overslept life.

i make plans just to break them. i set my alarm just to have something to turn off in the morning...makes the day a hair more interesting. i slept september away. yes, yes i did. with a little work here and there, the rest was sleep. but then i stay up til' 6 so really i just sleep when i should be up. so i didnt sleep away the month, i just slept away the mornings. either way i'm useless and this is just another reason for me to say that i'm useless. i'm such a loser.

inspired by t.s. eliot

your Waste Land
resides high above my head—
as a cloud—
or right beneath my feet—
as a shadow.

One is a reminder of heights
i will not reach on my own,
the other follows me—
even into my dreams—
but does not allow me to
touch it,
for then i would feel
my ego

and that is beauty
i am not ready
to see

someone else's poetry.

A Poem for Speculative Hipsters
Amiri Baraka

He had got, finally,
to the forest of motives. There were no
owls, or hunters. No Connie Chatterleys
resting beautifully
on their backs, having casually
brought socialism
to England.
Only ideas,
and their opposites
Like,
he was really
nowhere.

another monday

time waits for no one. i know this. and it is why may 17th is so far away in the scheme of continuum but like yesterday in my thoughts--partially because i would love for may 18th to be today and not september 27th, mondays as different as education and none. that way my whole summer would be ahead of me, more time to think, do nothing, think more, dream, no deadlines, no curfew, self-imposed, no thoughts of the future, who i am, should be, will be, won't be, can't be, anything but that. time. laughing. laughing at me.

i have not written a complete poem in three days. she made me re-think my motives, inspiration. i feel the need to pull the words that fill blank pages in front of me closer to my heart, to some universal understanding of me, being. in no way do i want to slight my voice or my audience, both irreplacable, raw, uncut, me.

all i have is this right now. i wrote it yesterday while listening to some song i cannot remember.

i dream in rhyme,
i speak in free verse

i think in sonnets,
i feel in haiku

i hurt in sestinas,
i whisper blues.



another monday. here's to life.

love letter #1

Dear You,

oh me. they are paying me now for the trangressions i have forced upon my heart and your name. my love, i never planned to make a career out of streaming tears and untempered longing but even after you left i could still smell you, hear your breathing next to mine as i slept. there is a place for you here with me and now i understand that no one is coming to fill this empty space, this outline hollow with heartbreak. nowadays, i spend most of my mornings and afternoons writing blueprints for grief and building winding stairwells to glass ceilings of desire. i can see heaven, sometimes, in old pictures of you, just underneath the glint of the sun but the cloak of hades rides low on the curtains after sunset, so during the evening hours my head is bowed and my body still. i allow the darkness of passing time, all time after you, darkness, to consume me. the world cannot be turning for everyday feels the same. funny, how i quit smoking while perfecting the art of drinking. for every shot i take, i take two for you baby. for every full moon, i carve your name in my arm. for every couple i see in the lonely streets, i blow a kiss in the direction the wind moves, hoping it will reach you. my life has paused and is waiting for you to come back and play. i lie in wait.

with all that i am,
me.

the song i never want to end (unedited)

you are the song i never want to end,
the quiet storm session on the way home, alone.

i drink to you in my room as i two-step
to Maze's 'Golden Time of Day'--lonliness

never felt so good until it came packaged as a gift
with thoughts of you within a dream of my mind's eye.

you are the reason for rhythm, the blues
working a sweat upon the brow of the jukebox,

why fingertips dance themselves across the lips
of lovers in vertical, kinetic foreplay--orgasms

echoing out of opened windows, mimicking
the crescent birth of the moon.

you are the mathematic equivalent of zero,
neither positive nor negative,yet the root

of all others, indivisible, all-encompassing everything
and nothing--the limit approaching infinity,

what one reaches for even when he is not reaching.

she said

" i want to make love to you in free verse to sade with the windows open in the dark, so dark we can't see, all we can do is feel. i want to be one of your poems i want to be recreated by your hands in the dark. i want to feel that place inside of you where your deepest thoughts come from. you're so beautiful. i've never known anyone quite like you. sometimes i feel like you are privy to my most private thoughts. the ones that you can only think when no one else is even around. it's like there is something inside of me i have never quite been able to put words to, but you do it."

how does one respond to this:

"damn"

now i need seven vanilla candles, one bottle of oil, a box of prophylactics and a plane ticket to atlanta...oh, and of course a pad and a pen. i need to take a walk.

new york.

jai and i walked from chinatown to columbia on the 12th...walking 1st avenue up to 42nd (United Nations)...then across to Times Square...up to Columbus Circle and into Central Park...most of the day was spent chilling in the park...we walked from 72nd to 123rd. We stayed at teacher's college in Columbia w/ Kamauru. Spent the other day walking Greenwich Village. I'm home now, loving NYC just a little more, planning my move there via graduate school. It has to be done. And now back to writing poetry.

untitled mirror project.

it will only take just a little longer to reach the end of the road to the place where our shadows will meet their end where the dark corners of our dreams move together, a little closer to understanding, weare not so different we only look it under a certain light, while in dissimilar mood, during a listening of music (in tune with our vanity) or a twitch of the heart attempting to fit itself inside another (two beats) or the breaking of a fingernail, or in the company of the same sex, the greatest air of conformity, thick as an urban august haze.
you have known me before (you know me now) we tread the paths of life in the same shoes, borrowed, broken, wise as drunk men nearing death. i know you, proud, disillusioned, always waiting, endless waiting for a vision that will never come--you reflect a still eye, frustration hanging low on each lid, watching dreams open themselves as gifts, revealing nothing.
our only salvation is to forget, to pour out our memories under black light, under the keen eye of each other's image. yet we stray, we continue to hope and for that we suffer, alone, in rooms with no windows, beginning to believe that nothing else, outside, is...

haverford

i've been up at haverford with brandon since saturday. yesterday we went into the city (philly) and ate philly cheese steaks on south street. i bought a few cds...jill scott's new joint and a new ryan adams release (love is hell). the campus here is great, very peaceful, a nice postcard to send home to the folks. unfortunately i will have to leave tomorrow but i have enjoyed my time here. all of brandon's dorm mates are very nice and i'm sure his time here will be well spent. that is all one can hope for. peace.

yesterday was the first day...

it felt like fall. it was raining. the air was cool. i realized, summer was ending. i find it hard to concentrate. the words fall like rain. the words seep through cracks in the ground and i never find them. they are lost forever, like the summer, the past. memory is the purest form of torture. i don't want to remember.