To my future lover
I’m sure you’re sitting in your room
watching Netflix in your underwear.
I’d like to think you’re writing
poetry about me,
but I doubt that is the case.
I just have to warn you —
I am a mess.
I wear oversized t-shirts
far too often.
I am very clumsy.
I snort when I laugh.
I don’t like to go out a lot.
I will pick out my
flaws from time to time
and say how much I hate them.
I will ravage you with passion
some days,
and some days I will be indifferent
to intimacy.
I am fire.
I will hold my rights above
my head with dignity.
I will be equal to you,
whether you are a man
or a woman.
I will treat you respectfully.
I will try to run away.
I will pull away as hard as I can.
I will try to rip you from me
like a bandaid.
Do not let me get away.
Also, I am sitting in my underwear
watching Netflix
and writing poetry
about you.
High School Didn't Prepare Me for This
I.
Will you miss me
when I leave?
Will you toss and
turn in your sleep?
II.
In your dreams,
you’ll say everything
you were too shy to say,
and in mine,
I fear you’ll push
me away.
III.
I wanted to fall in love,
but I fell into confusion,
and you can’t be a winner
when all you know is losing.
IV.
Please remind yourself
to keep in touch,
because remember
we were supposed
to fall in love.
V.
(Come on, babe,
we’re late.)
Finding You
Somewhere in the flowers,
In the meadow I trampled
And left behind like
Yesterday’s abandoned tomorrow,
Soon to harvest the sun’s aching
Presence, the burning upon our flesh.
I find you behind the walls,
Scratching just beneath the surface.
I find you beneath my skin,
Scratching just beneath the surface.
I find you beneath the floorboards,
Scratching just beneath the surface.
I find you in my heart,
Dead and gone as its chambers.
I find you in my heart—
Talking Therapy
Doctor, I am beyond you.
I was a boy: wet clay to mould.
The pulp of my happiness in mysterious hold;
The man who crafted something obscene
From my boyish heart; my peaceful dreams,
To this day—I think—runs free
Crafting more clipboard clichés like me.
His touch was scolding. I still see the burns
On my skin, in the night, when my conscious turns
To these depths I discuss, with you, Doctor.
Truth be told, the nightmares stopped when I fucked her.
My girlfriend. Did I not mention? No, I don’t want a test.
I am here for her: she bids my daemons rest.
Anyway, I am quite aware that I digress;
I find this hard to discuss. To use the word ‘molest.’
Yes, I’ve thought about killing; myself and others.
Yes, I imposed his face upon my lover’s past lovers.
Oh, you did not ask me. I suppose my mind wanders.
Understand; in this state, I am quite prone to blunders.
My mind is an abyss which unknown illness fills.
But of course, prescribe me your wondrous pills.
“I speak of love that comes to mind: The moon is faithful, although blind; She moves in thought she cannot speak. Perfect care has made her bleak. I never dreamed the sea so deep, The earth so dark; so long my sleep, I have become another child. I wake to see the world go wild.”
—Allen Ginsberg, “An Eastern Ballad”What Is Poetry Made Of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice,
and lust, and pain,
and bitter refrains,
and love unrequited,
or returned, then lost,
or felt too deeply
no matter the cost,
and beauty so pure
as to make us weep,
and the type of darkness
that won’t foster sleep,
and hope and despair,
and obsessive need,
and everything else
our pens might bleed.
That’s what poetry’s made of.
microbes
I read today about how due to the microbia
in every one of us, each of us
only roughly ten per cent “human”
cellularly speaking, and told me that
rushing outwards yet involving everybody, i could
consider myself more a collection
than individual.
I asked my mother to refrain from making any rude remarks,
at least for a night or an hour of the night ten
per cent of her heard me went from taxonomies
to maybe Pluto, which is still a planet
which is still a planet which is still a planet
cellularly speaking, in every one of us
more a collection, due to the microbia or microcosmos.
Passing out at his own birthday party in
Lateral opposition to the mattress,
he sleeps on it like a sluggish stone
whose mica deposits have dulled.
Beneath him the mattress struggles,
sheets strangling his ankles.
He rustles and turns perpendicular awake,
but this is false step.
He collapses languid in the deep mattress
and only God knows if he’ll ever get up.
