Polaroids

I heard that
sending a woman a love letter
is harassment, and I can see why -
you didn’t ask for it;
my love doesn’t entitle
me to any of you. So
I shall not send you this,
shall not tell you
that today morning
getting out of the bath, I dreamt
of tracing crop circles
on your shoulder, like you used
to ask me to do.
I felt affection
like I imagine
a father must feel - is that weird?

You don’t owe me anything -
but these Polaroids of love
are mine, and I enjoy
how they flutter in
uninvited
like you used to.

Christian Charity

An old woman gave me $2 while I was trying to sell poems for $0.50 a piece in the Montreal Metro. She said I looked hungry.

...

I wonder
how old
is this flower of kindness
that you just gave me.

How long ago was the seed planted?
A stray compliment, perhaps, when you were young,
that you grew hidden under your hair
until you plucked it and gave it to me.

Someone in your youth
or childhood
must have done something good.
Nothing comes from nothing.
Nothing ever could.

Marshmallows

Your lips
tasted like marshmallows
the night you left.

...

How can someone
so fair
be
so cruel?

Mansi

https://clyp.it/sccb4ehh

...

<3

Scream

She tells me she loves another.

And so like that,
the raison d'être of my words
violently dies in an explosion of ink.

...

C'est la vie.

Smell

Memories of you
live in a lake
behind my eyes, and
every now and then
I trawl through it and collect
dead hurt;
pile it like rotting fish
on the bank, so that
the scent of
your giddy happiness
the night we kissed on your
apartment floor,
might lose its way before
it reaches my nose.

But every now and then, on nights like these,
when the moon waxes eloquent,
the waters of the lake run high;
drown.

I pour liquid nitrogen hate
into this water, and my heart
pumps cooler, number.

I present you frozen words
wrapped in barbed wire, and
out of fear, refuse
to greet your reverse-Medusa eyes
they could turn me from stone 
into 
human.

You see,
you are not good for me.
You hold the trigger to my
insanity, and I
had hoped that time and
ice
would loosen your grip
and yet
here I am 
devoid of maturity, goodness, sanity.

So I will be continue being cold,
and give your burgeoning hatred
ammunition.
You should know though,
that this barbed wire
hurts me more than you.

...

"Why can't you be normal? Why can't we be friends?"
Would you give an alcoholic a glass of wine,
to sniff only?