How can I live in a world where I outlive everything I love?
A portrait preserves beauty, but not the life, lies, and everything I've ever spoken of.
True, time can devoid meaning, it can soften the blow,
but then the remembrance of the tenderest touch
is reduced to the distant flick of a snowflake against a ***** window.

If art reveals the spectator and not life, what, then, what has the spectator spent so much time living?
Has he not lived this thing called life?
He looks to the painting as an equal, not a mirror.
Each painted rose ****** his skin with forgotten thorns,
each crafted dove reminds of those long-lost, whom he mourns.
Reaching past/ through every frame, he extends his life,
he learns, remembers, and is forewarned
of his own work of life, for which time always sought,
painted with nothing but his own brush of thought.

I press flowers because I like it.
The thrill of thievery, of plucking irreplaceable beauty from those who can't see it anyway,
wild eyes daring passing cars to not slow down
for the girl holding flowers between her teeth.
And I ran and I thieved for a love of my own,
Until I began to press the life out of beauty, to preserve it for you.
I shook my bones until only pennies fell out.
I gave you everything, everything
and you said everything, and you meant nothing

I press flowers because I like it.
The thrill of thievery, of plucking irreplaceable beauty from those who can't see it anyway,
wild eyes daring passing cars to not slow down
for the girl holding flowers between her teeth.
I was good, I was just, I took only what I needed,
my happily dirt-stained fingertips treated each preserved beauty with the utmost love
And I ran and I thieved for a love of my own,
a secret I shared only with passing cars and the once perfect gardens.

But passing cars contain people, and people have gardens,
and everyone knew
So I began to press the life out of beauty, and I did it only for you.
I still ran and I thieved for a love, just not my own;
Countless cherished petals fluttered to the paper as I smiled,
my now gloved sterile hands caressing sallow dahlias and florid roses,
eyes glossing over each work of precious taxidermy.
Every page of crushed life spelled out made just for you!
and my gold tipped spotless fingertips could see nothing wrong.

As I ran, my long hair no longer flew in the wind,
the few remaining strands stuck limply to my wrinkled skin.
I grew weak, stems slipped through my desperate fingers,
so much beauty was too much for shaking skeleton hands.
My eyes barely opened and were filled with fear,
Who would pay attention to me if I had no pressed flowers to bear?
I searched for flowers and found winter instead.
But people still came for more, asking and pleading,
confused, saying that there were countless flowers, ripe for the picking.
I heard August bees, but they buzzed around twigs,
happy couples exchanged bouquets of sticks and dried leaves.
Could there really be flowers I wasn't seeing?
I looked down at my hands, gold fingertips cracked and worn.

My sight faded more, and I welcomed it, beaming.
I didn't need to see if people told me what they needed.
I picked sallow dahlias and breathed in florid roses,
filled orders and was met with smiles, laughter, and love,
until August was over, until the need for flowers
had completely dried up.

In September I waved at passing cars, varnished nails flashing,


I still run and I thieve for a love not my own.
But I plant beauty on every empty doorstep,
for others to find their love even if it is unknown.
Because I shook my bones until only pennies fell out,
but pennies are just pocketed rust to those who are afraid to love/ to those who have no time to love/ to those who don't take the time to love


What can fool someone so far to think the sun has gone cold?
Was it August's pollen showers? Could they really be mistaken for snow?
Are sun scorched sidewalks so white-hot that they numb barefoot toes?
How can something pave the world in grayness and shadow even beauty that was preserved?
Can something so simple make gray clouds greater than gold?
But then why is it so terrible to see beauty in the dull?
It is love that can make gray clouds greater than gold,
but it is also love that can dim the rest of the world.


i did something I loved, but it became an industry, no longer for love but for profit, for image, to look cool/unique
people love doing something and then it becomes too much, corrupt, not for you anymore, so they have to remember why they do it, do it because you love it
the lorax
do what you love, people

It haunts us, we are scared of it.
But we spend a lot of time thinking about it.
We walk around wanting it.
It drives us, makes us passionate.
Ditch everything we know just to chase it.
Wake up the next morning hoping to revisit.

It is different for each person, and we try to make the most of it.
Next year we make a bunch of promises, and swear to it.
No more this, no more that, but more of it.
Finally be the person we want to be, get really fit.
Time passes by, we forget it.
Maybe next year we will regret it.

Once you look around, you will remember it.
Slow things down, take a glance, it will hit.
Every second counts, do not ever quit.
You only get it once, before you split.

It is called life, cherish it.

Every day the sun stretched over the songbird’s ivory tower.
Nighttime ivy ringlets caught and pulled, like taffy,
sunshine tendrils into rocky satellite white.
She swung sunbeams into starlight
And I thought it'd drone on forever.
//
Every dawn the sun stretched over the songbird’s ivory tower.
Nighttime ivy ringlets caught sunshine tendrils,
pulled them into rocky satellite white, like taffy.
She swung sunbeams into starlight,
And I thought it'd drone on forever until

I realized that sprinkled sugar cookies made hands numb flammable,
that you can't feel them again until they leave the powder blue locker room,
until they're in the car, worried they might melt the steering wheel, when they’re left to figure out why.

Now streetlights gassed with Canadian lypophrenia
make snowflakes float like stardust,
while splintered lilac fingertips trace meaningless constellations,
as they ponder whether daisies can tell
if someone loves you,
                                       or not.

With firefly breath, I wished on dandelion dust
for December's cruel weather to warm,
so we could sleep forever on the concrete floor
and it'd feel like Pennsylvania moss and twigged leaves.
We’d swing dance in the sidewalk cracks
drowning in footsteps and manhole steam.
Saturn would bloom to petal dust in your wake
and you would never feel small.

And I thought cocoa butter was our solace,
that you'd be drenched in chocolate wishes
that turn ribboned skin to soft smile scars.
The Earth would lay enveloped and confessed-
a dripping orb of love and light thrown against
the burning oblivion of the universe.
I pull in the horizon like a great fish net
So much life in its meshes!
I call in your soul to come and see.

With the spring equinox, four-leaf clovers withered and died,
still-lit birthday candles melted into oceans
and heads-up pennies piled into roadway castles,
unwanted, unneeded by someone who forgot who she was.
I thought, for a moment, that I'd been wrong.

Within that rim of rose, there is ungravity and life on Mars.
But this world is a rememory of drought and oil spills,
drowning you in a warm, sweet, malignant blanket
of braided brown hair and tokyo tickets.
To you, my whispering lips screamed for palmers-
for 13 ounces of memories that were never mine,
and still, you slathered it on.

Our streetlights set and the sun flickered out,
the pennies I never reached for, someone else had picked up,
and the clovers I ignored, I now ached for with all my heart.
Eyes streaming, I reached for a shooting star,
but the night does end, dawn always rises,
and my precious last chance melted in my desperate hands

because i fall in love with everyone
and my lips are never chapped
  so now i eat cinnamon toast
   and I paint the sun
    with blackberry juice

In apple-killing cold, stars fade in the amber glow of tiger's eyes,
gray clouds are still bursting with starlight,
willow trees will forever weep diamonds,
and daylilies still steal away sleep.

Days, months have gone by, and somehow I'm still gathering (caught in) strings. Dropping my scissors, I pick one up and see echoes, and listen to the words I should not have written. What I should have said let's go to bed before you say something real still scratched into my wished (alternate universe) little memory let's go to bed before you say how you feel. I fold the northern lights neatly on the top shelf of my closet to leave it there, maybe forever. I wonder if something so bright will be able to collect dust. I reach for my scissors but they had stretched into threads just like everything else that touches it (the memory). Someone walks by the closed window outside I can't call you a stranger I recognize him. but I can't call you The clock says 7:03 for the first time in years and I close my eyes, willing myself to forget. I reach through the tangles of strings intertwined for a distraction and see my wall covered in posters. I try to take one off and it rips I've pinned each and every hope on you I shouldn't have taped them. I reach to turn on my lamp waiting for the hint of a spark to see the ripped paper but it does not turn on I will follow you into the dark it must be out of battery. I see my bed through the cracked shadows across my room but I can't reach it. I surrender to the threads and close my eyes on the floor. I wake up in a strange place somewhere I'd never have known my room just as it used to look but with one string left, right in front of me. I step past it and into a field of wildflowers golden rose, the color of the dream I had Pale dahlias spot that there's a lack of color here the bright field. I’ve always hate dahlias, but for some reason, I don't really mind them anymore I always knew