SOS

i sometimes worry
when you brush your lips
up against my lycanthrope mouth
that there will be no transformation
to justify pushing you away
for your own good

because i bit all my past lovers in the jugular
with kisses so sanguine their veins sang my name
and i can still feel them awakening to my voice
echoing through their heartbeats

elephant gun

I miss how you
spun around my soul
with androgynous kisses
and lifted me off the ground
as if the laws of your physics
put your priorities above gravity
until I was so dizzy
in the centrifuges
of your tailspin
towards gender roles
that I fell out of love

freeze dried romance, 5 hour phone conversations

this isn't the first night

i've spent staying up with you
until you have exhumed your soul
from the crevasses of emotion

liberated your broken heart
from women you proclaim
i am nothing like

so i will never be worth the effort

I constantly find myself
torn between the insides of my thighs
and indecision between good intentions
that pave a gilded path towards perdition
that you curl upwards towards heaven
like a sneering lip

but I admit that I love it
when your diction twirls me
around your fingertip until
I am at your beck and call

---

between
the wishful thinking
and the crazy

sometimes just settling
into happiness is good enough for me

because I've learned
that to coast on cruise-lack-of-control
means for once I get to enjoy the ride

love, war, and cardiac arrest

1. God cheated when he stenciled in
the outline of my bee stung lips with a shaky hand
as he penciled in anaphylactic shock and uncertainty
because I am allergic to the way your lips assault my skin.

2. Your red-fern eyelashes are infected by napalm
that sings lullabies to the ground before tucking it in.
The remnants of pesticides flutter weakly
between our butterfly kisses.

regroup

I have moments where I will listen
to Hope perched on my shoulder like a songbird,
but she ain't got nothin' on reality
because your flighty kisses
flutter weakly on my lips
like the aftertaste of optimism
that was seasoned
with the sun
rising too early

and baby, our horizon is fading
because I've spent my entire life
standing still in her shadow

---

somewhere in between
falling asleep to acoustic chord progressions
and waking up to Jason Mraz under your covers,
I fell in love with the idea of optimism

danced my way to menial chores
and sang until my throat was raw with positivity;
not caring if the rest of the world's ears
bleed at my voice (and did they ever)

because I have found divine guidance
in the way your pupils contract around my soul

bubbly?

my life has always been
a three-power-chord progression

which makes me wonder
why God keeps putting my simplicity
in the way of your arpeggios

but I will bend your notes
so I can reach the sound hope makes
when it fingerpicks its way to freedom

and meanwhile I will content myself to be
a small-scale minor interlude
'til you see me solo like Hendrix

because darlin'
I am finally regaining my faith
and my muscle memory

woke up this morning wanting a les paul

honey, I gotta admit I'm a sucker for it
when you tune your soul down a half step
and strum your fingers past your memories
as if your nostalgia could play chords

and darlin', the way you play your neck;
those vocal cords could croon out
industrial grade moodiness
reminiscent of Heathcliff

so I'll just gaze into the star-struck skies
while your guitar kisses me goodnight

greek drama

it's another night of jenny lewis
but I am sick of my pop-cultured life
through technicolor lenses

because all is fair in love-games of warfare
painted on screens with silver linings
as if life was nothing but theater

and after our performance
between the sheets
we wrote the script on

you left me the stages of grief
like an unwritten tragedy

mind/body/flute

it is only when I am perched
several stories above my mind
that hanging my body precariously
in the breezeway can ease
my shredded tendons; winds
whistling through pan's flute
as if wilderness could soothe
my frayed nerves, but I am not ready
for rebirth, and I am too tired
to spring forth anew into your life

missing digits; interlocking fingers

your soul
is a bright cold day
in april

but not even I
could bring myself
to betray you in 101

smashing pumpkins through nietzsche's eyes

dear blue eyes, my patience
exhaled its last gasping breath
at our finish line as if tonight
tonight could somehow
rebuild my dependency
on other people's insecurities

so I write to my irises in an attempt to
discolor-discredit-dismantle my past
like a fiction; but my pupils have taught me well
and the only gaze that remains is a watchdog
lest I turn into a monster

at matt's request

the storm sighed;
propped its head up on the broken windowsill
and exhaled cathartic rain from its lungs

breathed in the highs from our lives
that reached apex of maelstroms so blue
they blew the desire for audacity into your eyes

broken flowers

you've always cradled me
like I was something much more delicate
than my composition actually is; gently
fondled my notes as if you could coax melodies
out of my throat into sing-song ears
that fall deaf on synesthesic eyes like senses

slow dancing with your ghost

I want to tip toe
around your calves;
spin you around in candlelight
as if our intertwined souls
painted a dance floor
in the reflections of our gazes

and I just want to cradle you
like you are something tangible
one more time

---

Your kisses
are more placid
in my dreams

but reality jolts me awake
when you lie next to me

because I can hear
your breath sighing
in your lungs

---

I held you as tightly as I could
48 hours ago. I still wonder
if you noticed,
but your eyes
were glazed over
with optimism's reflection

elspeth

I keep your lucid poetry
like memories my synapses
fire between my fingertips, because
I cannot forget that your middle name
is the Irish version of my namesake
and all I can keep are your words
that strayed from your fingertips
to blank screens that flash in a pan like sincerity
while I paint our reality with metonymy

because you are nothing
but the world to me

a fine whine

I want to crush
raspberries
on my forehead like teenage
hormones developing in our abdomens
and press my soaked eyelashes
against your mouth;
ferment rubies between our lips
like hallucinations

spring cleaning

I nuzzled your jasmine fields
and exhaled eternity while your winds
sighed as they ran your fingers
through my hair. He woke up
abruptly, stopping our breathing
like a sudden line break in a poem

but your scent still lingers
like an aftertaste on the tip of my tongue

fml i am sick this is not a title fml

I watched your sensuality blossom
after being steeped in experimentation,
fermented with mentholated gasps
that tasted like cherry-chapstick moans
in the back of my throat

because baby, you objectified me
like a katy perry song

synesthesia

I watched your fingers
slam down on the piano keys;
Pygmalion sculpting Aphrodite
out of sound waves

and the mellifluous
taste of your notes lingered
on my tongue
as if I were a polyglot

but the cloying aftermath
of your symphony lingered
long after you left

macarthur

I walked in with wings
and you were dressed as a gangster,
but I didn't hold it against you

because I could stop bullets
with your bravado; that swagger
of a champion that channeled
a modern day demigod

but I fell through the cracks of reality
when dawn kissed away the butterflies
in my stomach

the morning after pill

I woke up
with your scent curled around me

while your the taste of your whispers
surreptitiously danced on my lips
and told me,
"baby, beggars can't be choosers"

solipsistic

I want to nibble
on your shoulderblades
'til your wings sprout out

cause I have been waiting
for you to take flight
ever since I laid eyes
on you

olga

I said, baby, your neck tastes like poetry
because the last time I tasted your rhymes
running down your thighs

I memorized the rest of your verses
and sang you sonnets in the morning
when dawn broke over your face like beauty

porch talk

She sighed, the dust teasing
the dew forming on the side of her glass. We
sat on the front porch, discussing
redemption, forgiveness, and atheism.
She exclaimed,
"God, I wish could quit infidelity"
like an empty prayer to a God she did not believe in
So I just nuzzled her cheek
and sang her lullabies to sleep

(Dear Siobhan,
Do you still haunt me?)

truths I will someday realize

I could make this
easier on her,
gently slipping euphemisms
into her pelvic region

the way honesty
can never penetrate


and I watched her cry--
from the sidelines;

your eyes lit on fire
by the burning embers of optimism
between her fingertips

but I held no sympathy because her cheeks
are filled with Shakespearean malapropisms

uncertainty

I want to run my tongue
across your pomegranate-laced eyelashes
because I've heard

that your insecurities
sidle shyly
past people

and that your optimism
tastes like
opportunity

Michael

you

kissed my backbone with stair-step lips
that made my spine tingle with the scars you left

and you

made out with alcoholism
and my Messiah complex

so I
move on
to create my present like a gift

cam(eras) on pins and needles

I want to taste your curiosity
as an afterthought on my lips;

run my fingers
through your insecurities

bar talk

I remember inhaling your smoke at the bars;
sitting under gauzy lighting that cautiously filtered
itself through secondhand carcinogens

we tossed back shots together
like tomorrow's hangover
was too scholarly for us ivory tower proles

but somewhere between nuclear proliferation and programming
I lost myself in you

and sometimes I worry
that this is not enough poetry
and too much soul baring
but I trust you enough to never read between my lines

drag (queen) racing

we wrestled
over the steering wheel;
fingers interplayed in mosaics
while bluebonnets sped by

and your eyes stared into me
as effusive fuel raced furiously
towards exhaust(ion)
piping up shyly like an afterthought

---

the strings snapped

and your guitar
looked like the loose ends
you never tied up

cliche

love songs terrify me
with their promises of permanence
that are so early
before eternity
dawns on me like sunshine

but I could find forever in your eyes
if you'd just give me enough time

apocryphal

we danced--
through street gutters;

flowed through drains
that outlined
the infrastructure of your city,

but I long for the romance
of your countryside,

where we could flit across fields of liquid wheat
in the bottoms of your valleys

and my tongue would search for release
in rivers that dance around rocks like a language

said comments on slumdog millionaire

I adore the implausibility
of third world love stories.
Does that make me imperialist?

You colonized my imagination with depictions
of slumdog goddesses waiting in train stations;
Sent fairy tale missionaries
to save my soul from bitterness

And I waded through
damp fields of salvation
and led your little brown brothers towards
bleached-white enlightenment

steven

I find it difficult to not cliche my happiness
because when I turned to face the dawn this morning,
I found that your face was a new day

Your rays peeped shyly through my blinds
and kissed my eyelids gently as if you were worried
that if you breathed too hard, I might awaken and dissipate

So I consoled you by skipping towards your horizon
while songbirds burst forth from my throat to serenade you

impreza

Spark--
Ignition
Key turns

Adrenaline burns rubber
careening through our veins;
Weaves in and out of traffic like snakes
searching for the end of the grassy knolls
we built molehills on top of

And you skidded to a stop
when your crashed through finish lines like hormones

dear syntax

it still jars me
when i wake up
and you have carved
your reflection
into my ceiling
like the breaths
between our kisses

but now,
i have abandoned your pretenses
the way sentence structure
rebelled against lover grammar

another way to get by

your heart
has drifted, but
it still feels good
to wake up
in your arms

gail writes to dwight

when I
locked eyes with your Shellie
there was no savior
staring back in irises
that sparkled
like polychromatic aspirations

but its funny
how I
find empowerment in
objectification;
how "always ... and never"
redeems myself
in your
hedonistic pupils

because there is only chivalry
in moral ambiguity

repeat offender

my only crime was the recidivism
that wrote itself on our lips;
fetid kisses that left
a cloying stench in the air,
and wrote apocryphal tales
to denigrate decency

I buried you in the 9th level of my heart

I found poetry in every word you spoke,
every sentence that reminded me
that
I was no paramour,
since that
would connote affection;

just a skeleton in the closet
being lowered into the ground

open secrets

contrition
shone through your eyes

sparkled like shooting stars
who had forgotten
that their destination was
subterfuge

(but only you
will never know)

crossed signals

I can recall nights
where I pieced together
your eclectic heart
like a patchwork quilt,
but your soul had an abscess
as pernicious as a perfidious confidante

I'm so lonesome I could cry

I collect sobriety
in johnny cash lyrics

the same way I miss you

nancy writes to hartigan

there is an oasis
hidden
in the middle
of your chest

underneath
an adamantium shell
resolute in its cynicism

so I write sonnets
addressed to your desert
though I've never been,

because it's the only place
that makes me
believe
in redemption

the roots dug in

when we were children
you climbed up fire escapes
towards emancipation

and broke through
glass ceilings the way
we rolled down hills

queer theory

your experimentation
left pock marks on my neck
the way heteronormativity
planted ringworms like kisses

programming errors

class your {
elaborate circumlocution() {
for ( on the radiator ; every time ; you loved my bones )
// as
if ( that could form ) {
quixotic affections }
else { affectations }
}

bruising( my countenance, like perdition ) {
because there is love in all violence
}
}

---

I shot Hope
through the heart
with a doe-eyed shotgun,
but optimism saved her.

wish you were here

roger waters
must've never
wrote of desperation

'cause those lost souls
are at the bottom of fish bowls
bluer than those moonlit eyes
that show up as seldom as
chemistry between lovers ignites

happy ending

I folded up your words and put them in my pocket
'til sentences like that became trinkets
I carried around in my soul

the sounds of your footsteps
echo in the lines in the emergency room
and they speak volumes
because baby,
your life is a fairytale
without redemption at the end

a conversation between milton and nietzsche

your words are filled with saccharine and
the cloying stench clouds judgment
so here's a verbose gesture

because you animated this creature;
created that angel doomed to downfall
abys(m)al monsters that you breathed life into,
so call.
Call for salvation.
Where is your God now?

So stare, lest it gaze back at you
because this was not the first time
camaraderie was stolen from me
won't be the last time you fall into the abyss