The kingdom stretches out as far as the eye can see,
Riddled with the regret of long distance,
Ruined sanctuaries and remnants of a civilization that valued the bonds between both of us.
I made a promise to the queen,
That all of us would make a sacrifice,
And yet as things progressed faster,
We must confess that we professed too much about wanting and not enough about vices.
If I could give you the world you want,
Would you still steal the moon for light or would moonlight steal the sight of the world you sought?
Some day I'll know,
Someday, you'll be right and I'll reap what I sow,
Past present,
You were at once my present and now you've declared you no longer want my presence.
To whom it may concern,
To have everything, is a disease,
A lesson I must learn.
A casual reminder that what people must live on can easily be replaced,
That I could be easily replaced and I am no longer a remnant of the kingdom,
Yet to some, I am revered as the prince.
I tried my hardest to make this worth it,
To make this journey fit to the grip of the wheel of this ship.
Will you keep this afloat?

The thought of you once brought me peace,
Now the nightmares...they will not cease.

I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.
Like a parade, I dance with friends, learn karate after school,
And when I grow up, I sit at waterfalls with my other,
Thinking about the trees, animals, insects, logs, the lake, oceans,
And the mountain I climbed to get to where I am today.

I feel like adventure lets me travel from place to place.
I get to become a new person with every new destination.
I now feel like the wind.
I last forever and feel different to everyone.

I used to go to sleep to the sound of rain.
It was the best thing I ever heard.
Every drop felt like it had little bits of my future,
My hopes, my dreams.
I think it’s time to get my head out of the clouds.

Boys annoy me. I get sad thinking about how many people I have to give up in order to know happiness, and it’s strangely ironic.
I’ve got purple glitter in my hair and the music my mom made for me,
Told me I could trust people I considered family.
It’s like the real meaning of poetry,
Illegitimate images to imagine a world no real person could see.
The magic of a life with a girl who is able to sit in her big backyard when the sun goes down,
Thinking she’s had a pretty good day and that image has been burned into my head ever since I saw the end of college’s road and I am not even ready for tomorrow’s 8th grade homework.

When I started to think I could be alone, I ended up writing a small poem each night.
They all started with lines like,
“I miss you.
Come back I’m sorry for what I did.
I will not miss you if you leave.
Because I need you next to me all the time.”

A story of a girl who had diabetes. It all started when she was 3 years old,
and there I go. Making up characters because no one would really want to live this life.
No one would really want to be a living example of me.
But I will not leave that same mark for my legacy.
Dad, I think I want to be a scientist now.
I’ve loved complex equations since I was a kid,
Learning about life is so beautiful and cool and everyone will enjoy you,
And I’ll realize that my failures are not a disappointment to you.
I’ll be able to know how to not be sad anymore.
Because science teaches me everything and more.
I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.


These are the voices of kids who have no idea what comes forward in life but will embrace it. These are the voices of kids who are disadvantaged because some societal system has decided they are nothing more that test grades. Here are the next leaders of our free world that have already been turned into scantron results.

You hear their voices and are impressed, but yet not depressed because as loud as they can be, the real world will steal their voices at the age of 18.
They are the only thing between us and anarchy.
They are the creative minds.
The souls we must nourish.
The skin we must keep pure.
If we are X, then they are Y,
And our direct relationship will always be an equation that must be balanced,
Never just an expression to be left unsolved.

Things move without question,
Our minds,
Left in suspension of a disbelief,
That one night could possibly save us,
When we never stop to look at the one night that made us.
A dream turned reality,
We bought our souls back,
Brought back a well timed wish,
Told that in the sea there are plenty of fish,
Yet, I caught you.
In an effort to remember,
We turned each minute into a spectacle,
And slowly, the spectacular became the mundane?
Will we last through the winter?
I can't remember the fall.
I feel like the summer yielded to the touch of our bodies,
A soft dew like layer stopped us from intertwining.
You never felt me,
You only felt my insecurity.
Its too late.
Follow in my lead and we'll watch the rain fall and cover our tracks.
We'll bury this love under 6 feet and 6 years.
This night won't change anything.
This night changes everything.

12pm and we are walking back to the train station. I feel a little more regret with each step. Barely a word exchanged but our emotions are kept within each motion.
She says I wish I could show my appreciation.
11am and our nerves are driven mad. I try not to think back but the past bites at my conscience,
Now I'm biting the bottom of your back just slowly sapping your warmth.
Its a little past the time and I know this won't last forever. My lips drop a little lower.
Two gasps in wonder.
10am and I'm stirring to the sound of a breath, I realize you're here and that makes this okay.
You haven't left.
A wayward dream creates a shattered conclusion. I have you now and I want you now.
A hand slides into another. They fit perfectly.
Correctly. Surely this feeling isnt pure ecstasy.
9am and the first alarm rings. I hate the sound of it and reach to turn it off. There is a presence which makes me feel uneasy. My heart races and I remember you're here too. I should be at ease. My breathing slows as we match movements. I slowly kiss the nape of your neck.
Its a nick sparks moment but who's bothered with the motions?
Our true motives will come with this morning.
8am and I'm restless as there is another body here. I remember in an instant that its you and instinct pulls you closer in. Our arms wrapped in one another's.
I feel free.
7am and my dreams are as pleasant as they were once bitter.
6am and I can't sleep. I'm too stirred by the drink our flavors could mix and make.
Are we a creation or a fake?
I will find out today.
5am and our eyes are closed. But our minds race. I whisper are you okay, you no longer respond. You inch closer to me. Our breathing slows.
4am and we're dead to the world but alive to our touch. Slowly, but surely.
3am and we come inside from clumsiness.
Foolish trials to come close, I smile as improvement becomes insurance.
You will come back again.
2am and the black tar teaches us mistakes I will never forget. Your grace is embedded in your silliness. One more dance.
One more swaying motion. I'll find myself back where I want to be. Whether tonight ends or tomorrow begins.
1 am and I escape the world as I feel your arm in mine. Everything begins tonight. I know I'll feel alright soon. Just you and the moon.
12pm and my life includes a random encounter from you. I'm escaping a party with no intention of being held ransom for my company. A mere thought escapes my mind that this isn't where I want to be. But fate has said this is where I need to be.
11pm and I'm preparing to head out.
With a future so bright but a dull outlook on life.
Whatever I didn't know was coming,
Whatever lies beyond this night.
The future doesn't scare me anymore.
How can I lose,
What I already don't have?
.

It is said in time,
That beauty to the beholder is a sensation.
The most powerful statement of forgiveness to a human being is the ability to behold and practice creation.
Ice figurines can’t hold under heat,
Yet their demise creates life sustaining substances,
Like dangerous chemical concoctions,
Company never really felt completely perfect.
We kept masks on when we gathered,
It seemed like my friends could have always made it to Hollywood,
The way our lives were just mere performances.
Highlights of high times,
Quality, picture perfect film reels burned into cyberspace,
But the ladled space between our fingertips became foreign as the next new emotional overhaul was just fingertips away.
Obsessed over why perfection isn’t an issue yet imperfections are celebrated,
Yet not the ones you have.
What is desire if the object sought is someone else?
Elsewhere, the first half of the year is spent trying to remake the second half, pretty in pink,
Only when it didn’t rain.
So soulless, our bond became,
The hollowed Ravens became vultures,
Clearing the pathways to prepare for a feast,
Not caring whether death would actually take us,
But what would be broken would cause the death of our own ways,
Our own souls terrified,
Shocked to the security of a coffin.
Do we merely search for what is rightfully ours?
No,
For we are dream catchers,
Simply grasping for a reality that would be a shame to the creator,
Formed by the realtors,
Sell your self worth for a secular sense of selfishness,
Steal the dream,
And be complacent.
The worst part wasn’t when I lost you,
It was what became of my dreams when I lost myself too.
My first half is done.
I wish no longer to live the second half in misery through.

I started to feel safe,
When I remember what the world taught me,
Simple lessons to catch meager drifts,
The simplest of emotions to see.
The caverns of poetry locked under my skin,
Spread like dust over a starry night canvas,
What have we made by falling in love,
With desperate breaths to understand the moon.
I pulled your breath under my tongue to taste your need for solitude.
I kept your heartbeat between my eyelids so i wouldn't have to feel what it was like to blink and miss you in an instant.  
Every time I close my eyes,
I remember what silence felt like in your arms and I want the night to hold that darkness so I never have to blink again.
Maybe I won't have to think if all I see is the night,
Maybe I won't have to let this moment end and maybe I'm better off never trying to put our stars together.
The sky stays black as I move our constellations together,
And the world orbits around me and what we used to be.

Draw into the hope of a missing river,
Forever forgetting forever isn't for everyone.
I wish I had another choice in the city full of choices,
I wish I had another city in the world full of cities.
I see these cities as see through seas untamed by those who see me as an uncalmable tide.
At the midnight calling, I become uncontrollable.
Like the statue, I collect and decay through natural forces,
Like the status,
I force nature to collect and decay.
Poetic justice,
No this just is poetic.
Moments put into words that give rise to the false trigger of five senses that the consensus claims can't be sensed through anything but reality.
The dream through words escapes the world in which limits are locked to five senses.
Nonsense to university,
No sense to individuality.
This creates the individual.
And their spirit lives in the flow of the Phoenix song,
Lamented in the night air.

When writing out who you're thankful for,
So many names come to mind.
It's so ironic that it starts to hurt to realize,
Who stays in your reality,
And what a dream world this would be,
If in the same moment,
You also come to know the pain of those who promised yet never fulfilled those sacred words.
"I'll never leave you if you never leave me."
No wonder I felt like life never made progress forward.
It's been a few winters,
But I've see the holy ministry gather with my eyes in their gaze and silent whispers,
It's all about regret and wishes,
With a soulless daughter being passed around without permission,
And a son who can't see the sunrise for his future is as barren as his once bountiful mission.
I have seen the world inside of a man lost in depression,
This obstruction of feelings,
Choking seconds before air rushes in,
Like an ache for the next season before the snow crashes in my home,
And yet the phone continues to ring,
With the sound of heaven alone,
Like I've always been asking for my baby to sing,
35 floors and you could only jump from the second.
Captivating,
What your eyes used to see the world for became the poison you doused me with and I still blame myself for the death of not only my mother, but the funeral dragged down by eulogies from those who never saw her face when she knew her child must live without her.
For what prayers did you hold my name in while holding another?
For what prayers did that man give to see his reflection to know he existed as more than a passer by.
John Wayne novels always had November as the casting call,
I'm still wide awake writing my dedication,
And yet I'd rather have the silence of myself than the willingness of those who will walk out onto the plank and drown themselves in themselves.
They never turn back until they need you to save them.
This future between the sailor and his father,
That bait,
Raising a man into a child,
Recluse.
Venomously,
Each word we wrote to the sky.
I wonder if anyone else connected eyes the way we did.
And by we I mean me and my reflection.
It's the only thing left that stays with me when I'm ready.
Anyone who tells you to buy beauty forgot what you looked like.
It's always 1984,
Burning our house away before I even had the love to long for everything that was missing.
We miss one,
We miss everyone.
We miss the sunset.
We lose one.
We lose all.
I lose myself in the idea of losing everything,
And I lose everything when I lose you.

Asleep in a train car,
Picturing a mansion and enough space to scream your thoughts till they're all around you,
It was that expansion that at once,
Excited, then frightened me.
They all want things to be different.
When you were younger,
Challenges appeared limitless,
And as you grew,
The challenges became impossible because it would have meant defeating yourself.
And I believed those who gave me a borderline dead silent goodbye as they shipped me off to get lost at sea,
What seasons changed when we played the same games as new people,
Revolutionaries, enlighteners,
Life tells the ground to crack at what points growth can occur,
And the earth responds in kind.
Infinity matters not when your heart stops beating.
Set your mind free and make the world understand that you protected all you had because the worth of what pain you kept inside was enough to bear a burden,
You wore it well as it tore down your walls.
A casual suit at a water park.
Bathed in insecurity,
Insecurity and promise.
Promises are preludes to tragedy.

It’s funny. I used to see the water in your eyes.
Like little raindrops, they were either lake or an ocean,
But you always let me feel grounded, because you’d only rain,
In my part of the forest.
And you fell all over me, the same way I fell all for you.
And people feel this, all the time.
This dream of some magical presence.
And we make each other these promises, to always,
To never let go.
And it just stops, everything for a second. Where we feel like time,
Doesn’t even exist.
What place could I drown in, that would be more substantial,
Then the storm where we, were whisked away.
And I hate emotional poems, but no one would read the little signals.
No one could drive in the right place.
It’s funny. I used to see water in your eyes.
And I just want you to know.
That I’ve never ever wanted things to be like they were.
They were just….wrong promises, at wrong times.
I know, and I know you can’t hear me anymore.
Because it’s this dream, of some magical paradise.
I saw over every mountain when I climbed into that bed for one last night.

I was told to be less metaphorical, but hope is just…..
Such a metaphor.
I didn’t realize that you can drown, in a lake, or an ocean,
Or anywhere where you can’t feel your breath.

And you always made me breathless.

Now I’m left with a sunset. And a body.
A body of water.
Fluid, and lost without love to contain me.

At the impasse.
Sometimes, one wishes they never let go of the dismay they feel when leaving love.
For it is this pain that reminds us of things said,
Things felt.
A truth split between two beings leaving nothing but a pure trail of destructive emotion between them.
We never felt the wake we left,
We always felt the earth move when our lips touched.
As forgetful as the moments we confessed in that motel bedroom,
To the blatant attraction we shared as we stared into each other's eyes under the sunrise,
And the note you left for me.
I promised this moment would last forever.
You swore this was reality,
But it was really just a fantasy.
Delusions lead us to a promised future,
But we were really just trading away false dreams for a mutual benefit.
A mended heart will eventually shatter again.
Until we meet again.
Maybe I gave too much to you at once.
An art form in courting lost,
I thought I had a hunch.
Just a mishandled bunch of actions with no conclusion.
Now we depart and tell our own monologues.
And we will always remember our unwritten epilogue.

Its been fun.
Genesis.

I have finally found my way back to land and though 20 years have passed,
I have the ability to adapt and will find my own way.

All my notes have come to you, and we have spoken back and forth through the whispers of the night air becoming a chilling wave of numbness.

This was never my story, this was always ours.
Told two voices over with no true connection,
Other than the ink that was bottled up and threw out to sea.


This is the story of Genesis, and how I was able to find me.

Graduation Speech

I wonder what God thinks of me
And how he plans his routes out
And when he in his glory spreads his wonderful grace to those who are devout I wonder if he thinks of me.

But I don't believe in him and I believe he respects that
And I believe that things are meant for me the way my children will remember facts
As staples pushed into the hearts of man
As statues raised in the tower square,
I believe in me.

Now this is my rebirth, my time spent Away learning what was meant to be learned and ingrained in my soul to survive In a society that's supposed to thrive on individuality is worthless compared to the spirituality we all possess, and yes, I believe in me.

When I was younger, the very thing that kept me going was my dependence on the world to avoid me at all costs, so that I could stay blissfully ignorant and I could forget the sorrow. But like everyone else who I grew up with, from the Stevens, the Caseys, the Josephs, the Ashely's, my time before becomin exposed was merely borrowed. And maybe as I stand here today I question my place, and as I beg at someone to look at my face and see past the physical scars and wander my path, and become blessed with the craft to imagine dragons and unicorns though their own witchcraft, yes I believe in you.

There were the beauty queens, turned their hair up to keep the so called common filth from sweeping up beneath them, thinking only that the world couldn't handle their innate..what... Gorgeousness they called it? Called the rest of the world selfish for wanting them on their level, went up the ugliest girl they could find, looked her dead in the eyes and said "yeah you tell em what it's like to be...incomplete".
And she, that darling flower who many wanted but wouldn't tell, because peers would constantly snake their split tongues and feed the idea that angels never fell, that only creatures would bare a face like hers to prove who could be worse, she goes home with 6 freckles overblown and a river streaming over her depressed mask thinking she must have a curse, a sickness that brought this fate upon her, and she's a little less cautious towards patterns of sleep brought on by the might of methamphetamines, before she sleeps she screams "please...I just want peace."
And one night she woke up without moving.

There were the middle ground, where my sister would exist, and they'd sing happily of the next challenge they'd overcome because no one had to make them believe in themselves. But like thieves, the heartless ones took advantage of them, and one by one each lost their sense of self, and what used to be a powerful spirit is now a empty shell kept on the shelf.
Entertainment they became, because that was the moment they didn't have to feel transparent, the eyes could see what the heart would yell, and the ears were capable of the stories they'd tell, but at the end of the day, all anyone ever saw was transparency. Diamonds being shined to earn currency but yet turning into hollow  shells so dark, the mind filled up with animosity. And they hate no one but themselves, their self is shattered.
Like butterflies to the flame, they burned out of the sky and became whispers in the night air, vessels for once lost souls to spill into and justify their own demons, and was it all worth it to find a sense of self, constantly questioning "is life fair.." Because we all know what hardships life hands us constantly reminds us that there might no one on the other side of the bed to console us but the stars...

And there in the distance were the movie stars, the most damaged, Ill advised, corrupted, mismanaged, disillusioned, what they saw televised became the mirrors from which their own fantasies about belonging became reality. The outcasts , some call them. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm distraught, I want to believe I'm normal,  that maybe someone will assure me, that after the hazing, someone will save me.   And when a hero didn't show, they put their faith in something that could flow and block out the hatred, and that dream would become reality, because it's too late for me, they took my creativity, I no longer have my naivety, and the boys tell me I'm only good for my virginity, and the girls tell me I'm only good for my virility. And all for what? So their story could get ostracized on blank lines so kids from the future could read these blatant lies taken out of context, taken from misread times in their lives.

And in the middle of all the angst, it was there I sat and I wrote. I didn't steal the words of Jesus, and I didn't interpret them. I didn't take the virtues of my parents and consume them. I took my blood and tears and let the hatred of not belonging come to me in the form of the words you see here before after 4 years of finding myself. I lost the courage to imagine the images off of paper and instead began to fantasize about my own depictions becoming fantasy..

Was there a happy ending to anyone's misery? Did anyone truly suffer as much as the incrowd? Yeah.. There were those who screamed so loud. Got tired of hearing the other voices controlling their every motion, and refused a simple flow, felt like the world was theirs to command, no longer had their creativity slowed.
But these aren't masses, and I grew out that myself, but I know for a fact that it isn't easy. And it gets harder to forget how it was living under a mastery, using parts of your soul for a makeshift reaction to whatever answers they predicted without predication, you spoke as almost a given response, trained to listen and not voice your own ideas.
Now I ask,


What do you believe in?