Don't you leave now,
I'm impatient,
Not a patient in this ward.
Where's my mother?
I feel smothered,
"Not another word from you."
Undeveloped,
I'm enveloped,
Folded in a hazel haze.
A prism prison
Built precision,
Predicated without trust.
My orphan organs
Will demand
Vital signs,
And vitamins.
Leer from your chest,
Scream with my eye,
"Let me in."
"Let me in."
"Let me in."

i always thought
you were thru traffic
that you were just jet lag
background noise
the kiss in the rain
i've never had
but what if you aren't?
what if this
was the thousandth time
i have loved you?
what if this is just a fresh coat of paint?
what if god
keeps a handkerchief
soaked in the day we met
next to his bed?
maybe theres a reason
i reach for no one in bed
the way i would
if someone used to be there
you know, they say
the road behind us
is littered with things
we couldn't hold onto
i wonder how many times
you've slipped through my hands
like hour glass sand
do you know
how much erosion you've caused?
i heard cupid
stopped keeping count
of how many times
we came together
just to come apart again
maybe it was just a rumor
it makes me think
about how many times
i've almost had you
like if all this talk
about history repeating itself
endlessly replaying is true
i wonder how many times
things have happened already
like the time
i tried talking you
into loving me back
back fired
or the time i could have sworn
jesus & lazarus were playing chess
with my heartbeat
but it was only you smiling
how many times
have i tried to tell you
how many times
have you read this poem
how many times
have i tried not to meet you
in my dreams anymore
it's like sleep tries to warn
me of what's happening
before it does but
i keep having this dream
where i tell you bedtime stories
and each one
is a different way you die
and in every one
i can never save you
it's like you're this song
i have on repeat
and every time it starts over
i forget the words
it's like you picked up the book entitled "us"
and the back cover
said you'd leave
so you never bothered reading it
tell me you aren't
going back in that bookstore
just to do it again
or will you tell me tomorrow?
or is this the time
you don't say anything at all?
if this has all happened before
if we call it quits
before we begin
again
from the beginning
i just want to ask you
to be my fire
because i am tired
of these old lives
and i'd like to see them
burn

I would start with your hands.
Mine would dance with yours;
our fingers waltzing together.

Then they would become curious,
I know so.
My hands would glide up your arm
leaving a trail of goose bumps behind.

I don't know where your hands have gone,
but mine have reached the top of your shoulder.
My fingers can't resist
tracing your collar bone.

Your hands find mine.
I think they got lost
in the escalation of my own.
But they're together now.

Taking a hint from yours,
my hands reach to your chin --
only breaking contact
for a second.

My fingers have tilted your chin,
so our eyes can do a similar dance
to the one our hands have completed.

Hands are the utilitarian laborers
of the body,
but eyes guard the gates
to the soul.

My eyes search your own.
They are hesitant, but
my hands are always reliable.

They pull you into me
and at the last second
before our eyes close,
and our lips meet,
my eyes find what they knew was there.

i'm not sure
but i think
that i think too much
but am i overthinking that too?

is it okay if
i see but do not look
for fear of something
that might send a shock wave
through my pupils
and into my mind?

is it okay if
i hear the world
but my brain filters it out
because i am too busy
listening to my own thoughts?

i am not alone
people surround and smother me
so is it possible
that i am lonely?

so many questions
yet so little time
to find answers

then again
who needs answers now
when the intellectual marbles
will inevitably be lost
and the answers with them

thoughts swarm without purpose
in and out of my head
and the taste of new wisdoms
overwhelms the tastebuds of my intellect
i am lost
high on the ultimate ecstasy of knowledge

i am no longer
viewing the world
the world is viewing me
for being inquisitive
in a world so full of certainty

Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer's plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.
Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,
Purple fish play hide-and-seek,
And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,
Down on the floors of salt and wet.
          Sling me... under the sea.

while september cicadas
were singing my neighbors to sleep
i was up walking holes in my shoes
over love once lost
so many poems ago
that the only thing i remember
about the house at 38th & bluestone
is that it reeked of alcohol and is
as i'm sure of it
still saturated in perfume
and abandoned laughter
but that's not the point
give me a minute
what i'm trying to say
is i always thought god
enjoyed watching things leave me
it makes me wonder
what was on his mind
that night in september
when i stooped to cough
or tie my shoelaces
i no longer remember why
but i recall their trajectory
the way gravity cradled my hands
and brought them crashing back to earth like a 747
they landed inches away
from a scrap of crumpled loose leaf
folded in half like the smiles
of my relatives on a holiday truce
you see, lately i've been looking for scars in the newspaper
i find myself checking the obituary
for my former selves since the day i found your suicide letter
maybe that's why i can never explain my obsession with history
maybe archeology is just a funeral
in reverse
maybe hell is just rewinding home movies
or watching confetti
turn back into photographs
i never told anyone
the reason the doors to the gun cabinet in my family's house are locked not because they are afraid
i will take my life
but because sometimes
i sing them birthday songs
on the day you died
it makes me think
of how rooms only echo
when they are empty

*you know
i never echoed until you died