The poet lives two lives.
One on the outside,
And one in their mind.

When you look in their eyes
You could see an abyss.

If you looked long enough
You could sink into it.

But most people don’t see it.

Take the time to read the words, though,
And you would know for sure.

The poet lives in two different worlds.

Someone asked me to draw
Draw what heartbreak looks like
I finally got tired of drawing a broken heart
And I started drawing you

Have you ever picked a flower
There it stood in the field
Lonely but strong,
alone in a green world
nothing seemed wrong.

When you pull it to you
separate it from the root
It looks so pretty
and smells so sweet
Its beauty no one can dispute

Then the pedals start to sag
Color begans to fade away
It not strong enough alone,
to stand in the cold light of day

You could have had it longer
If you had let it stay,
In the field of clover
Happy and gay

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

Don't even think about getting to me
my walls are up
Don't even think about saying hi
can't hear gossip
I did, what I had to do, you know the reason
and it was you

Don't even think about crying to me
I won't listen, won't listen
Oh I got scars all over my arms
one for each day, you tore me apart
I did, what I had to do, you know the reason
and it was you

Footsteps down the hall, it was you, you
Heaviness in my chest, it was you, it was you

I did, what I had to do, you know the reason
Yeah you know all the reasons oh
And if there's something you'd like to prove
then just let me continue to blame you

Footsteps down the hall, it was you, you
Heaviness in my chest, it was you, you...