guys i think i like em dashes too much

for the stars

how poetic,

the inherent poetry of stars—

how tragic,

the cemetery of long-dead suns,

brighter, now, then we’ll ever be,

and far more alone—

how romantic, 

to gaze into the same sky

all the dead poets gazed upon,

to pretend, for a moment, to be one of them—

how very characteristic of us,

to chart constellations,

finding pictures, tracing patterns, of things that never were

and standardizing it,

to yearn so desperately not to be alone,

to dim the lights of the stars as we make ourselves glow,

to write poems to lovers, 

comparing the loveliest and most charming among us to starlight—

it is a lonely and sorrowful person, 

i think,

who would best be compared to a star.

Not my best work and I can't think of a name for it. 

i have a reoccurring nightmare

where i am a new york times bestselling author

and my poems appear in glossy paperbacks

on a table at the front of a barnes & noble.

it is filled with a thousand portraits of you,

now worn anonymous,

but your eyes just gloss over the cover

and i wonder—

do you recognize my name?

are you surprised, or did you know,

all along,

that i would be destined for this?

or am i just another author

whose work you won’t pick up?

right—

you were never much of a reader, 

so what would you be doing in a barnes & noble, anyway?

my nightmare continues

with me on some late night talk show,

dressed in a houndstooth blazer

and my great-grandmother’s earrings,

crossed legs losing circulation,

endearingly awkward.

i promote my upcoming poetry collection

and joke that you have to be sort of ugly

if you want to make something beautiful.

meanwhile, you sit in your apartment,

drinking a soda after a day at your real job,

watching the tv

and you don’t recognize me

with my hair done up

and my faults hidden behind television make up

so you reach for the remote

and you change the channel.

then

one of my poems appears on some english state test question

and tired eighth graders 

who just want all of this to be over

are forced to analyze my language and line breaks

my syntax and symbolism

and come to some grand conclusion

about morality or mortality or another great universal truth

(and that’s the reason you never liked poetry,

because our teachers always had to wring out 

every last drop of sticky-sweet nectar,

leaving behind just hollow husk of a poem)—

but those kids are just reading into things

because all i meant by it

was that i love you

and i miss you

and i know you’ll never read it

but i still look for you in every crowd,

hoping that one day, we’ll be walking opposite directions

on some busy new york city street

and we’ll see each other—

and we won’t stop—

but from just a second of eye contact,

you’ll be able to see more of me than 

any test-taking middle schooler

or talk show host

or literary critic

or even i, myself, for all my poems,

ever could.

The rush of the river drowns everything out

The traffic, the customers, my heartbeat breaking

Falling into red-hot crunchy bits of confusion

A familiar confusion

So familiar I can smoothly float down a brook of thoughts 

While it comes crumbling down around me.

The river runs right behind the building I work nights in

Shaded by a canopy of leaves and vines

A little bit of wild surviving in the heart of civilization

If the heart can be defined as the nearest McDonald's.

I wonder how many people drive by in their metal carriages

Emanating sound and heat and poisonous air

Unaware there is any river running through the town 

Too busy 

Too indifferent

Too caught up in a web sprawling beyond

What is in front of us now.

The river looks straight, but it winds 

It avoids bumping into the road 

It flows behind the library

And mailboxes

And freshly paved streets,

Twisting until it's no longer running behind the sidewalk 

But somewhere else out there, burbling a quiet tune. 

On and on the river rushes

And drowns everything

Out.