Reality is cracking at the edges.
It’s stretching itself thin trying to make room for my head.
For what resides inside my head.

And I’ll never have this conversation because you need a whole day
To wrap yourself around whatever the **** it is you have to say
But I get that you are different from who I want you to be

I like you anyway.

I need the universe to stop expanding
I need reality to crack along the fissures
Create and destroy right along the fissures
I need to believe that it exist out there somewhere
And that if I just get better the world will just stay here

I want to stay here forever.

Here, with my friends in the corners and you at my finger tips
Where I can be wrapped in my own skin and feel free
Where I can dance on the cracks of the world. suspended.

and flying.

This is how you write a poem.
You close your eyes.
and you forget yourself.
you let your fingers ghost over the keyboard
and you press down
whenever it strikes you.
pick a key, any key.
a real magician never reveals his trick.

This is how you write a poem.
you close your eyes.
and you dive into yourself
you pull a part of you to the surface
and you release it out into the world
whatever part of you is screaming
the loudest part of your soul
the squeaky wheel gets the oil

This is how you ruin a friendship
you let something fester in the back of your mind
you let it grow and change and push
until there is no more space for it in your head
until you've made no more space for it in your head
and you push it out through your body.

I've heard alcohol helps.

This is how you ruin a friendship
you don't think of them until it's too late
Or you don't call them on there birthday
Or you laugh while you dance on their grave
Or you think too much when you hear their name
Or you give until you've given it all away
Or you play too hard so you lose the game
This is how you ruin a friendship.

I wasn't joking about the alcohol.

It's not because it makes you do things that you don't want
You don't wake up and immediately feel ashamed or regret
It's because it takes away the part of you that thinks about other people
It's only about what you want, It's only about you
(it's my party and I'll dance if I want to)

The regret and shame sneaks in afterwards
from the same corner of your mind that the force came from
and it's not that you regret your choice.
Or that you don't maybe want it to happen again
It's just that you remember there are other people in the world.

Sometimes I hate that there are other people in the world.  

But only because other people matter so much in the end.

This is how you write a poem.
you take something in your life
you talk about it with metaphors and similes and flowery language
until your pen is falling of the page
until it's so vague not even the paper knows what you are saying
Do you understand that?
(is it crystal clear?)

Poems lack clarity.
I don't regret it.
I didn't find it weird
Actually, I kinda like it.

I'm worried that saying it so many times has made it seem like a lie
Something like me thinks the lady doth protest to much
It's not a lie
But he is not the audience of this poem
It's you.

I don't know if I need to apologize.
I'm worried I might.
I told you once that I have difficulty being a good friend
I hope you don't believe me now.
I hope you don't believe me ever

This is how you write a poem
you find a friend who writes better than you
and you try not to *****  it up for long enough to pick up a few tricks.

They say things like friends and hold your hand
and they think things like don’t run from me  
and it echoes in the beat of your heart  
old and ancient and forever
even if it’s the speech you first heard today

It echoes against you
new and old
terrifying and safe
short and forever
like a blue sky when you can feel a storm on it’s way

the words spill from their mouth
tumbling over their upturned lip
and it’s the first time you’ve ever heard a lie  
and known it was the truth  

it’s just the ice inside your grace melting
it’s just your soul being born
It’s just friendship.
its just everything

You think it’s the kind of friendships they would write books about
if there was a battle to be won
but instead it’s just the echo of notalonefriend, iloveyoufriend
and at the end of a lifetime there is nothing just about that

I think I found myself
or a part of me, a small part of me
and it wasn’t at the peak of the mountain
that I was afraid of climbing
or on the trail
that I dragged myself up
slowly, laboriously, taking the risk and never giving up.

I didn’t learn anything in the struggle
other then how to struggle

And I didn’t learn anything in the victory
other then the power of victory in the fight

Still, I think I found a part of myself tonight
when I looked at the sky, and the cliff
and the part of my hand where yours used to be
and decided to jump.

I’ve never free fallen.
I’ve always struggled.
I’ve always thought of how hard it was to push the stone so far up that hill
only to have it roll back down again
and I’ve despaired in having to struggle
I never realized that I didn’t know how not to.

I am a fighter
I need something to fight for.

I’ve remember that again.

Somewhere on the trail, I shattered
I sent pieces of myself across the mountain
I thought I’d find them in the oasis at the peak
I thought who I need to be would be waiting for me at the end of the journey.

when I looked at the sky, and the cliff
and the part of my hand where yours used to be
and how I was not there
I jumped

and I fell
and I fell
and I am falling
but there is no where to land.

It’s just me and me and me
for miles and miles and miles

Falling                                          
          is
             just
                 like                    
                     FLYING                      
if there is no where to land.

I seek inspiration in myself.
I know that this is wrong. But still,
I dig deep, and I look for that gleaming spark,
that white star,
that I see in all of you.
I cannot find it.
.
I seek inspiration in the skies.
like poets of old and ancient scholars
but I am blinded, distracted in fact,
by the universe that is in you.
I want to bleed it out and capture it in my hands,
hold you there forever.
I cannot grasp you here.
You would think that would stop you from trying.
.
You do not yet understand how cold my hand is.
How the ice has crept in through the sinew
and frozen my fingers.
I cannot hold your hand
I lash at you with my tongue instead
cutting and biting but occasionally sweet, laughing.
You wade through those moments, waiting
catching slowly onto what I will not say
and I hope that you notice my fingers twitching
I cannot hold your hand.
But I do everyday.
.
Something in me is breaking
the stones, large and looming, take my words
and twist
till all I hear is a broken echo of hurtmehurtmehurtme.
And I do
Hurtmehurtmehurtme
.
Still, It is you (the thought of you?) that lifts my hand to the page,
And slides the pen between my white-cold fingers
And whispers write it.
Write the pain away.
And I do.
Loveyouloveyouloveyou.

Your throat is itchy
and you’re not sure if it’s because
the sour taste in your mouth that you just had to swallow
or if it’s because you’ve run out of things to say.

Run out of things to say? You? Ha.
You, who can wax philosophical about rugs, and black lines
And the failings of the second dimension.
No.
You have not run out of things to say.

You have simply grown tired of talking.
The medium exhausts you.
The bone weary tired creeps, slowly, up and up your spine
and never, ever, reaches your eyes.

You have not run out of things to say.
Words spill from you in torrents,
phrases  with jagged edges escape the gap
that is between your lips and fall
tumbling
to the floor.
Not saying anything at all.

It’s not that there is nothing to talk about.
It’s just that when you open your mouth
your brain spills out in droves
and you don’t flatter yourself into thinking
you think well.
I don’t think well.

I don’t think well, but I speak even worse.

It’s been a long time since I’ve opened my mouth and given a speech.

All I do is talk. All I’m doing is running out of things to say.

Inside of me, speeches
are welling up
crashing like tidal waves into
the blood/brain membrane
floral in a way that only fantasy
and spoken word
accept.
But they are real.
Real
So real that I become afraid to open my mouth.

I cannot give this speech.
I’ll leave it to the falling rain
and the icy sinew
and the folding sky.
They speak the same language

I cannot give this speech.
I can not find the word that mean what I need them to.
I cannot define my terms
I have nothing to say.

I talk to nobody.
Or, rather, I talk to the air around people
and sometimes they listen.
Normally, they don’t.
It’s not as though I am saying anything.
Or, rather, it is not as though I mean anything.

You’ve stopped lying.
But you don’t ever mean the truth.
You, whose tongue is silver: because it is malleable,
and lays people into sheets,
have run out of things to say.

And I, whose tongue is lead and carbon
reactive and sticky and tripping
am you.

And neither me, nor I, have anything to say.

New friends are tricky.
New friends are tricky because
we are all still a mix of have-been, have-was, am and will be,
and we don’t even know yet.
.
But, Old friends,
Old friends are like the soft patter of rain.
Or the feeling of flying down the side of the road
with only an old-*****-broken street bike
and moonlight
as your guide.
.
Old friends are like beaches and sunrise
where the clouds rush by and the sky is open
and every breeze screams freedom.freedom.freedom.free
like soft squishy couches and headpets .
They are like whispered words in the dark
that thrum not alone.not alone.not alone
in time with your heart.
.
Old friends are like the change in your heart
that takes you from no and never
to climbing mountains
and only stopping for water breaks
when you realize that
far and distant
means nothing compared to
always and forever and inseparable.
.
Yes, new friends are tricky.
But, old friends were new once.