no method to my madness

i got mad because you got mad
because i wanted to talk to everyone else, it seems,
everyone but you,
and now i'm madder than mad
because all i want to do is talk to you
-isn't that funny?
i can't contain all of my emotions
my body is too compact,
and oh, I do love you,
I do I do want to speak with you only you
all the time every second you and just you
but i want it because i love you and i want you to want it
because i love you not because
you're just secretly screwed up
and selfish.
i want you
but i want you to want me too
even when i act unwantable.
and i'm sorry for yelling
and i'm sorry for crying
but you, you should be sorry
but you're not
and you won't be.
that's fine
i'm sorry.

if only's are all i have

i hate you
i hate you more than i hate anyone
more than hitler or mussolini
more than eating whole apples
or singing in public
or girls prettier or girls skinner than me
or the boys who date those girls.
being around you feels like i'm lost on a subway all the time,
like i can't translate the map, even though
i've been reading it all my life. it's like i skipped my prozac dosage
like i'm in a white straight jacket
but worse, because
the memory of how wonderful it all was nags me
like a woodpecker on the mind
and i can't help but think
if we could only stay like that
if we could only last
if it only worked like in dreams.

fuck linear equations

the l i n e is a devious motherfucker
really it's a sick son-of-a-bitch
proclaiming eternity and execution like a young romeo
when there are some things you just can't know
and some even if you know you shouldn't promise.
they caution "always account for variable change"
nevertheless
rebellion sneaks in through windows wide a quarter-inch
guessing the 4 character password on the garage keypad
desperate to believe that life is as straight as a line.
but i'm of the kind who appreciates honesty, no matter how brutal-
deviation is our single constant
in this planar world.

the zoo-keeper's rules

what i know is the inside of an incubator
a vast white limbo of
the overachiever's science project.

the poke and the prod and incessant
wide eyes jabs like arrows
in wounded flesh
at every yawning second

and the
zoo-keeper's paranoia
that any moment i will release beyond the metal
not trusting return-

above all, the eyes are my wrecking ball.

lion roar
unheard and unheeded
because it was not solicited to roar;
roar for the crowds
roar for the villans
don't roar for zoo-keeper;

those are not the rules.

le fou

there was that time
you made me watch pierrot le fou
even though reading a movie requires excessive energy
but great love always murders its victims
and that was the first time i realized you were mad.
then you dived into the lake
to salvage soggy remnants of a letter
because they are not black on white,
but momentous fragments of a memory.
white clouds with faint whispers of their last form.
and your crazy bursts a flame, beautiful,
sets fire to the rows of wooden houses down the block
burns teacups in oven fires,
maybe i am too close
or- am i close enough

jasmine

light years between us now
your uncertainty decapitates me.

i hope you still buy produce from the market across the street
and eat them cross-legged on the carpet.

don't tell me you've done the bohemian thing
and rationalized religion and God
upon returning home from months abroad,
the discrepancies of faith
air-ridden.


i'm only writing this
because the girl from eons ago
was divine by nature.

Monday to Sunday, on a Carousel

Thursday.

Parrallel streets,

I walk the pavement like a plank.

drowning in the part of me I haven't yet met.



Sunday.

Boxes, boxes hang,

silhouettes in empty spaces. We are two planets. Collide.



Monday.

Your scent infused on my pillow, my tee shirts, your jeans snug my bottom like a hand.



Wednesday.

Threads unwind, I will carry you with me
forever until Thursday.

for the boy with the inflated ego

bobby pin juts out
and your bubble is burst

you were never quite so chilled
as when the fortune cookie divulged,
your life is empty
your heart is bare
and I have no more to give.

He was Love

I found God
and He loved me
I know because
He did what lovers do
He cried too

morning after

oh, i could drink a case of you
and never feel your weight on my eyelids
when the sun wakes up.

poker face off
we bask in the afterglow
like an architects euphoria in seeing the daybreak backdrop
upon their creation.

i'll take my sweet nothings
to go,
soaked in the light of the sun.

the serious man

the distate of gravitas
sour
on dry tongues
innumerable solecisms
unfetter pretenses.

let us say
all the things we
always wanted
and never knew.

let us leap
untethered.

a happy and an ever and an after

i'll carve out a shelf in my heart for you
pack up monoliths of black and white
call crayola and relay it to the factories--
all the yellow in the world is ours

billet-doux

our indian summers are lewd and
never slavish.
but when the blinders catch in the downpour
the steam precipitates


we live for the monsoon.

garbage-bag bones

my summer dress smells like your cologne,
the one you call
your natural smell
it chases my car like a dog on valium.
your phantom fingers on the dashboard
drumming along to boomboomboom.
when i vomit i vomit your Marlboro's
praying it stays down
because i still crave your toxic waste.
and in the end it won't be you
to expire due to your incessant puffing,
it was always me.

aubade

straight-laced mannequins
glass dolls with painted lips

behind a dearth of blood and bones
rapacious parasites venture onward

machination, you
poked logistics in the eye
howling with mirth

The Lost Verse

I draw you from a memory
I carry as pocket change.

I quit buying old houses
only to find
empty walls.


Maybe you weren't meant to read this text
Maybe fate decreed this night
to steal a glimpse at a fluid verse
pondering intricacies all the while.

hieroglyphics

in a jar by his bedside
two semesters measured
in glances and booming rhymths of heart

and all he could do was sit on the same side of the room
plundering booty
as if God Himself would demand an explanation.

she smiled. and he felt the ground quiver

the definition of a peninsula

you said something bad is happening to you when we don't talk
but i never wanted to be an anchor
when this ship is close to capsizing and it's already all my fault.
too late you sneer
but that was 7 days ago
and you're shipwrecked.
athena would've followed you home if she knew the way.
and i know it's not the time but-
i told you so.
a kite demands a kite runner
and no one's on the ground
my particles can't solidify
drop your hopes below a red rose
or swim like a great white shark
and never stop.

adam's eve

scattered, peppered, covered
my insides are no longer mine
you are my gravity
and i am

d
o
w
n
we fall from grace
earth-bound
but if we fall we fall
one palm to another
just like we promised.

moon-faced

distillations of laughter
behind sclera
eternally dizzy in stars.

two planets;
days in rotation the same 28
as days in revolution.