And At Home, The Lights Are Always Beating Poem by Jules Joaquin

In my room, there are scattered poems,
& everything smells of either Coke or liquor,
misused words in every sentence, exaggerations
on every line. How can you say no to an
“Everyday, I think of you as a pristine
wallflower that is yet to bloom.”? You can’t.
You would blush, feign a smile, for metaphors do not
sink in as fast as ink on paper can do—there
is always that period of denial that stings like
dishwashing material on an open wound, something which never
made you less ambiguous to me. (There is a wall of bad, poetic
graffiti that crumples up like cigarette skins in a back pocket.)
And I find it funny that while everybody here is in love with you,
you think that nobody really cares, that you are something everybody tolerates.
But it is only a passing phase that happens to people like us—somewhere,
someone is whispering vowels into a ticklish ear, and the night
closes like flowers that wilt in the summertime. But tell me, tell me,
would you still talk to me, if I tell you that
I see you on every blank mirror and that reflections are deceiving?
There is no certainty to the beautiful similarity that empty
windows display, for everything is misplaced,
everything is a gnihyreve & I love you is written in gibberish.
So I stitch my lips with smiles and nicotine rusted teeth,
and my hands are tied to a knot so that I wouldn’t grasp your hands
that fold like petals to the touch of a cold bottle, to the touch
of an arm that rests on cold wood that will last for a thousand years:
the same time it might take for me to dropp my poetry and start talking,
unless of course, you tell me to do otherwise.