The world takes a turn for the worst
and it’s a little less safe
and that is to say
the danger that was there yesterday
grew a little stronger today

how many more lies
will fools swallow
before the find their own little girl
not a little girl anymore
but a ghost of who could have been
nothing more than a broken thing

broken by a boy just being a boy
who will grow into a man
believing he can take
whatever he wants
when ever he wants it
and that no
somehow always means yes

that being drunk
is a good enough excuse
for any one
with the right kind of money
and the right kind of name
the kind that comes
from being born
in the right kind of skin

the kind that believes
its culture is a good culture
a good culture
where boys will be boys
who grow into men who are men
who are nothing
but cruel monsters
pretending to be human

Art has the unfortunate responsibility
of reflecting all the ugly truths
of the world
while at the same time
upholding the heavy burden
of hope

at the times breathing
becomes its hardest
we must inhale deeper
and transform the pain
in our lungs
and the doubts
in our own hearts
into something for others
to hold onto
to rest upon
to take refuge in

we must fight hate with love
give kindness the strength
to hold back cruelty
we must eat a little less
so those with nothing
will have something to eat

humanity may seem
to be slipping away
taking a step too far away
to ever come back
to ever remember
who we could be

and isn’t this a beautiful burden
this heavy weight upon our backs
and within our hearts

this feeling
that we are still alive
still able to breath
despite the pain

that we can still create
something out of the things
others would see destroyed

the ugly beasts
that dress like presidents
and kings with no clothes
with their ****** power
and their blatant lies

history will remember their crimes
as we will not let them be forgotten

tomorrow is not a day they own...

yet...

but if we want to take it back
we must start
by doing something today

remember

artist need other artist
to remind them
that there is still something left
in this world worth
making something beautiful for

and everyone

everyone of us
is an artist

so pick up your bricks
and your hammers
and your buckets of paint
and let your hearts
run wild through the streets
and start the taking of tomorrow
by turning the world
into something better today

The crows are going
  to rise up
over the black asphalt
  city skyline

singing into the
  blood red sky
   hearts crowned
    with fire and hope

flying high and free
   flying over
     the mountain tops

singing of the
   promised land

singing for the dead
   but not forgotten

singing words
  of flame
    and poetry

singing for
   freedom
     and unity

Let lightning course
through your pulse
and let your heart
beat loud with thunder

become the storm of your life
and the wind of your breath
let nothing move you
that does not move you

cry when you must
and love whenever you can
embrace every emotion
no matter how painful
  or blissful
    or mistakenly sinful

feel everything this life
has to offer you
both the good and the bad

learn from your mistakes
and bad relationships
and love each new day
and new lover more fiercely
from what your past
has taught you

become more open
each time you are broken
grow and rise up after every fall

never tame the wild beast
that lives in the marrow
of your bones
you can let you heart get stolen
     but never
   let your heart be caged

let your love be a gift
that expects nothing in return
for any other expectation
is not the truth of love
the reward for kindness
is the act of being kind

you will often find yourself
lost at sea
and when you do remember

let lightning course
through your pulse
and let your heart
beat loud with thunder
and be the storm
that carries you home

A blood red sunset drips over
the black asphalt city skyline
somewhere in a lost part of America

where the dream has
long been dead and buried
and hate and fear rule
the rural streets that are protected
by peace keepers
that practice ******
more often than upholding the law

It has been declared open season
on any crow the color
of a starless night sky
and the dove has become
a symbol of
to protect and serve
their own kind
birds of a feather
that cover for one another

justice is blinded
by the snow covered truth
and the color of corruption
is coincidentally the same
as the color of money

the poor have little choice
but to trade their bones
and their hopes
to the corporations
of the new land
of the free
to be owned by
and controlled by
a minimum wage
that only guarantees
to keep the poor
poor enough
  to work another day
    and another day
      and another day

until there bones are
nothing but powder
and their beds
are nothing but coffins
for the barely living

and life somewhere
in a lost part of America
at the end of everyday
the sky turns red
and the color of blood
runs through the streets
as the doves go along
with their business
of the murdering of crows

A crow never stole corn
   that the earth didn’t give freely
The man too often takes
  too much credit for what
    he puts down into the dirt
Wether it is a seed or a body
As if he alone made
  life sprout and grow
As if without him
   the earth would not be green
    the sky would not be blue
As if he himself is
  the very GOD he prays to
The man forgets his place
  when murdering the crow
   for nothing more
     than being a crow
Mistaking black beaks
  and black feathers
    and black eyes
  as things that must
    always be up to no good
A bird that is no good
  for anything but a target
    for his hate and fear
As if the crows heart
   was meant for nothing other
     than to give his bullets
        something to bite into
The man becomes something
   less and less
 every time he murders
    another crow

There is a moon
over Tennessee
and it is killing me
with its soft
moon light red lips
and don't you wish
you were here hips
her dark eyes telling stories
from the west side
of the tracks

if it isn't magic
that she makes
from her fingertips
out of the nothing
in the night air
then it must be love
she sculpts out
of these small moments
of eternity

the moments she shapes
into stars that shine
with flames of poetry
close enough to read
but just out of reach
never to be held
never to be touched

there in the sky
they hang
and they sing
with that moon

that moon over Tennessee
that moon
that is killing me

Depression doesn’t loosen its grip when I am caught off guard by a joke / and it is funny enough to make me snort and that only makes me laugh at the embarrassment I feel from snorting / it’s still there coiling quietly while reloading its fangs with venom / ready to strike whenever I start to feel something good is happening / that maybe this whole life and art and love thing is worth taking out my paper and pencils and pens and brushes  and paints for / and maybe just maybe give some hope to dreaming like I did back in my youth / back when I thought more about my potential / I thought more about my abilities / I thought I could do anything / I thought I would do anything / I thought love... / I thought love was within reach.../ somewhere with someone... / I wouldn’t say I really suffer from any serious forms of depression /  more of just “situational” depression /like I hate my job “depression” / I hate my ability to procrastinate so well “depression” / I hate the way I carry so much self loathing “depression” / the I hate my “life” depression... / you know / situational “depression” / and the situation only being the situation of being alive “depression” / but it comes and goes / slithering quietly through / from my mind through my heart / back and forth / waiting silently for anything I might feel or think that it might want to strike out at and strangle and swallow head first / its nice like that / to not always be present in every thought of every day / but never to far away / never gone for good / I mean theres a lot in this world and this life to be depressed about / how horrible would it be to not be able to feel depressed...oh man, I almost snorted...

Loneliness does not leave my body when I walk into a crowded room /it only amplifies itself with thoughts of why didn’t I just stay at home /what did I expect to find here / a pretty face with a kind smile and deep soulful eyes that would not only see the troubled and lost thoughts inside my head / but would be a mirrored reflection of the same struggles and doubts / someone who would say more by saying nothing and understand all the silence pouring out of my mouth / you know the girl / the one I read about in the poem I wrote last week / last year / yesterday and probably again tomorrow / the imaginary one I write all those fictional love poems to / the one that kind of looks like me in a dress / is it weird that I think she’s kind of hot? / the one that reminds me of the real girls and women I am always too afraid to talk to / I swear if it weren’t for alcohol and aggressive women I would still be a ****** today / it was so cute how they told me they never brought guys home with them... I don’t know maybe this was true / maybe it wasn’t / and I was always so naive that every time it happened I expected we were going to just watch a movie or something... / we did the something / just a something not as PG as I was expecting / something not really PG at all.../ oh...young me, where has tho gone.../ (sigh)... / I don’t drink so much now and I am not as naive / still a little / but that’s another story.... / and now I have been alone so long that it has a certain comfort and warmth / so long that I rarely notice being lonely at all / the dull buzz of silence / the peacefulness of an empty house is louder than the empty echo and cries of desperation from my heart... / that is / until I walk into a crowded room

Theres no cure for heartache
but there is always *****
and poor judgement
and my stupidity has no boundaries

so let me drink until tomorrow
is nothing but sorrow and regret
and love ain’t nothin
but a poorly written poem
on the napkin I wrote a fake number
for the girl whose name
I can’t remember
but can still smell
on the sheets we stained
as I was trying to forget
who your are

I should have known
I wouldn’t find anything
but the hangover of disappointment
from this kind of love
the kind that only burns in the heart
but never touched by the hand

theres no cure for heartache
and its always going to burn
it won’t matter how many names
I can’t remember
or how ***** the sheets get
when I can’t forget
who you are

In every breath
   in every beat

       she was a poem

in every thought
   in every dream

       she was a poem

Time stood still
    and eternity held its breath

       and

         she was a poem

and there beneath her breast
      beneath her ribs

was her heart
    and in her heart
      
           she was a poem

the one poem
     the universe had
            that was
                  more beautiful than love....

The world is a stage and life is a tragedy / and a comedy and a romance gone bad / and a love gone right until it has gotten away from us / and it’s ugly and cruel and its strange and beautiful and it twists and it turns / and we all got something burning inside of us /and we all got something to cry about / and we all got something to regret / and we all got something to smile about / and we all got something to sing about / but we move along like background actors afraid of center stage / afraid to feel all of our lonely rage / afraid of what will the audience think / afraid of stumbling on our lines afraid of tripping over our own heart beats / so afraid of dying in the limelight that we hold our breath and close our eyes and sleep without dreaming / and stay out of the spotlight and stay off in the wings / and what is it we’re living for by not playing the parts of ourselves / nothing but a shadow of who we could be / when will we all realize we can make our hearts into something bigger than a fist / that our heart can do something more than just beat / that we got the whole universe inside of us / and all we got to do is let it spill out / we don’t have to wait for our turn to be heard / we don’t need the permission of the director / we don’t need the applause of the audience / this is our life / this our stage / we got our own light dying to get out of us / we got gasoline running through our veins and we’re ready to burn from the inside out / and keep on burning and keep on burning and keep on burning / and dance along the fires of eternity / we don’t have to hold back who we really are / no matter how awkward or weird we may seem to be / there’s a beauty only found in those who find comfort in being strange / we don’t have to give in to normalcy / we don’t have to be complicit to the script of human cruelty / we don’t have to play soldiers in the war of wealth and greed / we don’t have to play the blind to the homeless and hungry / we don’t have to pretend to not hear the cry’s for help from those stricken with poverty / we don’t have to play the part of the enemies enemy / we can rewrite the script  /we can turn the world around and stand in solidarity and find our way to unity / we can stand center stage arm in arm and let no one move us / we can tear down the facade / and open up the cage our minds have been living in / and fly free and fly too high and kiss the sun as we burn hotter and brighter and not melt into nothingness / and nothing can bring us down when we make our hearts into something bigger than a fist / when we open it and let all this love spill out and let all this love come rushing back in / simply by just opening our hands and reaching out to one another / sister to sister to brother to brother to mother to father to daughter to son to friend / and to stranger / and write everyday with compassion and kindness and empathy / and throw away the old script of human misery / and all take a bow / after we have made our hearts into something bigger than a fist

I know falling in love with you
is going to lead
to a broken heart one day...

but broken or not
my hearts going to love you
until its last thunderous beat

and even after its shell
has gone cold and dry
and it no longer moves

it will still be singing
your name
in wherever
and whatever
comes next
for all eternity

Come...

put your hand here on my chest...
feel this heart...
this beating inside...
this thing keeping me alive...

can you feel it...

do you know...
do you know...

it's you...

It's you...

Every now and then
life gives you
a living and breathing
moment of poetry
be sure to read it
be sure to appreciate
that perfectly clear moment
of beauty and love
it doesnt happen often
and it doesn't last long
but the memory
can last beyond eternity
if you paint a picture
of it in your heart

Her heart was a wild poem
that bleed beautifully
through the skin of her chest

and you could feel it beating
out a rhythm of gentle kindness
that knew too much
about love and loss

their was a touch
of madness and folklore
in the unseen colors
of its song and pulse
he was hypnotized
by its seductive charm
of witchcraft

he was helpless to do anything
but walk into its flames and fire
and he felt no pain
as his body burned down
to cinder and ash and smoke

until he became part
of the wild poem
that made up
the whole of her heart
and her love

They will sell us the addiction and then profit off the treatment they pretend to be a cure but it ain’t nothing but a revolving door of pills and rehabilitation and relapse the doctor is just a dealer with a license to ****** what little humanity we might have left side effects of no free will and plastic smiles and refills of suicidal thoughts and if depression doesn’t suit us they can strap us down in high anxiety and low self esteem straight jacket pin strip suits to cover up the tracks and scars that decorate our arms where we mixed our blood with the poison to feel like someone more than human high above the clouds in the atmosphere where we can always see the son of Jesus dancing as we let our mind run free in its cage beneath our skulls and when we’re down and numb we cut ourself twice to see if we can still feel and three times for superstitious reasons that we hear whispering from something crawling just beneath our skin and we add up the two by two of who is who and the devil is only real when he’s human but the myth is easier to blame for the down fall and disease of modern man and what’s so modern about mass ****** isn’t that the commonality running through all of our history what have we done to earn the crown of most intelligent as we destroy the only planet we have to call a home it seems to me we are all addicts of complicity and stupidity and what are the wealthy going to do with all their profit when we have buried the last of our humanity and its **** **** **** for the spoon and needle and bottle of pills for cheap thrills and we got nothing to lose by using our last few moments making sure if were going to die from our addictions we’re taking them on our last ride there’s no cure for the living that live each day as they already dead walking in circles of relapsing rehabilitation of refillable suicidal thoughts all in a single pill all in a single pill all in a single pill to cure everything but the addiction

If we’re honest with ourselves we all have more than enough love to share with those who don’t get enough and the tragedy is that too many of us aren’t aware of just how much beauty we are capable of / we all got magic flowing just under the skin of our fingertips but we’re too scared to touch and be touched / how far apart do we have to get before we realize no matter the distance we create between us we are all still the same / no matter who we pray to or the skin we live in or the place our mothers give birth or where our fathers teach us how to sink or swim / we’re all just trying to get by learning the curves of the laws of survival when the law man and lawyers and judges aren’t playing fair / and the boss man tells us to be grateful for paying us a minimum wage while cutting every corner he can think of to cut pennies that add up to dollars off our paychecks / then jacking up the cost of living with inflation every time he takes another vacation and he’s always off on an island where he’s hiding all his excessive cash so he won’t have to pay any kind of tax / the government has become a soulless corporation killing off what little there is left of the dream and there’s no justice that can’t be bought off with a blindfold full of cash / they say they will let it trickle down but fail to mention the only thing they let go of is poison for the poor that profits the rich/ then they grind down the middle class over the bones of those even lower who are working two to three jobs just so they don’t starve or end up on the streets with the more unfortunate who aren’t getting any of the help they need but somehow are being blamed for their situation with out anyone stopping  to listen to their story / sometimes I just can’t take it as I try to figure out how we allowed all of this to happen in the first place / how did we become so cruel to allow laws to be passed to punish anyone that tries to feed the hungry / how is it wrong to do what is right / I try to breath and think of what can I do to help when I’m living paycheck to paycheck and I got a growing mouth to feed / I want to find someway to live more selfless and try to be more aware but it’s getting hard to look in the mirror because I haven’t lived up to my potential and if I’m completely honest I would have to say I’m afraid of feeling any deeper by being touched by all of the worlds problems because it seems too much to bare / if I don’t make a joke soon I might start crying and never be able to stop / but I cant find anything funny as the world is being split apart by hatred and apathy and greed and violence is spilling from the streets into the school yard / how many more children have to be buried before we do something about the bullets tearing the future of their innocence’s to shreds / you can give your thoughts but without any action they are as useless as your prayers / if we don’t do something soon it will just become part of casual conversion over dinner of who died today and who passed their math quiz / what good is any kind of education to the dead / isn’t that part of the problem our broken schools that teach nothing but the minimum of how to survive by preparing youth for nothing but the skills to work a 9 to 5 / I forgot to make a joke to stop myself from crying and now I might be drowning but I’m trying to float on a thimble full of hope / tell me what good is the love in our hearts when all we do is waste it by taking shallow breaths even though we have more than enough to share

When I say I love you what I mean is
I love you in a way that means
here is my love
take as much or as little as you need

whenever you need it
whenever you need it

and here this is my heart
but it is more than that now
it is yours now too

you can hold it in your hands
you can feed it to yours
you can hang it in the sky
you can put it on a shelf  
        and let it gather dust
you can press it between
           the pages of a book
you can stomp on it
you can break it
you can toss it away
      and laugh if you want

it’s ok
  it’s yours
it’s ok
  it’s yours

because I love you
and what I mean is that
when you need comfort
I will give you whatever
   comfort I can
when you feel ill or sick
I will take care of you
in whatever way you need
when you need someone
   to make you smile
I want to to do my best
   to give you a reason to smile
and when you don’t feel like smiling
I want to understand
    and weather the storm with you

when you are cold
I want to be warmth
when you are hunger
I want to be food
when you are lost
I want to be the road home

because when I say I love you
I love you doesn’t mean
I need you to be mine
and I need to be yours

it means here you made this
you gave me this feeling
and it is beautiful
and I am in your debt
and I give it back to you
not expecting
or needing anything in return

I am here
even if here isn’t by your side
you don’t need to love me back
the same way I love you

and if here isn’t a place
you want me to be
I will go wherever
you want me to go
if its hell
I will go to hell for you

and still if you need a little
or all or none of my love
it’s yours

take whatever you need
whenever you need it

it’s yours
   it’s yours

I mean I want you in a way
that means I want everything

I want to devour you
until I become you
I want to savor
every sweet and bitter
and light and dark
part of you
until I know every secret
you would share with me

I dont want to rush into you
I want to take it slow and easy
I want to spend an eternity
exploring and discovering
all the curves and mounds
of skin and muscle and bone

I want to learn every word
of every hope
and wish
and prayer
you carry in your blood by heart

I want to know every song
that makes you smile
every poem that makes you weep
every book that has changed you

I want to know all of the history
that made you who you are today
and all the dreams and hopes
of who you want to be tomorrow

I want to be part of the kiss
that makes your heart supernova
and then be pulled into the gravity
of the center of darkness left behind
and then relight the fires
of your still warm heart
and watch it grow
and burn brighter
and bigger than before

I want to be part of the journey
you are on to a better self
and learn how to become
a better me as I travel by your side

I want to be devoured
by your eyes
and let you split open my gut
and let all my lies
and truths spill out
leaving nothing hidden

I want to show you every thing
I have carried in my heart
I want you to know every scar
and broken piece of it  
I want to learn and teach you
the name of every star in the sky

I want to read you every poem
that has made me feel
there must be something more
to inhaling and exhaling
than just living and dying

I want to cry in front of you
as I read the favorite part
of my favorite book

I want you to know more about me
than I know about myself

I want to give you the map
and the key
and the bed
of my heart and my soul

I want to be everything you need
whenever you need it
I want you to know
how horribly and painfully
shy I am
and that for you
I want to be brave
I am willing to be brave
and I have never
been able to be brave before

I am willing to break for you
I am willing to cry over you
I am ready to stop hiding from
and neglecting my feelings of love

I am willing to give it away
and risk not getting it back

because when I say I want you
I mean I love you
and when I say I love you
I mean I want to give you
all of my life

whatever I have left
in my heart

I want to spend it on you

and if you don’t want me

thats okay
you’ve already given me more
than I ever would have asked for
and more than i ever
would have deserved

how do we become so alone

so distant

that we only appreciate love
as a tragedy in a play
a death in a poem
the ghost of a lover

who stole

then betrayed our heart

and even through the pain
of their crimes against us
we still miss their lips
and their breath
and their lies of love

what is so warm
about the comfort of solitude
that we forget
how to feel lonely

in our bones
in our blood
in our hearts

that we no longer lust
for companions
for friends
for any kind of desperation

were has the misery gone
were did we misplace
the fire and the rage
the want of need
the need to be needed

how far can we go
how much distance will it take
until we remember
that love is more

than tragedy and death
more than a tool
of the playwright
and metaphor for the poet

that it is not only the memory
of ghosts who no longer
need our needing

that we need not be so alone

so distance from love
that we forgot to feel lonely

in our bones
in our blood
in our hearts

and if nothing else
we can always be
alone together
so we never forget
to appreciate
the beauty of love

I reluctantly went to sleep around 3:30 am/not because I was tired/because I am always tired/but there wasn’t really anything else to do/and I shouldn’t call it going to sleep/when it is napping a few hours at a time/as my body tosses and turns/and my eyes are constantly opening and closing throughout the night/before my chattering mind or ghost of a mind decides that sleeping isn’t an option/and now it is three minutes past seven a.m./and I am up and exhausted/but that is the chapter my life has been stuck on repeat for the last decade plus/but it’s ok because I fake brave and try to wear a kind smile/but every now and then someone tells me I always look angry/and I try to explain that this is the only face I have/but the only expression I can make is the sound of shy silence/so the story of how I use to always smile as a child goes unheard/and only I know always smiling for me ended one day in the sixth grade/when while walking home from school a girl asked why was I smiling all the time/in a voice that let me know always smiling wasn’t something that was ok/and speaking of my younger self he was a strange and slightly paranoid kid/I remember him thinking in kindergarten  at recess that he didn’t feel completely “boy’ish”/because he was unusually shorter than the other kids his age/and his little mind inside his tiny body/went to thinking of why this was/and he came up with the theory that if you were born a boy or a girl/was decided by if your heartbeat was pushing blood out or taking blood in/and that he must have been born in between the two
/so he wasn’t really a boy or a girl/but just a human with a wee-wee/around this same age/this little dickens of a child/also figured out that we never died/that we just grew so old that we would start to shrink back into our baby bodies again/and once we shrank far enough down/we would start to grow old all over/he also once believed that bad people and bad things only happened on tv and in books/because he often heard a song on the radio that said something like/“there are no good guys there are no bad guys”/and he edited out the no good guys part/and only paid attention to the no bad guys part/so he believed that there were no bad guys up until the one day/both the television and the radio/wouldn’t stop talking about one guy that was clearly real/and clearly bad/going around to random houses in the night/and killing the families inside/and he turned his eyes up towards the moon/because the moon had a magic and  mystery to him/and he thought to the moon/but “there are no bad guys?” and the moon just floated in the cold night air/and said nothing back/and he realized that songs don’t tell the truth/and he shrugged his little shoulders and buried the first part of his innocence/and he grew up thinking he would always be a kid/feeling every school year was an infinite loop being lived over and over again/and that he would never be an adult and get to do adult things/not really liking this idea until he was an adult/and then desperately wishing it had been true/because as an adult he began to accept that maybe he was a boy/and the whole heartbeat theory was just a strange thought/of a strange kid/but that thought was often replaced by a feeling of not being human/because he still didn’t feel he fit in/and he knew he sure as hell wasn’t going to grow into a man of manly manliness/because that just seemed an absurd thing to do/and he definitely didn’t want to ever be an adult in a three piece business suit/working a business job with briefcases and power ties/that looked more like nooses to him/and what a horrible waste of life it was/to chase after a big bank account overflowing with money/with hearts bankrupt of any kind of love/and that was how the strange little kid who grew up to an awkward young adult saw the world/and he didn’t like it/and he didn’t want to be here/and he was the essence of a good guy/he didn’t drink/he didn’t smoke/he was a little nerdy/no/really nerdy/and he read comics and drew pictures/and started to write poetry/and hadn’t kissed a girl yet/because he somehow missed the class on how to talk to girls throughout his entire childhood/and he fell in love for the first time at eighteen/and wrote his first love poem/and gave it to the girl/and they became good friends/but never girlfriend boyfriend good friends/and they never kissed/and it broke his heart/and life went on/and he moved to New York for a short while/and had his first glass of wine on Halloween/while walking through Manhattan/and he liked this new feeling/and he drank a little more and a little more/and he meet a French girl/that read him French poetry/in French one night/and he thought maybe this was love/but he was still young and naive/and they became good friends/and on his last night in New York/they kissed and it felt good/really good/and he was happy for a moment/but still naive/and when she asked him to come back to her place/he didn’t realize why she would ask him that/because his flight left early in the morning/and it seemed a silly thing to ask/so he ended up flying back home/not knowing he had almost lost his virginity to a beautiful French girl/that was a good kisser/a really good kisser/and life went on/and so did his drinking/and being naked from the waist down after a night of heavy drinking on his twenty-first birthday/he thought it was a good idea to hang that lower half out the car window while being driven down the 101/and he probably would have fell out/but luckily he was pulled back in/and lived to see many other birthdays to celebrate in excessive amounts of alcohol and awkwardness/and he eventually did lose his virginity/at surprise surprise a Halloween party/on the bathroom floor of his best friends condo sitting beach side in Ventura/and they even cuddled all night while sleeping on the couch/and they held hands the entire morning on the way to breakfast/and all through eating breakfast/and the whole drive to her house as their mutual friends dropped her off/and it might have turned into a loving beautiful relationship/except even after this attractive young woman had put his **** in both her mouth and between her legs/and held his hand the entire morning and as much as he tried/and wanted to he couldn’t talk much/and never told her she was his first/that she had taken away that painful embarrassing virginity from him/and that he wanted to see her again/and that he really liked her/and could he call her and.../well none of it happened because he didn’t ask for her number/or tell her anything except for a weak and almost unheard goodbye/and life went on and the drinking went on
/and the awkwardness went on/and luckily or unluckily/the drinking helped with the luck/and he fell in love/and he fell in love again/and again/but he never got past being the strange kid who was horribly shy/even after falling in love and even after *******/and being so intensely shy without having an explanation/or the ability to express that he was so horribly shy/didn’t lead to lasting relationships/and even with the girl he spent five of the best and most beautiful and loving years of his life with/he failed too often at making her feel beautiful and wanted and hot/because he still couldn’t make the first move or even the second move/and eventually it made her feel unloved and unattractive and she left him/and rightfully so because why was he still so shy/how did that make sense/and now he is me and I’m older and known the wiser/still shy/still stupid/and life goes on/though with less drinking/no idea what to do when pulled into the gravity of falling/I could sleep on it/maybe think it all through/ and figure it out/but oh/thats right/I’ve forgotten how to sleep.../alone is nice though/comfortable/quite/and I am the master of quite

A hammer is useless
without a hand full of nails
except for some kind of ******

speaking of which
isn’t your ego overdue
for its crucification
to absolve you
of all your flagrant
self inflected sins

and not to bash on your intellect
because I know
there isn’t much of it left
as almost all of it
has been spent
on the overindulgence
of your self gratification  

you can pound it out
night after night
pretending that you love
everything there is about Jesus
with your hands
clasped in prayers
while making fists full of hate
believing you got a key
to the golden gates

while all you do
with your hammer
is **** any idea
that doesn’t align with your own
your heart is beating
for the only love you know
and that is your love for hate

believe what you want to believe
but even with  a hand full of nails
all you can do is ****** yourself
as some kind of idiot martyr

We once burned witches...

No.

We burned people who were accused
of being witches or practicing witchcraft...

never proven but still burned....

burned alive...

wether or not they were witches
will remain unknown
and why should it
have mattered if they were,
what excuse was that to have
behaved so maliciously hateful and cruel

I will tell you this though
if I had been a witch
or knew any kind of witchcraft
the first thing i would have done

is work out a fire proof charm
perfected an unburnable spell
an I can walk through the fire
and feel a hell of a lot better
after doing so spell
a my blood and bones
burn hotter than the sun spell
a you better get that
little matchstick outta my face spell
before I show you how to burn
THE REAL MONSTERS here spell

the monsters with the lust
to watch flesh turn
to cinder and ash monsters
the monsters who feared
the unordinary who showed
any kind of extraordinary monsters
the monsters of the masses
with crosses that burned
like torches monsters
the monsters who screamed ******
in the name of....

monsters

the monsters who could not see
their own reflection
for the hideous creatures
they were monsters

the same monsters that still live today
on this side of the looking glasses
under our thin skinned social structure

still burning witches

subtly now

with words of disdain
full of pernicious intentions
towards the lost and the lonely

with the cold staring eyes of indifference
and hearts without an once of compassion
towards the homeless and hungry

with the revulsion and abhorrence
towards those who love
the ones they love

the witches being any unordinary
that show any kind of extraordinary
still being feared for their difference
still being hated
reduced to nothing but
pill size suicides
red ribboned wrists
rope neck ties
for feeling too much
pushing too far
flying too high
dancing in cinder to ash
being burned
burned for being alive

She lives in his heartbeat
nourishing his blood
feeding it
keeping it warm
comforting it
walking through its halls
and chambers
telling it fables
only the stars
of the night sky know
in a language only the roots
of eternities flowers understand
keeping it safe
in the hours of sleep
holding it close and tight
through its moment of dreams
snuggling deep in its blanket
after a long
and well earned yawn
she closes her eyes and sleeps
then he walks through her heartbeat
and tends to her dreams
and nourishes her blood
bringing with him fairy tales
of warmth and comfort
anxious to yawn
and rest in her chambers
snuggled deep in her blankets
ready to dream of her
dreaming of him
dreaming of her
walking hand in hand
through the fields of forever
tending the flowers
found in the palms of eternity

Love...

if we are lucky...

is and will be
the only real reason we are here
and we will find
at the end of our lives
that it is not some judge mental deity
with a check list
of the names we prayed to
and the things we prayed for

but only love to greet us
and accept us for who we were
with all our human faults
and forgive us for
the way we ignored love
in order to allow ourselves
to be so cruel to one another

that to a miserable extent
we completely misunderstood love
what it meant
how to use love
how to share love
how to receive love

that too many of us
could not recognize
when someone loved us
or when we loved someone

that if someone
didn’t want to **** us
or we didn’t want
to **** someone
it wasn’t love that we felt
that we couldn’t
just love each other
to love each other
and nothing else

that we didn’t realize
how much easier
and beautiful life
would have been
if we had done so

that we couldn’t tell the difference
between emotional grace
and physical desires

or worse

when we knew the difference
but just didn’t care
and used love as an excuse
to get what we wanted

some of us will have been lucky
and knowing and not knowing
will have got love right
at some point
for some time in our lives

and we got to spend part of our lives
loving someone so intensely
that ******* them
was more than a physical act
that we got to breath and dance
while sleeping in someone else’s heart
and they breathed and danced
while sleeping in ours

that we knew and experienced love
for all the beauty it had to offer
in the short time we were alive
that we treated love well
and meet and lived with it
without needing to wait till our ends
to have death introduce us

so that in the end
we will just smile
as we know we are
just meeting an old friend

it is in the language
of the stars
and the secrets
of the leafs
it is the smile
and laughter of children

it is a tear blooming
into an ocean
it is the lost sands
stranded on the shores
that time has forgotten
it is the infinte sorry
only eternity can hold

it is a blanket of forgiveness
warming the beds of sin
it is the lips
and the color
of a first kiss
it is the serenity
of a dying breath

it is the birth and life
and beauty of love
it is loves lust
and desires prayers

it is yesterday's tomorrow
and todays yesterdary
it is the here
and the now

it is the air in our lungs
and the song of our hearts
it is the blood and marrow
of our souls

poetry is in everything
and everything is poetry

poetry holds onto
what death takes away
so we will know
that no matter how long we live

life

is always
too short

so always remember
do not squander this gift away
this may be
your once in a lifetime life
this could be the only
heaven you walk through
the only hell you suffer in


poetry does not lie

so in no circumstance


ever


lie to poetry

poets however will lie
almost always
except for the ones who don't  
they always tell the truth
the devil cheats at dice
and every other game he plays
and even angels can decive
be careful in who you belive

always be kind
hug daily and often
love who you love
no matter the odds
or situation
or how ridiculous
or improbable
or illogical it may seem

break the rules
when you must
trust your gut
and belive in your heart

it may not work out in your favor
it may break you
and if it does
it will feel terribly unbearable
but you will get through it

eventually

it will not always seem fair
it will not always feel good
but in the end

love

is what will make it
look beautiful
when you take
your last look back
at the life
that no matter how long it was
will have been too short

I am so tired
that I can’t sleep
I am so exhausted
that my eyes
wont stay closed

I am ridiculously sure
that I am not human
not to say
I know the mothership is coming
I don’t know that

Truthfully
I don’t know much of anything

I am a child
in an aging mans body
which
I am pretty sure
has a lesbian living
underneath its skin

which probably doesn’t make sense
to you when you hear me say it
but nothing inside my head
makes sense to me
so why should you
have the luxury to understand
anything I might say

but it is to say
I will never be a manly man
or see or understand
that way of thinking

that macho drink and ****
as much and as many
people as you can in life

dont get me wrong

I love everything there is to
love about women
which is just everything
their great

well...

most of them at least
or maybe just some of them
I mean that they are no different
in the way we are all the same
we are all
just people
some are great
and a treasure to have in our lives

and others...

not so much

and I have done more
than my fair share
of drinking

A lot more...
enough to never have
to drink again
but I probably will anyway
not so much now though

and, well... yea...
I've liked
the ******* parts too

most of the time

its just that I like

the love

part of *******
more than the
bim-bam-boom ahhhhhhh
I’m sooooo sorry part
that never but sometimes
and almost  always
happens part of *******

that awkward moment when
oh **** my ****
throw up on you moment
it always gets nervous
around pretty girls moment
that I don’t know what to say moment

that...

d’oh!... moment

but I do know
I’m not suppose to say
thank you...
moment

even though once you’ve gone
I will get down on my hands
and my knees
and thank every name
of every god I have ever heard of
for that painfully beautifully
awkward moment
I was lucky enough to spend with you

I guess I’m just a little too quite
a little too shy
a little too nice, maybe

a lot too sensitive

emotionally speaking

in that sense that everything hurts
and everything is beautiful
and the world is ****
but still there must be something
here worth living for

someone who will cringe
and roll there eyes
every time I write
and read another garbage poem to

someone who will love me regardless
no matter how bad things get
no matter how broken my heart is
no matter how horrible
I may look when I die

someone who I will love
as much as I loved
to hate everything about life

Oh, I hates it soooooo much

someone who made
every miserable moment here
worth  the madness of it all

Your heart is a vast ocean
of enormous and unknown depth
and I have heard the calm
comforting whispers of the waves
and the siren songs
of the mermaids hidden
below the surface
and there is a sky as long
and infinite as the night
bordering its every soft edge

I cannot remember falling
or diving in
but I find myself sinking
and drowning in its delicate warmth
and it isn’t that I have forgotten
how to swim
or that I am too tired
to stay afloat
but it is here in these waters
that drowning makes me feel
more alive than I ever
would have imagined possible before

it is a comfortable fear
a quite trembling of of nerves
a temptation to abandon
the peace of solitude
and the longing desperation

here is where I can die
exhaling my last breath
knowing that all I lived through
and for
was worth it in the end
that the brief moment
my life stretched itself
over the long horizon of eternity
I had truly found something
that made everything in life
more beautiful than love

Some tears have
their own heartbeats

their own pulse

and they stain our souls
with the beauty
that is only felt when touched
by the truth of eternal love

I shed those tears
every time I gaze up
at the infinite night sky
and hear every single star
sing your name

I start to write into a
puddle of metaphors
meant to be a love poem
and as I write down
the word love
for the thousandth
of the thousandth time

I accidentally misspell it...

...with the letters
of your name...

and I know visually
that it looks wrong on paper
but when I hear it in my head
it sounds right
and now I can’t quite remember
any other way to spell it

and thats not really the worst of it
because I’m really just rewriting
the same poem over and over again
somehow hoping that rearranging
the letters and the words
will somehow align the stars in heaven
causing my heartbeat to sync with yours
and somehow you will just know how I feel
and I won’t have to stutter
and stammer and choke on the words

because every time
you’re are sitting across from me
or standing anywhere near me
or being anywhere out there
in the world breathing
while just being you
causes my mouth and my hands
and my body
and the whole world around me
to tremble
as I begin
to feel so dangerously close
to not feeling so alone

and alone is a thing
I have grown to be
incredibly comfortably with
alone is a safe heaven
of quite and peaceful solitude
where pain is a thing
easily stitched away
inside secret pockets
of regret
that nobody knows about

alone is something that has
become the best friend
my heart has ever known
a secret companion
no one can steal away from me
the person that knows everything
about me that is too embarrassing
or strange
or heartbreaking to talk about

it knows things that
I don’t even know about myself

I am sure that I am
about to be swallowed
by some armageddon level event
and be forgotten by history
because this isn’t the kind of story
that i get to be a part of
except for the character
that no one notices
so there is no need to remember
who I was
or how when I thought
I misspelled the word love
with the letters of your name
was the first
and only  time
I ever actually got it right

The fresh new day
of school has come
and for some children
in the days ahead
oh what fun


until...

BANG!BANG!

Your kid is dead
oh why oh why
didn’t we listen
to the dead

why oh why
didn’t we do anything
but think and pray

oh how oh how
didn’t this problem
go away

no more bobby
no more sue
as we throw our hands
in the air again
pretending there is nothing
we can do

but hope and hope
it doesn’t happen
at our kids school

BANG!BANG!

money beats on its drum
while the greedy dance
on the graves
of the futures
they stole away

politicians giving
hollow speeches
while shaking hands
with morticians
who give the dead ones
a pretty smile
and dress them
in their dead days best

and cheat the live ones
of a good education
one plus one is two
and if you
make enough money
you can get away
with ****** too

BANG!BANG!

we watch in
horror and disbelief
at parents stricken
down with grief
because their child’s heart
no longer beats

we just cant believe
its true
surely this didn’t happen

again

at a school

No, no...

I could have sworn
just the other day
I heard my neighbors say
these can of things
DON’T
happen here

my neighbors over there
standing above the grave
of their child
they never imagined
would die this way

BANG!BANG!

the time has come
to teach ourselves
a better solution
than the letting
those with money
control the violence
of the gun

I looked up from my sketch pad
and for a brief moment
saw how beautifully perfect
life can be

and isn’t that all we have

just moments

and in that moment
I found that every now and then
life can be something
even more beautiful than love

What if we are nothing more
than the delirium of a dream
some figment of undigested madness
in the bowels of a god
dying from starvation
in the belly of a worm
as it writhes from dehydration
baking helplessly in the sun

so dangerously close to oblivion
yet so obliviously unaware
sleeping through our lives
to avoid the pain of the disappointment
of not living out our dreams

and what if it is so easy
as opening our eyes
to see what it is
that we could be
if we dared ourselves
to step beyond our potential
and reach past
what we thought
was beyond our reach

What if?

What if we could become
something more beautiful than love

The truth is, I probably love you...
and what i mean by that is...
I love you...
and that is to say I have loved you
since I first heard your voice
and lifted my head
and saw you walking away

that may seem odd
or improbable or impossible
but I recognized that feeling instantly
and though it was odd
and improbable and impossible
it dug its way straight into my heart
and it made it self comfortable
and stretched out and stayed there

though it was sometime
before I saw you again
and then even longer
before I ever heard your name
and much longer before I sat
at the same table as you sipping coffee
and all that was a long time ago I know
but it feels as if it all may have
just happened around the corner
five seconds ago

I may be rambling
because I really don’t know
how to talk about these things
and I am not really that good
at talking in general
and its even worse when its
with a living person
that I know I love
but have failed to mention
that fact
to that person

and the best option
always seems to me
is to pack my bags
and move to the other side
of the world
and never talk to that person again

because wouldn’t that be easier
than rejection
or worse...
acceptance
because acceptance
can often lead to failure
and if I check my track record
that is exactly where it has lead
ever time so far

also in the side notes
it mentions that
i am i hopeless romantic
so the fact that I seem hopeful
every time I hear your voice
and every time i see you
just seems to point to that cliff
were I always find myself
tumbling head over heels
and down into the shards
of stuttering bad poetry
and pillow cases filled with bricks
made out of tears
carved out of the infinite ocean
of my own stupidity

and that seems to be my life so far
something to laugh at
that isn’t funny
but thats ok
because it’s more of a nervous laugh

so the truth is, I probably love you...
and what i mean by that is...
I love you...
and that is to say
I will most likely drown
in my own stupidity
before you ever know

We waste our lives
chasing some false ideology
of what it means to be beautiful
dressing ourselves up
in the latest paper doll clichés
of magazine quotes
of how to look like a “10”

hoping to see something
other than our own reflection
in the mirror
hoping that a layer
of white washed lies
and vibrant coats painted
over fabricated truths

will somehow make us feel...
how do they say it
on the West Side?  
“I feel pretty and witty and...”
isn’t it somewhere around here
that the truth gets lost
where we allow the definition of beauty
to get painfully distorted

that we hand over our paychecks
and self-esteem
for the latest cure and concealer
to that ugly feeling
we get when we are left by ourselves
to face the doubts of our truths

and what is that truth?  

how was beauty defined
before we had a vocabulary of deception
before we danced to radio jingles
and sang along with our self doubts
what did beauty look like
when it was out there
alone in the dark
what was it that was beautiful
before we opened our eyes...

what was beautiful then
is still the same
as what is beautiful now...

and it is nothing we can define
with our words
or our books
or the noises we make when we speak
it is nothing we can see
with our eyes

it is as simple
as it is easy

it is there inside all of us
beneath our clothes
and inside our skin
and protected by our bones
and our marrow

living and blooming
every time we exhale
and every time we inhale

the truth of what it means
to be beautiful

is in just

being

and this truth is sung  
with every beat of our hearts

My heart could not beat without his
so small
so delicate
in a world of its own

I have known grief and tragedy
heartache and lost
the blue loneliness of depression
as cold and dark as an empty sea

I have known love
in many different faces
in many different ways
I have walked through
its endless fields
of flowers burning
in the palms of eternity

but this love
in his heart

it is born from legends
of fairy tales forgotten
prayers from old gods
whose name we never knew
the magic and wonder
that is only found
in the heart of children

all children

and how blessed are we
to know their smiles
and to hear their laughter
to be touched by
their infinite wisdom

so simple
so true
so beautiful

how is it that we have forgotten
we too were once children
how did we lose our way
where in our education
were we taught the things
that stripped us
of our own magic and wonder

and will we be foolish enough
to hand this same education
down to our children too

hope

at times is a heavy burden
a burden we must not drop
a burden we must carry
for our children sit atop this hope
they play and laugh
and imagine
within this hope
they carry and protect
the love of wonder and magic

here in this hope
is their better tomorrow
their better world

I squeeze him a little tighter
and a little longer
hoping he will manage
to hold onto his childish wisdom
despite his education

and I feel his little heart
echo against mine

so small
so delicate
building a world of its own

I wish I had more time
as I can feel autumn
blooming in my bones
and the winter of my death
glimmers  in some star
waiting to fall from the sky

maybe decades away
maybe days
maybe hours
maybe already on it’s decent

no morning I wake
is guaranteed to sail
into a night of sleep

I have not much in my pockets
other than a poor mans fortune
of coins and lent and memories

memories

what treasure is to be found
in my heart full of nostalgia
for names of ghosts
of loves found and lost
and hands once held
that now haunt my palms

is there some strange beauty
to this life
I haven’t seemed to get right
other than in the small moments
that felt like eternity
passing from my lips to hers

then from hers back to mine

has it been
one too many names
or one too few

I...

I have been lucky in this life
to have known the face of love
in more hearts
than anyone deserves
in one lifetime

and what of the agony
it would leave behind
what of the desperate aches
that would echo
in my empty heartbeat

those long nights of crying
over forevers grave
how many lonely tears
have I buried

has it all been a fairy tale
wrapped in the blanket
of a nightmare
of badly ever after

and if I had the choice
would I read it again?

Yes

over and over

these memories
this foolish heart
full of nostalgia
with all its scars
and broken pieces

is a mountain full of gold
burning with the bright fire
of a dragons breath
and raging with the blood
of a king gone mad

and yet still
I wish I had more time

if not for the autumn
in my bones
and the winter of my death

waiting to fall

maybe decades away
maybe days
maybe hours
maybe already on it’s decent

Your name is a sharp thing on their tongue
and they always mispronounce it
and it always has an odd way
of sounding like boy
as it leaves their mouth

they are still spitting the last syllables out
and already their teeth
are full with your ******
and their eyes can’t see
anything wrong here being done

now that you aren’t breathing anymore

and your fifteen minutes of fame
have stretched out
to a twenty minute story
on sixty minutes

if you weren’t already boxed
in oak and velvet
and buried under the ground
maybe you could have enjoyed
the lime light of it all

but there is no joy
surrounding your name today
but thanks to the alchemist
who turned the pound sign
into a hashtag
you’re part of the movement now

hashtag slogan

hashtag your name

hashtag another body breathing
at the wrong time
in front of the wrong fear
being pierced by an old hate
bullet after bullet after bullet
till it isn’t breathing anymore

hashtag slogan

hashtag your name

maybe I already forgot your name
maybe I’m guilty of mispronouncing it too
maybe I’m just too tired to say it
tired of being tired all the time
tired of watching things get worse
tired of knowing we could be better
tired of knowing we should be better

tired of the painful burden of hope
as someone else’s name
falls in line
and becomes part of the movement

hashtag slogan

hashtag your name

i don’t know what comes next
or where you might be

I hope wherever it is
It’s somewhere better than here

Somewhere better than us

Mary made a monster
mankind made a bomb

it’s all a fairytale gone wrong
we took the make believe
and made the horror real

history learned nothing
from all of that destruction
who forgot to read the book
that taught us our place
was not to play
the part of god

Mary made a monster
mankind made a bomb

the blood keeps spilling
as we still haven’t learned
that peace can’t be kept
by the threat and poor wisdom
of an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth

who can we pray to
and beg for forgiveness
for the hell we create
when by this point
we’re past knowing better

Mary made a monster
mankind made a bomb

we’re still not the wiser
as we repeat and repent
all of our sins
as again and again
we dress for the part
of playing god

and as the book ends
may the monster forgive us
for all the things
we have done

Silence is the song
of all that is beautiful
beyond the need of words

it is the light of knowing
the color of your heartbeat
in the dark of a soundless room

its the feel of everything untouchable
pouring over the song playing
in our bones

its the unwritten parts
of the fairytale
that gives away the secret
of knowing
when love is real

Beauty is not seen with our eyes
it is only felt with our hearts
and the truth of love
is the only beauty
we need find in this life