a random way to start a poem.
this was the prompt i'd given to my head.
i re-read it,
realized it works as it was—
and i didn’t need another instead.

this might be more of a digital zine.
i read it once, and more—
had it unravel my soul.
there's a lot that goes in here.
free verses are simply rare.

i've got a mind
trying to make sense of the chaos
through rhythm and fragments,
a heart
trying, staying far away from the shallow ends.

this is a journal between them both—
a memoir,
monologue,
memory,
moment—
perhaps double of all.

there's contradiction,
there's numbness,
and a yearning.
i ain't always living
in the classic sweet little nothings.

listening to the wrong playlist.
well, it’s just that particular one.
special moments, special feeling,
kinda thing?
the kind where the memories are kept and treasured.
but in the long run,
i’m afraid they’ll get weathered.

there’s a lot, quite literally.
today’s another time i write about—
well, being picked up and left.
not in the wrong way,
as a choice—perhaps?

slept only for three hours or so last night.
it was the last day—
ending of a year in a place
that ought to have been littered with memories,
and yet i felt—
a lot of nothings
things do that to you eventually, i guess.

they say when you keep lying to yourself,
pretending it doesn’t exist,
you hear screaming one day
and all you ask
is if the world exists.

numb.
that’s all i’ve been—
for most part, at least.
still am when it comes to talking
’bout things i should speak
about and of—
but they’re hard to put in words.

and so once again,
like a fool unknown to use of language,
here i am—
hoping you’d understand.

three hours of sleep.
two of writing my final.
another of waiting.
another two of failing at
achieving what had been planned
before it had to end.

a call—
my phone is ringing.
is it them?
yes—oh yes! i’m worried.
should i answer—
play pretend sleeping?
heart’s weak since the 21st of may,
i think i just will.

and so i did.
and so i found them
at quite literally my doorstep.
and next second we were out and talking.

have you seen petals bloom?
or sunflowers turning towards the sun—
slowly, gradually living and soaking it up?
i believe we’re that way.

it starts slow—
words and gestures,
nods and silly little eye contacts.
and then one speaks—
the other carries—
the third continues—
the loop persists.

(i wish the loop did exist this once.
a loop that would let me do whatever,
except each day would end on a different note—
in a different setting,
with the same people—
and the same old feelings.)

balloons.
ice creams.
ice pops—
they melted.
grape flavored. all three.

movie—kind of boring.
laughing—yes. loads.
walks on the footpath.
one continued to trot,
the other just headed for the road.

wished i’d been a ghost—
to stay,
to follow,
to breathe the same air,
not obsessively—
to protect,
to handle,
and to show the care that i felt—


memento? wanted.
find? never did.
left with—
memories.
hopes.
thoughts.
a lot more contraries.

still no pictures (well i have one! of them)
multiple in my head.
words and feelings—
all the downturned,
less spoken of meanings,
shared all at once—
"here’s what happened with me—"
"you need to tell me about yours—"
"we’re listening."

"the ones who know you the most,
are actually the ones who become the perfect ghosts."
meant nothing—
spoken without thinking.

and oh—friends.
the ones who’re ours. ours. yours & mine.
they are the ones who truly get to leave.
rest are unknowns—
they’ll still be so.

i’m afraid of goodbyes.
and of forgetting.
and of missing out—
living in the moment,
hoping to store it all in—
and watching it fade out.

of distancing.
of walking away.
of pretending it wasn’t real.

’cause it was.
and it has always been.
there’s just too many masks
and too many vulnerabilities underneath.

and irony to say—
remove the mask and show the real you.
the real is layered like an onion—
never saw light of the day after that one point in time.

forgot to laugh even—

i’ve been laughing and smiling a lot recently.
should i be worried?

asked,
are you going to pretend none of this happened and move on?
and this sounded like an ex’s question to their former lover.
but this one came true—
from the bottom—
deepest betrayed—
often starved,
often overruled layer.
the original.

will you fade out too? was the meaning.
heard no symphonies,
no heeding.
so it seemed.

i wouldn’t mention the replies or the comments.
perhaps i should.
i’ll hide them in words,
like i should have hidden the fragile
before i let it take over.

but sometimes it shows,
peeks out like an observing, curious,
scared little child
seeing a new person for the first time.

(curiosity killed the cat—
sometimes i was killed too.)

e-rickshaw rides. (a blue balloon.)
empty roads—
away from the city life and the highways.
barren land—
a flower shop.

a pink rose.
a blue balloon once more?
a red one to the one who helped cash in.
a pink chrysanthemum too—
unless i’m wrong, beauty nonetheless.

smiles.
smiles all along.
the security.
rose to him.
chatted along.
teamwork? surely.

cab driver.
music!
oh, can you play darling?
yellow balloon for his child.

child reminds me—
all the kids in the mall!
playstores and areas—
eating,
screaming,
crying,
laughing,
filled with glee.

and families.
blood is thicker than water.
not being related by blood—
i wouldn’t compare the densities.

(purple. pink. orange. blue. red.
the colors of balloons that i have.)

couldn’t share hugs—
too awkward,
i know i’m that.

(kinda mad, chaotic—
and sly.)

i do see it all,
but how do i say i’m afraid of it being a lie?
can’t confirm,
so i try to get it out in words.
from the others, of course—
can never admit i understand.
what if i understand it all wrong?
i’ve done—multiple times—
mostly bad—
compared to the rare good.

back home, in the shower—
hit me hard and soft playing.
a new kind of love followed,
settled in the dark.
took out my laptop
and turned it on—
cigarettes after *** songs that feel like drowning
and here i’m writing.

sleep.
i should.
but first, i’ll admit something—
only in words i could.

i’ve been smiling.
a lot, recently—
plotting, perhaps—maybe?
not to hurt,
to be aware.
to beware—
to protect.

i don’t want to be betrayed.
no tears,
heart feels heavy.

writing didn’t help much,
i didn’t know what to really say.
i speak slower at first—
at a tone only i can hear.
first to recognize,
that it’s how i sound.
second to make sure—
if this is really what i want to go around?
but then louder,
to express—
i’m left with several ways—
a couple handshakes—
a few signatures.
and that’s all i am—
boring, awkward,
a ghost of the third pov.

but that’s not how it feels—
at most times, at least.
feels like i exist—
hi, i’m here.
will you let me breathe?

they do.

how will you describe me?
& us! they asked so—

i'd read something a while ago.
the negatives could be killed by the positive—
but no, that wasn't the entire truth.
in the long run,
that is what you could grow into.
negatives were easy to fall back in—
the positives had to be given birth.
and for that,
the seed,
for the bud to grow—
warmth.

i termed them as warmth.

my hands are slowing down.
eyes shutting even faster.
i’m going to sleep,
kinda hungry,
but i won't be eating.

going to sleep—
a long, long sleep tonight—
hopefully it’ll be without dreams.

i’ve left pieces of myself once again—
bigger, rarer,
truer ones
that can be termed as fossils
from how long they’d been buried.

but i don’t seem to regret it.

i shall trust you—
it’ll be your choice to hold.

my heart kinda hurts.
i’ll come back later?
(you’ll be back, later, yeah?)

(a cut that always bleeds—
mine do a lot more than just that.)

afraid it’ll be long gone—
never to repeat—
that it wouldn’t be the same—
i’m afraid of destiny.
afraid of fate—
of everything turning out wrong.
(he had said something- it slipped from my memory)

and it hits
because i know a distance
and a time period that’s to come—
it just is so long.
the day ended.
smiles.
in all smiles.

i’ve been smiling a lot.
but then why is my heart so heavy?
is it nostalgia?
or is this the feeling i carry?
i wish i could be read—
as easily as reading a book with chapters titled and left—
bookmarked.
oh, it would help!

there's no tone—
nowhere the end to which this ought to go.
but it doesn't have to end, does it?
i'll keep it open—
not shallow—
not broken.

now, a couple things that i ought to add.
these are random, but they're the warmth they left.
the clock ticked the same way before,
why do i notice a few numbers—specific times—
the angles, a lot more?

i got my form of warmth from the people,
and i think i'll accept it now—
i've always wanted for it to be real.
bonds and bonds and bonds and families—
did i repeat? you'll see the meaning.

i got a sad soul with a happy personality.
see the paradoxes a lot more—
should rather be focusing on my memory.

the rules the society set—
work, earn, repeat—forget the rest.
i think i'll pass on that.

i still believe in mbti's and words that describe you—
knowing humans are more than that—
beyond feelings and beyond the divided distinctions.

like why start a maze from the beginning to end—
start from the ending you know—
maybe you'll go around the right way to the front.
lay down the path
for the ones who needed help to follow.
i often start from the centre of a puzzle
instead of finding all the pieces and placing out the corners.
boundaries are there—rarely taken down—
but walls need not be broken,
you could build a door!

and windows—
i've got a couple to my own self.
just knock the right way—
and i'll hand you the keys you'll need.


we had desserts!
a lot—
sweets—
oh, i love when i get to hear them talk.
it's nice having people.
nice having the ones you can love
without having to leave,
without having to prove.

but then—

you throw pebbles in the water—
watching the ripples they make.
this probably has a meaning—
but i think more of the stones in the stomach—
at the base of the meek.
is that why i too feel so heavy?
is it being anchored,
or set up for a fall that's called drowning?

the edit: (here to once again)

dreamt this once.
i woke up—had an epiphany.
a zeitgeist?

i saw a rope—
actually two.
are they here to pull me out
or simply leave me battling through?

i gasped, grasped so hard—
watched it go taut—i pulled so hard.
fragments punctured the palms of my hands,
the knots on the rope resembling a tug—
every chapter i ought to be pulled up.

the rope was warm—glowing even,
connected to the figures who stood at the end.
they were blowing—bubbles on land.
i didn't have to see their faces—
not as of then.
except, despite not capturing the moment,
they still remain engraved.

please don't let go—
i'd voiced it out.
they couldn't hear it through the water
that surrounded me all around.
please don't let go—
i screamed.

water filled up my mouth—
the rope burnt through my skin.
there were chains at my ankles,
something holding me down,
pulling at my shins.

i looked at the scars left behind by the other ropes—
the ones before.
other tries at saving.
rare as they'd been,
they remained,
and i felt my grip weakening.

something within yet again called out—
forced me to keep going.
to squeeze at the knots,
hold it tight,
pull myself up—
and then what?

could i swim?
perhaps i never learnt.
who would have thought i'd be drowning?

halfway up, or so it seemed,
i looked down—
the deep was and is unmeasured.
i've been here?
how long have i lived?

visible just enough,
the knots swarmed around me.
the rope fell and fell—
i pulled it harder and harder,
like the hands of a boat weaving through water.

i was so close to the top—
am i finally going to be better?

felt a grip at my wrists,
up my arms—
i felt the lethargy.
i lost the rope from my hands.

i didn't let go first—
or maybe i did.

all i remember from that night is:
there was a knot that had formed—
that locked me up—
tied itself around me,
making this mass a dead weight.

and i'd drowned once again
to a new rot—
to a new never.
a deep i didn't know existed.

they were molten hot this once—
my skin burnt.
the cold, numbing cold of the water
did nothing but provide a sensation—
like adding salt to the wounds.

i watched the figures,
who ought to have held the other end
for a little while longer.
they were human.
they perhaps got tired.
i'd watched them walk away.

read it somewhere,
thought i'd write my own
with the same meaning.

if poetry were to cover up my bleeding scars—
shouldn't there be bandages
instead of hollowed-up wounds
that were left for me to shower—
with care and in pain,
with love and in ache.

hi!
i'm here,
and i'll stay.




need not—shouldn't have ended this
the way i brought it to a close.
but i'll admit another once:
i loved it—loved being in their company,
and i shall hope and wonder
if it'll repeat, or if i'll reap
all that i've sown. i don't think there's much to begin with—
no clue, no ideas, nowhere to go.
loved it, loved what came out of it,
loved them, loved life, a bit more than i did the last time.

it's hard to begin, even harder to end.
i'm talking about poetry, not human bondings.
they mend, need stitches, new careful considerations—
specially in the patterns you plan to weave.
i never knew how to embroider,
but i think i did learn a bit on how to hit repeat.

tonight. the night repeats.
i've put the tape in my head, of all the memories.
my eyes cross, my vision swims,
and i shall go to sleep with a sigh—
one that cleanses my soul, gets rid of all that's stuck.
and i hope i'll dream of another time,
the first or the second.
there hasn't been a third—
perhaps i should end this with a yet or maybe.

maybe it is. maybe it will be.
maybe i'll love to live, and live to love—
someday, perhaps, maybe.

Something original. Of newer words, that originate from the pleasure and happiest of timeless incidents. The happenings, back of the park, near a set of restrooms, a pool of clear sea water and a purplish-red starfish. A sea cucumber. Trailing sea lions diving off of a cliff, a vertical display of rocks, moving a millionth of an inch each year. You caught me.  --------

I can't nail it. It happens to me when I sleep, it comes around me, over my shoulders and latches onto my breaths. I'm breathing and it creeps inside of me like a mealworm, I turn to look for it and it disappears again. It lives in a shadow but it is also a shadow of itself. An anomaly, a space for time and the tell of time, its hidden agenda, its positive nature, how it yields itself to prey, how it coos for a sweet smile, runs up to me in mid-day traffic, and kisses me, noon at military time.  ------  

The blessings come. All of them. Laid out on a table in red and white checkerboard, making the eggplant parm and the homemade vinaigrette. Peanut butter chocolate chip vegan cookies. A dandelion necklace that only fits around my wrist. It makes me weep some twenty years ago on a Playskool slide, orange, red, bright. I'm looking around my neck and still it's not there. Every where I want to be, every where I've gone and could go. I should go to California too but all of this...stuff, everywhere, under my legs, in my pockets, the closets tumbling high and low, I haven't had enough to change, and still I am wanting something else. You the same, my shoulders tell me stories, I listen and I fall asleep.  -----  

Sometimes my nerves grow quiet, my words grow- but then they just fall again, skittering in a lull plash of blue-green pond water. The bench I sewed to the ground. A tale of mirth and woe. I cannot call on you, you will not come. Sleeping beauty, blue eyes, blonde hair. I wrestle you in the day to day, the hour to hour. Minutes cannot go by. Pages that turn but I remember everything. My mind will never go.  -----  

Two pink letters in the post today. Maybe neatly placed for you. A fake-tattoo puffin, upper-left hand corner. My hands are empty, they have indecent memories, they write indelible superpowers. I can't go on. I run lake water over my ankles, slowly drift beneath arcing waves and cold grey skies. Half a day blue goes black, night comes and I whisper when the sky goes quiet. Nothing is as serious as this.   ------    


In a white box there are two pairs of shoes and a soft bear. The bear without the name. He doesn't speak to me so I leave him with the sea birds. Put them in a push cart and show them off, I take them here, I take them there. No one asks his name, where he's going, what he's going to do. ------------


Tuesday's are the worst. I count and count and count. I will never forget Tuesday's, twisting like a cuneiform jelly, fingernails spoiling me-meat, breaking the Styx crossing the river Rhine, there is nowhere that I will not go, only for me to cross time. To wait, I really hate waiting. Nothing comes between, I lie to a stranger and they fall in love instantly. I see you on Monday evenings and I want to kiss you gently, the sides of your neck, on the inside of your hand. Where do you go when all the shadows go? ----

Some of me is backwards. The waves shape the sky. A rabbit goes with a fire truck, a blueberry with a cephalopod. Back to the soft wood walls of the cotton luxe room. My legs have never felt so safe, you have never made my teeth so happy. In Russia you touch my face, I see you, a picture of you, any part of your eyes or the things you draw upon and I am instantly in love. I love you, a part of you, all of the parts of you, your soul is the only part of me disconnected. You are the happiest moments of my pleasure. You taste like Tahitian Vanilla and Acai berries. Gold grains hit our shins as we go like great wild horses through the alluvial plains. -----

I cannot count to you. There are no goddesses in numbers. I only have sleep, for you to look me square away into a bliss I have in a picture of the two of us, lost in our faces, our hands wandering each others knees. I sit across from you and I am not close enough. I go closer and I want to be inside of you, all across my limbs expanding our spiritual forms, intertwining in our skins. So I speak, I lay my words gently in front of you so you cross them as you walk our path, back from the sea into a narrow slumber. Sleep is the only place we all can play. You, me, her, her, and I.

You were totally something else. Like a calm respite overcoming an instance of excitement. Magic and other prime words that can dictate the inarticulate adjectives that was this afternoon. Happiness and pleasure. A coexistence. To coexist. Soy.

It's like this, and then there was total recall. Fast like a safety plan made wrong and then bouncing in and out all the way down the hall. Up through cable cars, Korean fast food market, wet fish, soupy street, concrete cracks filled with crab meat and **** heads. Just a square, a five block, two street, sideways quadrangle, beat of the Tenderloin, hour of the dove. Every one's dead on these loose ends. Hills of the back of her backside, skin of the back of her neck. Rapture is the grave of the sunset, memory is that thing that I said.

No one cans in carnivores, no one runs moves like a shepherd. Sunday, daft as candy, luck in the ways of the prophet. Canon of the blaze of every woman that died today. The sleep setting, the motorcycle bending the hollow, the ravines noisy interlude, up through the rough and the tangles, huddles in a six pack, three or four walking up the block to meet the rest of them.

The skin doesn't fit right, it wears wrong, the shoulders stiff, the masseuse excuses himself. Buckets of flowers hang from the ceiling like stripped cat christmas decorations in suburban mastermind serial killer resort town. Everyone is quiet because they gotta. They move their feet like they were hurrying death into a red volcano, like they were the errand of red from the top bell to the bottom of the town.

I sit on a roof top, baking in the noon day sun. Stripping sticks and stems off the side to sideways, just roasting away, laying, low in the afternoon light. I see a girl with her hands on her skirt, wobbling, scooting a priest card on a periwinkle terra-cotta.  I move my head, turn it upside round to take a better look. No one counts to ten when they see me. The gangster that woke up isn't the gangster that went to sleep last night. My wickedness ended my words mean your bright decay. So I ride the pavement exhausted, burying my coughs in an L-shaped arm

The clock gets me.
It comes to me in the middle of the night
Pulls back the sheets and says, "Hey fucko."
Then it lifts open my sobby wet sand-encrusted lids,
It knows when I'm trying at sleep, pumping quarters
Like I was swallowing yawns, sometimes I try to squint
Harder and take a dream to the next level, whatever
The next level is. It's like Friday night when I wanted to go
Out to do something, whatever something is.
Because I know that if I don't I'll miss that thing that's so
Important that if I were to miss it the clock wouldn't come for me

Again.
And on Tuesday's when I'm knotting a dream around 2 o' clock
In the morning, my web-footed adventure, say, killing your

Boyfriend, say
Fighting the Nazis, say,
Rediscovering that you sent nudie pics to
That rando guy we met in that club that lives
in Prague-
I throw the clock at the ******* wall.

Because who knows, I make the bed wrong
Or maybe I don't cook right, or look right, or
Smile the right way at the right

Time. And you start thinking that I have to die.
The bane of my existence is an imagined feat in your
Walnut-sized brain, slowly numbing us while we're
Supposed to be, say

Listening to the rich, Oxford voice of
David Attenborough.

Instead you're thumbing through that index
of CVS cashiers, just trying to find a scruffy face
To flip your digits to, your homemade justification. It becomes
A feat, an unjust cause of mine to

Get it right, that imaginative and artificial bit you've
Been sewing up Monday twilight.

That's when I go out and jaw your sister, somewhere between
A smirk on your face and a bit of anger at the end of your sentences.

angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.

*****!! Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.

But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.

There is not much more than lunch of your poor soul's gut. That which has hidden your chase,
Be it the same flurry you face, or the chaste, widowed band of loons
Supplicate snail-movements, while wading through the stiff lagoon.

Everything must, while the fissures grow grumpy.
While the dust settles inwards and the cracks fill with stuffing.
The particle stands stiff, while each nursery cries.
A pitter-patter of rain drops lurch the birds forwards towards flight.

Say the gumption to roost was the dork lit and idling,
Each abortion towards space, kept the rocket from flying,
Like the cannonball sneering, or the whistle of men
The trial and tribulations of the miserly pens.

If be swore the moors, concrete beds shuffle the snores.
Unlike any trumpet of nose notes or horns.
How each curious grumbler failed the ewe of his flock.
Lil' crock lodgers counting sleep  of each lot.

Who can practice commands, width that makes up a strake
In the morning the weir-men quaff each tea of their tastes.
Then comes to the rind, the hands each guided by eyes.
Stumps the bard of his nightshade in imported glass vials.

Show whomever the pleasure, the happy hell once began
Because under each gambit is the king of a lamb.

I am in levels. Past levels. This deep, intrinsic wonderful lost, the lawlessness of its fascinating expenditure of excite. Pushing through the wild and feral snow-dusted plains and timber ridges. Like red-spotted dots breathing through the cylinders called the spine. This descends into a narrow channel of scantly clad greenish scenery in a time-soaked visionary wilderness of snow,
Our crab legs dancing down wiry purple highways, our heads could not even look backwards if we had wanted.

Furious, love-latitudes, stalking breaths thwacking fork-ended tongues into a pinkish knot buried into the first layer of organic membrane on this railway of miniature canals, showing. And their pride snuck into the elbows, shooting down each vertebrae as it stepped with great precision every ledge that the currency emphasized. The raw accumulation of stolen heart-beats rattling between the interstices of new fuel careering these red engines. Crashing with exquisite pleasure into one another.