I can still remember.
That burning feeling of inspiration, bubbling up through my body.
It dominated me, defined me, led me to believe that I was my own hero.
A protagonist on a quest, a road to travel on, certainty in my bones.
Driven by love through the narration of my world, my story.
Words overflowed from my heart.
Staining the tracks, pages, and lilies of my life with my fire.
Every heartbeat resounded like the clanging of a tower's bells.
Each ring dictating time, order, purpose, place.
I can still remember.
The lingering taste of coffee on my tongue, my face sore from smiling.
Hours spent talking and listening.
The content of my life summarized like chapters of a book.
The way my heart vaulted when your eyes met mine.
It was like the moon pulling at the tides.
Giving the waves motion and momentum.
So I spilled my ink and blood, writing you into the story.
I can still remember.
What it was like when it was over.
I hadn't realized I had been living in a cell.
Scrawling my visions of the world onto every inch of those four walls.
Diagrams and diatribes, the things I considered to be myself.
Going mad in the most wonderful fashion.
As I left I saw them for what they were.
Mosaics and memorials.
Poison and poetry.
The passionate magic of first and finals, the ****** taste of loss.
But **** it was beautiful all the same.
I can still remember.
What it felt like to move on.
The taste of freedom and fresh air, an urge to defy what was.
And become something more again.
But suddenly, the bleeding in my heart slowed.
The resounding clangs of my inner bells softly faded.
It took years,
But one day I reached inside myself
Expecting to feel the fire burning inside me.
I can still remember.
The dread that came with the lack of heat.
The soul of myself, the definition of me as the hero.
Was only embers now.
The easy numbness that washed over me.
The determination and inspiration that was me had left.
I was broken, as I always was.
But I no longer knew myself as beautiful.
I was not a protagonist.
I had written myself out of my own story, slowly but surely.
There was no quest, no journey, no one to save or be saved by.
Just whatever I have become.
I hope one day to remember.
My clumsy and earnest return to form.
When my heart again bled ink and crackled with flame.
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 3:21 PM UTC
He wanted to drown
Not in liquid, but in sound
Raucous rapture bellowing beneath
Hands too heavy to hold his own
Heartbreak.
These lions labeled ladies
Making ****** hearts sing.
The candid caucus of cartographers
With eyes too cold to cry
Mapping and marring,
Partitioning paradox with every stroke
Witless wizardry without
Love and longing.
In a circus tent he found
That circuitous catharsis
Amid tremulous trapeze swinging
Watched by the sloughed skin of sinners
Vice and virtue muddied by malice.
Exploratory tongues
Giving preface to loneliness
Too tranquil to be twisted
Too torpid to be tangible
Romance recondite,
Sold to us by our world
Leaving us with nothing but
Fantasy and
Broken bones
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 9:47 AM UTC
It's funny, looking at my hands after all this time.
They do so much for me, they are the tools that allow me to do much of what defines me.
So here they are, splayed out in front of my face.
And I am trying to convince myself of something.
That maybe if my hands were just a little bigger, a little wider, a little stronger I could stop it.
I could catch all your tears as they fell.
I could hold you up when you fall.
I could point you in the direction where things wouldn't be so **** awful.
I could grip the fears and terrors of our day to day and
I could beat back the sadness.
But I have only got my hands.
And they seem a little inadequate for the job I need to do.
Because my hands only have so much surface area
And just like sand in an open hand
Sadness slips through my fingers
I want to carry the weight of the world on my hands, and give your shoulders a much needed rest.
God knows,
I have tried.
But **** I am sorry.
Because the results seem to be a little lackluster.
I know that I can't stop the sad days, even more than I can create the happy days.
Just know that for you, I will spread my hands like the wings I was never meant to have
And share your burden.
You are not Atlas, Job, or Cain,
And I love you because of that.
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 6:22 PM UTC
I feel it beginning again
Like some sort of torch being lit for the first time
In a long time
Like that song you used to love, rediscovered
I found blue eyes again,
And with them I found that sort of hope
That invades your mind
I keep finding you in the corners,
That sort of beauty that too often takes
A lifetime of breaths to explain
You are taking root in my heart,
And I am scared again.
Because I am asking you to be the light
That hits my clear prism
To create something more incredible than
Either of us could have achieved on our own
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 11:42 PM UTC
Why do I even bother listening to the music.
Why do I even bother finding the words.
Why should I ever try, given that everything I do ends in failure.
I will never be him. I will never be like him.
And I cannot be him for you.
I know that I am not passionate,
I am not exciting,
I am in fact very plain.
And it doesn't matter that being plain would mean stability.
It doesn't matter that all he leaves in his wake are ashes.
Why does it ever matter, if all the flowers I have ever planted are fated to die.
Tell me, give me a reason why I should care.
I am mired in my mediocrity, stuck with myself.
I used to think I was lost somehow,
That no,
No there is a place for me out there.
I take that back, I thought there must be a place for me.
Well I guess that I was wrong.
Everyone keeps telling me what I deserve,
But I can't help but think that they are lying.
So I am left to my aches and my longings.
Left to watch my garden never grow.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 11:17 PM UTC
I know that I just got out of the shower
But my eyes aren't wet from the water
And I would just like to tell you the difference between
"Bye!" and saying goodbye
The former would be used at the end of a long day
When the sight of you at another point in my life
Is not just a possibility, but something that is assured
I know when I go to sleep that I don't have to worry about
Telling you everything that I needed you to hear
Because I know there will be more time
But saying goodbye are the words I use
When I am unsure of the next time I will see you
And goodbye are the words I will use when
I want you to know that even though our time is up
I will never forget you, and every day I will wake
With your image in my brain and my memories of you
Still fresh from dreaming
Goodbye means that in the moments that you are gone
I will ache and cry for you
I will remember you
I will be thinking of you when I am lying in bed
And wishing that I could remember the last words
That I spoke to you
And when I say goodbye I know you won't hear me
Even though my only wish would be
The chance
To say goodbye
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 12:47 PM UTC
You know, if I had a penny for every poem I have read with the theme of
"You don't know what you have until it's gone"
I would be a rich man
It's a shame that it took me seventeen years and a handful of special people
To realize that sometimes clichés are correct
I am not sure if you are aware
But each time you inhale
It is called an inspiration
And each time you exhale
It is called an expiration
So here I sit
Echoing a process that has been perfected throughout the millennia
Except I guess perfected would be a strong word
Because we don't have it right just yet
You were someone who inspired me
To become someone who I could be proud of
Someone whose own stories set my blood on fire
And filled me with hope that I could take the raw elements
Of myself and forge them into something great
Because that is exactly what you did
Just a milkman's son
Who ended up becoming the smartest man I know
Who taught thousands of students
Both privileged and poor
And couldn't tell the difference between the two
Who inspired two generations of people
To learn
To love
To laugh
Whose little gestures meant the world
To everyone who had the fortune to inhabit yours
Your five sons went on to become
Doctors and lawyers
Businessmen and police officers
Even if one wanted to be a clown
You married a beautiful woman
Who walked with love in her heart
And kindness kneaded into her hands
Your grandchildren, while there are a lot of us
Each owe you for the knowledge and kindness you instilled in us
All this from a milkman's son
This poem isn't goodbye
Because each time I draw inspiration from the atmosphere around me
I am thinking of you and I hold that **** breath for as long as I can
Just waiting for inspiration to hit me
I squeeze my eyes closed and hope against hope that everything is going to be okay
Because I am too scared to let that inspiration go, I am not ready to expire
So grandpa,
Please
For me
Take that breath.
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 12:21 PM UTC
An architects influence, extends only as far
As his lifetime
Although sculpted buildings may last well beyond
A single life
They are but toys for the times
Repurposed and retooled until
It carries nothing but shadows of it's origin
What should have been a schoolhouse
Could soon become a prison
What should have been a church
Would soon become a business
And in a backwards and cruel way
There is an odd sort of beauty in this
Because life is just a series of
Would have been, should have been, and could have been
That didn't.
Jul 12, 2013
Jul 12, 2013 at 12:14 AM UTC
You know, I would like to call this a poem
But really all it feels like is bleeding.
Like the flood that pumped through me is,
Wasted.
And trust me,
That hurts.
When I think of all,
I can't help but cringe.
Because somewhere in the between I lost the pieces of my puzzle,
That I was really looking for.
And that the love that I etched so carefully
Into the lines of your face
Ticked backwards, like a forgotten clock,
At his mention.
For you, I connected constellations in your freckles,
As though there was some kind of system of finding my
Way in this labyrinth that I know so well.
I found oceans of depth in those eyes,
That promised me salvation in happiness
That promised love in loss.
Although I have learned,
That when you explore too deep
It is easy to become lost.
The bleeding isn't a pattern,
There is no rhyme to this reason,
Only treason and tragedy.
So excuse the torrent,
Because I've already drowned in the flood.
Remember when flowers grew in the garden?
Jun 19, 2013
Jun 19, 2013 at 9:21 PM UTC
Red is your color, never blue or gold.
My finish is never met with hollers or cheers, simply silence.
And not of the reverent sort, the sort of clammy, piteous, and overbearing silence.
Not the quiet that is shared in the company of friends or lovers. Never that.
My place on the podium will only raise me a foot or two.
From where I am standing the stars seems so **** far.
My "Participant" ribbon lies crumpled in-between my fingers.
And the ever present "I'm so sorry, good try" is meted out with each conciliatory apology.
But this isn't the first time, and I know it won't be the last.
That'll I will take second place in this race.
But really, how could I ever really want to win,
When I can barely get people to acknowledge me.
It would be a miracle if they started to cheer.
Did I mention I don't believe in miracles?
Everyone grows up learning to lie.
They fill in the spaces where we can't find the words.
They substitute for the stories we never made.
They shield those we love from all the hurt in the world.
So I guess I don't feel too bad about living a few lies.
Despite the wounds they left never really healing over.
I could blame him and her for them, but what is the point.
They happened, there they are on my skin, for all to see.
No use in tears, those won't change anything.
But the best I can do is grit my teeth and bear it.
The time for strength will be for later.
And I wouldn't look back if I was stronger,
But then again Orpheus was just a man too.
So call me a pillar of salt, or a push over.
But I lost, and it hurts.
I finished last again, and I think that adage might have more truth to it than I thought.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 9:26 PM UTC