Anyone else notice how our news
Is full of death and pain?
5 murdered, 4 in prison,
3 dead in accident, 2 missing,
1 heartbroken.
I'm waiting for the
Day when I can see something other than blood and grief on
The screen in front of me.
Show me a heart.
Show me a soul.
Show me love and life and joy and
Laughter.
I don't need proof that the world can be ugly,
Only that it can be beautiful.

She hated herself.
Her friends all told her how beautiful and talented and wonderful she was,
And she said thanks,
Mirrors rising behind her eyes so they only saw what they wanted to,
Not the poisonous
Self-loathing boiling beneath the skin
She sliced open in secret, in bedrooms and bathrooms,
To let out her fear.
Her darkness was so close to the surface if
If it was a snake it would have bitten them,
The way the razor blades bit into soft hips the she thought were too ugly
And into her tongue, to stop her from
Spilling all her painful truths.
Open-handed words ***** slapping hitting her head
Against the wall of her daddy's office
She hid that mental bruise with fake smiles for weeks as it faded,
Like her scars faded to be replaced with new ones,
Like her heart faded until she was just going through the motions.
If someone had bothered to research the skeletons in her closet
Maybe her mother's scream wouldn't have ripped through an octave and a half in shock when she found her daughter
Hanging like a forgotten Halloween decoration in the back bedroom.
She left a hole in her sister's heart the size of her smile and
Her grandfather couldn't talk except to mutter "What a waste!" and
She broke her best friend down to dust, not knowing that he cried his strength away at her funeral and his tears fell on her casket.
The air in the church is full of echoed voices, hushed
"She was beautiful"
"I loved her"
"Why?"
Maybe if the voices had never believed her lies,
She would still be alive.

You are a waterfall
Cascade out of open Berkshire mountain faces,
Stone lips painted red by your words.
They say red is the color of love but I can't feel anything but
Empty
Indifferent
Inside when I see the blood in the corner of your mouth.
You don't care
Chase your narcotics with tequila,
Follow your *** smoke with an inhaler,
I watch you drift.
Do you remember 5 year old me
Hugging you round your knees and
The way you ran to grab me when I tumbled into the creek behind your house?
I do
Your hands are warm where they brush mine
When you ask me to refill your glass
I didn't know you drank ***** by the travel mug now.
4 ice cubes.
I lean in the bedroom doorway and watch the mice scurry beneath your couch
And I think about how those same warm, now-swollen hands
Built this place.
Forgive me.
I have intruded on your aging privacy,
Gray hairs in the 3-day stubble on your bloated chin
As you gasp quietly, eyes shut over decades of memories.
Your steroids have inflated your stomach more than the lungs they were
Supposed to heal and
You shuffle so slowly down the stairs I
Shift uncomfortably as I wait impatiently to get around you to the car
Fleeing the air of decay and the whiskey on your breath.
New England roads are good for thinking.
Surrounded by ageless forests I think of my aging family,
Of you, Grandfather,
Your hacking cough sounding like the Massachusetts thunder
Across the lake.
2 hour car ride to see the rest of the
Degrading homes once owned by
My father's father's family;
Your family.
I see a waterfall in the distant Berkshires.
We are part of 1 family,
But I can't feel the love I see in my father's eyes, red from tears at your impending funeral.

I've written my suicide note too many times
On the inside of my lips,
Wishing against hope for the rain that pours from iron clouds to
Rinse me away.
I read it, my tongue tracing it's own scars against the warm whisper
Of rose-pink crinkled lines in my mouth
Give up, it murmurs
You've done so much,
Give up
Sleep quietly in the deep waters that are already
Lapping over your eyelashes.
I tear my notes to shreds with the hard, sharp lines of new letters
Rewriting my past and present in the hopes of forcing some peace into my future,
So here is my note
A poem to soothe your inevitable tears.
My thoughts swirl like dark water ****** down a drain,
But thoughts are only wisps of cloud,
Not solid guarantees or promises,
Like the ones I break without you ever knowing.
I need a guarantee, a promise of oblivion, bringing myself to
Be washed down to drain with my thoughts.
I wanted to write a poem to tell you how I
Would die,
To share with anyone the last moments of flickering electricity
In a brain worn out with life
Even though I've hardly lived.
I wanted to write this poem to tell you how much I would leave behind,
How much I would miss the feeling of spring rain on my eyelashes
And hot tea in my throat in October
And your hand on my shoulder when I cried.
I wanted to write you this poem,
But I can't find the words to describe
What a souls looks like
When I open the cage of my lips,
Baring my collections of old, written over notes for the last time.
I wanted to write you this poem,
But I haven't found the words yet
To tell you what death feels like.

Grandfather,
I'm sorry.
I know we don't talk much anymore..
Barely once a year.
You're old,
Your skin the weathered brown of a man
Who has lived in among the trees and your own roots,
Hard work and New England weather shaping the crags of your muscles and
The hills of your mind.
Grandfather,
I don't know you
You've gotten too distant,
Nothing more than a collection of colorful memories drifting lazily in
A summer lake.
Your face is familiar, but it is too large,
Bloated, with 3 days worth of stubble on your double chin.
Grandfather,
It's not your fault, I know
You've had a hard life
Your body has just finally failed you
And you pretend to not notice that you are too old to not notice your aging
You creep so slowly with your walker,
Looking wistfully over the water,
Seeing shades of yourself sailing on the breezy waves.
I hear whispered conversations of doctors offices and
Estates and wills and old family rivalries,
Too much for you to hold in your mind anymore.
Grandfather,
You don't ask for anything.
Maybe you don't know what you need.
Grandfather,
This is my gift to you.
This moment of privacy and silence
When you lean on the counter to steady your hand as
You take your innumerable medications
Your breath catching quickly in your ruined lungs and your eyes squeezing shut over 7 decades of memories.
I don't let you see that I notice your
Blank look or gentle snores at the table,
Or see how much you struggle to get down the stairs with a leg swollen to twice the normal size.
Maybe you don't see what you need
Or don't care
But maybe I can help
In my own, selfish teenage way
I can assume what you need,
What words might make you reconsider your stubborn
Indifference to your dying health.
Grandfather,
I love you.

The world is flat, a calendar picture,
Picture-perfect,
Afraid of being crumpled by the hand of a God and
Used to shoot trash can-basketball baskets
In a small, lonely bedroom where the only one keeping score is the
Parakeet statue perched on the broken clock, staring.
It's always 2 o'clock.  
2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in early November when
The whole world looks like it wants to curl up and cry  
So I curl up and cry for it,
13.6 billion years of tears dripping from green eyes
And a green heart meant for growing flowers and love songs,
Not crow calls and dreams that die in infancy
I float.
Salt water tears lapping around inside my ears
Maybe it will cover up the sound of screaming inside my bones
And the pretty girl swimming in my heart-lake
Laughing and stirring up the cold undertow of my thoughts and when I look at the sky
I see the cloud shadows against the blue,
Blue just a little too dark, little too deep,
Too deep, too dark,
The water beneath me too deep, too dark
I'm drowning and I haven't even left my bed
I wonder if that counts as talent.
Is this what it feels like to go mad?
2 o'clock my hands aren't attached to my body anymore,
They can't be part of me when they dance
Across desk tops looking for scissors and rummage through bathroom drawers to find razors.
That's not my blood in the sink,
It can't be because all my blood is locked up
Inside the red haze behind my anger,
Caught in sharp words like fish in a net,
Not my words but yet they fall from my mouth.
My room contains my screams
As they drip silently from teeth made crooked by too many lies.
The parakeet stares.
It's 2 o'clock but I don't know if it's a new day yet because the sky always looks dark
Outside my windows
So I shut my eyes and don't open the curtains.  
The world is collapsing,
The hands of God pulling down the picture,
Time's up, new calendar page,
I'm left behind,
Lost in the trash can pile of old words
And whispered thoughts.
The sky is too blue,
The water too deep,
I'm drowning.
It's 2 o'clock.

I breathe in this silence that is not
Silenced,
Air alive with heartbeats and
Clocks ticking too slow,
Eyes meeting over
Sticky plastic tables,
Snapping away like an awkward blind date,
Fingertips drumming impatiently.
Wait.
Calm.
Be patient.
Tick...tock........tick...............tock

I can't, I won't, my son laying
One floor, 3 hallways, 12 rooms away,
But we are relegated to the hospital cafeteria as if my husband and I are naughty schoolchildren,
Interfering.
My red shirt crumples beneath
Nervous fingers,
The same shade as the blood given
To my son, not knowing it contained
Death.
Why can't I fight with my son,
My son,
Shining brightly and boldly as the sun,
Infected with a blood-borne killer we were never warned about.
Hemophilia is a tough diagnosis,
But my careful worrying wasn't enough to save him from a
Diagnosis of ostracism and certain death.
AIDS.
Oh God.
Breathe.
Can't breathe.
Time moves too fast, my son racing towards eternity
Alone.


White sheets and sterile beds rob
My son of all his sunshine,
Lips blue and pale like my husband's jacket,
Nothing but incessant beeping and bustling nurses who can't fix him,
Clock going tick, tock, tick, tock.
I see red.
Red dripping into and out of his arms through silver needles,
How do I know that this is safe,
No one knows if this is safe,
This is our only hope.


Tick..tock.....tick........tock.
White coat of the doctor moving too quickly towards us,
We run.
My heart thumping red and my stomach yellow bile and my eyes leaking blue.
Hospital room not room enough for all my emotions,
All of my tears,
All of my grief,
All his last breaths.
My son.
No longer my sunshine,
Just a pale winter afternoon,
No sun beneath cold sheets of snow.
My son.

Time moves too slow when everyone wears black,
Like molasses dripping from a jar into
Metallic air and earthy graves.
Like ash clouding out the sun.
My son.
No more my sun.

To the ******* at Mongolian Barbecue last night:
Just because you let your short shorts and flowered headband
Scream assumptions about your homosexuality doesn't mean
You can make those assumptions about others,
Forcing red-faced shame and trembling knees on a stranger,
Your hands clawing the pride from blue eyes like
Storm clouds making the world grey.
Butch and **** are never words that should come from your lips,
To someone you don't know
Just because you portray yourself as flamboyant
And she has her own style
They carry too many decades of hatred and fear to be
Tossed into casual conversation
Like land mines in her closet.
I don't care if you thought you were joking or being funny or cute
Her leather jacket and kickass combat boots don't
Paint some sort of rainbow bullseye
Between her shoulder blades, behind her heart.
People have enough to deal with in this world
Without having to defend themselves against your ignorance,
Without having to stop their tears from
Making small oceans on the streets of Ann Arbor.
Butch and **** should not be thrown from your lips
Carelessly,
Meaning none of the weight they carry.
You probably didn't see her cry
Because that's just the kind of person she is
But I did,
A thunderstorm of conflicting emotions and heart-wrenching, blood-curdling cries,
A deep-seated ache that won't be washed away
With my hugs or chocolate or
Assurances that you are, in fact,
A **** who doesn't deserve to know her.
11:30 pm she walked through the front door with red eyes and damp cheeks,
Her voice thick and choking on
Your arrogant, misplaced words,
And I might not always get along with my sister
But I felt my sternum crack right through the middle
When she spoke of you,
Ribcage shattering,
Rainbows pouring from my lungs
To try and knit her fractured, hopeful heart
Back together.
I am my sister's keeper.
To the ******* at Mongolian Barbecue,
I hope you learn to grow up and see how your
Words splinter souls like weeds splitting concrete
But until then
*******.

I love the way the sky turns lavender along the
Eastern edge of the world before the sun rises
I love the way your long hair and pale curves
Against the blue sheets
I love not hiding who we are.
We should get Purple Hearts for all the times
The missiles of "queer" and "butch" have landed in
The midst of our embrace,
Launched by an unknown enemy before we were able
To twine our hands and hearts on the small-town sidewalks of an August afternoon,
Before I could have you over for dinner, movies, bonfires, and not feel the blue, icy glare of my neighbor
Laying under the lilac bushes,
Watching the day slip into purple dusk with firefly stars.
I love not hiding who we are.

My room is quiet
Blue curtains block out the world that lurks just outside
Waiting to hurt me.
8 pm.
I know that purple dusk is gathering outside my walls
The same way the bruises in my heart threaten to eclipse the sun.
I'm scared.
I don't look at the veins showing under my skin because they
Remind me too much of the indigo, under-oxygenated blood
That spills too often from my arms,
Reminds me of my father's face purple with rage
When I told him I didn't think I was supposed to be
In this body, wear these clothes, be this gender.
9pm. Navy skies peppered with stars I will not see again
Purple pen writing apologies to my parents
Heart pumping indigo, under-oxygenated blood too fast,
Knows it doesn't have much time,
Can't breathe, face purple, face blue,
Can't breathe, dark vision, indigo stars,
Can't breathe.

The yellow, early evening sun feels heavy and warm on my legs.
Like a cat curled up to enjoy a small nap,
It rests on my pink and rainbow blanket.
My mother snores in the old blue chair next to me,
******* in worry and exhaustion and the scent of basil,
Oblivious to the small-town sounds of birds and cars and children playing,
Unaware that her daughter is something she claims to not understand.

"Pansexuality, honestly, just sounds
Horrible,"
She had told me.
"I don't understand pansexuality and gender-fluid and stuff,"
She said,
The car sliding smoothly over the highway under grey skies.
I tried to explain, but I was swamped in
Confusion.
"Well...there are more than two genders, like being gender-fluid and agendered and bi-gendered and third-gendered......
And pansexual people like all of those genders."
"That's what I can't understand. I mean, I kinda get the concept, but..." Her voice trails away like blue cigarette smoke, still deadly even after it has dissipated into the clouds.
I feel like I'm choking on it, raw pink lungs tightening and swelling, forcing yellow stars before my eyes,
Not able to explain the way
I don't care what you identify as,
I only care about love.
My mother's grandmother didn't know that non-straight people existed.
My mother's mother didn't know that bisexual people existed.
My mother doesn't believe that more than two genders exist,
Or know that I find all of them attractive.
But she had already dropped the subject,
Instead filling the awkward lull with discussions of
Colleges and books she's reading and and what my younger sister is doing in school.
I could feel my soul bubbling up behind my lips,
Pink and yellow and blue,
I wanted to tell her to stop and listen.
I wanted to tell her to be quiet,
And to be accepting,
And to try to understand.
I wanted to tell her
'I'm pansexual.
There.
Now you know.
Would you have said that it was horrible and that you can't understand?
That, in essence, I am horrible and you can't understand me?'
But I didn't.
I sat, the warm sticky grey leather under my thighs
The same as the warm, sticky grey clouds,
The yellow sun just peeking out into blue skies beyond the pale pink dogwoods.

She wakes up, warm sticky breath catching in her chest
As she opens her eyes.
She mumbles quietly about oversleeping
Before she rushes out the door,
Leaving behind a daughter
She thinks she knows,
As she claims to not understand
My label
That I have hidden inside my closet door,
Next to my pink, yellow, blue scarves.
Maybe tomorrow I'll put it on,
Pin my heart to my sleeve,
Wear my colors proudly.
But not today.  
Never today.

There we were.
A dozen and a half middle-class white kids from Chelsea, Michigan
Who had convinced our parents to pay $175 to let us go down to Chicago and help homeless people in the name of God.
There we were.
Including the tall, gangly kid who had never been out Michigan and who held
His backpack in front of him as if he
Thought it might make a good weapon,
The ****** girl who was only there because her mom ran the church office,
And me, there because I honestly had nothing better to do over spring break
And I thought it might look good on a college application someday.

The soup kitchen was a place I would have never eaten uin a million years.
The ceilings were low, too low, oppressing the already oppressed with their
Chip board panels and bright, sterile lighting,
Table of sticky Formica that had clearly seen better days  
Surrounded by hard, plastic mismatched chairs, and
The food was no better,
Number 10 cans of dreariness and shame and just-one-more-day-til-I-can-get-a-job.
We were instructed to sit at a table where we didn't know anybody.
The gangly boy held his backpack on his lap as he sat with a group of grey-haired old men reminiscing about having
A great life, a good life, a better life, a not-terrible life, a life at all.
****** girl sat at a table with a collection of ***** children, and was instantaneously on her phone.
And I went to a table with a middle-aged black woman with a little boy.
I sat down.
The plastic chair dug into the backs of my thighs and the lighting units hummed and flickered like a
Hoard of discontented bees.
The woman looked at me, then at the bowl of soup, grey-brown with un-identified meat.
She was overweight, and she smelled. I almost choked on the
Scent of body odor and oil, cigarettes, alcohol, city streets, homelessness, despair.
She looked at me again.
My name is Josie Gonzalez.
I know that sounds Mexican but I ain't no Hispanic, she said.  
She went back to eating.
Silence.
Uncomfortable, awkward.
Silence.
I looked at her little boy, joyous, handsome, and
She looked too,
And I have never seen a person change as much as she did when she looked at her little boy
From a sad, lonely, homeless woman she became the proudest mother in the whole world.
She was the most beautiful person I've ever seen.
Her eyes lit up and I saw that they were the
Prettiest chocolate brown.
She smiled,
And far from noticing the stained, yellowed tombstones of her teeth
I saw how wide and honest that smile seemed.
I smiled too, I couldn't help it and suddenly
I felt like I'd known her my entire life.
We are all human. We will at one point all be
Homeless, lost, lovelorn, broken, or confused,
Stranded in a bad place with almost no options.
So be forgiving.
Share a meal, share a hug, share a smile.
Share hope, share love.
Share life.
Here we are.

His wrists are my favorite part of his body,
Bones pressing delicately through pale, unscarred skin in a way mine haven't since the 6th grade.
The only bones showing on my body are my elbows and knees, just barely
And the worried bones of my insecurities.
I wish I could see my shoulder blades and hipbones.
I'd never hoped to be a skeleton but
I'd hoped to be proud of my appearance.
Even though my best friend tells me that I'm pretty just the way I am,
I know I'm not as pretty as my sister;
We're twins but no one ever believes us
She has gorgeous blonde hair and pale skin and sky blue eyes,
Hourglass shape.
I think she got the looks, but I always hope I got the brains.
Today I don't know which is the better end of the deal.
I know I am fat. I don't need any doctors or parents or bullies to tell me that
My curves are not big-*****,
Obesity doesn't run in my family,
No one runs in my family,
And by no one I mean me.
My every outfit is prefaced by compression shorts and slimming colors and self-conscious shame.
My stomach has ugly purple stretch marks like tongues of hungry fire
Burning away my self-esteem
Summer evenings aren't fun anymore
When my father tells me I'm too big to swing on the swing set
And my mother asks if I'm pregnant.
I'm not.
I'm a size 14. My mother thinks I'm a size 10.
When I try on the too-small clothes she brings home  
I cry in the privacy of my bedroom mirror,
Oceans of salted pain worry over my face,
Try to rinse away the guilt.
At least I'm not an ugly crier.

I hate red.
Red is the color of his lips when he whispers in my ear,
The color of his dress that one time we danced,
The feeling in the back of my eyes
When I'm told I am not
The same to him anymore,
No longer worthy,
He is a bee floating from flower to flower
And I am the sunset-colored blossom too shy to walk away.
Red is the way I begged my sister to let me wear her crimson blouse when I went to see him
Because I know it's his favorite color
And I didn't care that she yelled at me later.
Red is the fire in my stomach that pours too much smoke into my lungs,
Leaving me choking on secrets, and fear, and
Emotions that don't deserve to exist because
I knew all along that this was going to happen.
Red is the way I should be angry but instead I feel numb,
Numb in a way that no scarlet late-night passions or self-inflicted bloodstains
Will banish.
Red, like the shadows in the night that are too unique to be ordinary black,
Instead creeping over tired limbs with a vibrancy
Out of place in the grey shades of my thoughts.
Red, the feeling of heat in my sternum when he said he maybe liked me,
The way my face grew warm with my sister's teasing,
The way my heart fluttered too fast,
Catching me off guard when he held my hand,
The confusion when he wasn't  comfortable with me,
The savage resentment taking over my mind
When he confessed his non-attraction to me.
Red, fading slowly to the dusty leftover
Pink-brown tones
Of roses left too long in a vase.
I hate red.

Time drips slowly down kitchen cabinets
Like cello music, sweet and dark,
Spilling over the edges of fingerboards and eyelashes,
Arpeggios of stillness cascading through the
Silence that is really music reigning the gaps between each whisper of breath and tick of the clock and soft drumming of raindrops on the street, an ensemble of intimacy.
I love it here.
I love the way it's vulnerable and honest inside your walls of false, forte confidence;
There are no cliché expressions of love at first sight, just the words of your heart,
Like notes played on an old piano, each separate and round and the tiniest bit halting but beautiful nonetheless.
They are rough truths, a little out of tune and not in quite the right key,
But they are the truth,
And that strikes more chords in my heart than a perfect rendition of well-rehearsed Beethoven harmonies
Fitting too perfectly to my rhythms.
And the cadence of your laugher flutters in my rib cage like
Triple-tongued fanfares,
The brush of your fingertips on mine
Sending vibratos of warmth through my soul,  
Yours eyes, honey brown, speaking as powerfully as a Stradivarius
Without even the smallest pianissimo whisper of voice,
My synapses firing in double-time, heart thumping adagio, allegro, presto,
Neither of us conducting, just riding out the jazz and operas and fiddles and symphonies of our love
I wish for books of blank pages to keep composing the
New melody of our lips, dancing along crescendos of
Instinct and softly thrilling secrets
On the gentle sonata of a rainy day in June.

You're alone. Well. You feel alone.
That's ok, but let me tell you why you are wrong.
I don't care about how you present yourself or what you wear or
How normal or different or quiet or wise or whatever you are.

I care about you. Just you.
I don't worry about whether you'll hurt me or whether
Sometimes
Things won't go the way we want,
Because I know eventually both will happen.
And sometimes, being a person and being a friend ******* ***** and you gotta just deal with it.

But what you see as your facade of bravado
I see as the mask of someone who needs help.
It's the little things, like the way you frown when you think no one is looking,
The way the scars on your upper arms have almost, but not quite, faded,
The way your anger is carried in shoulders too square, too tense,
The way your silence speaks volumes of confusion,
The way you look concerned for me and not yourself.
You are you.
You need to do what you need to do,
And sometimes that means letting other people (yes, even friends)
Deal with their own ****.
I appreciate the way you hold my hand when I'm crying,
The way you don't seem afraid, but...!
You ain't perfect, and I don't care.
I see that you're flawed and I love it.
I love who you are, and nothing is going to change that.

You're not alone. This is a planet of 7 billion people;
You're never alone in what you feel.
Everyone is the kid at the edge of the group, trying to play grownup,
Wearing too-short dresses and feeling too much responsibility.
We are all the little kids looking up to the big kids doing **** we didn't even know was possible.

You try and make everyone's day a little brighter, but
Sometimes people don't need your help to do that.
Sometimes, people don't want their world to be bright.
Sometimes people just want you to ******* and leave them alone to cry in the dark.
You don't see that you are not the sun, but just a star, and there are other stars and other lights.
By yourself you soon weary and burn out, but if you let other people help you, you can change the world.
But no.
You refuse. You are the guardian
That you always needed and never had,
And it's eating you alive.

******, what the hell am I supposed to say to take away the worry and stress and exhaustion of being you?
How in the name of heaven can
I
Take all of your brokenness and unshed tears and dark nights
And shape it into something deep and beautiful, not pretty, but beautiful?

And how can I make you see that we all feel that, some variation at least, and
You're only alone because you let yourself be alone?
I can't help you when you're living a life of self-imposed panic,
The anxiety you force yourself to face ripping through you like tsunamis.
Refusal to relax is a death wish that won't be answered for untold years,
All I can do is sit, and watch, and wait, and try to catch your burned-out soul
When it finally gives in, cracking at the
Stretched-too-thin seams.

I'm here for you, I promise I'll always be here, but I don't know how to heal you.
I'm sorry.
So sorry.

The world is sometimes dark and not all trees survive.  
I'm not saying this because you don't know this.
I'm saying it because, sometimes, I need reminding that it's not all good.
My tree of happiness is not struggling to grow,
Leaves of fake laughter making it look pretty.
You see, I have a tendency to overanalyze, overdramatize, over-generalize, looking for the good in everyone,
Wishing on stars that all the saplings will live and grow strong.
I guess I should be careful what I wish for.
I have a hard time coming to grips with the reality that life is not
Full of good people and good intentions and good reasons.
I put myself in everyone else's shoes, seeing justifications through
Their eyes, blind and full of dust though they might be.
Because even when elm and oak trees get sick and die, I plant new seeds
And even when I have to squeeze my hips too tightly into  
A child's swing set, I think I can still touch the sky
And even when I see lives cut short by guns, by drugs, by *****, abuse, suicide, gangs, cancer, hopelessness,
I don't really see the evil or the sorrow,
Only what could have been.
Only the Elysian Fields of immortal hopes and goals that now have a chance in somebody else's soul.
And even when my dreams are miscarried through open veins like exposed roots,
I feel joy.
Even when razors can't cut deep enough to remove my immediate tendrils and sprouts of pain,
Even when rivers of red on my legs don't rinse away my earthy, dark confusion,
I am happy. Deep inside,
I hope against hope that nothing will truly destroy my optimism.
Of course, as soon as I get out in the real, concrete, day-to-day, 9-to-5 (actually 8:30-to-3am) world,
I'm going to be crushed.
I'm going to find that seed of darkness and sorrow and pain that starts growing inside everyone.
From the time of our first skinned knee and broken promise, first heartbreak and the first time our dreams didn't come true,
The seed starts to grow.
I know I'll find mine eventually,
I think it's been mulched under  5 feet, 6 inches of forced smiles
And Sundays under that maple tree I could
Never quite climb.
The world is dark sometimes,
And not all trees survive.

Slipping, I slide down the edge of cliffs into
A sea dark with hidden pasts and shame
Gasping for air.
I slipped the way a knife goes too quickly through skin,
The way a noose falls too gently around an innocent neck,
The way I need too little pressure to press the trigger.
I slipped like miscarried dreams drip from veins.
It has been almost two years since the last capital-I Incident,
Years scattered with mistakes easily hidden in the crook of a finger or
Under bracelets,
But now I run the risk of slipping below that dark water
And not being able to find my way out.

We laugh at him,
My friends and I,
In our bubble of teenage invincibility
We laugh at him,
Skinny and ungainly,
In shirts one-half size too big and
Kakis  that were probably $10 at Meijer's.
We laugh at him,
Hair carefully gelled and combed to cover the
Bald spot where too many nights of
Indecision and loss have rubbed it clean.
We laugh, his awkwardness fueling our
Shameful antics,
Shrinking him until he appears no more
Than an irritating fly with
Strangely sad eyes and  
32 years of small-town memories not
Validated,
Never appreciated.
We laugh at his first-time fumbling and confusion,
Not knowing how to handle us,
In our smug overconfidence and
Judgement like one thousand pins,
How to reach beyond our stubbornness
To teach us something worthwhile,
Something beyond the plan.
He sits like an origami bird that was made
Without instructions,
Perched on the corners of old desks,
In storage rooms of old textbooks,
Wrinkled and refolded.
Yet his sad eyes and open vault of memories makes him
Stronger, stranger, than I, we, have ever seen in the
Four walls of our learning.
Favorite books and winged metaphors
Fly
Next to seeds of joy and a father's death,
Twenty-two pieces of musical
Coping
That we laugh at,
That we see as a pitiful attempt at rejoining life,
That we scorn
With our teenage invincibility.
It's alright.
We know the value of less than nothing-
Our judgment means nothing.
His too-big shirts
And lyrical memory will
Exist
To anchor a life
Far after we have left,
Lost,
Wandering.

They say a journey of a thousand miles
Begins with a
s
  i
  n
    g
      l
       e
Step.
Well, this is my first step.
Right here, right now,
I say-no, I
DECLARE-
That I will find and cherish one-thousand moments of
Joy
This summer. I have 81
Precious, glorious days and I am
100-and-31 percent determined
To find life in each and every one -
13 bits of happiness by each midnight, to be
Precise.
I am taking a one-thousand challenge,
The same way people make one-thousand paper cranes,
Or try and count one-thousand stars,
Or have a bucket list numbered neatly to
Just
Beyond nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine.
I will find one-thousand things
That make me happy.
And maybe, just maybe,
When I reach my goal I will find myself,
Like elusive laughter floating away from the end
Of a
Rainbow.

I have a love/hate relationship with morning,
And not for the reason you might think;
No, I have no problem with alarm clocks
Or early jobs, cold breakfasts,
Or the grogginess only cleared by a cup (or three) of coffee.
No, I have a problem with literally waking up.
On days I wake up without an alarm clock,
I hate it. Well, hate is too strong a word;
Really, it's bittersweet.
I swim up towards consciousness
From the warm depths of sleep.
I float on the strange, ever shifting barrier of
The dreamworld,
A silver sea rippling with black and white reflections,
Hints of rainbow.
My brain is trying to tell me something,
I'm sure of it, if only I could
See the message for a bit longer.
There is one moment,
One single, tiny, brief, glorious
Moment
Where I know that I'm dreaming.
My dream-self is warm and fuzzy and
Right in the midst of an imaginary...something,
And I know that this instant is all I have left of it.
I strain, focusing all of my real-or-not energy
On decoding whatever it is that I can't quite see.
I revel in the mysterious firing of synapses deep down
Within my brain, forcing pictures of
Life
Onto eyelids that have never seen
The bright-hued portraits
I hang before them.
And I won't be able to think about it
Until that last, final instant,
I try to keep it with me like water in a seive,
But I cannot stop myself from floating up,
Out of Dreamworld, off the surface of the pool,
Away from, from..from....
It's gone.
I can't picture it anymore as I am
Inexorably dragged up towards my life.
I wake, eyes flashing open.
Heart pounding.
Out of breath from my struggle to
See the other side.
A tear escapes from the prison of lashes.
****. I was so close this time...

You have to understand
I don't do this for me.
I don't do this for you or
Even for us.
I do this because I have to,
Because if I don't write and dream
And scheme and sit by
Clear rivers and streams putting words into spiral-bound notebooks,
I will die.
Don't worry, I'll still be around
Walking and talking
But my soul cannot, will not stand being a dusty attic of
Odds and under-appreciated ends,
A broken menagerie of witless thoughts
Not able to fly with only one wing
I need these words to live.
I need half-full notebooks and stanzas and
Scraps of rhythm and rhymes;
My blood runs inky black,
Full of midnight prowlings and
Pens on paper,
Pen, paper,
Pen glides on paper,
As smooth as black ribbons
Draped across the snow,
Black thread
Stitching up white silk.
The lines of words
Imprint themselves into my brain.
I breathe language,
Feel my heart beat with songs,
Dream in the rythm
Of poetry.
Eventually, the
Ink
Forces its way into my veins,
Carried throughout my body
So that I bleed
Ebony rain.
It infiltrates me
Until I am crying
Midnight tears.
My hearts pumps the
Unformed phrases around and
Around again
Until I dissolve,
Becoming a mirror of darkness
On the floor
To inspire another writer.
'Tis the fate of the poet:
To become one
With one's work
And dreams
And life
And soul.

My stomach aches
When I think of all those babies,
Ribs pressed out against dry skin,
Shrunken brains and swollen stomachs
Straining to escape a poverty
That makes minimum wage
Look like a fortune.
$7.25 an hour, when millions live on
Less than $7 a week,
Pennies that are left warming in parking lots,
Buying another day of life for gaping mouths.
Children are supposed to run, jump  
Play, laugh, learn,
Yet thousands sit blank-eyed
Staring at a future painted in
War-torn red, lonely navy,
And consuming, starving, empty black
Not having enough energy to
Lift thin, pale lips into a weak smile,
Let alone traipse miles of dusty sorrow to school each day.
My soul aches for tears shed in
Dark, hungry nights
Prayers uttered wordlessly
Into the crescent moon
As razor thin as their arms.

I was born into a
Hall of wooden pews and
Sundays full of crinkling satin bows,
Confronted by a stern-faced woman with iron grey curls
Tighter than her heart.
I remember very little of those
Sunday rooms, mazes of correct answers and long half-hours
I was raised through new pews,
Carpeted halls and
Long hours with brown haired ladies
A book 1200 pages thick of
Tradition and my mother's folded hands as I peek
From under my bowed head,
Earning sharp reprimands from white  robed men.

I saw them,
Of course,
Walking in Dearborn, Detroit, Ann Arbor, far away lands of unrest, but
They weren't in little, white, homogenous Chelsea, Michigan,
Of course,
Not them.
Yet I marveled at soft amber skin
And deep chocolate eyes full of
More galaxies than I ever knew existed,
Split solar systems of hushed mosques and mosaics that I was never
Allowed to see.

But I loved it.

My room became a tiny haven,
My dusty mirror showing a soft headscarf wrapped carefully,
Gently,
Over flyaway frizz,
Green cotton matching hazel eyes.
I knew not the complexities,
So I faked them,
Simply kneeling because I could not
Remember all the beautiful
Dances of prostration to praise another name of God.
Foreign syllables try to roll from my strangely
English tongue; I never realized how
Odd and stiff my born language is,
Too full of contradictions and
Double entendres, strict lines of black and white
Inky blood spilled on snowy sheets of paper,
Ancient characters telling me how to live my life.
As far as I'm concerned,
Allah (swt) and God are just two names
For the same deity,
And I simply preferred
Fajr
Dhuhr
'Asr
Maghrib
'Isha
Over the Lord's Prayer and
Hail Mary.
My rosary beads were quiet patches of rakaahs
Though I could not pronounce any of the words.

I kept secrets too heavy to lift into the
Dark recesses of my mental hiding-holes
Instead dwelling in discrepancies and dealing in bargains.
Half of me fit perfectly to each,
A blasphemous picture of the ****** Mary
Transposed to the cover of a Qur'an
I had never opened, like the
Guilt-edged pages of Bibles growing weary
Under my desk.
Two irreconcilable pieces of religion,
Broken images of stained glass crowns
That can't be formed into the intricate patterns of an
"Exotic" heart.
So for today I pack away my rakaahs and prostrations in a wooden box,
And take up my cross again.
Someday, though,
My heart will chase itself through the five pillars,
And I will shake out the green cotton,
Wrapping it carefully over a flyaway soul.

I hate your ******* skepticism.
You sit and look at me from across an
Empty expanse of blood-red tablecloth that might as well be
The divide between galaxies.
I try to stay calm when you ask if
"Alternative" pronouns are being used
As a "social experiment" in GSA.
I look away.
My heart pounds.
My face flushes.
It is only for the sake of the young kids present
That I do not mutter any obscenities.
I take a deep breath.
I tell you, slowly, carefully, that
No it isn't an experiment.
They have chosen to use plural pronouns
They, them, theirs,
Just as legitimate as the "normal" ones, male and female.
Why should anyone's name be tied to
What they were born with between their legs?
You answer back in a long drawl that is so full I skepticism
I could choke on it's ignorance.
"Okay then."
Two words, two words that make me rethink everything
I think about you, my father.
I was filled with hope when I listened to
Tales of love and life,
Freedom to marry who you want.
You support gay rights, Dad,
But I'm left wondering:
Do you support all my friends?
The pansexual and gender-fluid and bisexual and homosexual and demi-****** and those who chose other pronouns?
What about the transsexuals and asexuals and third-gendered and pan-romantic and sapiosexual and queer?
I turn away before I reveal my hurt to you
I will not open up this can of worms again, I'm sure.
I thought I knew you.
Now I only know how much more I
Respect
Compared to you.

I know a word,
Six letters long,
That destroys.
I know a word,
Six letters long,
That kills.
I know a word,
Six letters long,
That encompasses an uncertain future
Of needles and lab tests,
A word that can't ever describe the feeling
Of knowing your body is killing itself.
I know a word.
Six
Letters
Long
That rips away vitality, leaving only
Empty ghosts in sterile beds,
Laughter replaced by hushed doctors and quieted sobs and
The incessant, steady beeping of a heart monitor.
I know a word,
Six letters long,
That leaves a husband crying
Over hospital bills at a kitchen table,
His son standing silent in the doorway,
2 AM.
I know a word
Yanking soft great-grandmothers and innocent children
From here to the ceiling of the clouds,
Six weeks, six months, six years
Stealing hair and smiles and health and hope,
Leaving a drawn, hollow skull
Staring
At the abyss.
A word,
That makes you feel powerless,
An ant trying not to drown in six feet of flood and fire.
A word
That has claimed countless lives,
Forced springs of tears to well in miserable eyes,
Produced pictures of black sorrow at
Rainy gravesides.
I know a word, six letters long,
Called CANCER.

I like you.
A lot.
Like, really a lot.
Like, when I look at you, I get
Tiny purple butterflies in my stomach,
And when you smile I smile too.
I'm acting like I'm in grade school,
Trying to sit next to you so I can
Surreptitiously lean against your shoulder,
Secretly hoping you'll notice me and
Maybe, just maybe,
Think of me as more than a friend.
I know I'm being rather obvious
But my heart refuses to sleep quietly,
Preferring instead to conjure up 1 AM dreams
Of your soft curves and loud laughter.
You know, my friends told me to act
When the time was right -
Well, I'm a terrible judge of timing,
I'm always too clumsy
I stumble over half-hopes and emotions.
I can only hope for you to see all the mess in my heart
You probably (I hope) know all this;
I've been told I'm an open book.

It's raining.
Soft, cool knees hunched up against your chest,
Sitting there in a flowing skirt and knitted vest,
Quiet, at rest,
But you looked distressed, you look depressed,
Your momma knows your house is gonna get repossessed
Cigarette against your lips, unlit.
You look surprised the bus driver doesn't make you
Put it away,
But I pretend I can't see you
Watching night turn to day, your dismay on display
Hiding like a stray dog from memories of your mother's new fiancé
Last Father's Day when you tried to run away.
Well, now you're trying again.
You look weary, bone-tired and thinking about
All you admired, desired, dreams that
Expired and retired and why can't you see all the love
You've inspired?
I want to talk to you, walk with you,
Your skin is too pale, like chalk
I don't want your momma to hear that knock,
Empty face crumpling in shock,
People flock around you where you hit the rock,
The clock ran out for you.
Young ******* the ***** floor, feel like
No one adores you,
Feel hurt down to the core,
I tell you "This is your stop,"
You walk out the door.
I know I'm never gonna see you any more.
And next week, the weather's bleak,
I'm on break, I see your face on the newspaper,
Went to seek Death's mystique.
Raindrops sting like vipers, snipers,
I get back on the bus,
Turn on the windshield wipers.
It's raining.

I don't know who I am.
I don't know why I smile at
Mrs. Next-door's daughter.
I don't know why I wake up
Crying
At 3:26 AM. I think -
I think I'm scared.
I am scared to know why I hate my hips.
I am scared to know why my sister's laugh makes me  
Cheer up.
I am scared to know who I am - what if she (me)
Isn't who I though she (me) was?
Every single person who anyone will ever meet,
Every man, woman, and child on the train,
On the street, in a chapel or a classroom or
At the beach - is scared.
I'm not sure why we're scared. It just kinda
Happens.
I want it to stop. I want that pretty girl in the red,
Polka-dot dress to stop crying,
I want that young man with the troubled uneasiness of a secret
In his eyes to come out of the closet
Stop second guessing your heart.
**** it, find yourself.
I sit and stare out of rain-streaked windows.
I still don't know who I am.

I'm not perfect, I know that,
But I wish I didn't feel like a
Leftover,
Trash,
Tossed aside because my hips are too wide
And my stomach is soft and rounded, not flat.
I'm not perfect, I know that,
But I wish I didn't feel
Awkward,
Stupid,
Stammering because I'm in love,
And my day is made with her smile, not anything else.
I'm not perfect, I know that,
But I wish I didn't feel like a
Freak,
***,
Whispered about because my heart has fallen hard
And it's for a pretty girl with glasses, not a football player.

A bad day when her hair
Blew in the wind and he
Caught
Her, she too naive to see
His biting teeth, hard angles,
Sharp elbows and knees
Why didn't she run to the safety
Of soft bosoms and the swell of a hip
Like an ocean wave.

Jokes about pretty
Faces, hips, sensual thighs
The truth? - Beautiful

Nothing quite so exquisitely painful
As watching the one you
(Maybe)
Love gaze at a man far better than
Any woman you could hope to be.
Your heart wrenched with
Possibilities scattered to the spring wind
Like a thousand seeds of hope-sorrow.
He's better than you. She's better than you,
How could you ever hope to lure her from
A better man than any woman you could
Ever hope to be.
Golden-honey curls that will never
Wrap around my fingers are spread over
Notebooks full of love poems
To a man far better than
Any woman I could hope to be.

Your soft white-tan hands never brush mine,
Only connected by our two spoons in a pint
Of ice cream (which is good:
In my broken state I could kiss you). Drown my confusing pain
In milky, sugar coldness,
Hazel eyes, blue eyes not meeting much per
My choice.
My memory blushes at his comments,
I can't think of you here as the
Same you who wore the denim shorts
We marveled at- they were very nice shorts
(He said you had a nice ***)-
But I was more intrigued by his sideways glance,
Brown eyes flickering slyly over not your ****, hips,
I felt undressed.
Like he was wondering whether the *** under my loose jeans
Was anywhere near those denim shorts.
Spoons dig through cookie dough chunks
In near silence,
Evening shadows lengthening across grass, sidewalk edges
More perfect and straight
Than any attraction I've ever had.

Sobs echo
Through warm thick air,
Tears falling on
Tangled ****** locks of hair.
She curls in a corner
Beneath the stairs,
Alone and cold
With an awful story to share.
She has never ever said
That life was even a little bit fair
Because for her whole life,
No one has been there to care.
Nobody helped her repair
Her mind when her senses
Became hopelessly ensnared
In the lies he told her,
The oaths her made her swear.
And she hadn't a friend to make her
See danger when she was unaware.
He grinned his drunken smile
As he sat in a chair
Made of her tears
And her worries and prayers
Because in her life,
There is nobody there.

A drop of alcohol
Slips down my throat,
Giving me life
Helping me to float.
Heavy amber liquid
Resting on my lips
And crimson drops of blood
Drawing lines around my hips.
Oh how did you
Know my vice?
'Cause now I'm empty inside,
Though you're acting so nice.
No matter what you do,
Your face I'll always hate
Because you got me drunk and what
Happened next you still won't say is ****.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes snap open
Sweat beads your forehead
You feel the cold circle
Of a gun against your temple.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes squeeze close
Your finger tightens on the trigger
Will you be strong enough?
But then you stop.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes open in wonder
Your shoulders slump
The gun lays forgotton on the table
A warm hand covers yours.

Breathe in-2-3, out-2-3
Your eyes close slowly
Your lips touch
Warmth surrounds you
The world is comforting again.

A white silk dress
Like snow cascading
To the dusty ground.
A needle ******
The pale arms of
Sleeping Beauty's twin;
Drops of blood
Raining down to land
On her tear-soaked
Satin skirts.
She falls, deep
Into a forever
Enchanting rest from which
She will never wake,
Laid to die in a
Pristine, ****** gown
With the bloodstains
Reflected in the
Casket lining
From her white silk
Dress.

He stood on her doorstep, hopes and dreams in his
Wrinkled hands,
Longing for some peace,
If only he could help her understand
He's not a bad man
Whatever words her momma told her
About her deadbeat dad, they're not true
He was just lonely and sad.
He's old now
Almost time for him to die
But he's not gonna leave until the truth in
His eyes
Reaches her heart, makes her see
"I just want a friendship,
You and me,"
Words tumbling from stuttering lips
She stands and stares,
Her baby on her hip,
Here was her daddy, left only as
Foggy memory,
On her doorstep, begging for
Another chance,
She closed the door on that
Sad and lonely man,
His hopes and dreams now broken,
Dead in wrinkled hands.

Gone.
G-O-N-E,
Four letters that represent the hurt
In me,
Cold cold rain , don't care if it don't feel so nice
When everything it touches
Is already made of ice
You left me empty,
An abandoned house on a sketchy corner,
Cracked sidewalks running down the boulevards of
My heart
Gone,
And my life ain't ever coming back.
Oh, stand me on a pedestal,
I'm made of marble, pale and smooth,
I won't break when you drop me - ha!
That's a lie, just like the tears in your eyes
When you said goodbye - gone.

Teary kisses cover
Cold white lips
Life now gone forever

crimson Poison Apples drop off Burning
Bridges into Murky Waters
red with rust swirling swirling
she cries as her father's fists curling
beat Seeds of Suspicion into
her Reckless heart
bleeding bruises art art
runs and hides but stands alone
pleading begging moan moan
her shoes are jimmy choo
she whispers secrets to herself
"I Just Wanted to be Me"
but the King of Hearts is Out for
Blood
scarlet laughter piercing darkness
growling stomach fight fight
tears flow and flood the night
and she is Shrinking away
Coming Out to the show
blinding bright in the glow glow
spotlit on a blackened stage
forced to perform Circus Acts
remembering when she was-was what?-nothing
Prom Queen twirling twirling
"Look" -hearts in a sea of ****** silk-
but the only one looking is
The Collector
hoarding up stories of rosy misery
Mean Colors dancing in cruel red eyes
sneer and cry and lie lie
their Psychic Powers forcing isolation into her veins
like a Blood Borne killer
she is just fading away until the Song in Her
Heart is just a hum of amazing grace
life thought gone forever
lives
on
as
the
tears
of
friends
remake
her
memories
she is buried in a glass casket under
grey skies The Red Dress she wears
without a care care
flashy crimson
sunset
ruby
apple
scarlet
blood
pain
love
life
soul
RED
v­ibrant in dead fields
life thought gone forever
lives
on

I cannot move, breathe, think, speak,
Legs splayed across cool sheets
That you departed from,
Your legs splayed in dusty sun
Far away.
Dim light filters through the
Dark blue muslin curtains we bought
Years ago,
Or it could have been days - each second is an eternity with you,
The curtains that reminded us of the night we met.
I can't bear to see the flag in the corner, tear stained,
Like my black clothes still strewn across the carpet.
All gone.
Somewhere in the back of my
Aching head, piano music plays and I
Believe
It is the song you played, the only one you knew,
When you asked me to marry you. I said yes
You hit the cheap keyboard so hard with joy
It broke, and all the keys spilled onto the ground,
Little pieces of black and white laughter.
And my heart swelled to the point of
Bursting
When you signed up, with your brave face and handsome eyes,
To defend me.
We both left unsaid the painful truth:
You would go away and maybe you wouldn't come back.
The day of your deployment my throat was so thick
I was choking on my fears, little dark stones of misery
Settling in my stomach before you even left, tainting the
Brilliant blue sky.
My wedding ring felt so heavy I would have
Sworn it would pull me right down through the
Hot, tar-scented asphalt swarming with camouflage.
I could barely whisper how much I loved you,
Tears dropping from my eyes, so swollen I
Strained
To catch a final glimpse of you, looking over your shoulder,
Your brave smile, handsome eyes
You blew me a kiss
I lost it,
My emotions pouring from my heaving chest, ugly sobs,
Let my eyelids sink over the image of you
Walking away.
It is my biggest regret, not watching until the
Last second.
If I had watched you leave, maybe somehow
You would have come back.

Some days my lips feel cold and my ears
Hear none of what I say
Only a faint buzz of wings rustling in the wind.
Some days my fingertips feel blue,
Even though the blood is warm and
My knees chatter in the brisk wind
Even inside my head.
Some days I face the flames of the spiteful dragon in my soul and
His fire doesn't singe me,
A frozen statue.
I am a spirit, a single tarnished coin in the dragon's hoard,
A point of light drifting
In a body too big; I rattle around in my skull,
My skull that is too hard
I bruise and scrape.
Little red and purple-black marks, definitely injured
But a pale finger pressed to them elicits
No response.
Nothing.
I am devoid of feeling, my heart beating but
No pulse,
No life.
The dragon stands outside his den but
Makes no move to attack.
My bones are stuck in flesh
Too heavy, waxy and cold
I want to fly!
My joints stretch through in hard angles,
Translucent skin showing blue veins;
River-tracks of spent blood,
Cold blood,
Carried back to a fluttering heart.
Chilled.
Cold-blooded, a giant lizard seeking it's warmth from other sources.
A shudder twitches between ribs, lungs
Too tight, gasping beneath the
Skeletal, crooked spine running like dragon's spikes
Down past my hips,
Bumps that will maybe become wings
Some day,
Wings that will lift me up
Some day,
Lifting that will become floating
Some day,
And then broken branches will drop from
Cold trees
Fire boiling in my gut,
Waxy skin melting from trapped bones,
A skull too hard,
Flesh too heavy,
Lungs too tight,
Crunch, break, destroy
And my little soul of light will
Float away and be
Free!
If only I had a dragon's courage.

Midnight waves curl around
Your empty face, my stony heart,
Two people sitting on the beach
The roaring surf drowning us with our lies.

Society is just a bunch of little kids
Playing in the dirt,
Grubby fingers digging in the mud,
Wide eyes and buck toothed grins
Awestruck by shiny pebbles.
All we will ever know or will ever see
Is contained in this 10 by 10 square
Of ants and stray blades of grass,
Hands sticky with fruit juice.

Dancers twirl
Through broken glass,
Blood in ribbons
On the grass.
False laughter fills
The air with smiles,
A collection of fake happiness
For a short and precious while.
Appluad the graceless efforts
Of the sinning ballerinas
As the crowd cackles
Like the call of a hyena.

My mask is pure
And white as snow
But my heart is
Black and cold.
Beautiful rythms
Flow from my lips
While my mind plays a
Sour note.
Where did the happiness go,
The easy, simple
Melodies of childhood,
The light and happy beats?
My style changed
As I grew up,
Higher and louder and faster.
An air of panic
Entered the flying stanzas
As my life started to
Fall apart.
Now the only music of
My soul
Is the melancholy dirge
Of lost hope
And broken dreams.

The air is molten,
Slow-moving and thick,
And filled with the heavy
Fragrence
Of white lilacs,
Like incense in the temple
Of the sun.
Memories float,
Seen through plate-glass
Windows
In people's souls.
Melodies lazily dance in
The summer sky,
Laughing notes that fall
Like trickling streams in
Scales,
In singing
Crystal waterfalls
That wash away the
Dust of life.

The master of emotion,
The king of the dance,
Hurried fingers add
A note of daring chance.

Molten happiness
Floats in the air
Like a passing good dream;
With never a care.

Now poignant,
Now sad,
How melencholy
How deep and drab.

Silver metal gleams
In the eye of the mind,
Lost an ancient battles
On which the sun shined.

Melodies curl around inside,
Twining round my arms-
This music can protect me
From any kind of harm.

Sharp, shrieking voices
Let out a scream
As they find out the world
Is not what it seems.

A starry night captures
A beautiful song
For a love through the ages,
The ages so long.

The smooth rythms
Of the everlasting trees
Whisper quietly
Throughout the leaves.

Musty notes
In a darkened room,
And sunshine floods
Into the gloom.

Music tells the truth
And the truth never lies,
But pianos are tricky
And their feelings they hide.

Anger forces the
Furious beats
Into the world
And off silent sheets.

Midnight and brightness
Float in the stars,
Connecting all people,
So close and so far.

Pure and simple,
Liquid notes
Fall in arpeggio scales
Through dancing dust motes.

A single tears falls,
Making no sound
As keys pull memories
Up from the ground.

Everything's so simple
When played in black and white;
The piano controls
My darkness and light.