He asks
what do you mean
and I say
I don't know
I'm a poet

-cj

You've got this rock in your heart
Thrashing the tissue
Less than a bullet and less than a clogged artery
But there's nothing to save you
Put up this façade-you're beautiful happy and fine
Despite how you're wrecked and helpless and dying inside

-cj

pawns didn't do me much good
but friends do what they can
sure, the timing was a flattering element
but what am I
a useless chess piece
quick, your queen is calling
I'll be in the border between the
black and the white if you need me

-c.j.

This nemesis recites it all
washed up
It makes me want to grab
the little black binder
from her and apologise
to the ceiling and sky and
what dwells above

-cj

you'll always venture near dark gardens,
through mazes going along eastern hills
over fences you'll explore vast spaces
made of imaginary kingdoms

until the sun quits raying and shining down,
scamper into joyous field of flowering sepals just heavenly
see the valley's dandelions sway and drift side to side
under olive trees, from vine to vine

out even further lies some open-faced southern edens,
for visiting despite malevolent heathens not going their
expected ways

-c.j.

It's liberating, really
That subject suffocates me
You understand with tainted certainty
Enlightening hunger for what, we don't know

-cj

wrap yourself closely to me
pull your past identity
reminiscence we're anxious to quit
we'll coast effortlessly
I swear I'll keep my eyes on what's ahead
it's an hourglass spent
both terminals are beginning to lapse
we've exchanged so much
it's resistance that's supplied us courage
we're not figurative
we're not carbon copies
no coin to mesmerise or evoke memory
sweating, acting
it seems peculiar
wrap ourselves closely again

-c.j.

I'm a makeless nuance
Last week's murmurings
No one of consequence
I'm a mindless newcomer
Luckless while many
Never can even begin

-cj

hallowed and punctured
misshapen and desert dry
gambling for smiles wry

-cj

Sheer heartbreak breeds **** good poetry
And without the pain, numbness occupies the corners that bliss once nestled in
He's gone
but he is never gone from within me,
for he is there in constant pulse
like a final mantra
I utter to fetch the remains of
this existence which spins out
moments of gambling fever,
like risky love affairs I hide
in my youth weeks
I will miss and pine
for his lips on mine
were the haven I resort to
in every hour, if only in longing retrospect
It's real, it's here
This is my poetry

-cj

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 arrow pointed west,
the heart aimed east
The body went up, down, north, south,
pacing in the corridors

Adolescent wolves chase the myth,
it is this they run endlessly for
Blocked in prisms of light,
pounding on walls for heartless dark

Under the moon they cry, and she shows
no mercy
She refuses to acknowledge her dimness
compared to her competitor

With little gleamings she tells them,
This entanglement takes place after dark-
when the sun cannot feed you

-c.j.

radio babble
an instance of purer lessenings
in probability
listening for the catch
the snag, the definition
anything
then we were home

-c.j.

It was an emerging phase that I couldn't avoid
Being a teenager was purely torturous, and I look forward to the end, but something vivid and cheaply plagiarised had showed up
It was the desire to stir jealousy within others, a cruel beauty and idyllic body as a symbol of what deserves bliss
It was fake love, mere attraction and the disaster it brings, it was being with the people who tell the best rumours, the most electric fragments of truth
It wasn't mean-spirited, just viciously fast in its attempts to infatuate the crowd, the individual, the tiny wishful inklings in someone else's heart
It was wanting to be superior, a want unlike the innocent ones from my earlier youth
Wanting everything to fill that space in my mind between the ideal and real
It was fatal, and I knew it; I knew it

-cj

Call me a morning ******
I can refract the light and mess
up your bedhead further
Concentrate on my better
mistakes
I can do my best, maybe just for you

-cj

how about tomorrow?
(ha, ha, ha)
is that later? is that enough?
or will another season, semester, suffice?
(I wanna be with you)

-cj

Do you confide in your window glare
or is it your enemy?
You're breathing in numbers
and little decimals ***** the lungs

I want to say, as we drip we blossom
That the smoke will lift, and when it does, the sky will pale and remember all the terrible apparitions it enveloped

Do you believe in a beginning or is the middle enough for you?
I am clutching the thought of you
in a dozen mirrors at once

-c.j.

You are a beautiful pianist,
she touches my hand and says
Seventeen and horrified, maybe
Terribly sympathetic,
playing blue arabesques and
yearning for summer

-cj

The weird part was being reminded of him constantly
In the movies she watched, in the songs she sang, in the temperature
It would be a shame to say that he didn't equivocate her affection, but it was true
He superceded it
He didn't just see her in every film, hear her voice in the music, or sense her in the weather
He kept her name under his breath everywhere he went, infatuated with the very thought of her

-cj

Oaths in the palm's memory
Grasping the tendrils
Circumstance swallows exceptions whole
Hand trembles, eye conveys
A simple beacon, resting in your womb
Speak, the law and rule must be defied
Let the promise fade as you breathe

-cj

About certain metaphors my senses become leaky
Can you hear me trickle
With these phrases my limbs tremble like awkward syllable dances
Night is especially prone to this phenomenon, morning is clueless
Friends don't know so empathy is dry
Care to listen to ramblings of the dead come alive, print on a page
Even if I'm denied of that, they never could make me feel less than every feeling compounded

-cj

absence of fear and hunger,
replaced by the need for time and blundered veins
create this enigma, destroyed by thinking it over
it's a bomb, vulnerable to detailed thought
how to escape
is simple-
love the pieces it has
and forget the ones it lacks

-cj

she glances in mirrors
a geometric façade hems her shoulders to her ribs
the moon bleeds white in phases
crescent makes for the chesire cat smile, she sleeps to the silent sounds of it
gibbous, waning, waxing
all hallowed to the eclipsing snowy veil of it
she passes the reflection of her own skin
the light in the night shows it for her

-cj

I am not up against an artless rival,
it seems
the revenge is crafty and the underhand
is lethal
but I cannot be stunned
please forgive me when I do this
what you never thought would occur
is now a harsh reality in your teeth

-c.j.

Mum likes to shove concepts
down my throat and Dad lets her
They tell me to smile about it
And make everyone else want it
It can take a while to see through cobwebs

-cj

I'm in the nation's capital
And it feels like the centre of the universe
Everyone drinks their coffee and ingores
each other, the cold nipping at the
skin exposed slightly beneath their sweaters
Is that where it all happens?
Do the things they decide there affect me?
The buildings' windows are transparent
WANTED signs, and I look up at them
somewhat admirably
I don't know whether I love or hate
this country
It is either great or evil, and the extremes
polarise further with my continuing to see
people people people people
They crowd the centre of the universe

-c.j.

Did you need them as much as they seemed to need you?
A dire necessity that wrung me out and then bottled me up
Must you go?
Can't you linger?
Let me wrap you around my finger until it's too much
But it won't be
The friends, your fans,
they're calling, and
lone and terrible I remain

-cj

Original plans decay
sweat replaces the goosebumps
go, stay, with whom do I travel?
obstruction and the scare
a loss of innocence and oil
but watching him stand over
the hood, in the heatwaves
swindled by my hopes
cold water plastic
cards envy
lovely pretension
tears on the velvet bed

-cj

late running in on your silver steed
ride with grace, no desire to race
harsh fences to admire with dull eyes
entry devils whisk away troublesome friends
hanging red tulips, divine nuisances
growing weary reading subliminal stanzas
yielding, or instead, risking loss,
to appear perfect

-c.j.

Shadow bends, bury it before its life smothers ours
Blackening out the sun, carressing the pure snow, it's in between our fingers
(Somewhere lodged is a song title)
Sweet tastes and a naiive fever
Sleep, the silhouette will stay still because you're so young, lovely, innocent
(The bedposts will sway and rock you, sway and rock you out of, out of here)

-cj

suburban utopian nightmare
clutch to the strangest desires
if we give up right now
we know we're all *******
let's get out, go out
drive and not come home
no more killjoy, only the blaze
and chasing dreams
sour and put in the corner
don't be a killjoy, my sweet
the night's just begun

-c.j.

the concept is the energy
for a wild heart's beating
a concept, only an image,
whether it's good or not

lure us in, lure us close,
and then lure on
don't be convinced,
don't release it,
don't pretend it's his words

we'll cool off like red flames
in a flattened fire
I'll gaze at you and we'll laugh
in secret, just as we thought

stormy seas leading ambivalents
in their ships
now they approach,
you invite them in,
love the rush

the starving streaks have angled
to another scar
the demons run, cause me to swell
with a lovely dear

I wish to be her identical when I leave
I wish to be, but I don't wish to try

we keep our ties

I've got a song but the uncertainty restrains me
I've got a song but the chaos is muffling our sound

I've got a decision but the decisions are diminishing
I had a cause but the cause ran away

-c.j.

I fell asleep whispering your name
and woke doing the same
Have you choked on the sun?
I am sketching needy hearts into my hands
and rescuing dreams with tea leaves
Hopeful, wanting, hoping, wantful
Mountains converge
and our lips are
so far apart
Perhaps, this time, they are real wounds
disguised as fleshy hyperboles
Written about restlessly, melted candles
with congealed memory resting on the desk
The spinning cups on the table;
that is us, dear, that is us

-c.j.

How are you?
Pre-happiness or something
Explain a bit?
I'm disordered
I have a song that might make
you feel better
It's absolutely beautiful
Divulge
(I will unearth this)

-cj

Pacified, left on a street corner,
with December stillness in her eyes
Her mouth could not begin to contain
a mere cliché, its distaste for foolish
reminders of current surrounding speech
was strong as infrared,
though she'd say, "the other will speak in statistics
while all that spills from my mouth
are fallacious metaphors"

But he'd reply, "you intrigue me so,
with your blotted out sentences for scars,
and pretty oceans for eyes"
Looking for fragile lips to hold,
midnight and midday

-c.j.

I am alone
You are in between your comrades
We are something
I am sad
You are laughing at a dry joke
We are something
I am dying
You are jumping
We are something
I am something dead, babe
You are just beginning to live
We are estranged but
We are something

-cj

anthems for a seventeen-year-old girl include:
a bizarre love triangle, delicate hands, and home

bizarre love triangle is something
not taught in geometry
it is scalene, and it is uneven
for the shorter leg is the devil's arithmetic
and the longer, the perfect equation
the common side touches both in
different ways, for different reasons
shorter swells with jealousy as
longer and longer yet meet at their divine point
practicality destroys the art made, year last
a loss, a jilt, weathering sides so relentlessly
distanced from what devours ideals,
both isolated lines in cosmic space
each prayer inches them closer together
though it is bizarre, it is also beautiful

-c.j.

run your finger across my teeth,
you wicked child
call me in the morning,
call me in the evening
probably making the same mistakes
again and again and again
mistakes are making us
again and again and again
we're the cards nobody wants
take us out of the stack
so we can have that playdate

-c.j.

unravel it like always, I'm surrendering this time
the gloating conman cutting at his own mind
snatching prints we would have trusted fully
and you're filching fragments from the squandering entirety

between the mess there's paradise
between the boxes I have to check
and at the close a prologue thrives
and now the end is the beginning

the flames lick, conspirators are awake, still
we won't leave soon, not for seasons
if by hour the tower's drop down,
the ground glistens like a lake

why is the end now the beginning?
rewind the film for her
and at the close a prologue thrives
and now the end is the beginning

-c.j.

Apparently I've learned nothing
Falling down the rabbit hole
Becomes even more enticing
The temptation pierces and nags
And I want to forget, but it won't leave from under my skin
This boy, his eyes
His beautiful mind
The circumstances of my dreams
"Nothing is as it seems, " a lure to my own gallows
But smile harder, love
The best is yet to come

-cj

I am insane
I am psychotik
It is a numb sensation
that sharpens my sense of
dual reality
I'd much rather
lock eyes with you
                                             (and never
                                              find the key)
than stare at this
blank pool for the
umpteenth time,
defeat sitting in my gut

-cj

If only one day would wane like
our favourite side of the moon
Then we would look up and watch
it wax into something only slightly
less eternal than us

-cj

My chest feels hollow a lot, so I wonder
what truths would come out of it,
they said
They had asked, what is reliable to you?
And I said, innate truths that bleed
in your chest
What makes something real, they ask
That's something I've been trying to figure out for a while, I say
So you've been in love, they inquire
So my heart tells me, I reply
I yearn for asteroid belts and pluto,
alas dreams I have surrendered,
they mention after a pause
Oh, dear rune, don't think yourself
so ancient

-c.j.

we are in nobody's empire, watching
the dimming light
in the sky we hear the thunder clatter,
and ask the palm reader what the
lightning bolts mean on our hands
the laws of the universe are unbound,
she says
science, merely an old friend
gravity's been lifted, now, so
float and see reason blend

-c.j.

when you feel insane
and chilled to the bone
in a bed only becoming familiar
the windows glare and your eyes stare
into mirrors made for someone else's gaze
ghosts, hearts, little numbers
and vivid hotel sheets
they were the beginning of the end
and i loved it

-cj

She wanted to feel her heart cut out,
and raw, again
Verse after verse, drug after drug
He is subtle about the terrible
aftermath he inevitably brings
And her eyes spoke tales of nothing
chivalrous, only lust and the smell of skin
Only, "protect me from inevitable division"

-c.j.

I'm not one to give up
and you tell me you can live with that
You guess that I haven't given up my crusade
The one that makes you all the more alluring
I believe that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all
You shouldn't treat us like we are time bombs
Though it appears all is fair in love and war
Something within keeps me knocking on your door, over and over
You tell me you will always deal with my madness
You believe I would do the same for you
I already have been, I say
And you reply, that's why I believe that you would

-c.j.

the idea
that it would never end
scared me immensely
but the idea
that it would
also catalysed a fear in me

-cj

The rich fled from their churches,
their faces flushed
The poor remained in the parks
with the birds squawking at their feet

Blood, fabric, hymns- clashes of humanity with art
When asked about the past, the bravest would utter,
Holy water couldn't save me, all the priests saw me in the flood

So the wind prompted,
Whisper to the deities of troubles, the paradises, the wars;
hear them shiver

When the authorities passed by
the laity revealed,
They told us to confess that we were wicked in nature, sinners from birth but we always liked the thought of innate good

-c.j.

What's unsettling about its premises
Learned how to make it fast and easy
Is this a good thing
No, it isn't, sweetheart
Just a shortcut to death
Or slow comatose wishing

-cj