I prefer to wear my heart on my collar just so you see it skip a beat each time you peck my cheeks

I wish I could connect my veins to your brain and my arteries to your fingertips so we know what we feel for each other

Sometimes it seems like we’re still trapped in an hour glass, must have been the closest thing we did to spending eternity together.

You let me cover every inch of you with finger paintings, just to show me it can be fun watching paint dry.

I like that you’re sweet in a weird kind of way, like ice cream in winter.

Sometimes I etch your name on the branches of winter trees, hoping I would hear it in the wind from summers leaves.

I like the way your hair sleeps on your shoulders, like your ears have been reciting bed time stories.

We’re like shoe laces in key holes, odd but a perfect fit.

Now and again I try to steal a little bit of cloud, I know how you get each time I get to nine.

But for now all I can do is jumble alphabets till I find a combination worthy of you.

It’s a constant battle between gold and stone in my chest.

One likes to hold a sword to the dark with the whole city at his back.

The other makes warning bells of paper mâché .

Where I come from we’re mostly dare devils.

We cook food on open flames next to a gas tank and race on bridges with no rails. Only one of those is real.

My mind sometimes seems like a doll house made of old computer processors. Attempt 79.

Most days I try to keep my lips zipped shut but my eyes are like a see through body bag.

On other days music tends to be good enough superglue for broken masks.

I remember the first time time froze and my heart tried to handwrite on the ice.

I tried to draw her attention with the broken lead pencils I have for lips but I’ve never been a fine artist.

We haven’t spoken in a while, I guess making new friends is easy but keeping old ones is hard. 
There’s overgrowth on the road less travelled and it’s hard to find.

And when I feel down for following the crowd, I use poetry as a pendulum to help my mood swing.

If I could I would write letters to the wind and ask for lessons on how to blow you away

If I could I would take a star out of the sky and put it in a ring and ask you to be it’s replacement in my life

If I could I would keep you between my second and my fourth rib, so they will tell you they’ve missed you.

The first time I saw you, I smiled with my mouth open to let go of the crickets I buried in my voice box so I could say hello

How else can I explain to you that our stories are God written guitar solos to the keys of our DNA, and I’m more electric and you’re more acoustic.

On some days you look like there are lingering pieces of a boombox etched in the framework of your spine. In simple terms your body speaks volumes.

On other days you feel like there are too many fault lines on the rail track of your spine

Those are the days I want to tell you I’m a pretty good conductor

Your voice sounds like an unfinished love song stuck in the throat of an ’80s jazz musician and I’m more of a hip-hop kind of guy, but I would make kissing you the perfect symphony.

I’m more like the odd boulder on a sandy beach and you're the entire ocean but I've drawn coastlines on the chambers of my heart

With you I could build sand castles in hourglasses, cos I wouldn’t feel time pass.

If I could I would write this poem on the wings of a butterfly and say to you “Here I think this belongs to you, I found it in my belly”

1) I wish people called me Mike Hart, I think it’s a really cool name. I wish I were a year younger and a foot taller. I wish I spoke less and listened more.

2) I’m a love child between science and art but I was raised under the rain in a house made of silver linings. Behind a red door, with gold hearted kids peeking through windows at a world full of endless possibilities.

3) I don’t share a lot about myself. I have dreams my pillows don’t know about and skeletons my closet hasn’t seen. I tend to hide things in the space between the ink and the page where no one can find them.

4) I don’t connect with a lot of girls, but when I do, I tie my shoelaces to their heart strings to stop myself from falling for anyone else. All I have left are scars on my chest from all the times cupid has missed and a few ****** shoelaces.

5) I have a photographic memory but the pictures tend to come out more picasso than canon. I tend to overcomplicate things, I describe hair as the perfect shade of sunset or the sun as that perfect shade of blonde. And I’m called a poet for this.

6) I’m familiar with broken promises and broken people, sometimes I’m doing the breaking. It took me a while to realise that being a man wasn’t about how strong you were to break things but how strong you were to fix them.

7) I love Ice cream in winter, it makes my body shake and reminds me I’m a bit like an earthquake. My laugh has always been a bit too loud but I always believed my life will grow into it.

8) I have holes in my sleeves from where my heart used to be. I locked it up in my rib cage and swallowed the skeleton key. I guess I took it too literal when they said the way to a mans heart is through his stomach.

9) Honestly, I don’t know a lot about myself, but I do know that sometimes my mind is like a paper mâché prison and it’s hard to control the thoughts that get out. Most days I try to keep my lips zipped shut but my eyes are like a see through body bag. On other days music tends to be good enough superglue for broken masks.

10) Hi, I’m Dagogo Hart and I’m Human.

My mother, is my reference to everything that is beautiful in every single way. She has a smile that powers butterfly wings and heartbeats.

My mother, carried a sunset belly for nine months pregnant with stars, because she understands that stars are just far away sons. And God has used her as a garden to grow supernovas.

My mother, has helium balloon pair of arms that always tend to lift me up when I fall. With leather belt extensions to hit some sense into me when I’m wrong

My mother, taught me that the journey is great, but the destination is legendary. That God comes first and everything else next, so I put my best foot forward and look towards heavens gates.

Real life superwoman, my mother has a cape made of hope and silver, constantly flying into dark clouds so we have silver linings to hold on to.

My mother, made sure that in a black and white world that is more tiger than zebra, we saw things through shades of grey. That nobody is just bad or just good, and once in a while devils can be good samaritans.

So give everyone a chance, with pennies for their thoughts and just maybe they’ll have two to rub together.

So I promise you this mother. That I would love God and love you.

And if I’m lucky enough to find a woman half as amazing, God willing, I will call her wife.

I promise to be the man that you raised me to be, with titanium spine, a gold heart and glass eyes to see past what this world has to offer.

I promise to stop making eggshell promises that break too easily.

My mother, is a vast blue ocean, with a shoreline full of the whole world, watching her son rise.

Maybe it's my fault.

Maybe when God asked me, I should have said boy.

Maybe I should have said white.

I wonder if that would have made a difference.

Our bellies are beginning to forget what laughter feels like but our eyes would always remember your faces.

You the reasons we chose girl.

You the reasons we chose black.

Are you coming to get us?

Or are you waiting for them to bring us back?

I have this bag, full of the all the things I would do if I ever return home, and forgiving you is one of them.