marionettes
what means youth to you? that we are bright bright burning
our lips red and chapped our eyes lifeless
our teeth white our cheeks rosy from the wind in our faces?
do you know how often we are told the future is ours—
no, worse, that we are the future?
i don’t mean to refuse some birthright but in a world in want
of individuality must i be defined by a collective
only? what means youth to you? is it
the sound of the time ticking down down down
the world in need the world on fire the world through all of it
watching us?
isn’t it?
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the exact opposite of excelsior
anyway, i’m tired. and since everyone’s doors closed for good
my refrain has become: and for what?
if everything had a reason you’d think i’d
be able to find at least one.
one reason to keep typing away, chipping at this pile of
commitments though my fingertips are bruised.
something about being anywhere other than here.
maybe productivity has a thing against me, maybe i’ve
spent one day too long procrastinating and karma
or my missed opportunities are holding grudges now,
i don’t know.
but god, don’t you see i wish i did?
i just want to claw my way out but my fingertips are
already burned, they’re already bleeding.
the ruin isn’t coming, it’s already eaten me inside
out. the ruin isn’t coming, it’s already here.
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never elysium
lost in the lights / or the draw of adventure—
if i were a born hero i’d already be / gone.
but i am here in the living room / nose pressed
against the windowpane / do you think i
wanted to end up / this way? what is more timeless than
temptation? / what is more fluid than ecstasy, ambition?
i wake up to early afternoon and i / know in my
fool’s gold soul of souls that this is it. / this is
what / i have waited for. i have waited for
the dawn breaking down into the / promised pieces
of day. / night and its stars shattering anew,
chorusing: / come what may, come what may, come what may.
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gambler’s fallacy
the folding chairs were left out for months after
the family reunion. so we all had dinner together.
so we talked about the same things and rehashed
our usual arguments. sure. listen, the chairs are
collecting dust, can you clean them up and put them
away? i’m tired of the house being a mess, i don’t care
if the closet is full or if you’re hearing their voices even
though the funeral was two thursdays ago. i don’t want
to hear it. dust the bookshelves while you’re at it, will you?
no point in arguing, i’m going back to sleep. be quieter
puttering around first thing in the morning, honestly,
can’t you sing loudly when no one else is home? you’d
shower much faster if you didn’t make it into some
broadway production, jesus christ. i don’t know what
you mean when you say i’m always falling for the gambler’s
fallacy and frankly you know i couldn’t care less. why won’t
you just take your wins when you can? why don’t you just
beat me at blackjack and go? why can’t you ever follow
instructions without immediately talking back to me? the house
is a sty. use your eyes. it better be clean when i wake up.
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undying
i always knew i was dying, i only just figured out
how to say it. forgive me. forgive me. forgive me.
don’t you know the poets die?
don’t you know i will spend my whole life on my knees
begging for forgiveness
because there will always be someone who holds me
against me? who will walk away no matter what
i say?
i always knew i’d end up here, i only just realized
it was me i was referring to when i said “you”
and me i was referring to when i said “me.”
don’t you know i was born to gasp words into existence,
enraptured, suffocating from the inside out,
a study in self-destruction?
don’t forgive me. don’t tell me i never said a word about
my fate, the red-lettered respite just out of reach.
don’t tell me the poets die.
don’t tell me i do not need forgiveness to rise again.
i always knew i could do anything if believed it to be so, i
only just realized that sometimes truths are truths and lies
are lies.
sometimes you have been fooling yourself.
i am dying in the here and now. i am dying in the in-between.
forgive me for saying it as it is. the forgiveness is in the saying.
can you forgive me
for wanting to be forgiven?
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garden gate left ajar
if i had love enough—if i really did choke
on the idea of a love so vast—if i myself was
that love—if i lost myself in the drowning of a thing
because i am the garden hose and the watering can
and the glass shower door
then perhaps i will bury my hair / from the haircut i gave myself
in the dark
in the plot meant for a mother’s hydrangeas
the thought will occur that i am—i can be—i must be—i am
the enforcer of my own stillness
the teacher of my own complicated tongue
my own final epiphany / curled in on itself
how language is in itself a litany—
burning me in bottomless anticipation—
buried will i grow—
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condensation of avoidable tragedy
let us for a moment go back
to the usual deconstruction
the decades-old armoire left
on the sidewalk to be ruined by rain
and it will be slippery out there
on my usual perch where my hand
rests on the banister and the peeling
black paint matches my chipping nail polish
isn’t it precarious isn’t it exhilarating
living on the edge of sorts
i suppose i could be some kind of tardigrade
the old armoire cemented in memory mahogany
i could plunge down and hit the sidewalk now
split-second scream following as i fall
beside me the armoire which did not last to be
my childhood closet could be my coffin instead
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love is blind (is blind)
an individual as a mosaic in purest form,
head thrown back & jaw held wide as the sunshine
pours from an open window into waiting lips.
simplify the fraction one last time:
love that rests in wait on the kitchen windowsill,
where the blinds are never closed, over
found introspection between clasped hands,
a silver whisper which cannot, hard as it tries,
wriggle its way into the end of the sentence,
the opening/closing lines of the story. it is possible
someone is looking at the scene incorrectly.
that someone is blind, that it is blood not sunshine
that it is ichor not light which has begun to reside—
or rather to stain—the tiled floor, the fingertips,
the ceiling which begins to warp at the start of summertime.
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and my mirror was a stained glass window
i am still weaving an intangible net, if you will,
with which to capture profundity. maybe in its visualization
it will not be so much a butterfly net as
a cube net—the way the facets of too-high expectations
of the self (look at me, not saying self-deprecation,
pasting a label reading determination over old & yellowed
self-doubt.) can be flattened out into mosaics,
paintbrush and liquid glue taken to lay oneself
at the feet of incoming sunlight.
look at me, still trying to spin the unspinnable
into threads of gold. can someone so unfolded
be golden too? can we become the light again,
can we hold our own against the coming of the day?
as a cube i will sit out on the fire escape
just when it begins to rain.
in the essence of profundity, of course,
is wonder.
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broken pencil tips
no more pencil shavings. no more tearstains.
no more deep grooves in the legs of the desk that
you cannot possibly pinpoint the origin of.
no more rings from the bottom of the third-favorite
coffee mug. no more quiet whimpering sounds.
i sweep the pencil shavings from the desk into my hands
again and again
but the pencil is still dull—the tip snaps—
but the desk is so worn and beaten i cannot think
full rehabilitation is a possibility. no more feeling sad
but not knowing why. or maybe i will go on and on
just like this, sitting here sharpening pencils, entrenched
in a coffee-stain sinkhole, letting myself drown.
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aftertaste
let the behind-the eyelids imagery
remain on my tongue, long dissolved, the taste of which
while indescribable can be traced around the edges by
the word bittersweet. the word nostalgia. the aftertaste of the aftertaste
of the cough syrup reserved only for childhood.
the chewable vitamins. the coating of gummy worms.
let the nostalgia of cherry-but-wrong coat the roof
of your mouth, here and now and then.
the duality of letting a memory lie and letting a memory go;
of reminiscence and of forgetting;
the spun sugar of it all. the molasses of memory.
sweet yet tinged with bitterness.
stop coughing but think about too-red medicine
and lingering artificiality,
once more a dual remembrance.
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on the application of inductive reasoning to transitivity
it’s perfectly reasonable not to believe them when they say
tomorrow will be better.
better than today.
perfectly reasonable to be so stuck in your downward spiral
of everything you have yet to do, congealing into that
all-too-familiar lump in your throat. you barely even choke
on your hesitation anymore, on your own insecurity,
not for a lack of it or even a dwindling supply but simply
from a tolerance built up over time. that’s perfectly reasonable,
you know. what they will tell you is that tomorrow will be better,
better than today,
but what they mean is transitivity can be established
from a single reference point. the existence of one better day
implies the existence of others.
there have been better days, so there will be better days.
they will say: tomorrow will be better
than today.
you will think—perfectly reasonably—that maybe it won’t be.
this time, though you will know that the better days
might seem out of reach
they will never quite be out of sight.
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who’s to say?
am i in love yet? who’s to say?
who’s to say i haven’t been in love this whole time,
in love with love, in love with the idea of love, with the idea of being in love,
et cetera.
who’s to say i am not made of love and therefore
i was born to shiver with an ache or a chill or a sigh
when i ask myself whether i am yet in love.
who’s to say i know what love is like?
i will answer, for lack of a better ending
or any sort of sure thing to turn to.
me. i will answer. me and only me.
but i will leave you to guess what i said.
(who’s to say?)
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in search of winter’s wonder
if you’ve grown up in the city like me
the moniker “winter wonderland” doesn’t quite make sense
for the longest time. the snowplows are loud and snarling
and once fallen, snow is quickly dirtied and shoveled and trod into slush,
an inconvenience at best. it’s an indoor life,
winter notwithstanding.
but it’s easy enough to grow up asking yourself
where the “wonder” part comes in. that’s before.
that’s before you wake up in the middle of the night
and you see that it’s snowed. and on the sidewalks
the snowdrifts almost glow in the streetlamp light, dim and haunted
and somehow breathtaking, too. you have grown up in the city
but in this midwinter fractal of a moment, everything is dead quiet.
your breath fogs the window and then all at once:
your chest balloons with inexplicable contentment.
with a sort of unexpected peace.
with—if you dare to think it, maybe it will at last fall into place—
wonder.
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encapsulated
i’ll fall asleep in your arms to the sound of your near-even
breaths and think of the ocean. i’ll watch the sunset night after night
and think of how light catches in your hair, sticky and sprawling
like spiderwebbed rainbows.
an entire world can be kept in one color. encapsulated.
you hear me talking in my sleep but you never tell me
what you hear me say. am i calling your name?
are you calling mine?
in flickering firelight your eyes are flimsy as shadows, timeless as death,
and i, holding you close, will twirl your hair around my finger—
auburn. a world in a color. auburn.
you and i like two colliding oceans, breathing slowed,
eyes closing as the sky fades to black.
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semper
i want.
i want.
i want.
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to whom it may concern
if you’re out there, if you’re out there, here’s more proof
that all my love poems are about me, too:
the wanting to be held and the
see me for who i am and the
endless spite and yearning in equal amounts?
those are all me.
the twisting of words into themselves,
the rhythm found in free verse,
the time lost in imagined liminal scenarios?
those are me, too.
my daydreams are still mine even if they are not real.
my piecemeal poetry still sounds in my voice,
still rings true even if it is so easy to be read as false,
as made-up, as manufactured and thus somehow lacking.
if you do not hear me within every word i write
then you aren’t listening.
if you go looking for me but only where you want to
that’s not on me.
you can find me in any damn love poem. try me. look closer,
if you’re out there. the proof’s there and more.
are you listening?
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