Do you, little child,
Fear your blank slate when nothing’s inspired, but you see a flag
Which paints itself on the face of
Someone else’s moon?

And do you, little child,
Know the pain of a thousand plain feathers pulling up and further
With nothing but hollow bones and
Grey sinew beneath?

And do you, little child,
Realise that the anguish of loss which comes with every edited word
Is bygones is bygones is bygones
Gone by?

And do you, little child,
Understand that a shoelace which appears at first to be two strings is actually
One road to the end overlapping again
And again?

And can you, little child,
Fear more than the dark day’s end, or the eight-leggedness of tarantulas,
And worry instead for the loss of your
Creativity?

When I am given an assignment
I scoff inwardly.
The professor says
The project is due Thursday.
I know very well that she won't
Actually look at it till a month later.
A month later she'd accept it just the same,
So why put myself through this hell now?

Hell? You question me,
"**** it up and just do it, baby"
It's just some project.
Like all the others, relatively no effort,
It will take all of an hour to complete.
Then, it'd be over and done with.

Wrong.
It's Hell.
I stare into space, dreading the thought
Of lifting my pen to mark a sheet of paper just
Because I have to.
I could sit here for hours and write,
With the same pen, the story of my life,
The poetry that describes my innermost thoughts.

The same pen lifted for the assignment
Of someone else's creation,
Weighs down like the rock
Left behind after the cave's collapse.

The only times I've ever seriously considered,
Giving up.
The only times I've ever considered
Sleeping... Deeply,
Is when I am forced to lift,
One by one,
Each piece of rock, back into that cave's ceiling.

Sometimes when I've half finished,
I think that maybe,
If I shook the walls,
I could let it all cave in on me.
I'd never have to find my way back.

I walk into class,
Lay the sheet to rest
On the desk of it's judge.
Hardly notices my presence,
The granite dust on my eyelashes.

What do I get for my efforts?
Red pen, an "A".
My friends whine and moan,
"You didn't even have to try!"
Because I'm too smart to pay attention in class.
Too smart to actually study.
That I don't have to try.

They don't have to rebuild caves.

Sometimes words sit screaming inside a chasm
asking, “where are you”,
like a nightmare intimately breezes
from a cage fashioned for anyone
it recognizes first.

On the coldest of nights you can see their pain
in lines that make you close your eyes
for reasons
that you may not want to know.

Running takes you nowhere
when words scream out “I want you”
then entwine themselves
around the flesh
of your pen.

Her bare feet slapped against the pavement.
Tulle skirt stuck to her sweaty thighs.
The first drop fell.
Rain came that day.

Arms outstretched, she started to twirl.
Until the footsteps came near.
Out of time with the thunder claps and bursts of light.
She stopped and stared.

He was there.
Drenched in the rain.
Watching.
She laughed and pulled him to dance with her.

When she turned her gaze upon me,
I was a mote of dust
caught in a beam of sunlight
I was huge and beautiful
and bright.

I laughed and danced
and shone.

And when she turned away,
a cloud moved across the sun
and I was extinguished.

he wrote three poems that night
and all hell broke loose
the children looked through the windows
and fell in love with sin
the men stood on the misty northern platforms
waiting for the trains to take them to the front
and the women wept for hours because they were afraid of change

he wrote three poems that night
he stood high up on the city walls
and fired them at the crowd with his magic Beretta shotgun
to a bunch of innocent by-standers
who would never return to their homes sane
and they laughed and they felt awkward
and they knew it was up to them to sing in tune or disappear forever

he wrote three poems that night
one exploded like a space shuttle in the frozen black sky
the second burned the gates and freed the tigers from their cages
and the third roamed the streets with a wicked smile
- dynamite strapped around the chest
and high on acid like a bulletproof *******

it was the night the dogs were barking his name
and the signs on the walls were painted blood-red
while all the communication systems broke down
and nobody was ready

but clearly
he was

In time you will see
that you wanted
everything too much.

You have asked too much
of this world.
But soon you will learn

that things appear most beautiful
when viewed from a distance,
and you will find no comfort

in illusions of closeness.
You will find that the reflection
in the window

clouds the promise
you expected to find
in some vaster field of sky.

A challenge for
most people, looking
into the eyes of another
for ten whole minutes

but there is so much
I can see within your
colors, your soft
airy connection as if an
examination of my
soul deemed it a perfect
fit for your own
and our trial
run of five counts to
sixty was through
in a blink

Thunder hearts, rainstorm
breath, lightning smiles