Riding down the rapidly declining *****
on the bright, soft-water day,
I imagine myself as nothing more than an animal
falling down a waterfall into a lake clear and crisp.
The wheels of my bike turn rapidly
like the a propeller of a plane,
just as powerful
and just as dangerous if I fall,
but only to me.
Catching the sea salt breeze
my blonde, sun bleached hair flies as if
it were flying on seagulls wings.
I am a cadmium yellow blur on a painting,
moving much too fast to be captured and depicted accurately.
I ride until the end of my ***** this way,
finishing strong with out a hint of regret.

Circuitry, click snap into place
the memories of the lesson
the learned facts of the day
but theres a single missing link
and every click snap is
misaligned
and all of those facts become

dust.

A feather floating,
this feather is me and it was a pound heavier.
This once heavy feather merely floated.
I found solace in weighted thoughts,
my heart was born a feather
and it personified me
but it felt too special in all the wrong ways
when this feather aged and changed
many felt pain and this poor feather floated
but it added a few ounces to normalize itself
this heart of mine added weight by the day to
identify myself with other with ease.
I tried to float in this new chapter of my life,
but the feather floated ungracefully,
the feather lost its fluffy bits, bit by bit.
Crunch time and I dropped a pound of weight from my heart,
it was sudden, almost like losing baggage in an air plane terminal.
I use this feather as a saber,
it floats gently around conflicts that are blinded by shallow intents
and cuts the air.
It dances and spins,
this feather truly floats.

There's half a sandwich in my baggie,
I run with it around the playground and
I'm getting weird looks because..
I'm 23
and somehow I find it much more amusing than nerve wracking
because when I wrack my brain to find answers
all I can think about is running around
my old elementary school play ground.
Maybe just maybe that's why I laugh like santa who had just finished
his rounds for he year and
maybe I laugh like a man that just won a billion dollars,
because I know when I go back to work the next day
I know I cannot laugh this loud
so loud I shed tears of joy, no
when I go back I will shed tears of boredom if there is such a thing.
Sitting at a desk is killing me, but I guess in the end
I've been dying all along.
"Sit quietly at your desk until the bell rings"
"Ask before you use the restroom"
"Finish every thing on your recycled tray"
Well let me tell you there are none such rules on the play ground
I can run and scream, and
I can finish the other half of this sandwich
when I **** well want to.

Honestly,
when will I realize
that my world has take color?
My life seems to be a pity party,
pittling along with the gray flowers made of heavy clay.
They droop when the rain falls
and they stay deformed when the sun rises.
The life I'm living stopped being a race
when I stopped running.
I'm on the sidelines and
honestly
it's because I broke my own legs.

My knees need grease but the can is to far away
for my lazy limbs to find.
Cracking under my own weight and
honestly,
when will I realize
that my world has taken color?

It's a hot day,
So hot that the sweat on my back
evaporates before it really has a chance to stink.
My only true friend in this feverish heat
is not my broken AC,
or my broken spirit,
but this popsicle in my hand.
When I was a smaller person
with a smaller brain,
and a bigger heart,
all I wanted was the flavor.
Now I am older, smarter, and unfortunatly
more in tune with the heat.
All I want now is this icy pop in my hand,
and maybe a fan too.

Loneliness knits it's way into my sole being,
leaving no surviving aspect of my life
unturned.
'Feelings' and 'phases' come and go,
where my heart is afloat,
where my heart is a stone.
It sinks.
"Still" I tell myself,
maybe it's just the winter.
My melancholy heart longs to write in beautiful spoken words,
but they can't be captured by a shaky soul like mine,
left to repeat rhapsodies of some whimsical person who didn't know any better.
My mind can't find you because you won't let me find you,
you run away
faster than I can chase.
Loneliness captures me again,
it may have nit picked at my happiness
but my smile was never fake but for a moment.

Dear love,
Please let me know you.

They made her a quaint painting,
well mannered,
she never spoke out of turn.
She granted herself a wish,
she only wanted to be picturesque
so
waning to the wayside of  mannerisms
she gave herself 'wiggle room'
she was a sight
not worth seeing.
Cracked porcelain faces,
she saw herself in them.
It took time to find her way to shore
but when she did
and stood on her own two feet,
she was more vivid and brilliant
than any quaint little painting.

Let's dress up,
and have a tea party.
Just you and I
know the ins and outs of the toy house.
I can collect bugs for our mud pies and
you can get the water for our tea cups.
The boa sets you free,
and that tutu is constricting.
Babe your make up is
so on point.
We can fill our layered treat tray with delectable goodies.
Just you and I
know the ins and outs of this toy house.
So let's dress up,
and have a tea party.

There are days when I remember this incident
the incident that made me stop trusting my own instinct
and start finding a way to make sure I'm happy.
This incident,
a letter
with the sheer mask of a love letter was
really actually a hate letter not directed towards me
but to the sender,
I find that every time I remember the incident
I remember the sheer terror and silent screams that
protruded my body,
I remember the buckets of tears I cried that night,
and I remember the space and time,
I remember how happy I was right before I opened that letter
and how it faded all too quickly.

I can't handle myself now a days but
this incident finds me at these moments and grasps me,
I remember it, always returning to tears and
I come to the conclusion that I don't share a lot about myself
and I remembered just today thinking
" I talk about myself a lot don't I?"
Well I don't, not really.
No one really knows how I felt in that moment except God himself,
not even now, the moment is too shrill to describe,
because it absolutely broke me.

Find
Rewind
unwind your spine in the easiest of manners
our machine has cogs as far as they eye can see.
You can't see yourself fitting?
That's no problem,
we can fix that,
unwind and we will rewind
you and your way of mind.

Find
Rewind
Glue together your thoughts and make them a new song
make a new joy out of the sorrow you see.
You have been running from your dreams because your gut
your gut says "leave"
but even so you know you need to go,
rewind to a braver time
and find yourself
pick yourself out of the cog that machine broke you
to be in the shape, form, and spitting image of.

Find
Rewind
You there, you right there
you can come out of your *******
and into ours
you rang your bell when you're crushed to tight
but we don't care too much,
you are our profit, and no the margins do not lie.
Do you remember the last time you even rang that bell?


Find
Rewind
there are memories in that broken shell you claim to fester in
there's something in there.
I can see that little ray of sunshine in there,
come out of the machine that claimed you when you were broken
because "no one else wanted you"
but that machine wanted your
spine
your mind
and you don't want to rewind to the time
you were there,  because now you are comfortable,
But you have to find your way out my dearest friend,
because you are in there.

When days roll by a little at a time
trickling on the rocks,
drip drip
the time flows by endlessly into the night.
Peaceful these days seem and soon you are bombarded
unwittingly under stress your soul cries out
and like hail pounding on your roof in quarter inch disasters,
you pound your fists.
Time still flows but it is staggered now,
there is a storm tonight.
Out of control, it leaves a trail of sorrow behind it.
A light flashes and you are startled for a moment.
You wait.
The floorboards, ceiling fan, your appliances rattle all at once.
Lightning strikes and not a single person is hurt but the storm
rages on.

It filled me
to the brim,
or so it seemed
for soon I was still hungry
for another story.
And so I fed on everything that my heart desired.
and picked out the
poison.
For there is nothing more satisfying than
being hungry
for more.

Where do the sunbathed birds go?
I want to know because I'm bleached pale
with the winters woes
and I want out of this cage.
I want to sunbathe were the birds might be,
with their twittering tweetles
and the promise of spring that is so soon around the corner.
Here the weather is just as bi-polar as I believe myself to be.
I'm a self proclaimed doctor with a self proclaimed condition,
and I am prescribing myself a day in the sunshine.
I can't wait to be where the robins lay their eggs,
where the sparrows fly with a glint of their tail left behind them,
and where that indistinguishable "too big for its britches" bird
finds himself his next meal... slowly...
So please, can you give me any directions
to where the sunbathed birds go?

I may walk slowly
maybe quickly.
There isn't a care in the world I have here.
The forest envelopes my soul like a young child that had
Lost
Her way and made it back in to the loving arms of her mother..
I have never run to the forest for comfort,
not before today.
I have never been to a real forest..
A forest of the mind,
that is where I am.
Now, in a meadow. I sit in the middle
Lost.
I'm lost, but I know where I am.
The forest has trapped me, I have let it trap me..

I have one problem, one problem in this serene world.
I cannot look up. If I looked up my world would be
Lost.
No one can tell me but myself
the forest of my mind is alive and active. But
I have found I am just existing..
Small, insignificant
That's how I've been made to feel.

Slowly I crumple under the anticipation of looking
up.
My eyes move from the ground
to the tree line all around me.
It's dark but not for long.
Light pours in from the sky into the world around me.
I close my eyes and lay on my back
facing towards the sky of my mind..
I say an apology
"For so long I haven't looked to you
dearest sky,
forgive me, I will look to you
and not the ground.
The ground I stand on only holds pain.
While all this time you have watched over me
and given me direction, light
and captivated me with your majesty."

The forest turns itself into a field of wheat
the forest is broken and gone.
I cannot see the ground below me.
but I can see my bearings.
I am no longer
lost.

Maybe what I need to write
isn't something that reflects how I feel
but rather
how the world around me is beautiful even
when I am recovering from crippling embarrassment while
I was the center of attention.
How there's sunlight coming into the room at such an angle
that it creates a heavenly glow across the walls,
or maybe how much wearing sweatpants in bed make the experience
so sweet.
How a sad song makes me happy because
it takes away my anger
and replaces it with serenity.
How there's a walk one step out of the door to where ever i go that
keeps my head clear
and reminds me how even when it's freezing its a gorgeous day
because I'm living in it, not dying.
Writing about how beautiful this world can be
when I can't find that beauty..
it's therapeutic.

He was a tragic story at eighteen.
Peering out of the door of his home,
with half of what could be fathomed as a life on his back,
he started his journey.

The Traveler,
he’s been to the peaks of the mountains
to the dangerously deep crevasses of canyons.
He’s almost died a… more than a few times.
He steps with a sort of sluggish mindset.
He doesn't need to move with what his teachers once called “purpose”
because he’s always on time.
With his life on his back
and large thoughts on his mind
he might throw out his hip,
moving too fast, like the young folks do.
These things never did stop him from gettin’ down,
his moves are new,
unlike his body.
Maybe that’s why he simply nods
when those young’uns challenge him.
He saves his money for things he absolutely needs,
pens, pencils, paper… and toilet paper occasionally.
The bag on his back is 40 pounds,
most of its contents is the words he had written.
Containing a few mementos from the land
of hot suns and early mornings,
he travels.
He doesn't grow hair on his sun kissed bald head,
at the moment,
guess it liked the south so much it stayed there.
He’s homeward bound today.
With an image of his beautiful baby in his wife’s hands
and a white picket fence in his mind,
he found himself at the same door he escaped at the age of eighteen.

He was a tragic story at eighteen.
Peering out of the door of his home,
His whole life on his back now
he’s ended his journey.
Now he’s home,
and so is his hair.

When all you can see is
the up and up
and everything
seems to have color.
Where frustration happens when
you don't understand why you
don't like that person
or
don't want to talk to someone who is looking
down at the feet
that carry an cope with them.
Things are looking up for you girl,
but you've got that voice in your head that says
'What if I only fall from this all time high'
Well girl the truth is you will face
Ups and Downs
and you will face
Troubles...
but Girl you have the power to empower the people around you,
and girl you didn't even realize they were the ones
your friends,
made that all time high a reality.
Keep being astounded at how amazing people are, girl
and keep writing those
Ups and Downs
because it's good to reflect on your troubles
and not have your troubles reflect you.