I want something, maybe.
A day or two with someone who gets me.
An escape from the same old day-in,
day-out, common place pattern I've been living in.

An adventure with a kindred spirit whose soul is willing.

Are you down?
'Cause I'm up for it.

To whisk a batter of secrets and spine-tingling stories with or without glory.

We can make it up as we go and/or leave it up to fate to guide us on our way to escape from a place we've been dreading waking up in every single day.

What greater miracle can there be than to just see your face?

I want real love baby,
won't you hit me up?
Let's take straight punches to the head until we finally go to bed with the most amazing dreams running through our minds.

I'm somewhere up and to the left of where you're currently headed towards.

Come find me.

Here for the rush, we all wait in line
just for a small dose of turpentine.

Life's a mess.
My soul is quiet.
My playing is inspired!
I've been reading half the day.
Man,
I'm freaking tired.

"Adore me!"
"You bore me,"
and I am not like that.
Domestic goddess take a hike;
please get off my back.

"Ignore me!"
"No problem,"
I said into the wind.
So much for happy endings;
now let the truth sink in.

The artist fell asleep after he leaked tears on her arm.
She held him tight while full knowing that he's held them in for so long.
Together,
they both dreamed of healing their wrongs.
A picturesque scene of two broken souls moving on.

How rare to find another person with the same gleam in their eye.
She became his muse,
and he was her guy.

They never again questioned their fate.
They stopped asking why.
Oh, the things they did create while they both felt so alive!

But time went on,
and the colors did fade.
They began to pull apart -
growing separate ways.

The artist came to think he did his best work alone.
His queen found herself uncomfortable atop her lofty throne.

They both gave in,
and chalked it up to something neither could define.

She never again would fall for a broken man,
and he spent no more days crying.

When everything goes sideways,
it's the diagonals that make the most sense,
But whether they're rising or falling -
well hey, what's the difference?

I resent this emergence of televised li(v)es.
A pathetic attempt to make our own feel less worthless.

Mother,
don't you realize?
You're wasting away.
I don't care about who the Bachelor sent home today!
That's not real love.
All that ****'s fake.

You spend your whole life staring at screens.
Get out of the house!
Please, do something!

If I told you how many hours I've spent alone on my back porch
just smoking and thinking,
you'd probably think I was nuts.
But I'm not crazy.
You could join me if you want,
but I probably won't say much.

Wait, you mean I have to actually relate to these cretins?

A feeling can be fleeting,
but what about the source of a thing?
From just one seed,
roots can grow deep.
Though the leaves of a tree may change,
and some branches might break or fall off,
there is one part that always remains,
grows stronger;
the heart.

"You're on the precipice of something, and soon you'll be left with nothing but memories and time."
"Sounds like a recipe for disaster."
"Sound's like it'd go good with some wine."

Sorry about that.
My feelings got shut off.
Totally beyond control.
An automatic response.
Now I'm saying sorry,
but we both know I'm not.

This poem should not be written.
These thoughts should not be thunk,
because I'm a little lost right now.
I think I might be drunk.

You're the one who hides beneath every thought that I do think.
The cause behind my highs and lows -
you're the reason why I drink.

Please leave me alone.
You haunt all of my dreams,
and turn me out until I'm coarse -
I'm splitting at the seams.

I didn't want to love you.
It was just a game.
Elaborate revenge for calling me "cute."
I underestimated the heat of your flame.

Big mistake.

Now I'm burning for you.
In the smoke, I see your name.
It repeats through my head as I writhe in bed
again, again, and again.

I know it's New Year's Eve,
and that I should be out partying,
but I have a very strong desire to stay in and read.

I climbed a tree.
Earlier this morning.
I mean, yesterday morning,
I think.
There was this person on top of a tree.
He had climbed up it himself.
That person was me.

"Do you remember when we used to be sad?"

"Oh man, some of the best times I've ever had . . . "

I slid down the tunnel like a morsel down a throat.
It's true what he said:
Down Here They All Float
I felt all my hair rise up in static.
I almost forgot that breathing was automatic,
and in between breaths I felt so close to death.
Suffocating as I wondered if I'd ever come back.
A sound like a freight train shook my whole frame.
A hive of cicadas roared in my brain.
It's true what they say:
This Is How It Feels To Go Insane

Quick and in short order,
we slid back to our separate sides of the border.
But it didn't feel that way at the time.
Every second an eternity spent drawing the line.

Who drew first?
I couldn't say.
I ran through my entire playbook on the very first day.
From there on out I was making it up as I went,
and you went along - every now and then -
until the last of our words were spent.

A penny for your thoughts?
I'll give you two cents.
(With my heart in my throat after every text message sent.)

Now all I've got are handful of songs I find too hard to listen to anymore,
and a nagging guilty conscience.

and some people will, but most people won't.
I think that you might. Do you though?
I'll wish that you would.
I really do hope so.

Filled out this application but left all the questions unfinished.
Been swimming with schools of fish bitten by sharks;
how our numbers have diminished.
This much closer to being fired but never been farther from quitting.
Spitting phlegm during my best attempts to explain it to them;
It spills out like this:

Shook a forsaken frame just to sustain the complex game being played in order to maintain some sort of constant.
Consistently bombarded with confrontations to the stasis of each and every escapist mentality.

Virtual reality narcissism.

I'll start making sense just as quick as I learn to deal with it.
Whatever that may be.
Seems our plight is nothing more than to forever search for an answer that fits.

Aw crap, I mean fins.
No wait, fence.
Fences!
Do you wanna be fronds?
You know, you and me.
Just a couple palm fronds,
floating down the pond.

Wait, that's not right.
Ponds don't have currents.
No, see the problem is I don't currently have any frans.
I don't even know a Fran!
Do you?
Not even a Francis?
Ha, we have so much in common.
Let's be Frances!

Oceans deep,
and seas do swell.
How will we ever survive ourselves?

Fell into chasms devoid of light.
Provided a ladder to climb our way out.

No one ever asked for life,
but given what we've got,
we're obliged to make it right.

So send me a soul with its pieces awry.
I'll find a place for my own as I try to assemble these feelings into some sort of grace.
Break us again and I'll chalk it up to an obscure determination of fate.

I never asked for any of this.
Please send help.
Give me some bliss.
I'm drowning myself.
Come rescue me, quick.

All of my quests have left me diminished.
Leave it to me to start what I can't finish.
On to the next one to pick up the reigns.
We've only got so long before we're driven insane.

I look onto the world,
and all that I can see
are tales of woe, success, heroes,
love, loss, pain, and tragedy.

I look back on my life
and see it just the same.
All of it so beautiful,
yet commonplace and plain.

I look onto the world,
and it looks back on me.
All that I can see,
all of it and everything;
nothing more than poetry.

Get to the car and run for your lives.
Hit the deck and call it.
Slippery when wet;
this floor's too dry for me to mop it.

Slowly realizing that life moves too quickly when compared to the rate that we're dying.

Slowly learning that the only lessons worth knowing are the ones that take a lifetime of trying to understand.

Quickly tiring while waiting for some mysterious seed to grow into a full sized fruit-bearing tree.

All this time spent wondering how best to spend my time will surely be the death of me.

I thought I was falling for you,
but I was really just falling.
I thought you could catch me.
I was wrong.

Side by side,
rows and ranks, cow hide, leather flanks.
Hard to the bone.
Tough to penetrate.

Don't go thinking any connection is a thing.
Don't go justifying would-be mistakes.
People are people,
even when reduced to a number.
(Especially when reduced to a number.)

What are the odds of this sum equaling one?
Nevermind.
There is a mission,
and work to be done.

Everything I like in a poet.

I love storms,
but not strife.
And, for sure, lightning strikes.

Broke the surface with the provided bucket.
His face followed shortly after.
Proud as a father
of the fortune contained therein.

Gold-plated doubloons and dyed resin jewels
planted there by employees that very morning.

I haven't packed my bags, but my mind's already gone.

Only instead of staying up all night talking on the phone,
I spend it writing to strangers.

Several different approaches,
but which to go with?
Past experience reveals the best angle.
Line it up, just a bit off-center
in an attempt at proper English.
No time for second guessing,
it's all for nothing if you don't follow through.
That hole is home. It's the fate of this sphere.
Send the others spinning,
then get out of here.

I threw up into the dark and wondered why the monsters wouldn't eat it.
I folded myself into complicated origami shapes
and wondered why nobody tried to unfold me.
I surfaced through a swamp full of muck just to take a deep breath.
I spat oxygen into trees and remembered that they prefer carbon dioxide.
They don't love me.
Nobody does.
I once chewed on bark and spat out blood.
I once swallowed sap and lost my taste for syrup.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it so much.

I fell down wrought-iron stairs once.
I wondered why my friend didn't find it funny.
I was hurt and out-of-breath, but he didn't even laugh.
He should have laughed.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him so much.

On my last night in the state,
his friend told me that they ****** each other's ***** once.
I promised not to tell.

The next time I go on a date,
I'll feed my date dates,
and I'll hate it.
I hate it.
I ******* hate dates.

If I ever fly a kite again,
I'll try my best not to think of every smug ******* who told me to do so.
I'll just let the string go,
and count all the swirls on my fingertips.
Squeeze the sand between my toes.
Kiss some innocent know-no-better
with the taste of salt-water on my lips.

I swear to God, I hate it. I don't even know what it is.
I hate it though, I hate it so much.
I hate it, anyway,
I don't even know what it is.

I guess they knew it all along,
though I never let on.
Games are much more fun when no one knows they're playing.

Beat this one before,
but I'm not keeping score.
You can only make so many points with what you're saying.

So tell it to the wall, babe
cause I'm not staying.

Crashing on top of my bed,
I'll just lay down for a second
while in the middle of doing something important;
fully clothed,
light still on,
door wide open.
Beautiful dreams of madness.

He'd probably say,
"*******!"
Then follow it up with,
"Not in my father's house!"

Your wasted potential is just an issue that people who've wasted their own will pick on you for.

Surely, whatever you're doing right now should be worth at least thirty times more than what you're currently doing it for.

But if that number is zero then it doesn't make a difference.

It doesn't take a mathematician to know that smims maflori hindrance.

Go slow;
There wasn't snow on this road forty minutes ago.
The factory's closed on account of inclement weather,
and the wind blows as if it's got a grudge against the trees for standing together.

I get home and go back to sleep to dream of sandy beaches and palm fronds waving in a warm breeze,
beckoning me to return.

Said the young guy on my right.
"Why?" asked the bartender.
"Because people are more likely to come out if you yell 'fire.' It's been proven."

Her brow furrowed in doubt.

"Well that makes sense," I said, trying to help.
"**** makes people uncomfortable, but everyone wants to see a fire."

Why are you so wacky?
Why can't you just be sane?
You've done a number on yourself
and the inner workings of your brain.
Take a deep breath, you'll see, for sure;
all is not so lost.
Make a path back to the shore.
Our light will guide you through the fog.

You don't understand,
I'm homeless in the sand;
my castles only ever crumble.

Then don't build them so big,
or so close to the tide.
Tame your pride,
and learn to be humble.

I'll share no reefs with bottom-feeding things.
I'll use no shells only fit for a hermit.
I'd rather spend my days in the melodic waves.
I've  got what it takes;
I know how to endure it.

An ode to all those lower-middle-class kids raging against their own insignificance,
romanticizing their circumstances and chasing cheap bliss.

An ode to all conversationalists,
who kiss each and every sentence with well read lips.

Here's an ode to those who,
while watching a meteor shower,
remember to make a wish.

Sarcasm's beat,*
is the word on the street,
and those in the know are attempting to grow
something a little more sweet.

Play a song you like.
The kind you long to hear while you're out there living your life;
the one that rings in the back of your mind while you jump through the hoops of all the things that you're supposed to do.

Play it just for you,
and play it loud.

Feel its tones vibrate through your bones as you spring from the couch and start moving.

Finger-tips spread out with electricty shooting from one wall to the next.
Bouncing off the ceiling and falling back on top of your head as you somersault into the atmosphere.

Feel yourself disappear into the shadows of every moment you've lost while the time of your life suddenly materializes right before your eyes.

Play your song.
Play it loud.
This is your night.
This is your life.

Feel your soul move from your heart to your hands as your fists clench tight.
Punch the living daylights out of the sun until you're splattered with a glow that only the moon knows how to  appreciate.

She's only ever shone for you.

Never look down on a man with a dream,
for he is master of his own destiny.
His path in life may seem clandestine,
but he knows what he wants and he knows what he means,
and he's willing to sacrifice everything to make it happen.

If you are who I think you might be,
and if you're actually reading any of these -
if you're not just an offshoot symptom of my paranoid descent into insanity -
then I want you to know
that I've got something to say:
FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU
Go away!

Keeping it together in front of my uncle,
but I'm not though.
I failed.
I'm a wreck.
Look at what you've walked in to.
I don't care though.
I don't care what you do.
The feeling is mutual.

Lately I've been letting the smoke out
before I **** it all in.
The taste of it.
It makes me feel nostalgic
for the days when I didn't used to inhale;
those glory days back in high school
before addiction felt real.

The madness that started in March
is traveling into May.
I didn't even watch a single basketball game.