i always heard,
"write what you know.
forget the rest."
but i'm tired of
poems where you
and i never fit
on the same line.

just once,
i'd like to breach
your universe—
an alternate reality
where you opened
your heart,
not just your body.
i dream of a galaxy
where your affection
floods my psyche.

then i might pen
a verse or two
in quiet
reminiscence,
commemorating
an experience
where love
was finally requited.

you are a kaleidoscope
of oscillating multicolor.
a spectral spectrum,
at once
elusive and constant.
i couldn't decipher
your wavelength  
if i wanted to.
instead,
i lie awake
every night
and pretend
i'll be fine
without your fire.
i can't seem
to find the nerve
to douse the flame.
so i spin Jane Doe
and let Converge
sing me to sleep.
your name
is still my password.

you scratched our initials
into the surface
of the polished wooden table
behind Redlight Redlight
with the key to my heart.

P + S.

a brief message
etched in time
for all to see.
you grinned up at me
when you'd finished,
ombré fluttering slightly
in the evening breeze,
and said, unabashedly,
"it was the first thing
that popped into to my head."

P.S.

sometimes, i still think
of how your hands clung insistently
to my windbreaker when we sat
on the pier, how our bodies
synced in quiet harmony.

there was an empty seat
at the table tonight.
while the candles flickered
in the streetlights,
i shut my eyes
and wished you'd appear
right by my side.
i blew and the flame sputtered,
then guttered out.
but, when i looked up,
you were still
nowhere to be found.
i looked up to the stars
to try again, but spotted
your irises instead—
a vision hanging
in the heavens.
there was an empty seat
at the table tonight.

i went through my mid-life crisis at twenty.
i dare say, that doesn't bode well for my longevity.
five years on and now i've done
twenty-five arbitrary circles
around the sun. a quarter century
spent spinning like a top
upon this pale blue dot.
one year older and i've only grown
colder at the thought of a life
stuck, stranded on this rock.

in the grand scheme of reality,
i am but a solitary blip in a lonely corner
of the Milky Way. the galaxy gasped
and, in the blink of an eye, i passed
once more into nothingness—finite.
with my last act, i'll whisper,
"it is finished" and breathe
a sigh of relief.

but a piece of me will last an eternity.
like the hammer of the gods, i was forged
in the core of a dying hyper-giant.
my bones are fashioned from star-stuff
and to that same dust i return, inexorably,
tugged apart in the fusion of the multiverse,
scattered to all corners of the cosmos.

when humanity is long extinct, molecules
that once belonged to our bodies will cling
to each other and build new bonds.
i'd like to think that i'll find you there, lovely,
rotating and waiting for me,
adrift in the fabric of space-time,
so we might embark on a new journey
and spend a moment or two entwined.

my lethargic limbs ache
taut against the strings.
****** around
by a puppet-master
with invisible hands.
perpetually exhausted.
i sleep,
but i do not rest.
just once,
i'd like to wake up
on the right side
of the bed.
instead, i keep
waking in a sweat
at 3:00am, wishing
i was dead.

the fissures spiderweb across
the glaciers, torn asunder
by invisible hands.
a rising tide doesn't lift all ships,
it capsizes them.
the fat cats will turn dead presidents
into sails to catch the earth's dying gasps,
but they will flutter, helpless
to progress in this disaster economics.

green business won't save us.
infinite growth on a finite rock,
a pale, blue dot circling until it, too,
burns up. the tires are spinning
in the mud. we've no other option:
we cannot reinvent the wheel—
we'll have to break it.

reformist logic leaves us soulless,
servants cowed by corporate forces
whose sole motive
is cashing in
on our projects.
they'll serve us up
without a second thought.
they'd raze the world
if they could make a profit.
fascism is capitalism
plus more ******.

we must admit our losses:
false hopes and letter-writing campaigns
are too little, too late.
a petition won't halt climate change.
beat their bombs with hammers
until they're shaped like plowshares.
the Earth will be consumed
by the sun long before
the State saves us
from our fate.
if we're to be prophets
of the future,
then it's time to ******* rage.