I think the hardest thing to remember is that everything ends.

When times are great and I'm lying in your arms its so easy to remember
That you're going to leave.
I count down the minutes until you'll have to get out of my bed, pull on your shorts, pack up your bag,
And go.
Its easy to look at it in terms of time
And know exactly how many seconds I have
Until you leave.

But when the insides of my stomach are clenching and aching,
When there's nothing in the world that can make this pain stop,
It's hard to remember that this too will end.
This time there aren't a set number of minutes to count down,
But it will pass.

My friends tell me, "He wasn't good enough for you"
My roommate says, "There's only so many times he can make you cry before I write him off."
My mom says "You've been down lately honey.  Is everything okay?"
I start to perk up and think, You're right. I'm glad he's leaving.
Only a few more minutes.

I follow up with telling them that my psychic says I haven't met the love of my life yet.
I don't yet know the man I'll marry,
Which makes me feel better.
And then she says, "Have you seen her recently? How do you know?"
And I'm back to tallying the minutes left in my misery.

Its hard to remember that this pain will subside
That it will stop hurting so badly.
That I will stop thinking about you every moment of every day.

But then take me back to the flip side where things were perfect.
When we spent our first night together-
The build up,
The flirting,
The giggling-
To when we were finally in your bed, locked in each others arms
And you said to me, "This isn't going to be a one time thing."
Even then, I knew our time was limited.

I know eventually I will leave your bed permanently in the morning
To go back to my place.
And I know eventually my life will continue on without you in it.
Without our fingertips locked around each others.
But its hard to remember that
Its hard to want that.

And now you're leaving
And I so badly want to say the things
That you're not supposed to say to the guy you're fucking.
Will you ever talk to me again?
Can I still text you 24 hours a day?
Can I have your address?
Can I call you?
Do you want to call me?
Can we talk about doing more?
Can we talk about visiting?
I don't want to get a drink or coffee when I happen to be in town.
I want to visit for you.

But I'm afraid those are going to end things even quicker.
I know its going to end.  That's not the question.
I just want to hold out for as long as possible
With my fingers caught in your hair,
With your arm grasping my waist,
With our texts stretching late into the nights when we can't be together.

Maybe someday we'll meet in some city
And get that drink or coffee I want more than
And rekindle this flame (5 years?).
Maybe I'll text you one too many times
And you'll stop responding (6 months?).
Or maybe we'll meet other people
And forget about our short moment of bliss (1 year?).

Until then I will continue to tally how many minutes have passed
And I have left to suffer
Until something, someone, fills this aching hole
Until there is a happier ending.

happiness
all i want
it's not a front
can roll in a blunt
something i drink
or swish
or sweet
not something to eat
or a quick feel
not a tug on the reel
a new steering wheel

but it's what i want
and i'm gonna find it
trying to figure out where to look
i've read a number of books
to see what in the world
happiness looks
like

i saw it in a kid
he was riding his bike
and another little boy with his father
flying a kite
i saw it in the face
of the kenyan who won the boston marathon race
i saw it in the eyes
of a young couple
and it was two guys
i see it in the sun
in the beaming rays
when it grazes my face

i smell it in the kitchen
mother's cooking dinner
the roast is in the oven
and the dog is by her side
i saw it in her face
in her eyes
when id come home from work
she'd jump off the couch
in a very quick spurt
and start barking
jumping
and licking
and playing
happiness
i miss it
wish it was staying

i'm gonna find it
no matter how hard i try
i'm going to make it
through the world i'll glide
in happiness
i always strive
for happiness

but how do i get it?
do i stop try?
or go harder?
travel waters uncharted
boats not chartered
i seek happiness
i want to be smarter

happiness
i'd rather it not
have a price
can't be bought
but happiness
past present
all i sought
all i seek
just had a dream
and in the future
i see
happiness

I have this ache, Doctor. And so far, no amount of drugs or drink have been able to cure it. Where does it hurt, you ask? Why right here, Doctor. Right here in my chest.  It started feeling odd when I saw HER for the first time. It was a Thursday; August eighteenth of two thousand eleven I believe. I remember her perfectly, for I had not, and have not, seen anybody more beautiful in my life. Her auburn hair was  streaked with red and waterfalled  perfectly over her delicate shoulders, that were on that day cloaked in a blue jacket. Her long graceful fingers bloomed from slender palms and were crowned with and elegant black nail polish with a cracked silver finish. To this day, I have never so much as imagined anybody more perfect than her. So what's my problem? Well Doctor, she hates me. I can see it glint in her dark eyes every time she looks at me. Why is this? Why I have not the slightest idea. All I have ever been was polite to her. All I have ever been was kind. When she shivers I give her my jacket, regardless of how cold I am at the time. When she is hungry, I use my last dime to feed her. I do everything in my power to make her happy, make her laugh when the pain adds weight to her shoulders. But I guess it just wasn't enough in the end. What do you prescribe, did you say? An entire bottle of pain pills and a slash down each wrist? That sounds about right. Thank you, my dear Doctor.

You will have a moon-faced child who is good at keeping secrets. She will be a piece of the the sea, ruled by the sun, and afraid of the dark. She will start to explore and never stop. More than anything, she will be frightened of being settled, getting stuck. She will say, "No, I will not", but at what cost? 

I have terrible nightmares. I dream that I am running, trying to defend my truths against immoral powers. In my sleep, systems corrupted by the complexity of control try to steal my simplicity, try to make me dirty and compliant, things I will never be. In my dreams I am persecuted time and again for things that make no sense to me. It is a feeling of choking claustrophobia, worse than any coffin. The injustice insults my soul, and I wake with heaving lungs and an aching heart.

I am obsessed with knowing myself. Maybe if I can understand that much, the rest of this will start to make sense. We'll see.

I worry. I worry about dentists. Pharmacists. Business marketing majors. The dispassionate masses. People content to do things for money. For little bits of green paper that aren't particularly attached to anything but false notions of power. I have no religion to reassure me that it will all even out on some other plane. I have here, I have now. I will not fritter and waste the hours that make up the dull day, I will not be made to be afraid.

It hurts my heart to see how easily my brothers and sisters accept the notion that we are destined to spend most of the precious hours of our existences working at jobs we don't care about just to stay afloat in a drowning economy, and how easily judgments are cast upon those who don't conform to such broken logic. It's easier to judge than it is to think. Thinking is so uncomfortable.

It makes me want to scream, to rant. Don't they see? We pave the way for each other to be lazy. We have created technology that we use to save time so that we have more time to spend on the important things, like trying to figure out how to get our hands on more money, so that we can buy more things. We aren't paid to create, repair, discover or teach. We are paid to entertain, not question. We survive by serving. And that's a little too close to indentured servitude, wouldn't you say? Planned obsolescence. Wage slavery. Stockholm syndrome. Electoral College. War on poverty. From the makers of Agent Orange, corn! And no, you can't heat up your burrito, you think you're fucking royalty? That's right baby, keep voting. You have a voice. You are free.

Our entire system is obsolete if the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat are killing us because we've been so busy saving time that we forgot to remember not to poison ourselves. We create disease, and then spend lots of time and money "treating" it. Treating and treating and treating, fixing things by breaking things. Quality of life be damned, we want to live forever! It increases our GDP, don't you see?? When it's my time to go, plug me into a wall for a few years and then bury me in a big fucking box to make sure that the nutrients in my body won't feed the earth. Spend a lot of money on all of that. I will look down on you lovingly from my cloud, stroke my chin and proudly ponder my legacy. The end goal, it seems, is to die old and rich and fat, surrounded by things. To leave no mark of love on anything, not even our own hearts. It hurts my heart to see my people so removed from their selves and their truths that they think they are right.

So much of what I see around me hurts my heart.

She sits half full of optimism, half a pessimist
sometimes happy and seldom blue.
Lay your head back she persisted,
Such eloquent charm to be resisted,
          All the times she's helped you through.

Follow her tail wherever she leads,
and lay your head back once more.
Through your lips she softly bleeds,
And quenches all your desperate needs.
          Until you need once more.

In the sweetest whispers never misconstrued,
all she confides you keep secluded.
All the while she sings softly to you,
Assuring that you'll make it through.
          Until your time here is concluded.

With the world now off balance beneath your feet,
shes the only one who stops to greet you.
Mixing clarity with deceit,
And keeping her from angels teeth.
          How could they bite the hand that feeds you?

Drink more then old friend, perhaps you will see,
that her affection is distilled in misery.
But whilst she fills the glass in your hand,
          Its anything but a tragedy.

Summer comes and the crazy creeps in
driving me out
to the streets-
roads and alleys,

To madness and the barefoot listlessness
I wont keep longer than a week
I wont stay longer than a day.

My man, to survive
a second summer,
in question.

Sip. Drink. Swallow. Stare On.
At this point I'm alone
thinking maybe maybe maybe maybe.
I cool, the leaves unfurl

from the buds they were- only
weeks ago-
I was sane.
And moving forward.

If you're alone
And I'm alone
Why don't we be alone together?

We can have a drink and
Shoot the shit and
Talk about the weather.

Because I know this world
Has got you
Shaking in your shoes.

So if you're alone
And I'm alone
Why don't we be alone together?

Fashion this as liquor to give spirit to
a song in write.  Seen seldom to weigh
words at play in search, sewn
expensive for time spent in trust and
recite.  Penciling not for profit so
rhythmic this may show.  Find in the
presence to open and reflect our
woes.  Only prescription for
uncommon those in write.  A same
those who compose.  This on display is
the compromise of sheltered dreams
and the soul, of rhythm in gentle prose.


This is the allure of the jewel of
life.  Sent as promise a same a
wish.  Stem those genes and make
heavy this vision and prayers in
might.  These are our rays made ink, to
weigh the pressures of waves constant
in cycle, to detract from nature’s
Heavenly sight.  Lost we shall dream
and ever so patiently grow old ~ but in
heart live bold.


Rugs were in Persia mathematically
correct and with an Indian craft
colorful, Heaven sent.  Only captured
in a metaphor this day, so men do
master, so simple this way.  Simple this
as to measure the years past, shudder
away tears, for the river purifies our
passions commandeered.  So culture
our gardens to prosper and replenish,
in the green untamed, and natural in
wonder, behold.


Today we thimble a sew for tomorrow,
for our craft is spared only to simple ~
ness of editing, not journeyed journals
to an ever-changing composition.  
Perhaps unfamiliar this vest, this
life.  Sample the living, in books that
inspire.  Dismal I think the desire to
purify a pen in this heavy practice, a
dance an art.  Time lends a flavor,
marinating appealing to a fashion so
write.


Always calm to prolonged righteous
reason, modern making, yet captured
still as storytelling.  Uncommon
to cues, but refreshing at leisure, is now a
computer who makes simple what once
was wasted time.  Measures made in
this art are laborious, the passion is
for the pen, reel it in as your tool,
rations will in turn ~ give as a well and
nature and sow, the seed of the write.  


Refinement ~ un-forsaken, notes of
detail, must reinvent and inscribe in
ink.  The bank of intuition lay tender as
our diction.  Replenish in the soil of
our Native grounds to seed another
tool, the luxury of our lingo.  For
inspirations may befriend or become
uncharted if left in the cold.  Sold but
without a surrender to all integrity, we
will call for many souls to ship and
receive what Forefathers intended.  In
over our heads, over watering our
behaviors, half unknowingly over
diluting our mental treasures, is this
the liquor of life, all too fancy in
measure but it was the tea of rebellion ~
and so I toast ~ to a drink tonight.


Inherent as memories of a generation
now surely within time, we will fill the
promise within crafted lines, and
file away ~ many promises ~ many
revisions ~ many times.  In spoil we shall
not surrender our bounty of honesty
and wisdom, so gray in years we
mend.  Dent our self-serving self ~
respect, make and justify the wheel in
role common.  Like a beard in keep,
intention is relevant.  Surely women
refine makeup as to show beauty in
character.  Thus what we intend to
refine is an endeavor to unwrinkled
and celebrate the qualities of growing
old.  Time is of new defining, for the
times are naturally at all times in
ritual of change.


Memories to grace the gift of sight ~ are
the shades to carry our reflections
away.  One, who trusts and so cares,
lay in the daydream of light.  In a wish
sent salient, reference to eyes unveiled,
patiently as a seed shall ripen, the
flavors of life will flower in springs
day.  We hanger ~ thus shelter, the rags
made clothes, best when leather to
weather firm and tight.


Regift the promise, to harness the
wind and make words potent as those
before did without regret.  Today in
general we lean and conform on the
fundamentals, too disciplined, mirror
of stale literature.   Similar to wood
varnished but without the stains of
life.  First revision is not for giving,
only what is taken, luxury of
time.  Color your copies of the wood
you talk in and pencil in your
pressures to relieve the pain, simple ~
ness and cold feet lay sold, as buttered
bread to fill.  But imperfect, so
forthcoming, wills the literature of
today ~ finding promise in ceremony
by charting drafts and revisions to
send in message to those young in
read.  This voyage is regretfully gentle
as our host made monumental any
verse, so breathe within the soul and
hearts of men, to find new styles to
milk the mind of reason.  Leafs from
the tree of intuition ~ censure the
picture, sell in the filter of Freedoms
fight, not first drafts ready when
write.  


Battered but purely by pace and
meager beginnings, the wave of
procurement in the arts of linguistics
will saddle and shelter the idea
profound.  Don’t toss away the raisin
of a pen in hand,  for we lean to easily
in bits and bytes.  Promise of Heaven's
pennies falling in rhythm will sing
tonight.  


Majestic in find, common in ground,
gift a find, in leisure, in time.  Gather
they guard and uphold the greater
good, not to entertain but inspire.  Just
as ones soul is when right.  Humbled
in behaviors so chips in clever may
fall.  But poker face we have become,
once centered in earnest of essays in
rent, now owners of ideas
embellished ~ in verse ~ our native
treasures.  Second we charter the raft
of ideas in mend, to conceive works so
aspiring as the poets and linguists of
historic claim.  So riddled ~ so
mastered.  Surely a new discontent
shall offer, in a pebble of examples
met, but with practice and structure
our youth will pen.  


Demand must be patient, for
procurement in the arts of linguistics
will nurture and mother our future
Leaders to a discipline in their own
right.  Never forget the days of past
generations for they marveled in the
arts ~ and in rain it falls in our hands
~ to luster and defend.  Poetics are too
political if not in share.  Protection of
this is how Freedom was rung.  The
hungry will maintain its resolve and
rightfully so.   Riddled as sow ~ these
lentils, this meal, these feathers, this
ink ~ shall fuel the fire.  A dance in the
pillows of night ~ shall brush the painting
in the Autumn of ones days.  Flaccid in so
many ways.  


Glorified by the shadows of
protection, but only one day is stored
for this intention.   Freedom is in the
work engraved beside it, within it,
sharing we celebrate it, and our Brave
provide it.  Celebration comes by way
of duty and hard work, and is rises
high and early in the dawn.  Yes, on
the Forth Day of July.  Food and
pleasures are gifts for price paid by
our Soldiers and Agencies who protect
and defend our freedom and intelligence, and
calmly watch over it as we carry
along.  All under the calm watch of
Gods umbrella.  Future dreams are
blessed a same, for all under this Flag
by notion alone, seam and dress and
hence sail ~ with solemn truth.  Trusting
the winds of reason to keep us Forever
Free and on course to replenish the
soil, for those young in years.  Students
in the day dream of life are in the send
to allow their pen to charter this
peaceful but daunting Nation to one of  
peace and prosperity.  Willingly and
calm the lion stares afar from
American shores, Democratic in nature and
always reinventing in this idea we
call ~ the American Dream.