It will work this time. It has to.

“It’s enough to make you wonder if it’s better to be a perfect physical specimen than it is to be bright. If all the time you’ve spent lost in thought has been a waste, when all along it’s been easier to just -run-.”

—	Shane Hawley I've got a lot of work to do.

52nd Street

Davis places a nickel into the meter.

He says nothing. He walks to the corner and watches the sun set,

the ocean of light receding to a beach the color of graves

saves his voice for a woman he knew his whole life would be waiting there.

Hello

refracts through the air like a lighthouse beacon through fog.

Belle says nothing. She is waiting for a man she doesn't even know

to look her way and say

love,

did you know a fault line lies under New York City?

When she answers correctly,

as she's never sure she will with hard questions about geology,

she will notice him there, making echoes on the earth in tribute

to her tectonic skin

her smile, causing her brow and her mouth to move like mountains.

He is only a player in the most literal sense.

Never much for big band, just steel strings in hand and her,

his muse, hallowed be her harp-string of a heart,

thumping to the rhythm of black-and-blue ruckus,

prayers to gods of memory loss and escape.

Fate finds Davis miles away from himself -

kind of blue, or kind of silent. Tonight,

he is a million sacrifices of soundwaves

not knowing true love's real name,

gambling like the lord is coming tomorrow

so he must sin well tonight...

Safety safely secured me a seat at a feast

when all I want is a sandwich with you.

Belle smiles bashfully,

feeling bold in a sleepless city

roused from half-real reveries.

Name the time and place,

she says, feet shaking and tapping to the rhythm of rolling rocks.

Belle begins moving, dancing like she forgot what year it is

what block she was on

who she was waiting for.

You.

His hand glides up and down the neck of the instrument

like a lover just returned blind from the war

as its case lies discarded as last night's mistakes on the sidewalk.

He holds it firm, praying this is the day an upright bass becomes a love poem

thinking

Wow, if pretty could kill, you'd be the Manhattan Project.

And he'd be the last survivor.

And she'd be the last thing he'd be alive for.

As Davis plucks strings like he is a puppetmaster

and Belle dances like a liquid Pinocchio

but she only wants to lie with him

as the quake hits crescendo

and the notes

become notes, strips of papyrus carved with quartz saying

You are the rhythm playing inside me

and I lose the beat enough without throwing it away.

My body is sheet music

and you sight read me flawlessly.

Courtlan did not get arrested that night.

He did not get one too many traffic tickets

and was not told to give up his car

or his jazz spot.

He gave the renaissance lovers a place to go,

didn't attract the police to Davis and Belle's loitering love poem.

On the other side of the street,

Belle dares God to snatch the papyrus from her palms,

her paper skin turning stone, glistening as she falls into

his arms like a suicide, back-first...

his hand moves up and down her neck

his instrument

his lover

his instrument

his lover...

His fingers explore her skin.

52nd street

lays scattered like a deck of cards waiting to be picked up.

All that jazz...

but what's a handful of clubs to a royal flush?

Love, Davis says

did you know a fault line lies under New York City?

Under 125th,

Belle says back.

Davis packs up his past just in time to feel the rumble of downbeat.

He takes Belle's hand, walks to the wreckage they created and says

See? It took God six days to create the Earth.

In one night, I opened it just for you.

A swingset on Homestead Road

June 8, 2011, 10:38 PM.

Up and down, I listen to T.I. and look at the

fifteen stars that are visible like teeth I hope to still smile with when I'm old

and gray. In the bushes I hear footsteps. I jump, half-cocked, from my seat

burying my knees into sod and sand.

I remember:

the skyline, the night, love, beauty,

these are not things that belong to me.

My frame is too monstrous to catch butterflies so I crush cocoons

and hold on to the technicolor wings

taking what I can get, I remember

people like me don't unfold, we burst.

I am not a star but the pile of dust it leaves when it implodes.

Rewind: dinner.

We are talking around the table about classes and theology

and the subject shifts to the subjects of my writing,

my love of superheroes and love stories without proper endings

I explain I write what I know.

The subject shifts to the reason why one of the guests

had been avoiding me for sixth months

and she explains she was just busy.

She was the fifth to say this;

I wonder which of my inadequacies did it this time.

The beatings I received at 6 years old

turn into a furrowed brow at 22.

The raised voices that played the violin strings of my childhood homes

turn to hushed tones on stage and in places where I can let go of my roar.

The jeers from when I was in grade school

are the weights that hunch my back quasimodo even now.

But that night, fifteen random stars smiled as my feet and the corners of my mouth

turned skyward.

I wanted to hold each one,

feel its warmth before it supernovas into memories

like I know we are wont to do at the most selfish moment

and name them,

stick them into a bottle like water and play them with my fingertips.

23. The issue of X-men where Beast's mutations furthers and he turns blue.

119. the first time I said "I hate you."

840. The night my best friend told me I'd always just be second to her.

912. 5 shots of tequila and a broken jaw.

17. God just makes some people different.

263. When you can calculate prime numbers over 100 in your head you're a nerd.

777. The ugly boy you could never love but who always rang the bell on time.

323. My last fight 8 years ago.

324. Bloods broke into my house. There was gunfire and I couldn't walk anymore.

613. You want to know how I got these scars? I weighed my mistakes in an iron maiden.

540. On one knee, hands pop-locked into prayer position; the last time I say "I hate you."

400. I loved you enough to let you go.

13. I'm diabetic and starve myself.

04. The shattered violet lantern ring and the empty bottle of gin beside it.

1,209 is so distant I'm afraid I'm making up its name.

It sounds like Daddy, are you proud of me now?

Did you see how high I swung?

How dark it was?

I promise I wasn't afraid.

Parthenon (original; not to be confused with the poem on my Tumblr)

From the highway,
the city always looks smaller.
At night all the comers and goers flying
down the street
look like fireflies waiting to burst
into a thousand rainbows and these
these are my first memories of holding your hand.
I want all nights to end this way,
watching the cars crash into pillow cases full of rose petals,
the light shining just so.
"Picturesque" should have met us before it defined itself.
I'm sure it would have had something to say about our feet,
bare and dangling over the infinite catwalk
that seduced us.
It would complain of our pulse being too loud,
too syncopated.
It would ask why we were a symphony of lips parting
then meeting
then parting
then ask why it must be just a word
dribbling off of a third grader's chin.

And I know nothing of either.

Some nights, I feel lost in a sea of love letters. They're addressed to all of my closest friends, but none of them are mine. I'm just the messenger. The waypoint. I give the people what they want and they thank me with hugs and "I love you"s; none of them feel as real as I need them to when I need them to.

I'm not the type to get angry, but if I were, I'd be infuriated by the feeling. As it stands, I'm not motivated enough to hold grudges. I don't cry as often as I need to, I'm too harsh on myself, and I still treat my scars as if they are something of which to be ashamed. There's no real point to this blog post. But writing it made me feel better.

In short, nothing, no matter how inane, is for nothing. I love you, person reading this. I hope you're having an amazing day or night :-)

Lost.

I.

She called me beautiful.

I don't think it's because she's in awe of me.

I think it's because she doesn't find me attractive

but refuses to hurt my feelings by saying so

so she sticks to a word that can be as ambiguous

as a deep breath before your first kiss.

II.

There used to be a graying tower

where their cottage by the sea sits now.

They're waiting for the day the ship finally comes in,

the tears tearing its hull to bit after it's realized

the crew's families stopped on them years ago.

III.

I used to love her,

but I learned a long time ago

that some things simply don't translate.

La Douleur Exquise

doesn't mean anything to her tongue but

I'm not good enough

is all I have

and it doesn't ever mean all that I need it to.

IV.

This language is beautiful,

but there are so many words confused in their meaning

and they're never what I need them to be

when I need them to be.

Some days, I wonder if I'll ever be good enough.