Space Boy

tiny fists reach up towards the night sky and
he wants to touch them, touch the stars,
gather them like glowing seashells in his palms
and let them warm his chest on cold nights

the tangle of cool circuitry weaves under
his skin and metal and flesh become one
lifting him up higher and higher and it’s
close enough to burn in the sun

the only lover Space Boy knows is the cosmos,
shaped like rosy bouquets and valentine
chocolates from the store down the street
he recites equations for relativity like poetry

love notes in glass bottles are thrown
into the sky, but shatter at his feet

Paper Valentine

He wants to take the word “Love” and
crumple it up like a paper Valentine;
Stuff it into his mouth,
Grind it down,
Swallow it clean.

He wants to take the gaudy pieces
Of candy and crush them under
The heel of his boot
And then snort the dust
If only to feel the burn
Of something that isn’t
Heartbreak.

He wants to smash the memories
Like a broken coffee pot on a lazy
Sunday morning and then crunch
The glass into his hands,
Across his palms, and smear
The saccharine
Blood across his face like
A savage preparing for war.

But he does none of this. He
Crumbles like stale cake and
Waits for someone to move him
and his cracked frosting heart
With the rest of the rotting refuse.

Jupiter

Watch my breath expand like wild hydrogen,
fields igniting under the weight of my
burgeoning ego that consumes and conceives
like a vacuum in space hung among the stars

Pinpricks of light, of life and love, are swallowed
down like an elixir and finally I flourish;
my world expands and so do I, claiming
the space that belongs to me, the hollowness

that generations before carved out for me,
for me and only me, with my stars and sinew
expanding like the roots of trees and the
inky outreaches of the universe

But how far can I expand? I watch my fields
burn, the embers tickling my bare ankles.

Tangibility

We savor the darkened silence of
an unborn dawn as I
trace over the
arch of your brow,
quietly admiring the
contours,
slopes,
and shifting shadows of
your untroubled face

I whisper how you’re
poetry waiting to happen,
words brimming
with your existence
eager to fall across my
coffee-stained notebooks
at 4am
as I try to capture the
tangible curve of your
stubbled jaw,
the taut stretch of
fresh skin over your
scabbed knuckles
(not because you’re
a fighter, but because
you’re clumsy and had
fallen off your bike.)

I feel the curve of
your smile,
how the corners of your
naturally sleepy eyes
crinkle with
bashful delight
and I-

Ah, my alarm.

Ah, reality.