To whom it may concern,

I’m staring at the Knife of Life,
a bark blade from the Tree of Life,
bound to us like our own shadows,
sapping all, from doe to meadows.
A slow torturous fact that sticks
us all the way down to our wicks,
shooting prickling pain up the spine.
Freedom lies in the speed of time.
I don’t know that all have the will
not to hasten their blood to spill,
when patience is waiting to die.

Yours (since God died a long time ago),
The one who yearns
for a flowering fern.

Dear one, who yearns for a flowering fern,

Mortality does bring us Death,
but please know, there is more than pain
before that final ounce of breath
those lovely lungs let flee in fain.
Life’s about swinging on those strings,
warm connections that tie us all,
and caring for each other’s wings,
should lightning strike and have you fall.
Let me pick you up now with love.
You are more than enough to be,
you are worth the space in my glove.
I’ll free you that quivering knee,
just lean in my embrace with hope.
I won’t leave you alone to cope.

With love to fill your days,
The one who hears your cries,
in the void of the open skies,
who will show you better than a magic fern,
a home to mend your broken heart and let return,
because I’m the one who you have to be concerned
for you.

I. (The Real Poetry).

All these notions but nothing on the page.
Haven't we heard it all before?
Impetus from departed greats
wash ashore in our brains
but when confronted with an void white meadow
our hands go numb,
glued to the roof of a freezer.
This idea of mine is big, challenging,
but so far only a few thousand letters
have made dirty snow angels.
In its place, poetry.
Swifter to write, to read.
No rhymes usually,
just haphazard feelings lurching out my head
like a turquoise waterfall.
Sure I pace round the room
waiting for the next line to evolve
but who doesn't?
I write about real people,
people I speak to, people I know.
Do they know it's them when they skim my work?
Perhaps yes.
Perhaps they don't read them.
Perhaps best for all of us.
The book remains unseen, incomplete
while real poetry rushes into the world
like another superfluous boy band
playing more vapid pop.
Numb them instead.

II. (The Wind).

On a bench
in the garden
I sit with her
as she rests her frizzy Goldilocks
on my shoulder
and says I shouldn't go on Sunday.
A few years younger,
sweet and out of bounds.
Out. Of. Bounds.
So why am I holding her hand?
Doesn't mind from what I can tell.
She likes me.
No she can't.
When does 'the other side' ever like this?
I've told her about the one back home,
how she could be superseded.
I'll disclose, for a while now
I've seen photographs
and wondered what if,
what if the same way too feeling
snaked up the ladders
and throttled me?
What would her sister say?
'He's only been here four days
and look at him, cuddling
the queen of yesteryear.'
Her sister comes out, surprise, joins us.
Say no words, look at stars overhead.
The direction of the wind is altering.
Must be.
I unzip my eyes.

III. (The Sun and the Moon).

Half eight
a year or so in the distance
on a Wednesday morn.
A car.
Neither of us can drive as I write.
One of us is about to though.
London.
Why?
To meet friends.
Another reason?
A show.
A show of sun and moon.
A sporadic delight like a white Christmas.
I say to P it's one of those events
that must be attended.
I'm what, twenty-one?
She's gotta be twenty-four, five?
When will this ever come about again?
Have to acquire this chance.
He says if she'll be aware of the poem,
the one I scrawled down some time ago.
Doubt it, but you never know.
You never know.
Maybe it's true.
A young, beautiful girl
with a hat and a guitar.
There's something you don't see every day.
To the city.
Rejsen begynder.

I am content being in my closet-bed, safe and alone. I am ok with my window open and the night air. I can switch the switch of pursuit, fondness and a candid smile. I have my own sphere of existence and I am happy to have it. I cannot always start running on a new chapter of my life but I am fully able to continue to ream in the past with new vigor and statistical desperation. I am one of a few million-million and it is still unclear what creates the legend of capital uniqueness. I love my father and mother and always my sister. I want better for everyone and myself. I want to love on them all that I can.  Marriage no, children no, family is what I have as conflicting and contradicting as it may be. Thing fall apart. I love the ugly moments of my ceiling.

I am not a new story waiting to happen. I am not a ravid political face or frenzy. I am not a desperate grunt who got his just-comings. I am not the type to be escorted in any way by the crumpled void of fallacius fame and humble-beginning-fortune. I am the desperate coat bearer of the northeast bronx. I have the mind of a child. I have the graces of rat. I have the public anticipation of a broken man apart from his chariot-era. When sitting I grow anxious and hungry and mis-mannered and poor and terrified. I throw away any hour to the madness of deep seething and wallowed whispers of loathing per-the manuscript writings of two years ago. I cannot help myself like others can. I cannot say what haunts me the way they can. It's the deaf ears and I have some too. I was born this way and I who I am. They are permissible and I am another anachronism. I am tempted to start over somewhere completely unknown and away. I just want to break free from the cycle my age and be with my age. I want to chase my girl around the city and stop at another house and have another long conversation about the same daily occurrence of you evenings. Then move on when you have moved on and see straight into another tomorrow like I was unable to until now. To write myself out of another horrific night, alone. Defeated by my own revelations of my own determined normalcy and struggle for authentic dialog. Near the line of conviction that I should never say another word because the shy me now will be appalled by the shy me years later. That I will surely be an embarrassment in my own if I ever stepped on a stage. That I have nothing, and will never have anything, worthy or useful to the world around me. That I am completely doomed to die forgotten and unoriginal.

Culture slips from me
At a faster pace.
The void: “Hi.”
I say “Hi yourself.”
We smile.
Knowing we’ll be back together, sometime.

(Breakup song for the void.)

For a month a part of me was missing.
At least I thought.
So when I found it again, I was overjoyed.
Life made sense again because a void was filled.
But everything that glitters isn't gold.

You can't miss a part of you that was never there.
There's not a word for it either.
I tried to conquer the lexiconical gap.
So I watched as the petals grew crisp
And his words lost tenderness.
I relived the feelings of before that were  the reason I left.
I questioned why I ever came back.

I watched myself and my movements.
Wondering why I did everything with him in mind.
Just wanting to be seen as imperfectly perfect,
Be any and everything.
To others I was everything and more,
To myself I tried to be more, to be that part he never could seem to find in me.
But yet again the lexiconical gap stopped.
I couldn't miss the part of me I never had
Especially because I never knew what it was.

Summer came and went.
Our summer was the sweetest.
I miss what I actually did have then.
Those constant conversations, that eagerness and anxiety we'd get when too many hours passed without seeing or hearing from each other.
We did have that.
Now summer comes again and I'm faced with the
everlasting gaps that are me waiting to hear from you.
That denial I have when I finally do.

A gap, the lexiconical gap that may never be filled.
Not even Lexi can fill it, not even Lexi can keep you.

Life was easy before
Loneliness.

There wasn't a
Void

To fill.

Life was easy before
Love;

There wasn't a
Heart

To break.

Life was easy before:

Jobs
Girlfriends
Money
Apartments
Friends
Death
Fading idols
Tickets
Debt
Anxiety
Genius
Bravery
Solitude
Freedom;

Life was easy before all of that.

Instead of a simple life
Our society bogs us down with
New things to make our leaves easier

But the truth still stands behind;
Lingering on doorsteps,
Behind the television set,
Underneath our persian silk sheets,
Even underneath the sidewalk
We walk upon to work.

The truth is still there,
With a blank stare,
Holding a smirk as old as time.

Gadgets gear us towards the idea of immortality
That we are the mighty Gods now
But all we need to be reminded of our dispensability
Is a little rain
A little shake
A little gust of wind
And our gadgets and selves will just wash away

Don't let me stray into those matters
Evolution always has me worried
Envy of not seeing man at their newest, their best
Holding the gates of my eyelids open
So to see the break of the waves blue white breast

Atonement in these times generously dispensed
But everyone remembers a face
The way the iron clad soldiers forget is through
Further murder, hoping to one day die themselves
To be truly forgotten is the greatest of miseries
Never having lived means to never have existed

Our footprints are getting wider
The trees sway further toward the ground
Exhaustion peels away at me
Like a babies hand would an orange
Barely standing, I go to work to make $50 a day

Expected to live and be grateful
Produces a laughter mixed with mad absurdity
Where are our heroes now?
On the screen? On the stage? In the field? Behind desks?
There is so much to be done and
When all is finished, the hands scabbed and the knees scraped
All of it will be in vain

Though, we can say we tried
Rather than sitting on our loins
Watching the clouds burst
And the swirls of sand form a tunnel toward God

Lizards prepare their feast
Buzzards rip the flesh from a fresh carcass
Dung beetles roll their wears to the holy land
And the hope of man breathes in and breathes out

One final time

There     are     faults     in     our    stars



                                                             ­    Ink marred by burning scars

                                                             ­      Holes in velvet seams

                                                             ­           We cling to foolish dreams

                                                             ­   Seal the blinding hope within

                                                             ­                          The light will always dim
                                                             ­                 
We burn so bright

                     Can we ignite without the light?
                                                             ­                                                 
I have never felt the same
                      
                                   Since you extinguished my flame
                                                             ­                                                       
I am a match with no spark
                                                        
                                       Now you are a stranger in the dark