This is some of the poetry I’ve written over the years. I don’t really think I’m a great or prolific poet, but there are a few poems I don’t mind showing people. On the whole, I think a lot of poetry is cheesy and juvenile—people who argue that incomplete sentences broken in random places (with no capital letters) comprise a poem usually prove this point. Most of my poetry is highly planned-out and structured, and I usually pick a very matter-of-fact tone over a flighty, romantic one. My poetry has also been rejected for publication for being “overly angst-ridden,” so if you want uplifting poetry about the perseverance of the human spirit, you should probably go somewhere else. Like the Hallmark website.

The Ballast

Sailing lessons left me all but helpless.
I wrestle the rope onto the cleat and sigh.
“Having trouble?” you ask, coming down the dock.
“I can’t keep a course. I keep tipping over.”
“You need a ballast,” you say, smiling warmly.
“What’s a ballast?” This seemed problematic.
“It counteracts the forces acting on—
well, it’s easier to show. Untie that.”

Soon, we’re back on the choppy lake, and you
reach for a wire running down from the mast.
“This is a trapeze,” you say, wire in hand.
“What does that have to do with a ballast?”
“I’m the ballast,” you say. “A live ballast.”
You grab the wire and hang away from the sail,
and instantly, I feel the boat lay flat,
the winds and white-caps trying as they might.

And so we sail, the wind pulling me down,
and you and your smile pulling me back up.
Being pulled in two different directions
has never been so oddly comforting.

New Day

Your modest voice will draw me in
like fish are drawn to fishermen.
Your words pervade my thoughts again.
I’m happy you remember me.
Look up to me from where you drift,
and call to me out of the blue.
If you need me like I need you,
I’ll take you as a refugee.
The dark will bleed, the sun will rise
and settle Heaven’s subtle cries.
The pain is old, the old is new,
and I would give myself to you.

If love is what we fell into,
repose is what we’ve fallen from.
Love and solace never come
like simple gifts from little boys.
We’ll lay our heads on separate sides
of tragedy and comedy,
and keep between us irony
to laugh our griefs and cry our joys.
The pain is old, the sun will set,
and nothing ‘tween us dances yet.
The sky accepts a darker hue,
and I would martyr us for you.

I’ve used up all my yesterdays
to think of you and I as we.
If you should ever cry for me,
don’t tell me so. I miss your cries.
I’ll let you float or fade away,
but don’t forget me if you climb,
and greet me, if you have the time.
The night is cold. I miss your eyes.
The sky is old, the moon is new,
and lonely nights bring deeper blues.
My tired eyes forget to see.
I only long to be with you.

I’ll stumble in and drift away,
and watch contentment evanesce.
I’ll find another one, I guess,
where plenty more rest in the sea.
Your modest voice will draw me in
like fish are drawn to fishermen.
Your words pervade my thoughts again.
I’m happy you remember me.
The dark will bleed, the sun will rise
and settle Heaven’s subtle cries.
The pain is old, the old is new,
and I would give myself to you.

Shellfish Love

I know it’s cheesy, but it’s all I could think of. And you know you smirked at it.

Imagine a pearl—a red pearl—from a
bloody, soft-shelled oyster washed ashore.
It grew from a piece of the barren land
lodged between apathy and empathy
and cultivated for seven long months
in the dry, dry air by the lonely shore.

And when the pearl was at its reddest,
you cracked the shell and told the little oyster,
“What a lovely oyster you must be
to have crimsoned such a perfect pearl within.”
The oyster, unaccustomed to such words,
was, naturally, happy as a clam.

The oyster grew to loathe the sea and long
for new heartaches to fashion new pearls.
One by one, he dropped them on a string, and
you watched him churn and care himself to death.
So claim your newest prize and tell me, dear:
Do you like your new necklace? I’ve plenty more.

To Life, On Her Eleventh Kind Letter to Me

Forget theory.
Forget grand ideas.
Forget kind words, poise, and respect.
Just tell me this:

If all you say is true, then why
am I so good at falling down?
If I’m really so smart, then why
do I keep repeating myself?
If you really love me, then why
do you only care when I look like you?
And if I’m really loved, then why
do I hate myself?

I feel so clumsy in my skin
while you move gracefully in yours.
I can’t laugh when you laugh, or cry
when you cry, or sleep when you dream.
Is my pain validated by
my life, like a scrape on the knee?
Do I really run too fast, or
do I just hit the wall the fastest?

Teller

“We’re both so impulsive,” you say,
in-between bites of your salad.
I nod, in-between bites of mine.
“And so, I’ve been thinking a lot…”

And that is your bank slip. And you
choose to cash in on my trust fund,
the interest of which has financed
a relationship for five weeks.

As you hand me the slip, you say,
“I’ve been thinking a lot. Goodbye.”
I smile and complete the transaction.
So long! Thanks for doing business!

Brave Gilgamesh

Like a brave Gilgamesh
against a god of fate,
I steal away my prize:
a chest made of men,
filled with valor and hope.
And like brave Gilgamesh,
a companion called Truth
is struck down for my sin.
I dive to bitter depths
to search for new esteem,
and I am denied by
a great snake of insight.
But unlike Gilgamesh—
what a great king he was!—
my great kingdom’s walls have
slowly fallen apart.

Untitled – for someone I know

You know that he loves you.
I want you to know
that I love you, too,
even though I let
her hand swing across
your face so carelessly.

And every night that
she called you a whore,
I want you to know
that I cried with you,
in my quiet room,
in my silent life.

But what I am now,
I want you to know,
I hate myself.
I hate what I am
for letting you become
what you are at night,
when one can see,
and for making you ask
questions that no one
should have to ask.

And I hate myself
for never moving.
I hate that it was
always you, never me.
Do you hear me now?
I hate it all so much.

Don’t believe the lies
you were told back then,
and I won’t live the lies
I’m growing out of now.
Let’s grow up, and not
wear our lies as a skin.
I want you to know
that we’re free.

Untitled – April 23

I thought I’d sleep the dream away—
your eyes, your smile, reading Hamlet
together. My head was a mess,
and my throat still sore from my first
cigarette and my last heartache.
Last night, we were dancing, and I
made you my dream. But then today,
you smiled, and I was still dancing.
I thought I’d sleep the dream away,
but you would not be unmade.

An unplanned child to an unprepared father
This isn’t my story. It was actually an assignment to write a dramatic monologue in poem format.

I look just like you.
I don’t know if
they told you that,
or if you ever
remembered your son.
I’m nothing like mother.
I like to think that
I’m just like you.
Maybe someday
I’ll fly a plane
and teach at Berkeley.

Or maybe one morning
I’ll wake up with
no wife, no children,
no one to beat on
except the poor old dog.
Maybe I’ll die and
never make amends.
Maybe no one will
cry at my funeral.

Look at me now,
the bastard child of
passion and apathy;
her passion, your apathy.
Twenty-six and
still a newborn,
with no thoughts of
where to go or
where I came from.
You’re dead, and I’m
coming to life
with what I’ve been
given to live.

Look at you now,
six feet beyond my touch.
Maybe I’ll see you
in the next life.
Maybe I’ll know you then.
I still think about you,
but I didn’t cry.
I never will.

Jonathan

On an old wooden desk
covered with letters and bills,
in a room with no lights,
in a house with six people
in a fight with no end
lies a small coil pot,
full of cracks, dirt caked inside.
“I made that,” says the young boy
with a crooked smile and no father.
I know he sees the cracks and lumps,
but he says nothing more;
he just stands there, waiting
for me to say “This is a fine pot,”
or “This is a beautiful thing.”
Instead, I take his hand in mine,
saying “You are a beautiful thing,
you are a fine boy.”
With my other hand,
I pick up the crooked pot.
The boy says nothing.
I hold the cracked vessel in awe,
seeing nothing but beauty in
the uneven glaze and unsmoothed edges.

Laughing

Yesterday, I laughed
when I spilled coffee
on my brand new jeans,
filling each blue fiber
with brown, bitter liquid.
They cost me 24.95.

Today, I laughed
when you told me that
you’re never coming back
and slammed the door on me
so uneventfully.
It cost me six months.

I used to laugh because
I always kept living.
Now, I laugh because
I always keep dying.

Poem for my father, in which he takes pictures, smiles, and wraps cables (poorly)
Despite the name, this is not about my father. It was another product of that creative writing class.

You were great, you tell me
as I wrap my cables
and unplug my guitar.

I know you heard each song
and even took pictures,
but still don’t believe it

after all the soccer
games you skipped, after you
missed my graduation.

You seem like a father,
but not mine. Mine is an
entity which I have

perceived but never known,
to whom I seem a son,
but not his. Now, you are

a man struggling with
how he has become a
father and I’m a son

trying to find out where
I have come from. That’s why
we’re both smiling the same

nervous smile. The room clears
slowly, leaving just you,
me, and our nervous smiles.

You grab a cable and
start to wrap it (poorly),
and I’m glad to have you,

just like when I was six,
and yours was the only
smile I ever knew.

The Grove

The dock and murky
water sing of how
the world forgot them.
Here, in the wilderness
that is not so wild,
we forget about
the world that forgot us;
there are only the
smells of orange blossoms
and your hair,
the tallest palm trees
dancing with the wind,
the cracked wood and
rusty nails that will
never fall apart,
the sun above and
colder depths below,
the laughter and tales
of the jokes the world
has played on us.
The grove and the pond
are world enough for us,
the hour left ’til sunset
is all we need to live.

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