I remember the first time you winked at me
Looked a like a pair of school children
Holding hands, perched a top your eye lids
I’ve never seen unity like this in pupils

never seen rain drops form lip to lip around an eye lash
as if to say
all those “what should have been’s” and “could have been’s”
lost meaning a long time ago
I’m here now
Here to show you what love smells like
Open your nostrils
Let me in
You see…I’ve been in the kitchen a long time now
Cooking up nostalgia and something that tastes like chicken
You gotta learn somehow right?

I have a trial and errored soul
A heart with stretch marks
A tattered rib cage full of wingless butterflies
I thought it counted being beautiful on the inside
That there is nothing I couldn’t stomach
My stomach
Loved that joke

And you were patient
A child waiting for his grandfather to find the keys
A battered wife
At a women’s shelter
God
Waiting for Adam and Eve to fuck up

Inevitable and yet strangely apologetic
I must have looked like the 5 yr old standing over the anthill
Burn marks don’t heal as easily if you only have one limb to lean on
Lean on me
Lean on us
Lean on an intertwined limbed conversation in the park on that Sunday
A baseball game in the middle of the summer
The first time I told you how mike died

August couldn’t have come soon enough
And our fall left us with the leaves

Left you bitter as a sailors wife, widowed on Christmas
And rightly so
The wind in your hair, never seemed so refreshing
Until I’m standing on a light house
Trying to throw poems into the dark
What if I was never coming back?

What if the only thing we remembered?
Was the first time we made love?
Can an orgasm
Mend a broken heart
One night stands of sweat
Dripping in between bricks like mortar
There is nothing strong here
Nothing worth singing about

Just crippled hands amidst a missed step or two
Falling
Never seemed so easy

Write me a poem
On the back
Of the only picture we ever took
Something fiery and short
And sign it sincerely
The last girl
He will ever yell at

Ps Sometimes I do miss you, even if I swear on my life that I never do

I pray these ice chips in my chest
Find somewhere else to dwell
Or crystallize
Into something a little more beautiful than a heart beat
I don’t have room enough for the cold
And I know you
You don’t want to be in this chess match aftermath
Anymore than I do
But sometimes Kings and Queens
Just wait the entire game to be taken

And maybe that’s the point
Love is worth waiting for
And beauty worth fighting for

We earn every badge
Every scar
Every love tap

None of this was meant to happen
And yet
Everything
Everything happens for a reason

There is a rainbow smile in our drag race chaos
We just have to stop the motor long enough to breathe it in
Let it linger on our lips
Like God is our Dentist
Placing Relief flavored fluoride on our gums
Flossing with Grace

There’s nothing to be afraid of Young Queen
Smile
Like you did
On the first day we met

Penn’s premier spoken word collective is having its spring show this coming weekend! Do not miss your chance to come out and see the sickest display of filthy poetic awesomeness in the western hemisphere!

Tickets on the walk every day starting Monday. Pick em up early because they will sell out!

April 2 & 3 @ 8pm
Dunlop Auditorium
$8 on the walk
$10 at the door
$9 ONLINE

You’re not as warm as you used to be,
And I chose a crowded restaurant where everyone knows me,
So I won’t make a scene this time ‘round.
Whether on a stage or a familiar place,
I’m always best when people are watching,
But there’s only been one person,
I’ve never been afraid to see me for who I am, naked,
And it’s been far too long,
How many times can I drive you home,
Watch the front door close stoplight red,
And wonder would you let me run it if no one’s around,

When I got home, I went to play basketball,
Because it’s the only thing I’m worse at than you,
And I need to feel good about us again,

It snowed on the walk back,
And I swore the sky was trying to romance me,
Sierra Leone mine diamonds from the stratosphere,
Have you ever tried to catch a dying star on your tongue,
It tastes nothing like forever,
More like innocence,
The dust of the February wind dancing halos under each lonely lamp post,
Until the earth is a blank slate again,

But I know now we can’t start over,
Because we don’t stick right anymore,
Love is not always white as wedding gowns,
Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty,
Like New Orleans jazz and the hurricane season,
The grit of brass band parades when the muck is up to your knees
Believe we can rebuild a home out of anything,
Take me back to Dixieland, I’m cold.

Get your minds and bodies ready for the first spoken word poetry show of the year from the sickest poetry group on the planet. The Excelano Project is kicking it off early this year with a continuation of last year’s EP Underground Tour to raise money for our November show.

As usual we’re bringing a sick set of Excelano poetry and we’re opening up the stage for all our unsigned Penn/Philly talent to join in with the fun. Also, the night will be a special HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY to David ‘Bless’ Warner, one of EP’s finest.

Free to enter, definitely donate if you want, but most importantly just come and enjoy your show.

Excelano hopefuls are recommended to come and get some exposure on the open mic before auditions this Sunday!

http://www.dopesickness.com

But I was just a boy,
Caught playing hookie in one too many science classes
when you were already three grades ahead,
And I was just too good at fakin’ it with the advanced curriculum.

So I never learned that even the sun will burnout sometime,
No longer able to kiss two protons into one helium smile,
She too will die,
A collapsed star,
I never liked how black holes sucked all the light from everything,
I said I’d rather not go out like that,
I think there’s more energy in parting,
It’s best if we go our separate ways,
And you said gladly,
Just give me what’s left of my love back,

But I never realized that breaking hearts is like splitting atoms,
How chain reactions fill chest until it weighs critical mass,
Until ribcage becomes radioactive chamber,
And my heart, a nuclear reactor,
Erupting into the three mile island of my sternum,
This is the stuff bombs are made of,
This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
This is Doomsday,
Screaming “My God what have done” from the Enola Gay, with mushroom clouds in our eyes,
This is fallout:
When the nuclear winter blocks out the sun,
With the ashes of everyone,
because everyone is dead.
Reminds me of times I wondered if you would be with me if I were the last boy left alive.

And it’s a curse to survive,
Radiation’s fried my immune system,
So I’m left defenseless,
To rot in my skin,
The napalm of my bones burning me from the inside,
Only I will know what pain is,
The horror of amputated limbs,
After my family tree returns from war,
And fate hacks off all the branches of our future children,
My genetics feel more like genocide,
And I’m not quite human anymore.

So lets start over,
Bring me back to the Stone Age,
And show me my basic instincts,
Whether cavemen throw rocks at storm clouds to pierce nimbus for sunlight,
Like shooting through fog for the moon,
Like cigarette burns in Brooklyn back alley ways,
Like rockets blossoming in the sky at midnight,
as if we could replant our love with explosives,
Remind me what fire feels like,
Because I’ve forgotten how to glow,

And I’m the only living boy in New York,
And you were more than just another “F” on a science test,
But even Einstein flunked out of chemistry,
And look what he gave us,
Limitless energy and a nuclear holocaust,
So I don’t know what about this project scared me more,
The possibility of success or the chance for failure,
But I’m willing to accept the consequences now,

I know you’re not here tonight,
And I know it’s my fault,

But when all seems lost in this experiment,
Lay by my bed and teach me,
That even uranium, rapidly decaying in half-lives not lived,
Does not die,
It just grows old together.

maybe I was as you drew me
all bundled up and still far
too big for my own skin,
bone softened with milky watercolor
and too well contained
on canvas to jut out
at uncomfortable angles, and maybe
you were just something
I dreamed about and tried childishly
to stick to the wall.
I too liked the flavor of black
paint. I spoke in the industry
of romance, smearing
sadness where I settled
to collect and whisper warnings
from crude, iridescent
puddles. We were artists

only in the sense that we knew
what the aftertaste of heaven
felt like on our tongues.
We were geniuses
counting on inadequate
tools, trying to cheat the science
of happiness,

painting our utopias
with colors that were never meant
to be pretty.