Valentine's Day giddiness
catalysed by the semi hand-holding
and the nervous kisses that
hallow the romantic amateurity
of junior high

Then high school,
the brick-walled hell of september's
The pressure
The hormones
The naked need
for warmth and
an unkillable desire
to lose the one thing
to gain another

But in the end
It's all the same
We want love
(need it)
to survive

Those who live without it
are the poor skeletons
without the fellow heart
to bleed with, side by side

And for those of us who find it,
find that wondrous facet of existence,
the indescribable absolute, love

Our pulses race and minds helplessly
spiral into oblivion to the others
when the one is there

-cj

The grey ghost
shuffled in between their aces and queens
ignoring you amidst their gamble
Was it ever any different?

-cj

The music was in my brain
How keen it spun its figure eights in my head
It was a nice gesture, for I had smoothed the ice for a skate of notes from within and from the mountains and department stores and black skies

-cj

When something isn't right
it's all wrong
A ruthless rubik's cube effect
and the fear manifests itself
in waves
Those culprits that mount
and eventually subside
But some of it
never goes with the rest
It gets under your skin
and ultimately
your body will defy you
The hysteria batters you
from the inside out
And it's all to blame on
that one wrong thing

-cj

I live my life so as to escape it
Her hair was in a braid,
Her heart was at war
Just as sullen as things were before

-cj

I suppose I wouldn't mind waking up to turquoise skies
painted outside the window
When I'm dreaming of you,
I sing to the mirror like I am serenading a paramour
but it is nonchalant, almost fearless,
with my voice still in a tumble of organs and sleepy phlegm,
finding its way out
My fingers turn the faucet on, and the sink streams water out with the slight whistle of the pipes in the background
It's the beginnings of morning,
in the sequence that those prime-coloured skies ensure

-cj

She's pale and thoroughly a briarsome beauty, what with her hazeling eyes that blush.
And if there is logic laced in love,
I am a lesbian for her.
Violin case is a silhouette,
body against brick wall.
Waiting.
Something we have in common.
Her skin looks soft, I muse
and her hair smells sweet,
But separate as isles in the sea
we remain.
Logic shatters;
That vain mirror.

-cj