dear so and so,

strong intro
hook line and sink her
cheap wines don't hide the taste of sin, oh
but you made yourself a thinker  
four paragraphs in the outline
covering her head to her toes
pouring thoughts into her hair line
writing romance in her elbows
conclusions, confusion
you kissed her and tasted him
contusions, retribution,
her surface you've barely skimmed



love,

her eyes told me everything she didn't want me to know.
like the first time I whispered, "I love you", I knew she loved me too.
because even though her mouth told me to hush and her fingers got tangled while unbuttoning my sweater,
her eyes burst with this firey, glossed hue and her skin grew flushed and soft and I knew right then that staring into her eyes was the sweetest gift she would ever be capable of giving me.

hello, I am busy
looking for the cracks in your porcelain halo
to be happy is to be in the practice of
letting your sorrows unfold into the atmosphere
they are still there; they swirl and drift lazily into bird wings and against the sides of tall mountains
but to breathe and let them be is to be happy
lately I have sat still thinking of my pulse
of our pulses when we connect our wrists together to feel that extra oomph
and I have deduced that I cannot breathe as easily as it was to recognize happiness
not yet
we are cracked porcelain

I hope you don't mind--
I softened the ends of your ribcage
so that it won't wound us so bad
when I touch you

Perhaps I lie awake for all of those eternally sleeping.

I drove your mind into a river
Parked your dreams on the sand
You clutched at my body but I threw you out of gear
Rolled down your eyelids and your heart played static
Over the line I heard the radio chatter
"He's gone," they voiced
Exhaust fumes suffocated your family
As they choked out their goodbyes
Your console had filled with water
Muffled your drowning cries
And in those last moments your clock said
6:43
Funny, it almost looks like
B, Y E

maybe the universe wouldn't mind explaining to me
why we romanticize how we'd react in tragedies
I mean, we watch the news until our eyes glaze over
another school shooting, dozens more killed here, there
and we have the guts to say
"I would have done this differently"
no
I dare you to stare down controversy
chances are
your name and mine would also end up on an
R.I.P scroll at the bottom of the CNN media

he was thin and white
a habit I couldn't break
leaning against the crumbling walls
mind adrift and shoes making
light scuff marks against the cracked tar
he wore a jean jacket every day and at first
I likened him to a *** but once you
see a person so many times
what they wear becomes who they are
and who they are is what you love
I loved the way he shoved his sleeves
up to his elbows and then he'd
push his messy hair out of his face
with these battered hands that were
subtly caked with paint
sometimes you sense a story about the person
and I wondered for a while if
it would be appropriate for me
to insert myself in his chapters
but you know love
and you know interest
and you know you can't help it
so I broke the barrier and shuffled up beside him
he didn't look at me
just stuck his thumb in his pocket and
rested his right shoe back against the wall
he wouldn't speak so I took his photo
stood directly in front of him and
snapped what would go on to be
the first and last time I saw this drifter
he melted away into the mortar
he curled into the sun
my photo held his existence steady and still
until that evening; I lit it ablaze
you may ask why I didn't catch his name
but it is a known fact that smoke can never
and will never
be one to be captured

My prayer every evening is that I will become excellent at something
Because my outlet can, at times, stutter and fail
I like to write, and I like to think
And sometimes I despise doing both
Because it's impossible to quit thinking
I refuse to turn to drugs to drown out my mind
I will not own more crutches than I already have
My biggest fear is losing control,
So why would I give some other source the option?
Ah, and so I end up writing
It is terribly cathartic and atrociously raw
I pour out my insides and then have this erratic fear
That I have shared too much, too soon
It's like once you post something,
That mental thing becomes true and concrete
I am petrified of the concrete.
But.. I guess I'm also thankful to be alive
Concrete evidence would show I'm still here
-Something- is still here
Strange, but every once in a while I need that reminder
So I keep writing.
I'm still here.

I didn't think I could get out alive
for years I sat chained in this dungeon and hoped and prayed
to a thing supposedly bigger and greater than me
have you ever cried so hard that you panic and think you won't
be able to breathe again?
every day I have flash backs
clear as crystal and deep as a wound
I see you coming at me with rage and hatred in your eyes
my god
when I asked you if you felt sorry
you said NO!!!!??????!!!
the resentment I feel is larger than the hurt
I don't know how to cope and I don't know how to be

I was walking through town the other day and had this
alarming sense that I wasn't supposed to
I feel guilty when I want time to myself
I keep expecting you to yell at me
to threaten me
to turn that evil, lifeless grin on me before wrecking my life  
it's like
each time I rearrange my pieces into a jigsaw puzzle that spells "alright"
you come sauntering in and cut up all the jagged edges and I
can never completely fill myself again
my head is nothing but anger and confusion and dread and
sadness and mess up
I'm so messed up
you're gonna walk in tomorrow and I'm gonna have to hug you
and don't you know it kills me each time?
there will be nothing left
I don't know how to be
flatline

My heart, it can't take much more
Knowing your secrets, your core
Does she touch you the way I do?
Does she love you like I want to?
Tell me, when you're awake at night
Shadowed by her hair and the moonlight
Do you think of me?
This is a game of run and chase
I'm the mouse, and she's the snake
I could prove myself to you but what good would it do
If you stay by her side until death turns you blue?
I see the way you fight and the fire in her eyes
She'd rather make you miserable than admit her lies
How can you stay?
I envision us woven together,
You and me bound by a tether
Discovering crevices and dips and grooves
The way your shoulders feel so smooth
My dreams are of you doing better, for you
My hope is that you will add me in, too
She'll call me a home wrecker, it may be fact
But don't let our chance slip through the cracks

We sang goodbye to the Sun in unison,
never worrying, never fading;
welcomed the Moon and her power and secrets and mystery.
Knowing Mother Sun would appear again soon,
shining with her warmth and energy and Love.

is it alright if I link us all together? I need to lump us into a category entitled, "poets", so that I can discuss something with you all.
you see, I've read many a works with instructions on How Not to Fall in Love with an Artist. but there's a problem. we are poets, and we are artists, and the people who wrote me beautiful instructions know this as well.
but they forgot to teach me how to stop my heart from going there anyway.
it is a fact that us poets and artists and artist-poets see the world differently.
come on, tell me you walk down the street, see a kid dancing, and you don't want to run home and write about it.
I see poetry in everything I do.
every place I go, every voice I hear, every song I sing, I find a muse.
it's inevitable and lovely but it also makes living life with other people quite difficult.
when I was younger, my mom used to get so mad at me
because I'd sit in the car and question everything
I'd say
"why did we call a tree a tree? imagine if it were called 'blue'. we wouldn't say the sky was blue, because the sky isn't a tree. you see?"
and she'd say
"sweetie, I love ya, but you're going way too deep for me."
and I got so disappointed because to me, that was just the surface
I had an uncountable amount of questions and wonderings
with no one to discuss them with
so, yeah, I turned to the poet artists
I looked for love and all the hush hush and the yes
I sought out whisperers and thinkers and debaters
if they made me mad or confused me,
oh god,
it was love.
and yeah, so maybe none of those relationships stayed
maybe they were all way too broken and I couldn't fix them
they couldn't fix themselves
but I won't give up hope
I refuse to settle for the ones who are so numb to their own feelings that
they refuse to read a book
not because they're "boring" or "uninteresting" or "too hard",
but because books and words and poet artists transport us
directly to places we try to hide from.

my fellow poets understand and embrace this part of themselves
but "the ones" I am referring to, and you know who, because
you're imagining them right now...
they gotta think a little bit
they have to let me think with them
and if that results in misery and tragic writing
well, so be it

they say there is a time and a place for everything
well, ha, the time is now
the place is here
and my everything is you

the thing about photographs..
is that they last a lifetime, mostly
if you never drop them in mud puddles
or tear their fraying edges
or forget the last names of so and so

pictures capture memories
that, otherwise, we may have misplaced
usually..
but what happens when that lovely backdrop
turns into an argument
when its subjects cannot define
if it was here or there?

snapshots freeze us in time, everlasting
except that we still grow..
or we manage to die
our youthful skin becomes crinkly
and our eyes give away more than just our years

I dunno,
still-life was never really my thing to begin with..

Upon waking
I hacked impurities from my rusty lungs
And you traveled out of my esophagus
Down into the fluffy folds of no return
A thing to be wasted, to be thrown out
And even though the label warned me
That side effects may happen
I was crossing my bony fingers
In the hopes that I would sleep forever
But it looks like this medication
Is powerful in all the wrong ways

I have turned grey from the amount of energy
that has left my body to be ****** up by others
I feel hollow and used and walked on
and yet I still feel this ultimate duty
to do better, to be better, to be the bigger person
and for a long time
I have held a vice grip on my tongue
I've counted to ten and calculated my words  
summing them up to something worthwhile and nice
I smile in the face of those who oppress me
always doing what is right
so that nothing can come back on me
but I am in dire need of learning
how to do what's right for me

I have been horribly mistaken about loss and mortality
all this time I saw people grieving, but I was immune to it
I saw grief from a distance
and in my heart I thought that grief over death was weakness
because we all die
we are all going to die
so how can we stay so sad after it arrives?
but Jesus as my witness
I was wrong
I was so wrong
and I am so thankful that I discovered this truth when I did
because life is a beautiful thing and I don't mean our experiences
or the flowers and the ocean and the mountains and raindrops
I mean how we connect with people
nothing is comparable
do you hear me?
our unique invisible strings of being get woven together
and they get tangled and messy but oh
I'm in awe! the strings become intricate pieces of artwork
invaluable,
priceless,
WHOLLY intrinsic,
completely indescribable
and we wouldn't trade them for anything
and, God, when we grieve
we may be sad
but there is absolutely nothing
NOTHING
that is more precious and sacred
than the bonds left behind from those we love
we are forever tied together beyond the rules of time
and I now realize
that I would rather grieve a thousand times over
than to never know that type of love again
I'm so sorry

my eyelids grow heavy...
holding the weight of my choices
one is wet with tears and the other, black and ******
is it not okay to find ourselves?
the more I search, the more my identity turns to sand
tries its hardest to shift and spiral
right out of my clenched hands
continuously, I assure myself that I know who I am
I smile back, I answer calls, I tip the bartender
so I can guarantee that if they found me
washed up on this gritty gravel shoreline
they wouldn't understand that I tried sinking to the bottom...
simply to find my peace of mind  

for under the ground lies a habitat of freedom
an abundance of silence, solitude, serenity
to sink means I've succeeded
but they would yank me to the surface
they always do.
and I struggle yet again
to understand if oxygen and warm towels and emergency lights and people and warm tea and life are a blessing
or if, yet again, my plans to find myself have been hopelessly
foiled...
I really hate warm tea

old friend, what a surprise
past the devil's hour with open eyes
now my mind is surging with all the
thoughts and self I blocked out after sunrise

you're my saving grace
when no one else listens
you allow me infinite pages
to pour out my insides
and you never even
speak a word
you're my best friend
when no one else gets it
you allow me to recover
from the mistakes I make
you touch so many people
in so many different ways
in song, in rhyme, in rhythm, in time
you cross generations and continents
you are diverse and honest
you are bad and great and here,
you're always here
and I love you for that
you're my life, in words,
Hello Poetry