Scars by Rudy Francisco

1. If I could I would nail these hands to the edges of stars. I would sacrifice this body to the sky hoping to resurrect as someone spiteful enough to not give a fuck about you.

2. Staple me to a cross. Pierce my side with a broken promise and I will bleed all the crippled reasons why you deserve one more chance.

3.Your bed smells like the last thing I was really good at.

4.You wanna know how I got these scars? I ripped every last piece of you out of my smile. 

5. I whispered you stardust.

6. I spoke you into sunflowers. 

7.I dipped my hands in forever. Touched you infinity. Treated you as if you were the last molecule of oxygen inside of a gas chamber. I was good to you.

8. You wanna know how I got these scars? I swallowed my pride and it clawed it’s way outside of my mouth. 

9. I realized I was never really your boyfriend. I was just your fuckin hype man. 

10. I hope your next boyfriend gets smallpox.

10. Yes I said smallpox!

10. I hate you!

10. I miss you!

10. I love you!

10. It’s hard for me to count when I get emotional.

10. I heard that 90% of human interaction is nonverbal so….

10. If I could I would tie your arms to a daydream and then auction you off to my fondest memories. 

See I wrote this poem in my own spinal fluid, I put it on the backbone of a white flag so before you read it you’ll already know that I’ve given up. I’ll just keep you here. Shackled to the most important chapter of my life story pressed into the basement of my eyelids like liquid salvation so I remember you beautiful with amazing underneath your wings and an orchid smile you gorgeous earthquake. You cracked hourglass with sand spilling from behind your ribs, you wasted my time.

How dare you linger on my lips and then kiss me like a stuttering apology with excuses stapled to the roof of your mouth. I still remember you like a dream  tattooed to the inner walls of a long term memory but some days I wonder if you existed at all. 

And of course, you wanna know how I got these scars. 

Well fine I’ll tell you…

I got these scars the day I fell in love with you. 

I landed face first.

Love Poem By Rudy Francisco

“I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak. And then suck my ex girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations. I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet. In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp… just to show me how painful love can be. And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned.
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in brail. And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless. I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed; it’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended. See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet. But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem… it would be about you.

About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared… but reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you. You see, I’m not really a love poet. But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window, you see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me because if you were here, right now, I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to.

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the pacific ocean, I want to drink the sunlight in your skin. If I was a love poet, I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful, even on days when everything around you is ugly you see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink.

If I was a love poet I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture, every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart, it plays hop scotch inside of my chest. Yo it climbs on to my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again. I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back in to one of my ribs just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you.

I swear, I’m not a love poet. But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love, my first poem it would be about you. And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me? And I said, put it like this: I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like… trust you.

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life. And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer. If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat, do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time. Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James. I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain even though it never rains in Southern California. And together, we could be music.

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend, I’ll say no. She is my musician. And me… I’m her favorite song.” 

"When I asked you for a chai latte,
what I meant to say was,
“I was walking past, I saw you in the window,
I only came in here because I had to know what your voice sounded like.”
But instead of saying that,
I got really nervous and just ordered the first thing on the menu
I don’t even know what the fuck chai is,
or a latte for that matter.
When God made you,
He cussed for the first time.
He turned to an angel, gave him a high five and said,
“This shit right here..”
You are that beautiful.
I’ve spent the last five days trying to figure out
how I’m going to say hello to you properly.
I finally figured it out.
It’s going to be something like.. “hi”
That’s all I got so far.
But I think it’s a good start.
See I want that,
I want that ‘my friends think I’m crazy’ kind of love,
that reckless kind of love,
that ‘wake up early make you breakfast’ kind of love,
I want that, that crack open my life and say ‘look, you gotta see this!’ kind of love.
Forget the shallow stuff
I want the deepest kind of love,
that ‘I want to stay up late and tell you all my secrets’ kind of love
that, that ‘every time I see you, I fall to pieces’ kind of love
I want that, that ‘stand next to me’ kind of love
that ‘you are my destiny’ kind of love
that ‘no matter what happens, you will always get the best of me’ kind of love
that ‘invest in me’ kind of love
because I’m already invested in you kind of love
that ‘you come home upset you don’t have to say nothin’ I already know what to do’ kind of love
I want
I want love..
I want love"

� Rudy Francisco : 2009 National Underground Poetry Slam Champion, 2010 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, & 2010 SF Grand Slam Champion (via seashelleyes-windysmile)