Pain is...
Being able to imagine a future with him
Someone who will never love you.

Pain is...
Loneliness
Sadness
Being overlooked
Wishing for the impossible
Seeing everyone run from you.

Pain is spirit breaking,
Tear jerking torment.

That's what pain is.

The world is just a puzzle
We try to find our missing pieces to make ourselves whole
Sometimes we find shredders
Or the edge of the table below our cardboard limbs

The college guy that goes out on Friday nights to the same bar,
Trying to find a temporary thrill,
Seeks excitement.

A young lady who wakes up every morning to get to the gym
Seeks wellness.

An old widow with his knees bowed next to the alter at church,
Looks to find sanctuary.

A man watching the people pass
Looks for inspiration in the lives of others.

The greatest of sinners
His back to an metal table
Limbs strapped one by one
Says one last prayer before darkness overtakes him.
He seeks redemption.

What are you seeking?

Sometimes I feel as though I am not me
I am not myself
That I make up my emotions
That I doubt my feelings if I'm not in the moment of the emotion's happening
I cannot stay true to anyone
Not even myself
I am not set in stone
Just a sun-bleached sheet blowing in the wind
I am closed when I need to be open
I am open when I need to be closed...

Is this okay/normal?

You found out I called you crazy,
but to be fair you were the same man who
stabbed himself on purpose and
picked at wounds just to see how well the scars held up
under your knife.

The same man who woke up with bruises for hands and
bourbon for breath.

You always slept with your eyes open,
glazed over like a snake ready to strike.
You said this was from spending 19 years locked in a cage
like a feral animal.
I see that didn't teach you anything.
Some beings can never be rehabilitated;
they should have never released you back into the wild.

You picked roses because they reminded you of your dead mother
and once you made me talk to her ashes
and afterwards you threw me on your pool table
and made a mess of me.

You said it was for your memory,
I used it for my art.

You would cut me up for fun and stalk me for pleasure.
You say bourbon and *** makes you feel real again.
You would always tell me I was too pretty for you and
we would laugh along to gory movies until our eyes half closed in drunken lust and all I wanted to do was drink from you.

You would lock your door and turn on the fairy lights
and touch me real slow and hard until I became cold from the
beating of your heart next to mine.

You always said you were going to leave,
I never thought you'd just disappear
and still be 5 minutes away from me.

You are a ghost that I wish would haunt me a little more often
because I am reduced to ashes now just like your cremated mother.

You turned me rabid and mean.

You never told me how to make this stop.
I just keep bleeding from the wounds you left.

You turned me into the same animal you are.

the angel of
the strangest love
wraps her feathery wings around me

the danger of
the strangled dove
delicate wings surround me

Im about as subtle as a gunshot wound on a Thursday afternoon
and everyday when I wake I forget how to use my feet because
you were the bones in them and now you are missing

one day will I be able to say your name without sounding like
***** in a wastebasket in an office

without sounding like a dead deer carcass in a stream

last spring you took me to the park
and we walked the trails and layed in the pine needles
like nesting phoenix and I think you burned me on purpose
well I have yet to rise from those ashes

all I ever did was ******* love you

remember when your parents went out of town
and I spent the night in your bed and when I woke up at 11 am

I saw the sunlight streaming through onto your face and oh my god
you were just so beautiful

remember when we got drunk and spent the night
in your backseat after you threw up 3 times in the street

do you remember
do you even remember me

I think of you at least 7 times a day
and I always thought you were all I ever needed
but here I am now

learning how not to need you

Leo: Remember everyone is fighting. Be patient, forgive, but never allow yourself to be a doormat to those who care less about you than you do them. Forget the wrath. Find the joy in the power it brings you.

Virgo: Do not stunt your growth trying to entertain the opinions of other people. You know in the end, you have to be the most important person in your life. Grow.

Libra: Quit running. You will never find yourself in other people, so stop trying. Desperation does not look good around your neck. Hold your chin high and look inside yourself for what you need.

Scorpio: Go. Stop leaving claw marks in your wake. Know that what you think you need is not always so. You are worth more than what you have been selling yourself for. Pride is important to you, but it is still okay to cry if you need to. Say goodbye to what is less than you.

Sagittarius: It is okay to say no. Don’t apologize anymore for having an opinion. Speak your mind, let yourself be heard. Do not quiet your desires for someone else’s.

Capricorn: The past doesn’t matter anymore. Close the book, shut the door. Stop searching for answers and know that it all happened for a reason. It will make sense soon if you let it.

Aquarius: Do not make friends with your demons. Clean the skeletons from your closet. Take a long walk tonight and allow yourself to feel the weight of sadness like a moth eaten sweater. Fold it up in the morning and put it in a box. Throw it away.

Pisces: Stop being selfish and cruel. Put the bourbon away, put your phone away for the night. Sleep by yourself and see what you dream of. People are not trying to ruin you like you are them. Forget revenge.

Aries: Let go. Do not cling to what you think is saving you. Do not drink tonight, do not tell them you love them again if you do not mean it. Be careful to not push away the people who truly care for the one who doesn’t.

Taurus: It is time to stop caving in on yourself. Reach out to someone, stop to smell the flowers. Find beauty in this world again.

Gemini: You’re almost done hurting. I know your mother told you the storm never lasts forever and you doubted her. Let the rain leave you now. It is okay to not define yourself by your sadness.

Cancer: Let the things and people you are bitter about leave you. Do not let memories haunt you any longer. Wash them off in the river while it’s still warm. Baptize yourself.

Financiers feel superior to farmers
and pundits have it over poets.
All to the good because if you think America's
doing just fine, don't skip to the poetry reviews.
Our enemies are barbarous, our allies duplicitous
but our smart bombs are smart - that's how they found you.

Dad said all wars are resource wars. Follow
the money. The world needs more order, nothing
less than Nazis, never may the anarchic man's thoughts
be my thoughts, each shove sends a ping,
shields urge on shields, helmets helmets, we can be
the reigning kings between the last empire and the next

or implement a vision of collective deliberation
and binding agreements. Can China's navy
be harnessed to ensure free passage through
the South China Sea? We'll see how
things work out in the next generation.
In the meantime should I read Henry Kissinger's meditations?

He who thinks poetry's effete
probably considers Darwin a geek and Einstein
a postal clerk. Containment means leaving space
for the passionate and zealous to face themselves
and giving them missiles that don't work.
Slowing everyone down until one thing's done well -

governance or sustenance or brotherhood.
When violence comes to the neighborhood
the hierarchy will hold or fold, it is then the peace work proves
      relevant.
Failing to achieve understanding, we're searching outer space
for an entity to unite us as humanity.
That person, or city, is consciousness.

By that what is meant. Sitting still and thinking deeply
on the relation of anger to coercion,
systems for correcting the decisions of earlier presidents.
We're required to report incidents of depression
to a doctor because you're a valued member of of our community,
or so insignificant no one notices or cares.

How necessary the interface of war and poetry!

he searched for her
he found her
he had her
he loved her
he no longer loved her
he left her
he lost her