With one look
You set my soul on fire
Lit it up like the Fourth of July

With one glance
My heart engulfed in flames
And my breath labored

An illness I never want to build immunity to

The if and then
Of now and again
Has waged a war in words
Of joy and pain
The sadness reigns
Though nothing has occurred
To beg and plead
Yet not succeed
Can break the strongest heart
Though they tease
The subtleties
Enhance the miles apart

Me and Mary Lou
Were married right out high school
Her soon to have a baby
Me with nothing much to do

Didn't get much of an education
From the high school social scene
Life is now one big social frustration
If you know what I mean

Got a job on the dead shift
Down at the Jiffy mart
When Mary Lou went to labor
Emptying out her shopping cart

Got the call at 2am
Telling me I had a boy
I went straight to isle 3
And bought him his first of many broken toys

Cause broken toys prepare us
For the book of broken dreams
That most of us later in life
Tend to sit and read

Got the call not that much later
Telling me Mary Lou had died
Pretty shortly after that
My boy let out his first of many cry's

I wish I could have been there
Though not much I could have done
Except to give last minute comfort
To the mother of my son

Still down at the Jiffy mart
Whats a man to do
With a now 2 year old by your side
Sitting on a stool

He loves to hear the stories
Of when his mom and I were young
But he always adds the saddest end
When he asks why she is gone

I tell him she's still living
Only now she's in our hearts
I'm not sure that he believes me
As that's when the tear drops start

But life goes on as always
Like the purchases that I ring
With both us boys missing Mary Lou
If you know what I mean

It's times like these
I'm never sure
If your the disease
Or if your the cure

I know your an angel
But it gets hard to tell
If your one from heaven
Or if your one from hell

With broken hearts
it always rains
Still you never do
wash away the pain

I used to be much taller than this
If that you can believe
But you've taken me off so often
Right above the knees

I'm not really sure
Who you are
And how a broken heart
Can still be pulled apart

*With broken hearts
it always rains
But never does it
extinguish the flame

This is what love looks like
When it is one sided
And this is what love looks like
When it is misguided

If you don't believe that
Then take a look at me

This is how it feels
When you love another
And this is how it feels
When your not their lover

You might want to stand back
Give my heart room to bleed

This is how it feels
When it's all gone bad
And this is how it feels
When you've lost all that you had

When it comes down to it
Who are you going to believe

Cause this is what love looks like
On this side of nothing
And this is what love looks like
When it is missing someone

Especially when that someone
Just happens to be...

This is how you bake a pie
Find some fruit that's really ripe

Measure stuff into a cup
Take a bowl and mix it up

Bake it till it smells real nice
Hopefully just like a pie

Take it out while it is hot
Find the best of cooling spots

Take the pie that you just made
Find a clown and fill his face

What I ink to my page is not poetry,
There is not rhythm or rhyme, nor reason.
The empire state is no structure to my art.


What stains my page is not creativity,
Squiggles and lines leave marks from my mind.
The blank canvas does not lead to my masterpiece.


Words are my patchwork quilt,
Adjectives and nouns thread together my memoirs.
There's no glamour in my prose.


What I ink to my page is not poetry,
nor is it my intellect or wisdom.
What I ink to my page is life.

Too soon I will need to depart from what is closest to my heart
going away from my land of Oz (Hello Poetry)at least saying goodbye for a short, maybe even long time
   Falling into the unknown rabbit hole, which might be kind of magical but I don't know yet for now comes with some uncertainty and anxiety
It is for now another chapter yet unwritten in this book called my life
Many books to be read, questions that I need to find answers for
writing poems being replaced with papers to write
Many new faces in crowded classrooms at first nameless faces, Age differences spanning many years
hope that obstacle is  not a barrier to making friends as I feel
It is good to have friends of all ages
I wish that the previously unknown faces will become my friends in class  
Test anxiety that I hope to overcome
The end of my summertime  becomes Fall
                                                                Quarter
                                                                        Way
                                                                           Too
                                                                              Soon