Failure and success
Are subjective and
Relative but either way
They're my fault.

Another reality is ours but for the time being
We're chronic victims of our own poor judgement  
And anxiety
Spurred by loops of psychoanalyses, like VHS
Tapes rewound and repeated until the film tears

Mirrors telling lies    makeup
         Painting illusions,
                   Stains
                      On
                     Lips
Making caricatures from my face, a
Character in its place, playing
Narcissist    every    day.
If I love me they will come,
If I love me they will stay.
This part masks insecurity,
If I say I love me, won't they?

Another year and
While we're sharing toasts and cheers
I wonder what you're drinking and
Where you are.
Here's a toast to you
And the love we wanted to share
But circumstances and contexts
Couldn't allow.
I wonder if you're cheering and toasting and
Thinking about what I'm drinking
And where I am and who and what
I'm doing now and
I wonder if you're wondering
If I'm wondering about you, too.

A name carved in stone, weathered
All that remains is an
Anonymous ode to a has-been.

We won't wrap our lips around
Or string together    words   through
Proper
            Mechanics   of
Grammar   to
Birth what's inside,  alive
And better off dead.

Liberation
Is speeding down
Back roads
In the dark, windows down
In the pouring rain and
Sticking your hand out  so that
Water droplets sting like pins and
Needles when they slam
Against your palm at 80 miles an hour.
Liberation
Is loving someone when it's wrong
And doing it anyway
Because 'god ****** I'm free'
And I'll love who I want even when
I have no right
Even when they're bound, gagged, tied
And held for ransom by a ring on
Their finger.
Liberation
Is getting on a plane to fly
Across the country on a whim
Because there may just be a chance
That that man I met once
Halfway across the world could
Fall in love with me when my feet get off
That plane.
Liberation is cracking open your head
And looking at your skull
And blood is life that sludges
Out of you and you wake up
A few days later realizing that
If you had died it wouldn't
Have made a difference, anyway.
And knowing that next time
You're dying you will
Make **** sure it
Matters.