a series to make me forget and remember all at the same time

she laughed.
in my face, of all places,
and the anger was trickling through my blood stream
just like the water was flowing down my body.
this is once where you had touched
long before i realized
my body is my own temple
and is not for you to desecrate
(with your graffiti hands that burn me at every
inch you get closer)

and as much as i'd hate to admit it
those old tunes you'd use to play are still
sneaking out of my speakers
unassumingly i'll listen
(just as i had once done)
until

certain chords and certain beats will remind me
bring me back to those graffiti walls
and you, red-handed in the spotlight
laughing insanity mess
drink
to
be
me.

"baby we're only young once.
live this right, live us right."
and if i had a thousand lives to live
trust me, darling:

none of them would be anywhere related to you.




"i will talk to you soonish"...sometimes i wish you wouldn't lie.


we each lit one
candle, two matches
blazing to the heavens
above

the window cracked slightly
wind whispering to us through the
screen that would protect us from everything else
and you, your arms are here, hold
me close and protect me here

your lips, my skin
"a kingdom for a
kiss upon the shoulder"
your lips, my lips
"all my riches
for her smile"

so we lay solitary
eye to eye
the way i like most
in the distance the curtains
catch wind by the hand
warning not to disturb
us and the only thought i can
muster is that

if my ultimate wish is
to return to the oceans after death
i could die looking into your eyes
and i would be home



exit 259: infinity
and
beyond

so you took another hit
turned the wheel 90 degrees
towards an exit with no exit

i didn't try to stop you

maybe i should have, or at least that's what i thought when the car went skidding on its top across the four lane skyway. the view was nice, or what i could see of it through the shattered sun roof looked appealing --

and from my peripherals
i could see you with
your hands to your heart
clasped together
in meditation
and as we went crashing
into the pacific
you bowed forward and
whispered
"namaste"

sinking to the bottom and we had our most meaningful conversation
talking about fate and life and all its many crashes
and the one-hundred plus speeding trips we would take
that was like love, for the first time;
with a metal tip you etched into my hand
"never forget"

it took me until we reached the bottom to realize what you meant. your infinity was already over, denoted by a hard blow to the steering wheel, and i was looking through the windshield at schools of silver fish catching their scales by the sunlight on the surface. "never forget" - never referred to life or to the things one experiences, but instead - that life is not exclusively ours, bottled up in a pickle jar like lightening bugs you caught and kept on your nightstand. every life will drown one day. every life is replaceable - none are immortal. "never forget" - what you do is probably temporary. but if temporary touches a life, forgetting that each breathes and lives accordingly is a never kind of thing.



i want to write this down.
write you down, frame
your perfect figure
in a sequence of meticulously thought-out words.

impossible. as the veins in my lips
trail the outline of your freckled skin,
and i can feel you breathe (in, out, in again),
i grasp this indescribable emotion in my hands.

(tighten. arch. grasp. hold. scratch. release.)

the smoke is hollowing out the roof of my mouth.
feels like the inside of a cathedral. the wisps act like monks
walking uniformly towards one central idea.
blow out. uniformity lost. and when i smile
(with this white cylinder clouding the sanity in my lungs)
all i want is that feeling in which says

take every vulnerable party of my body. of me.
(tighten. squeeze. deepen. bite. relax. breathe.)
peer pressure, and persuading you is like persuading a light pole.
useless. but still, your face:

lights up the room you're in
and inside my chest these fireworks explode
playing techno in this hollow ribcage
bounding wildly against my hardened skin.

(that patch of decorated dots on your shoulders
are merely outliers on this complicated diagram.
inside of each other we do not find ourselves;
instead, we find that "i" we wish to be.)

yours truly...



(p.s.: your eyes? they are like a color wheel
intermittently swirled in numbers of two's and three's
laugh gently, sweet thing. breathe softly, me in.)





look at me with eyes not fit to stare
touch me with hands not fit to feel
talk to me with lips not fit to speak.
in this charades game of colorful persuasion
I am not who I say I am but
who I say I am is not relative to I --
where periods actually denote endings instead of
age-old life-changing beginnings
is where I tiptoe, difficultly, conspicuously,

and in the morning when you creep
across the drops of clear dew resting on
the freshly-showered blades of green
please do not forget about the lilies
that grow in small, undiscerning patterns
and only open in the mornings for your empty delight

cross them with dancing feet and light movements
as you go about your day, forgetting them as you breathe
each second a heart beat arising from the blood in your veins

but instead in the night when you arrive back
from your plentiful yet meaningless adventures
and you feel the lush carpet beneath your feet:
pedicured, fragile, soft, vulnerable
please remember that i, as well, am laying there
like the discerning morning lilies
and i am here, my darling, only to soften your step



extended periods of time where you've been in my life and nothing more monumental than my pen tracing heartbreaks has happened. it's a miracle, right?