i tried to write a poem
i've been trying for a while
to write the ways in which you always
seem to make me smile

i've tried to tell our stories
through the medium of rhyme
but every time i start to type
the words fall out of time

it's always been so simple
i can write when i feel wrong
but it all seems so unnatural
now i feel like i belong

i don't think i can do it
'cause i don't know where to start
so if i see you in my poems
it will mean you broke my heart.

You think seeing is believing
You think you're alive just because you're breathing
But the truth that you've been told
Is stale and old
It holds you back, won't let you move
To do some good or think of something new
Dark and relentless, warped and demented
Read on if this has captured your attention

So this is what it's like to be holy?
This was the vision that kept me awake in bed
The revelation manifesting itself in my head
I remember wishing so hard to wake up dead
But then a whispering voice crept up and said
"Why not turn your weakness into strength instead?"
It was like a gust of wind with a goal to embed
Me with some kind wisdom for what was ahead
But who was I? Some kid thought to be brain dead
Filled with guilt, shame and irrational dread
Always quiet, leaving my words left unsaid

So this is what it's like to be holy?
But now after hard work and humbling failures
I'm breaking down doors and busting up barriers
This is so major
After dealing with haters, traitors and jailers
Who gave me the spark, who gave me a reason
To go make my mark and fight for my freedom
To pick up the pieces and make something decent
To freeze all the heathens and either eat or be eaten
Or I could have become numb and go to the bottle
But I'm having too much fun becoming colossal
       -Tommy Johnson
Sunlight warming up face
They're bitter just taking up space
But I'm trying to start something
I'm not trying to be judging
But it's kind of touching
How I started out as nothing

So this is what it's like to be holy?

Above my head, I saw the dead dance
Put under a trance
A Gothic romance
I heard the whisper say "take a chance"
"It's the won't it's never can't"
"You must always advance"
And with that I made took my stance

So this is what it's like to be holy?

You look tired, girl.

The lines on your face
from annual frost wedging
sprout tiny trees and assemblies of
lichens
that blot the pages of your book
like carelessly spilt ink,

but it's not worth crying over.

I spent my time trying to read those
pages,
those hieroglyphs
penned in a foreign
and dead tongue.

I tried to read the landscape of you.

Where split rocks harbor still-breathing mammals
at the base of your collar bone.
Where the aspens quake
and make homes for hawks
on the crest of your bony hip.
Where the trickles of water babble
softly,
but not unheard
and the trout jump like living jokes
in the cracks on your tongue.

Really, I tried.
And the closer I looked the more I realized
that you are not my native land.
I was an invasive species there
and I could feel the god in you
crying out
to abolish the man in me.

So I tore down the shack I had built
at the border between you and I
and I watched as the trees regrew
where I used to harvest my firewood
and I saw the deer
bed down
as the sun set
behind the
cold and silent mountain range
that fringes your hairline-

those mighty castle walls
that I could never truly breach.

I want something other than ****
with the short shorts showing
everything
the low-cut crop top
exploring eyes wander over
on countless evenings
my imagination having nothing
left

I want smokey flannel
a two-day-old pony tail
boots stained by the dirt and grass
a hole in your jeans
that wasn't there when you found them

I want hungover-fastfood-drive-throughs
with my shorts and your tank top
wrinkled from your floor
your hair still wet from the morning shower

I want leggings, a t-shirt
and a backwards ball cap
while we sing loudly out the open window
tapping the dashboard off-beat
hand raised fingers pointing at the moon
laughing at the man that sits watching us drive