I met a girl once, she had french fries for hair and she was pretty legendary. I’ve been trying to explain her in words for a few days now.

But I don’t know how to write that kind of poem, that explains that it’s the smallest things about her I find the most amazing.

Like when she laughs, and her whole body becomes a wind chime, both in sound and sway

Like her walk, how it seems like her ankles are two old sagacious birds that  know some secrets about the ground that no one else does, so it seems like she’s almost flying.

How she has basquiat fingers for hips, and every time she moves it’s pure art.

How do I explain that every time she speaks, her lips become two ex-lovers that still have a thing for each other, constantly touching and stopping.

If I could, I would capture her smile in the ink of a pen. I would write sonnets and ballads about the arch in her back. I would write nursery rhymes about each line in her palm, let me read your future. Are you kissing me in it?

I guess sometimes words fail even the best of poets.

Sometimes,dreams don’t do reality justice.

For those that will never hear the wind chimes in her laugh, that will never see the feathers on her ankles.

The best I can say is that she’s pretty legendary.

When the sun starts snoozing its alarm too often, when autumn leaves are corpses under white caskets and the memories of her are nothing but distant car horns. I’d always remember french fries.

You have these helium balloon pair of arms, that always tend to lift me up when I fall.

You raised me as part slingshot and part boomerang and no matter how far I go in life I’ll still return home.

You've taught me that we are all keys, and if I don't fit in then I wasn't made for what’s behind that door.

Sometimes, I spend too long at some doors. And I break my edges trying to fit in, till I can never open the doors for which I was made anymore.

Some days, your lessons are like the edges of a jigsaw puzzle, they’re the starting points to fix me when I’m a mess.

Your smile reminds the super glued, ice sculpture in my chest what it feels like to be warm.

I come from a long line of glass spines and barbwire teeth and my back was as bad as my bite. But you've taught me to carry the world on my shoulders and kiss Mary Jane on the cheeks.

I see the Irony of the cobwebs on your letters.

It’s not so funny when it’s on your head stone.

I heard icebergs only show a tenth on the surface, and that, is one hell of a surface, makes titanic hearts like mine sink too easily.

I’m sure if i searched your eyes I’d find my daydreams, I’m sure between your lips will be a good place to hide my nightmares and kissing you will be the safest thing I have ever done.

Between your leopard print skin and zebra stripped life, lies everything perfect about imperfections.

I understand that a womans thoughts are hard to read, I heard once that they are written in braille. If love is truly blind, then reading your mind should come easy.

If you would let me, I want to be the answer to the questions you were too afraid to ask. I want my heartbeat to be your favourite bedtime story and you would fall asleep on my chest every night.

And if you won’t, then at least let me be a home to your gorgeous, an ocean to your iceberg, I’ve lived long enough to learn that there’s enough space in a friendzone for two.

A cup full of pennies

The sun had dipped into the ocean and sizzled out it’s bright. The sky was a bipolar devil trying to glow in the dark.
He was a man with a red beard and a cup full of pennies from all the times souls like mine had wandered here seeking his stories.

In some way he was a memory of the past, words of light that cast shadows on the men we used to be, and he was also the hope for the future, a seed breaking its shell learning to trust the earth, knowing that people aren't always good, but aren't always bad either.

When he said if I ever do die, I can take care of my soul, but somebody please take my body home. All I could say was I will, all I could think was, I know a few things about being lost myself, I have perfected the art of drawing circles with my footprints, the sand between my toes is not from this beach, we are both travellers of some sort.

No room to feel he began, we were men
Our hearts of stone were never for evil, it just had to be strong enough to protect the people in it.
That’s the problem with poets
The sunset was never meant to be stared at, it was the only sign that we had fought the sun that day and won and the sunrise was a new days battle cry.
The stars were never meant to be gazed at, they only remind us that anything that can only glow in the dark will always remain small and common.

So no room to feel, maybe every silver lining is lightening and thunder is the sound your body makes when it hits the ground, you my dear boy are trying too hard to touch the clouds, there’s ground that needs breaking.

So leave dreams for sleeping men, leave sky for birds and leave tears for shoulders strong enough to carry them.

But what do I know, I’m just an old man collecting yesterdays till tomorrow comes. And you are a young man with the foolish of pride and the wisdom of time. The sun’s coming up, leave a penny in the cup.


2. The bread-maker's son

He lets the rain kiss his closed eye wet, he buries the air in the depths of his lungs and counts the seconds between each wave, this has always been a funeral for his fears.
And tonight he washes sugar and yeast and his father’s name from his finger tips, he knows all that has no place in war and sunrise will be a new days battle cry.
But he yearns for Glenbeigh, for the kiss of her rain, how her waves rise like the yeast in his father's kitchen, how sunrise was an ode to the sunset before.

When did the crashing of waves give way to the clashing of men, and bodies fall to kiss the ground loud, they do not rise like yeast anymore.
In honour of the one hundred and twelve, how much room do the nameless dead deserve on a monument?
He lets the blood kiss his closed eyelids wet, he buries the dead in the depths of his mind and counts the seconds between each loss, this has always been a funeral for his friends.

I remember Lagos. Her humid air and lazy clouds that did nothing to stop the sun, she is nothing like Glenbeigh. But she is everything like Glenbeigh, they’re both distant homes of two soldiers in different wars, a burial ground for fears and father’s names that have no place in war.
I came here searching answers to questions that others had asked me, so did Paddy, this was not our war.
But we search all the same, we fight all the same, if not for anything then for love, for home, for hope, for every time life hits you and you rise like the yeast in Paddy’s father’s kitchen, for those that cannot rise anymore.
If I ever do return
I’ll let my love kiss my closed eyelids wet, I’ll bury the air of my sister’s laugh in the depths of my lungs and count the seconds between each wave of tears from my mother’s face, this will be a funeral for all my fears.


3. Old School

She runs down the stairs forgetting the age of her bones, He drops the walking sticks in each hand and spreads his arms awaiting impact.
She runs into him like a car crash, with the impact of a single applaud, soft and firm and loud, as his fingers rest on the home of her spine, the place where they had lived for the past 50 years.
Her laughter, mending the broken fragments of his aching heart.
Her tears, drowning the purple heart on his uniform.
Paddy uses ******* to put her hair behind her left ear and whispers to her, "You're stepping on my toes"
They hug and sway, their laugh was like a hip hop and jazz jam session, Paddy was always trumpet loud and Sarah was always drums, the beat to which the rhythm flows. So each skip of a heart beat was half cardiac problems of an ageing man and half love.
I am half whatever you want me to be and half yours.
If Paddy could fight an entire war then what is an ocean, if not eight hours and two planes, what is a movie over Facetime, if not the sound of your heartbeat when you fall asleep with your phone on your chest and what is a half empty bed, if not a metaphor for all the parts of me that you complete.
And every time that we meet and forget the reason we were apart in the first place like drowning purple hearts.
I pray that my fingers will find home in the arch of your back
And my toes will find comfort underneath your feet.
My love,
When we are old and frail and walk the streets with love like thunder, the loud that is left after all the spark is gone, the sound of a single applaud.
I pray that our love will be proof that jazz and hip hop are a match made in heaven.
But till then, pick up your phone.

4. Price and Punishment

The lads and I were gathered around his stool like stars around a half moon, his stories were always the longest, mostly because each sentence was followed by a swirl and swallow of Guinness, he described it as the worst thing he ever tasted, but said drinking this was the duty of every red blood red beard Irish man.
His stories were always the longest but always the best, they were always about the same stranger, the same soldier, the same red beard, the same tattoo on his wrist where he had hid his lover’s name, the same war.
Red beard Paddy never really believed in God, but it didn’t take long for him to learn the language of the enemy, it didn’t take long for that to convince him that he deserved death just as much as they did. The first time he got shot, it was a graze across his wrist like something was trying to tell him we know where heart is, like something was trying to tell him there is no love in war, that death and blood are prize and punishment.
But Paddy, Paddy fought for love, for love of country, for love of family, for love of the ******* his wrist that bullets couldn’t ****. For what is blood if not the price of love and what is death if not the punishment for apologetic sinners, for God so loved the world, that he killed himself.
The war as patient as his love both waiting long into the night, the days as many as the number of fatherless homes, each bullet hole just something else for bullet girl to fill, her touch was soft and deep and complete.
Paddy prayed in the language of the enemy the day he heard the war was over, he cried in the language of God the day he heard he had lost her, almost half expecting it, something for his sins, a bandage for his wrist that heals and covers all at once.
The stars were gathered around a half moon that day and that was all Paddy and I had in common, my father’s death was no price for sin my pain was no punishment. I sat there, listening to this story about the price of sin and the punishment of war wondering, what was my sin? Why do I always have to look at a half moon and wonder, where are all the stars gone? If death is the price for love then what is the price of life? Tell me and I’ll pay it.
Maybe Paddy and I aren’t so different after all, maybe we love a bit too deep and cry a bit too God, but losing her will always be his price and loving you will always be my sin.

No room to feel

We lived mostly as bridges, standing tall and strong.
Our hearts of stone were never for evil
It just had to be strong enough to protect the people in it.

No room to feel

There was no reason in emotion, no strength in tears and nothing good ever came from either.

The sunset was never meant to be stared at, it was the only sign that we had fought the sun that day and won, and the sunrise was a new days battle cry.

The stars were never meant to be gazed at, they only remind us that anything that could only shine in the dark would always remain small and common.

So no room to feel

Because we were men

We were Irish men

With a Guinness in one hand and a fist in the other. There was no room for hugs and embrace

Because we were men

We were Irish men on foreign soil but we were still Irish

And this was nothing but a great drinking story in the making

They couldn’t stain us, we were the palest of clouds yet we were the soil

We were the earth upon which the world stands. The world did not revolve around us, but we were the axis upon which it spun

So no room to feel

There’s a world to build of steel and bones and ours were the strongest Because we were men

We were Irish men

This is for those December mornings, when the sun is having a lazy day and the clouds are trying too hard to make a rainbow.
For dreams that only the night can carry.
For angels with broken wings envious of pigeons.
Fathers say our shoulders are strong enough to carry the world, but only some of us will have to, mothers say only some of us will get to.
Mother carries you in her arms and father carries you on his shoulders. The world isn’t that heavy today.
Most days we try, sometimes we fail. We only know what we know until we know better.
Our cheeks have known too many rivers and joy doesn’t flow around these parts no more.
But I do know a few things, I know faith is showing belief in the sky by planting deeper into the ground. I know curiosity shouldn’t always be explored and sometimes feathers are better pens than they are wings.
So catch flight with this, let this be your mothers’ arms and your fathers’ shoulders.
I know someday soon the world won’t be this heavy and we’ll get to carry it, even though we don’t have to.

I prefer to wear my heart on my collar just so you see it skip a beat each time you peck my cheeks

I wish I could connect my veins to your brain and my arteries to your fingertips so we know what we feel for each other

Sometimes it seems like we’re still trapped in an hour glass, must have been the closest thing we did to spending eternity together.

You let me cover every inch of you with finger paintings, just to show me it can be fun watching paint dry.

I like that you’re sweet in a weird kind of way, like ice cream in winter.

Sometimes I etch your name on the branches of winter trees, hoping I would hear it in the wind from summers leaves.

I like the way your hair sleeps on your shoulders, like your ears have been reciting bed time stories.

We’re like shoe laces in key holes, odd but a perfect fit.

Now and again I try to steal a little bit of cloud, I know how you get each time I get to nine.

But for now all I can do is jumble alphabets till I find a combination worthy of you.

The first was in the corner of the smile of a fourteen year old girl when I asked her to be my valentine. Apparently you’re meant to ask before the day. I still think about her. Hers forms the basement in my jar of stolen heart pieces.

The second time, it was holding my hand when reality met nightmares. It carried words like “alright” and “fine” as arm candy. And even though I wasn’t alright or fine, a maybe was enough for me.

The third time was when I asked my grandfather if I would see him again. I half expected a “not” after it. He taught me that making choices is easy, but living with them is hard. Although his lessons were more things not to do, than things to do, he’s still one of the best teachers I know.

The fourth time, I met a girl with surrender in her lips but escape in her eyes, she seemed to laugh a lot. I always knew if I pulled back the curtain of her laughter I’d see broken heart fragments realising tears isn’t the best of glues. She left like the ocean leaves the shore, slowly stealing grains of sand, knowing she’ll either come back to return it, or she’ll always have something to remember me by. A maybe for the former was all I had left to hold on to.

The fifth time, I carried it in my hello when I talked to sis, although distance separated us I could feel her tears drop on the shoulder of my voice. I tried to act like I knew what I was saying, but a maybe seemed to end every advice I gave.

The sixth time, the man in the mirror asked if I had feathers for fingers. How I made words seem so fly. They would lift off pages and tickle ear drums till a smile was the only response the body knew to produce.

The last time, I heard it somewhere in her blush, somewhere in her smile, somewhere in her laugh. And I thought, maybe she’s the one. I can’t promise I’ll always feel like this, but a piece of me will always only show goosebumps for just you.

The smoke from the lantern was the misty grey of an uncertain sky.
Brother, sister and I were gathered around the dim light attempting to play a secret game of cards, because mother had told us it was bad for our eyes. Moore was losing as usual, he was barely five, then we heard the all too familiar voice of thunder "What did I tell you children about playing cards in the dark?"
This, this was the recipe for all my favourite memories as a child.
Outdoor mattresses and hand made fans were all we needed to spill the secrets of the day. Falling asleep, one child after another but mother stayed up to chase the mosquitoes from our skins and the nightmares from our dreams. This, this was our language of love.
This was where we found God.
Yesterday I tried to count how many hours we've spent together in the last seven years. I stopped at zero in the last fourteen months, I couldn't go any further. I'm forgetting what lantern smoke smells like. I'm forgetting what your smiles look like. I've tried and failed a thousand times to wipe your tears over the phone. Distance doesn't take kindly to sympathetic lovers.
So I miss you like fingertips miss palms when uncurling a fist to embrace the cold, knowing it's for the best. We tell ourselves it's for the best, that roots like me have to branch out to break ground. That apples don't fall far from the tree but must roll away from the shade to see the sun.
My mother is the settling dust that brings the best out of all of us. So I know what she means when she says "don't come back."
She means be the best you can be, the world deserves you as much as we do.
Wear your name as tight as your skin and if they say it wrong correct them.
Today I found an old lantern in a store on a street somewhere too far from home. The smoke doesn't smell like I remember.

If I could I would write letters to the wind and ask for lessons on how to blow you away

If I could I would take a star out of the sky and put it in a ring and ask you to be it’s replacement in my life

If I could I would keep you between my second and my fourth rib, so they will tell you they’ve missed you.

The first time I saw you, I smiled with my mouth open to let go of the crickets I buried in my voice box so I could say hello

How else can I explain to you that our stories are God written guitar solos to the keys of our DNA, and I’m more electric and you’re more acoustic.

On some days you look like there are lingering pieces of a boombox etched in the framework of your spine. In simple terms your body speaks volumes.

On other days you feel like there are too many fault lines on the rail track of your spine

Those are the days I want to tell you I’m a pretty good conductor

Your voice sounds like an unfinished love song stuck in the throat of an ’80s jazz musician and I’m more of a hip-hop kind of guy, but I would make kissing you the perfect symphony.

I’m more like the odd boulder on a sandy beach and you're the entire ocean but I've drawn coastlines on the chambers of my heart

With you I could build sand castles in hourglasses, cos I wouldn’t feel time pass.

If I could I would write this poem on the wings of a butterfly and say to you “Here I think this belongs to you, I found it in my belly”

1) Somewhere not so deep, serendipity carries serenity.

2) Eyes are just more beautiful fingers, so try to leave goose bumps where others leave bruises.

3) My hobbies are poetry, basketball and convincing people of things I don’t believe.

4) Art is something that cannot be expressed in any other way.

5) Fear God.

6) Sometimes, the answer might be right but the question might be wrong.

7) If you could steal the moon from the night sky, the stars would get more attention.

8) If tears glowed in the dark, pillows would make wonderful night lamps.

9) People may be shades of grey but still have one black shadow.

10) Beauty is not so relevant when drawing with white chalk on concrete.

I learnt today that things hidden between the shadow and the soul are the most precious of all. Maybe there’s something about darkness that keeps, that stays, waiting for light to leave but still doesn’t reveal itself. I learnt today that somewhere, between the shadow and the soul is where dead things live.

Maybe in the dark we can both lay down our armors and no one will know. Maybe we can strip our bones of our skins and bath in the shimmer of night till we belong.There’re two lovers at the bottom of a well somewhere in the middle of nowhere with their souls dancing to the sound of sinking water.

There’s a rotten corpse that serves as a home to an earthworm and a field mice that know they shouldn’t be in love, but they come back to the dark everyday. There’s an alley that dances with its shadow every night when no one is around to judge. And I’m somewhere in between, between dancing alleys and sinking water, spread over the different shades of dark, between the shadow and the soul.

But with all this dark, nothing compares to mine, where I have hid me, somewhere between metaphors and mirrors. Cos the brightest of lights make the darkest of shadows, so we hide in plain sight, a dozen fake smiles away from sunset, waiting for night to come.

I really want to be shot
to feel excruciating pain at the brink of unimaginable pleasure
to be covered in blood staring at the light at the end of the tunnel speaking words of profound wisdom
to laugh with tears rolling down my face
with coughs of blood interrupting my last address

I really want to be shot
not in the head so I don’t die quickly
but close to my heart so I put my hand to my chest and bleed out slowly
as each pulse escapes my grasp and my life flashes before my eyes
each a fleeting memory never to be recalled

I really want to be shot
as she tried to stop the bleeding, she cries out
stroke her by the face and tell her everything will be alright
smile a midst the chaos to ease her pain
eyes close as I fall into a sleep I probably will never awaken
open them to the warmth of lips upon my cheek
I really want to be shot so I can ask ‘Am I in heaven?’

It’s a constant battle between gold and stone in my chest.

One likes to hold a sword to the dark with the whole city at his back.

The other makes warning bells of paper mâché .

Where I come from we’re mostly dare devils.

We cook food on open flames next to a gas tank and race on bridges with no rails. Only one of those is real.

My mind sometimes seems like a doll house made of old computer processors. Attempt 79.

Most days I try to keep my lips zipped shut but my eyes are like a see through body bag.

On other days music tends to be good enough superglue for broken masks.

I remember the first time time froze and my heart tried to handwrite on the ice.

I tried to draw her attention with the broken lead pencils I have for lips but I’ve never been a fine artist.

We haven’t spoken in a while, I guess making new friends is easy but keeping old ones is hard. 
There’s overgrowth on the road less travelled and it’s hard to find.

And when I feel down for following the crowd, I use poetry as a pendulum to help my mood swing.

I will be your moon

I will be your light when the sun has deserted you

Surrounded by many stars yet I will follow you

I will be your moon

When I am slim and have nothing

Or full and filled with plenty

I will be your moon

On those cold winter nights and the nights get longer

I will come earlier

I will be your moon

What's in a man
My mother always said to me that the day I was born my father ran home and changed into his finest suit.
In his words "I am a man now".
I do not remember the time but I know she described it like the sun hung on to the sky like a bright yellow lantern trying not to fall.
Everyday I wake up, my goal is finding that suit, something to say "I am a man now". Some fabric made of second hand wool and words and actions, all trying to fit into the same seam.
I was three the first time my father called me the man of the house, I was five the first time he meant it. Since then he has been more sky than earth and I have been the bright yellow lantern of a sun hanging on, trying not to set. Trying not to dip behind the clouds because I know better than most that the shadows of fathers are long and dark.
It's been over two decades and I still don't know the recipe for a day, I still count my steps between sunrise and sunset and believe life is everything that happens between a day dream and a night mare. I still describe life between the shades of grey as if Sophia's eyes have ever been ash, as if my mother's smile has ever been anything but an upside down rainbow trying to catch rain.
But today I a become old enough to know I am not old enough to know what makes a man
But I know that each day demands a different recipe.
Some days I am simply my brother's keeper
On other days I am the last straw on the camels back trying to balance.
My mother always told me that faith is showing your belief in the sky by planting yourself deep in the earth.
And that is why we bury.
So today maybe all I need to do is just be.
A pigment of dirt and air and a spirit that has pretended long enough till practice makes perfect.
Maybe real men don't exist, and we all just have faith.
My mother still tells me about my father's favourite suit.
She's said he carried me with pride and I was his glow of fabric and wool.
So Maybe that's all a man is,
The chin that holds heads up,
The lazy sun catwalking across the sky that keeps the darkness at bay.
And this is the man I choose to be
A sacrifice to the world.
A cemetery for your bones.

I’ve been walking backwards into my footsteps trying to find my way home

But we’re all barefoot in the desert of lost souls

So if you end up at the house with the red door

Where the street lights illuminate the night life of familiar faces in dark places

Please tell them of me

I heard that home is where your heart is, so for now I’ll listen to my chest hoping to hear your voices.

I heard that the voices are the first part of a memory to fade. But I have tattooed your voices on my eardrums and your faces behind my eyelids, so my dreams will do you justice.

I am a product of ice boxes and broken black holes and I long for time to freeze again.

For now, I’ll sleep under blankets of memories on pillows of promises to red doors and street lights.

Today I breathe, like each breath was a champagne toast to life

Today I walk around with a pocket full of pennies in search of free spirits and  cheap talk

Today I celebrate, over half a billion stories each just over half a second long

We are not always broken

Death, is a forest where family trees fall and no one is around to hear

But life, is a star growing in a back garden under tiger striped sky of night and day.

So I carry my garden in my chest, growing veins and arteries and guitar strings so each story has background music of heart beats.

If I could, I would trade in every well wish for a wishing well and make your wishes come true. Give wells to parched gardens so stars can grow.

Someone once said “What is the difference between a ****** and a coffin? You *** in one and go in the other”

What is the difference between a ****** and a coffin? Nothing, they both carry unfulfilled potential, and we are lucky not to know either.

But if I had to choose, I'll choose the latter. Knowing I have lived even for a second, is a breath worth raising my glass to.

My mother, is my reference to everything that is beautiful in every single way. She has a smile that powers butterfly wings and heartbeats.

My mother, carried a sunset belly for nine months pregnant with stars, because she understands that stars are just far away sons. And God has used her as a garden to grow supernovas.

My mother, has helium balloon pair of arms that always tend to lift me up when I fall. With leather belt extensions to hit some sense into me when I’m wrong

My mother, taught me that the journey is great, but the destination is legendary. That God comes first and everything else next, so I put my best foot forward and look towards heavens gates.

Real life superwoman, my mother has a cape made of hope and silver, constantly flying into dark clouds so we have silver linings to hold on to.

My mother, made sure that in a black and white world that is more tiger than zebra, we saw things through shades of grey. That nobody is just bad or just good, and once in a while devils can be good samaritans.

So give everyone a chance, with pennies for their thoughts and just maybe they’ll have two to rub together.

So I promise you this mother. That I would love God and love you.

And if I’m lucky enough to find a woman half as amazing, God willing, I will call her wife.

I promise to be the man that you raised me to be, with titanium spine, a gold heart and glass eyes to see past what this world has to offer.

I promise to stop making eggshell promises that break too easily.

My mother, is a vast blue ocean, with a shoreline full of the whole world, watching her son rise.

I write the worst happy poems and right now you make me want to write about eagles with butterfly wings planting rose seeds in the clouds of heaven and I don't even know what that means.
But mostly I want to write about your glasses, how they serve as night sky to the moon behind your eyes, I see them follow me across the room.

I want to write about your glasses, how they rest on your ears like lazy man lips whispering something sweet, I heard them say you look beautiful today.

I want to write about your glasses, how every time you take them off my heart skips a beat cos I know what's coming, I learnt the hard way not to stare directly at the sun, but staring is the only way to fall blindly in love.

I want to write about your glasses, about the marks they leave on the bridge of your nose and how they look like where you've saved all my breaths you've taken away.

I write the worst happy poems and your glasses are putting a smile on my face, so when I say eagles with butterfly wings plant rose seeds in the clouds of heaven, I guess what I mean is not all roses grow from the concrete, sometimes all it takes is something strong and beautiful to show you what heaven feels like, something like you.

A

I wish I had more self control around you

I love him

When you smile and I smile back, our little sign language of I love you and I love you too

I know it’s what makes you hurt the most

but I’m torn between a summers breeze and a winters warmth.

I don’t fantasize about our bare skins or heart racing to the thought of lips

Its more a dream of our minds merging into one body

Forever drifting with a cloud nine evaporated mist  

That’s when I call him

To remind me why I love him when you smile



B

Words can’t describe that perfect moment when you’re sitting on clouds under the sun.

lifting to the melody of silence, with breathing like strums on a guitar every so often in a corn field

As you describe your emotions for him, you describe what I feel for you

Stuck in an emotional box of me, you and our moments of heaven

As time flies in slow motion to smiles and awkward stares.

Lost to the look in your eye, I see myself banging from the back trying to break free from the paradise that are your eyes

While crashing to earth with every blink that blocks the sad reality of me, you and our moments of heaven.

Calling him at the most awkward of times, just to remind me you love him.



C

The look on her face an uncertain assurance

Do I trust the lips or listen to the words from a blink

"I love you too" makes it hard to see the half lie in a half truth

Can’t talk you have to go to bed, sleepy you were up late

Too scared to connect the dots of an unspoken truth

I know I’d see it in your eyes

If I can stand still to every wave of a tear drop

But then you call me and remind me you love me

Staring at the screen, till it uses the words I've been running from

"Missed call"

One year
This is for you
You that counts time in moments
You that has stopped claiming to know things like the back of your hand because time has made your body a strange place
This is for my grey haired aunties and two stick uncles
One year is 365 sunrises and sunsets, It’s 52 crepes, It’s 8409600 breaths, It’s 2 coffins, It’s 10000 steps that if I placed on a map would show I never really went anywhere
It’s 100 I miss yous and 10000 I miss you too, It’s 2 I love yous still finding their way out of my mouth
Apologies to those of us that had to search for eulogies in old albums this year.
Congratulations to those of us that could search for eulogies in old albums this year

1) I wish people called me Mike Hart, I think it’s a really cool name. I wish I were a year younger and a foot taller. I wish I spoke less and listened more.

2) I’m a love child between science and art but I was raised under the rain in a house made of silver linings. Behind a red door, with gold hearted kids peeking through windows at a world full of endless possibilities.

3) I don’t share a lot about myself. I have dreams my pillows don’t know about and skeletons my closet hasn’t seen. I tend to hide things in the space between the ink and the page where no one can find them.

4) I don’t connect with a lot of girls, but when I do, I tie my shoelaces to their heart strings to stop myself from falling for anyone else. All I have left are scars on my chest from all the times cupid has missed and a few ****** shoelaces.

5) I have a photographic memory but the pictures tend to come out more picasso than canon. I tend to overcomplicate things, I describe hair as the perfect shade of sunset or the sun as that perfect shade of blonde. And I’m called a poet for this.

6) I’m familiar with broken promises and broken people, sometimes I’m doing the breaking. It took me a while to realise that being a man wasn’t about how strong you were to break things but how strong you were to fix them.

7) I love Ice cream in winter, it makes my body shake and reminds me I’m a bit like an earthquake. My laugh has always been a bit too loud but I always believed my life will grow into it.

8) I have holes in my sleeves from where my heart used to be. I locked it up in my rib cage and swallowed the skeleton key. I guess I took it too literal when they said the way to a mans heart is through his stomach.

9) Honestly, I don’t know a lot about myself, but I do know that sometimes my mind is like a paper mâché prison and it’s hard to control the thoughts that get out. Most days I try to keep my lips zipped shut but my eyes are like a see through body bag. On other days music tends to be good enough superglue for broken masks.

10) Hi, I’m Dagogo Hart and I’m Human.

My baby sings to me sometimes

A gift of wind from her lungs. Giving up the thing they love the most.

She explains to me “Mpenzi, wakati mwingine inabidi tujitoe sadaka”

Meaning “My love, sometimes we have to sacrifice”

I know the tale more than most. My mother was a sun too in love with the stars so she gave us some of her bright and sat on the throne of the moon, watching us shine on the midnight of her skin.

My baby sings to me sometimes

Songs about trees, but not the brown of the branches but the dark of her roots, the basin of her belly where her pride comes from. Just like that of her mother and her mother before her.

“Umekula leo?” “Have you eaten today?”, “because it is the nature of my hands to care for your body, and the nature of my heart to care for your soul”.

My baby sings to me sometimes

She hums “lala salama” like a ritual to chase away night mares.

She whispers “nakupenda” like she doesn't trust her lips to say what her heart means.

And she sings, like only queens do, like only dreams do.

My love, I have gathered your voice in the desert of my favourite memories, and yours is the background music to everything good that has ever happened to me.

So sell me your whisper, and hum me a song about stars and midnight and moons that used to be suns. And I will pay the price, I will peel the skin from my secrets and show you all the parts of me where I hide God.

Because  wakati mwingine inabidi tujitoe sadaka, but most times we don’t.

Maybe it's my fault.

Maybe when God asked me, I should have said boy.

Maybe I should have said white.

I wonder if that would have made a difference.

Our bellies are beginning to forget what laughter feels like but our eyes would always remember your faces.

You the reasons we chose girl.

You the reasons we chose black.

Are you coming to get us?

Or are you waiting for them to bring us back?

I have this bag, full of the all the things I would do if I ever return home, and forgiving you is one of them.

Today is one of those days

When my voice sounds like skeletons scratching behind closet doors

When pages are feathers I glue to paper airplane pens in my attempt to get high.

Today is one of those days

When ears are more valuable than hearts

and the pen and paper seem to be the only ones here

so I ignore the paper cuts on my heart and use my fingers as antennas and channel my emotions into letters

Today is one of days

that my thoughts are in a language I don’t speak

and I’m stuck in the middle of two loose ends and it seems hard to make them meet

so I just pretend to have it together

Today is one of those days

When I fear there is no bullet in the shotgun I’ve been holding to the head of death and he will soon call me on my BS

Today is one of those days

when I realize I'm probably not one of the 7000 people that will be one in a million

Today is one of those days I spend mostly dreaming of tomorrow.

what happened to you?

your mind used to be a cemetery for boredom right next a maternity ward of inappropriate laughter.

you spoke like an owl was perched on your ribs, your wisdom was profound.

but what happened to you?

I named your lips nectar and honey and mine were two butterfly junkies trying to get a sugar high.

I could have sworn I heard  your name in the winds whisper through the leaves lips, but autumn came far too soon.

and when it seems like things want to get sweet again, time becomes a rehab for relapsing diabetics.

you were a beauty among beasts, a rainbow on an oil spill.

But even rainbows can't be out when the sun is not.

He says that if you walked long enough in one direction, you’ll only end up where you started.
He says that bullets and escape shuttles share the same address and veins are just smaller bridges. so he leaped off the edge of a knife and even though he felt like he never made the cut his wrists didn’t always feel so.
Good times are just cushions we try to rack up to fall back to when the bad times come. He’s been falling on the same cushion for so long it’s not different from the concrete.
The world is a dark room and he still hasn’t found the light switch.
On days like today, he tries with all the walk that ******* has left him.
On days like today, when the world is trying its hardest to prove to be black and white, he tries to be a gunshot in the spine of a rainbow.
When you die we’ll put two money stacks on your eyes cos heaven has to be far from this hell hole that we live in
But you know better than most that you know nothing about what comes after death.
So sail, sail on a canoe of timber and broken dreams on a river of your own blood. Cos maybe heaven is better believed than lived

I want to write a poem on the inside of an eggshell.

A poem that will carry life in its yolk, with white or brown skin.

Honestly, I want to write a woman into words.

She would have fireflies in jars for eyes.

And a life that stages a mutiny against the world.

Her smile would be a flower that blossoms all year round, with roots that stretch into her soul. It would hold lungs for ransom and steal breaths right under noses.

Her pride will hang low with the earthworms and field mice.

She would have a cheeseburger smile and french fries hair.

She would have milkshake skin and her body will feed starving eyes.

She would hold stardust in her breath and kissing her will be a wish come true.

She would be imperfect pen strokes trying to explain something the mind doesn’t fully understand.

She would be mother and wife and daughter and sister.

I used to think you knew your soul mate if their chin fit perfectly into the nook in your neck. My first girlfriend was pretty awesome at giving hugs.

But I knew the kind of woman I wanted to marry the day I watched my mother hum her favourite song while doing the dishes.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to her humming.

Would my son ever watch me slow dance with his mother?

Or would I always be writing poems about leopard print skins and french fries hair.

I carry all these things on top of my heart and I fear if it gets broken they’ll all fall through the cracks.

Maybe I have a flawed perception of romance, maybe slow dancing, humming, dishwashers don’t exist. Maybe gorgeous earthquakes aren’t always heart breaking but ground breaking.

I feel like each second is a grain of sand and the waves are washing away my sand castles one after the other. People always tell me I make the truth the hardest to understand, so I guess what I’m trying to say is I feel like time is running out. And with all the so called fish in the sea, these waves never seem to leave any on my shores.

Maybe I’m too blinded, concentrating on fish when there’re great blue whales around, tiger sharks and even electric eels that we’ll always have a spark.

I’ve been living too fast, but there’s no point finishing first if there’s no one waiting at the finish line, I’d rather slow dance to her humming and maybe in essence we would be the ones that won.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to no music in the living room. I know she eagerly anticipates the day her and I slow dance to my wedding song. I hope this is not another failed attempt of me trying to get closer to that day.

As uncertain as the first drop of rain, an undecided sky trying to pick what game to play, she was the wild kind of beautiful. With her, every heartbeat was a fist against heavens door and my chest was left a battered jukebox playing broken tunes for broken men. See wild things always leave broken in their wake.

So we unlearn love by attaching orange peels to naked mandarins, and maybe one day I will love mandarins for who they are but I still see your face in every crowd because most times close enough is good enough, so apologies to mandarins. When I said forever, please do not believe I lied, for forever is just another way of saying from birth to death, so let us bury this alongside old jumpers and handmade cards. Let us gather all the orange peels from the kitchen floor and find all the places we hid ourselves in each other.

Now my mother worries about me, she doesn’t mention it but she says “remember your roots”, I almost said it’s hard when you’re trying to branch out, but I just said always, I always say always. I always mean sometimes the ocean between us makes me feel like half a story no one will ever truly understand. So apologies to mandarins, until your skin learns to unravel across an ocean to the doorsteps of old black women with crowns for hair that doesn’t know how to fall and wishing well bellies where dreams come from, I will always be half a story and you will always be half my life.

As long as people see themselves in art, metaphors will always be the best place to hide truth.
Because I will rather say “two fireflies that fall in love in the belly of a dragon might just stand a chance in hell” than explain that the tough times make us stronger.
But maybe fireflies don’t fall in love, maybe you and I are two wet wind-shield wipers that love playing chase in the rain but never do touch.
We shouldn’t have tossed our hearts around, gravity always finds a way to win, whether it be falling in love or breaking hearts.
There’s an anchor of cobwebs and strings that should never have been attached, but the deep of my voice would always be a resting place for your worries. Even when life puts shorelines and new loves between us, I’ll always have a metaphor that carries you in its arms. I would always have pennys for your thoughts and paper cups with holes made for old strings.
As long as people see themselves in art, metaphors will always be the best place to hide truth.
Because I will rather say that patience is a key to a door I haven’t found yet, than explain that most times I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
But maybe the fear of the unknown makes pacifists out of activists and poets out of lovers.
If words could make you sweat as much as they make you cry, the world would be a better place.

Place your palms in mine, let them fall asleep exchanging war stories, while our hearts stay up all night practicing to beat in rhythm.

Let me kiss you on the cheek, I have rose seeds in my lips to plant in the creeks where the river of your tears flow. So whenever you cry and I’m not there, the roses would remind you I’m always with you.

If I could I would make your laugh the sound track to my life flashing before my eyes. It would make dying a lot less awful.

The goosebumps and hair at the back of your neck say everything your lips are too afraid to say.

My heart of stone to other girls was just practice to being your rock. Let me be your home, let me be your refuge. I’d pay a thousand sunsets to wake up next to the sunrise in your smile, to see the moon go green with envy every time it sees your eyes.

No matter how much I try to act cool, my heart beat has never been good at keeping secrets, I have busy bees for butterflies and your voice is the only honey they know.

I want to know your eyelashes by name, I want to kiss the chills down your spine.

Let me be your favorite bed time story, let my chest be your favorite pillow and my arms your favorite blanket. Come lay with me, fall asleep in my arms and let me be your first dream.

She smiles,
I try not to,
But we both know my weakness lies somewhere between her lips. So I do that thing where I smile and frown at the same time, as I mumble "it's not funny" under my breath.
This, this was our language of love, but it didn't always come easy.
I'm still learning to take hints, especially from damsels in distress, they paint the worst pictures, with shaky hands and nothing to work with but red and grey.
You, you came into my life like a basketball going out of bounds, with ******* men chasing after you, each bounce lower than the last till you met me where I've always been. It took me a few tries to learn that you can't play football with a basketball, somethings are meant to fit in your hands, she liked to be held, so I did this, as often as she allowed me to.
Every time I said women are complexity, she always replied with "men are uncertainty". If I was ever grey Miss, this is the black and white.
You are the dream of all my dreams. A cloud made of silver strings trying not to rain, but trusting the sun to make a rainbow even if you fail. Trusting me to do that thing where I smile and frown at the same time, something to tickle your cheeks when tears are forcing them to be more river than mountain. I'm sorry if I failed you sometimes, men are raised to be more rock than water, not knowing when to flow around you.
I still think of you everyday, most days not even because I miss you, but because I'm terrified I'll forget what your smile looks like, what your laugh sounds like, what the hair at the back of your neck feels like every time I kiss your belly button. On days when I catch myself smiling, your name is the mumble under my breath. We will forever be that picture of grey and red, an uncertain man trying to paint rainbows.
I've wrapped my entire body in a bandage of time, hoping to resurrect as someone who doesn't love you as much. But I've settled for being another black man chasing a basketball going out of bounds, or at least, at least let me catch the rebound.

I will always be words. I will always be rope, both noose and harness. I will always be words, jumbled up alphabets to break spirits and raise men. I will always be flesh, I will always be too man to cry but just man enough to fail. I will always be tears, I will always be too much pain to be anything other than mortal. I will always be man, too much ego but just enough sense to know I need a woman to tell me when enough is enough. I will always be my mother’s prayers and my father’s son. I will always be my brother’s keeper and my sister’s friend.

Write a poem about anything.

Rip the page from the book and make a paper plane. The simple ones we made as children.

When I was a kid we would breathe into the wings of a paper plane like somehow we had the lungs of God and that must be how he kept planes in the sky, because even then we knew that living isn’t just breathing but the application of breath. So breath into yours, and let that paper plane poem fly. Believe without questioning that air and words can keep anything alive, for what is God but words that come to life when the world feels dark and empty.

My mirror always gives advice like, consider the big picture, but always pay attention to detail.

All my gods don’t pay attention to detail and I don’t blame them, there’s over 7 billion details. So maybe we all don’t matter the same, but at some point we all believed that out breaths could keep paper planes in the sky, at some point we all believed that God will make our dreams come true.

So today I am writing poems and making planes and taking breaths so deep the paper ripples from the wind of my lungs. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying.

Men like me, we daydreamers, we caterpillars trying to be birds but we’ll settle for butterflies. But my best friend, she is a tree, planted deep but reaching for the sky, shedding leaves in autumn cos she knows that even the ground needs a blanket from the cold.

All my gods don’t pay attention to detail, but my best friend, she is human and kind or at least she tries.

We still fear the empty in a half full glass, but we know we need air as much as we need water. So we drink, half believing we are all gods in charge of our planes. And we breath, as humans, capable of much better.

Somewhere at the centre of every tornado is a violin playing “surrender to the good Lord”.
The skeleton of every raging storm is an orchestra of rivers overflowing with sin and blood from all the times I’ve tried to wash myself clean. So being planted by the river doesn’t help me much anymore.
But I hear there’s something of a Jordan to your tears, something of a white to your blood. So take me to your river, deep me in your smooth waters. I hear you have experience with ****** hands. I hear you have holes in your hands from where the nails used to be, I have a few holes too, and all the superglue music doesn’t seem to keep the rain from coming in. “So take me to your river, l wanna go”
Been travelling this road for so long now. With nothing but an echo of mama’s voice and a faulty compass heart to guide me. Most times I just follow the sound of water, hoping to find a river to go with the flow.
So on those days, when the sun is nowhere to be found, and two stars in a black sky are all there is to remind you that home might as well be billions of miles away, allow me to sink. Cos swimming just feels like another tornado gathering strings.
I’m trying to find my way home, with an army of brown skinned girls with tomato lips that always tempt you to bite, with a cup overflowing with blood that needs emptying and with a heart with missing pieces from all the times its been broken trying to free the creatures that hide inside.

Yours is the lullaby saved for thunderstorms, where boys like me gather courage to face the rain.

Yours is the music for dancing in the rain.

Yours is the one legged soldier at the end of the war, thanking God in the language of the enemy.

Yours is the light at the end of the tunnel and every bit of darkness still left in between.

Some words are better left unsaid, so we let you carry language in your keys and our voices are the doors you always seem to open. Like the number of times Beethoven used you to explain that true music is one part sound and one part vibration, one for the body and one for the soul. So we gather the dancing souls of deaf men like fireflies in a jar, something to chase the night and green the moon with envy.

Drift on the clouds into melancholy

In the depths where creativity dwells

Dip the brush into the palette of my mind

And fill the canvas with strokes of genius

In dim lit rooms and smoky hallways

A thousand violins begin to play

As smoke becomes sky and light becomes moon

Ocean currents move in perfect rhythm to the music

The stars make way for the sun’s birth

The shimmering light and the hidden sights a new world it brings

The branches of the trees conduct the white noise of the wind

And after all this time, imagination is still fiction

Eyes bring the only reality

If only I could hold a mirror to the world and show it its own beauty

Distance and hope are two old cell mates that have long stopped fighting for the top bunk. They settle into each others charm as I think of you nightly. As my voice tries to break the night to spew sunrise for its spine and my shoulders learn to catch tears over the phone.
Our Faith is in the Palm of an arm too long to see the face. Our breaths are daily sacrifices, but each kiss is a protest, Each three hour train ride is a war against heaven and a riot against hell demanding paradise, nothing but crepes, Netflix and winter. With swords made of Friday nights and shields of Saturday mornings, time is nothing but a prisoner of war.
But for those Mondays when I’m too far to reach, but my scent hasn’t left your pillow and there’s still brown hair in my black, let this poem be the cloud of hope and dandelion seeds, keeping you afloat till you find fertile ground, till you find me again.
If I have learnt anything from you it’s that for trees to grow the earth must break, so we know that not every trial is a test, but every test is a brick and every wall that we build is another reason to slow dance to an orchestra of ringing phones and text message alerts.
My love
For when I cannot hold your hand
For when I cannot wipe your tears
For when you and the moon cower under the blanket of cotton and cloud
For when your heart is breaking, know that I will sip through the cracks like glue and hold you together, I will whisper your name under my breath, for what is the wind but the breath of lovers too far to reach.
So I love you like I love the pen, beautiful and true.
And I miss you like oxygen to two sinking lungs, more and more with every breath.

Sometimes, not always, I attach strings to the ends of my arrows to help give meaning to the relationships you get in.

Sometimes, you walk around with arrows sticking out of you like a human porcupine, cause the pieces of you heart are scattered like a jigsaw puzzle in your chest. I still don’t get every piece.

I have to admit sometimes I’m a pretty bad shot.

but most times you don’t let me.

Most times your either hiding with the skeletons in your closet or you leave home with your heart on the sleeve of yesterdays shirt.

You tend to lose your breath every time someone comes close enough and your butterflies have long suffocated .

Finger tip arrows to touch hearts and silk basket ears to catch dreams I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that your kind is a solar eclipsed blue moon. You don't happen that often.

You've battled impossible in rings made of bent realities. So how dare you not trust faith to be faithful.

You've developed a stainless steel philosophy, hoping if you stay still you’ll stay stainless.

But sometimes, not always, a broken compass still points north.

I have this broken hour glass mind that is perfect at wasting time.
But every once in a while, there’s a writing in the sand.
I found this picture today and it reminded me of you, I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s because I assume she has a walk like night sky, with moonlight in her heels and stardust in her footprints.
Maybe it’s because I assume she has a laugh that haunts the hallways of memories.
Maybe she leaves lipstick stains on the hearts of many men.
Or maybe if she were alive today, she would be over a hundred and twenty years old and still look as beautiful.
But I do know this
I know that the fact it’s a portrait, with nothing to distract me from her face, reminds me that women are more than what they can offer from the neck down.
The marks on her cheek remind me of goodbye kisses, the ones you never forget because they’re from people you’ll always remember.
How every strand of hair on her head seems to have a voice, maybe that’s what gives the picture its thousand words.
She isn’t smiling or frowning, she doesn’t seem happy or sad. Just plain, like it was meant to mirror peculiarity before prejudice, like the picture was taken right before the world made all its assumptions about her.
I know that the picture is black and white, not because it’s old, but because the moment lacks the complexity that comes with colour, it is just simple and uncertain.
This is how I see us my darling, uncertain of what the future holds. Maybe it is full of promise or maybe I’m just a broken hour glass, spilling sand, wasting time.

She runs down the stairs forgetting the age of her bones, He drops the walking sticks in each hand and spreads his arms awaiting impact.
She runs into him like a car crash, with the impact of a single applaud, soft and firm and loud, as his fingers rest on the home of her spine, the place where they had lived for the past 50 years.

Her laughter mending the broken fragments of his aching heart
Her tears, drowning the purple heart on his uniform.
Paddy uses ******* to put her hair behind her ear and whispers to her, "You're stepping on my toes"
They hug and sway, their laugh was like a hip hop and jazz jam session, Paddy was always trumpet loud and Sarah was always drums, the beat to which the rhythm flows. So each skip of a heart beat was half cardiac problems of an ageing man and half love.

I am half whatever you want me to be and half yours.
If Paddy could fight an entire war then what is an ocean, if not eight hours and two planes, what is a movie over Facetime, if not the sound of your heartbeat when you fall asleep with your phone on your chest and what is a half empty bed, if not a metaphor for all the parts of me that you complete.
And every time that we meet and forget the reason we were apart in the first place like drowning purple hearts.
I pray that my fingers will find home in the arch of your back
And my toes will find comfort underneath your feet.

My love,
When we are old and frail and walk the streets with love like thunder, the loud that is left after all the spark is gone, the sound of a single applaud.
I pray that our love will be proof that jazz and hip hop are a match made in heaven.
But till then, pick up your phone.

I’ve never known how to feel about wild things.

I read once never to fall in love with a wild thing.

Their hair will always belong to the wind and their toes will always belong in the sand.

“Never fall in love with a wild thing” they said

Their soul is made of earth and sky and has no anchor.

Their heart is always searching for reasons to skip and there’s only so much rope you can offer.

So do not tame a wild thing run with it as far and as long as you can until your body breaks or you become wild too.

I choose to live to choose
Somewhere at the corner of 8th and sacrifice.
It is easy to have opinions on burdens we do not carry.
She carries her burden at the center of her being where the world has told her to keep her gifts.
The decision as difficult as the action that must be taken, she said to me, "How do you force sacrifice?"
I search for words at the bottom of my opinion but we both know that death isn't the only way to end a life, for even God gave us choice for us to truly live.
So I choose me, over his or hers, for what is sacrifice if it is forced.
But my baby did not ask for this.
He did not ask to be the product of my choice or the sacrifice for my life.
The neon light of the late night pharmacy was the knife we used to peel the morning after from the night before.
It is easier to make mistakes that can be corrected.
But a life is a life is a life.
Where do we bury the bodies of unwanted babies. Will the tombstone of my first child read medical waste?
What role do I play in this? It is my child as much as it is her body, but hers is a temple men like me only come to pray. It is hers to choose who stays.
As I leave you with more questions than answers
I do not offer opinion on politics.
I do not offer figures to statistics.
I place before you two lives
who decides who lives or dies?

My heart has never been good at solos, its always been too much flutter and skip and too little beat. It is a glass jar holding two whirl winds always leaving pieces of broken dreams on the kitchen floor that pierce the soul.

My lungs are two empty revolvers searching for bullets in every breath, something to make my words hold the whole world to ransom. But they are beginning to learn to give way to the ears.

My feet are constant reminders that time is just as important as distance and sometimes a fast life does nothing but set a clear path for the slow and the steady. So walk, one step at a time fast enough to clear a path but slow enough to leave your foot prints in the grass.

My fingers have always loved puzzles, whether jigsaw or broken hearts, but my knuckles have always loved trouble. Together they fix as much as they break. They are experts at gathering loose ends of old strings that once held me together trying to sew me together again, but they are still learning to wipe tears.

But my mind is both battleground and cemetery, it is a bed of roses growing in gunpowder. It is still learning that only death before life can prepare you for life after death, but it knows that only true love can give birth to awkward poets with too much cloud and too little earth. So bury me with pen and paper and just maybe I would bleed words till I’m nothing but bones and rose seeds. And maybe I will live on, planted somewhere in the mind of another, a memoir of words and anonymous legends.

I used to fear that one day I would run out of words.
That I would put pen to paper and spill expired honey too sticky to lift,
But now I know there's still a thousand ways to say your name
I know S can be a silk bridge like Lala salama or bright like sunrise or asante
So today when I say babe
Let your ear convince your heart that it is not broken
I have tried and failed a thousand times to write a poem about butterflies, french fries and you
But if the past year has taught me anything it's that relationships cannot just float on two lungs sacrificing oxygen for a kiss
And no matter how much you fit between my ribs I still have to rip open my skin to let you in
So I don't promise butterflies anymore, but I promise to give you the universe, with all the good and bad that comes with it
And if I cannot be there know that I will always be here, so don't be afraid to fall
I trust the earth to spin fast enough to send me your way every so often
Let me be your wave and you will be the rocky shore, tempting sea levels like me to rise.
Let me hide my fears in the space between your eyelashes and watch you blink beautiful.
So as you watch me stumble in the dark searching for where the tunnel starts, having faith that I will remain the boy of your dreams and become the man of your prayers. Know that I remember all the places I buried my smile and all the times you've gone grave robbing.

I’ve always had a thing for old photographs.

The way the black casts its shadow on the white and leaves shades of grey in between.

The way they contrast and compliment each other in a single frame.

The way they hide truth but reveal beauty.

Or maybe that’s just how things are in the purest of forms. Maybe they strip bone and leave nothing but spine and smile.

I’ve always had a thing for old photographs.

They’ve always filled the blank spaces of uncertain

Like you my love

You have and will always be a dream

The red sweater in an old photograph

The tickle of rain on my desert heart

Forget the heartbeat, dance to the grey that my veins now play and unwind the colour from your skin.

You’ve always been most faithful locked in the tower of a dream

You’ve always been most beautiful when you didn’t exist.

Most times I write poems for the sake of writing poems, I write pretty words that make you smile and butterflies flap in your belly.
Most times I write poems for the sake of writing poems, I write harsh realities that make your bones shiver and your will break.
But sometimes, sometimes I write truth. I write poems about a boys day dreams and his night prayers. About a boy too young to be this old, about a boy too strong to be scared.
But he knows more than any that the palms of fear are sweaty, that it's voice shakes in rhythm to a shaking faith and it's knees are two rope bridges, the only path between standing and falling.
He carries his pride in a backpack of loved ones, and even though they may seem heavy, he knows that if he falls they would always have his back.
Most times I write poems for the sake of writing poems, but sometimes I write about you. About how I dream of being everything like you but pray to be slightly better.
Mother prays my feet are bigger, but she knows the shoes better than most.
Shoulder cannot be both broad and cushion. Boy cannot be both man and Saint.
So for every blue cloud under a yellow sun, there's an ode to the grey. There's a star more silver than bright and a rain drop not quite.
But the sun is coming, the dark is not as fast as December, and for every dark night, there's a blue Sunday.

This is not a poem, well maybe it is, but it isn’t a poem about streetlights and butterflies and metaphors about metaphors. It is about weak men and strong women and places where lost souls practice bravery.

I don’t know what she felt
I don’t dare claim to
But I know she cried, I know she fought, I know she broke in places she didn’t know she had, I know she scrubbed hard all the time praying her skin was the memory, I know she prayed, I know she prayed hard, I know it rained, both inside and outside.
But I don’t know what she felt.

I’m tired of excuses and stories about how men are built like tsunamis raised between rock and hard place leaving broken bodies in their wake. I betrothed the knife under my pillow to the souls of men like you, men like me.

Is there a crack in my spine, why can’t I understand that women are nothing but a sum of their body parts. Is it my fault for seeing them as everything we can’t be, from wishing well belly buttons where life comes from to men raisers and once in a while they beat us at our own games just to remind us that they can rustle at the top also but foundation is key. I’m tired of apologizing for men that cradle in the arms of a woman but still reach for her neck with their arms forgetting the reason he is off the ground.

But even if she was none of these. Even if she was built like a tsunami raised between rock and hard place. In his eyes her body will still always be a temple for his sins and sacrifices.