PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I have hung everything I have

on this city.

I push pins in a pattern

write my own heart

on the map.

The minutes I can’t remember

for choking on nothing and laughter.

The nights the wind is so vicious

I breathe in brave and our bodies lift a little.

The change and the waterfalls

and the hearts

I resent for being

so worthy.

The cards I toss on the table

like silent truths that sit on my shelves,

I don’t have any other way to give them.

The kisses that can sing on their own,

I want you to hear you speak without words.

The quiet nights holding this pen,

hoping I can tell someone about everything and you.

You know

you are my favorite city

and the first place

I remember really waking up in.

Something about this

makes me want to

fall into the sky,

dream with the same head

that can be drowning.

I am carrying my weight

in gold and little gifts

but I can’t bring happy

to some places.

And I breathe in a little every day

but there is only so much air

that will fit

before I leave a little behind.

And I will love you

but there are days I build bridges

and there are days I set fires.

On the days I feel more lost

than memories in the darkness,

than my thoughts in your sleep,

than a century,

I can call on

every time you’ve held me

and paint the ground open with purity.

you don’t want me because I spend

too much time

crying in elevators.

I am a slave to the not-enoughs

hibernating in my throat

and when no one comes to save me

I don’t tell you because I am caving

and I don’t want you to crawl where I’ve been.

you don’t want me because I don’t know what I’m doing.

admit it

and you can’t make me anything

I have always wanted to be for you

so all I have is a pebble with your name hacked into it on impulse

I have nothing else lasting to give you.

you don’t want me because my voice carries like bad news.

I like to think I tell you everything

but there are things I don’t ever want to hear come from my own lips

or the dam will break and I will never stop shaking.

and sometimes I write things

not because they are true

but because they sound like a waterfall

and I think you want to be drenched.

I am not honest,

trust me.

What are we going to do with all this love?

I ought to call it mine.

But honestly I ought to scratch the sky open

and dream something worth writing down

and work a miracle rather than pleading for one

and listen to the song that breaks my own heart

and feel so much something in me explodes

and do a lot of things

I might never do.

I’m left seeing blue in half a world,

I am not here to beat as loud as she does,

she breathes in a window and blows out a supernova.

as she pulls from me I feel the lifeline stretch.

We turn to dust, to gold,

she glitters the same.

I’ll buy this place

even when I know it’s already catching fire,

see it burn so I can say

for once

I haven’t wasted my time.

I’ll buy this place full of future ash,

breathe it in just to say

for once

I’ve made something a beautiful part of me.

I can’t seem to command this heart

so once again I find myself

putting you back in poetry.

Trust me,

you are not

stronger than me

you are just stronger

than who I thought I was.

I am on the giant’s ladder

inside this house

and I didn’t know how much of a reach it was

until I found you and grew three sizes too perfect.

Remember that place?

It made a gorgeous sky-high fire,

we made a gorgeous sky-high fire,

they could see it

for miles around.

They whispered it

as the flames went down.

They spoke it like a drug

into every pool and valley,

every footstep when

they ran into each other.

They wove it into the colorful lips

of the world’s best storytellers.

They called it

something they had never seen before.

Maybe if we weren’t

so damn quick

to call ourselves each other’s burdens.

I am sorry

you get

caught

on my

corners

escape

on my

edges

I am sorry

you have

nothing

to be jealous about

everything

to lose

The blades

on my

shoulders

will not

take sandpaper

The sounds

in my

head

will not

take no

for an answer

All the truth

I could tell

spells out for you

I can’t stand anything

I can’t change

so quiet is

the only place

I know how

to be sorry

I will try to

shout it to the sky

for you.

I am addicted to saltwater,

I got sober alone.

I wear my thoughts like saltwater,

soak them in too much of the day,

held down to the rhythm of my footsteps, getting here

and passing everyone I will never know.

I am addicted to saltwater,

I got sober wishing I would stop crying

over things I will regret wasting tears over.

From this twelfth step

you should know how hard I wrap myself around you,

how I embrace the saltwater it takes to slip through your door,

how hard I hold my breath

when I take a level to my messy

like I think I can figure it out

with logic.

We last like a horizon,

I can’t sketch

exactly where the sand meets the sea,

and sometimes it storms and I think I will never be able to pull anything out of this whirlwind

I’m just trying to make angels.

I am addicted to gravity,

but I keep trying to wake up in the clouds.

I wear my thoughts like gravity

when I’m around you,

used to

being held so tightly to the ground

and still feeling weightless.

I am addicted to gravity,

I got sober right on the ground

with your hand in mine.

When I am a shipwreck

you find the right pieces

that haven’t been torn up

and tossed around too long.

Your hands keep me grounded,

I collapse like a raindrop

something trapped in the empty I leave behind

I want it to be something worth seeing.

I give my shaking sins a name

in your desire to pin my soul,

I know how to let myself go

trust some of my blueprint with you.

When I am crumbling

you remind me I am not even complete,

we shatter then we solve,

we break then we build.

I thought I would make it to dry land

but when I found myself here instead

I am in the storm,

I am laughing in the lifeboat.

Your hands hold me together,

I swear sometimes I can hear them saying

we are not finished building you yet.

When I lie with you so long

I trip over the stumbling stars in your eyes

and you don’t even know how hard you try,

but when my cracks show

your eyes reflect things that don’t work.

I am a tourist in my own skin on the verge of breaking down

I melt into puddles and

I turn sticky saltwater into lonely and lonely into aimless and aimless into uselessly busy,

I turn lonely into a lifestyle.

And I know I built this tower around you

but you’re a terrible altar,

an amazing cliff.

I will fall with my valuables but won’t give them to you.

I will set the cracks in my own arms and lean on you.