How many never stand up
for fear of being laid low?
how many people count stars and
forget to ever ask
what did counting ever do?
How many star on the edges in ball gowns and masks
thinking "better to be uncomfortable
than to be let down"
so they stay where they've been
and become who they already were
for the sake of being
something they've always known

Do you think we could lay beneath the stars in a sort of wondrous terror?
Terror at the thought of such exposure. The stars that we are made of could see us,
Pale in the moonlight.
Moonlight suits us.
Your dark eyes would become caverns, your dark hair would tangle like so many brambles.
And I would be there. Reflected in your eyes. You always were the sun, and I the moon. A sacrifice and the result. An unconditional love.

Don't ask me to stay
Ask to come along
I am too in love with the world to let it go
But I love you enough to share it
and my suitcases
and the food on my plate
and my room for the night
Why don't you ask to come along?

Given out in high school
for Nothing
peer selected nominees
for Nothing
for being Nothing
but a pair of cool shoes
and a fake smile that hides your bitten tongue
given to the best dressed
most arrests
opinionless
children
seeking to grow up to be
Nothing

Walk in a circle to find yourself
pace to find the thoughts in your head
as long as you are moving
it's better than being dead

they love the symptom
hate the cause
open the windows
close all the doors
lock up your heart strings
drive yourself insane
what is the point in having a brain
when its easier to look away?
Wake up in the middle of the night
darkness is easy if you don't know the light
The intelligent are in their graves
where they themselves laid
sadness kills them before age

There is so much that can happen
when your eyes are asleep
and the moon is kissing the earth
with her silver tendrils.

There is a world I own
and I share it
with my friends
the birds and of course
Sam.

We name it and we live there
at night and when it's warm
I'd like to say it is endless
but my world is hopelessly finite
outside of my forested mind.

I make up for it by filling it
with stories and songs and cairns
built for things that never die
dreams and souls and love

I walk the edges
and mourn that the borders beyond are not mine
but I have ten acres more than most
and it is my own world

To be a musician is to be a creature of conceit
To believe that what one creates is worth hearing
And that the words and names given to creations mean
anything
at
all
to
anyone
at
all
besides yourself
and a true musician
will
not
care

If I cover my face in diamonds
will I be beautiful enough
So inhuman, so cold
so sharp and rough
If I cover my face in diamonds
will you finally stop to look
at my lips and what they are saying
and not think only am I beautiful

they get a sick type of satisfaction
another ding
another score
another 3 word message that conveys nothing
a notification
some bit of horrible, tantalizing news
out of some plastic strangers "mouth"
and I do not understand

We all fight to be heard
with our volume turned into brandished swords
silver blades made of words and vibration
our murdered time dragged around the court
of our conversations
before being stuffed into our personal coffers
as other people try to buy more time
it's easier to be reborn when you are dying
its easier to leave when you know it will all
be taken away

Loud and Vain
Silence and Pain
burn it out or up
we're all here
pretending to be winning
imagining its for us the world is spinning
maybe it is today

It is
a claw
attatched to a string
tied to my foot
and when I try to move away from it
it scratches me all the more.

It is
a pool
of clear water
with black rocks on the bottom
the more I try to swim up
the closer I get to drowning.

It is
a hurt bird
and when you try to help it
it breaks its other wing
leaving you the criminal.

we play games with the word Death
and it loses its meaning
respawn
game over
try again?
soliders with out sacrifice
electric children
plugged into
imaginary building blocks
in unseen and unreal
worlds
a stranger imagined for them

Green is the color
of envy
I have been told

How many green eyed girls tire
of being
the temptress?
never are we the
Innocent
or the Sweet

We are too dark to be blue
and too light to be chocolate brown
and too decided in our pigments to be hazel
Is green the color of envy
because we envy what is green?

I didn't think so
I too like to talk to you

Every man a poet
every word a rhyme
every clock a sentry
every sentry can tell time
i get so sick of the way the clock ticks
we are so obsessed with out own deaths
but when we take our deaths in jest
we make less of ourselves and instead
we make a joke of our lives
Every mask a neighbor
Every street corner a mob
We used to believe in something
now we believe in nothing more
than what our eyes see,
we mask our feelings
go **** yourselves but don't let yourselves feel love.

i am not a mathmatician
so don't pretend that i am
don't make me write down endless strings of numbers that
i don't understand

do not choke me with square roots of evil
or drown me in formulas
while telling me reading music
is not a real skill
as i've noticed you can't do it
nor can the lady across the hall
you've gotten through life alright
but i haven't seen you smile once.

Math worked out for you i see.
And i grin because i can read music.

I will confess my love before this bruise of a world
and my hands will not shake because
I am not afraid to feel
I have felt the wind rush past my face
and I have heard musicians playing while the lights scream
I am not afraid to feel

If Light had a face it would be homely
a great, cracked, bulbous, wrinkled thing
not smooth like fair Darkness
and not half as cold

If Light had a hand it wouldn't be slender
Light would not posess piano hands
Darkness is the one with hands of silver
stretched and ready to play


If Light had a past it would be harrowed
for only goodness can come from such a trial
and if Darkness was an age it would be ancient
and Light would be seven times twice as old

If you love the poets now
after they are dead
and put to sleep in their graves
wearing suits of soil
and gowns of earth
then why, pray tell
did they wear rags
and lie alone
with books in heads left unread
and ink stains on slender fingers

If you love the poets now
why do they fear living in an apartment
because someone might hear them screaming
or sobbing
it can be hard to tell
and harder still to save them
and ti is hardest of all to be screaming and have no one listen
or to call the cops on the one who is breaking nothing
but their own heart
and that ugly vase
that they never liked in the first place

If you love the poets now
why do so many reel back hurting
fearing wether or not they are deserving
of praise, or food, or sleep, or laugh lines
they are not sure they will ever get

If you love the poets now
why do they lie starving in foxholes they dug themselves
or in dead end jobs that **** them slowly
or ravaged by needles and color
in some endless hope that they might be heard
and understood
and that they might finally
see what they see with their eyes
and not just their hearts

Love them now
for they know they are dying
kiss their lips
for they know they can not speak the truth
Hold their hands
for their language is in their fingers
all that they do they do for you.

I heard a boy talking today
about a poetry contest.
He wouldn't enter
because he thought
they only wanted poetry on boring things
like suns, and trees, and stuff.
And he doesn't write that sort of poetry.
I felt bad for him, not knowing what poetry can be
until he said he wanted to enter for the first prize.
He can keep his false beliefs.

I know these eyes,
see how they reflect me differently,
I know these hands,
they have held the broken pieces together,
even when the pierced your own skin,
on accident always
and you never have regretted it,
because I know this heart.

the way an old woman cleans a grave
with respect
and silent love
with no expectation of love in return
but for the sake of memory
and for the sake of love itself
tinged with a bit of sadness

I ran away at every age, every year a new destination, armed with a pack filled with not what I needed but what I wanted. I never really went.
I live now with much unanswered, a heart unquelled silver at my center, a song that will bleed me dry. I never really went.
I tied myself to hearts that attached themselves too much, and did not see the world with static that blinds the eyes and burnt my ears. My mother never knew me and I am not scared. I never really went.

Like ink on paper
you have made your mark on me
and it is beautiful

I love you in your silence
you wear so often
but never so completely that
I cannot hear your whispers
as air and sleep and dreams
intermingle
where is it that you go?

Is it death you ask for? Or is it peace?
They don't have to be the same thing, sometimes they aren't.
Is it success you ask for? Or is it happiness?
Happiness is not always success, but success is always happiness.
I promise.

Is it existence you ask for? Or is it life?
You can have a whole world to yourself, if you remember to ask yourself for it.
Is it admiration you ask for? Or is it love?
You can share a world that you made yourself, if you love enough to reveal it.

I had a dream
that I was dead
and it hurt to move
and I moved so slowly.
The light was yellow-green
and so was my skin.
My brother was dead
than I was. He couldn't move.
Not even slowly.
My house was stripped
of its carpet and it's furniture.
My parents were there. They were dead.
It hurt to move.
And I moved so slowly.
I wore white and there was blood on me.
I carried white wreaths and set them
on the hard floor.
I was hungry.
But my mouth would not move
and stomach could hold nothing.
I kneeled.
It hurt to move.
And I moved so slowly.
The curtains were white
the windows were open.
I could not hear. I was numb in my head.
It hurt to move.
And I moved so slowly.
I had to get up and go down the stairs.
My eyes were dead.
It hurt to move.
And I moved so slowly.

It boils your blood with its crying sound
it wakes the long dead gypsy
we had to make her sleep you know
this life is not possible with her
but you see, you know, I am
a creature, and not human,
not wholly when I am whole
and you, you do not fear me
but instead see the trappings I have always known,
Your pity is not needed, but I will take it all the same,
The lovely captor tries his best to make my lovely jail
alive

I read Poe while playing ELO
I'm different, I might grow
5'1 and 22
I don't know what I can do
Leave me here
And let me sigh
whisper love
and I might die
I've read books in less than a day
But what about I couldn't say
Some leave marks
Red and raw
while others fade into oblivion
without so much as a word on my lips
or a simple recollection

I write myself raw
and use blood as ink
my life becomes frantic paper
and my body a hopeless vessel
that I am burning through
my words are whispers of honest
hopeless shadows of a soul
just as a bone is hopeless shadow of a limb

Loudest are the silent mouths
that do not protest with Voices
but in their nothingness
their lack of agreement
their eyes like gates taking in your lies
but guarded so you may not reach their hearts

We must live with our mistakes sometimes
and we give them our own name
and let them become our definition
it is no use reminding us of them
we wear them around our necks

It's hard to write a poem
and read it to someone who can not read
words for what they are not
and then try to explain it to them
in words that are what they are.
It comes across as only ink smatterings on perfect paper and a series of vowels and consonants on perfect silence.

Upon a crime
there was a thief who stole
everything
that touched his hands

He stole his name from the lips of his mother
and his great from the hole in his chest
and then he stole away to an unmade bed

He stole his words
then his religion
then he took what he could from oblivion

while watching the cars pass the only
intersection in town

Don't think for one moment
that I don't hear you painting me your own colors
without one thought as to how I might
paint myself

I do not live for you
to please and entertain you
I do not live to harm you either
but do not confuse compassion for
compliance.

I do not go to temples
I will not build one for you
But I will watch your temple at night and make sure it does not leave
I do not have your anger
In the same direction
But I will let you hold your ground, the ground is mine as well
And when they go about, they go about, they go about, I will not silence you, for to silence you is to silence myself, and I have much to say.
How can I condemn you
For your sorrow and your sound
when I myself with do the same if you give me enough time
I do not ask that you conform, Its a four letter word with 7,
but I ask you to not do the same,
Can we not be peaceful
and believe in different heavens?

I want to stay up all night
we'll watch the radio
and hear the things that never see the light

Come one! Come all!
See those who I have deemed freaks.
They are Poets, and Artists, and Writers.
Feast your eyes on those who refuse to take standardized tests!
Be amazed by those who can still us there fingers to do something other than text!
They would starve without me, your ringmaster.
They would drive themselves mad in your world.

Let's take one
like a thief would take jewels
or a tired mother would a nap
cheap sunglasses
and spare change
counting dimes for gas
and nickels to tip the waitress
barefoot
radio on
blasting ancient crooners
or classic rock
going fuzzy every hour or so
as we leave
every new home
we make

Little strange thing
born in the wrong world
has been trying her whole life to get home
it hurts to feel
but it makes it feel real
when you live without having to bleed

Sale on Stars
while we were fighting our wars
and we pretend
that it never ends
so we don’t get scared of what will happen when our
hearts echo

Sale on Stars
as we try to find who we are
and the last love song doesn’t exist
we just keep on writing them
thank God


Sale on Stars
that no body buys
who wants to own a super nova?
who wants to really know you
when you are light?



He wrote with his eyes
on pages of hearts
and the stories he told
would never stop

She wanted to know
why she wanted to go
to a grand somewhere else with him

She played with universes
and they always smiled back
and I think she loved
with what was more than love
but she was seldom loved back

Scorch

You watch them stutter before glassy eyes
trying to tell you something
they themselves do not know
or if they know they can not tell
and they can’t tell if they can

Start a fire
burn all of your words
take a globe and watch the world burn
one is a metaphor the other a gift
and which one you should save is irrelevant

carry your hands
at the ends of your arms
take an oath to do no harm
then break it twice
then fix with tape
never try to be more than an intelligent ape

He wrote with his eyes
on pages of hearts
and the stories he told
would never stop

She wanted to know
why she wanted to go
to a grand somewhere else with him

She played with universes
and they always smiled back
and I think she loved
with what was more than love
but she was seldom loved back

Become a Mass of Light and Shadow,
colors and grey
let me sleep there in it,
let me lose my form

Lie on the ground like you have a choice
like you might have stood otherwise
Like you are strong enough to carry
the weight of the sky
On your shoulders there, slender, imperfect
when in reality a breath of wind would fell you
easily
a slender beast before rainclouds

I hate to write a song
but I love to have written one
and have my fingers ache with the wonderful fear
that it might be good

I am past my definitions
I feel my sounds pass through my ears and from my hands
once they leave me do I still own them?
The places you've fallen asleep in
and the places you've dreamed in
after you've left them
do they lie still breathing?

Take back the walls crumbled
and rebuild them
not with Bricks and Mortal
but with Dreams and Fire
for who then would dare tear the down?

Ink and Skin
a permanent reminder
of lines and color
rudimentary lines and colors
a sacrifice to memory
all drawings in the end
turning back to dust

If you were to have been born in Yearn you would’ve been born hungry

Trash collects in crumbling corners
Sand will always blow
And all the books you’ll never read
contain things you’ll never know

The dead carry the buildings
the living carry the dead
and only one dead man carries himself
and the rest live in fear of him