It is not my intention to paint
A morose portrait of your passing,
To draw you up as the sad clown.
After all you where are, were,
A comedian and I a poet.

But as a poet I am allowed the artistic
License to express a range of emotion.
A comedian is not because
When funny people stop laughing
The world stops listening.

You took too big bites out of life.
Did you take to much?
When the crowds stopped cheering
Was the reverberation of the silence
Too loud?

Was our laughter ever a kin to
That of the jackels?
Could we have saved you
By lifting you on to our shoulders
Rather than on a pedestal?

The smell of cigarettes reminds
Me of my father, but not
The thick chemical smell
Of most cigarettes, no he
Smokes an all natural brand:
Oxymoron Lights.
Which will still **** you, but
They smell so much better.
I used to hate that habit of
His, but now I know it's
More complicated than the
Addiction they warn about
In health class.

Kindergarten was the first
Time I learned about tobacco,
Properly. The teacher asked:
'Whose parents smoke'.
My tiny hand shot up with
Eagerness, pride even.
She had those of us with
Our hands raised get our
Jackets from their hooks
On the wall. Our classmates
Took turns smelling our coats
To determine whose smelled the
Most of cigarettes. The winner
A small blonde boy who's name
I don't remember, only his
Brown leather  jacket and the
Stench so strong it has stayed
With me fifteen years later.

I know now that my pink
Puffer coats lack of odor
Was a sign of my fathers
Good character and love.
I know now that he is not
Perfect. That he carries a
Life time of pain and regret
Behind his eyes because he
Thinks that I can not see it there.
And that cigarettes are a much
Lesser evil than the demons that
Haunt his past and the he will
Not let them haunt my present.
I know all of this now, but
Back then I just wanted
To smell like him.

I liked that you wore a watch.
Never looked to your phone for the time.
The time, where did the time go?
You kept it on your wrist attached to
The hand that held all the cards and
You took it with you when you left.

love; something everyone wants
but no one knows what it looks like.

#life; something everyone has
but no one knows how to use it.

#sad
  #depression
    #pain
      #death; for when poets get ‘the feels’

      #heartbreak #you #him #her #heart
       Poets who fall in love fast with the
       Same reckless abandon that made
       You climb all the way to the top.
       Those scars used to make you cry
       Now they make you write.

Sitting on the floor of my apartment
Eating peanut butter from the jar with
My fingers, I don’t want to ***** a spoon.
Surrounded by boxes filled with
Belongings that don’t feel like mine.

On my way home, boxes packed into
My mother’s car. I would have driven
Myself but two months prior fate
Pushed my pretty red car off the
Road with a U.S. mail truck. *****.

Unload the boxes in a room that
Looks like a memorial to childhood.
The memory of summers past are
What I cling to now, for the next three
Months feel like someone else’s time.

Look for a job. Look for a car.
Look for signs that he moved on.
Look for an excuse not to and
Go to the beach by myself instead.
Look for a place for storing boxes.

I should unpack. Boxes arrogant
And weighted to compartmentalize
All the expectations I would rather not
Remember and disappointment  
I am tired of looking at.

I sit down to write a poem,
actually write, not type.
Because pencil against paper is
satisfying. It's warm, not cold,
not like keys on a laptop, or worse
a touch screen, that's not touch.
Because I want to feel,
everything, but I haven't yet.
I sit down to write a poem,
I got nothing.

The depression began when my grandmother died.
She died at exactly three am (the same hour
in which I write this poem). Three am has
since become my sort of witching hour, magical.
I remember being ten years old and
rolling over in bed just when my little alarm
clock turned the hour and being told three days
later that she had died at three am that night.
It was like she was saying goodbye.
My grandmother and I shared a bond that
I feel was reflected by tiny moments of
happenstance from the moment I was born.
I was born on July 3rd, her half birthday.
It was also the day she was diagnosed.
I wake up at three am almost every night
now and if I do sleep through the entire night
I feel like I missed something.  

Hers was the first funeral I’d ever been to.
I remember disappearing for a while, in
between the service and the grave site,
when lunch was served, I wasn’t hungry.
My grandma didn’t go to church so I
find it strange that her funeral was held
in such a large one, it was a complex of
chapels and offices I admit I got a little lost.
I found myself in the balcony off the main
chapel, it was lovely with picture windows.
Down at the front there was a priest and
a couple with their baby. The baby was being
baptized, no fuss, no fanfare. Just loveliness.
The baby cried and so did I, for I was wondering
Was it the same God reasonable for both events?

That’s always been my problem to many
big questions needing answering.
I’d go to four more family members funerals
Before I was fourteen and with each one
The sadness grew stronger, I had more
questions and even fewer answers.
That's never really changed but now
I know that I may never get my answers.
I say sadness, but depression has
nothing to do with being sad really.
We all go in and out of sadness
but some of us like to hold it to long.
I know now that it's only my old paint
under the new and I'll keep it that way.
I guess the reason I never went through
with it is because I felt I didn’t have a
good enough reason, how sick is that.
The survivors of really tragedy have every
right to be angry, to be sad, and yet…
That’s one of my questions should I meet God:
How can people you’ve hurt so badly
love you so much?