I think I lost my ability to write sober and it scares me shitless
Everything I've ever wrote that's worth something has been a product of drugs
Everything that has ever rhymed
and flowed
and ebbed like the sea has been a result of alcohol
I am a cliché
All of my thoughts are the same recycled ones of the media and social influence that are only brought to surface with chemicals in my bloodstream
All of my romanticism and pain and obsessive verses are mediocre when I am not high
I am not as creative as I claim
I am a fraud
I am a fraud.

We skipped the movie.
It rained hard and
We didn't want to
Change out of our

Slouching clothes
(She'd bought me a pair of

PJ pants, as comfortable
As pure
Warm
******).
So,
Full of sushi and
Wine

We reclined in a pile of two
On the sofa.
Flashes of lightning on a

Horizon growing
Darker with
Each roar of its
Brother
Thunder.

Even the gods are
Celebrating us,
She whispered, raising
Glass towards the
Open balcony
Door; then me.

Happy one-month-
Anniversary,
Baby.

A poet, still baffled by the
Straight forward, no-poetic-bull-
****-card she'd written me,

I raised mine back, caught a
Glimpse of a bolt
Splitting the
Sky down the
Middle like a

Sudden
Snapshot of
Some
Celestial open-heart-
Surgery,

Glanced at her
Beautiful hand in my
Not-so-beautiful one, and

Replied, exhausted with
Young infatuation and
Equally

Exhilarated:
I'm so ******* in
Love with you, girl. I
Give up.

I am.
I do.

My daughter called today crying, and said
"I miss you daddy, when are you moving closer?"

Any other day

I would just tell her "I'll be there soon, baby"
but those words seized up in my throat
and refused to pour from my lips

On most days, I would tell her
"Baby, Sometimes you have lay the foundation,
before you can build the house" and her
sleeping on the floor and giving me her bed to sleep in
or giving me the 5 dollars that she had saved from her allowance
isn't a viable option (though a heart like her's makes a father proud)

but today

Today I was three seconds
from melting down, the process
signaled by tears that formed like lava
quiet pools meant to renew, gathering at the corners
of these weathered eyes, and it took all the strength I had
not to curl up in the fetal position and close my eyes
until the world turned black

I held everything inside for a few moments longer
just long enough to let her know
that I love her and to say goodbye
I realized at that moment that I had waged this war far too long
and losing a battle like this was not the end of the world, so today  
I held up a white flag in surrender, and gave in

There's something about crying, it's like hitting the reset button
it buys you a few more days before the next breakdown
before the next time life tries to break you
So I cried in my car, alone....

*because today she needed to see strength
and not the cracks in my armor.

A teachers heart is one of learning.
Of constant modification.
Lending pieces of it at the sound of a child's voice.

What is not seen  
Are the broken parts.
The times when my heart falls out of my chest.

My child, I am sorry
My child, you don't deserve it
My child, here is safe

A heart of protection.
Showing each student their worth
Value more valuable than the words of this poem

Without you my child
My heart
Would simply

collapse

my brain is dousing itself with kerosene, tempting thoughts taking
form of unlit matches,
yet to spark
how do i learn the art of
living under extradited energy of this fire?
the elementals of exhaustion, oh,
how it rests as the black hole in the back
of your head.
it smells like last spring break, you know,
crazed.
i began carving
myself into something other,
you began eating less and
vomiting more.  
i wanted to believe in god,
waking up at 12pm on a sunday to
slug the nearest bottle of red, maybe,
it'll get me closer, maybe,
maybe i'll taste him
i'll become so numb i'll start to believe
i'm living for a purpose,
that theres some drawn-up reason for
my little existence,
opening old wounds or
leaving without closing any doors, any at all,
touching stove tops,
praying to 'anyone' that this is already hell, that this has
gotta be the worse, this can't
get worse,
punching brick walls to break knuckles, only to watch poems fall out,
heaving at the sight of anything and
laughing when remembering everyone leaves, even 'dad,'
shaking hands with the reflection in the mirror, the person you don't want to be, the person you're claiming 'too toxic,'
the person you're afraid to see again