I should feel the sharp sting of Betrayal,
as easy as it may--
I have forgotten many Memories,
and forgotten which ones have Stayed--

You gave your so called love to Another,
You gave "our song" as "hers"--
As I was once a beautiful Angel,
am now the devil that you curse--

and How carefully do we tread upon,
the cracks within our faults--
are only the things we let up on,
pretending to exalt--

So it seems only right that I would write,
a Vindictive note Of You--
But darling, I haven't an ill-intent
and the past, I cannot rue.

You're not just "beautiful".

No, I mean, yes, you are beautiful, but jesus, when I say "beautiful"
it's not beauty like perfect "golden, glowing, soft halo" or whatever the hell writers like to glorify about some strands on your head
or having a "radiant smile" or "blush of a fair maiden" or things that wouldn't even make a lick of sense
if not for
biological evolution, physical attraction and Shakespeare.

No it's beauty that your mind is radiant, it's a tragic galaxy that I want
nothing more than to live in
and your heart is beating and it continues to
and you continue to, even when
you feel defeated
because it's you and your mind battle
and you scream out in
every way possible, your spirit and voice is  an orchestra that resonates somewhere in between my ribcage and my lungs and the words
the very words you use,
doesn't that tell more about you than
how "skinny your thighs are"
or how your "eyes glisten in the moonlight"?
Doesn't that tell me more than your "curving nose"or the "sway of the hips"?

No I'm not going to ******* love you for your "porcelain skin" and the
stupid "contours of your spine", I won't worship you like a poet --
I'm not going to praise your "romanticizing self-destruction",
which is so over used,--
can't you understand, beauty is not the face you wear but
the beauty that rakes itself over coals,
the sacrifices you make and the passions you care for,
the darkest secrets that you harbor
at any given midnight, and
even the way you like your ******* tea in the morning.

So when I say you're "beautiful", just know I'm not a poet.

can try to capture beauty,
try to capture expression--
yet as an artist, never satisfied.

i want to do more than catch your likeness on paper
with pen or graphite, desire more than just a role as an avid watcher and portrayer.

i want to learn the hard planes of your body
the ways they could move in junction with mine,
hands with such strength and virility. there is an urge
to bring those fingers to my mouth, or a lone earlobe.

bite down. sharp inhale. that's music.

i want to know the shapes you make, the way a body looks glistened in hard work, trace the indentions in a spine, be familiar with its knobby structure, kindly measure the quiet strength of muscles, the contours of a figure that is a reflection of its environment.

feeling. quiet feeling.

i want to look and really look, study the proportions of smiles, the simplicity in wrinkles and the path of veins, gentle lines that nature already drew for me. especially observations of lines in your eyes. what is your gaze drawn to. don't tell me, show me.

let me understand a deep look. stare at me. let me stare at you.

i just want to draw on you--
human skin is my canvas,
eyes are inspiration,
raw souls are my
new medium,
and
passion is my paint brush.

can i sketch you, love?

city streets won't tell me what sunsets spent without you already know. they can't whisper like our hushed conversations--pillow talk on the highway is for gypsy lovers but we're not caravans because i'm the only one drifting.  i'm lost as ever, and in being lost, i'm so free. i am directionless yet i'm yearning for the taste of living. does it taste like your skin? i wouldn't know. there's a certain loneliness that clings to each 2 a.m. pondering. i ache. i ache and i ache.

i always had fondness for lying in an ocean bed since waves were a warmer blanket than most arms i have known. drowning is a fantasy of mine but i didn't know it was just as possible to drown in a person as it was in the sea. riptides have nothing on you.

i could tell you i love you, i could. I always will in some capacity. "what-if's" cling to the roof of my mouth for much longer than peanut-butter sandwiches and lunch time. i make myself sick with remembrance. i dream about your eyes. you're far away from me, reaching for a pillow, or maybe even another set of hands. i ache.*

and i know they told me otherwise, but love is a question, love has never been the return reply.

i.

Experience is subjective, but maybe it's like Jung said--
our collective unconscious shares our pain
even if we don't wish to do so.
Maybe we're not as perceptive to the hive mind in the duration of normality
but sometimes I feel it, I understand it,
the connections in my dreams.
we're an inversion to the universe,
one of many indefinitely,
Observing in our pocket of humanity--
trying to find a reason to be
that doesn't have a clear outward
manifestation.

ii.

I don't believe in purpose,
that's something we made up.
fate and destiny are not at subliminal lines of a universal intention
but what culture wants us to think.

iii.
I'm a cosmic accident, but I don't mind-- even accidents can do good things.

when it began:
dissonance.
a mind disjointed,
filled with a million words,
a thousand broken promises
and maybe a few nolstalgic memories.
there's nothing to romanticize when
everything collides.

A lonely hour catalyst:
chain reactions like fast paced domino sets,
falling rapid and helpless,
trailing below.
wavelengths of a thought process contaminated by restlessness.

note:
let sleeping poets lie (awake)
to dream out their dreams
and make futile wishes on dead comets
and empty sunrises.

When I see you fall asleep,
closed eyes, expressionless face, sprawled form,  I hold my breath until I see you breathe again-- it's true my heart doesn't beat 'til you inhale. you are the most handsome face of death, asleep. I'm afraid if I try to wake you, you won't wake up. and even more afraid that when you're sleeping, you're not really asleep at all.

2. Your hands are not cadavers,
and I know this fact because they are torn and callused. funeral hands are pretty and funeral faces are powdered. make up is not an art for post-mortem, but a sad reflection of what was. I like you a little unkept because that means you're not 6 feet under.

3. I refuse to wash the sheets**
because they smell like us, throes of passion, loving contact.I can't easily let go. all i can remember is clutching them like a lifeline and then clutching you. safe as a cradle, we'd drift off in languorous sleep-- twisted limbs and all. no matter what, we are somewhere in that bed still. and I don't know if I ever want to climb out.

you were ready for a conflict that never ended–
teeth bared, fists clenched, furious and broken,
spitting blood
on the image of a one-day corpse of yourself that
always threatened to become reality.
you learned to love with your claws out,
battling self hatred the way most people
have to deal with traffic on their way to work—
you hid your vulnerabilities like a lost lover, smiled so wide that it could tuck pain into your back pocket without anyone ever noticing,
but even so,
your heart rate never slowed down
because it set its pace with how fast you struggled to
outrun yourself, an agony you never asked for,
and no matter how much time you spent in the shower,
your heart will always have the stench of someone else’s misplaced guilt.

there is this though:
the sting of an open palm will fade
the slamming doors will only be the wind
the abuse will no longer rule your mind
the dust will settle
one day, i promise, you will be able to lay down your armor
but for now i understand why distrust is braided into every fiber of your being
because
kids like us
we speak a language they can never learn.

– *(i know the wars you fought, i fought them too)

when i've exhausted all my resources
i find that the material that i
use for inspiration
is you--
nothing makes me angrier and
nothing makes me happier,
darling,
you're killing me
you're using my own words against me
you wrapped up your insanity and sent it
on express mail to my mind--
oh yes, you know you're killing em
and you're playing me--
i'm another domino, and you're the  rolling
dice ready to knock me down, you're the
wild Ace that's gonna blow apart my plans,
the chessboard is your plea for power
and you just took my queen--
you own all the real estate in monopoly of my heart
and
twister is not just for flexible bodies, but for how much i will end up
bending over backwards for you--
you know i haven't mastered my poker face and you're already have made
a full house in my bones.
Games, you act like there are no games, but
i know you're trying to break me
and the saddest part is...
i wouldn't mind
being a little bit broken
by you.

around you, I'm all ellipses. My sentences still make it through though. And my teeth are no longer fragile because I have let many of my secrets out when they threaten to spill over like tea time at noon. I was never an expert at lock jaw but it came as a surprise to find that I am still unlocked around you. There is a certainty now my gullible mouth won't break under the pressure of my past.

I am still trying to break down yours without a battle cry.

we build our characters. your body is "ex lovers, bruises and barriers." your hands are "loose change, determination, extra joints, destruction and creation." your eyes are "newly copper pennies and the season of spring" . I still don't know what I am somedays.

the desire for all new edges
shape us--
the places we left
are just fine without us,
they don't need our words or time.
all harsh breath clawing out, whoosh
sharp and crisp the sound together
entwined, mesh of
lips, neck, throat,
clenching the sheets that wrinkles haphazardly,
screaming, "oh, god."
the pieces fitting so well
we'll never move again.

I have shifted the tide, so to speak--
not held captive to the flaws of men
or the romanticism of it--
I no longer have the inclination
to adore atrocity or
to revel in insanity,
But,
in sanity,
I am numb to these vibrations,
numb to the feeling of happy or sad,
because coping is another word
for "robot"-- I'm the analyst now,
I'm in love with logic,
and so life goes on,
without a further nod from me.

do i look like a temporary replacement
or is it just written in subtle letters
in the spaces between my eyelids?

tell me if i talk too much.
i remember every word of endearment to be passed through
your lips. are they meaningless?
does "beautiful" slide off the tongue so easy, it has forgotten its own
meaning whenever you speak it?
does the word "amazing" leave a rancid taste in your mouth?
how many other places has it been? i'm sure it left an imprint on
the tongue of your ex lovers.

i'm sorry, i'm not usually so passive aggressive,
but i swear i can feel you leaving me and my insecurities to howl at a lonely moon.

I'm a ****** rose,
I'm deathly nightshade,
I'm angry poison ivy,
And my vines have seemed to strangle
everything else that tried to grow--
loving me might just **** you.

But maybe you like suffocation,
the taste of sweet poison on
lips that have spoken nothing but
infallible sin,
it is fated, written in the very way
you submit yourself to the storm
that I am.

If anything, there is one thing that I've learned:
as much as daisies are pretty little things,
you're not gonna find one that would make you
do all the crazy things I could make you do.

All I can remember though is the taste-- skin and sin and the way you made me shudder your name, oh god, such fire.
But maybe it wasn't enough, because as much as I loved the burning, maybe you just felt the aftermath.

Was my love the taste of ash to that archaic soul of yours?
You love your smoke though, breathing in my burning.

Baby, I'm a moon and you were a killer asteroid that left craters with the immensity of your short lived love.

But the hurting never felt so sweet.

fall asleep, the rhythm and
the sway-- breathe quiet and slow.
inhale.
exhale.
inhale.
exhale.
The motions are
a smooth, slow, steady delicacy--
the touch of air like butterflies over bare skin.
the sign to be close, mingled breath and entwined bodies.
how we can care, open the kinder side of a heart, arms and embrace enfolded.
tuck each other's limbs in each other:
just make sure that all the
stray corners hold.

the floorboards always chattered
when we bothered them,
groaning and creaking at the weight of sin,
strained at the pounds of flesh
that gravity tugged with deliberate patience.
but our steps became slower, the passion mundane, and i can almost hear them sigh,
whether in relief or regret, i still don't know.

and the walls were not much quieter, especially when the wind went to kiss the roof the way we would kiss each other--strange familiarity.
etched into your palms and written on old postage stamps
addressed to the letters i never got to send you--déjà vu.
but then again, our fall out felt just as familiar.

reminded briefly that by definition a house can be a synonym for home, but webster never left any clues as to how to keep it that way.
our sheets are twisted and the tired joints of our fingers that held together the seams of memories and intangible bonds between us threaten to let loose as we slept.

tell me. when did we wake up strangers?

Easily infatuated
With beautiful bodies,
And sharp curious minds.

Longing to peer closer
at those startling star-lit eyes--
brief moments and motions captured on a page...

Je veux comprendre.

I thought
We could be
Something--
When I say something
I mean instead of a "hello" or "hallo"
Maybe a good morning kiss.
Or twine your bilingual tongue
To mine and make sense of all the hidden
Messages and vowels in our
Passion.
Maybe we could
Link hands on long walks
Or swim in each other's eyes
With knowing, glowing
Gazes.
I just thought we could be
Everything happy for a little while
And everything that makes smiles
As easy as learning how to say
"I love you" in our two languages--
I know you already know, but I don't know how to say it yet
I just wanted to know an "I love you"
Which isn't foreign in any language.
I just thought we could be
Together.

But I guess not.

there are moments when i can’t decide if i
want to die                            sooner or later.
and some days it’s like the        first regret,
the first time you hurt someone;   but then
you do it on purpose, revel in a   sickening
way, the manner in which you      discover
that empathy is a             two-edged sword
and   drowning       sounds            less than
gruesome and                more of a    fantasy.

i didn’t know how to hurt you until i hurt so much myself.

i learned slamming doors and  altercations
with the mirror from my mother           and
that’s why my fists are     bruised    and my
insides are   tarnished with      self-loathing.
to “forget” to look both ways before i cross
the street is as much a     bad habit of mine
as the tendency to     bleed   for people who
don’t           deserve         my             wounds.

i never thought i’d make it to my 18th birthday.

the real purpose of changing my pillow cases so often
is not for       cleanliness                but because I figured
my     nightmares        were multiplying on my sheets.
i haven’t had as many lately         but I fear that they’ll
come back, so i keep my                             superstitions.
i cannot figure out a way to tell you how often     sleep
felt like i was                            practicing for my funeral.

if God embodies the     clock work theory, then    i am
the first     rough draft                         of a masterpiece,
the intention was supposed to be                        poetry,
but instead I leave my   love              on ***** windows
and use   stolen    ink to                                 write down
all      of              my                                    bad intentions.

does this confession count if i address my diary to a deity?

if God is an                  artist
He must be          frustrated    
with His                 creations—
screaming in the       echoes
of                  space         time,

“when will she learn that
   breaking every pen will
   only stain her own hands?”

Your eyes remind me of copper pennies I wished on and my green grass youth.
Your hands remind me of all things i let go but never wanted to.
Your chest reminds me of a canvas, half finished, ready for my hands.
Your lips remind me of stolen kisses and illicit library touches.

But mostly you remind me of what it feels like to have a home.

I paint on canvas but
baby can you paint me
with your tongue?

this house is cool and dark,
occupants in the meleé of sleep:
outwards, peaceful;
inwards, facing demons and dark fantasies.

Morning light ushers through glass and open panels, gently probes,
but to no avail....they lay rest in quiet.
I greet her at the window with a tired smile.

we know each other well.

awake, I am.
dreaming, I am not.
but who's to say it isn't an illusion
since no one else can tell me so?

stuck at crossroads. urge to feel and  taste outside air.
Morning and I will leave the quiet residents to sleep in,
and I will run my restless bones
until I know the world once more.

i.
I have a bad habit of flirting with thunder and lightening.
but it seems you don't mind, fellow storm.

ii.
You might consider yourself fluid, but what about in the sheets?
They say the largest bodies of liquid are pulled by the moon's magnetism and honey, we are 90 percent water--
I guess that makes us pretty wild. Let's converge.

iii.
Weave me like you weave your words and I swear I'll set us both free.

in love with so many people and beautiful songs and sunsets i've witnessed--
pieces of my heart on every street corner and welcome mats where
i am able to feel human,
adorn the sweetest of tragic heartache.

there is no point to any of it. but there doesn't have to be.


i just do.

and i'm not original--
but art is art,
and i guess i'm andy warhol.

The darkness was more your significant other
than I ever could be and it's easy to see why
since you spent much more time conversing with your father's pistol than you spent admiring the way my curves are shaped.

I've always wanted to ask you if that cough medicine tasted better than my skin, but you fell asleep before I could tell you. I wonder if that's why you would cradle your bottle of pills, the way I used to wish you'd cradle me.
Is it better company than my eyes?
Or is that where you go so you can't see my eyes?
I'm not the pinnacle of judgment -- you can't escape every pair of eyes that follow you.

I would knock on the window panes sometimes because there was no **** on your door and no doorbell to let you know I was there. You never really answered.

I became a shadow -- I thought you'd love me darker.

So I faded my smile and faded my jeans. My nails were black, I wore my lips dark maroon and I began to acquaint myself with your reaper on Friday nights when no one else was in the house. I never touched your pills though.

But I'm finding that even a shadow has nothing on your fondness for picking out your gravestone. Cigarette smoke fills your lungs better than my perfume and I can't compete with your harem of dark habits.

So I'm going out of town tonight with my lips colored like berries and I'd ask if you'd be the one to smudge it but
you're more into dying and less into a kiss of life.

She's every thought you ever shunned out of horrid curiosity, every flower that you couldn't bear to pick up because you were unsure if it had thorns, and every book
you've ever wanted to live in
bathe in ink and paper and drown in words
just like I want to drown in her mind
but I can barely skim the surface, barely
penetrate the depths,
and I guess my thoughts aren't heavy enough to carry me to the bottom.
Her fingers are cold and timid -- the way the first snowfall flurries down, unhurried and forlorn -- if they ever traced my skin I'd get more than frostbite, but
chills are okay as long as they stem from a place
that makes goosebumps a sign of anticipation
and not fear --
but I fear the way this makes me feel and I can feel so much already --
it bursts through my ribcage stronger than a heartbeat.
The eyes she has -- I can't tell if they're more full than mine, full of light and rapturing blue, or less full, empty like oblivion, and I just look and think and die and suddenly -- it's like she was never there,
she smiles and looks my way, but it's not a true smile,
not the kind so sweet that it will make your teeth ache,
but the kind of smile that's half-hearted like a shy blossom in spring or a polite stranger in an elevator on your way to a tenth floor cubicle, but ******, I'm not a stranger, --

I'm just trying to find the reason
why all of her "hello"s sound like goodbyes.

Teeth,
grasping at straws,
grasping for words
but I'd rather they grasp
at my flesh--

Hands,
gesturing while speaking
but oh, if they could
make gestures on my form--

and Minds,
thinking deeply,
but do you mind to
let me forget my sins on your skin?

Let me take these little pieces of you,
let us immortalize not in words, but in
feeling.

a boy who spits out apologies like they’re tied to the roof of his mouth,
a girl who’s apologetic about existing.

a boy with eyes as reflective as sea spray
a girl who always fantasized about drowning in the ocean.

a boy that has hands that look like chiseled marble
a girl that’s used to being carved by other people.

a boy, struck with the thoughts that makes him unaware he’s art
a girl, who’s seen the greatest works in European museums, seen the crowns of kings, blood in the bathtub, lovers leave without grace, struck with the knowledge she has never seen a masterpiece like him.

sorry I reek of loneliness.

my parents always told me i was a forgetful child,
who's little
pattering feet would go quickly running
back upstairs to double check,
even triple check the things i would need
or forget to carry with me,
as if i was a marionette puppet pulled by the knots on my fingers.

but it seemed as though no matter how many bows i could tie on my fingers and how many post-it notes were stapled around the house, my mind was a clutter of litter--
filled with little odds and ends
and useless junk to day to day living.
if my brain was a room it would resemble a crowded attic, full with the pieces of myself that i longed to get rid of but refused to, whether out of sheer stubbornness or fear, i still don't know.

it all changed when you came along. i was inspired to a point of frenzy. I was uncluttered, with the exception of my thoughts, because they were full of you. if my brain was a room, it would be a museum of glittering proportions, a massive archive of our affections.. this is art, a romanticized portrait of our time together. you had tattooed love etched on your skin, from all the things you grew passionate about and i swear i looked at my own skin and saw your ink seeping in between the cracks of my ribcage-- i used all of it to write out devotion. you were my favorite collection of destructive metaphors i sunk into.

but it's funny because you outgrew our memories. i am a worn museum, a discarded trunk show, filled with artifacts of past lives we have lived and the empty promises we made. no one wants to visit a dusty museum when there's a new shopping center in town. so i pull my venetian blinds down and make my way downstairs without double checking.

how is it forgetting seemed so easy in my youth? because no matter how many knots i untie from my fingers, no matter how many bows i pull loose from my ragged hands, no matter how many "forget me not's" i have ripped from our dead garden, i have yet to forget a single day with you.

I.
you know i've always been drawn to the darker parts of
people,
the shades of grey that dapple a soul in impurity--
i adore the artistry of flaws and the orchestration of violent passion.
maybe it's because i've been in the light too long. or maybe it's simply a second nature to want what you're not supposed to want.
I crave the weakness of a sinner in his unfathomable delights.

II.
tempting is my favorite game to play:
i've been told that i taste like a bad habit, walk like an addiction, and have a tendency to leave them wanting more--
but still manage to look like an angel.
that's fine as long as you acknowledge the fact you look like a bad decision that i am more than willing to be hypnotized by.

III.
it almost is painful this reckless longing but it seems
you make me hurt in the places that don't mind hurting.

I have had more lovers than winter jackets
and maybe that's why I'm never cold.