live it like no other

Descending like a death angel to collect

Another red-haired mistake I keep deliberately swimming against,

You land; I’m desperate for your attention, yet crippled by the thought of your touch—

Just like any other man, forever dreaming.

Your eyes looking at mine, scrutinizing my skin and brain—

A dream turned nightmare from which I wake up paralyzed,

To another dream within a dream, again and again.

Asking for a part of me every two days when you require blood,

Every past minute of your silence, a reminder of my lack of self-worth.

But I’m into pain, your cannibalistic ways.

Hungry for your body and mind,

Until you made me lose both, and my appetite.

When you said you’d come on my chest,

You went 3 inches deeper.

Made me a friend that same night, and all turned black,

Pulling December two months early.

Hearing its ballads penetrate like icicles through my heart.

Another New Year’s Eve with last year’s resolutions incomplete

As the bells hit midnight.

DEATH ANGEL II

I could see us together—I always do.

Call it a curse or Chiron’s way of making the wound that never heals grow larger,

Turning sentient—my conjoined thinker,

Whose death would choke me with nettles, mute me of the song of Spring.

Same mistake, different timeline.

Giving my all to one because I’m unable to give less to many.

Have me all to yourself, baring skin to be mangled.

Guys like you always fall through.

Though you were speaking in hidden signs when you told me your favorite tea—

Hibiscus blended with cinnamon and orange—

Because I’d be the cinnamon, still warm and tanned from Malaga’s sun,

And you, my orange sunset-tinted kiss.

Your tea knowledge, insipid, kept me entertained for days.

Shared my recipes with you, ignoring the recipe of disaster we’d make the two.

Told you mine was orange blossoms,

A sob story tied to my grandmother—

And you bought it for yourself the next day. “That’s so sweet.”

But I’m not a complete fool.

You were playing me, the toy your outer man-child desired, to break me completely.

“Vegetarian ginger man-child that wanted me but in pieces”

Is the label I’ll use to revisit you.

Signs forward me onto the red traffic lights.

Believed you were the byproduct of my white magic,

Dismissing the unchecked boxes left in white.

But we checked off the modern fairytale:

You, horny for me, check; me, the attention-whore for you.

“I am the moon,” you said, so I lit up to be the sun as bright as I could.

Robbed me of my cool, set to zero my days without sad, and I didn’t even like you.

Tried to be what you wanted so we’re each other’s type.

You wanted fun, but I’m the serious kind.

Perhaps I was the moon as I cry in your shadow now, in full gloom,

Eclipsed to wholly be the far side of me.

I didn’t say goodbye. It was implicit from the start,

When a 2-hour train was your insurmountable molehill keeping us apart.

I see us in my made-up timeline,

Where all the men I’ve ever talked to at least once forever exist,

Living the happily-ever-afters absent from my men-free reality.

Taking a peek at each one of you when it’s most inconvenient to me.

To ghost-feel, in that highly flammable, wooden-floored kitchen,

In the one-story countryside house hugged by pine trees,

Where I once dreamed I was happy, with just me.

Wish I didn’t write you, make you immortal—

I’m like the flowers in the tar roadside in late February, that have dropped unloosen from their stalks to rotten, from where they wish they would forever stay in blossom.

Its edges brown and dry, of what was once white and bright. Its delicate petals rot from outside-in, I don’t know why I thought they would not fall down this season.

I saw the end when it begun. They were timed to fell apart, like you and me. Still, I went for the end run and watched it plummet into the chaos I call home.

Uncollectible, fordone, they were not forever. I still remember your dumb voice; it touches me like the wind that blew the petals to the ground. I try not to replay it, afraid of overwriting it with my own but your silence makes this end inevitable.

That time in July has become my bittersweet place. I miss being smitten by sunlight out of a clear blue-sky in those warm days of summertime, have butterflies stop by and sip on the sugared taste of my sap, being hovered by hummingbirds which believed I was sweet as a honeysuckle, and having the shadow of your branches and rustling leaves intertwine with mine. I miss being illuded with happiness.

Now I see you across the street, and watch you wane like suffering and desolation are the current and coming reign. Feeling blue for you have ripped off your every patch of green I gave you. Blaming the soil that your roots drown in a tarpit of hopelessness from all your past trauma and hurt, this “cursed land” that you have scorched earth. You make me feel like nothing.

I would rewind time prior to where we both were in stellar bloom, to those nights under the full moon when we’d burn time ‘til we watched the sun rise, and wilt as fast as a match when lit on fire if that meant wilting again alongside you.

I’m the flowers, the branches, and the tree, the fall King, everything all at once, stripped of joy until next spring.

Eres como el polvo que flota entre mis párpados y mi globo ocular que, bajo el sol a ojos cerrados, me fascinan.

Sobre este translúcido fondo rojo, proyecto las filminas desgastas que restaron de ti ante se deflagren en su último rodaje a cenizas.

Tus labios granada recién peladas, dulce almendras mazapán, que en fantasías me los mordí.

Tus ojos grises en que me perdí, tus hablitas suaves me las creí.

Que tú vendrías de Viena hasta Madrid.

Que te gustaban mis ojos negros, candentes piroclastos de un volcán.

Que como en las películas de cine, nos acostaríamos bajo las estrellas, las contaríamos y empezaría por ti.

Y el perfeccionismo que buscaba en ellas, una tontería mía, nada cambiarías

Ha queda’o un extrañar de algo que nunca a pasa’o.

El bobo crédulo mantuviste ilusiona‘o.

Lo que tuvimos se murió a plazos.

Fue como ver mis centellas esparza-fuegos convertirse en nada.

Creías que la distancia nos mantenía alejados por montañas y océanos.

Pero tienes los puntos cardinales apartados, tu rosa de los vientos sin flor de lis, de ti mismo escabullís.

¿Todavía piensas en lo que podríamos tener? Tu cigarrillo después del sexo... ¿O aún te cautivas en tu malquerer?

Me traes tus rosas,

cierto de que me encantan.

¡Quiero las rosas en lumbre!

Que tus manos te duelan y hiervan,

como cuece mi corazón en fuego alto.

Que tengas de cruzar cumbres y llanuras,

hasta que tus manos no aguanten,

y me alcancen por fin.

No por ti, o por mí,

pero por las rosas en llamas,

que, en tus manos pinchadas de espinas,

se ahogan sus flamas.

my belle heir beech of winter,

you bare in splendor.

I’m sorry I can’t write you a love poem, it’s not a question of want but I’m an adolescent at heart and all I have known is heartbreak.

If I knew love, I like to think I’d write you thousands of great ones, nevertheless, heartbreak seems to be my inspiring muse. The unsought black swan that glides over my fluvial lake, invader of my unrestful nature and mocker of my unrequited love.

If I knew love, the quietest time wouldn’t consume me inside and the words “I adore you” written by you by hand in the golden sands wouldn’t cave in, washed away by the morning tide.

Whenever I write, an entropic tendency unfurls from the tips of my hand, sap off my cork oak tree deep-rooted on the island where no man has ever stepped.

Maybe it’s not in the cards just yet for me to know what love is, much less with you, or simply put, we were never meant to be. Whichever it is, the shoal of stars which reign over the shifting heights seem to agree.

The sun rises, calling truce with the yarn spinner in my head, my eyes open, heavy from the blues and tear-shed that cradled me in bed. Another sleepless night where emptiness fills.

I huddle into my chrysalis of past mistakes that I’m designed to make over and over again, for I’m a hopeless romantic, oblivious to the stakes.

You see, heartbreak is no stranger to me. It’s the gut-wrenching punch that you’ve hit me with so many times that broke down the bridges leading back to the starting house. Yet, I’m willing to jump across the wreckage back to you if you set fire to the coals of your lighthouse and show me which stone to step.

If you, reader, read this poem then by now you know it didn't work out. And if you, subject of my failed attempts at love poetry, ever find my work, know that I’m sorry I could never write you a love poem.

You’re like the tempest,

endless in rage you calm my own haze.

Give me your worst,

hail in my hands, they will slake my thirst.

Bring me in closer,

lift me in the skies, the fall are my highs.

“Open your eyes,”

I say for the millionth time.

“See the beauty I see through my weeping willows before they dry.”

But you’re in a whiteout.

I have tried to kill you but you’re six feet under

Thought I had you at my feet, but I feel the cold ground on my cheek

The fog rolls in and soon I hear thunder, the perfect storm and there’s no cover

Your image seared into my mind, bait to the mist to which I let myself be wrapped in its arms since in yours I failed to go under

Still I wonder, how warmer your touch would feel under my three hundred layers of Damascus steel as the enveloping whiteness muffles the storm’s wailing and tears

I throw you ropes, made from the knots in my throat but they’re too thin and frail just like became of my hopes

We met online but not how you’d think, we met in an online world and how random that was, and from that world we branched out into several, smaller, more meaningful ones

A web of worlds in which our heads got stuck deep on their sticky threads

When I asked you if we could make it, outside onto the offline world, you ignored it, I asked you again on another high moment of us, but then again, you didn't say when, instead a few lousy excuses that I gulped in

Time was going by and our fantasy world grew vividly, you said you wanted to know every single thing about me, but you never made the effort of actually knowing me

I told you my fantasies, and you fuelled them with yours ‘til they become ours, intertwined with the hopes they one day come true, outside of this online world you didn't dare to say goodbye to

There was a moment in time that you made me yours and for that moment of your time I believed you were mine, but you're not mine, not even yours, you're from who pays you the most

A never half full vessel owned by whoever is the highest bidder of your time, and that I cannot stand by

Grey is the world you warned me about, but I neglected your warning, charmed by your dark grey eyes that bid me to stay, and all because it felt right to be treated nice by a man again

And now you’re offline, our world gobbled down by the pitch-dark night that over and over you said it followed you from dawn to twilight