I've always been jealous of leaves

because they have the luxury of dying
with the promise of being reborn
in a few months' time
even brighter and more
beautiful than before

    sometimes I want to die
but death is such a big commitment and
I've never been a fan
of permanence

I miss you
but
not in the a-piece-of-me-is-missing-when-you're-gone
kind of way
I miss you in the
I'm-okay-with-being-alone-but-I-like-it-better-when-you're-ar­ound
kind of way and I think that
that is a pretty healthy way to feel

It took me a very long time
to realize that I was whole

    and I'm not so scared of winter anymore

Where men are gay for their beers,
and never integrated with the world’s clock.

Where men **** away their fears
on a wall only as big as the spot
they need.

All these fields
and the health they yield
all mushy and dead
from the crops
that would from the veins of grain, rot.

wrestle with the puzzle
with only your finger
or maybe a single straw cold glance

Maybe a bed of saw dust
would fix the pain in your Head.

No feather pillows
to comfort and cradle the mind.
to address the metal wounds
poverty to shelter me
and never too soon
if the distance of this curl in the sheet
might seem as distant
as this scene
as the movie passes it plays in
double, half, real time

As the flat valley
where a palm tree grows
in a puddle in my palm.

Mended the electric circuit
of the frequency of your body and memory

Finally slicing that grain of rice.

for the parted message like a divided sea,
fragmented slowly, evaporated

stuck in this resistor.

that makes it so tedious the final drop of condensation
finally becomes
a summer ants
last
breath
on a cold winters day or perhaps it was so little
like the smallest petal
falling down
as the pedal of a bike
cycling
up and down
through the largest
park
or maybe a roses thorn lifting the dirt up
ever so much
that a bit of dirt
amongst the frost
would rise up
the loudest sounds
as the heaviest dirt filled cloud
one this frozen water
could no longer hurt.

Dear,

Parents. Siblings. Friends. Lovers:

Give you this.
Give you that.
You take ten
and I take that:
NOTHING!

My shoulder? Please!
And my home too?
Progress with ease
as I wish for you.

But a moment for ME,
oh but just one,
I’d like you to SEE
just what you have done;
Sorrow and pain,
my tongue will stutter,
but through my tears
my RAGE will flutter.
Though this may be the gist
of my anger in reign,
a WALL and my fist
returns...no gain.
When Austen, Kafka, Garcia-Marquez
instead hit the wall,
ALL ties are dead.

“YOU here for me,
but not I for you.”
Is all you can see...
All you can do...

Your ear I implore,
a little sympathy too;
FRUSTRATION galore,
to hell with you!

I run from love
I run to love.
I run from hate
Yet I accept it all the same.
Love is always good
And hate is always bad.
Wouldn't you agree?
Love is complete joy and acceptance
Willing to sacrifice yourself
And that's not even necessarily your life.
Jumping in front of a bullet isn't easy
But it's easier than changing your schedule
At times.
Hate is always bad
So why is it acceptable to hate
The people who've hated the most?
We can't learn from mistakes
Or just move on without acknowledging them?
Well, I'm a firm believer
That cookie dough is always good.
Except when it makes you sick.
Tastes like salmonella.
But cookie dough is still always good.
Except when it makes you fat.
But
Cookie dough is still always good.
Except when you don't get any cookies.
Cookie dough tastes better anyway.

cradle your head in your hands
as every barbed whisper in your head
echoes until it's thunder wreaks havoc

you are a jarring lance against the wall
while the buzzing breath of the world rolls

you are not here
you were never here

you can only pray,
only only only
wish you weren't

but you cannot just will yourself to die
with the fierce passivity that comes with nirvana

because you know that
while you can still convince yourself
there's something better in the future
barely
but barely is something still

even though presently

you are on a slab and you were Romeo
who believed he died alone, on the top

you are on a table dissected
metaphorically flayed and made raw

by the seeming death of passion, a lack of someone in your bed tonight,
and the slipped hand that pulled off your skin and made the feelings of the feelings that wound.