5:30 am...I hit the snooze
To turn off the obnoxious sound
All I do is delay
The morning melee
As the sound rolls back around

Quarter till six I remove all the sticks
From my eyes also known as sleep
My feet hit the floor
As mutts scratch on my door
A reminder of what's to be

My four furry friends at once all descend
As I open my bedroom door
I make my way through
The mine field I knew
My dogs strategically placed out the night before

I open the back as they all attack
Their imaginary foe
Like a bunch of banshees
They let out their wild screams
If I can't sleep why should my neighbors next door

As I stand in the dark with one last high pitched bark
Contemplating the sanity I lack
We go back inside
A slight tear in my eye
To get ready for work where it is I go to relax

Fighting back tears
Her eyes heavy and despondent
She looked up at the sky for consolation
To try and find beauty in the clouds
But the sky was utterly empty.

Poetry hurts.
It hurts to look at, hurts to read, because
it digs into the muscle fiber of your heart and burns its way
marking a fixed tattoo in your bone marrow
tearing through your brain material and ******* you dry.
It requires you to latch into the throttle of the soul and feel the pain
and joy
of everything you experience.
No, there is no escape-
explore your pain, stay there, fully enjoy the beauty and the frightening
love of this terribly glorious world.
Books don't hurt,
they placate. They are the balm on your poetry-burns,
allow you to view your pain objectively, to quietly observe
from a peaceful, magical
faraway land where pain doesn't matter
and that roller coaster is just a funny backdrop instead of
the vehicle in which you fall in love and lose your innocence
in the same run.
Books are the numbing, the morphine
to allow you to fall into an enchanted sleep.

We all need books and poetry at different times- to each his own-
but for my own part,

I prefer poetry.

There is falling
and there's FALLING
and I was good at both
I swear to that completely
I'll swear that under oath
If there's a way to take a tumble
A way to fall on down
Then I'm the best example
I've spent a life time on the ground

First, we'll tackle skating
Couldn't cross and make the turn
I'd get caught and then I'd tumble
It's something I never did quite learn
I was always out there falling
While the others skated by
I could never make the motion
So...I no longer even try

Athletics, you know track and field
High hurdles, running track
It's evident, I couldn't jump
So from track I got the sack
Always had weak ankles
Was always falling down
While most kids shorts were crisp and white
Mine were stained all green and brown

I gave up and then tried camping
Just a tent, the woods and me
I never even got out once
I tripped over a tree
I mean, I fell out in the forest
And yes, I made a sound
I mean if anybody heard that noise
It was me hitting the ground

I'm not much good at anything
You can see that from my past
My body moves  at one speed
My feet just go too fast
I've always been a faller
Falling's the one real thing I do
And the last time that I fell
Was the day, that I met you....