He seems to take my hurt
my tears
my mistakes.
Use them with his tongue
say failure without a slight change
in his voice
his posture.
I feel smaller than krill
in his vast ocean,
in the dark he keeps me
from reaching the light
from being me.
I've lost the smile in  my eyes
months of crying have darken them.
Secretly i wish he would go away
but how would i exist if he was gone.
I hate him but i am desperately
horribly, sickening in love
with him.
I doubt he knows this
for i keep everything in.
A big ship of secrets that he knows
while inside a trap door are more.
He promised to leave me if i said more
than the ones he knows.
So I'm keeping them hidden
until he goes away
But how can i exist
if he was to go away.

Why are you an atheist?
How often I get asked this question...
Because I am alone in this world.
I am alone, and you have your God.
How is your God great, and is your God good,
When every time the news comes on,
I hear the latter?
People killing people in so called,
"Holy wars."
What's so holy about ******?
About war?
About ****?
Poverty?
Suicide?

So while you spend your Sundays staring
At the heart of an empty sky,
While you waste your last breath pleading for forgiveness,
I will sit here and be an innocent bystander
To the will of your ******* savior.
Such horrors your savior has put me through.
Why am I living in a place where people are judged
By the color of their skin?
A world where people slit there wrists and throats
Just to feel alive.
A world were daddy's **** their "little princess'"
And mommy is on the bathroom floor
A little too long this time.
If that is the world we live in,
I don't want to live there anymore.

So, take your comic books and your name tags
And pedal your beliefs somewhere they are needed.
I don't want them.
Your God doesn't know me.
He doesn't know what I can take.
And what about the people who couldn't take
What they were given?
With their broken backs
And your broken heart
And my broken mind.

Oh. But what if I have lost my mind?
Throw me in my padded room
With my bleeding writs
Tied behind my padded back.
Thanks so much for your God's help,
So much for knowing my breaking point.
It's too late I am lost forever and
The void in my heart is full of jellybeans,
And the void in my head is filled with my heart.

I, am tired.
Where is your god now?
Where were you when I needed you most? What about when I was face down on the ground?
I thought of you, it went up with the bottle
and went down with the pills.
Who stopped me from killing myself?
When the thoughts slowly left my head
And my heart ceased its song in my chest.

Where are you now as I sit in front of your children,
The corpse of a girl we all once knew,
And spin my stories?
Where are you now?
Where is your God?

I am God.

(a.m)

And if the piano breaks it's because each time you kiss me it feels like I've taken a bullet to the brain.
Today, I looked into your eyes and saw nothing but forever.
I think that maybe, if you took my hand, we could fight infinity.

I've never believed in God, but ****, I think you're my religious awakening; THIS is a baptismal revival.
I think I was dead until the day we met- you give me life.
Whispers: "safe, safe, safe."
She strikes a key to play me out of tune.

What does she look like in the dark?
What do you wear when you're alone? (I wear the black pendulum)
Seastar, starfish, lover, oh how I'm suffocating on my anguish.
Convince me to forgive him, and then I will try and forgive myself for all that he has broken.
For the ***** nights, the rancid sheets, ten years of filth- it would take an eternity to scrub out my stains- ugly.
Whispers: "****, ****, ****."
Screams: "daddy please, daddy no, daddy no, stop it!"
It's hushed up by the sounds of the broken piano- the unforgiving black sacrament.

Steel and skin, forgiveness and pain.
You can only hide for so long; sleepmonger, deathmonger, counting sheep. When will these childhood nightmares end?! Oh.

So, 1, 2, 3, 4, who's that looming at my door?
5, 6, 7, 8, he calls it love, she calls it ****.
9, 10, 11, 12, he put her though ten years of hell.
13, 14, 15, 16, who could love her scars- so distinct?
17, 18, 19, 20, fall for me; so sick of running.

(a.m.) 05/05/14

She stopped breaking laws when she
started breaking hearts

Bottled tears in the vial around her neck
She lays in bed like a spider in their web

They say curiosity killed the cat but in this story
Curiosity killed you

And you love kissing her because she is not like the others
She does not pull away out of shame

She kisses hard like brick on brick on window pane
no face aflame

And you love ******* her because she does not hide away
Begs you more more more

She stopped breaking laws when she
Started breaking hearts

Summer raining on the Eastern seaboard
I liked you better before November, personally

There are metal shards floating in this bathwater
Their own tiny islands of pain
A mirror in shards face up on the floor
Guess that is just another 7 years of bad luck

Pennies are dropping into the bathtub
Copper going plink plink plink
Tiny rivulets running their paths

That's just the sound of my lifeline going down the drain, again
Smells like metal and tastes like pain
Red river gushing from my veins

Locked door trying to staunch the flow of secrets
Head swimming to the tile floor
clink clink clink

Scars these days open so easily
Like the Raven said, Nevermore

i am a blank canvas 
he is the painter to my soul
caresses of color
bring wonder to the minds eye
a focusing of self 
and it all locks into place
a moment of perfection
that brilliantly shines rapidly outwards
golden, and pink,
and soft cream
followed by wine red
soft and dark purple and ripples of silver
covered in deep liquid prussian blue

and they walked on like clouds float on
the blood red sun on rivers run
waterfalls you see flow one way
and molds don't notice what they decay

a quiet drum to quell those flashes
canvas white for bold stroked splashes
pointedly naming because of growth grown
awake again because of what my mind knows

bearing what brunt? this is the purpose
in the thicket noises form onslaughts
planting bones to grow dreams lost
and these eyes are sharper now
cutting through balloons in air

I want to hope for old eyes, as if growth was easy

Dedicated to
dr. B. Dixon, Ph.P (Philosopiae Poeta).*

You, Poet, define yourself as a
"'Meat and Potatoes' -kinda guy."
We were speaking of food
But I see that you eat
With your writing-hand.

You, Poet, write like a
Quitting smoker
That stands with his very last
Smoke in his mouth -lighter
In hand. Frozen; carving a statue
Of the moment. For himself.
From himself. For all to see.

You, Poet, are the wind thrusting
Confidence from under the wings of
Angels, down to assist the
Flapping of little, pen wielding
Ducklings at take-off.
You are a devil of a gentleman; an
Arms open welcomer
In this realm of written renderings.

You, Poet, are an agent of king
Poem Himself.
As convincing and encouraging as a
.357 barrel imprint on your forehead
To remind yourself to keep writing
-Just always keep writing; just
Write.
If you guarded the Gates of Hell,
You'd still give good meaning to
Words like 'Warm Welcome'...

You, Friend, make poets feel
Like the true
Rock Stars of the Universe
That they all
Truly
Are.

Man's love of money...
I love it too. It results in
Food, drink and shelter
For my loved ones. But...
On days when my back
Won't straighten properly,
When my carpenter's elbow, rugby
Knee and boxer's hands
Impair me
I ask myself
How many hours I've worked
To pay just
Interest.
How many banker's cigars
And Department of Finances-
*****-ups I've
Funded with
What's left of these knots of
Muscle and bone that
Are moving towards giving
Up the guitar.
Haven't owned a new one
Since '94 anyway.

So if what I've heard is correct,  
Five percent
Of the world's population
Earn ninety percent of all
Money made.

Somebody very high up
Should be fired.
When I'm dead
I'll ask to see
The books.

My father.
Old sailor.
Old farmer.
Old carpenter.
Old interpreter.
Old archive of facts
And history. He knows
Our ancestory by heart down
To the 1600s. Born 1946, 68 years
Old today. Bought me my first pen,
My first book, taught me English
From the age of five. Told me I
Had the gift of language and
Expression. And that I was
A stronger boy than any
Anyone had ever seen
By the time I began  
To learn English.
I owe him credit
For every word
I have written.
Weak now
With age and
Bad lungs, I still
See him as a giant
Handling a chainsaw,
Smelling of forestry and
Gasoline and winter, smiling
At me with eyes deep blue from
Seeing more ocean and sky than I
Ever will know with my own.
His name to me is pappa.
After a few pints of his homemade
Wine, I sometimes let him beat me at Armwrestling. Then we laugh like
Old friends, remembering how
The roles were different back
Then. I am glad I stopped by
For a cuppa on this day. He
Would never ask me to.
Happy Birthday, pappa.

I'd cut a decade from my lifetime
To add a single year
To yours.

It was relegated to the old root cellar
Dropped in haste in  forgotten storage
Where dimmest beam of shafted light
Kept it 'live in yellowed life , weak and twisted
Root and vine, seeking sickly , striving life
But now it's out in planted field
Furrowed in and giving yield
Vine and bud quickly growing
Spreading out and surely choking
All the other crops of life
Air and water , precious light
Strangled , starved , beneath the blight
It feeds upon all below
In rapid spreading nourished growth
Soon to cover , spread to all
Like a **** , all fields will fall
So grows the tyranny imposed on men
Carefully planted and watered in

Such a common trend
I could've been daddy's little princess but you left mommy out in the rain
when you found out 1 2 and 3 were on their way
you didn't even flinch
but everything's okay
see she made sure I never needed you
worked multiple jobs just to afford a smile or two
and when she had to leave
we were never afraid, because she wasn't like you
I didn't mind your absence but why'd you leave the black & blues?
no longer visible on her skin but emotionally they'll always live
and truthfully, that's the only reason I resent you
because when your name is mentioned I simply ask:
dad Who?
see I never asked questions like "where is he?"
because you made sure I never met you
and at my high school graduation the headcount was perfection
now I understand why some children are actually lucky when they're born to one parent instead of two
After all,
what kind of princess would want to live in a castle with a daddy like you?