I have nothing I want. But somehow I have everything I want.
I didn't get the girl. I didn't get the part.
It eats me up inside that she ignores me. It levels me that I wasn't good enough.
She's beautiful and it hurts, and sometimes I can't help but remember her tenderness, her hand on my cheek, her smile warming the world, her soft lips,
And her ****** promises that I believed.
Belief is terribly dangerous, and terribly traumatic, even if it only happens for the barest of seconds.
I'd cry about it, but I'm terrible at crying- nothing comes out even when I try.
But...there's this other girl.
I haven't known her long, either,
But the other night we were curled up in bed and suddenly
I started crying,
And I didn't know why but I couldn't stop.
I cried for everything I have lost, and everything I know I am losing.
I can't remember the last time I couldn't stop myself from showing an emotion, and I was truly terrified.
I think it was her hands on me. Her arms around me. Her understanding eyes.
I felt safe to and...
I just broke, and the tears poured out, because I've failed
And it hurts
And it's hurt for years,
And I keep failing,
And I think the reason I fail is that I try so hard, but I try in fear that I will fail for lack of trying.
And she just accepted it all and told me it was alright.
I didn't see the fear in her eyes, I didn't see the need to run from my need.
I saw only the same empathetic, frank calm I know shows in my eyes when I see somebody cry, because I love their truth and I want to know it.
I think that is why it took a very long time for me to regain control of myself.
Even though I've lost,
Even though I am not good enough for the people who decide who sings and who doesn't,
Or the girl who kissed me and then chose to walk away with my heart,
Or frankly, most of the world,
Who would shame me for the shameless way I am forced into love and my inability to shut up about it,
Even though I will keep on failing because I am too scared of regret to try any less than my hardest-
A trying that scares people and loses me things-
Even though, ALL of that... I am good enough for this girl.
That's the thing, see. I have nothing I want.
But when I'm with her I don't care that I have nothing I want.
I don't need it when she's there.
I don't need it all for a while, and I can BREATHE,
And I've never had that.
It's a different love than I've ever experienced. I've never loved someone in a way that hasn't ****** me dry and left me empty.
Sad, but true.
Sometimes I am loved in return for my love, but always it takes from me,
Always
It requires a sacrifice in blood.
This, with her, whatever it is,
It asks nothing.
What it takes is offered, what it gives is wanted,
It is an easy thing.
For 18 years I've needed comfort, and I remember getting it once, ever, before I met this girl.
And now whenever I am brittle and close to despair, I can last until I can see her,
And somehow the pressure lessens when I do.
So, despite all the failures I see coming,
All the falls and the bruises and the crushing disappointments that, let's face it, I set myself up for
By being a patron of a brutal kind of love,
I have discovered that there is a balm, a comfort,
Someone who will give what I need and want what I offer.
And that is, honestly, probably the only reason that I don't feel broken, even after all the things in these past weeks that would have broken me before.
So yeah, it's true.
I have nothing I want.
But I have everything I need,
Everything I always dreamed I'd have but never came close to finding.
Funny, how I always seem to be in the in between. I'm forever in the halfway, if I am happy.
But this is different, still. This is new.
Because when I am with her and I think of all that I've lost and all that I know I am losing by the second,
I can't feel the hurt that comes with it.
It's distant. It's a fact, but it doesn't... MATTER.
And I have never met anybody who can heal me like that,
Ever. And I think she knows that.
And I am honestly excited and inspired to find ways to thank her and give to her.
And for once, I am allowed to be, because I know she will not reject what I give.

I wrote
I wrote
poems of disgust
poems of love
poems of criticism
Has it ever occurred to me
that my words were more than words
that my thoughts were more than thoughts
I see,
a poem works better when you're really confused
writing it.
And this probably why
I'm trying to write the confusion out
Words are being told and written
Tomorrow
words written on a piece of paper
may perhaps, mould my destiny
And I'm more confused than ever
the day before
On whether this is the start
or this is the end
Why the sonnet?
the villanelle?
the ballad?
why, oh why
Some reason why
I saw poets drafting poems
5 drafts before a poem
and I don't why
Simply because am I not writing a poem?
that many people put pens onto their heads
and scratch their chins
Is it not a poem enough that I'm writing this?
Or filled with secrets should it be?
A need for a title?
A space for a little flight off to another world?
Where Time starts with a capital T?
And perhaps, Death too?
Is it not a poem enough that I'm writing this?
Repetition after repetition
Theme
Structure
why the need
if you dare to speak out through your words on paper?

Empty asphalt parking meter,
Suburban drop out,
Accidental, half baked,
She-really-didn't-mean-to-
Love story of the empty
Alleyways and crowded
Cross streets, full of sober promises
And five day old
Chewing gum
Wadded up and discarded
On the faded, cement floor.
Blood pulsating
Through fifteen dollar
Cheap leather combat boots.
The almost cold, October air
Wheezes through halfway parted
Lips and abstract fleece jackets,
Stained by yesterday
And the subtle scent of pizza sauce
Evaporated grease and
Paper thin
Apologies.
Nothing grows here,
As worn out tires skid to a stop
In front of fluorescent bank signs,
Illuminating the way
To a safe ride home
Along with a three dollar waiting fee.
Heavy upon our translucent veins,
The world pushes down onto
Our vulnerable skin:
Hold your breath,
And one-two-three,
You won't even know what hit you.
Pulsating rhythms of life
Of something like Vicodin,
But with a stronger kick-
Bloodshot,
Our eyes dart back and
Forth, until eventually they lose track
Of everything alive enough to feel it.
Vibrant shades of yellow and red,
Lose their faces within
The fogged glass of the department store
Refrigerator. Who is there
To see the transparency of
The off-brand seven up
And diet doctor pepper?
Momma, I have shied away  
From life:
A coward too preoccupied with
Monday.
Death and damsels
Pull at my indifferent coat strings,
Until all I hear is the muffled sigh
Of yesterday
And that of the tomorrow
I will never see.
Oh, twisted fate,
Don't fail me now:
Palms up, I mindlessly surrender:
Who I was
For who I will never be,
Amen to amen,
Crammed up against the scratched,
Metal lining of a transit bus
Between the middle and end
Of a crowded route-
Nothing breathes here:
Hold your seconds until
Reality pushes up and
You can heave in the polluted
Scent of half past five
And missed doctor appointments.
Neck arched back,
Life flows down my esophagus
In the vessel
Of a Benadryl
And vitamin C. It's all the same
When you've bottled up your
Emotions, and sold them for
A pretty price
To anyone poor enough to buy
Them. Leaving you with a penchant
For emptiness, and a stomach full
Of vacant ambition
Sealed to the brim by an
Extended hand, not quite close enough
To feel it.
Bang, bang,
The sound of closure haunts my every move,
Driving me closer to my final hour
And away from the one before it.
I'm no longer with you:
Practiced, proposed, rehearsed and perfected.
Life after death is an encore-
A standing ovation,
So loud
That it drowns out reality.

summer mornings. sweat, sticky, salty.
licking cracked hangover lips, tasting juices
molded, squeezed, smashed.
fitting together like two folded puzzle pieces.
summer nights. bent over, kissing bruises, battle
cries.
fumbling and stumbling through sheets, thunder clouds,
vapors of ***. alone.
but alone with each other.

The scary thing about dating is that you want something so badly,
Then when you get it you're confused.
See you want forever but the thought of forever freaks you out.

You can imagine being married, spending time together but mostly you wonder what happens when it's over.
You can't think of starting over without them, of forgetting them,
Of learning to be yourself again without filling your hours with them.

We imagine a relationship as a fairytale thing where you are together, understand each other.
The kind of love you find exactly when you need it and it wraps around you like a blanket and keeps you content.  
Instead the right person could come at the wrong time and we question whether they are the one.
You question if the timing really is the problem or if something is wrong with you for looking a gift horse in the mouth.

You want to talk for hours and not get bored but instead you feel self conscious,
Like maybe you're not that interesting.
You want to be all over each other but instead you fight about everything.
You think it will be ok but it gets worse and scares you.
You wonder if you are wrong for
each other.

He said he would love you and wanted to have a future with you. But you felt smothered like maybe he wanted someone available and not who you were.

Your fear magnifies into paranoia. What if it isn't enough? This love you thought would carry you through everything and suddenly its a void.
You need him and you wonder if he would understand if you told him.

And you begin to think that maybe its you who is messed up. You want too much too soon, you're too afraid to be happy.

Maybe it's time to let go of all that and let him love you. You can't plan falling in love.

Cracks the water child
to run through heather, bracken wild and down the track ways to the chiming of the sea.
The tears of summer day , a lost one somewhere down the way of all the Autumns I have seen,
water wears it all way as if it never was a day, but I remember it that way ,as if the smack of water and its lips would leap before my eyes and spray me till I, the droplet on my sunken treasure of a cheek would sneak a smile,
from this point of unsung singing brook it took a while to shuffle down the catapult of greens and browns that swam like trout, but in the getting out of midstream, where I dreamt this was a great dream,
I meet,
The splitting of the rush strewn banks where swans are graceful. I again give thanks for what was such a summer day,
now gone.
Autumn will not last so long that winter will not knock and I,
the rock
which water has worn down,
erode and melt away.