a light touch of the sea
a greeting, for me
a reminder, of peace
and something very gentle
lifting from inside
to meet the breeze

pick me apart until i’m nothing but crushed daisies on a sidewalk,

until i’m dreams dashed on the pavement.

pick me apart, love…

pull at my seams,

drag on my soul,

weigh down my world with your burdens.

i will wear them til i drown,

and meet your diligence with my own.

so pick me apart, my love…

and i will hold my fragments in open palms for your perusal

until you take them, with pleasure,

your promises a riot on my heart…

your neglect, the rot i should’ve scented from the start

the poet

fear me

for i am unafraid to live alone until i want you

fear me

for i will never need you by my side

but love me

because one day i’ll choose my forever muse

and if you love me well,

then maybe… just maybe… i’ll choose you.

Interlinked

Traversing my walls

Taking tender steps yet

Sure-footed steady as you go

Putting me perfectly at ease

Laid-back onlooking between relaxed blinks

Of crinkled eyes, thinking with a satisfied

Sigh that this feels oh so right

As stoniness buckles under

The gentle sway of thoughtful touch

Bringing joyfully energizing

Vim and vigor to my days

Turning up the heat at night

Until we burst into flames

Fireworks colorfully lighting up the sky

Fourth of July has nothing

On our pyrotechnics display

Then we fumble drowsily sweet

Into dreamy gratified sleep

Reaching out for each other

Circuit complete

I dreamt you

No you’re real

Still I don’t know you well

Most especially not the way you came

To me in my dream state

How to put into words something

So no-holds-barred passionate

Frenzy escalating at a just-right rate?

Pulsating with need, freed from

Everyday brain-numbing constraints

Delirious yet decidedly lucid

Abrading yet making every ache better

Via ecstatic escapades; exhaltations

In every exhalation escaping trembling

Lips loosened easily–volume rising

With each vibration from you to me

Enough to quake me awake wondering

Why you and why in this unexpected way

Is my subconscious playing dirty

Tricks on me? If I go to bed

And you meet me there

Another go-round would be

Icing on the cake

Pretty bold of you to say that I’m overreacting
Would only acknowledge my bleeding 
Accompanied by blood curdling screaming!

Because it began to stain your clothes
Left me to rot…
While you bought a new shirt.
Said it was a pity I died!
But, I’ve survived worse.

Perhaps they were right in putting love into books.

Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

-William Faulkner

Georges Bataille

Gillian Flynn

Sue Zhao

Georges Bataille, Guilty (tr. Bruce Boone)

Mary Oliver

Margarita Karapanou

Touched

I don’t want a lot

Until I do…what to do with

My moody to-and-fro self?

When the longing for more

Starts to grow, so does the guilt:

Of being a restless mess,

An incorrigible ingrate,

A wide-eyed whore

So I try to ignore every craving till

I get so thirsty, I drink too much

So hungry, I devour too much

So sleep-deprived, I crash too hard

Falling too far to connect

The dots back to start

Only sensing I was trained

Somewhere between being treated

Like a precious commodity and

Denied any actual affection

Maybe one cannot die of touch

Starvation, yet this feels like

Afterlife

Stimulation

when you feel reduced

to just a human

to just a speck,

to just a stack of atoms,

i will magnify

your every moment,

your every word,

your everything

you think departs

once it occurs.

i will recognize a monument

when you swear

you’re just a shack,

i will behold a sun to orbit,

when you think

you’re the blade of grass.

i will be the microscope

that always finds what matters

amidst your mass.

- “what matters”

misery afflicts me like a disease, 

but hope makes an addled physician out of me,

as i devour paintings and poetry, love and lyrics 

and everything in between as medicine,

in hopes that the Polaris 

or a forget-me-not 

or anything, 

anything, 

anything could be

the remedy. 

- “remedy”

i am a fighter even if my fight looks like 

cowering in a black room because bleak thoughts 

make the world spin, when i yearn to be motionless, anchored to ceramic tile—anchored to something.

i am a fighter even if my fight looks like 

cradling my quivering body when the world says 

i should wield it like machinery, 

as if these soft hands could ever tear down anything besides myself.

i am a fighter even if my fight looks like 

seeping blood, sweat and tears as i mourn the wounds instead of stitching them up.

i am a fighter even if my fight looks like

longing to surrender, but lingering for hope to trickle in like light through a cracked door. 

- “another kind of fighter”

you cannot tell me that time is an arrow, as i stand taller than my mother, 

yet shrink in her shadow like it’s my first day of school and i am 6 years old. 

and often i still am, as i transport worms out of gutters and mourn snails squashed on pavements. 

but sometimes it’s 12 am and i’m 7, dissecting dark corners in my room like it’s a crime scene

and i’m now the investigator searching for ghosts

in place of monsters that once made me the victim. 

other times it’s 6 am and i’m 10, but i’m not stirring from nightmares, 

i’m slipping out of bed and into them, like shackles instead of slippers. 

then i’m 14 with secrets that mark me in scratches, in bruises and insecurities,

but i mask them with lies and schoolwork and sweaters and smiles

that split my face in half to distract from the pit that is my chest. 

suddenly—perhaps finally—i’m 16 in August and every hour is 3 in the afternoon;

the hospital bed feels like the precipice and everything that comes after is the descent

because time is not linear, it is not the arrow or the bullet. 

sometimes it feels like the plunge before the collapse,

like forever pointing the gun, but never pulling the trigger,

or standing with the bow drawn, but never letting go because you’re always pulling back. 

- “time is no arrow”

Cold Shoulder

We play this game of hide and seek

Always lurking just to leave

Five missed calls,

Three or seven texts

I’m watching and waiting for my next fix

Winter’s claws are sinking in;

And lonely nights make the shy grow bolder

But it gets colder over your cold shoulder

Than I ever gave this long winter credit for

Scorching heat glazed his tongue, leaving the taste of ashes on his breath. “They make us into hungry dogs down here,” he pointed down the line of cages, all the creatures pacing their tombs. “They bleed us and starve us and pick at our instincts until we are wound so tight we snap at everything. But they forget,” he seethed, his voice saturated in some foreign entity shaking with power, “theyforget that a hungry dog is never loyal.”

–Thief of Sins and Secrets

Tara Hardy, from My, My, My, My, My

Richard Siken;Little Beast

Susan Sontag, I, etcetera: Stories  

Franz Kafka

Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights

Greta Garbo

old paperbacks, messy hair, mismatched socks, disorganized playlists, kisses on collarbone, smeared mascara, crumpled paper, art galleries, museums, rainy sunsets and gothic architecture, coffee, studying under dim light

The Wonder Years

literaturemoons:

Laurie Halse Anderson