At first I thought,
I believed -
Poetry is effortlessly flawless;
Happy and perfect;
Verses and rhymes;
Beautiful and sublime -
I mean
I am rhyming right now,
Aren't I?
I thought reading poetry could make you walk on sunshine.

I was so far from the truth.

I mean poetry is all that,
But it's not just that,
It can't be.
True poetry tells the story of a poet -
His happiness,
Her pain.
You can tell when he's drunk in love,
And when she's drugged up on hate.
True poetry makes your heart skip;
One beat;
Two beats;
Three beats;
Four.
It can turn the sweetest thing sour.

True poetry can make you glad when you're sad,
But it can also make you sad when you're glad.
You can relate to it;
You understand the poet;
He reminds you that the world isn't filled with dark days,
She teaches you that sometimes everyone will desert you.
He found someone to take his pain away,
But she was unlucky and life gave her limes.

I know you know that true poetry speaks the truth,
Because only the truth can truly speak to you.
No matter what facade you keep up,
True poetry will seek out the real you.
And that is who I write for.

The first time
you said you loved
me, it was as if
I had been pulled aboard
a life raft after being
lost at sea. But
I see now that this
raft is littered with
holes and
we are sinking, but
you are convinced
that your love is a
teacup to scoop out
the water pooling around
my ankles and you will save
us, but the teacup has a crack
down one side and
do you see where I
am going with this?
A tablespoon of water
will never put out
a forest fire; I am burning
through acres.

The ocean spills
on a Thursday night
congested in between these four
skinned-down, off-white walls.
You're veering into retrograde,
obsidian and spiraling,
heavy and unsettling --
a plethora of pterodactyls gnawing their way
out of you
except on days like this,
they've grown too comfortable inside
and that is worse.

Here is to nights when pain screams your name
and misses your body
too much.
Pain,
whose unmapped origins,
make you loathe yourself
and everyone else.
Pain,
like maps to places
you don't want to revisit.
Pain,
like an abandoned amusement park
consumed by tall grass,
infested with pests
and memories
the past was never too kind
to make you forget.

To beacon as reforming torchbearers
To smother dubious testimonies
To ablaze invidious roar
I beckon invocation
To hail resplendent among splendid
To brim the exorbitant generosity
To lame dogmas and evils
To gobble irksome cruelty
I hail to you
The onlooker of the world
The progenitor of the universe
The splendid incarnation
To shoulder the keelless..