Look and you will see the tragedy that is bestowed upon us,
Children of the universe.
It eats away at our hearts like acid
Yet we grin and we grit our teeth.
Our spirits are roaring with the ache of insecurity.
We are the children of the universe.
Our thoughts are a twisted garden of vines
And no trespassing is permitted.
Our minds are guarded mighty and high.
We rise every morning and put on a smile,
Ready to show the face that we have chosen for others to know.
Our exterior is cool and prepared.
We conceal the flowers that bloom from our minds
And pull them out as though they are weeds.
We sacrifice our identities to satisfy society.
Every word we speak is one that is cautiously selected.
Our insecurity has its hands on our throats
And is slowly suffocating us.
We are all dying under the weight of hiding our truths.
We are the children of the universe.
When will we say how we feel?

the curves on my
frame are the lines of
a sketch bent slightly
too far; i'm an awkward
angle in geometry
class no one dares to
find and this tiny black

dress is revealing too
much in too little
time. the whispers of
crisscrossed marked
thighs and starry knees
swirl before me and i'm

gone, disconnected. they say
black is slimming but
i've never felt more
potent and i hope
to god no one can see
right through me.

formal dances aren't
ideal for the invisible.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

I want to write again
I want to feel
Like I did back then
When my day depended
On the words I had chosen
-- The life I put
In my poems

I want to write again
I want to feel
The thrill of the pen
The delight that rushes through my veins
When the right words blend
The pain I endure
Once my thoughts
No longer make sense

I am exhilarated
When I start
Scribbling on paper
My heart at peace
As soon as I polish it
On my typewriter

I write again
I write
Like nothing ever happened
Like not a thing prevented me
Months at an end

I write again

I write
Because it is who I am
Because in time,
I always return
To my essence
-- That in the end,
Nothing feels quite right
Unless I am writing.