here's how it happens
the morning after
you reach into the drawer
where the your t-shirts live
to find it austere
you'll shrug because
you're still drunk
& you can't remember
when last it was
that you had something wet
or how long it's been
since you made the floorboards blush
or why the carpet is upset
who wouldn't be
the contents to the upended ashtray
strewn around the apartment
resemble the aftermath
of the smallest war
to ever take place in norfolk
some midnight thief
must've made off with the lighter
because it isn't in
any of your favorite spots
maybe you chucked it
along with a hundred other things
that make noise when they land
in the neighbors yard
you won't remember putting
the refrigerator's belongings
in the bathtub
or scrawling a buzzard
on the bedroom door
but then again who would
you'll pretend it's spring again
before putting on your winter coat
to go out front with a cigarette
in your mouth
you'll hope for a passing stranger
to *** a light from
or drag yourself to the corner
with couch cushion change
to buy a new lighter
and on your way
you won't bother looking back
this is just another day
on eggshells for no reason
another november
choking on birthday candles
on your way home
you step over beer cans
the kind you fell in love with
and wonder who
had the last laugh last night
or if anyone said a word at all
it might've been another
moment of clarity
it might have been some idiot savant
any adjective that feels like home
anything that keeps you thirsty

Even in your medication, even in the early morning and the foggy air and the heat from a meal your Mother made you, one you ate as if it was a way to recover, your promises haunt you like a quiet hum that no one else notices, one that sits at the back of your skull until it softly melts into something that you call a part of you. And the rain is still there.
Still in its eternal state of trying to find enough within itself to break down whatever doors it believes to be knocking against, and you look right past it.
Your Mother made you this meal, your Mother was singing in the kitchen, the same one that you swear gave color to her milky skin, the same one where you saw that same skin bruised by your Father.
And you don't know how she can make such a place seem so much easier to step foot in, like the whole time you're just looking for a way out but for right now, where you are is okay. With some people, their dreams find ways to follow them when they wake up and then they slowly start to ease their way into places like the bottoms of their sneakers or even their shadow, and then one day, when you try to remember why you are here, and the way the winds would blow right through you in your slumber, you realize there isn't a difference between the skin that held you at birth, (the skin that was there the moment you became and the moment you became less all at once) and the things it cannot touch, and you see that everything is it's own language and has its own way of being and it is beautiful. And every day in your wake, in the moments you rarely remember, you lose a sense as to why, you even forget to ask about it, and it is up to you whether or not you find it, or replace it with the things people give you, because people will give you a lot. They may not notice it, they may not even have good intentions, but they will keep your hands full.

do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul says :
"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."

I do not know anything about God except that he was sure to not make us strong enough.
When people leave something, even if they don't see it, even if their memory forgets it so strongly that it's existence becomes less than it has ever been before, something in the world forgets how to grow.
Forgiveness is difficult.
Understanding is difficult.
But no one ever really has time for things that come easy.
Remember that we did not give the world it's color, we are only here to watch it change.


I am only here to show you that even in loss, even in darkness and ways and places that we may never understand, there is always something to see.
I wonder if everything in this world is connected in some way similar to that, and if we, in our most bare state of being, were once broken at the hip from the pieces of this world we hold most beautiful.

I know what the body sings, and what pushes blood inside people's arms and legs, how life and death is the only art that humanity is worthy of remembering. About the ending of things: is there any better way to die than lying on concrete, feeling your Life detach itself from your core and knowing nothing that you can hold on to is going to save you today, knowing that this is simply a conclusion of what was always there?
Remember: we never love anything enough to keep it alive,
and whether or not you want to believe it, you need more than love, because we are not built to withstand something so immense.
But in our lifetime, if we are lucky, we will find someone who makes you feel the way you do when you hear your Mother laughing from the living room.
How even the smallest ways to love things are greater than happy endings and how even in our greatest moments we are simply what we are.

1) Your heart is so entwined into mine that I'm not sure if it hurts you or me when I pry it out with a crowbar and leave it on your windshield.

2) You're letting boys ****** you sweaty in your backseat and I just want anyone to write about me the way all my blank pages scream about you.

3) I've always been one to root for the underdog and baby we're a million to one shot.

4) You're the Dragon and the Damsel and I'm not sure what to do.

5) You're the draft I've been writing on for months. Art is never finished.

6) I'm wicked and I'm proud, just like every fallen angel.

7) That's not a light at the end of the tunnel. It's your eyes and I think I always knew it was.

8) There is no salvation. There is no damnation. There's only you.

9) And I'm sitting outside the Pearly Gates, cigarette perched in my lips like a crow.

10) Or maybe I'm sitting on the bank of the river Styx, I'm not much of a cartographer and Dante doesn't have time for fools like me.

11) My poetry is a lip-synched prayer and my goddess has turned a deaf ear to them.

12) I was replaced by we and me by us and you wonder why I don't know who I am when you're gone.
12b) You wonder why we don't know who we are when you're gone.

i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader  
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear

These eyes of mine
Have seen
Beyond the imaginary lines of being,

A broken heart mend over the written word shared by those whose wisdom has surpassed time,

Beautiful sunsets painted over gray lines by poets who know that you'll never know the true meaning of joy without a little pain paving the way.

I have wandered in the caves of those who dare to etch their souls on paper, and shun their thoughts to wondering eyes,

To give meaning to the lives of many, direction to the gypsey, and a mender for the torn,

Walked more than a mile in shoes of so many to find the quintessence of broken glasses, the epitome of troubled souls, and the essence of being,

Beautiful melodies that soothe the soul through the ears of a deaf man,

The rhythm of a heart in love that sickens the soul, invades the thoughts and leaves every inch of the body longing,

A memory of a love so precious, unforgettable that it's fragrance lingers still from a distant memory,

And when all is lost and plundered,
Your words are like a thread that sews patch after patch across my torn silhouette


It's a pleasure
To have read so many inspiring, beautiful and heartfelt poetry in here.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
For it no longer echoes in my ears, in my fingers,
in my tongue. These endless digits fallen instantaneously
numb like a local anesthetic or winter basement nights
alone in the dark.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
It's melodic tones and overtures, the way it wraps
around words like my hands around your curves.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
And how I fed on it like the word of God.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.