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One stormy autumn afternoon
A question was asked by my philosophy prof:
"Does life have a smell or taste?"
The girl in the back,
The one with the bruises,
Started laughing.
Must have been an inside joke.
"Life smells of ***** when you're sure
Your lover has left you."
Her voice was a rasp,
Probably nights of endless screaming.
"It tastes like blood and broken promises.
It's beautiful and poisonous,
Sugar and morphine rolled up in a joint
That we all smoke to die."
My prof asked the others for answers
But every time he tried to say whose was best
The thunder screamed its protest,
The lightning flashing and illuminating
The sad and broken shell
With her lover's name etched in her skin.
Part of the summer 2013 poetry collection "Memoirs of a Phobic"
a world was hidden,
one in one,
a water layer in-between. those
within dreamed of swimming
up, the waves partial to those
above. I loved to sit at my
world’s edge, gazing longingly
below. my mind and feet
would often fight of diving
through the depths. the day the two had
had enough I pierced the ocean’s
blue, my skin kissed by the water slugs,
air bubbles like crystal eyes.


their world was like a hovering jellyfish awaiting
to strike. he was there, the one I cannot name,
thrashing thirstily to get out; I
loved him in one glance. only when my
oxygen ran out I swam up and
left the trapped world behind, prey
to be devoured. I loved him less as I climbed out,
and loved him naught back at the shore.


I sat at my world’s edge, once gazing longingly
below. my mind and feet got softer
with their fighting. the waves bore down on those below,
washing over those on top. a water layer
covered the top world, a world
below swallowing the one
above. what good was knowing how to swim
when miserable rage was fed, a sea urchin gobbling
the whale; it did not wait to
be served.
Broken conversations,
empty lungs,
doors half open,
hearts almost out of love.

We used to talk of how
we used to be infinite.
But now every second now feels
like a stroke against an unforgiving current.

Our conversations broke
as the flaws of our souls
fell through the cracks of this glass foundation.

These upset words that escaped you
left the air around me a little sad,
a little awake,
and with a lot of echoes.

My lungs went empty
talking you down.

I left the door open for you.
So you can walk in
and slip in quietly-
I won't say a word.

And this heart could never go empty,
not mine.
Yours,
at this point,
I know not.

Flowers never lost their color
as long as you walked this earth.
Only fools rush in
But I don't believe
I don't believe
I could still fall in love with you 

I will love you till I die
And I will love you all the time
So please put your sweet hand in mine
And float in space and drift in time

All the time until I die
We'll float in space, just you and I

All I want in life's
a little bit of love to take the pain away.
                

This song is beautiful and it plays in my head.

It makes me happy.
I am a kaleidoscope—shapelessly shifting, and
dominated by colors that I cannot change
without some sort of grandiose outside force
granting me a helping hand.  I might as well be water.

But my reflection insists on creating dissonance.  She
and I, although we look the same, do not coincide
as neatly as
           yin and yang
           Adam and Eve
           my hand in his.                       Perhaps because
thoughts and feelings generally
do not mix like paint.

Human beings are full of hypocrisies; I am merely
one of seven billion.  My doppelganger knows that

I will never be harmonious, and I am but an echo
of Sisyphus, yet still I wonder if she also knows how
sanctimonious I can be at even the best of times; how
wolfish my attitude can turn; how
downright wicked I can become.
                                                        (Perhaps she is overlooking it.)

Oftentimes, I find myself wondering if those ugly,
impulse actions I grudgingly stomach are really my
own choices, or if they are hers.  I am the analytical
one of us, and she, the fervent, the hot-blooded prima donna;
I think of how easily I lay down my neck to her will, how often I
throw my frontal lobe at her, belly up,
as if to say,             “this is my
                                              white flag.”
I allow my duplicate’s hands to twist and turn my paths.

She makes me self-conscious of the
           coffee splotch birthmark on my shin,
           my flummoxed feet that flounder about;
           the mausoleum I keep buried
six-feet-under in my backyard.  Her sentiment
bleeds into me and permanently dyes my bones red
like the red meat I am; she tries to coalesce us.  
                                                        Perhaps it’s idiosyncratic of me to
rip myself in two, but being made of water
makes it hard for oil to blend into place; it makes it
hard for logic to have any room for a
seemingly clairvoyant heart, though

sometimes I wonder if my sophist thoughts could
possibly have any consideration for my twin’s
sibylline yet affectionate disposition.  I
wonder what the
           secret is to being whole, what the
           secret is to ending civil wars, and what the
           secret is to placidity—
I wonder why all my answers are kept under lock and key.

The internal bloodshed within myself might not
be as abnormal as I think it to be, but if it’s not me who
I see when I look into the mirror,
what is it that others see?
a sort of self-reflection.
Can you hear it?
Soft on window pane followings
Long of sunrise shadows
Paced in steps of fountains calling
Drifting in and out of silence
Tempo’d in graffiti sign language
Pouring out internal meanings
Rhythm’d vertical thumping

Blushed in muted tones
Standing in the rainbow’s arch
Drenched of weeping welcomes
Locked beyond early futures
Singing sweet praises of you
Moving in metered time
To your wondrous love
Can you hear it?
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