I myself was broken
long before I ever met you,
long before those words were spoken,
long before I could regret you.

So you don't get the glory,
can't lay claim to my sorrow.
I erase you from my story.
I'll write you in again tomorrow,

Or until I learn of freedom,
learn to bear the thought and smile.
And this you will call treason,
sentence me without a trial,

But I myself was guilty
long before I ever knew you,
long before you made me filthy,
long before I could pursue you.

Crying, she locked herself
in her room,
boarded up her window.
She laid down.
I didn't know what I'd done
when I asked about her old lover.
It was casual,
but maybe that was the problem.

Hours turned to weeks.
Her parents brought her
all she asked for.
Wood.
Nails.
Paint.
All she needed.
She didn't leave.

You could hear the anguish,
the hammer,
her feet pacing,
her knees drop to the floor.
You could taste the tears,
the sweat, her blood.

I called to her, ashamed.
Worried.
I drove my fists through the wall.
I drove my car to city limits.
I drove myself to the edge.
I sat in the hall.

When finally the door opened,
she looked mad, accomplished.
No more tears,
just red and black paint
smeared across her eyes.
I reached to her
with broken hands.
She handed me what she'd built -
wood nailed to wood,
crudely cut and shaped,
splintered,
dripping red and black
paint and pitch -
her heart.

Immeasurable ignorance,
you wear it like a golden crown.
Born without your innocence,
your only path will lead you down.

Standing like a rigid statue
before a crowd of hungry eyes,
hiding all your sins behind you,
feeding them your ugly lies.

Money makes you feel almost normal.
Without it you would turn to dust.
The whole world begs for just a morsel.
How dare you say you're fair and just?

Trusting in you is a blunder -
you and men who pull the strings.
Crumbling from the weight we're under.
Expecting us to kiss your rings.

You are just a ******* whisper.
Time will leave you far behind.
Soon your name will cease to matter.
Death will come and rob you blind.

You will suffer in the end, and
You will beg to die again.
You will reach out for a hand, and
this you will not comprehend:

You will find no peace or mercy.
No one to pull you from the grave.
You will be forever hungry.
Pleading on your knees, a slave.

Moths flutter 'round in my mind,
chasing after the light in my eyes.

No deception in his yellow eyes -
I admire the hawk, I do -
as talons seize the shrew.

Forthright in his motions,
he takes that which he needs,
to sentiments pays no heed.

For nature is indifferent,
not blind to love or hate.
A course narrow and straight.

Your body moved like ocean waves
                beneath me,
    the wet taste of salt shared between our lips,
        moonlight reflecting off metallic jewelry
like little lighthouse beacons gleaming in the darkness.
And in that fleeting moment
      of equal parts fear and fulfillment,
  when there is no moon or movement
             and all is quiet and still,
                 I felt myself sink into you
             and I have yet to hit bottom.

Once I saw not color.
My dreams were black & white.
The days, it seemed, were endless
and void of light.

Then I met a young girl
with rainbows in her eyes,
bringing hue to my life
and to the skies.

You are the reason I look out the window at night and smile.
You give light to the darkness, it is your nature.
You bring thrill to an elsewise soulless sea.
Though I saw you not that night, you were there
(part of me) at my birth and,
come time to die, I will look on you and smile, again.

To live, to feel,
deny what's real,
to run, to hide,
to stand and fight,
to give or receive,
or choose to believe,
to laugh, to cry,
or hold it inside,
to bend or to break,
to lie there awake,
to sleep and to dream,
stay quiet or scream,
to nurse or to ****,
to swallow that pill,
to eat, to drink,
or refuse to think,
to die every night
or bask in the light,
to hold on, stay true,
or let go of you,
I'll do what it takes
to get through.

Your experience will always be less
than that of those for whom you write.
Therefore, don't write for anyone but
yourself.
If others wish to know you, let them ask.
If you wish to answer, read them your poems.

God created man.
I create poems.
Just like poems,
some men are good,
     some bad.
The poems that are good,
I save those.
The bad ones? I save those, too -
that I may rework them
until they are good.
     I do not burn my creations,
for they are only ever bad
because I lacked a vision or patience.

This world spins
like a record
and we are
the needle

I remember as a child
how desperately I would fight away the needles,
no matter that they were to make me better.
To this day, nothing has changed.

I got a phone call late last night
and who was it but Mr. President.
"Ya got no business callin' when I'm trying' to write!"
"Can it, pal, you owe me rent."

In seconds flat I's out the door.
Ran a block and hailed a taxi.
But I left my cash in my underwear drawer
so I couldn't pay the cabby.

So I got dumped out in East River,
and as I's swimmin', met a mermaid.
She went by the name Bette Midler.
She ran me to shore, gave me a band-aid.

There I was all cold and wet
with seagulls overhead laughin' at me.
I wrangled 'em all in a fisherman's net,
started walkin' to Cincinnati.

Naturally, I got lost along the way
tuggin' at a movie star's blouse.
When finally I looked up, to my dismay,
I's standin' on the lawn of the White House.

Mr. President said, "I can send you to prison
or exile you to Nantucket."
And sure as seagulls are mean and Christ is risen,
I threw up my hands and said

She takes you to a clearing
at a place near the river,
and she tells you there is nothing
that you could ever give her
that could match the charm around her
as the sun pours down like honey.
And you're careful not to doubt her
for she has all the charm inside her perfect heart.

You take her hand and place it
on that space that holds your soul and
you ask if she can read you
like the tarot cards she stole, but
there is something in the way that
neither you nor she can notice,
but you dare never doubt her
for she has all the grace and wisdom in her heart.

And the sun by now is sinking
just as you beneath her glory,
so she opens up her novel
and starts reading you her story,
and you hang on every word
like the student you have been,
right there beside her fire
that is shining from within her.
And it leaves you feeling worried,
still you keep tugging at her yarn
because you know better than to doubt her
for she has all the beauty in her perfect heart.

I am not what you expected
when you went searching for answers.
I too come with a question:
what is the use?

When you're holding my heart
can you feel the cancer?
When you kiss my lips
can you taste the abuse?

And do you want to hold me?
Do you want to touch me?
Do you really believe you've got what it takes?
Do you think you can control me?
Do you think you can love me?
How long will you last before your heart breaks?

let us run naked thru time square
and wave insanely at the cameras,
or paint the white house pink
before we also burn it down.
     let us fill our wombs with cement
and lament the passing of sexuality
as it was and exist as little more
than statues at the mercy of the weather.
     and let us ****** our pasts
and those we knew
and engrave our portraits
on the sidewalks
which in turn will flood over
with the bitter tears
of the former generation --
     all to spite a faceless enemy.

I'll look out for you
no matter where I will go.
You taught me to love.

Far right, far left.
Same rancid breath.
Two heads, same beast.
Sharp claws, palms greased.

We have the numbers.
They have the guns.
Let's meet at the center.
Let's have some fun.

Velvet tongue. Serpent.
It's hard to touch your skin or
look into your eyes.

I don't know my voice.
I haven't heard it in years.
But I do know yours.

Are you afraid to write dangerously, fellow poets?
Is love all there is to talk about?
It seems that perhaps you have yet to find your voice,
and that's fine.
But, when I read your poems, I become worried.
Your heartbreaks are important, yes -
it's part of your experience -
but there is more happening in this world,
and I'm sure you have something to say about it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.

"All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them."

The tears come easy.
I wish they weren't for you, but
everything is.

I'm writing you this poem
as I've done so many times.
I hope a word will reach you.
I hope, at least, it rhymes.
And when I play my guitar for you
and let ring all the strings,
between each rusty, broken bar,
I hope to hear you sing.

I wonder if you
give thought to me in these times
when I feel most lost.

I feel like September most of the time.
Not too warm or cool,
not more of one thing than another,
barely discernable between
the hot haze of August
and October's sobering chill.

There is a certain dexterity needed
to balance the life with the death,
to be a ghost in time and place
and memory, together.
And if you look into the morning fog
and squint your eyes to see me,
then you are trying harder than you need.

God punishes us forever
because we merely sought knowledge
in The Garden,
long before things were written down.

Did not the masters of the slave trade
demonstrate the same authority -
denying their subjects knowledge,
or simply the hope of betterment -
as they toiled in their gardens?

And are the descendants of those subjects
not still punished by self-proclaimed masters
who are little more than masters of none
but ignorance and inequality?

And yet, we pray that God may show us the way.

So I'm talking to this girl.
We're sitting beside a fountain,
people walking past,
it's busy and loud, but we stay focused.
I'm trying to pick her brain,
find out if it'll be worth it
for us to stay together,
being that she's a little batshit crazy and all.
And then I hear this voice from
way up above my head say,
"Tyler, she is not the one,
for my name is God and I know and see all."
So I says to God, "God, with all due respect,
I'm trying to have a conversation with this lady, here.
**** out."
So the girl, hearing me talk
to this voice inside my head, thought
I was completely insane.
"Well," I says, " I guess that makes two of us. "
We're still together, mind you, six years later.
I think maybe God retired after that.
He hasn't spoken since.

I wake before dawn
to the soft sound of breathing
and am thankful
for another moment like this.

I feel like I am
tumbling down a mountainside
I should be climbing.

His name is Kevin.
His wife sits beside the bed,
twisting wedding ring.

Chemotherapy.
Hollow eyes, losing weight fast.
Choose this or cancer.

Just a month to live.
Declining quickly. Father,
uncle, brother, son.

Mother & father
fated to outlive their son.
Holding hands. A prayer.

New dog waits at home
for his best friend that he will
never see again.

Rain hits the window.
Kevin lifts an eye and smiles.
This is the last rain.

He knows these faces.
These faces, likewise, know him.
This is family.

Last beautiful thought:
his two sons playing in the
front yard in the sun.

Two kids in sunshine.
Their mother watches - a smile;
dad has become light.

What can I tell you my brother, my burden?
That I wish we grew closer as years carried on?
Or that all is forgiven, though I doubt you remember.
I carry on in silence, the conclusion's forgone.

What can I give you my brother, my culprit,
that you have not yet taken from me before?
My very own blood flows through you, too.
The blood of a toddler, the blood of a *****.

Look in your mirror my brother, my devil.
Notice the dimness behind your blue eyes.
Those cold pits of anguish you buried me in
where I learned how to crawl and I learned how to lie.

You say I'm no man
because I cry and have doubts.
I really don't know.

I grew up listening
to my mother's sighs,
father's footsteps on the porch,
the harsh rattle of car keys,
and then the intermittent silences.
The salt-taste of tears
baked into suppers
was unmistakable and
I came to enjoy it,
because without it
there was no taste at all.
And without the sighs,
goodbye-again footsteps,
or the keys before the car peeled off,
what else was there
but those silences?

Come a little closer.
I want to read what's in your palm.
Yes my fire's burning
and the air outside is calm.

Your eyes in the moonlight
remind me of my sweetest dream.
When you touch me like that,
sends me floating in a stream.

Yes, I feel like I'm swimming
and the water is just right.
So kick off your shoes now,
let's both sink into the night.

And do you remember
how I walked you home before?
Just a timid boy then,
standing outside your door.

But we're all grown up now
with desire on our tongues.
And my mind is swimming.
I want to breathe you in my lungs.

Yes, I feel like swimming
and the water is just right.
So forget your worries.
Let's both sink into the night.

Come and meet me at your door again.
Let me in from the cold.
I'd love to try and read your cards again,
If I may be so bold.

Let's go walking by the pond, my dear,
Like we did where we made love.
Let our minds drift through the atmosphere
and mingle with the stars above.

Oh, you really were a lovely one.
Your voice, it lingers in the room
Like a thread left after the yarn was spun,
Dangling from our dusty loom.

Come and meet me at your door again.
Let me in from the cold.
I'd love to try and read your cards again,
If I may be so bold.

I am scared for my nephew.
Indeed, for the coming generations,
I am terrified
that they may never come to know
the clean smell of a forest
wet with new rain,
or the sound of a cardinal's song
breaking the snowy hush
of a January morning.
-- So wrapped up in, so fixed upon a television
broadcasting images
of the apocalypse of beauty,
of replicated emotion,
of fabricated belief.
-- I hear my nephew ask,
"What's a rainbow?"

Pitch-black the night:
God is awake yet,
sitting on the hospital roof,
feet swaying, dangling from the ledge.

Bitter cold is the wind,
howling like a broken heart,
dancing in the doorway
around the newly-christened widow.

Hard are the hearts
of the bedside mourners;
the brother, the sisters, the parents
whose eyes still trace the floor.

And pitch-black remains the night,
God jubilantly whirling, barefoot on the roof,
little more than a mere child
with another new friend to amuse.