I drove my fist through the facade,
I had to do it or I'd fade,
I longed for my own face.

Staring back from the mirror,
That is me, no? Tis a ghost,
One putrid man I used to know.

He loved the music,
And refused to face it.
So I sang him a lullaby,
As the glass around him,

Shattered.

Please don't shut the door,
To your warmth.

I remembered,
And kept it open.
I keep it open.

You were two people,
When you wanted to be one.
Maybe you were taken by hellish thoughts,
But I did love you,
And I hope you're okay.

As far as I see,
There is only one path in front of me.
One road to wonder,
No U-turns allowed.

I torn apart what you wrote,
In that notebook.
All the reasons I was good for you,
Now I don't regret it at all.

I like it chilly.
Little licks of wind make me think,
With more clarity.

Maybe things are a little bit,
In order

To be collected,
You have to start out a little bit,
Crazy,

May God bless the poets,
And our slice of paradise.
I think it goes to show just how far we go,
That no AI crawler will take our place,
Bill collectors to disgrace!

When
You plant
Flowers you forget
Someday you'll have to
Let them go away from
You because they need space to
Bloom

You
Didn't mean
To choke them
But you're so tired
Of things, people leaving over
Over again you wanted them to
Stay

Stay beautiful
(with you)

You can't
you can't have
you can't need
                                       I do
                                       I miss it
You shouldn't
Shouldn't
Can't
                                       Shouldn't
                                       Shouldn't you want it back?
No
No focus
No, focus on something else
                                                           I'm hurting
                                                           I listened to you
                                                           Now I'm hunting
Stop
Stop you're
You're a
You're a bad person for it
                                                             Why?
                                                          I'm,
                                                        Trying,
                                                       To,
                                                      Focus,
                                                     On,
                                                    Other,
                                                   Things,
                                                   Like,
                                                    I,
                                                     Promised,
                                                       You,
                                                         But I want that feeling back or I'll
Freeze.
Let it happen.

You have a funny way,
Of coming back to bite me.
When I'm lost and cold,
I remember how our love was bold.
I remember how you held me,
And I never wanted to be held by anyone else.
There was a time before the dark,
Before the light.
There was a time when nothing mattered,
Except for you,
Accept, for you.
Will we ever have time again,
To love? Not us.
Maybe you will,
Maybe I too.
I can know anybody,
Except you, again.

She shed a tear into the barren earth.
I watched it sprout, snow white.
Blinding,
She saw it,
Stopped crying.
Now there's a white flower,
In the dry cracked earth.
Cry your heart out,
It'll be better soon.

The pretty winds are here,
Chilly breezes are greeting me.
I have tried changing,
But the map is torched too.

We lit a fire on the beach,
And burned what twigs the lake would give.
The embers were warm on our skin,
Mother nature nurtures her children,
Just as any good mother gives.

The fire is burning it all up,
Somehow,
I feel it swallow me.

Visions of warmth,
Are all I really see,
When I swim deep
down in the cold
dark sea. Do you
ever see me looking?

Mama, am I pretty enough to get people interested in me?

You don't know it,
(I hope) But you
really got me on
the hook. Have you
ever seen yourself
sparkling? I have.

They're so young and beautiful. . .

Drifting like the dead
I am. Lost in a dream
where I'm the one you
fall into. They say it's
not real, they tell me to
change the way I feel,

But I feel for you.

We are rock,
Broken down by forces,
Uncontrollable.
Destined to be reshaped,
Rebuilt in a way that's,
Undeniable.
When we rise from the sculptor's dust,
We will find we've achieved the,
Unbelievable.

We are lost.
Save the students,
They are our last hope.

How can we be so blind,
To see our empires,
Falling to the
Ground.

To see
Our peoples,
Oppressed and
Beaten down. How!
I demand to know why,

We have become Godless.

If there's a comet,
And if we all were to die,
I'd welcome it with,

Open arms,
If you do too.

Romeo, 2025.

The pianist stands his ground,
As he stares into the crowd.

A volume is all he'll ever be,
His music is his memory.

So he plays life,
In forte.

I can't breathe
My heart is beating
I didn't think I'd see it.

For certain I was dead and gone.
It takes a dream, a spark,
A flare of life.

Only the smallest speck of candle light,
Is what you'll need to make it through,
The spirit of life, is built anew.

Do you ever watch the stars drift by?
In the dark of night,
Little lights flying though.
Do you ever wonder what's out there?
Do you ever want something,
New?
I know you love him,
But he's no good for you.
I think I can fix it,
If you come close,
And drift into the night with me.

What does the rose mean to me?
It means truth,
within dark and bleak.
It means freedom,
From chains and pride.

Each thorn is a lesson,
Took straight to heart.
Each petal is a lover,
Far too far.

When a seed sprouts in the perished soil,
Still rising to become beautiful,
It's a rose.
When an idea survives the tear of war,
Blossoming into fruition,
It's a rose.
When it all closes in,
Yet you make it out,
It's strength.

The rose is an effigy,
Our visions burn it bright.

We were once as the breeze is,
Floating fluently,
Unnoticeably,
Above the heads of others.
To our merit,
We may have caused worry,
In the eyes of the lily jumpers.
They didn't want us to turn to wind,
Blowing away what they had.
     Though time does tick,
     And to their credit,
     Maybe the worry was credible.
     It'll be a little harder not to notice we,
     As we've grown a little stronger,
     Than the breeze.

Have all the sunny days gone away?
The smile of a warm morning,
Appears to be lost.
Where are the lovely people?
Lost in their dreams,
Staring up into the clouds,
As the afternoon grows long.
I miss the town square,
Full of life.
Bring it back,
The warm days we had.
If only I wished on that flower,
When I had a chance.

I tend to think of all my love,
When a rock ballad plays.
First I think of you,
Six months for Sixpence,
Maybe we weren't ready for each other,
Maybe we weren't supposed to meet.
Then I think of her,
How there isn't a star left that's as stunning,
As you were to me.
I'm so sorry,
That I was never ready,
Never was I trying to be a heartbreaker;

I'm just a growing boy.

In the courtyard there's an apple tree,
You can see it's branches sway in the breeze.
I sit on the stoop,
Watching,
As summer strokes those branches.
They say an apple falls right in it's place,
I can see that's not the case,
One lone apple blows over to me.

Everything comes full circle,
At least eventually.
Two years lonely,
One year loved.
It'll come full circle,
When I'm back in 'someone's' arms.

Gift your heart,
Far less than you gift another.
It takes a winter snow,
To appreciate spring colors.
When you eat,
Eat only the freshest foods.
The just picked pears,
With nectar ever purest.
If you cry,
Do not wipe your tears,
Wander outside towards daylight.

Life will stop your struggle,
Yet it takes time.
Be ready for it to pick you,
Love only as far as you'd like.

Speak softly my love,
For my mind aches and grinds,
If you listen close you'll hear my gears whine.

I am tired of thinking for my own,
I'd rather just believe.

Watch as I fall to my knees,
Dripping my blood into the fountain,
I pushed so far,
To fall back again.

These ideas are tiring,
So I'll believe yours.
It's too hard to make people understand,
When I am the one thinker in a barren land.
How is it that the one idea you preach,
Is right against all odds.

Cette école est silencieuse.
Dans le vent pourri,
Vide dans la lumière.

La Chambre D'écho,
Mensonges intacts.
Une idée pour les jeunes têtes,
Prendre notre belle vie.

Sur les pierres se trouvent les étudiants,
Têtes basses vers le père,
Alors qu'il prononce son dernier sermon,

Une vérité pour les gouverner tous
Mille pécheurs pour prendre la chu

Some summer flowers have yet to die,
Such a miracle to innocent eyes.
Though my scarred flesh cares to wonder,
What sort of life they had.

T'was it an empty one?
With no true purpose at all,
Except catching a young girl's eye,
And coming home to live in her ***.

Someday these flowers will be nothing but hanging carcasses,
A looming reminder that time will pass.
When they do finally fade,
The first tear of winter may be shed.

If you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness
into peace
if you had let me rest with the dead
I had forgot you
and the past.


If you had let me rest,
Bedded with the bones of dread,
I had outlived the both of us,
And forsaken what you'd taken.
If you had let me be,
Without falling to your knees you see,
I may have been able to make it out,
For instead you unearthed me just to kiss my lips again.

Had we never met,
At the crossroads between heaven and hell,
With our maps all folded,
Our hearts too lost.
Had I never seen your face in the rain,
There was a chance for me.
Yet now my grave is open,
I am forced to live again,
There was a time I begged to live,
Now it's time I begged to die.

Dear Mr Hardison,

        This is a formal request for you to stop writing vague pain poetry about an event that happened months ago with a person who doesn’t even think twice about you anymore.
The readers are sick of hearing about it, and the new ones have no idea what you’re talking about nor do they have the energy to read all the long, long backstory. I understand you still resent it and you’re so stuck on it but it’s dragging your writing down and the press with it. This your final warning, if I see you write one more poem about finally breaking through to your freedom followed up by an immediate relapse you’re toast. She doesn’t care about you anymore so why do you, for the love of God focus on the one thing you’ve got going for you.

                              Sincerely, Poets United Press.

Re: Get Off Your Lonesome A…

Dear PUP
      
       I’m trying my best, |

Kentucky cookie cutters are the best,
For cutting pieces out of your head.
Memories and distant pleas,
Erase with ease,
When you chop em out,
Using a Kentucky Cookie Cutter Thing.

A night sky is a piece of black paper,
With little holes drawn in chalk.
Rested by a soft, white, light,
Warmed by a nearby lantern.
If we were to leave the cold earth now,
And fly up, so high,
We would feel the warmth too.
I'd bet there's an empty star, somewhere far,
Sparkling against the inky sky.
If we're kind and treat it right,
That star will keep us safe,
If not for forever, than tonight.

We go where the wild things are,
When life is too slow to stand.
There’s a place just on the brink,
Of reality and dream,
Where we go to dance.
There’s a place on earth for all of us,
So never let your colors weather.
We’ll all be here soon,
Where the wild things are!

The shucks of it is,                                                  The shucks of it is,
You don't control me anymore,                            If you didn't want,
You don't dictate my actions.                               People to hear the,
So if I go to a friend,                                               Way you *******,
To vent,                                                                    Me up than you,
You don't get to call it bad mouthing.                 Should've thought,
The shucks of it is,                                                  Shuck through,
I'm not telling tales,                                                I'm sorry but the,
Just the truth.                                                           Truth is truth and,
I am my own man,                                                  It won't be silenced,
And you have a new man,                                    Maybe your new,
So get out of here.                                                  Boy will fall for it,
MY poetry is my outlet,                                        But you've broken,
So if I write about what you did,                        Me so much already,
You don't get to tell me to stop.                           I won't change more.

                                 When education is not liberating
                                     The dream of the oppressed
                                      Is to become the oppressor

Unfortunately I am liberated and born anew so your threats aren't going to throw me askew I won't say I would change how things have been between us because there was good and we had fun but I think it'd be better if you stopped saying you can be there for me if I deleted my Hotmail account if you stopped emailing me because you don't want drama if I stopped responding because I want to but I don't know why I don't stop if you just focused on your new relationship instead of giving a shuck about me if I just let go of my grudges instead of being so mad at you for hurting me so much,

If the world was simple
                                                                                       If we lived in truth
If things were black and white

      If everyone knew where they were meant to be from the start

If I never wanted love                                        If I never deserved love

I am now a natural gem,
A mix of murk and clear,
Different colors or shades.

I am now a healed piece of earth,
A patch of glow over the ashes of disease,
Diverse as I breathe in fresh air.

It's always August 31st,
In the last week of August,
It's always August,
That makes beautiful things.

It's always the first fading trees,
In the forests around this house,
It's always the thought of coming fall,
That makes us forget winter's creeping jaws.

It's always the first winds of fall's fading,
In the empty chapels and lonesome evergreens,
It's always the feeling of ignorant cold,
That makes people run to what's not meant to be.

It's always spring's first flirting's,
In the midst of things you thought you wanted,
It's always those who love you,
That show you how better things will be.

Rocking in the empty space,
Between loneliness and overwhelming love,
Is where you'll find me now.
Looking up in the night skies,
Thinking about the stories I was told,
And told.
Life is what you make it,
So I'd like to make it this.
Running after storms,
Holding fast to the ground.
Coming home with dirt stained shoes,
Hoping someday I'll come home to you.

Somebody said the sun would come up,
It stuck with me,
When I was stuck up.

I wanted to be somebody people could love,
But I was too boisterous to contain,
Too wild to settle.

When I asked for help I was told,
First you need to help,
If you're going to help yourself.

Karma kills to knock you down,
Unless you learn that life is more than your success,
Life is the blooming flowers of our people,

The pulse of our community.

Someday the clouds will break

Smoke in the sunset
Something like a blinding haze

Surely it means nothing to me
Sinking slowly to my soul
Steeping in the rough cut end of things

Reaching for Gloria.

I learned from the water,
You need to rock the boat,
To survive.

In order to keep in balance,
You must move against the waves,
To keep from going down.

When you reach the island shore,
Lay on the sand,
Staring at the blue backed sea,

Knowing you made it through.

I throw my fist up in the air,
When I'm challenged by the tendrils of time,
Just to show I am not going down.

When I was in sixth grade my crowd of friends was bigger than I could count,
When I moved up to seventh,
I could fill a city with them.
Now that I’m going into tenth,
It seems I have very little left.
Now’s the time to choose who I run with for the next decade,
And stick with it.

What is it?
The reward for climbing,
For breaking pieces of me off,
For giving everything.

It’s not the kind of love I’ve been through,
Because all it did was knock me lower.
I don’t go for the love I want anymore,
Not because it’s not there,
I don’t think I’m deserving of people like them.

Nor is it golden chains and watches,
I’m through with suits and such.
What good is money,
When I’m looking to make it big and broke?

It can’t be the journey either,
Or rather, those certain things that came,
That changed me.
Maybe it’s the people who made it out of the rungs,
The people with whom we run.

If I could pick a prize for life,
It would be standing in the shallow waters,
Staring at the shore,
After fighting through the deeps.

Life is a series of circles,
That's why we don't like it as much.
Because it's only back and forth,
Around the course.
It's getting better for a while,
Then going back to where we were.
We can't accept who we are,
It doesn't work like that.
There's too much piled on,
That makes us want to rot.
It's something better,
Then the same.
I only like one loop,
It's the flashy earing,
On the girl I want so bad,
Sometimes.
Because she's exactly what I have in my head,
Though I understand I could never have her hand.
I was made to fight in this broken place,
She was made for better things.

When I was younger,
I'd change the station,
At the first sign of an Olivia Rodrigo song.

When I was younger,
I never knew the toll someone could take on you,
The way they could change you,
In a way nobody seems to understand.

Now that I'm here,
Listening to every single Olivia song,
I understand the things a person taken by love will do.
Now that I'm here,
I know what it's like to wreck your life,
For the hope you'll get something back.

At times I still want to take it back,
Fold into your arms,
Defeated, but loved.
At times I hate myself,
For latching onto your memory.
That I let you hog a part of me,
Can you please go away?

In the end I won our game,
Of who loves who more.

One of us still thinks about the other,
How leaving might've been the biggest mistake he'll ever make,
But taking it all back when he remembers all the ways you cut him down.
Even that brownie recipe,
You'd do anything to keep me attached to you.
Anything to keep me with you,
Even if it was twisted,
It was nice to need each other.

Though that won't ever happen again,
Now that the other has another.
It's eating me from inside out,
You saying you were here for me,
If I needed anything.
Turning right around,
All you wanted to talk about was how much better he is for you.

In the end I should've known,
On my ankle your sprout still grows,
Some sick parasite,
Digging into me,
This flower twisting up my leg,
One lasting memory of you,
Wants me to be,
The new black tulip.

Today I am broken,
But I am still the person I came as.
I am still strong and I still have strength left to give,
I know you liked to see me crumbling apart,
Left in ruins while trying to find my beating heart.
At least it’s how I felt,
Today is a better day than any to grow a little more.
To repair and replace,
As I rebuild the castle inside of me.

I’ve learned to listen when my mother talks,
I’ve become so used to thriving off of hastily done love.
Patience is so hard to use,
But that’s why they call it virtue,
I could crawl back into the arms of another someone.
Or I could start to let go,
Of these hopeless pleads for romance.
Truthfully I don’t need anyone but me,
To know I’m worth it,
To know I’ve made it.


Rest, you’ve come so far.


I’ve learned to listen when my mother talks,
That if I keep chasing the broken,
And expecting full light,
I’m not right.
That you can love somebody,
That isn’t good for you,
And still keep them in your heart,
Hope that they grow beyond what keeps them down.


Mama said no broken girls


I’m sorry that I didn’t stick around,
Sometimes I wonder what would happen,
If we tried to stick it out.
Next Fourth of July,
I don’t think I’ll go to see the fireworks.
Instead I’ll stay a little longer at the family BBQ,
Get to know my family a little better than I have.
Because in this world we don’t get to choose blood,
But we do get to choose who we love with,
I’m sorry I didn’t choose you.


If we had come along a little later :(

I wish there was a better way,
To show things will get better,
Than stupid umbrella metaphors.
Because the truth is,
No amount of wisdom can really help,
When darkness is a brainless beast.

I wish there was a way to make things change,
Nothing big,
Just to shake up the rocks.
To unstuck everybody who needs it,
It’s not much compared to these pains,
But I promise we will see the sun.