Younger wanting to be older
Older wanting to be young
Child wishing to be bigger
Bigger wishing to be thinner

Teen wanting a clearer face
Clearer face wanting a better body
People lamenting bad hair days
Bad hair days replaced with no hair days. . .

We diss what we have
Wish for what we lack
When what we have is gone
Oh, what we'd give to have it back!

Youthful desires for future yearning
Future bearing down like a train
Elders' memories of past unnerving
Hit by a train never the same



Mark Toney © 2020

Are we making the right mistakes?
Are we driving the wrong direction?
Nothing is certain but everything’s treasure.
Donuts and dinner to graveyard simmer.

Autumn stars and rising moon,
Rising stars and autumn moon,
I’m just so sick of feeling so blue,
You’re just so blue of feeling so sick.

My name is Erin
and i was *****
at the age of 7

it has taken me
14 years of my life
for those 13 words to escape
my hollow mouth

the only questions i come to now
is why
why lock me in that room
why take everything from me
my innocence
my purity
my childhood

in that room
where my family trusted you
where i trusted you
the night terrors i have to this day
still haunt my mind

like a never ending
drive in movie that plays
over
and
over
only the moon in the night sky
isnt made to be found here
there is no light in these terrors

i cant sleep this time of year
because every time i do
its you
in that room
locking the door
shutting the windows
******* me
yelling at me
every single night
i close my eyes

it has taken me 14 years
to accept the fact that i was taken by you
i have been numb ever since
left in the dust
rotting away at the core
thinking i was nothing
thinking i deserved nothing
because you took everything

but not anymore
i will recover from this
i am strong enough
i believe in myself
i believe in my own happiness
and i promsie
that when i have children one day
i will never ever let them rot at the core
i will find happiness
the darkness will not take over this time

I don't think i'll ever fall in love...

Even as I write these words I can imagine the faces of my closest girlfriends, and the well meaning statements of reassurance such a statement might illicit...  

Only... I do not need to be reassured...
When I say i don't think i'll ever fall in love, I'm not speaking from a place of defeat, but rather from a place of recognition, and understanding.  

"Oh, Don't you worry Phillip, you will find a great girl one day :) "

Thank you for the vote of confidence Ashley, I know it comes from a place of great intentions, but...the truth is I have met great women, some I call family, others I call friends, still some I call teachers... and then...some... I whisper to, softly in the night


I have been blessed to meet women who are strong, talented, intelligent (many much more intelligent than I) and beautiful, dear lord, if there is one thing I am grateful for, it is the multitude of beautiful women you have put into my path, their faces shine with perfect symmetry, sharp jaw lines  holding delicate female features, which pluck upon the silver strings of a midnight liar named desire...

It is not for a lack of meeting women that I say I don't think I will ever fall in love, and it is not a shortcoming on their end or a shortcoming on my end that breed this idea, rather, this idea developed from the realization that "to fall in love" has a connotative meaning, a meaning which has been bought by corporations and mass marketed through our media in the form of stories, books, and movies, with redundant story lines that follow a formulaic model that ends in either two dimensional happiness or despair...

When I say, I don't think i'll ever fall in love... I am not saying, I will never love...  
I am in love...
I am in love with life, the subtle intricacies in a delicate tapestry,
I am in love with family, who take time out of their day's to mould me,
I am in love with friends, who hold me down through tragedy,
and...I am in love with all that I have met...

Its just that...I don't believe my love has to come after a fall...

I believe that love is simultaneously eternal and momentary, that the moments crafted in love will be echoed through the halls of eternity, until the Valkyries of Valhalla bring their weary heroes home...I believe that relationships are meant to be fluid, that we are meant to freely flow in and out of one another's lives, and through honesty and consent craft the parameters of our relationships, rather than trying to take people, and through some antiquated notion of "relationship" form a shallow contract to absolve our insecurities,  

I've been in formal relationships where I have felt choked, as if the words I will never leave you linked together around my neck to form a chain of lies ending in...never again

And... I have had friends with whom passions have arisen, and in the dark of night and the secrecy of our abode, our bodies have fused together into a tangled, and sweaty heap called freedom,

To put it simply, I have been in loveless relationships, and love full...well...by contemporary standards...love full nothing's

So please know...That when I say I don't think i'll ever fall in love, I am not saying I will never love...but rather... I will never fall...for the ******* lie...that love can only be fostered through some mundane form of courtship doomed to die...through some, incorporeal ignorance that makes one feel he or she owns the other, fall for the bull that flowers on Valentines day somehow means I get you, or that a diamond means, I love you...

But...also know...that i don't say I will never fall in love...
But rather...
I don't THINK I will ever fall in love...
Because no one person knows the future...

And it may just so happen that one day, in some dusty..smokey..coffee shop I  may be reading this very poem... and in the audience there may be a women thinking to herself that sounds exactly like me...

And through perfect symmetry I may be swept away, the sand castles of my doubt cast out to sea by the tidal waves of our emotion

But...I still don't think I will ever fall in love
Because real love dosen't make you fall,
It makes you soar aloft wings of passion and truth,
And so after this whole rant I believe my original statement needs a revision,
Because now I DO KNOW...that i will never fall in love...
But if i meet the right person...
I just might rise to the occasion