I was born into comfort’s cradling arms
And bounced on the knee of a lap of luxury
Raised in an age when the World was coddling
My lullaby was a song of interdependence:
“There’s no need to worry, you’re never alone.”
Quickly, I learned to step like the others,
March like the soldier who never says “no.”
In a land full of freedom, society raised me
To grow into a man without a conscience of his own

Now the World is on fire
And I watch it burn
Smoke rises with prayers from all of Abraham’s children
If I close my curtains
And turn on my TV
I can pretend I don’t see a thing
Put a locked door between myself and the cries of a nation I don’t know
Their burden is not mine.

February 14th comes around once again
And once again I’m by myself
Am I supposed to be depressed?
All by myself crying and dreaming of a day when I’m wanted every minute of every ******* day…no thank you.
So yes, it’s ******* Valentine’s Day
And all I have to show for it is a card from my mom
Does that mean that my life is over?
No it does not.
I know that someday, someone will see me
As more than just a talking meat suit
More than a one-time endeavor
Someone will look beneath my skin
And see who I really am and who I wish I could be
I will show this person the darkest corners of my personality
And they will not turn away
And until that person comes along
I am not settling for second best
Or second rate
Just so I can have a date
For someone who is all-right
For someone who simply thinks I look nice
Or that I’m kinda funny
Or that I will do for now
Because I respect myself more than that
I respect myself enough to wait for the right one to come along
And someday, when I’ve got the white-picket fence and the rest of the American dream grasped tightly to my chest
I will thank the Lord that I did not waste my time
Crying every time I found myself alone.

You came to me flawless
Skin smooth and unbruised
And my arms were painted
Scars from the past exposed

And I tried to assure you
That you would come away clean
That love doesn’t hurt
That love isn’t mean

But you walked away decorated
One arm black, one arm blue
Tattoos from clinging too tightly
To someone who wanted to run

The sharp words we threw around
Dug deep into your skin
Leaving permanent lines
Etched into your porcelain arms

Yet, I’ve spotted you lately
With skin smooth and unbruised
You hide your scars from the world
With an innocent smile

Staring out into the solar system
The illuminated banner scattered across the black sky
Heavenly bodies so numerous
I can’t begin to name them all
So bewildered I sit and wonder
Why these worlds so far away
Fade in and out of existence
To my unaided vision
Yet I’m comforted to know
That even in the furthest reaches
Of the most unknown parts of the universe
There are lights to guide the way

A young man, 19, the World waiting before him to be forever engraved by his most delicate breath.
A man unsure of his steps, ready to change the World
A man unprepared to succeed
Yet determined not to fail
He knows little of the harsh winds bound to bowl him over
He cares little of the precarious path etched ahead
At times he steps hesitantly, unsure of himself
And less often then he dare admit, he steps confidently, firm in his beliefs
Doubt grasps at his heart with every step
Stumbling with every half-hearted motion
He is not ready for what the World has to offer him
But the World will not wait.

Saturday,
A blank slate placed in front of an adventurous child
My imagination took me across the globe,
While my feet danced across my backyard.
Freshly cut grass grew into a weeded jungle,
Only a six year old could appreciate.
The sun was only a summersault away,
And I reached up to the sky with my stubby fingers
To form marshmallow clouds into pirate ships, and circus animals
Back when the moon was made of swiss cheese and superheroes really could fly
No one dared to whisper the word ‘impossible’
To a boy who feared nothing

I am dying to know
If the way your fingers swept through mine
Was simply an accident
Or if you meant something by it
Is the way I catch you staring at me
Something I make up in my head
Because I want you to be staring at me
I sit here waiting for you to say something
Well why don’t I?
I am nervous
I am shy
I am just a simple guy
Could you love me?
I ‘ll never know unless I try
Move past my insecurities
Build up some confidence
And let my feelings float freely
Because every time we separate
And I still call you ‘just a friend’
It kills me

Retrospective vision makes every task seem simple
Except for the one ahead
I forget the struggles I fought
Inside my own mind
Looking back, I choose to erase the doubt that weighed down every decision
And yet, with each new choice I make
it’s there

I have met wonderful people
People who have shown me the secrets they know about how a life should be lived
And everyone’s got their own answers
To face the tests that come from each day of living
I have shown these people my solutions as well
But God passed a different exam to each person
Testing their will power, questioning their faith
And on the outside you can see the small struggles I’m facing
But a greater battle is waging beneath my thick flesh
I hide the fight I face each day
From the wandering eyes of strangers
And even some familiar faces may never see the darker side in me
Time and time again I deny the entirety of my existence
But as my bones lay exposed
And people see what I’m made of
Will they too deny that I exist?

A cushioned seat high above the earth,
Buzzing with power and bloodlust,
Sits empty once more.
Echoes of a thriving kingdom
Are buried by a din of silence.
When rulers abandon their perches,
Palaces crumble.

I meet your gaze
You’re gazing at me
Am I supposed to say something now?
Are you even flirting?
Well, now this is awkward…

Please excuse me
And my inability
To understand the signs I’m supposed to know
I should be dark and swarthy
But God made me
just a little bit dorky
And nobody taught me
How to take these first steps
But if you give me half a chance
I could be half-way decent
At being the man you hope that I am
I’m working up the courage
And gaining the confidence
To finally say something to you
Because you, you are radiant
And I long to know you
But I don’t think I can

I’ll bottle my feelings this time
And walk away lonely
Next time for sure
Next time I’ll be brave
And I’ll know what to say
I’ll give you no choice but to love me…
Next time.

We sit in this room talking and laughing
No judgement, no secrets
And a large box of M & M's shared among friends
I cherish each word and every obnoxious chortle
Every anecdote, which fills this space
I cling to this moment and wish for it to endure
While we sit in our private sector of the world
Set aside from the foundation shattering headlines and news bulletins
We neglect the impending deadlines created by worldly demands
For a moment nothing on earth matters

I like to pretend I don’t have emotions
In my mind I’m better then those weak-kneed, angsty teenage girls who write about true love in their journals but have never worked up the nerve to actually talk to a boy
I enjoy my feeling of superiority
But no human is without their flaws
My flaw happens to be you
When you’re near I seek out the nearest mirror and check my reflection
Fix my hair
Straighten my shirt
I clear my throat as I try to slow down my pulse
I tell myself to breathe, slowly; inhale, then exhale.
And when our encounter is over
And we’ve gotten no closer
To the place I long to be -in your beautiful freaking arms
I walk away and daydream of our lives together
Next thing you know I’ll be scribbling your name all over my notebook.
You turn me into a cliché I never thought I’d be
******* you and your beauty

…and your charming personality

…and your perfect smile

…and your witty remarks

Just ******* you.

Hiding my feelings is a craft I have mastered
Steering my emotions to make people believe what they are ready to assume
Concealing even the most basic instincts
Convincing myself it’s for the best
But when no one gets to know who you really are
Life can get awfully lonely
I’m going insane trying to maintain
The sideshow distracting people from seeing myself

How disgusting is this World we live in?
Because I know I am not the only person
Keeping their thoughts from the surface
I am not dark and twisted
I am just a person looking for love
From someone who loves me back
And I don’t want people to hoot and holler for me
I’m perfectly happy with no one giving a ****
Just don’t bring your picket signs into my personal life
Because I don’t protest your love for another
I’m not attempting to do anything radical
I’m not even trying to change the World
I just want to love a man
And not be ashamed to say it

I sit on the edge of disaster
If I should fall
It wouldn’t matter anymore
I no longer cling to my petty existence
As I once used to
The mantra running through my head tells me to keep my chin up
But I can only lift my head so high, to pretend that I’m okay
I can only struggle to stay afloat for so long
Before my arms grow tired and my neck becomes stiff
I could simply stop struggling to survive
I would not take the air out of my own lungs or the monotonous pulse from my chest
I simply wouldn’t work so **** hard to make sure I wake up tomorrow
I long to rest beneath layers of dirt
Where the doubts and insecurities that gnaw at my skin
Become insignificant thoughts that float in the empty air
Without a troubled mind to invade

I was never one for rebellion,
Going against the rules was never my thing
I didn’t get a kick out of making trouble
Or starting controversy.

But I learned from a young age to stand up for what’s right
Those were your words, your teachings
And as I stand for the things I’ve learned, and the things I love
I wonder where you are.

I remember when I was introduced to a man who loved the World
Do you remember leading me there?
You told me he forgave even the largest sins
And he could see into my heart.

Now I am standing here alone
Representing a lifestyle I call my own.
And though I know you don’t agree,
What happened to the one who supported me?

The one who told me “God is love.”
But I guess love is only for a few
A chosen breed,
Chosen by you.

I stand here now, unafraid
Knowing all my sins are saved.
And who told you love could be a sin?
Will you ever love me again?

You may see me as a monstrosity,
But I am built by your teachings
Composed of the lessons you taught my young heart
We see the World differently,

But you gave me my start.

Count every calorie
1,2…Too many
Try each quick trick,
power shake,
weight loss,
fat *******,
muscle building,
fiberlicious,
piece of ******* I can get my hands on
Take the stairs, not the elevator
Walk to work, then walk home
Jog in place,
Do 10 push-ups,
Jumping jacks,
Tuck jumps,
Sit-ups,
Scissor kicks,
You name it I’ve done it
I’ve stuck to my diet for so long
My menu has consisted of a million and one ways to say bland
I have looked into low-fat,
No fat,
Fat free,
Sugar free,
Sodium free,
‘Feel free, to leave me on the shelf because I taste like dog ****’
versions of every name brand in the produce section
and now…now I would **** for some cheese fries,
Or a giant cake just for me,
An entire package of Oreos dipped in Nutella,
Or simply a candy bar
Dieting takes will power,
But vending machines take mere pocket change.

I often wonder if God looks down at us with a microscope
Like a small child examining ants
As we march to work and we march to school
Falling into the rhythmic beat our busy lives create for us
Doing everything we can to fall in line

I wonder if God laughs, when he sees me stumbling over small cracks in the sidewalk
Thinking I know the best way to go
Thinking that I can make it alone
Not realizing how miniscule I am in this universe that he has created

I wonder if God hears my insignificant squeak
When I turn to the heavens and attempt to roar in pride
When I bury my head in my hands and sob over Earthly things
Do God’s cheeks sting from salty tears as well?

I wonder if God’s heart breaks
As I struggle with doubt
As my heart wrestles with questions about his existence
Or does God even have a heart to break?

I wonder if God turns his head away when I attempt to meet his gaze
When I stare into the sky and challenge his authority
When I think I know more then a man who knows everything
Or do his eyes stare back into mine, as he reminds me of everything I don’t know?

I wonder if God ever wonders about me
This strange little creature that he has made
Fighting society
Attempting self-salvation
Looking up and asking questions
I wonder if he smiles

Go on and give me the cold shoulder
It fits your icy personality
Don’t bring your pompous nose out of the air
To look at the people below you
You’re better than that now
A little insignia on your clothing
Has you forgetting who your friends were
When you needed them most
Well next time you need a friend
You can turn to that insignia
Because I am a stubborn child at heart
Who holds on to everything

I cling to the day we met
A couple of anxious teenagers preparing to step into adulthood
Watching movies past midnight
Downing an entire six pack of pineapple juice
Not sure where the next year would take us

I remember the day I learned to trust you
In silent desperation I opened up to you
And showed you the fringed edges of my soul
The parts of myself that have been bruised by the short life I’ve lived

I can’t forget the day you came to me in tears
And I was there to comfort you
And even then you didn’t know why you were crying
We sat and cried together
Because we realized how cruel people can be

But more then anything I hold on to the way your eyes no longer meet mine
I can’t get over the way you choose to deny my existence
Like I am a lowly creature
And you, with your lofty gaze and your newfound love for yourself have better things to look at

So keep your eyes in the sky, because someday that is where I will be
And you will have to look at the ground, if you want to pretend I don’t exist anymore.

I’m afraid you can’t see your own delicate beauty
Because I’ve become as addicted to watching you torture yourself
As you have become obsessed with putting yourself through pain
Your porcelain feet, fragile and small
That danced so freely, so intricately
Now stomp through the shards of a broken existence,
The one you created for yourself
You’ve gone back to your torturer
The man who left you broken
Painted his own self-satisfying portrait
With the deep-red stains from your skin
Shall I let you continue
Your broken waltz with destruction?
He leads you
       You let him
            Caught in-side
                  Hyp-no-sis
        Mind con-trol

Will a fatal cascade be your means of escape?
The fall of a tragic ******
Used to getting her fix,
Your daily dose of pain

When you are mangled and twisted
Bruised with the fresh knowledge of someone else’s cruelty
I’ll cover your wounds
And ease your pain

Help you reset your emotions to be battered again.

Look back at who you used to be:
A boy who walked the straight and narrow
Afraid of your own shadow
A child who made promises unto himself
Swearing you’d never give in
Swearing you’d cling to your dream
Swearing you would be strong enough to stand high on the mountain of morality
Out of reach of their harsh words
And too far away to see the blinding lights of reality
That hoped to knock you down

Now look at who you’ve become:
You call yourself a man
Because you’ve been exposed to the elements
You claim to have “grown-up”
Since you’ve traded in your morals for a ribbon of approval from your friends
You let the words of others sting you
And you change your personality to cover the wounds
You are a disgrace
You’ve cast off pieces of yourself
And glazed over your flaws
To be a mindless piece of perfection
That society won’t reject.
Good for you.

The sun casts its miraculous glow onto the Earth
But what the sun illuminates in the day it abandons at night
With the coming of the sun we must also accept its absence
The cold chill of a dark night
As a massive shadow blankets the colorless sky
The beauty of the day forces us to recognize the cruelty of night

While many believe that darkness breeds fear
I am all too familiar with it
I attempt to cloak myself in the golden glow of sunshine
But as hard as I try to hide behind its beauty
The dark stain still bleeds through,
A part of me accustomed to the dark

And maybe I’m the only one who can see
Navigate my way through the pitch black
Because as hard as I try to cling to the beauty in this World
My heart understands darkness
Many times I’ve played naïve
Pretending life is always what we choose to display to the day

But I am always reminded of what I’ve seen in the dark.

When life took me through doldrums
And times of distress
I looked to the future
And dreamt of success
When I came close to crumbling
My dream carried me through
The days I faced failure
I dreamed instead I could fly
For years I had plans
I knew I wouldn’t be like the rest
Settling for practicality
I would be the one who made it
But society called me crazy
For daring to try
I decided to settle
I looked through a filter called reality
And with a dull knife
Dipped in regret
I clipped my own wings
And sometimes I remember
The dream I once had
I can feel it coming up
The song I once wanted to sing
So I choke it down
And pretend it’s not there
I painfully swallow the ambition’s I had
Then turn a blind eye to the pain in my heart
The voices of practical and new dreams
Console me each night
And they tell me the payoff is
That my dreams don’t get crushed,
But that’s only because
I’ve crushed them myself.

Do not bother your articulate tongue
The time for speaking has ended
The thoughts lingering in your mind
Need not be forced out of your lips
Tell me a story without engaging my ear
Explain everything by revealing nothing
The sweet euphony created in silence
Makes a clear canvas for words
Our minds can formulate ideas
To float in the air between us
The World may call on us to respond to its siren calls
But we will pay them no attention.

This village of two hundred and fifty six people probably won’t ever be ready for you.
Your secret will haunt the community for as long as it takes them to pretend you don’t exist
At first people may scream and cry
Fathers will load their shotguns and little old ladies will lock their doors
Afraid that you are bold enough to profess your love for another man
But behind the bolted windows and petrified stares
Know that you are not alone
Supporters will come from the most unknown places
Someday we can hope this place will change
But that doesn’t mean you have to wait to be honest with yourself
This place will always be filled with gossip
Where news is spread between hair dryers at the local salon
And political conservatism is ten times bigger then the grocery store
In this small corner of the world, where kind words and friendly greetings are waiting on every street corner you will meet the disgusting face of hatred
But when hatred dies, love will come up from it’s ashes

The sky was your modern miracle
Simply because you were in it
Defying the laws of everything
You went against physics
You went against society
With a cape proudly adorning your shoulders
You did the impossible
Gravity became your vanquished enemy
And you didn’t look down.
But by tying responsibilities to your ankles
The World managed to weigh you down
Telling you to get your head out of the clouds
You haven’t taken to the sky since then
Now a suit is all that adorns your shoulders
And the duties of manhood keep your eyes on the Earth
And out of the Heavens

But hopefully someday when the wind blows just right
You’ll drag that old cape from your closet
The one everyone told you not to wear
Letting your feet drift from beneath you
You’ll become lighter than air
And leaving all responsibilities behind you
You’ll remember how to fly

My car is filled to the brim
An iced coffee in my cup holder
And one of Smashmouth’s two well-known songs blares through my radio speakers
As I pass rolling hills, barbed wire fences, and corn stalks taller than my 1998 Ford Explorer
Everything tastes familiar
The flavor of my favorite drink
A nostalgic song from my childhood
And the pathway home

Set before me is the most gorgeous scenery anyone could ask for
The road that takes me to the place I most want to be
Three grain elevators sparkle with all the allure of the emerald city
Beckoning me forward
Taking my heart back to the place I can always return to
Trees wave their branches covered in elaborate displays of amber and green
As if they know I have returned
The boy who used to climb their thick trunks
With a posse of dirt-clad children from the neighborhood
This place is painted with beautiful memories
And nowhere else can be so inviting
I am home.

I look back on days when I didn’t care about anything
And each moment was an opportunity for adventure
I saw beauty in everything
Childhood was a wonderful thing
Now I stand on the line between being boy and man
The child in me fights to survive
And you draw the man out of me
While I struggle to grasp what remains of my childhood
I watch it dwindle away every time I’m with you

These halls I’ve walked so many times before have changed
The familiar feeling of a home I used to know has gone away
Is it this place that’s always changing?
Or is it the man who wants it all to stay the same?
We used to laugh about the past
But now the past has lead us here
To a present I don’t even recognize
While time continues to take each moment
As retribution for all the time I’ve wasted
Trying to figure out what I wanted the future to look like
Was it worth worrying about the days to come?
When they have now become days gone by,
I realize I wasted every one of them
I could have done so much more, become so much more
If I hadn’t worried on the future,
And lived for the day I had.

My reflection speaks to me.

He reminds me of the person I wish I could be

Twenty pounds lighter

A couple shades dark

Society’s perfect specimen.

I think of the person I could be

And with great disdain,

I look at the person I really am

I wish my flaws away.


How vain could I be,

To pray away my individuality

In order to be a deluded form of myself,

Who could face himself in a mirror?

And then...what would my reflection say?

Your cold body is contorted on the soft carpet
Spurts of thick blood come from the heart I have carved out of your chest
My warm fingers bare the scarlet stain as evidence of what I’ve done
And no amount of scrubbing can take it away

I’ve become a paralyzed creature, who doesn’t understand how to respond
I played around with the heaviest words in my vocabulary
Not realizing the power that they had
Unaware that I was unready to say them

I never loved you; at the time I thought the feeling was there
Now you lie unresponsive
As I slowly walk away from the mess I’ve made
And leave you in the past
The words I used to stab at your heart, the words I didn’t mean, echoing in my mind
“I love you”

Can’t life be simple?
You walk one way
And I’ll walk another
I want nothing to do with you
Yet your face keeps popping up
I wish you would disappear
Cease to exist in my world
No I don’t ask for death
I just ask for an alternate route
I’ve tried changing lifestyles
Changing my ways
I’ve attempted changing myself
But either way I’m forced to see you
I’ve been down on my knees
Making bargains with the only man who knows
But his answers can’t satisfy my impatient heart
I can’t seem to get away
I could run
Yet with each step I’d be reminded of you
My hate would grow stronger
Until I couldn’t face myself
Trust me I’ve attempted a getaway
But you surrounded yourself with the people I love
No, I’m stuck
With you
The baggage I’ve tried to leave behind
It’s you
A secret I tried to leave six feet below the surface
But you come crawling back
The life I used to live