Everything about me is unorganized and messy,
like your favorite pasta dish, or romance novel-
There are layers to who I have become
and even more layers to who I was.
I can't help all my poems sound the same,
or maybe that's a good thing
because when the pain drowns me
in the same mistakes I've made repeatedly
I remember that I am yin and I am yang
all in the same hand.
There is no sign on my star-crossed heart
that says I can't stay exactly the same
there is no roadmap inside my dark defeatist mind
that says I can't change who I am everyday.
So let me be dynamic-
and never the friction between your sheets
because I will never be static.
I am a stone wall with every sad thing you've ever witnessed.
I am a garden full with every joyful experience-
The pessimistic paradox and the optimistic oxymoron
is what I have become and I'm still comprehending how that can be.
I have yet to find myself fully, but I know who I am
these words become my compass
and I wish I could just go north
but this galaxy that is within
wants so much more-
I will discover myself again.

Some days I can't think straight,
these words in my mind twist and they turn
until I'm trying to discover the bottom line.
Some days I can't think straight
and some days I think too much-
the words I speak hang on the edge of my tongue
awaiting someone to understand the intensity
of this overwhelming desire to speak my secrets.
Would you listen?
Listen as I sing from the rooftops my tragedy
and mask the brick walls
with the graffiti of my cloak-and-dagger heart.
This isn't closure, it never was for me.
The nights I spent alone and sobbing
have taught me more things
than any amount of advice can.
I have yet to be silenced,
because these words I write
and these poems I seek out
are the undisclosed reason for being.
I may have wanted to die many times
but there's a reason none of my poems rhyme
and it's because there's no rhyme or no reason to them.
They are stream of conscious
they are hanging on every word
until I have no more left in my obsolete mind.
Please don't test me.
I will be fine-
because I always end up that way.
One Poem At A Time.

The darkness engulfs me and the pain ensues. I have felt the malevolence of larger hands wrapped around my throat. I have felt the arch of your back on top of me turn into something that reminds me of a cataclysmic time. My eyes go dark and nothing seems familiar anymore. The incessant reminder of what was is something I can't run away from. The depths of my mind go farther and more undiscovered than that of the ocean floor. But the waves keeps crashing and pulling me, turning me into a tsunami of these dark uncharted memories. The only thing that holds me back is the memory of being held down and stripped of any control I had over my life. I cannot help these hands I hold remind me of stone sometimes, I can no longer hide these broken parts of myself. Naivety was my biggest downfall at a young age and I couldn't stop the fact that something so sacred was ripped from my fingertips and thrown to the floor as I watched in despair, thinking this is how it was supposed to be. Now the fog has lifted from my mind and these eyes can see clearly once again. Some time after, I realized I would never trust another man. Not when that innocence I had left was turned into these nights I spend crying on the bathroom floor clenching a bottle of Vicodin ready to lift each and every pill to my lips... it will no longer control me like this. These hands will no longer feel the stings of deceit.  This broken heart is being rebuilt, one fragile piece at a time. My sexuality is not to be toyed with and although that part of myself was stolen from me I am trying my best to get it back again. These hands are still grasping the idea of sanity , frail and bruised as they may be, I'm still holding out for something.

Just when I think you don't know me at all and that everything I've come to know and love is falling out from under me, you remind me that you've always known me. You've always known the part that tries to push you away because I get scared but you don't let that happen. You know I'm irrational and inane but that's why you love me. Everyday with you I am reminded to be a better person, for myself and those around me. I lived a life with my head in the clouds thinking no one wanted me, but you came along and showed me what the grass felt like between my toes and showed me the ground felt a lot more like home. Sometimes I try to rationalize love, to over-analyze it and dissect it, until I know exactly what I'm dealing with. But you remind me to feel with all I have and not to worry about the weight on my shoulders because we carry it together. Things are hard for me to cope with sometimes and these days feel so bleak and colorless, but you're always right there next me convincing me not to be afraid of the dark, to just wait for the sun to rise again.

I'm so ******* sick and tired of being just someone to you. I start to wonder if it matters who I am or if the presence of a body is all you need by your side to provide you with comfort at night. The friends and the nights of sleep I have lost for you are mountains in comparison of what you've given up for me- which is minimal, maybe just some time and your sanity. Your hands have held onto me for so long you don't remember what it feels like to be without. The cold between your fingers has been long overdue and I have been so worried about you getting frostbite I forgot to keep myself warm so I am left with a frozen heart. I would build you monuments and you would tell me it blocks the view of your precious sunset. I would sail the entire see to grab the sun and bring it back to you and you would tell me your skin is burning from the intensity. So it seems to me nothing I do, no amount of effort I put in will ever be enough, but at the same time it will be too much. So is it asking a lot to want the same treatment in return? All I ask is for adventures and surprises, maybe a second out of your day where you do something for my benefit.. But you're too busy stuck inside the monument I built for you and basking in the rays of the sun I brought to you only to never realize that I am frozen in your embrace. Parts of myself have been lost inside your arms, and hidden away beneath your sheets. I do not like what I've become, a mere shell casing of who I've been. Extrovert turned introvert by love's sinister embrace.

Halfway through halfway through my life I understood what it meant to be wanted by no one and not aware of anything all at the same time. I've driven miles and seen many places but they all fade to gray over the horizon. My eyelids become heavy as I think about the sleep that I need, but instead I stare at a computer screen. This life has brought me twists and turns, ups and downs and it's like roller coaster tycoon on an old desktop computer because these days I find myself trapped inside are slow and these words I am engulfed in are incessant and I can't seem to turn off full screen mode so everything that goes wrong I can't run away from anymore. The mistakes look me right in the eyes and deem me unworthy of avoiding confrontation. It seems these feelings are starting to demand refuge and they're tired of spending seventeen years in a cage. These matters can no longer be referred to as trivial. I have made more mistakes than I have made poems and I'm tired of being a victim of my own emotions.. No longer will I stand and watch the sunset slowly fade away. I will chase that skyline until I see the dawn again. I will plant my feet firmly on the ground and I will do the only thing I know how, grow.

I would like to be happy for other writers because they're a lot like me and in the same sense not anything like me. But these words upon these pages can't help but reel me in, whispering sinister secrets into my ears, telling me not to let in anyone and keep my pen to my self. These words are my wreckage and these bones thrive off of the ink that spills, spills into my veins until I'm not sure I have much competition anymore. It's a rush, an escape and a piece of nirvana flowing through my body. But I cannot help the fact I feel insecure. Everything I've ever done, or have accomplished has been overlooked or taken away. Not this time. I will write until my hands are sore until the crippling pain of arthritis makes me no longer capable of using my hands. I will then use my words to encompass the page because all I'll really need is like text to talk or something by then right? **** since the age of about 6, I knew this was my lighthouse, my way home when I couldn't see the grass in front of my feet. My way out of the dark corners and into the arms of those I love. The lifeboat I needed when drowning in the same sorrows as my mother or when I was drowning in the bottle like my father. This is my sanity, and in the same sense my downfall. So when I stand here and recite for you, write for you and smile and shake my head and tell you all these things about myself not many people know, realize it takes more than these ten fingers, these two legs, and this one thumping, beating out-of-my-chest heart to be this exposed and this naked. Usually at times like these, if i'm not shaking like a leaf I would be picturing you all as puppies, but now I'm just picturing you all as my family, my close to home even though I'm not sure what home feels like anymore but if I had to pick, and someone asked me on the spot, this would be it, you all would be it. So when it comes to writing there is no winner, or loser or anything in-between, there is you and there is me, pen and paper, shaky voice and butterflies knees, right here is sanity.