listen.

i have too
much love

it's been boiling
up inside me

and i'm aching
to explode

it's been so long
since i hugged

all i want
is someone

i can hug
and not let go

is this too
much to ask

i want to stay

"zombie"

this is not the first time
i have been a zombie
i have been a zombie
before

in a perpetual
state of shock
not quite sure
what to do
or
how to feel

never
quite
awake
but
simply
there

i sit frozen
aimless
eyes glazed
over trying
not to think
of anything

awaiting the next
pang
of realization
of my misery
to flood my mind with
darkness
violent outbursts
trailed by breakdowns

for the first time
in years tears
spring forth from
the nowhere where
she cut me

unable to work
i am laden with it
it builds up
atop my heartache
applies pressure
by the pound

all i do awake
is cry and feel
sorry

so
i want to stay
in dreams

i want to stay
where i can save her
and when i do she
thanks me

i don't want to kill me
but i need a way to breathe
the salt closes my throat
the singult chokes me

if i cough up love
don't bother mopping
since i know no
one will notice

"I kill the dead"

I kill the dead
leaves crisping brown
leave only flakes behind

I strew their entrails
as dust jacketed
across the walk

Their corpses snipped from twigs
by gusts of air recycled
by we parasites

they flutter helpless over concrete
skeletons of springtime past
betrayed by nature

Rubber soul sinks
crunches autumn
sifts its thinly threaded veins

the consequence
a mutilated remnant
once unbroken green

collapsed into itself
to humor modern man
who kills dead for their music

the lazy liquid

"Molasses"

Thumping bottom of browned bottle
with my ungraced palm
pining for that one last tablespoon
an oozing of molasses

for one tiny batch
of my favourite cookie
made to cure
this impatience.

As the lazy liquid
inches toward the lip

I think of you

a perfect sugary
morsel of molasses
caught against the rim:

your viscous film
stretches to be
mixed into my batter

but the adhesion keeps you
clung to glass.

As the syrup
creeps I hum

I
have
been
waiting
for
you
to
escape.

At last the remnants
leap to bowl

and I spoon out all I can

just as I shall spoon you out
tomorrow.

Soon,
molasses,
make me melt.

you I'd treated stranger

"Cookies"
(a sonnet)

I saw your face today but didn't see you;
I passed you by with neither smile nor wave,
but knew it you but seconds later, peering
behind and pond'ring clearing my mistake.
Our eyes had locked, and you I'd treated stranger:
for this I'm stricken now with pangs of guilt.
The corner of your lips proved recognition,
yet mine, pained, answered no more than a wilt.
You I must have offended, so I turn
on my return to where you had been sat,
to conjure few apologetic words
to promise you I'd not forget you yet.
When mental data clouds, erodes, and blurs,
our photos fade; friend's face, when faced, demurs.

[read my other sonnets: Incubus | The Courting]

colon end-parenthesis

"today"
[written 10.17.10]

today was once a special day
today was like a holiday
I would await today for days
and when it came
hooray :)

today today is just another day

a myriad persons

"Obituary"

My eyes grip the grey print
where a name is inked
and weaves through wood pulp.

One more soul made disincarnate
ushered to extinction
whose existence had been
unbeknownst to me.

My mind hums the Flaming Lips:
Do you realize that everyone
you know someday will die ?

All the names and faces
you hold dear will someday
simmer down in somber silence
rendering your mem'ries obsolete.

And nobody will notice
any change.

I presently am pondering
how many times I've died:
I've been a myriad persons
who are little like me now,

yet I never noticed
who I am

had changed.

And I don't miss me.

the constant contact craving

"Not yet."

[Poemspring #1; written 05.13.10; originally published here.]

We've been through phases one by one
Attraction, Wondering, Learning, Doubt
And now the Waiting has commenced
At some point in the falling-out

I want to talk to her again
The urge is irresistible
Her smile, her sound, her semaphore
The learning how we're similar

But wait.
Not yet.

I must hold off, lest she believe
I'm something worse than what I am
Unfortunate but crucial, Waiting
Gives "her" time to think of "him"

I must maintain the distancing
I must restrain the constant contact craving
So I won't be overbearing
Though it's really hard sometimes

Just wait.
Not yet.

re: action

she,

finally ?

hugged.

- me

[I wrote this mentally on 07.09.10, though I never wrote it down until now. :P It is my shortest non-haiku, followed by "what we made."]

when my soul has smoldered cold

[I have very little idea when I wrote this, since I did not datestamp it. All I know is it was a few months ago; and I found it paired with "self-awareness," so it was probably written around the same time (08.10.10 ... a bit later, I think).]

"therapy"

coddammit
I feel like I have no one to talk to
about the serious, emotional, important things
when I have inward issues I have trouble sorting out
I need help
but all my friends feel superficial
all my bonds are brittle
I feel alone with my own thoughts
my only therapy manifest through page
— a black pen capped with red 
that sheds blue in the darkness.

I don't have much to pay for therapy
but sometimes it would taste so sweet
not to seek answers, mind,
but just to talk
& meanwhile someone listens
oh how long it's been
since someone listened.

I know I want a hand to hold
in truth not just to hold her
but when my soul has smoldered cold
to use her for a shoulder.

therapy is just like all else:
but some words selected from a lexicon,
arranged, estranged, & sequenced
by a mortal mind
groping to be heard
among the mass of echoed anomie □

あなたはいまわたしがすきですか。

"depression"

anata wa

more words fumble from my tongue
in the hopes you'll humour me
with semisweet nothings of your own

ima

your silence distances you from your image
casting doubt on my decision to adore you
an embarrassment I can't bear to endure

watashi ga

one more night elapses unrequited
I question consequences of confession
tears well up inside my barren ducts

suki desu

impatiently I ponder your reaction
and wonder if you'll ever come to comprehend
I want to hug you only when you answer

ka

pixies trading darkness to our neurons

"Ex-Isle"
[written 05.18.10]

There once was a place
somewhere subconscious
floating between the clouds of dreams
and the memory palaces
where you could go when you had
nowhere else to go
It was a happy place, to say the least
There was always someone there to greet you
welcome you and comfort you with fuzzy words
It was salvation
it was an island for castaway aspirations
and it was always there to give you hope
a hug and a backpat
and send you on your way
In those times nobody ever felt alone

But we cared not for our island
We were careless
we smuggled in emotions not allowed there
and we frittered them away

The rule was
on this island
everyone is happy
But our souls went rogue and didn't want to listen
Soon a black market erupted in our thoughts
pixies trading darkness to our neurons
and the darkness sent to spread along our spines
sorrow anger guilt frustration bitterness retaliation
all the things they'd tried to lock out
now seeped inward

The island was undone
It'd lost its purpose
so they closed it off
and nobody can find their way there anymore
We lost our happy place
because we'd tried to make it more like real life

Now
when you're alone and you have
nowhere else to go
all you can do is sink inside yourself
and dissolve deeper into darkness
swimming blindly in an ocean of regret
wanting nothing more than to reach that once-island
all you find is ex-isle with a cold, brittle shore
so you drown in bubbling rot.

A home is what you make it.

[see also: Gift]

mineral water

"impurity"

A businessman embodied by attire
exudes an aura of authority.
His nestled tie proves he is more than man,
a paragon of principles pristine.
But as he lips a crisp sip from a bottle
and clears his throat of what the humans breathe,
he hides what all the lipsticked mannequins
who peer through shaded lenses don't perceive:
the drugs he's capped within his perfect pocket,
the secret sin he's buttoned up his sleeves.

a sort of babbling.

subject: rant
style: rant
source: 23 minutes. 

[This honestly was not supposed to be a poem. I intended it to be only a rant by which to release my bottled-up emotions. Naturally, though, I found myself instinctively trying to speak poetically, so as it went on it sort of turned into something pretty. Hence I've titled it and added it to my list of poems as an afterthought.]

"spaces"

life falls to pieces.
i have too much
too much to worry about
god.

the trouble is
i have these ideas in my mind
of how i want things to work out
and i just can't tolerate the thought
that they will happen any other way.
it's constricting me

fuck.
i hate social anxiety
i hate not
i hate
i want to just live

so much stress
too much stress

i'd rather explode

my head aches
from all the nosnesne

i don't think
i'm cut out for

i
life ?

ask her out
ask her out
ask her out

i know.
i should.
i want
to

I AM NOT CUT OUT

my nightmares
consist
of purple leeches
seeping in to

scare me
scared me

maybe
it will work
out
no.

yes ?

maybe.

i'm scared
of rejection
but that's not the worst part
i'm scared of what will happen
if i am not rejected
this is what social anxiety
can do.
i am scared for my life
to do anything with her.
so why is that my goal ?

i like her.
i know
do
but do
i like myself ?

m
reduced to a sort of babbling
to make sense
of my own head

mind *

don't
me

worse yet
my head hurts
because it splits itself
into pieces
on a nano basis.

this is called ocd

or so i think

left right left right left right left right ad infinitum
emphasize

infinitum

so music calms me
momentarily
but it doesn't do my work
though

work. damn it
as if i need one more
thing to

reduced to biting
biting my lips again
great
just great
just

let mek now whe nth esp ace sse ttl ewi lly ou?

it would mean
a lot of me

yes.

it is time
is
it is not yet time

i really just want to

talk

to you

(is that) such a
(is that) so hard
(is that) too much

to ask
is to coqneur

stood in

letter to Santa:

no firetruck
for me this year.

all I ask
are answers.

if You know God
forward him this
please.

I know that I can
trust You since You
follow through.

god never
gives me
what I ask for

so I wonder
why.

stood out

"impatience"

waiting
foot taps its thousandth
beat to the spewing buds
in less than common
time

waiting
for a word
(any)
word from her
letters draw out
draw
out
when imagined

neurons tire of firing
these impatient thoughts
they stretch and yawn
for minutes as time
drags them out
drags them
out
drags
them out

as album closes
head hangs
at the loss of hours
and what the hours lost

stood up

"Revelation"

If this works out right,
I'll have everything I want.
That never happens.