I used to write
My secrets in the sand,
Knowing they would never stay
Long enough to be told.

I used to just swim,
pulled my hair up and never
Really tasted the salt that foamed
After the crash.

I've ran in the sand,
Sure, but never have I
Ever let it smooth my
Skin into what it could be.

Before today, I've never
Let the current take me
Under and feel what it's like
To always come back to something.

Just like the finest wine
Just like you
The finest things age sweeter
And become better with each day

The house that I grew up in is growing old.
I can barely distinguish between the house and my grandfather, and both have given up. Tired..of people walking inside of them.
I used to fall in the house running around the hallway and through the kitchen and now I'm falling through the floor.
There is no one to say "Get out of my kitchen!"
I've never been in the attic and I've only seen my grandfather open the latch once; I'll never get to see what was stored.  I thought Katherine's ornaments could be up there, but neither knew what had been done with them.
It broke my heart to see what I had seen. I wanted to have those memories again but not all the money in the world could buy them back.
The magic I had grown up with is dying. There is no more children to fall on the cinder under the fur shed and burn her forehead, or see snow for the first time. And after making snow *****, running hands through water and letting Katherine rub them through her bony hands. It doesn't snow in Louisiana but for this house it did.
I loved being old at such a young age. Picking blackberries with him and learning to preserve them. Staining my mouth, cheeks, hair, hands, my shirt with Mulberry. Then rolling dough on the counter and staining it with little girl hands and thin fingers and bear paws.
And still the only jelly I'll eat is blackberry jelly.
Cards at the table with Katherine was the best. She had this laugh. More of a cough and she wouldnt stop coughing until she caught her breath and then I would laugh so hard and try to walk it off and trip over her oxygen tubes.  That machine  used to haunt me. It looks with green eyes at night and stood in the open doorway of the door that I never understood why it was there, it never closed anyway. The doorway I used to hide in that one nightmare  about the dinosaur that would chase me around the same hallways that my grandfather would. I've always loved dinosaurs after that.
And eating at the kitchen table where there was always honey because grandfather was also a beekeeper and loved honeycombs and fresh honey.  The one flaw in that table was the window where I always thought raptors or a bobcat would jump out of while I was eating and eat ME. Tough little five year old me would put up a fight and scream until Paw would save me.
  The dining room table where Granny Velgin always had pancakes. The BEST pancakes. Where I learned to make them years later along with paine perdu, or French toast.  Little Cajun french me with my French name and father who was Czech but I have a  Cajun French grandfather.

The magic that was the now 60 year old house is going. It was always "50 years old" every time I asked my grandfather how old it was. It was his childhood house too. He says he still remembers Granny chasing Ayo with a pan for staying out too late..and I still chase the Christmas lights we used to walk to see. I still chase my cousins around the backyard geese and chicken and duck pen. I'm still chasing the magic that sat in the attic of the house I never looked in.

Keep the gates up
God please please please
Keep the gates up
I am not ready to break again

I hope this strikes a nerve in you
To tell you that yes
I have blood in me too.

Someone was shot today
Execution style on their knees
Weak and unable to live on their feet
For fighting for what they believe.

All anyone ever wanted in life was peace
If you close your eyes like Lennon said
You'd see more than you would with them open

Black
White
Asian
Hispanic
Russian
Cuban
I don't care what you are

We all bleed red.
If it's blood that is  needed to be spilled to show

Then take it from the history books.
War shouldn't be all we know.

One day I want my babies to feel safe
And have friends of every race
And love the color of their blood,
Not just the color of their skin.

I want them to love the person they love
Because their personality is colorful.

I don't want them to care about equality
Because we're all God's children
He put us all here.
Isn't that equal enough?

They didn't listen when I said I was tired
I said that being different was hard
Because my jeans  don't fit right
My actual genes weren't right

And so I came out in comparison to everything
Already didn't have a father to teach me
The skies will cry if he ever tries to reach me
Not knowing who to trust was something girls my age don't worry about

They're far too happy living oblivious
And I question myself off of this-
How do they possibly not know
That they are all the same person?


Same gloss on smooth Pink lips
Smiling a shark smile that they do like kindness
And they name the rainbow by shades of eyeshadow- as if there wasn't enough color

   Girls like that are happy with the same person for a week
And yet I cannot be happy with myself for a day
Then they switch partners because "Don't  worry he's sooo cute!"
  
  I wonder if they are happier naive
And how hard it will be for them when they realize how the skies are actually smokey black
And they've been looking up through perfect eyelashes- but beauty doesn't last

   It must be nice always being average
With a cover girl to cover you sitting next to you
And manicured nails to scratch your way through life

Never forget to tell your children...that  it's okay to cry
Because it's that when words are forgotten,
They often feel like lies.

You only get one life
Unless you think there's an after
You're kept alive by your beliefs
And views you've shared may matter.

You get what you get
You can't change the time you were given
It's up to you to make that choice
Get up out of bed or stay hidden.
You've been given a script not yet written.

Talk to people you wouldn't dare to be
Who cares if you shouldn't
Atleast do it for me
Never let someone tell you
That just because it sounds fun
That it is fun
Wondering into adventure is different then walking into hell

Pick your battles
Build your worth
You live your whole life knowing you WILL DIE.
You don't get to know when.
Choose that coffee instead of water.
Drink that protein shake.
Can't sprint it?
Jog it. Walk it. Crawl it.
I don't care how
Just get there.

If you're sad or depressed...been there..
You'll wake up one day not thinking about
How?
Or
Where?
One day you'll wake up and feel the need to play in your storm
Don't sit in the rain
You'll drown yourself..
In the weather you make.

You're happy today? Good for you!
Just please make sure,others are too.

You get a future.
You get to breathe.
You get to choose
If you want to stay
Or the next day leave.

Stay fearful, it lets them know how much you care
Or if you care about losing something.

Remember that if one day
You forget your name
The people who truly love you
Will be surrounding you
So in life
Surround yourself with people
Who will every day remind you
Of who you are
Because they are as afraid of losing you
As you are of losing yourself.

(A poem over a few thousand miles)
by JAC and JAB

Distance and I can never agree.

We were together, but thousands of miles apart
It was a creation between the both of us
And somehow the words created this "we".

We who are strangers, sharing only words
We who are nervous, for words are our souls
Distance and I can never agree
But distance and words, maybe we'll see.

Bearing words across the world
Souls across the distance
Some stranger seeking peace?
Distance wouldn't know
It never agrees.

Distance is as short as words are instant
When one soul thinks, another waits
Strangers are strangers until they share souls
So is distance just a stranger's mind?

Questions that would linger in the depth of some unsure mind,
Once they were doubts, but now I’ve made them mine.
This stranger is no stranger, well before he met me
But then again, his time wasn't always free.

We all have strangers, that were and were not
always strangers to distance -
So this time, distance's differences aside
Stranger or not, I'll confide.

Red is the color of anger
That burns and boils and bubbles
It seethes and seems to soak into beauty
It is cold and fierce and fiery
And ironically
*red is the color of love

Trying to find rare people in this world's generation is like trying to find a book in a library of blank pages

Lonely nights like this
And up for conversations with the stars
Had one milky way in my drink too many
And enough moons under my feet
To last many big bang theories over again

The stars seemed bored
Just..floating there next to Saturn
And I finally got the courage to ask..
For his constellation
And he said he likes my sun spots
That are resting across my axis

And told him that it must be nice
To be constantly revolving
Around someone else's  own orbit
Well...
And at this point I couldn't help but notice
He was glowing I swear
They can kind of be ***(troids) sometimes

Wow..and he could be a cometian.
Stars are funny that way

Let's please don't rush
This,
Let us grow.
Take a friendship,
One rather old,
Watch as it
Slowly
Turns to gold.

Works like a cliff hanger
Dropping off her lips
Don't ask her where she's been
She's had a lot to miss
                                        She wanted to feel free.                       So she broke apart her wings
    She tore away the things that made her heavy
The ability to fly was a burden on her shoulders
Knowing that she could not get away

He held her back by pinching her wings
Holding her in every way but gently
She would shatter if he'd stop holding her

For once she was ready to let go
To render her pieces to fly

She left her heart behind
She said "I" more often
She became icy hot
She was slick as rain

She was
She became
*She is free

Over and over
My feet hit the ground
Spinning in circles
The earth is what I've found
Vibrations match my heart
I must be in love with myself
For the way I see blur
It makes my soul completely melt

How nice to feel dizzy
And not worry about the weight

W a nn a  
g o
w a nn a taste the open   r o a d

l e t  strangers look at me f u nn y
want to catch this t r i p

wi t h you

wanna be a mess
           have my feet on the dash
b e  s o me  w h e r e  o p e n

The rain knocks
against your window
Hopeful to wake
the madness inside of your head
And it's funny,
at this point
you were  the greatest evolution

We're all
Afraid
Of something beautiful

If I had to love
You twice
I'd first come
To know your doubts
And then your dreams.

By my hand would they disappear and then
Your hopes would
Grow in the sun as
They may.

Who stole my thunder,
Who christened the ground with their footprints where mine should have been?

The holy heat of my words spreading up your spine, kissing your fingertips with friction...making the hair on your arms rise.
I could make you say amen but the sound of your rain is prayer enough.

Blessed is the air that graces your skin between touching and going...the light that you bring and leave with

You never stay but God the intensity is shocking

It seems to run it's softness through your hair
Like I want to do
The closeness to how it dribbles onto your face
And the smooth as it looks like tears
The rivers of it down your shoulders and catches the slopes of your neck
How I love how it pools on your chest
And it the water loves to kiss you how I want to
In showers of rain

The flowers needing to reach for sunlight..
Stretching in every direction and bunches of blooms that were once close together spread their petals at its own pace.
Some stay at the bottom and others blossom at the top.

It's natural to grow apart, because in order to grow you need space to stretch and change.

It's no one's fault..sometimes we need things we didn't need before.
So that's what we reach for.

Where is home
When the air feels better
Than being held.
All things considered,
This house isn't it.

I do not believe in death
But there is something called
Not being alive
So I beg you
Don't forget me

You and I talk about beauty like we see and know what it looks like.
Though we never say why or how we think it’s beautiful.
Tell me. Scream it.
Use the air from your lungs and tell me how ugly you are.
Use that air and taint it with everything beautiful about hurting someone.
About executing the pride that comes in their own humanity?
Tell me is it fun?-
destroying their belief that the world is lovely and showing them how hateful it really can be.
It’s so rare to find someone who finds beauty in the downfall of someone else’s understandings.
  
  You see..we’re part of this tight clique and whenever she feels the need to be unshakable
I build walls up around her because she may be hard-headed but I am hard-hearted.
She’d pull me on a string but I’d always be on her side-or standing behind her-
ready to take on however many knives are thrown at her back.
  You didn’t ever think you weren’t beautiful and why should you start now?
You never second guessed your weight-
until suddenly their words are so heavy you can’t hold yourself up on your own anymore.
  I’m so proud of how huge you keep your values even as they keep being belittled, how they never shrink your bravery or your courage.
I loved how you refused to see it until they saw through your shield, right at whatever you saw was in your heart and worthy at protecting.
Please just tell me what it is that cuts you up so deep you’re left with so many scars that I can never see...
You have to know that not knowing how to heal them is killing me!
  You hide your pain away and distract me from the sadness in your eyes; you know you can’t hide that from me,not ever and definitely not forever.
I saw how they took the smiles from your days, like the sun from the blue skies
and rain can’t go unnoticed!
  The scary thing about having glasses now is that there is no more hesitation in what I see when I doubt it that you’re sad, there’s a certain sharpness in your tears that weren’t there before.
They contradict the fairness of how great the world was-
ah it was so pretty until you see that time doesn’t always heal.
It is less than amnesia that only makes you forget...but you can’t forget the marks on your skin as you can see them daily.
  Time wears thin and stretches ‘till one day you hear something snap inside of you.
Where does it end? When you can’t take it anymore and you long to not feel their words bounce off of you anymore-
for their shots to sink in and you think you deserve it..
You’d willingly take their blows...
But I’d willingly take all of yours for you.
  I heard you whisper once that I was a bully.  
I heard your plea..I know you were really yelling for me to rescue you and my mission was to get you out alive.
I’m not perfect. But I’d sure try my best to forgive my flaws for you to look at all of yours
I’m not a teeny little thing like you..I have curves that wind and sometimes I get lost in them trying to find myself.
But I know better..I cannot be lost because I know where you are..on my compass helping me to when I come to remain at your side.
My thoughts used to vary from, ”If I spilled my secrets with my lunch then maybe my heart will be lighter..”
to
“If I painted my face with shades as pink and vulnerable as yours then maybe I’d be as porcelain and fragile as a doll.”
  No. No more. I can’t sit back anymore and watch you break into pieces like fine china when I’m still putting myself back together from the last time I fell.
Life is a puzzle-it is in pieces-we are made to find the pieces that fit into our souls-
You are a piece of my soul,you are part of my puzzle!
You are my missing piece and without you I wouldn’t be whole.
  I only know what feeling whole is like because you have showed me and I will never let you
go even a day without feeling my love-all the lengths of it.
I can only hope I can make you see that you no longer have to question the heights of your limits and the widths of your personality-because they can go no further than where you let them.
These are the only things you should want to measure-
but toss away your rulers and tape measures because I will never give you a capacity.
  You are not a shape like a square where nothing is outside the box or
a circle when everyone outside is an outsider and you worry about making the cut just to fit in.
You fit in anywhere you are-so never worry about where you think you belong,you
belong wherever you think you do,and I will make sure that is where you are.
  You are a shape that defines where your edges meet and how deep anyone has to go to see you-
not the painted figure with eyelashes too dark and lips too red-
but you.
The silly girl with sideways smiles and bright eyes.  
  If you are a sea of jokes then I’d drown in any “Knock-knock” until I come to rest at your door.
Don’t give me that whole, “I don’t deserve it.”
I don’t care if you think you do or not
But you, are worth it.
  Worth all the nervous  “How do I look?” ‘s you give me
Worth the play fights and being thrown off the bed at 1:00 A.M.’s
Worth all the “I’m ugly” ‘s you throw my way.
I’ve never seen anyone any more beautifully broken.
If I have to stay awake forever putting you back together,
then there’s never been anyone more worth it than you.

She becomes woman
When she puts her foot down
After only using them for
Dancing.

She is woman when she
Doesn't question herself
Or her feelings and isn't scared
To talk back for once.

She is grown when she can
Still giggle and be playful and dance and have wonder
And still put you in your place

We're all idiot fish in a barrel
Jumping into the air to watch the bullets
**** by our fins and hoping the
Strike doesn't hit but misses

And kisses the outskirt of our barrel.

The water is draining fast
And we struggle in all the odds
Against each other and try to get to the
Bottom where there's more water

But we're all gonna die anyways.

So we push each type of fish at each other and smother the others in blood
Of their brothers and don't do anything
Until one of the fish jumps out of our home

And right at the man cleaning the barrel of the gun.

Was it fun watching us unfairly die
While you are doing nothing
With our dying folk
But watching us perish.

You're a real jittery man I bet.

But as bullets fly by the fish we
Demand to run arrogant politicians to
Calm our gills and ask into our feels


But it doesn't matter anyway.

We're all idiot fish in the barrel fighting each other while someone pops holes
In our walls and allows the oxygen in.

We'll all die anyways.

His cheek bones tightened with a little bit of a masterpiece,
yet I can see a small beautiful grin right underneath.

She looks at me,
And my world turns upside down.
Oceans don't seem so deep,
The sky at my feet.
She crashes into me like a wave,
And her hair curls around my finger like the tide.

His eyelashes flutter in the dark, lost within themselves,
every breath he took was taken with his demons sitting on his shelves

She can hardly breathe,
I know that now
Will all this talk of being deep
And yet she starts to drown

He built her into a gun, loaded her up,
made her say things she wouldn't

She crashes.
She looks beautiful as she breaks

He kisses her,
He tore himself apart first

I let her hands
Find mine

and so our hearts
were intertwined

I've lost a lot of people and my soul won't heal from that...but my body will. And as long as it is able I will keep running,and if I can't run then I will walk. If I can no longer walk then I will crawl. When crawling is useless then I will pray. However it is I will find a way to keep on moving.

Dark rings around her eyes
Are at all unlike a tree
They do not define what age you are
But instead shows them how she does not sleep

Heavy feet rooted deep into the ground
Unmoving but with shaking limbs
That often try hard to not
Be blown over by light touching wind

She leaves me so bewildered
How she stands so tall
While they use her like firewood
Taking all they can from her

And burning her dreams for warmth
Smoke signals ripple in the sky
She should ask for help she knows it
But not understanding why

Why must she give off her light after giving
Her last breaths away.

And life
is beginning to look
like a lot of  "okay"s

In the body of a forest
Lies the feet of a tree
Sunk deeply into the soil
Is the root with a heartbeat

Deep earthly eyes
With a presence that is calm
If you let him sink into you too quickly
He will water your every form

Like the spinning of the Earth
He is the drizzle of the stars
The sweetness of the air
And the breeze with every and no care

He is the tunnel system in the city
That connects us through and through
He is the electricity
That lit the room

In a world with different stories
He is the sun that claims no glory
He is the seed that plants the tree
Yet has the roots that found their way to me

I hope there is a heaven
I hope it was swift
I hope you were not in pain.
I hope there is forgiveness
I hope there is peace.

I stare at the stars on my ceiling
   and still, look at you
Like you put the moon
   in the sky

It's so much easier
To bite
Than it is to
Smile

She, is the woman Atlas
But she carries the world within herself
For her shoulders were made to lean upon
And her hands for building

Not all poets are tortured
And not all skies are black for photographers

I now understand
That it all came down
To a single decision-

This is the
Moment I grew into
Myself.

Faithful and free in nature
With words as clean and soft as holy scripture
Lord has had his way with you
Fine dime of new dimensions

You're perfectly unbalanced
With the wrong scars in the right places
A smile that leans too swiftly
Almost filling the role of Pisa

Pleasing peripatetic you find
Your grace in the movement of falling things
Gently playing pizzacato
On my heart strings

You are a snake...
With a crooked smile and a bearded face
If you shaved I'd never recognize you
Unless you'd smile then I'd see your fangs
Go ahead slick...let her know!
Show her the feelings that you told *me
Make me promise
And drag me in
I'd rather let you break my pinky..
That's MY girl
No one hurts her
So you can keep your broken promises off her
Snakes slither..and it matches the way you walk
In perfect sync..
Funny that snakes can be considered to have pretty eyes
**Just like you

I forgot how wonderful it feels to cry
To for once
Let these creeks flow freely from my eyes
To not hold back this bursting dam
To let go of this anger that builds
In the shape of shame
I will not be held back..at any moment
I will gladly open the packaging I was told
To never even touch
Starting with binding tape
Ripping apart the flesh of the box
God that ever confining box
And tear the corners that held it's shape
Until all that's left is a mess
A beautiful
Broken mess

From where your thorns stem
Around your harsh words
Your petals float
Above the places others do not see
Nor did they care to look

But I did.

She's a freak
Dressed in all black. AGAIN
Who's funeral are you going to?


I know those words
I used them
To water my garden
So please don't you worry

In this garden of ours
They are weeds
And they stem from negativity
In this garden
I do not want weeds.

Do not worry Haley
You are the flower
That knew cracks and ice
Before you lifted into the sunshine
You are the rose with character
The gorgeous red that isn't afraid
To draw blood in your defense

They stretch their hands into your bristles
Wanting the beauty
Without the pain
Leaving your thorns
For petals
And you will make it a point
To show them not to come again
Unless they are willing to get the scars
And they will get the point.

They are weeds
And this is spring

Please mom remember your girl
How she never cries
Now think of her with tear stained eyes
And galaxies,bruised on her thighs.

Think of her now
On the phone with your oldest
To whom she is the closest
Biting her hand,so her sister wouldn't notice.

She fits all of the parts
To popular from punk
To poem freak to none
To happy then one day gone.

When she tells you that it's nothing
Think of strawberry gum
How she likes mint the most
But fruit when she needs help
To absorb her stressed cramps.

Mommy did you notice
How she favored her long sleeves
How even in the evening she said she wasn't hungry
Usually you'd say
"She'd never lie to me!"

Your baby girl is growing up
But you'll soon forget her height
Funny how life takes away
Your might and leaves a trail to fight