It's been a year of heroes.
I've met so many of them
Since January.  

Ed Kowalczyk, Eric Church...
And Neil Gaiman today.
They were

All the same comforting
Base of blood and bones as
The rest of us.

I want to be your keeper
Offer you a safer place than this planet to live
Come stay with me, make me your home
So that if some days this planet
Rips you into shreds so tiny
That the pieces get caught in the wind
And turns you into confetti
Forever searching for its celebration
Know that I will always be home
Sitting, waiting, looking foolish in a birthday hat
So you know where to go.

ask your blood
your limbs, your breathing feet
what Poetry is -
a phylogenetic anomaly
in light’s discontinuity

or just…
the strange yearning of hematopoiesis

ask the silence in your lungs
the bursting DNA, reinterpreted
how it allures memory inside your bones
how it treads conventions of sleep
with the weight of a sigh

if you ask me
what Poetry is
I’d say: breath calligraphy
a winged dream of depth
on enchanted retina
the bitter-sweet art of airy harmony

ask your hands
what Poetry is
perhaps they’ll take a moment
to bloom

It sits on my shoulder —
a crow
weighing down,
bending a spine
that was once
so tall and proud.

Tainted blood
of the most precious
midnights hues
flow down my arm
from where black talons
had dug into the flesh.

Red is only fit for those with passion.

Mine had gone
so long ago,
taken away
by vultures
constantly feeding
on the broken dreams
of those delusional enough
to fancy themselves
artists.

Now I live
— barely —
as one of the broken
who sit and watch
as the lucky strut in arrogance
spilling watered down ink
at the expense of our blood.

But when the moon is high
and darkness comes alive,
my heart rejoices
as my mind rages
filling empty pages
with scornful desire
hidden in the sweetest of words.

The crow sings,
haunting the night
with the melancholy song
of a soul
invaded by the moon
and haunted
by broken dreams.

In the morning light
of the arrogant sun
as the moon disappears,
the words of the night
inked in blood
become nothing
but black smudges
to the eyes of the lucky
who think that ink
is the only thing spilled
to make art.

The broken
know very well
that empty words
written in ink
wash away
like promises on sand
but desire
inked in blood
will always glow red
in the moonlight.

So rejoice,
children of the sun,
for ink is cheap
and recognition
a giveaway.

Bask in the light
for as long as you can
because fame is short-lived
and the vultures are
starving.

I dream of going far away.
Plunging into the grandeur
And the vastness
Of the world.
I am ready to leave this place;
I am ready, I say,
To be away.

I will write and draw,
And take drugs with strangers.
I will sleep on the beach,
Bathe in rivers,
And plunge into nature,
Away from four walls,
From screens and cars,
And toward greenery and stars;
Splendid laughter and epiphanies
Spilling from the ether,
Behind trees and over mountains,
In the silent water of calm lakes,
And in the crimson sky
Of some northwestern twilight.

I will wander abandoned roads
And drink coffee in midnight diners
Thousands of miles from home,
For the road beckons,
And the moon never waits.

The wanderlust of youth
Is nothing to waste.