There in a corner is a messed up kid
But no one knows
They never speak or rise their hand
You will never hear a word
They keep to the shadows
So no one sees them
However
They see you
They hear you
They notice everything
But they will never step forward
As they are frighted of what
Might happen if they step
In others way

Pour out your heart and soul,
and others read and say… so?
That's the way it goes,
when one is a writer.
Agonize over just the right word
and others read right over it.
It's absurd, the life of a writer.
Why do we do it? They ask.
We answer, Why do we breathe?
Oh, to be a writer.

CR Binion

you sent me a love letter, a message in a bottle
but when i cracked it open i cut up my hands.
i guess i’m the same way;
i wrote you a love song
but i forgot i didn’t know how to sing,
so i yelled the words at your window like
i was flinging pebbles and you told me to put down
my boombox because i was going to wake up
the whole **** neighborhood
with my teenage angst,
my painfully naive i love you-s.
i think my heart is too loud for suburb lawns
and white picket fences.
and i guess that’s the trouble with us;
we were always
controlled chaos, a dormant volcano
and all the kids counted down to the eruption
like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop  
and numbered their calendars for a date
that should’ve been on a unmarked grave.
and we’ve just got short fuses,
kisses and bruises
because when someone is the pin to your grenade
when someone is the oil spill to your wildfire
you’ve always got to be wary of explosions.
and we were always going to ***** each other over,
we were always going to
burn too bright, burn out too fast.
because i was just a pretty girl in a sundress,
and this is just a memory you’ve been trying to repress
hand clenched in the fabric of us,
so determined to not let the inevitable happen on schedule.  
and i love you so i’ll ruin you, it’s inevitable
and i love you so you’ll leave, it’s inevitable
and i love you so it’s not going to work out like i want it to.
it’s just... inevitable.
there’s no avoiding it the future unless
you take your own away.
sometimes i have to remind myself five times a day
that destruction, that implosion,
that falling apart isn’t as poetic as i think it is.
and now, i’m biting my tongue to keep from saying
baby, bring home the wreckage
maybe there’s still something there for us to salvage
and if we're a sinking ship, i'll go down with you
and if we’re doomed, i’ll be ****** with you.
because i’m still thinking there’s an off chance,
because i’m still thinking that maybe if you still...
i’m still thinking that all this time
i was just wishing on the wrong star and there’s still a chance,
there’s still wishes to waste
and coins to throw in the fountain
and eyelashes to count on.
but you know somebody once told me
that the stars aren’t really there, we’re just seeing
footprints of where they used to be.
we’re always looking a galactic graveyard, a sky littered
with the star-studded remains of supernovas.  
always thought you were more of a black hole than a star,
but maybe there’s some truth to every cliche;
i see everywhere you used to be clearly,
i can see your presence in every absence.
because i miss you terribly
and i know i’m not supposed to.
but i still wonder what you’re thinking about sometimes.
i still wonder about the stars
you’re looking at sometimes.
i still wonder if we see
the same constellations
anymore.

my church doesn’t take attendance.
my church just wants to know what color you see the world in.
my church won’t fight your battles for you
but it’ll patch up your knuckles, it’ll cheer you on
from the empty bleachers.
my church is full of repentant pickpockets
and former ****-ups and kids with crooked teeth.
my church coughs up the word religion,
my church doesn’t believe in anything bigger
than its own two hands.
my church has never needed to.  
my church ain’t trying to fix you but
it hands out bandaids and lollipops for free.
my church doesn’t ask questions, it just holds hands.    
my church doesn’t exist until it’s 4 AM and you’re all alone,
coming out of your skin.
my church doesn’t believe in sinners or saints, just people.
my church doesn’t focus on the after-life, just the one we’re in.
my church doesn’t have pews,
my church has hiking boots and ***** feet.
my church doesn’t want your worship, just your love.
my church dances barefoot.
my church writes songs about you.
my church is open 24 hours but it ain’t a liquor store.
my church is the radio, my church is every song you’ve yet to know.
my church listens to heavy metal and bubblegum pop
and always sings the wrong words.
my church is anxious, my church is tapping toes,
my church hates public speaking but loves to be heard.
my church is the first day of spring after a winter so long that
you didn’t think you’d find your way out of it.
my church is crying on your best friend’s shoulder.
my church is reruns of the shows you grew up on.
my church is your mother kissing you on your forehead.
my church is dr. seuss is snuggling up
between shakespeare and j.k. rowling all on your bookshelf.
my church is poetry, my church is finger paints.
my church is i’m sorry and my church is i forgive you.
my church is in love with you.
it always has been.
my church can't jump high enough for a leap of faith.
my church is the last kid picked in gym class,
my church breeds underdogs like they're laboradoodle mixes.
my church has overgrown front lawn full of dandelions.
my church has neighbors who talk **** on it.
my church doesn’t always finish its homework on time
but it finishes every story they’ve start telling.
my church doesn’t give a **** about your GPA,
but my church wants you to learn everything you can.
my church wants you to always ask why.
my church is late with the rent check this month
because it bought tickets to a show,
my church regrets absolutely nothing.
my church is still figuring it out, too.
my church is falling apart,
and sometimes the congregation watches
and sometimes they pick up the pieces, keeps ‘em in their pockets.  
my church is home to anyone would believes in
friday night and sunday morning with the same intensity,
my church has its doors open to
atheists and holy men and godly women and those who just don’t know.
my church is home to the non-believers,
my church doesn’t like to tell them they’re wrong.
my church calls them baby
and says that we don’t believe in much here either.
my church doesn’t care who the *******’ve been praying to,
my church doesn’t care if you never have.
my church is honest, my church is choking.
my church is broken, but it
believes in you.

like everything else,
you never see the collision
until you’re already crashing;
all the coins in your cup holders raining down
to be suspended like copper stars,
our hair floating around us like we’re underwater;
we are drowning in mid-air, we are just a car upside down,
headlong towards the water
rushing to a date with destiny we had wanted to cancel.
we are just an airplane shot out of the sunset,
blazing down like a comet.
and if you have only seconds left,  
have you lived a life you’re proud of?
would you change your regrets?
who are you thinking of as it all goes dark?  
who would you call to tell that you love them
two minutes from the carcass of a plane crash?
why don’t you call them now?
but see the thing is, most people don’t start living
until they’re afraid of dying.
we are creatures of comfort and comfort is in habit,
and until the car crashes
until the plane falls from the sky
until the bank is held up
until death’s staring us down,
just trying to see who blinks first,
most of us aren’t going change anything.  
we all know that the sun is going to expand
and swallow us whole,
but we won’t care until it’s singeing our eyebrows.
we like to talk about death
as if it’s not inevitable,
and we like to ignore the last page
until we’re on it.    
we are all the in between, we are all in transit,
we’re all nomads and lonely hearts and wanderers.
we’re all bandits, we’re all thieves in the night
illuminated by our emergency flashlights.
we’re all stars destined to be either
black holes or supernovas, imploding or exploding.
so maybe we’re all destined for destruction,
but i don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
not to me
because it’s all about the drive not the destination,
it’s all about the story not the ending.
and i don’t know if i believe in any god,
if i think he’d be the clockmaker or the caretaker,
and i don’t know if destiny damns us
or if we ***** our own selves over.
perhaps life, perhaps the end is predetermined
and we’re all stuck in our circuits,
we’re all mice in our own mazes.
but there’s something to be said for the middle, isn’t there?
the story doesn’t stop meaning anything
just because you know the ending.
and perhaps each of us is the director of our own existence,
and perhaps we are the chorus member of somebody else’s
and perhaps we’re just caught up in the details of it all.
what i’m trying say is,
we’re all a little ******* up
and we’re all a little messier than we let on
and we’re all just trying to figure it out.
because i have at least two existential crises a weekend,
i’m just trying to beat the world to the punch
i’m just trying to unravel the universe
before it unravels me.
i’m trying to unravel the universe with
my tongue like a cherry stem.
the hand we are dealt is not a choice
but the way we play it is
and i don’t know much about fate
but if you’d tell me, i’d being willing to listen.
i think too much about the past,  
and i can’t tell you about the future,
but on the off chance the fault is in ourselves
and not our stars, i just want you to know i love you.
if i don’t say it i’ll have no one
to blame but myself.

question is and always will be:
am i dead when my heart stops beating
or am i dead when everybody forgets about me?
do i matter because people tell me i do,
or do i matter because i say i do?
i think therefore i am, i over-think therefore i wish i wasn’t.
because existence is a tricky thing;
you don’t want to die but you’re too scared live.
and maybe it’s futile, and maybe it’s pointless
maybe i am struggling with
my gifts and curses, poems and verses,
looking for a meaning that just isn’t there.
and maybe it’s ironic,
how we waste our lives wanting to die
but just because you have
doesn’t mean you don’t ache for what you haven’t
and sometimes being grateful is hard
when you’re supposed to
and you know, this world, it’s rough all over
and everybody gets cut up at little.
nobody wants to grow old but nobody wants to die young.
i want to make a mark, but i know it’ll be forgotten.
and i don’t want my marks to be blemishes
and i don’t want my marks to be scars
and i don’t want my marks to be footprints on the beach
and maybe there’s no meaning,
and maybe there doesn’t need to be.
all i know is that most people don’t think that
the vastness of the universe is something
to tell bedtime stories to,
but i’d tuck myself in with the stars even after
they reminded me again how small i am in comparison.
so either i’m too stubborn or too smart to talk to god,
paint me anyway it fits
paint me any way the lighting hits
i am open for interpretation.
because you’re semi sweet and i’m completely bitter
you’ve got an altar i don’t know how to worship,
you’ve got faith in all kinds of things.
and i’m cynical, i’m altered,  
i’m ****** up in the best and worst ways.
i write poems just to keep my hands busy,
i write poems just to keep myself from writing eulogies.
and i know, what a ******’ contradiction
the dreamer who doesn’t believe in anything.
i am the only one inside my head,
so would it be classified as a tragedy
if my dreams bled out with me?
nobody knows me like i know myself
and if i die then a library full of words crammed
inside dies with me, and dying young
is only a shame if you had something to live for.
maybe i am the end and beginning of my own legacy.
i don’t know about our ghosts and past lives
lurking behind our eyes, i don’t know
if you’ve got somebody else’s smirk on your lips
or if i’m loving you out of a second-hand heart.
but i think, but i like to think
that while my bones may be borrowed,
matter not destroyed or created
just redecorated, that my soul’s not recycled.
but i’m not looking for a dictionary definition
sometimes we’ve got to stop and cut the ignition
before we crash like waves,
i’d rather going somewhere slow than going nowhere fast.
and it’s not like i’m a visionary,
it’s not like i’m even really much of a poet;
i’m just a ******* kid with a thesaurus
and too **** much to say.
and i’m trying to tell you a lot of things,
but i don’t know how to phrase anything.
so maybe we’re old souls
and maybe we’re brand new,
maybe i’m borrowed and maybe you’re blue.
and maybe it’s all random and maybe it’s all planned out,
and maybe fate is for suckers
and dreamers drowning naïvety
and maybe fate is all we have.
maybe we’re looking at the world through
totally different lenses
but maybe somehow we’re seeing
the same things.

You aren't going to **** yourself tonight because, in one of the

spun sugar fragile sequences of the events in your life, it works

out. There is a place, somewhere amidst star stuff and cosmic

collisions, where you are not the problem daughter or the

biggest disappointment or the most regretted kiss. There is a

place where you sink into a desk in your eight a.m. class and

a boy with bags under his eyes and a hole-y sweater pulled

over his knuckles says, "hi." There is a place where your father

comes back from the war with sand grit in his eyes, blood

under his fingernails and lets you save him.  There is a place

where you live in India, where you aren't afraid to love, where

everything hurts less, where you stopped punishing yourself for

the faults of your parents. You are a girl. Not a dart board or a guilty

verdict or the final, desperate ****** of a sword through

someone's chest. You are made of the same stuff as Marie

Antoinette and Catherine the Great and Elizabeth, and you

can command the winds too. You aren't going to **** yourself

tonight because no one ever asked you about the scars on your

thighs but that doesn't make them nonexistent or unimportant.

You aren't going to **** yourself tonight because you've grown:

stronger in some ways and weaker in others, but you are still

a result of rhapsodies in violet and trees bowed to the sea

and soldiers with wind burn on their cheeks. Tonight, you are

going to wrap your own arms around your own chest and

breathe, swaying silently to no music. You are going to

memorize the sound of silence, and you are going to listen hard

for the even, jagged, pitter patter of your heart. You are going

to thank your body for waging war against itself, you are going

to apologize to your head for bruising your heart. You are going

to feel the roughness of the floor and the vastness of the entire

world and all of the eventualities spread before you. You are

going to remember that this is only one, that atoms and

molecules are flighty, whimsical, prone to selfishness and

longing for the promise of stability. You are going to press your

lips to your own wrists and know, as surely as Anne Boleyn

knew when she walked to the guillotine, that no one can save

you but yourself. You aren't going to **** yourself tonight

because you are not an accident of the multiverse. You are

purposeful and beautiful and young and reckless with your

feelings, but you are not a mistake. Listen to the trembling

of your heartbeat and breathe. You aren't going to **** yourself

tonight.

you will write yourself empty
with talk of sieve hands and sifting hearts
and you will write yourself selfish
before anyone teaches you the definition of the word.

poetry is as good a punching bag as anything else
and you don't have to be lonely to come back here
but it's been months and I haven't been able to write anything worth reading that didn't begin with, "I."

here is my hand-me down hymn,
my rebel yell my soft and quiet
my church floor my vaulted ceilings
my elegy my aubade my fear--

I send quarter notes stumbling
when I'm not careful.

there have been poems I wish I could write:
my mom's hands like cracked mosaics,
my unforgiving, weak winter skin,
my sister's sharp wolf heart
my dad's icicle fingers melting
an entire four seasons spent
searching for words under rocks
the teeth of my fear shredding
the meat of this poem.

it has been a year,
and I don't worry anymore.

the quiet, craggy shape of my fear
will stretch itself out in the sun
when it's time.

until then,

tell them I'm home
tell the commas to come in
tell the exclamation points to vacate their tree
tell the question marks that now isn't the time for questioning--

tell the words I'm home.

Swing swing
Kick a pebble into the distance
My sneaker leaving tracks in the dirt
Beneath me
The shadow of the tree
caresses my cheek
And I feel free

On the upswings I am happy
On the down I am "okay"
If I am pushed I may fall
If I am pushed I may soar
I close my eyes
Recline my mind
Inhale and realize what life
is truly for.