No Man's Land

I.
In all the hollow stadiums
never did I imagine it would be us by the vending machine,
cranking out old war stories,
eating expired skittles and drinking cold coffee,
our bodies silhouetted under the bleachers.


It was a sweet nectar, black rose kind of evening
and the fog made it seem like everything wasn't in focus.
It made it easier stumble into sinkholes
pretending that we were all along
puddle jumping.

II.
I could've told you then
and there were so many things.
But to you, I suspect they would sound like nothing but a sordid tale
spoken only to lull youngsters into shaky oblivion.
You'd take it for nothing more than folklore
and from my lips, even more fraudulent.
Not to mention the lack of trust I had for words during moments like these.


Because all that you have said, all that I have done -
nothing but wild reflections throwing cast iron heat in the daylight.
Through the breaks in the bleachers,
the sky looks down,
a tender gaze, a knowing smile,
the constellations spelling sin like G-I-F-T.

III.
You propped yourself up on your elbows
held the can to your mouth,
wincing as the cold aluminum paled your lips.
You planted a coffee stained kiss at my jugular
and pulled back only for me to lock my arms around your neck
and fasten my lips to yours, cold and warm,
a thermostat romance we knew too well.

IV.
I dread the lightening of the sky; in truth I do.
It becomes the dispelling of illusion,
the bottoming out of sleep deprived drunkenness into harsh sobriety.


The glass pieces now we use
to make picturesque iridescent tinted windows
will open cuts on our fingertips only when the sun rises,
only when your head hits the pillow,
only when you forget that ours is just a temporary world.


Like most things,
you can only start getting hurt when you start waking up.
Maybe that's why we're still here.
Maybe that's why we're hiding in abandoned stadiums
underneath bleachers that creak in the slightest gust of wind.

V.
I haven't slept in three days and counting.
It is such a cruel trade off.
It is in your presence that I feel the most at peace -
thoughts barely any energy to run free.
How rare it is for me to find someone I can fall asleep with.
And yet it is with you that I cannot waste the hours with.
You and I - we are already a dream. If I close my eyes,
the world will wake up with me.

Regarding the Overflowing Trashcan and the Ever Empty Page

I long for the day
when I hold fear by its beating heart,
feel its breath come and go
in the racing pulse below its neck,
when its legs are two stumps
finally incapable of pursuing me.

I will crush its windpipe,
pulverize its voice box
for all the lies it spewed
that I believed to be truth.
And as its vitality slips through my fingers,
the eviction will be official.

And in the extra space I will plant my ego.
and I will water it daily,
trim it should become overgrown.
I will have conquered one demon.

Drawbridge

At the end of it all,
you can have the door cracked open
time and time again,
expose the world inside for a minute second,
wear your outsider heart on your sleeve.

But it is never truly open
until the hinges break
and the wood falls to you feet,
breaking free of the frame and all.
There,
an open drawbridge
an open world
slowly blending into yours.

They do not belong to themselves any more.

You — 1.48am

It was all I could do —
holding onto your barbed wire fingertips,
your candy cane arms
beguiling yet, humane.
For all the agony that ensued,
it was all I could do
to swallow every burning bite,
force-fed and bloated,
metal crunching — bits and bobs
grinding my pearly whites
till every gate
was golden.

Booking It

She is picking up the tattered paperback book. The spine has a million wrinkles in it, the white jagged unbroken lines strongest at the center. It has been cracked hundreds of times. She understands because this story is a heavy one to carry on anyone’s back. Her fingertips trail tenderly over the cover, the colors now faded. The sky blue has become paler, less vibrant — a couple shades away from being grey. The baby pink has become beige. As she opens it carefully, it makes a protesting creak. Perplexed, she examines the front page again, seeing that it has come right off its spine, only hanging on by the back cover. She traces the exposed spine to feel the remains of glue. It seems as though it will not be righted despite how many times it has been fixed down.

Despite the newer copies staring out from the glass cages, despite how destroyed this one is, it always seems to receive the most care.

Izora

It was the scarlet rebellion
of a young woman.
Blooming she had an expiration date,
and plucking destroyed any further extensions.

And they negect to mention
rebellion simply means
not taking death with a smile.
And young is just a synonym
of descending into hell
with sweet heaven still
on the tip of your tongue.

Beyond the Breakage

I am the way glass shards try to make music
as what was once whole
falls so hard it leaves no mark
but shatters irreparably apart.

For the Love of Old Things

This is What it is to Live on the Edge

For as long as I have known,
I’ve been on a precipice,
too far back to be called the edge
but too near to be just nameless woods.

Close enough to the end
to imagine rushing it to feel the rush
but far enough to feel like standing with you,
withstanding brash wind is even rougher.

The Cost of Content Creation

There are only so many notes, so many octaves in the frequency we can hear. There are only so many words created, so many words you can fit into a dictionary. Everything has been made, has been done. Sometimes every note has been sung to its finale that when you open your mouth, nothing comes out. Sometimes every word has been written to epilogues that when you pick up a pencil, no letters form. It’s hard to come up with things people have never seen before. It’s even harder to make things that you have never seen before — almost altogether impossible.

Feeding your muse is easy when she is around. The tricky thing is what happens when she is lost somewhere out in the world, holding the keys to your inspiration. So you walk around, kicking pebbles into drain holes as your hamstrings start to wear but you don’t stop there. Inspiration, it’s like the weather. You can plan for it. You can forecast it based on what you have to work with today. But it always reserves the right to shut you in, freeze you or tear you to pieces.

This is the cost of constant creation, of creativity. It is also why the arts are shunned in the world of profit. For priceless work to make profit, the creator covers a greater cost and pays a greater price.

Waiting out every dry spell.