An empty page is a perfect reflection
Of my empty mind

And who took the life away from the words I write?
Who has cursed me to pace nervously around dining rooms with the hope that something meaningful will appear on a page
Some words that are worthy of being said that will be met by crowds with adoration and applause
Yet I am not worthy
I am not worthy of adoration or applause or words with meaning
I am stuck in this flat affair
Because while others seek for meaning with action my hours are stained with a deep black oil that keeps me standing still
When I think about writing my head feels so empty
And I wonder if I have wasted all my pretty words on meaningless sayings in the hopes someone would look at me and say “now there is a good and articulate revolutionary soul, a good man with good answers”
Now, for once, the whole truth is clear
I cannot write sacred words for there are no sacred words
I cannot write a sacred poem for sacred poems do not exist
And I think this is what growing up feels like
The day you realize that just because you read Allen Ginsbergs Howl,
and wanted to write a poem just like that, and you spend two years attempting to create a facsimile of “I saw the best minds of my generation”,
None of that can make you a poet
Just as refusing to have a drivers license does not make one an anarchist
And how much have I grown away from that once holy phrase “I saw the best minds of my generation”?
Since then I have heard Marius Jacobs declare “I saw the world and it was not beautiful”
Max Stirner cry out “All things are nothing to me”
And Johnny Hobo singing “you wish that the world was clean/but I’m in love with the way it’s *****”
None of these words are holy
None of these sayings are sacred
But I hold each one in my heart as if they are my property, or rather, a property of me
I decided to write poetry because of people like Carl Sandburg and Jack Kerouac
I loved the words they wrote to the point that my words were lost
I celebrated their words as if they were holy
But growing up means I understand that, at the end of the day, they are just words
I tried so hard to write the words that came from them
And it’s about **** time I start writing the words
That can only come from me

Aesthetic accounts on Twitter elicit long lost emotions I never thought I would feel again
I have never written a love poem
I don't know if I have even been in love since I've started writing some 3 or 4 years ago
There were always those few moments where I thought someone would come along and everything would change
But maybe I am fooling myself
Maybe I'm not ready for this idea of love
Or if it's more that I don't care to have it
I know I've never been the romantic type and surely I have said it before
But maybe it has gotten worse
Because no more do I write about people as angels or romanticize the passing of time
This poem itself is so matter of fact
There is no emotion here
I don't know what happened

Let us raise our glasses to toast
To the hope that I can write better poems in the future
To the hope that I can write about my emotions outside whatever political frenzy I work myself into
Let us raise a toast to love, the concept
Love, the flower that is always out of reach
Love, the conversation I have in dreams asleep that make it so much harder to get out of bed each morning
Love: the songs I refuse to sing, the poems I cannot write, the emotion I have forgotten, that one thing I don't necessarily want right now, but probably need, that I will reach on my own terms one day don't you worry it will all be wine and roses then
Let us raise a toast to love

It's too late for me my friends
Pacing around my kitchen with a half empty bottle of Red Stripe I write this poem to you
To anyone who gives a **** enough to pay attention and listen to all the nonsense that leaves my lips
I am a man with no realistic goals
I am a man who does not listen to the battle cry that beats in his chest and forces it's way through his veins
Instead I plug my ears because I know what danger would come from action
I am a slave to inaction
And I've been told that a slave that doesn't defy their master is not yet deserving of their freedom
While I don't believe that's the truth, I let it apply to me
Because I am a coward
Nothing I want is attainable
None of my dreams are feasible
I have lost more times than I can count
But maybe if I lose enough, it will mean someday I've won
Because I don't want to live a quantifiable life of wins and losses
Successes and failures
I want a life that is worth getting up each morning
A life of joy that is armed to the teeth
Because from John Brown to Emiliano Zapata
From Spanish barricades to French communes
I believe that the heroes who fail are the only one's worth having
Because in failure there is always action
There is sincerity and the feeling that what one is doing must happen eventually
So why not now?
What is stopping me from saying "no more shall I live a life that isn't according to the what I believe"
I believe in a life like the hardships of Paul
"Sorrowful but always rejoicing
Poor yet making many rich
Having nothing yet possessing everything"
Alone I must build for myself a life worth living
And together we can build a world we can finally call home

If you ask me on a good day
What we need to change the world
I'll tell you "each other"
If you ask me on a bad day
I'll look you in the eyes and tell you
"What we need are more riots"
We need people out in the streets
We need a little fire, chaos, and to embrace our friends like its the end
And I would say both answers are realistic
Realistic in the way that I don't have an actual plan

There's a reason I'm not an insurrectionist
Because while freedom is out there
If I only reach out and take it
You don't know how hard it is for me to reach out and turn off my alarm in the mornings
So I tip my hats to all the Dean Moriartys out in the world
Those beautiful adventurous people who go to marches and take a stand or take their whole life and move across states
People who know what it means to "live like you mean it"
I have trouble knowing if I really mean anything I say anymore, much less what I do
I've always been more of a Sal Paradise anyways
The background character in my own story
Writing the chronicles of all the Roman candle people
Beautifully illuminating in the night sky

But I still haven't wrote myself off completely
And I hope you haven't either
Because there are still times where there's power in my step and fire in my mouth
I was born a militant apathetic
All that's left for me is the right catalyst and I promise I'll burn brighter than all the molotovs thrown in Greece
And while I can't promise to make total destroy
I can promise that I'll try my best to fight when I'm needed
Because all we need is each other
Today's gonna be
A good day

What in this world can I understand but me?
Whose pain is this if not mine?
Whose voice is this if not mine?
All I can ever be is my Self
All I can ever truly know is me and mine
I live in the shadow of my own Ego and I know **** well I cannot escape it
Max Stirner you tell me I should only act in my self interest
You tell me that all things are my property if only I reach out and take them
But do you know what it is I want Max?
You have never met me
I worry that what I want would be a hell for the people I care about
You must have had the luxury to not have anger like mine
You must have not ever experienced the fire in the back of your mind and the bricks in the pit of your stomach when life throws you for a loop
You don't know how bitter I can become
Can your egoism really help me?

Max I look into the mirror and wonder if that's you I see
Hiding in my mind behind my irises peering back
I had such distaste for the things you preach but why was I so fixated on letting the world know that?
And suddenly it's all clear
Max Stirner you are my shadow
You are everything about myself that I have trouble accepting
You are every clenched fist at the thought of someone I love loving someone else
You are every scowl on my face when I feel like I'm surrounded by people who don't give a **** about what I have to say
You are every night I stewed in my own mind because nothing went how I wanted

When I first wrote this poem,
I wanted to be rid of my ego
I want to live a life where I'm never in the way of anyone pursuing what they want
And I still do
So what do I do now?
Because you aren't entirely wrong Max
I am free when I take responsibility for my actions it's true
Maybe I am the unique one, the creative nothing, the indescribable qualities that make me who I am
And so is everyone else
And just because I say something is "mine" doesn't mean that it can't also be "ours"
Do I want to be a good man because it is in my self interest to do so?
Do I possess the tools to set myself free?
And is love nothing but a ghost of my mind?
A spectre that disappears as soon as I reach my hand out to it?
Do I love because it pleases me to do so?
They tell me love is just a bunch of chemicals in my brain anyway
But ****** it's my brain and it's my chemicals
They are mine
They are my property

So Max, we might not agree in our anarchism
At the end of the day I believe in causes and powers bigger than myself
But I have a respect for your beliefs
Because I know all too well
All I can ever be is me
All I can ever understand is my self

How many regrets are you allowed to hold before its better to lay them down and forget them?
I'm spending a lot of time looking back
Back to when I was in high school and I felt that I knew who I was
Back before the heartbreak that made me rethink all of my actions and motivations
I have reevaluated, reexamined, reminded, and rewrote so much of who I am
I see that past as a stranger
I'm on the outside looking in
And what I see is a skinny boy with a lot of acne and a big heart that he tried to hide under layers of boisterous and loud nonsense and misanthropic dispositions
There are apologies I wish I could give but I know it's better if I didn't
But it's the music tonight that brings me back again
It hasn't been all that long since I took the stars down from my ceiling and whenever I look up at the night sky I can only imagine myself, age 16, looking back and wondering what the future would hold
It's baggage I intend to leave at the station
It's bitterness I want to erase from my heart but haven't figured out just how to do yet
Back then I put a lot more hope in love
But what did I know then of love?
Will love be more kind to me in the future?  
I had only loved one other and since then I have not yet reached that emotion even when recently I had gotten closer than ever before
But I am different now and don't know how to process such emotions and I feel all the dark moods waiting in the corners to once again make my mind consumed by their doubts
So tonight
As songs from high school and miscellaneous memories fly through my head I decide not to hide the dark moods but rather allow them to pass quietly in peaceful alone moments before they cause the dam to burst
It's been three years and I have changed
It's been three years and I am better
It's been three years and it's approaching four and I'm beginning to realize now who I'm truly meant to be