(Poetry) The corpse of you

I hope one day to come across the corpse of you, while holding the hand of another man's daughter.
There we would drag you down some secluded alleyway, so that I could give her the education it took me years to graduate from:
a Masters in the Art of You.

 First I would run my hands across your body,
 making sure to find the puncture wound, or broken neck,
because if this is anything like our relationship,
 without rigor mortis you are bound to come back to life, and enter back into mine.
And if history is meant to repeat itself,
 then I would rather be the one to drag a knife into your chest
 then let you pin your poisoned accusations into the very core of me,
 only to leave me the one floundering in painful familiarity.

And once I was done, I would pull my daughter's hands into my lecture hall, and recite my dissertation on what it was that made me wish that I could touch you,
kiss you,
let the world that had built itself upon my shoulders
 fall into a cloud of forgetfulness when I had the opportunity to take you in between my fingers,
 lacing your curves,
 your flesh,
 and the very sight of you
 underneath my nails that begged to release the truth of you away from that mask that you had latched onto.

So that if she ever came home with a head filled with questions,
and homework based on that "cute boy in class" lessons
I can remind her of her hands I pressed into your heart,
touching each tendon that was chilled with misuse,
showing her how some men can betray it so young,
using it as an after-thought, that had barely begun.

And if that isn't enough,

I will tell her about the silence that would eat away at our phones
 causing the rift between our bodies to expand,
 collapsing into a million letters that we never sent.
Of how I would type each unsent digit gently,
 like a lover,
 into the frame of our misdemeanors
 and from the release of those thoughts
 I would let the memory of you slip
 like watercolors
 into a muddled patching of what you were,
 to what I wanted you to be.

I'd tell her how I pray that she'll get the answers,
 without having to live the lessons
that she'll never have to play the broken record of a heart,
 that continuously skips over all of the best parts
and that from me, she'll know better,
that when asked,
 she won't make the choices that her momma never taught her.

And I'll pray that she'll forgive me for who I am today,
 remaining in the present here like I have,
 letting the rush of blood pump back and forth between the places where my heart and hands once stood,
 letting me replace the cur of my emotions
 with writings to you about trivial things,
 in hopes that maybe once,
 just once,
 you will understand that all I wish to whisper to you
 is that I hold out my love to you,
still.

(Poetry) Alex Gross. Oil on Canvas. "Product Placement" Inspiration

There we sat
a party for two,
at separate ends of the room.
Starbucks and it's water maiden looming over our heads,
conducting our first encounter.

Transfixed in your eyes,
scanning over some pixilated nonsense,
oh how I longed to be the subject title of your attention.
Oh read the digits of my thesis,
veer your fingers to scroll down my index,
let me be the body paragraph that you sip over.

I long to touch you across the floor,
moving my desires over your unknown trespasses,
let me lose myself in your cashmere decors
so I can replace it with my silk printed interests.

Oh Starbucks maiden,
heed my prayer,
let us finish our overpriced refreshments at coincidental times.
Let us stand beside each other within your blessed,
 and slow-moving lines,
so that the proximity of our bodies will answer for our introductions.
Allowing me to brush my hand against his,
as an ending paragraph seduction.

(Poetry) Butterfly Inspiration

A rhythmic enchantment begins to pulsate beneath the layer of grime
gathered over my cerebral cortex,
where misuse of synapses have died down
 from last I omitted poetry from my fingertips.

Now,
watch as the river of sludge dribbles across the porcelain page,
each word chasing after figments of butterflies,
in attempts to make sense of abused syllables and sentences.

Lacking in structure,
face,
movement,
and time.
I am creating a monster in misconducted monotone.
Grasping onto the fraying corners of overused visuals
as I attempt to stimulate a coal into the uncertainty of its nature.

Oh gleam and reflect my own unsure character,
judged by histories long forgotten ancestors.
Let loose the chiming of laughter
 that remains flapping
 on the tip
 that is my imagined butterfly wing.

(Poetry) Dedicated to December 28th

They tell you not to eat before it happens.
They tell you to hold it in until they can get a sample.
They tell you to wait. To enter. To put this gown on. To lay down.
That this is going to be cold here and there, as they pump you full of drugs.
To count down from a hundred.
If you're ready.
But you're never ready.
Even when they say
"This is going to be uncomfortable just for a second"
and
"This might pinch".

Then after wards,
they hand you a bottle that is supposed to make the pain, go away.
They give you a clean little packet of papers, that is supposed to explain everything you need to do for the next two week,
and if anything should happen that isn't covered on those pages,
to give them a call.

But you can't call them after you wake up from another nightmare.
You can't call them when the shock finally catches up to you.
Their papers don't cover how you'll have to stand there with the knowledge that you let that 'thing' go.
That 'thing' you and others told you you'd be better off without.
 That 'thing' that books and movies describes as "the best thing to happen to you".
Clearly making what you did "the worst thing to happen to you",
right?

But that pain doesn't originate in the losing it,
 it's in the wanting to keep it with every fiber of your being
 since the moment you woke up in a half daze to test yourself at five in the morning.
 That moment when you think your mind is playing a cold trick on your heartstrings,
 and yet even after the floor stops spinning,
 you're left facing that it did actually happen to you.
 Even as you're calling the other member to this party,
 long distance,
 at a reasonable hour that is long past the hours you've been living with this realization alone.
 Trying to convince him to fly down to your hometown now,
 no not three weeks from now,
 but now.
 Right here.
 At a distance that his arms will fill the empty space between yours,
close enough so his words can convince you out of your desires.
Where the need to feel his skin is satiated, because it's the only thing that will be like that thing that is growing inside of you.
Whenever you need to feel the brush of his hair against your cheek, because it's the only crown of hair similar to the one inside of your body.
The one you'll never touch.
The one you'll never see.

They never tell you how you have the date burned into your memory,
 like a cattle prod
afterwards.
And that every year you will have to drink yourself into a stupor to celebrate the loss of something that took a part of you with it.
They never tell you that afterwards,
 you feel half the woman you were before.
 Even when they remind you of what you can have again,
 and again,
 and again.
 None of that matters.
 How can it?
 The first one was let go,
no...
ripped out.
Pinched out.
How can you replace that feeling?
That longing?

That's right.
 You replace it with his words,
 when every night you woke up in sweat over another vision of her beautiful face,
 and her precious laugh
 that you have on a tape cassette that repeats itself against your discarded innocence.

His words of "Don't worry baby, we'll have another one"
But you're asking yourself, another what?
Accident?
Isn't that what he called it?
Isn't that what it had always been,
even after he left you shortly after?
After you went insane with the post-traumatic depression,
stress,
anxiety,
tragedy,
 after you swallowed an entire bottle of pills in front of him
not knowing if it was for you, him, or her?

But then I guess,
we really did have 'another', after all.