I used to rip pages out of poetry books and tape them to my walls. I’d try to grab on to each word and pull myself up and over. The walls grew higher and higher and the books eventually ran out of pages. I wrote a poem about my efforts and ripped it out of the journal that I surely would have lost someday. I taped the page to the wall. I wrote more poems and I taped them to my walls. I wrote songs that were sang by kings and queens but the tape would not stick to the songs lyrics. I wrote stories of a boy who would look but never saw and stuck the stories to the wall. I looked with my eyes and I saw the boy in the blank pages. I dug my pencil into the cemetery of lined pages. The kings and queens voices echoed in my head. The poems silence rang louder. When the pages from the journal I’d surely lose finally ran out, I stepped back and looked at my walls.

Windows.

We want
Something
That fills our lungs.

But
That holds the power
To stop us breathing.

Sometimes i feel like dropping
down to my knees and weeping,
my face pressed against
the dirt and fresh cut grass.
but
something keeps pulling me up,
up until my feet dangle
just above the lawn and i
hang there like a newborn child,
limp and blind in my mother’s jaw.

I live only to forget. And spend too much time remembering.
Remembering the moments before my eyes opened
to lights counterpart. before my voice ached to be heard
by the men without ears. what is thought is never heard
and what is said is often misunderstood.

anxious hands and tired eyes.
The earth was spinning a million miles an hour and then in an instance it stood still, one soul lighter.

my eyes  up like a truck-stop burning. my eyes light up like
an ambulance on fire.
we throw rocks at the ant hill in the yard
we whisper promises to a moon lit sky.

if heaven is above, this must be hell
if heaven is above, this must be hell.

we poke sticks at the spider webs in the yard.
we whisper promises to a moonless sky.
I hear your cries but don't listen.
Just as you look into my eyes but don't see.

The fog is lifting, but only to reveal the cracked concrete that we stand on. The cold is fading, but only to spark a flame that will once again singe my fingertips.
My stomach turns when I think of sleep. All the motions of yesterday seem to fade away when I dream. They're lost in the darkness, dead upon impact, pillow to skull and then it’s all gone.

I never could draw. It was something about the heads, the eyes, the hands, that I never got right. The feet always ended up different sizes. I could never capture that thing we tend to have. The silent thing. You know, the thing that you can’t put words too. That thing that's gone when you're dead, when the blood stops rushing, and the palms stop sweating. Not the skin, not the nice faces, not the smiles and tears.

Give me what I can manage, I can hold it for now

Sometimes i feel like dropping
down to my knees and weeping,
my face pressed against
the dirt and fresh cut grass.
but
something keeps pulling me up,
up until my feet dangle
just above the lawn and i
hang there like a newborn child,
limp and blind in my mother’s jaw.

I live only to forget. And spend too much time remembering.
Remembering the moments before my eyes opened
to lights counterpart. before my voice ached to be heard
by the men without ears. what is thought is never heard
and what is said is often misunderstood.

anxious hands and tired eyes.
The earth was spinning a million miles an hour and then in an instance it stood still, one soul lighter.

my eyes  up like a truck-stop burning. my eyes light up like
an ambulance on fire.
we throw rocks at the ant hill in the yard
we whisper promises to a moon lit sky.

if heaven is above, this must be hell
if heaven is above, this must be hell.

I guess writing is a bit like loving somebody.
You dig deep within yourself, you scrape the walls of your heart, and you hold out your hands, eyes down, with an offering. Knowing well, that there are others who have more to offer than your mere scraps, more than your anxious hands can hold. But just praying that this one time, maybe, you could create something beautiful, with pen & paper... or with a glance and a smile.

I sometimes feel this pressure.
Seeing these articulate individuals weave words and phrases in such a way that it would send echoes down your spine. Seeing these benevolent lovers, hand in hand, smiling into each other's tomorrow. If I am being honest, well, I've felt like in order to be appreciated, like them, I need to write, like them, I need to love like them. But that isn't the way. That isn't being a writer. That is not how you love.

I wake up sometimes with this complete utter clarity.
Like maybe it makes sense now, here, today. Maybe on this day, my optimism will breath truth into my writing, allowing me to create something genuine. But that same spirit lingers in the shadow, still, beckoning me. That shadow of recognition, that pressure to be accepted, literarily. That pressure to be loved, romantically.

Sometimes pen sinks into paper with perfect precision.
Sometimes it stains that page.
Sometimes we love people with every piece of our cracked heart.
Sometimes they don't feel the same.

Writing is a bit like loving.

There’s an innate understanding in sadness.
To look at the moon and to notice the shadows
Is not to ignore the haunting glow of its shine.
To look at what hides behind the sunshine,
beneath its smile,
Is not to crave the silence in the night.
To keep dancing in meadows of light
But to start crying in the rain.
Each drop, both from skies and tears,
Washes away the built up layer
on cheek and earth.
That is beauty in sadness;
deaths kiss,
sweet and heavy.

Is this just rainfall?

Or is the sky weeping for us?