I held a caramelized dream in my hands
Dripping down my arms and soaking my sleeves in sticky juice
Rich golden syrup that drip drip dripped onto my toes
Too sweet to eat
These dreams are bad for you
I held on to it like school books and riches
I held it out before me
As it caught the sterling sun
Glistening hopes
So beautiful
So messy
Ever melting
Ever dripping
Leaking through my fingers
Falling from my palms
Fading from my sight

Candles melt
They melt on tables
And leave thick lumpy messes
Messes that I'll eventually clean up
After I've blown the candles out
After you didn't walk back in
And allowed the smoke to taint my dinner

Don't define me by the words on my page
Rather drift through the great paper wall called poetry
And inspect the person I think I am
To share such things with carefully discerning strangers
Who haven't lived on the outskirts of my reality
I dare you not to read between these lines
But to rather to crawl underneath them
And to view the person that stands beating her chest behind them
My rage, thoughts, insights are not paper thin
They have no margins
No page breaks
Or font size
Nor does yours
They are but tattoos that will fade underneath the tattoos
That will be inked after them
Nonetheless,
Here I am
Writing again

I was never a child
I was always an ageing adult
Half chocolate
Half a middle aged twice-divorced man
Searching his memories
For the moment he departed from the school yard and built a life on the sand
Where his chocolate half melted in the heat of mid-day
And left him half a person
Half a puddle of sticky mess
Warning people
With signs and sirens
Not to slip on the part on him that got away

For hearts as deep
As shallow ponds
In silence weep
Your sadness gone
For morning breaks
The wake of dawn
And wet eyes take
Your face it from

i think perhaps one day
i will write poetry
the way happy people do.

no inconstancies, the little blips
and commas in places they shouldn't be,
just so.

does this bring hope?
is joy found in predictability?
is contentment in life a reality?

just so. flowers in rows,
the old woman bending over
plucking weeds between her toes.

a period at the end of every
line i wrote. not literally, for lines
and sentence rhymes do not always coincide.

i must break off my thoughts mid-stride
to conform to this three-lined rhyme
forced melody is no poem to me.

yet see how this flows so innocently.
like the little ribboned pigtails of a girl
who has never seen anything bad on t.v.

she isn't me, but neither is this,
coincidentally. but how coincidental
can we be? another few commas and this is over.

not to me. fitting periods where commas
were meant to be is the only skill that comes
naturally.

that, and ****** poetry.
happy people pen happier words that
fit together intuitively. not me.

What are my arms?
But floppy dead things that hang at the sides of my body
And beat against my chest when i run?
Do they fold and bend and caress the compartments of my mind?
And build shelters for my hopes and dreams the live behind my eyelids?
What use are they to the dead man they lay on the side of the road,
But to hold up the ***** crushed cup that he uses to beg for a days meal?
Can they save him?
Or just point to show that my heart notices his cry for help
Or hope
Or just a few cents
Are they just the blankets that I wrap around myself when I shiver of shake and questions?
Or answers
Or just the sharpened coldness that bite at my legs?
What are my arms?
Show me how to use them
All you folks who have achieved
And bled
and blistered of a hard day's work
Make them your students
Even just to teach them that they can lift up and be pillars for my hands