you could say I have an addiction
to obsessing over
every square centimeter
of your existence
but that's not wrong
it's no legal infraction
to be so immensely captivated
by the shadows on your cheeks
and the dizzying inflections of
your voice
surely I am not crazy
you are
for being so ridiculous
and impossible
to forget

-c.j.

Waste nothing, want every little mint and lozenge in the shop
Forgive everyone, seek vengeance on all
the sidewalk cracks since the start

-cj

Enter, seize the catalyst
It's a battle and a friendly conversation
Smile and you die, sword and you die
All because of the footprints she left and the echos of platonic laughter still here

-cj

enough damage has been done
send our condolences to yonder sun
its yellow mask to beaches bask
killing purity as it stains and sinks down in
so hard to love but impossible to despise,
this overbearing sphere of flame
dismiss us to the caves and underground places, tis unright to see all the faces
that tilt up to gaze but turn sideways, a myth of blindness intercedes
ingrates people children users misers lovers keepers sleepers
(oh, grey skies, will the sun die with us?)

-cj

it's a **** arena, isn't it?
the contenders sense it, too
you spectate while I battle
this out
onto bad intellect swings
the blade
tracing scandalous imageries
into corrupt teeth
isn't it a devil's game,
one we cannot win?

-c.j.

All she does is talk
Do you see the practice in her mock
genuinity
'Cause I can
Maybe she put you in a trance with her
plagiarised poetry and false inflections
When I was standing there, my arms
crossed, my mouth agape with eternal o's resounding from it

-cj

Mum was good
Dad was not bad

-cj

The picture of mediocrity is not me and you
We thrive in our honours and shake hands too often
The places the others hide to escape, making something good happen, while they resonate with dull reverberation, like the past in accord with dust and lampshade
Tomorrow's price lunges in acrobatic ways to upset the utopia I've begun

-cj

Why was I about to cry?
Because I had fumbled
with my senses
in a masochistic ruse
Played god in this
grotesquer game?
All I felt was
the sweet tears come
but not fall

-cj

It induces physical reactions within me
i.e. lurches of the heart
I decided to be happy again
And not live in limbo

-c.j.

Like a devil's advocate
I listened as deep as apparition
licked the fictional dust
falling under the self-written
mantra's power:
It's not my fault

-cj

break the seal of the envelope
to view the sender's pity on paper
but please rush to open the letter
because I want to talk to you
for a while, if only one-sidedly

-c.j.

you and I walk
I don't want to leave this, not yet
stepping in sync with you
is the one thing I have done right
in a long time

-c.j.

Whatever floods the veins, the poet said, excuses the faint and the young

-cj

for some reason
taking a book from the shelf
and opening it and reading
a sentence
feels like picking up
where we left off

-cj

The songs that don't force you to feel a
certain way-I like those
They give you something and your mind
swallows it, whether it taste bitter or sweet
It is yours

-cj

In fading blue you told me,
"as the clock ticks slow, my heart slowly flares,
knowing that I'm in here, and you might not
be there"
Now we rest in beige and cream,
as I remind you that "any fight is
a spark of life"

-c.j.

further along from that friday
early, late, is it just a ruse
craving the past, i was brave then
verbal nerve catalyst (heart beats wild down staircase)
are we the same,  impartial neighbours,  somewhat lovers
walking past each other in silence?

-cj

tales of the mountains' sound, scandinavian girls dancing, happy
together they sing
this too shall pass, this is not everlasting
light is their hair and twisted is their logic
they confuse the seasons, an iceberg for the sun
still they spin, blissfully unaware of the brewing storm

-c.j.

Earthquake tremour in the body
like unexpected feelings they
just show up unannounced,
Imposing, it's rude
Seismic startledom

-cj

is it a second chance or the twelfth?
the stars around my heart are fighting again,
sparking up the little adolescent muscle in my chest
because the danger in metaphors caught up
with me and they convince me I'm not living

in the real world, I bite my lip
I walk alone

but when I think of you
my heartbeat-
you take it away

these faulty stars know ways to go and stop
and start again
but they are still only juveniles

the twelfth chance spins into the thirteenth
so I let go of my lip and slow down or
run ahead to meet you
and my heartbeat becomes me

-c.j.

Is it a crime
to want to
be near you

Is it a felony
to want to
hear your voice
all day

-cj

It's not quite morning yet
The night is fading, its plum and dark fruit watercolours are drunken by the sun
like a rewinding cassette tape

-cj

why don't you just stay awhile?
the mundane will go by faster with you
yeah, we forget good won't majority-trump all
save just you and I
didn't we have this conversation before?
that is why de ja vu has been gnawing at me-
it really is discomforting
nevermind that, just stay awhile
help **** time while holding my hand

-c.j.

Only too quiet for the loud ones to hear- an unfair thing to keep from those deserving
No guilty whisper to set the two apart, no disaster to detect, yet how about the sun, and the world, and every person who has ever breathed?
That is something to think of in the unspellable dark

-cj

His face in sunlight
It's become a paradigm
This is in no way a genesis
We've seen too many days
But, you, my dear, are
the reason for the paradigm shift
And you have no idea

-c.j.

Cut into rubber
then young skin
and like a ******
I bled
a lake of lustless blood
rubies liquefied into
the agent that has me
reeling & paling
I am a stupid little girl
who hurts herself
at each opportunity
like these knives
are tempting rumours
to spread
instead of duties calling
work, work, for the day is ailing
and the worst is neverending

-cj

There is no reason to hang up your coat
if you are just going to pick it up and
wear it again
So stop your concessions and far-reaching
hypothetical frettings
Give me a maroon bite on the neck
to prove that you're human
like me

-cj

Sincerely hoping you are not
an illusion
Some figment of my
more idyllic imagination
You are art, you are music
You are colour and you are sound
And how I long to lean in next to
your ear to whisper,
Love knoweth no bounds

-cj

how do things, seasons, change?
surely a tilt of an axis cannot fully explain
these transformations
but read into it and eagerness to stay is
wild and unwavering
also the sun sort of fries the sorrowful,
but only when they're under it the ones
above are comforted with delights we
cannot comprehend
is this all there is? work and no play?
or play and no work? is there ground to
tread or a scale to measure
or are these worn out metaphors just a
lifeline to sustain such a heartbeat as mine
or hers or yours

-cj

songs of a funeral, possible recovery,
a grain of salt
the river saw me that night
it keeps its word
so I won't have to be shoved
under the bright light

-c.j.

Pencils tapping, stomachs grumbling, silent, empty lessons
This is the school soundtrack

-cj

It rains alot this time of year
Paranoia soaked
Was it a mistake?
Despite an interlude of an overbearing cloud mass, gallons from the atmosphere,
Accompanied by harrowing hallway whispers of wilting hopes
It's all forgiven now, justified and crossed out
Now the winter sun can penetrate us further into bliss

-cj

Until now your science has been mere evidence
Essential maxims blew hard scores
into my ears
Negligent, the stark truth remains

-cj

The girl who sees through their games
The lies thick like ash but fragile as spiderwebs
She falls prey to their snares
Because she is human
And therefore weak
And vulnerable
She is polluted with the alluring smoke clouds of harlots mania wine & gold
Her eyes are darker in this state of blindness
A trance, an illusion
Her heart knocks on her mind's door
And she swallows her pride like the spoonful of medicine & no sugar she is fed by reality
But her heaven, her home
Is truth & light & purity
And it is within her again
Returning
And filtering out
The toxicity of
Frivolous cataract-inducing filth

-cj

the good thing about love is it has this speed, so rapidly hemorrhaging the skin
to dye the eye take a peek in the scope
a prism, spectrum, cycle of bursting shades
it's no trick, darling, beauty is decked in these striped halls and passageways
fasterfaster now, light must go, to meet its fragile fate
(it meets your eyes and lives through you)

-cj

While I type to you about pigeons
and you talk about an article
with my subject's first syllable,
just spoken differently,
our walls crumble
a Berlin sight
Caught in the east, I am liberal
and arts
You claim to be only a sum of your parts
So here is me proving you wrong
Sending the lyrics to a trampled-down song
Eleventh hours soothe the night
Letting our minds get our breathing right
I'm sorry for my preoccupations
My lover, he was an alcoholic
I'm sorry for all of the poetry, too
Which probably only puzzles and bothers and unsanctifies you
It's the least, it's the most, it's the worst kind of best I can do
Underneath it all, my parts are few
So subtract and add and pull me apart
That way I'll know I own a tangible heart

-c.j.

The dark is your enemy
Only the obvious and optimistic can be trusted
Say farewell to the subtle, the underhand
The bright and brighter sun and such will brush up the secrets once hidden and the mouth clamped tight will loosen,
Semi-transparent truths seeping out

-cj

there's a portable television showing a map
of the world with concerned voices behind it
reporters tell us to take it as it comes
and that every exit is now blocked
there's reason to run and there's reason to fear
as the news blares in pixels and decibels
and we bite our lips when we realise that
to run is human but to fear is divine
so until further notice we hide inside
pretending no bravery so our god will
save us in our weakest, most human moment
God watches the news too, don't you know

-c.j.

I'll resume the noiseless punishment
from your limbs, asymmetrical
I'll resume the elementary pessimism
less conversing, more concept
I, above you, that's all you'll obtain from me

I'll stay awake observing the clock
you wander back, protected within these walls
tangled lately, but then
without angst, a revered accolade
I, above you, that's all you've offered me

I'll resume the noiseless punishment
from your limbs, second to none
I'll resume the elementary pattern
less friends, more elbow room
the vein's deceit
don't tell my own story
the lifeless cell
don't tell my own story
and yearn for the remaining trouble

I'll resume a subtle exit
but I'm ignited, tempest-like
so I'll resume the noiseless punishment

-c.j.

a cup transparent, a sight, a reflection
which one diverts like unbolted frames
in the air
a serene dawn will arrive
this vision is in a kaleidoscope lately

heat in sheets goes unfelt
this fear, it expands and loses, drowns and rests
a serene dawn will arrive
my serene dawn will

heat in sheets goes unfelt
until a pair of eyes out of the grey
pull confidence towards it
this juvenile center won't delay
it waltzes, forces me to dwell on
you're the brightest sun, the brightest shadow
it leads to me being in awe of you

-c.j.

they are waiting for something good
can work erase the bad?
kids eat mudpies and cry "mushaboom, mushaboom"
there goes the fear they once had for the wild
now it's become a phantom limb

-c.j.

you called me wild
i labeled you sane
we prayed to the same god
that someday we would
stand together in the rain

-cj

Breaking the chapters into sections
Breadcrumbs of fractions
For little peeks of a story
They speak so much truth
And they fit so nicely in my palms

-cj

Obnoxiously optimistic and
anticipating a firework or two
And all I had to do was flutter my eyelids
to get a peek, to exchange for strength each littler thing that said, "I am weak"

-cj

I was scared of it, scared of you
Did you know the shutters' shaking hymns
coming within me, they were all for you?
We learned to detect lies and speak and
cover our boxes with musical skin
Is this the end? No, we have yet to begin

-c.j.

for your birthday I'll write you a novel
no surprises there, just acquiesce to my stories
of the street just east of Eden where we made our choice
notes resembling thoughts in the back of your head-
I'll release them, bring to life what you thought was dead

-c.j.

After this perjury
I desperately compress
material to my antibust
and think of the pearls
in the ocean
and the nothing
residing in me

-cj

to break her heart you'll need more than a needle of course
a knife sharpened minutes ago can cut cleanly-
is that what you intend to make, a clean break?
it will hurt far more if you go halway
and stop
heartstrings taut, reminding onlookers of a harp
created by a blade trimmed keenly and sharp
to break her heart you must damage it but not
beyond repair
or else, you see, she'd simply get another one
this way it's stuck in her chest, unright,
mending each fibre until the ache is only
a phantom hurt
it will merely be a vague pang, eventually
you may sharpen your knife now

-c.j.

I want to spraypaint every chorus,
every note
every breath
There isn't room
Instead I embellish my mind's
synapses with them
and it keeps me alive
a little longer

-cj