say that I no longer miss
your carcinogens in my lungs,

reminisced about inhaling asthma
as if the one saving grace
from my lung capacity
was the wispy smokes of cancer
dancing around my alveoli

but though I know
I only kissed your memory
goodbye last night,
breathed a rasping breath
as if your lips' feathery touch
could asphyxiate me,

it has already been too long
to hang onto the nostalgia
behind falling in love
with your waltz
that life-like
deadlines cut
in between

so before you leave me,
may I have this last dance?

Marshall

I found myself early this morning
stuck in between mix tapes and Bible verses;
woke up to an insistent tapping in the corner of my mind
from a beggar asking for change-of-hearts,
as if my memories were loose coins
that fell out of my cerebral cortex
and without context,
the two-cents I had to contribute were worthless

so I will pick myself back up;
keeping walking sideways sidewalks
up my spinal cord until I reach
the subconscious reason
I have fallen so hard for you,
twirl and pirouette up and down
my vertebrate until I reach gray matter
that can decode the warmth of your aura

although I have grown tired
of dancing around your inaction,
I am naive enough
to accept the wisdom
of your band-aid solution to "hurt"
being your attempt to save the world

single-
handedly

and I, too, have learned the value of solitude,
but I am sick of walking the winding streets of my mind alone
because all I have left to wrap myself around is your smile

texas flood

baby it's dry outside my window,
but I can hear the storm clouds rollin'
like foreshadowing in the lulls of my heart beats,
whispering and dancing through trembling leaves
that shake the way my fingers wobble when I'm bending strings
just a little too heavy for my conscience

but I am safe from the lightnin'
as long as I tune my leeriness down a half-step
so there is less tension when I kiss your neck
with digits that intertwine in the strings
so I can better understand how it feels
when rosewood cries the blues like a hurricane

because we exchanged numbers digging our toes shyly in the sand,
beached inhibitions lying in the surf
where high tides couldn't even reach our ambitions
in the eye of the storm so baby, hold me close
'til the typhoon is done crashing on the grainy interlude of this limbo,
and I will dial your soul as soon as this Texas flood is over

absolutely

it's hard to not qualify the last
nine-days with a numerical proposition,
because I haven't tasted your kiss
since the last of never, but until then
I will wake up to church bells
like a lucid embrace day after day

and while I think clarity is overrated,
I can hear optimism in the way you say
my name, as if the repetition could
will me to never want to leave your side

because I could lie, but I'm happy
two steps away from security

she will be loved

I have aged prematurely
since we last spoke; spent my time
scrawling lines on walls like
long-lost-dead sea prophecies

the way your memories
leave cloying remnants
in my cerebral cortex

but I will wake up the next morning
missing your presence between the sheets
less and less as acoustic chords
strum you out slowly like a
progressive change in my life

I'm so lonesome I could cry

I first taught my fingers
how to walk the blues pentatonic
over Hank William's chords

sat for hours as they roamed
over rosewood, listening for
silent falling stars

and tonight, it is cloudless
over heavens that regard
calluses as hard-earned medallions

and blue-collar-moons
don't mean nothin' ornery
in the countryside of
a worn down acoustic

that shapes its hillsides
with the tension set just a little
too high

life is not a graphic novel

while I refuse to reduce my life
to comic book cliches, I remember that
the last time I let lovers so close,
I wound up with adamantium fused
to my skeleton like a defense system

so I will wake up tomorrow
with forced optimism tattooed on my soul
knowing it's easier to get through the day
not needing a kryptonian savior
who is so busy saving the world
he forgot about Lois Lane

because I have learned my lesson;
let the blues shake my body like sobs
so that my callused fingers can wail better
on strings rusted over with Texas floods

but I can only wish
that I could give myself that much credit,
because I have forgotten how it feels
to be close to fretboard necks

in the same way that I have become leery
of my susceptibility to attachment
thanks to being taught yet again
that sometimes, even heroes fall short

life as an expiration (date)

I want to stay awake all night
shaping poetry out of your guitar strings
because lately my life has been so
melodious-mellifluous-serendipitous
that I have tuned myself a half-step up
in the hopes that I will trip upwards
towards redemption
and finally run in the direction
of something meaningful

because my life had subscribed
myself to a deist perspective;
refused to attribute personal growth
to a force beyond me

settled for mediocrity
and forgotten what it felt like
to follow Corinthians 1:13
until I felt a presence
outside my being

felt the will to follow the trinity
and let my faith guide me towards
hope for a new beginning
and I swear
I know

I'm following the wrong path towards love
for the right reasons
but I will keep walking
in Your image

the little demon on my shoulder

it's been years since I substituted
my insouciance towards carcinogens
with spoken lyricism

and while I always attributed my tremors
to nicotine addiction

tonight was a night where even
the dying embers
of the eve's last cigarette
couldn't shake off heart palpitations
that can't help but wonder if you will skip a beat
in the rhythm of abandonment

because I am so disused
to the susceptibility of attachment
that I have become inured to the grasp
of chemicals around my throat
to soothe broken muses
that refuse to let me sleep

and it's been almost a year since we touched,
but your oaths of contrition make my head spin
with broken record promises; make me
wonder about the time you taught me to

never-hang-on
but I have yet to
let
go

siobhan's stratocaster

baby three years ago
I stared straight back
at sentimentality
that played on 11 gauge strings
just a little too heavy for my soul;

promised you that I'd honor
your memory with tendonitis

but I have moments
where I tire of
walking hand in hand with nostalgia

and I wish you could lift my spirits
with lighter cares and optimism
in the same way you'd kiss my eyelashes to sleep

your ghost reincarnated

I sat shotgun
in a country western so nostalgic
I can hear your boots click
down the gilded road
towards southern hospitality

but our paperback romance
don't need no pick up line

because I fell head over heels
into the back of your truck
while counting the shooting
stars in your eyes

and years have passed since
we sat under those arches,
letting gauzy smoke trail behind our lives

but you left your carcinogens
in my lungs like the hope for redemption
the second time around

stratacoustic

it has been two years since I ran my hands
past your body, and I have moments where I
can still feel your rusted guitar chords
underneath calloused fingers
like muscle memory

but unlike you,
I have resigned myself to a minor fate;
scaling up my defenses suspended between
stainless steel marionette strings
and maple backbones

and I can still feel your solos
sending sound waves through my soul
as if my past could amplify
the hollowness in our touch

she's waiting

the Lord, he knows that
I had moments where I
wanted to save you from yourself
and light up your doe eyes with hope

but emancipation
came several kisses too late-
sounded out the freedom that
rang in every syllable you spoke

re-mem-ber-when-our
eyelashes intertwined in the sun?
you grinned through the light
breaking through my blinds

re-mem-ber-the-
aurum outline of the .45?
our tongues locked;
your mouth full of lucid bullets
that furiously dug holes
towards your soul

and the Lord knows I-re-mem-ber
the time you never came home

the boy who taught me how to live

even today, I still recall
how your eyelashes curled shyly
as if the brown hair your fingers
mussed up so tentatively
could match ebony black-holes
lit up by my starry-eyed reflection

because I was a wide-eyed pupil
during late night conversations
about physics and politics
and water filters
and messiah complexes
... and muse playing endlessly
as we fell asleep

let you teach me about the genes
that lie snug up against our hip-bones

memorized the way you taught me
to never let anyone hold me
so I could become unbreakable

but Lord, summer is upon us again
so I shall simply be content tracing
your fractured shadow in my irises

Horace

I wandered just close enough to your face
for my eyelashes to dance with your pores

kissed you 'til I lit up your ruddy apple cheeks
as if summer's blush would stray from the sun
just enough to capture the brightness dancing down
through your hair so jarred by wind's sudden presence

and I am just drunk enough off the light
to wish that I could wake up to dawn's smile
shyly peeping through our blinds;

the heat impairing my judgment just enough
to make me want to stay the night
so that I

could catch the gentle lady-moon as she fell asleep;

dance with her tides
while you held me in your arms

but I have drowned my thoughts in poetry;
its rasping last breaths fighting the expanses of my seas
and I have capsized, so carpe diem (and seize your day)

---

I have never heard anyone beg
with such ferocity; let time stop
as it clocked me in the jaw
with your inner thigh as if the tongues
I were speaking were emancipatory

but our lingua franca was constructed
from the only universal human sounds
left to the constrained; halted my muse
from crossing over into coherence; exited my throat
proclaiming the arrival of false demi-gods

so I trailed my tongue across
your black-hole pupils as if butterfly kisses
could patch up the rift between us
after we fucked

“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

pirouettes on my heart

I watched your body contort
as if you tangoed with smoke and mirrors;
created illusions
out of broken bones
and fractures like a break dance

and you tapped out morse code
S-O-S on floors
that resonate with
your indecisiveness

but honey,
my life ain't no crystal ball (room)
and you can't cut in
because my acerbic nature
grated emancipation into grit
between its teeth

and I have no need
for a gentleman

a man's breakfast

I woke up with the taste of camaraderie in my mouth;
blanched at the sight of your hair still caught in my teeth
as if you had shed a bit of your soul on my pillowcase. I
rose from bed and wiped away the stains of solidarity
you left like an imprint of your lips on my sheets. Somewhere,
you're waking up in his arms and he holds you like you
are something delicate; a flower blossoming for the world
in his hands. I'm left wondering about the implications of
lotuses and inner peace as I stumble towards the microwave,
pretending it can give me instant gratification
the way my soul was exhumed from my body; your lips
pressed up against some mysterious orifice
that could release some false sense of catharsis.

I'm having my first smoke break of the day. It's been 96
hours since I last thought of inhaling carcinogens into my lungs
to forget about that venereal disease they call emotion. I
occasionally worry that this is less holy than the rest of my works,
sculpted out of abstractness as if my words were ethereal
instead of nebulous claims to immortality, some sort of verbal
invulnerability that breaks the way I got down on my knees
to hear you scream my name

baby, don't flatter me like that

I will stare straight through
through your myopic pretensions;

those honey-brown
lit-up-by-ambition
once-in-a-blue-moon-sapphire eyes

that wouldn't dare
make a difference in my life

so gaze airly at me;
ask me if I can stay the night with the
gold-flecked
gilded-age
black-hole
irises

that taught to wake up alone
'cause I learned by the way
you thrust yourself into my mind
to make you expendable

and baby,
I know
that you're
just

vain enough

to think that
this poem
is for you

i have yet again done something stupid

I broke the one promise
your closest friend taught me to keep

woke up next to hope and solidarity;
squinting through rose-colored shades
sifting the morning dew
through to my pupils
the way my thoughts
condensed into consciousness

your adamantium ate through me;
decayed my spirit the way that kryptonite
consumed your childhood aspirations

and you are not unbreakable;
I'm just more fragile than most
because my life lacks comic book heroes

... but i don't blame you

my words are too exhausted
to fight your attempts at lyricism

enervated by the desire for brevity
and instant gratification at your
fingertips that dance
on my lips like a muse

called my emotions together
like they needed a false sense of solidarity

an invocation for melodrama
to flow through my veins
like a poetic vice

A love letter to College Station

when I was still a young child,
you taught me that southern hospitality
and pennies at the base of statues
could bring me good fortune

fed me camaraderie for breakfast
when I woke up to the band in the morning

thrived on stack and the burning spirit
while I waited to reach maturity

watched couples walk together
under a tree that promised eternity

stood by at silent candlelight vigils
broken only by the sound of
21 gun salutes and solidarity

and baby, you can't even begin to comprehend
how long I have waited to marry you
with that golden ring upon graduation

the holy trinity

I don't mind the way I bled, accepted
the way my lips were kissed so hard
passion burst forth from capillaries
that were fueled by adrenaline

because each one of you tastes different,
and I want to write your life stories
with my tongue like I understand
what language your soul is speaking

she kisses like she wants to forget her past;
wraps her legs around me
like her body is a present,
and all she wants to do
is gift her innermost thoughts to me;
sends me messages through her chest
pressed up against my beating heart
so that her murmurs
cause mine to palpitate irregularly

and he bites with a ferocity
that makes me wonder
if he realizes the futility
of chewing through a concrete wall;
but he is determined to untangle
the bodies intertwined in front of him
as if one of us
was that missing puzzle piece
so he can pick up the shattered remnants of his poetry
and breathe life into his muses' lips again

but darling, three is two too many
and my lyrics are exactly both your stanzas too long
for me to wake up next to either of you
in the morning

99 problems

people have falsely denigrated me;
called me ms. anthropic, but my true surname
was plucked from my faith in the heavens;

scraped off the golden gates
like knees kissed by concrete

so I kissed away spirituality's childhood scabs
like it meant that I could find rose colored glasses
because back then, I retained the fierce optimism
of youth tempered by smooth elocution

but since then I have found that
my flaw is my Messiah complex;
complicated like religious differences
like reading psalms hidden within
prophecies about self-fulfillment

so I have given up on enlightening
in favor of preaching from a Bible
without divine guidance
lost myself in the missionary position;
abandoned hope kneeling by the bed

because darling,
you are just beyond saving
and baby, I'm not bitter
but you're just too fucking far gone
for me to revive

cross-hatched poetry

If nothing else, you taught me
how to walk myself out gracefully.
The dew is condensing on my face the way
my lips touched your eyelashes as I slipped away;
morning rays creeping towards my irises
because it is seven in the morning
and I have not yet taught myself
how to fall asleep in your arms,
have not given myself the opportunity
to let you push me away, but I know that

she's still on your mind
haunting you like a crick in the base of your spine
and I am building hidden innuendos and memories within
neglected lines I am confident you won't
ever read

east meets west

The smoke you exhaled around my face
curled around my nostrils the way Taipei air does
on a rainy day, and I hear stray motorcycles
in the distance. The fog penetrates through
iron gates that scarlet kissed with oxygen,
staining my fingerprints with the residue of nostalgia

Your namesake has British pretensions,
but you breathe out the forests of Wuhan
and her morning condensation flows through your veins
which makes me miss your colonization;
the way you took over my mind
with hazy fantasies I constructed like paper tigers

because I can still smell your dynasties
that you built up like great walls around a fortress
to protect yourself from girls like me, but baby,
my self-fulfilling prophecies aren't covered
by your insurance policies- I am invincible
and threw down our bones long ago; read
the back of turtle shells like I could predict
a self-determined future;
wrote symbols on your back with my nails
so you can forget me when you wake up
alone in the morning tomorrow.

why I don't stay the night

I rolled over and looked at her,
said, "baby, why won't you stay
because my love
has an expiration date
and I'm just waiting for you
to cash in your emotional investment
when I expire,"

so I stroked her hair and sighed,
running my fingers through infidelities
that blossomed on a wan face
that knew better than to fall in love,
because baby, we all die
alone

and baby, you're on your own

but my spirit
will always be two steps behind you

a lyrical response to little one

sweetheart, I am not that fragile
and you weren't the first to break me,
but I lack the piscean attributes
prescribed like a solution
to my problems

though I won't admit to giving astrology
that much credence to my life
because my character traits
are fickle like an inherent mis-dosage
in the time-release numbing capsules for my soul

since I have learned
that all good things wilt with time-
that spring is just a season that leads to the fallen in autumn
because Christmas morning still haunts me
like a lullaby I sing at night so I can't sleep

so I am done looking for happy endings
and settled for instant gratification instead
because darling, eternity can wait for me

messing around with wordplay

we spoke briefly on the phone today,
digits interweaving in invisible webs
while my fingers
caressed your voice through a telepathic connection
drawn out between our temples like a portrait

and I kissed your diction through the air;
worshiped your tongues like a deity
kneeling at the edges of altars
that sang benedictions about language
at your service the way that I
would serve you by wrapping my legs around you
in a heart beat

let drum and bass pulsate
through your veins; screw
and scratch
you like a record
from the deep south,
pick you like cotton until
the thorns ate my raw hands away

and I would be left with no way to call you

she dances on my heart like a flutter

You told me my poetry was beautiful,
but I do not write with words because my lips
are parched from kissing you too hard
on the longest night of my life, and I
have run out of lyricism and settled for brevity.
It's ironic, because I vomit out mellifluousness
the way the smell of morning coffee wakes me up.
You're already up and about,
carrying about the rest of your life without me,
and I carry on my shoulders bite (marks the spot
like an unfinished afterthought
between missing parentheses. My hang
over looms like a precipice I cannot step away from,
but our mo(u)rning never truly came
the way you shook between my legs,
because I stole away in the dark of the night;
kissed your eyelashes and took a heartbeat from you
while you were sleeping

and love, you've never even noticed that I still wake up alone.

when I first discovered America, I fell in love with the Wild Wild West

There is nothing evocative about your past
with me; I simply opened my eyes in the
greatest country on Earth. Your footsteps
defined the dust on the floorboards
as if solidarity's denotation
hid in the crevices of your boots. You
cocked the brim of your hat to the side
and it flashed its lopsided cowhide grin at me,
beckoning towards a genteel mannerism
Easterners will never fully grasp. I
surveyed your cracked brown hands the way
a farmer looks over a plot of land, and
you said, "honey, your words are parched
and it looks like your malaise is only 'cause
you lack a little lovin'." But I will remember
long summer days spent making love to iron horses
in your deserts, cooking stir fry in your melting pot
and chasing the ancestral ghosts of my racial identity
as if growing up in the only place where
chivalry has not died could somehow help me
to recall foreign memoirs written in my DNA.

But then you took my hand and kissed my fingertips,
opening doors for me in such a bowed manner
that I discovered opportunity

we never even locked eyes.

shy but beautiful;
you dirty ingenue

those three syllables
dance on my muscles
like temptation

and your heart shaped glasses
spun dainty pirouettes on the silver screen

because i can still taste your flesh
on my parched lips

the lady doth protest too much, methinks

We lost the meaning of "protest" the first time we fucked.

got tangled in the etymology of our moans;
while afterward you exhaled puffs of smoke
that curled around your nostrils
like catharsis

but that will not emancipate you
from moments when your splayed fingers across my face
and tried to push me towards amelioration of past ills

because you tried to absolve your present;
gifts like redemption and starry eyed gazes
that shine in your pupils like hope
but you have forgotten that you emanate Queen Gertrude

and I will not exonerate you
because I am just a pearl surreptitiously dissolving
at the bottom of goblets meant for sons, not lovers

your girlfriend is an ingenue

God pricked pinholes
into your skin like camera obscuras
so your pores
could see a bit better

and I have dealt with your acerbic wit
but you eroded your karst topography
and smeared calcium deposits
like an emollient onto my lips,
leaving caustic bite marks in the shape
of paramours like inamoratas

but I will take pride
in having smoothed you over;
sanded you down
with precisely executed
gyrations like demolitions

sonnet to siobhan

God sends an angel down every time
I hear skateboards grinding into concrete
Because 16 is too young to start counting the deaths of soulmates

We giggled as we stuffed notes into Josh McMillan's locker;
Scampered through sewer drains
and burrowed towards opportunity
in hopes of connecting ourselves to brighter futures

I will always remember the first time you died.
You ripped open your throat to let the larks warble in your voicebox;
performed tracheotomies to loosen up the spirit of the world around you
And I strummed your chest like broken guitar chords on Christmas morning

The Pale Man

Some people speak in complete sentences;
You hang disco balls at the end of your statements.

And I
find myself
so enthralled underneath the light
that shines the way
your irises
paint rainbows,

with pupils for fingertips
and inaccessibility
as your canvas

gigi writes to alex

I scrawl lyrics
from Jason Mraz
and Taylor Swift
into my temples
to prove to myself

that my flaws
can be externalized

but there
is hope written
between the strings
of acoustic guitars,
banjos,
and the future

thinly veiled metaphors for treachery

One day,
I saw John Milton
walking down the road to perdition
which was paved
with cliches and good intentions

and along the way
we realized Nietzsche
had replaced St Peter;

switched out Heaven
for nihilism

because God's metamorphosis into finality
transcended existence

and I left you rotting
in the 9th level of camaraderie
because
betrayal
was Satan's greatest gift
to you and I
and there is no redemption for him
in our paradise, lost

the inferno

I had forgotten
carnality

until I traced
the curve of your spine
with my closed eyelids;

nibbled on your shoulder-blades
til wings sprouted out
and my tongue danced
with the feathery tips
of Lucifer

and I was wrong
to ask if you were a demon
(because you
are nothing
but a fallen angel)

my fingers
searched for salvation
in your chest,
but I
looked for love
in all the wrong places

because the last time
I checked between your legs
there was only empty space;
blank pages for other people
to write on

and yet I find
cathartic emancipation
in your hatred

because I could only ever love
someone as broken as me

tracing our steps on concrete

dear empathy,
I lost you like a cause

when birds erupted
from my vocal cords
singing about the hope
I once held for the future

warbled about
how I formed affectations
between my fingertips
and mistook them
for affection,

and the waves of effects
washed over me like deliverance

but now, you stare at me
bewildered and doe-eyed
because I am not here
to emancipate my misdeeds

and instead,
I paint my face
with the livid lucidity
God blessed me with
the first time
dawn broke on my eyelids

and I have no sincerity
left to offer you

fine

tonight
brevity became an art
danced on the tips of tongues
like the aftertaste of fine wine

and you
spoke in dialects of emancipation
as if we could glorify helplessness
with our words

because
you
are fine(s)
the way tickets are penalties
for better outcomes

alternate routes
forty ounces away from freedom

fine
like assertions
(affectations)
that pour out wordplay
the way
whiskey spilled on the floor

because we are
the objectified proletariat
glorified in academia;

self-referential fourth walls
to keep us
from breaking
that glass ceiling

I reserve particularly lucid nights for confronting the Real.

I must admit

at some point

that I
regularly plagiarize
the thoughts you shoot at me through eyes
that reflect comfort
like worn down security blankets
full of good intentions
as they walked towards perdition

and I
waltzed with your subconscious between my fingertips
like airy lungs
gasp for
amelioration

unwritten whalestoe letters

my poetry spells itself out like johnny truant
and the structural integrity has been overwhelmed by
heroes fighting their inevitable metamorphosis
into the monsters they battle;
creatures that gazed back into their own abysses for far too long

because I walk your hallways with footsteps that echo like
overturned porcelain dogs on the kitchen counter

the weight of your years pressed down on me as if
those reverberations meant something more than age differences;
signified a will to power like a death wish

grew glass ceilings of desperation
as the walls skyrocketed towards redemption

but the black paint is peeling from the walls,
and memories don't grow there anymore