I am so much better than I used to be
in every way possible
I don't cry as much anymore
I don't scream as much anymore
I don't let unworthy men put their ***** hands on my body anymore
Recovery comes in waves, big and small
and sometimes it is hard to celebrate the little victories
so here's to those triumphs, the forgotten ones
Here's to getting out of bed before noon
here's to not calling in sick to work
remembering to return the dvd's on time
eating food that will make me feel good
eating food in general
bringing my inhaler with me when I know I'm going to smoke cigarettes
not beating myself up for smoking said cigarettes
here's to a summer in which I am actually comfortable in my own skin
and here's to daily progress
-

What makes a poet ?
That was my thought
I mulled it over and
Came up with these oughts :

Late nights with
coffee , tea or beer
Perhaps harder stuff
Whiskey , smoke or gin clear

And the struggles and pain
as the birth is exclaimed
Blood , sweat and tears
Falling as hard as ice on rain

Confessionals made
As black on white page
Love , death , fears
Even extreme rage

One who struggles
with the a's and the's
Should one even use
The apostrophe

One who's words
Gel by the witching hour
Words full of promise  
Warnings so dour

But perhaps greatest of all
Before even the start
One must have
a true poet's heart

I. CHICKENS

I am The Great White Way of the city:
When you ask what is my desire, I answer:
"Girls fresh as country wild flowers,
With young faces tired of the cows and barns,
Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries,
Slender supple girls with shapely legs,
Lure in the arch of their little shoulders
And wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at
          the ashes of my mysteries."

                           II. USED UP

    Lines based on certain regrets that come with rumination
               upon the painted faces of women on
                   North Clark Street, Chicago

               Roses,
             Red roses,
               Crushed
In the rain and wind
Like mouths of women
Beaten by the fists of
Men using them.
     O little roses
     And broken leaves
     And petal wisps:
You that so flung your crimson
     To the sun
Only yesterday.

                            III. HOME

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry
     in the darkness.

I’ve learned to love a blade’s edge…
I am nobody and somebody
with nowhere to go: the border between
Manhattan’s East and West Streets
ground and stone
reason and faith
mother and father,
the Father and the Son.

I’m the Holy Spirit, the shadow always
mediating between phrases “Serve me” and “Agape”…
I am this sentence. I want you, for this moment; this sliver
between life and death, this Mississippi cutting through
a continent. I was in Adam, after his expulsion:

Let the green apple be lodged in my throat
while washed in the image of Eden
before I leave, so in cursing my fate
and love what is…

Sharp and dangerous, always ready to use conscience
and **** according to judgment,
the thrill, the second where happiness
and sadness is satisfaction, I am there.

Nothing ever gets done without me.
I am a peninsula, imparting
land to waters and seas
divinity to mortality:
Pentecostal.

The blade’s edge ready to cut and be cut.
In the name of the Father and the Son
and me
Amen…
Go to heaven
if you cannot accept hell.
Go to hell if you cannot accept heaven.
As any mediator, I am a nation
unto myself, my fate, my exile.

Memories prickle your lazy morning thoughts
as pine needles remind bare feet
that mountain trees have lost as well.
Here,
you run hands through meadow grass
to rummage through a treasure chest of texture;
to root yourself into the Earth,
and not let go of your soil.

But when we do this,
rain pours,
and we soon take hold,
until the seed in our minds sprout like dandelions,
and those memories float away on cotton sails,
off the mountain,
elated to grow somewhere else,
to be picked by someone else,
in a different time;
hands softened by youth
and the innocence required
to see not weeds,
but flowers.

I was taught to add and subtract at the age of four. My twenty year old mother would sit me down on the grass while waiting for my aunt to get out of high school, and teach me my numbers on her big, scarred hands. I was five when I realized something that would change me for the rest of my life. The number six and the number four are both just one away from being a solid five.
At six years old, my classmate and I were given our daily snacks. My friend had gotten six crackers, while I got four. I asked, “may I have a *******?” She reminded me that I had already gotten my napkin-full of crackers. “But if you give me one, we will both have five.” She bugged her eyes at me.
“I wanna have more,” she said. I shook my head at her, and ate my four crackers.
I wanted to participate in my elementary school’s food drive when I was ten years old, and in fifth grade. I was motivated to make a change for families in need of canned food. When I went home and asked my mom for cans, she explained to me that the cans that my schoolmates were donating would probably end up in our pantry, because we get our food from the local foodbank. I looked up at our pantry. I saw some dusty cans in the back that hadn’t been touched, and multiple cans next to them. I then remembered when we didn’t have even one can, and thought of the families who didn’t have even one can right then. And then I thought: But we have six, and they have four...
A homeless man and I both had five the day I bought him a sandwich when I was fourteen.
My best friend had four when she was sexually abused, and I gave up one when I shoved past the school security guards and got her to the hospital at the age of fifteen.
The year I turned sixteen I figured I had six when I realized there was an unfairness at my school. I gave my fellow students one when I convinced the principal to make a change about it, after being sent to him for disturbing the class with my speech.
I gave up one of my six when I turned seventeen and wrote the inspiring story of my brother’s car crash, for all of the people with four in their broken hearts.
As long as I have six, I will continue to give one. I won’t stop until everyone has five, and the world is one big ten.

He protects his phone
but not his ***.
Sitting on a cherry
withered-wood,
it's good to remember
that in December,
he waited for this
tired world, to pass
him by, for his mother
to 'please come home.'

Casper, undercut with curls on top,
plays a greyed banjo while wearing
the green-chestnut flannel his dad
wore before he disappeared into
vermilion sky, only remembered
with lullabies from a hopeful mom
that smelled like Pall-Malls and
factory-soaked-heartbreak.

White, chiseled with skeleton intention,
he sips from within himself,
hoping to harness new direction.