a lil sumthin sumthin

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

—	Ernest Hemingway in Esquire, December 1934

the dumbest girl i ever touched

the dumbest girl i ever touched
felt like velvet and smelled like
what a perfect sunday morning
can only wish to smell like.

she was exotic, despised narcotics
but indulged me as much as i
wished to patronize her and her words
and her dress that was inches too short.

and when i slept in her bed
she would hold me so tight
she never got the chance to
feel me like i felt us climax.

and when she would wash the dishes
i would read her shelley and i would
sing her t-pain and she would hum along
when she moved onto ironing my pants.

to her i was a pharaoh and to me she was
my countrymen and we both believed
in our hearts we were frauds and tricksters,
constantly trying to remember our own lies.

today the sky is as blue as dorian gray's eyes
and the smell of sunday morning is as faded
as the painting of dorian gray's eyes and my
father's hands are calloused; this is my

inheritance.

she would question her thoughts,
and when i corrected her she would
laugh like a thief getting caught. we
would argue and she was always right.

when i hugged the dumbest girl
who ever touched me, she smartened
up. her grip loosened. her eyes glistened,
she smiled and i'm sure the revelation
felt like childbirth; she felt me for the first time

and
the dumbest boy who ever touched her
had nothing to say.

the universe is intended to be discovered

I hugged my pillow to sleep
and the scent of your hair was nowhere.
The universe currently exists between
my sigh and when
you close your eyes.

I am not asking to be Columbus
and you the New World.
You are not territory
and I have no sovereignty
to place a flag on your landscape.

I just ask you understand
that looking into your eyes
and listening to your thoughts,
amidst your vulnerabilities
and your insecurities and your
strength and resilience

I have discovered a world
unique, a world beautiful from
the inside out. I have laid eyes
not on a world flat -- one which
I was scared existed -- but
a world in which my stars satellite
with gentle illumination.