I quake in the sight of your smile
Flutter apart tracing your seams
The past bares you so beautifully
You’re all I need

We laugh at him,
My friends and I,
In our bubble of teenage invincibility
We laugh at him,
Skinny and ungainly,
In shirts one-half size too big and
Kakis  that were probably $10 at Meijer's.
We laugh at him,
Hair carefully gelled and combed to cover the
Bald spot where too many nights of
Indecision and loss have rubbed it clean.
We laugh, his awkwardness fueling our
Shameful antics,
Shrinking him until he appears no more
Than an irritating fly with
Strangely sad eyes and  
32 years of small-town memories not
Validated,
Never appreciated.
We laugh at his first-time fumbling and confusion,
Not knowing how to handle us,
In our smug overconfidence and
Judgement like one thousand pins,
How to reach beyond our stubbornness
To teach us something worthwhile,
Something beyond the plan.
He sits like an origami bird that was made
Without instructions,
Perched on the corners of old desks,
In storage rooms of old textbooks,
Wrinkled and refolded.
Yet his sad eyes and open vault of memories makes him
Stronger, stranger, than I, we, have ever seen in the
Four walls of our learning.
Favorite books and winged metaphors
Fly
Next to seeds of joy and a father's death,
Twenty-two pieces of musical
Coping
That we laugh at,
That we see as a pitiful attempt at rejoining life,
That we scorn
With our teenage invincibility.
It's alright.
We know the value of less than nothing-
Our judgment means nothing.
His too-big shirts
And lyrical memory will
Exist
To anchor a life
Far after we have left,
Lost,
Wandering.

A weird moment
Where you exist over there,
And I forget before I remember.
But hopefully it will pass,
If I choose your words: It will pass.

In the grass you were hidden
from view, poison you did spit
to others about me, I didn't do
you wrong, but in the long grass
of friends you were obscured
from my view.

But your fangs you had got in
to others, lies were your venom,
untruths spread through the
minds of those you had bitten.
Was it some thing I had done,
but I thought what was it them
not me.

It wasn't just me you were jealous
of, for when the long grass was
cut the whispers bleed from its
roots, showing that you were biting
lies to others not just about me
but all of us.

I woke up drowning in my sheets
Another day to do my job
Slowly starting up the daily routine
I could still feel my head throb

Night shifts are normal shifts
It's the only time that would work
Slowly sifting through the filth
Of the memories they took

I pick out things put in some,
I sometimes put in fakes
Does it really matter?
It's just happiness at stake

My cause is unexplained
No compensation or benefits
My work has no awards
But it keeps everything together
Every night and every day

I am afraid to express myself to the world because of unnecessary judgment.
Afraid to be captured by demons but they're already inhabited inside my mind, body, and soul.
so what am I hiding from?
I'll be judged regardless.
The demons are already here and I'm afraid they know all my deep dark secrets
but shhhh.........
deep down in my spirit I feel as though there is something much more scary than a couple demons and judgment.
I think its those thing called "friends"