June 1st, 1998.
A child born,
A boy,
With a mop of brown hair,
And complications.
Pulse weak,
Not getting enough oxygen...
But the complications?
They were handled.


June 1st, 2003.
Blowing out your candles,
Looking forward to things to come.
Like being the ring bearer in your parents' wedding.

June 1st, 2005.
Forfeiting your birthday wish,
Because your wish is coming true.
Your brother is born July 26th.

June 1st, 2012.
Looking back on middle school,
And ahead on the monster known as high school.

June 1st, 2013.
Looking back on freshman year,
And celebrating 6 months with the first girl you ever loved.
You're positive she's the one.

June 1st, 2014.
Looking back on sophomore year,
Relishing the thought of being an  upperclassman,
Yet still mourning the loss of your first love almost a year before, on June 26th.

June 1st, 2016.
Going to the meeting and signing the paperwork.
Feeling more pride than ever in your life.
You leave for basic training in August.
Little do you know, you will be medically discharged in November of the next year.

June 1st, 2018.
I will look back on all I have done.
My failures most of all.
Because they're all I have.

By the grace
Of the moonlight
Upon icy winds
Take to the sky
Fly Dragonfly
Away from
This world
Full of painful cries
Fly Dragonfly
Save yourself
From this fate
Drowned in lies
Fly Dragonfly
Fly Dragonfly

I write
About all unholy things.
Twisting shadows,
Making peace with Demons,
And dancing with The Devil.
I admit,
I've made my fair share of mistakes,
But what did you expect?
Surely you should be wary of
A Wolf with a tongue of silver?
A boy who plays with shadows,
And hides from the whispers in his head,
Regardless,
I've missed this.
I've missed the outpouring.
I've held everything in for too long.
Love and hate have torn me apart,
So now I take time to heal.
I welcome anyone,
Old Friends and enemies,
New adversaries and acquaintances,
If you have something you want to speak about,
Something to set straight,
Or just want to catch up,
You know where to find me.
I've missed you all.
My mind is awake.
Life is pointless.
So please,
Give me something to write for.

I'll face it,
The place I call home
Is just a
Smaller,
Emptier
Lonely room
To wait out the time.

Ring a-round the rosie,
Pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down...

Stacks of swollen bodies,
Screams of sick and dying,
Burning! Burning!
We've all been ******.

Forty days of pouring,
The lost which we are mourning,
Sinking! Sinking!
We all shall drown...

My rhyming now is finished,
Your heart now feels diminished,
Sickened! Disgusted!
Flee from my words.

I've got a bit of a reputation.
One heartbreak and I end up alone,
Find a heart to latch onto until,
Eventually it falls apart.
I make it down the road called life,
By hitchhiking,
From heart to heart,
Love to love.
There's a reason I'm no longer trusting.
You should know that.
But the boy with a broken down red truck
Is now the villian.
Not like I expected any different.
Like I said,
There's a reason.

Ah, someday...
I remember that word.
Full of certainty that tomorrow would be better.
Forgive me for being stubborn, but the future isn't set.
A trigger pull is a split second decision.
And the future isn't always there for us to look forward to.
More often we agonize over its coming.
The what ifs and hypothetical reactions.
Waking up in the morning to push through another day.
Another day of pressure from all directions.
Another siege.
I've warned you.
Now your actions are your own.
If you are set on stealing a dragon's scale,
Just be prepared for the possibility you may be burned alive.
You seem determined.
The board is set up, the pieces straight.
Make the first move
...If you dare?

I've wandered that path,
And I beg you, please,
Go back.
Take the other path down the road.
Be stronger than I ever was.
Don't lock yourself down,
Once done it's almost irreversible.
Don't cause further damage.
Look at me.
I bear scars, bruises, broken bones.
All healed,
But none of them gone.
Needles, knives, razors,
I've even turned a boxcutter on myself.
A fishhook through the finger,
An exposed wire to the skin...
I've done it all.
And I tell you it's not worth it.
I'm going to tell you what no-one ever told me.
It gets better with hard work.
You're important.
You matter to a few people not pushed by pride.
Pain is not a release,
It is a bind.
A crutch.
Don't be like me.
You don't want to end up with shadows as your only friends,
And anger your only salvation.

Two peices,
Curved edges,
Sharp corners,
Yet when lined up,
The connection is visible.
Two people,
So different,
Yet the same,
And we just clicked.

A little boy stopped me today,
On my way past an overgrown field.
The one where the peewee teams play football.
He needled me,
"They'll put me in, right?"
And rambled.
"My daddy said he can't come to this game, by he'll come to the next one, won't he?"
He dreamed,
"I wanna be a soldier someday, and help people."
And my heart broke more and more as he kept talking.
Youth and innocence have their place.
So I walked on.

A tired man stopped me today,
Outside of my old high school.
His eyes were full of tears and madness.
"Please, for my sake, don't give in."
He sobbed.
"I don't want to end up this way."
His hands were scarred,
And his eyes scared.
"I want us to be better than this. I wanna be what we meant to end up as."
Age and wisdom aren't always synonymous.
So I walked on.

Past the field,
Past the school,
Past the struggling masses.

I stopped myself today,
On the edge of oblivion.
We're not done talking yet...

I live in a den in the land of the dragons,
A place where the sunshine rocochets off of every surface and monsters are the most human beings around.
I stalk the woods and do not shy from battle. Even dragons have turned from me.
Unseen in the shadows,
Eyes of liquid gold,
With a silver tongue trapped behind sharp teeth.
I could talk my way out of trouble,
But honestly, where's the fun in that?

It's strange, how after all this time...
You still make me want to strike a match,
Watch the entire world burn,
And salt the ground so that nothing grows.
Erase every memory of us,
Good and bad.
Angry? Me?
I guess you could say that.
Maybe you shouldn't have taken advantage of me.
A wolf with a good heart is still a wolf.

I have myself so thoroughly fooled,
I'm not sure what the truth is anymore.
I don't know what's real,
Who I know, who to trust.
I don't know who the enemy is,
And they deigned to give me the ROE.
I don't know who my allies are,
Or where I can hide and still be safe.
There's no list I can read,
No dotted line I can sign on,
Nor a box I can check,
To request reinforcements.

We learned so many things,
Didn't we?
Who to trust,
What was important,
Things we should and shouldn't say and do.
But the one thing we both swore we would never do again?
It's common sense.
The one person you should never
EVER
Listen to,
Is yourself.
Even in a letter.

I could paint you picture perfect,
Then burn the canvas,
Making the paint run,
Distorting the picture until it seems you're screaming.

Every night,
I feel I fall deeper
into the dark.
It's a safe place,
A small sanctuary
To be myself.
The shadows pass no judgment,
They understand the ups and downs.
I can do what I need to without guilt.
I can sit and think,
Scrawl hate on a page,
Or punish myself for my misdeeds.
I am but an artist.
And though it may be morbid,
My body is my canvas.

I'm sorry.
By nature my writings are cruel.
They speak of angry things,
Abused animals and beaten children.
Brother killing brother,
Families splintered.
I can try to soften them,
But the euphemisms only last so long.
Metaphors sharpen themselves,
Turning into barbed hooks.
The truth is that's all I've ever known.
War, death and heartbreak.
There's a reason I'm more comfortable
In a shadowy corner with a knife,
Than I am on a sunlit street holding hands with the girl I love.
It's because she's not there anymore.
She always leaves,
And my knife hasn't ever left me.
It's dependable,
And always sharp.
A man's knives should always be sharp.
*Hie par in tenebris est et in tenebris caput meum

You say happiness can bloom in dark places...
I'd rather rip up the roots and leave them to die on the sidewalk.
Anger serves me much better.
It keeps me alive, keeps me unscathed and wins me every fight.
Sorrow reminds me to stay careful, to keep myself isolated.
The less chance there is for attachment, the less chance there is for pain.
The devil's snare creeps over the cobblestones,
Trapping those foolish enough to come near.
It avoids the sunlight, like me.
We have more than that in common it seems.
The shadows my sanctuary and my mind my prison.
Just don't leave the door unlocked.

I stopped myself on the edge of oblivion,
Down the road to my right,
All I'd ever done.
Everywhere I'd ever been.
Everyone I'd ever known  
Down the road to my left,
All I had yet to do,
Places I had yet to go.
People I had yet to meet.

And I spoke.

"People tell me to keep fighting.
That it's not all that bad.
That things happen for a reason,
And the reason just hasn't shown itself yet."

I gaze into the structureless abyss.

"The truth is no-one gives a **** how I feel,
The ones who encourage me only do because they can use me. I'm constantly being told to buck up."

Fists clenched and my nails cut my palms.

"If anyone ever lived through what I have they wouldn't want to keep fighting either. They wouldn't want to keep surviving. So why should I?"

A deep breath and shoulders sag.

I stopped myself on the edge of oblivion...
And couldn't talk myself down.

I stopped myself on the edge of oblivion...
And I jumped.

When we were young it seemed we owned the world,
A mixed up band of distracted boys and girls.
We always had our heads in the clouds,
But when we believed in something we screamed for it loud.

Now we're spread from town to town,
All our dreams are dust on the ground.
I've had friends die walking the streets,
Seen suicides and several ODs.

We always pushed ourselves to grow up fast,
Now our wish comes true at last.
Right out of school Will has two kids,
Lives to support instead of living his.

A close friend was blindsided by cancer,
Don't have the heart to tell her religion ain't the answer.
Her parents tell her all she can do is pray,
As I sit and watch her get worse each day.

I miss the times we had when we were kids,
No obligations, full of innocence.
But now it seems we can't find the light,
They said it first, The Kids Aren't alright...

When the cheater is cheated
By her partner
Does that change anything?
No.
What if the cheater is cheated by the cheat she cheated you with?
Still, no.
But it's **** funny.

There are no more razor blades,
My parents started locking the door to the garage
And I'm not allowed in the kitchen anymore.
They took my belts,
Hid my bootlaces,
And my guitar sits unstrung.
The medicine cabinet is locked,
My father finished his whiskey,
And the gas can and matches are locked in the garden shed.
No way to drown the pain.
No way to use it against myself.
So it rots.
And I decay.

Some are born with the rhythm,
Some have rhyme but lack imagination,
Some have all the passion,
And lack subject.
Some are endowed with poetry,
Some hunt it,
Others steal it from their peers.
I have to trap it,
And twist it to my liking.
I have to use it,
Like an addict I will do anything.
The rhythm sates me,
The rhyme feeds my fire,
The passion gives me drection,
And the form keeps me sane.
So I go from pen to pen,
Looking for the next rendition.

In a sea of sand
A single grain
Holds the
Weight of a star
They interact
Shifting and sifting
In rippling waves
Edge to edge
If one grain
Were to vanish
The shape of
The wave would change
The edges would fold
And the sea would collapse

She told me if I loved her,
That I would change for her.
I told her that if she loved me,
She should love me for who I am,
Not "who she can make me."

Someone smiled at me today.
I went to dinner,
And the hostess eyed me and batted her eyelashes.
She should have taken a deeper look.
Maybe the corners of her eyes would have creased,
When she was in disbelief of what she found.
She would have frowned in concentration
As my scars surfaced and danced across my skin.
An American Flag burned into my forearm.
She would have seen my mind racing,
And my defenses kick in.
She would have realized how it would affect me.
How she could break me,
With the smile from a stranger.

Intentions explained,
Problems avoided,
Words spoken.
A clean slate has been provided.
And it will be used
Inimica est inimicus meus
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"
I'll keep gathering enemies.
But finding a friend here and there can't hurt.

It really is amazing
How a human hand
Can turn taught strings
Into a song that touches the soul.