7.1

on second thought, i take everything back
you have the propensity to be such an ass
and thank goodness i left

7: Bullets

in their cases on the shelves, collecting dust.
the gun is in the shop, in the woods, rusting blue.
everything unshot, or pre-shot, or clicking in the dusklight

• sometimes, i want to kiss you just to know what it's like to be kissed by someone who wants me that much
• i like you when you look at me like looking at me is enough, when your hands don't demand more.
• you were absolute in the midst of my abstraction. 

• i want you to place me on a counter top and love  me without words. 
• i want you to dip me in ink and love me entirely in letters. 
• i want you to take me to all the nowheres you are going. 
• i want you to sleep next to me and think that is as close as you'll ever need to be.
• i want you to hold me in the glass roots of your thoughts stolen only by your vapor dreams.
• i want you to know where i scribble my dotted-lines. 
• i want your lips to teach my throat what it feels like to be voiceless.
• i want you to think of me as grace, something you receive in faith, undeserved. 
• i want you to let me go.

• there are parts of you that you have forgotten;
• dismantle disarm disengage

6.63 x 10^(-34)

I think too much,
Almost as if it's going to change anything.

6

Gusto ko lamang sa buhay ay yakapin mo ako.

Don't be surprised when one day,
the adventures stop coming.
It's been a while since I've been alone with the cicadas;
And it's been a while since I've smoked.
Sure, yeah, yeah the world will keep on turning,
But this revolution seems a little more purposeless than the last.

It hurt when I found out
That I might be caring over nothing,
Because my immediate reaction to unbalances
Is to even them out.
So now I'm trying to care as less as you.
But it hurts to care less;
It hurts like I'm slowly sawing off a damn limb.
It's hurting to cut you off because
Frankly, you're already impossibly,
And embarrassingly
a part of me.

In the way that I let you get away with everything,
I let you get away with me.

5

I'm sorry you have to be around for this
to witness the slow decay, the quick undoing,
the immediate unraveling of a mummified personship --
or entity, or other. Us. The sudden, the brisk
misfortune, the altogether swept under the rug,
the haphazardly thrown into the closet
of us. The horrible, the failed discretion, the vain
attempts to keep things casual, to achieve the simple,
to be civil and mature and keep the Id at bay, to not
demand answers or explanations or more. To settle
for less than what you deserve

for now.

I'm sorry you have to be around for this
to witness what I'm like when I like the like
that isn't you. When there is want where you
are not, where you once were, where you believe
you should be. Here. The space, the vacancy
between us, a picture frame of a previous time,
a memoir, the right turn on a shipwreck yelling
iceberg. The intermediate, the alternative, the place
you shouldn't have to see, or hear, or think about
the third vertex of the bermuda triangle
where there is no reason, just the earth pulling
downward, physics at its best, a storm cloud
crackling, stay away. 

Instead, you stay.
And you see.
And I'm sorry.

4

maybe self-improvement isn't the answer
maybe self-destruction is the answer

your lungs are giving in
and all you want is to help them collapse
eliminate the vacuum by caving in on it
maybe then you wouldn't feel so fucking empty

3.5: Intimacy vs. Isolation

He touches you like roller coaster handrails
He holds you in importance and in practicality
He knows that losing you means losing himself
When he says he means well
He means he wants to keep you alone and breathless from his altitude
When he says he means well, he means you mean involuntary

3: feminism

may i feel, said he
no, said she
just once, said he
fuck you, said she

2

Escap(ad)e

I want you to see all my rooftops
And landscapes and skies.
Meet me in all the churches of gods I have no room for,
For I'll always believe in you.
I'll stay with you too high
and too gravitated,
Like a two-storey plane crash.
Don't look up, we said.
Where's the fun in that?
We'll blow on all the weather vanes,
Because I don't trust the wind to take me somewhere higher.
I'll trust the sunlight on my face,
And the way your camera captures you.
Here we're walking endlessly
Keeping true to the end of the skyline.

I can keep this pace,
If you keep your stride
Even with mine.

1.5

When we touch I'm afraid
afraid that your skyline won't meet with my landscape
that my mountaintops can't reach your clouds.
I can have you kiss my neck again and again
But I hope you do with closed eyes.
I'm afraid that if you explore my savannah skin
just behind the thicket
you'll find my scars
double back 
it's too dangerous here.
Fear keeps me from your New World.
Again you're here
And again I take a deep breath and dive
Wide-eyed like I'm mapping trenches
But I'm just waiting for my lungs to give.

1

I want to trace the back of your hands, hold your arms, and know where you've been. 
I want to make countries out of you: draw them in double dimensions on your back 
with my fingers. Maybe if I can carry your weight, the world wouldn't be so heavy. 
If I can hold you up, I can hold cities. And the little spot of skin on your neck that I 
love to kiss is the concave crescent where civilization started. Your sighs are the fall 
of empires when we fall away. Your breathing the push and pull of the moon, and I 
can feel the ocean against me.