and I wish with my entire being
that I could go back in time
and return to that
little girl
making daisy chains with her daddy

Spread, soar, open up your mind
Let it flow with the rhythm
Have it let go of all cynicism
Resist getting blinded by mysticism
For we're only here for a time
So don't give into criticism
Radiate good vibes like a light prism
And always listen for life's lyricism
For though we are here for a time
We never know how long that time will be

My love was not blindness
But the only truth
That you could take to be true
Never comprehending
Always
          Doubting
Debasing
          Damning
My love
Not as noble
As your love—
Your love was not blindness.

By no means, did
I succeed in moderation;
With you my feelings, like my words,
Came in bursts of awkward energy;
I couldn’t control the volume
And never realized proximity or intensity
Until you interrupted me
for yelling in your ear,
(You particularly hated yelling)
And I quieted down for a time.
Maybe I was too loud,
But of the words themselves
I should not have been ashamed.
My love was not blindness.

Blinded, could I have
Seen what you buried within yourself?
Believe me, all I wanted was to help you,
but, in aiding, all turned on me; unsuspecting,
I found myself under the depraved dirt
Spiritless, struggling, suffocated.
My love was not blindness.

I deny Dostoyevsky’s distinction,
An error of translation, perhaps;
Even in the most compatible of languages,
One language will lack the means
of expressing a word essential to the other.
We’re the same person, we always said
But I couldn’t invoke that here—
Here where it mattered
More than it ever had.
As I yet again,
not one for eye contact,
if only you had been able to
stare straight into your own
ever-evading,
ever-escaping eyes.
My love was not blindness.

I am your eyelids and the train-tracks of your stitches. I am the cracks in your bones and the wealthy mind riches. I am the fluid of your language that speaks in every sentence of your prose, I am the syllable you cannot speak though your tongue still knows. I am the chapel of your rib cage and the rage that it slows, closing the gates to the crosses in rows. I am the dirt under your cuticle and the follicle of your skin, sprouting a thread of your body within. I am the anxiety of your brain and the ecstasy of your flesh, crawling at the sense that you attain and possess. I am your lost baby teeth and the way that they chatter, I am the neurons, the synapses, the dark and brain matter. I am your saliva burning caverns in the cave of your time. I am the line of your lips and the lungs you call, "mine." I am your soul, your secrecy, your sanctity. Your spine.

Its a shame
things ended this way
Not that I ever
thought you would stay
I dont like conflict
But its all for the best
I guess anything worthwhile
Is bound to hurt
Once its gone
As soon as you were
Out of site
It started to pour
It was symbolic
Of how I felt
Watching you walk away
Holding back from
Wanting to tell you
For the last time
How beautiful
you looked today

I was searching my pockets for a story to tell my daughter on the night before Thanksgiving when she was looking especially nineteen, shouldering the immeasurable weight of being nineteen, and I couldn’t find one with a good three-act structure, but I started to tell her about the kind of vaguely existential warm knot I always used to get in my stomach when I went home from school for Thanksgiving, and how I couldn’t decide at the time whether it was happy or sad, but now I knew that it was happy for certain, and when you think about how once things change they are not changing back it can be kinda heavy, but you don’t have to think about it too often, and we had this new recipe for cranberry sauce this year and you don’t even have to get up early to watch the parade.

When I went downstairs at nine the next morning to put the turkey in the oven, she was smiling in front of the TV, sipping a cup of black coffee with her dad.

Today I made a sad attempt to die
yet I had no rope
To make my thirteen loops
like an old man showed me to do
I thought about where I could find enough
to hold my body above the ground
Where my feet just barely touch
my hands limp beside thick thighs

Failing at my attempt at life
there seems no better time
When I have no hope
this is costly and for naught
I've nothing to offer here
and I have no want to
No being pulled apart and shoved beneath the rug
yet I lack motivation and drive
Even in this
so no progress will ever be made
I made a sad attempt to change my life today

The Minutes pass me by
showing disgust at my wails.
They don't bother helping;
they don't stick around for that matter.
With only sixty seconds to exist,
I must be of no concern to them.

The Hours' fists crash into my skull
creating a constant clangor resonating through my brain
exciting my ego,
electrifying regrets.

The Days...
Oh those god-damned Days.
They see me confused and so seize their chance;
they pull out my feet
right from under my frame,
and helpless, hurt,
I collapse to the earth.
And now begins their fun.

The Months form gangs called 'Years'
and The Years take their turn
breaking my joints, my fingers, my knees,
all my snappable, crackable points.
Curved, crippled,  and creaking,  
I languish in fantasies of what's supposed to be.

Time makes things worse.

A dark shadow moves over me.
I look up  as far as I can lift my heavy head
and like a fat man coming to rest on an ant's back,
I see The Decades with their massive, soul crushing weight
squatting their hindquarters;
oppressively,
down upon my twig-like spine.

This is a merciless beating!
This is the beat of time.

And throughout the abuse,
I crawl, cringe, cower
as safe as can be in a low lying state on the ground,
(which is still six feet too high for all that time cares!)
I hear from somewhere afar
an unfaltering decree
from my maker to me
"Stand up straight! For Heaven's sake!"