hideaway
I’m standing at the shore where I first told you I loved you
And that was when you walked away
From all the long nights holding my hand
Under the starlit streets
And dancing in the alleyway like it was our own personal hideaway
Why couldn’t you love me?
You said you dreamed of what I could be for you
The hopes and promises and the empty bottles in your hand
Told me that I could no longer trust you
But I still told you I loved you
Whatever was meant to be
Just couldn’t be
And whatever I meant to you
Just wasn’t enough
For either of us
I want to forget you as I dance around this fire pit of the stupid little things you ever gave me
Like the love notes and the necklaces
And all the fucking lines about the universe tying us together
I want to forget you like the lines of a Broadway show that’s too problematic for the 21st century
Probably the show that you quoted in your senior thesis
Because you’re a man’s man who made another man fall in love with you
With no intention of ever returning the favor
Play me like a violin, broken strings still holding on to these chords without a chance in the world
My heartbeat’s music will echo forever
While you change the station for a nostalgic song that reminds you of her instead of me
I’m standing at this lake some hundred miles away, talking to a new boy
He’s got the sweetest eyes
His smile lights up even when it’s bright outside
But even here on my phone
I’m spilling out my guts about you
I can replay every scenario like a broken record that’s tired of skipping tracks
You’ll always be in my mind
And I can’t even find a new hideaway from you
Not even in someone new who treats my scarred arm like a saving grace
Whatever was meant to be
Just couldn’t be
And whatever I meant to you
Just wasn’t enough
For either of us
I want to dance around my broken wings that fell off and hit the ground in a huff of smoke
They spelled out your name
And I cursed the fucking wind
Because it spun the ashes around and around again until I went insane
It’s stupid to say I’ll ever forget your name
As your story intertwined with mine will haunt the pages of my diary for years to come
Spilling ink from my fingertips, everything’s black and sticky with regret
Like a broken bottle full of whiskey and ecstasy
I’m not part of your story anymore
But you’ll be in mine even when I think I’m done for good
What a damn shame it is to love without consequence
You showed me nothing but smoke and mirrors
A trick I had done for years
A taste of my own medicine is bitter, and my lifeline is sinking
And I wouldn’t have you now even after all the love I said I felt
But my heart will ache for you
Because the love I thought I felt was still a feeling regardless of the outcome
I can lay broken on the floor a million times over while your shimmering complexion and silver cool smile laugh in my wake
And it’s safe to say I’d rather stay broken
Forever shattered by the realities and fallacies created in the hideaway of my brain
Because at least the pieces reflect the me I so desperately want others to see
My vulnerability will ease the edges of my fragility with grace and experienced confidence
While you will stay drugged up in your hollow shell
Waiting for the next thrill
The next moment, because it’s just a moment
My lifetime of loss and unrequited love will outlive your singular moment of adventure
My story is a tale told a million times over, I’m a legend before my time is done
Whatever was meant to be
Becomes a page in the book
And whatever I meant to you
Was never real to begin with
I can say that with confidence now
two waves
Papier-mâché cuts against my fingertips
Feels like when loose lips sank the ships
Crashing underneath two different waves
Gasping for air felt more like a chore I refused to participate in
The cliché of a crumpled heart on the concrete floor, bleeding out empty promises
You wrapped my skull in bandages of bondage and masochism
Bludgeoned me into submission
And I fought back
My safe word was your name, but you didn’t know because you never heard me scream it in bed before
So, you hit me harder and harder while I begged for each blow to be the last
Dying by your hands in what you thought was an act of love
Felt like the heroic end to my journey
Take me out back like a wounded animal, exhausted from life
Shovel to my head
Shovel for the grave
Toss the dirt onto my corpse like you tossed me aside once again
And would I be brave enough to rise again after all the abuse?
I rose up against you time after time but now that you’ve buried me
What’s the use?
Calculating all my best mistakes with a bottle of red wine
I chilled it for too long just to piss you off
Why am I not pissed off?
I’m complacent to the continuing, callously cold nature of your demeanor
But I know if you ever laid a finger on my sister
Even looked at her direction
The fiery wrath of Lucifer’s fury would fill my heart
The rage would automatically give me the crown and throne
But when it comes to me
I become so small
A shell in the sands of your life
Stepped over, forgotten
Maybe picked up for a quick admiration to then be tossed into the mercy of two different waves
Battered and rolling
I find my place with the others
Repeating this cycle on a rock repeating its cycle
But I still find peace
dallas
California is the place where I keep my heart
And all my deepest secrets are asleep
Under the coastline
And hidden in Balboa Park
The Tierrasanta canyon echoes with the coyote cries
But the one thing that brings me back
Are the haunting days of adolescent discovery
The moment I knew I was different but that I was still me
Lingered in the hallways at school
But only because of you
None of my exes live in Texas
Because your namesake feels like a curse
Without your touch on my body
Alone in your room while your parents were away
I may not have known
It’s a “what if” I wish I had control of
We never said a word about what transpired between us
What are two boys up to
Alone in a room with nothing to do?
Now I sit alone in my room
Listening to folk songs in isolation
And my memories creep up on me like a hawk swooped in from the sky
I don’t think I loved you
Maybe because the only love I knew was a father’s fist to my face
And you decided to hold me softer instead
But that wasn’t the only thing you held
And I’m blushing from the rush of ecstasy I felt
Who knew at the age of eight I could feel so intensely?
The only regret I would have, if it even meant anything now
Was my shyness and lack of drive to talk to you
Multiple sessions in your dimly lit room
A gentle kiss and a caress
Somehow meant a lot
But you ignored me at school
Hushed away with your friends
You wouldn’t even steal a glance from me
No matter how much my eyes shot like daggers out of my skull
What’s a sixth grader got to do with a fifth grader on the playground?
Lunch time was for cooties and gossip
None of which I sought out
But a year of sensual moments alone
Broken by the scandal of your father
I assumed you retreated in shame
And locked me away with all your bad desires
I thought maybe you’re married now
To a woman for sure
A life changing epiphany that only affected me
I swore myself to secrecy
Locked away the impurities
Who wants to hear about the sexual awakening of a child born of emotional instability?
But I’ll keep my indiscretion
Slightly tongue in cheek
Just so if you come across this
You’ll know that I miss you
Separate ways down different life lanes
I’ll keep these memories of you
But I couldn’t keep them locked away in the attic collecting dust
I’m setting them free, like I’m trying to do to myself
Once they flutter away from my reach
Maybe they’ll reach the San Diego shore where they belong
And I can continue to move on with my shoulders freed from my past
Just like that
atomic bomb
Crisp were the leaves on that fall trip to my grave
This is where I buried my heart
The air stayed chilled like a six-year grudge between best friends
I can still hear my heartbeat faintly underneath the rotted soil
And you carved your initials on the tombstone like it was a prank egged on by your brother
The goosebumps on my arm remind me to breath in the death in the air
One little disaster among the perils of man
I never recovered from the atomic bomb that was the “I love you” from your lips
Hero’s rise, and hero’s fall
But I was the villain in your story
Such an end to meet in such a way that meant everything
Silver was the tongue of the man who broke my mother’s spirit
Her crippled fingers ached as she clung to familiarity
Lashed out at everyone around her
Her soul ascended and found reprieve at the stroke of dawn
She was not the same mother
Broken from a spell of abuse and cigarette ashes jammed into her eye sockets
She wanders the halls of this house
Echoing and foretelling my own demise
She finally recovered from the atomic bomb that was a man saying “I did this to you on purpose”
Heroes triumph, and heroes cry
She vanquished the demon she became
Broken but still beautiful and bashful and brave
To tell the many stories of agony
Is to tell the same story with different metaphors
We’re all surviving our own atomic bombs
A walking memorial museum, decorated with flags on coffins saying “we made it out”
But we never make it out
Not in one piece, not as we were
Carry the weight, become a burden
This is your purpose
You were never meant to be anything else but a piece of discarded love notes and empty jewelry boxes
So, stay sad, selfishly secluded and somber
We all would understand, but not really
Keep your shrapnel lodged in your rib cages
Breathing is achy and harsh like a rip from a bong lit with the fires of a volcano
Heroes are flawed, heroes are weak
A smile a day won’t keep yourself at bay
moonbeam
Kaleidoscopic memories refract through my mind
Piercing and colliding into walls created by trauma
Flashback to when I was at peace
A blank black screen appears
Awaiting a millennium for the moment
We wait in pregnant pauses and anxious anticipation
Who is this figure in the moonlight
Casting intention spells into the void
Trying to make a better world
Son of the moon and all her empathetic burden
Crippling under the pressure his supposed sun bestowed upon him
The stars are aligning to form a question mark
A shoulder shrug
Most likely a middle finger
Guiding him into uncertainty with promises of adventure
We are all collectively gathered like stardust propelling through an empty space
Collision and catastrophe merged, married into a moment in time
Red wine stained my lips and I kissed the devil
He bit me hard as he penetrated my being to retrieve the soul I promised him
A mangled monster stood before him
And the devil shed a single tear
He begged to help me and I just laughed
Now I was free of the emotional weight of life
So, I bought a fiddle and moved to Georgia
Searching for a new soul to bestow a different purpose into my existence
Casting shadows onto the still lake
I glide through the meadow unperturbed
The moon has called on to me
She told me I lost my way
The sun cursed at me
He told me I was a sham
Like Ophelia before me, I laughed and sung the ideologies of the mad
If neither would have me, and the devil embarrassed of me
What was I to do?
Then I was pierced by blinding light
A moonbeam struck through my heart
Still beating, still bleeding, still broken
The moon could not let me live
The sun then cursed her name
And the devil sighed a relief
My smile crept through the pooling blood
And we all knew
It would never be the end
Alien Buddha Press 