Crush By Richard Siken // Richard Diebenkorn // Richard Diebenkorn // If There’s A Way Out I’ll Take

Feelings are powerful. kept unchecked they will eat away at your sanity until you are steadily talking to yourself in the third person...

VM

I have a pain

in my chest

Some longing in my heart,

an emptiness inside me

I’ve waited so patiently,

and still I wait

I wait for you to arrive

At the rendezvous in the dark morning

In blazing glory and dark

stubble.

I wait for you at the end

of sentences,

on the side of the road,

in the dead of night.

These I have loved

A great tall girl, full of blue

Inviting lips, sweet to the eye but never tasted

Glasses that were black but now are pink

A voice of the ocean, Like waves hitting the breakwater

Of hair so perfect, Aphrodite should blush

A figure akin to the sun setting on the horizon

A connection so deep, the ocean has nothing on it

The future that lights up my nighttime

A conversation of Apple's and taste

Two people so together- hot and cold water

The sound of soothing poetry

A great tall girl

Yes,

These I have loved

"My body aches and longs to be next to yours, feeling as if the very stars are in my heart.."

A hunger, a craving for you - eUë

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Let it go. Something beautiful wants to grow in its place.” - Unknown

From Frankkie’s chapbook, It Was Good Until It Wasn’t, available at https://bottlecap.press/products/good

If you wanna love the world, where do you start?

I wanna write a story

about the sun that was once my chest,

about the cloud that was once my head,

about reaching for air, how I was finally able

to fill my lungs with a single breath,

how I've learned about peace and then heard

something inside me crack.

If you wanna love the world, where do you start?

I move too fast, it's my thing

to set a pace and outrun it;

it's my thing to collect my tears just in case

all drinking water gets poisoned -

can only hope that I've cried enough

so I won't die of thirst.

If you wanna love the world, where do you start?

'Cause I can feel like I'm about to break,

again;

I remember so very clearly

how I was making deals back then

for just a splinter of, not joy,

but potential.

Cycles over cycles, little athlete, tell me -

didn't you pass yourself a million times?

Do you still mourn the dreams

you once had when you were more than stuck

and just needed to get out?

If you wanna love the world, step by step,

how do you do that without needing to resurrect;

I found my place in the world and came back from the dead,

but casket diaries, they become quite exhausting -

take a second, just imagine it,

it's no fun anymore the millionth time

'cause I know by now

how my coffin's shaped and

my fear has turned to resignation.

So how does it come the sun still hurts as badly,

so how does it come that the light on my skin

still feels like it did on the first day?

Date someone who understands you're a work in progress but still adores you for the absolute fucking masterpiece that you already are.