sometimes falling for someone is like sky-diving,
and sometimes it’s like jumping off golden gate bridge.
sometimes falling for someone is like sky-diving without a parachute
and still expecting to land on your feet,
sometimes falling for someone is like jumping off the golden gate bridge
and wishing you could climb back up in the split second
before you hit the ground.
see, you and me, we’re a little like my teeth;
all the things i let get just a bit crooked
because i didn't try hard enough to keep them in place.
i think there's a metaphor somewhere in there.
i think there's a metaphor in everything if i look hard enough.
but the thing is, life isn't poetry.
it doesn't always have an overarching meaning and message.
and not everything makes sense in stanzas if you unscramble it.
so i think the biggest lie i’ve ever heard about love
is that it sets you free.
but in the same breath our heartbeats sync up
like all those people who made love look so easy, so simple.
you are a home i don't know how to find my way back to,
and i know you can’t make rest-stops into safe havens
and i know if you’re going to try to make homes out of people
then you can’t be surprised when your house falls apart
and you have to move away.
but you, you were good at making hotels feel like homes.
you were good at making things
like open roads and bedsheets and stolen moments
feel like they belonged to us.
like that twin bed and the two of us
with our feet are tangled and our wires are crossed.
we were always spilling over the edges.
you never fit into any part of my life, but you still squeezed.
and not in a bad way, maybe more of a i'm mad at you
for finding all this extra space in me
i never knew was there until you
and then having the nerve to leave it empty.
so i guess i don't really miss people, i just miss the spaces
they leave behind.
the cracks in my pavement.
and god, what a dangerous thing to think
that someone else can make you whole.
and god, what a dangerous thing to think
that someone else can save you from yourself.

they say don’t become a teacher
if you want to make money,
become a teacher
if you want to make a difference.
true enough, when you’ve got hundreds of
young impressionable minds staring up
at you from 7:40 until 2:40 everyday
still unmolded like hunks of clay,
you’ve got a weird kind of power in your hands.    
so maybe it makes sense that
my art teacher starts class some days
with a ten minute sermon on the hazards of fracking
that blurs into his feelings on education in america,
all before we even make a mark on our canvases.  
my art teacher is a bit of a conspiracy theorist,
but i think all myths are rooted in some fact
and all conspiracy theories started with a little bit of truth
so i like to listen instead of rolling my eyes.
some days instead of painting and teaching us
about shapes of value
he takes up his worn down soapbox,
preaching to a choir that doesn’t care much for singing.
today, he starts talking about color
and way we perceive it
and as i watch, it spirals into a lecture
on the universe
and the way we believe in it.  
color is just reflecting light,
the world is just a reflection of how we perceive it.
matrix of the mind, we see through projector eyes.
the world is a CD, our brains are a scanner
the biggest video game there ever was.  
we’re all holographic minds, he says,
what will you find if you pick yourself a part?
nothing but 1’s and 0’s,
reading like a laser and telling you stories.
he paints a picture with more than brushes,
with his hands waving,
talking about the emptiness of the world
in comparison fullness we believe it to have.
the world isn’t there, the world isn’t real, he says.
these bodies of ours are just space suits,
how silly of us to care about their imperfections
and insignificant differences when really
they’re just just vessels.
we’re just tripping on an acidic universe,
the world is just a bandwidth
and how we read it is based on what we believe in.  
and isn’t that comforting? he asks,
isn’t that freeing?
to know that nothing is real,
so nothing can hurt you?
isn’t it incredible? he says, when you think of it
that way you have nothing to fear.
but you see, knowing is pretty **** different
than believing.
knowing that theoretically, technically,
nothing can hurt you
doesn’t mean you won’t still hurt.
human feelings cannot be quantified
and analyzed so neatly and completely despite our very best efforts.
we are all too messy, we are all outliers in our own rights.
knowing or believing that reality isn’t real
doesn’t change the way hunger feels or the way a heart breaks.
intelligence does not alleviate fear,
really i think it’s more likely to intensify it
because then it’s harder to ignore anything.  
you know what they say: ignorance is bliss.
and maybe reality is perception
and nothing can hurt us if nothing's real
but i'm pretty sure if somebody shot me in the head
i'd still be pretty ****** no what reality
i’ve been perceiving.  
perception does not protect you from reality
like a bullet proof vest does.
and he talks about how belief systems
dictate everything you do,
how they close you off from anything new.  
this enlightened guy who preaches about the universe
in one breath and says,
"you know, most girls don’t like sci-fi," in another,
doesn’t even realize what kind of beliefs
he has internalized himself.
but then i suppose we only see what we want to see,
only notice what we want to take in.  
and don't get me wrong i like him i do,
this art teacher with all his big ideas
about the universe we reside in.
i like him in that way we’re all familiar with
where you sometimes have to ignore
an off-handed comment to still like people
but that's another story, that's another poem.
so if a tree falls in an empty forest with no one around
to hear it then does it even make a sound?
if i am speaking to any empty room
then do my words even matter?
if i am alone then do i still exist without anyone
there to take witness?
what i’m trying to say is:
i don’t think the world stops existing
if there’s no one there to see it.
crimes still happen with no witnesses,
miracles still happen with no witnesses.
maybe the world is just a bandwidth
and how we read it is based on what we believe in,
and maybe your belief system colors your view
like kids with crayons and coloring books,
and in a lot of cases they can close your mind
like a trap door,
but there is nothing wrong with belief and believing.
for some people it is all they have.
and even if i don’t believe in god,
who i am to play the part
and try to shatter other people’s realities?
what good will come the broken glass?
maybe we are mice in our mazes;
but if we are happy here,
blissfully ignorant as we may be,
is that a bad thing?
and even in the labyrinth there is still sometimes light,
even deep in the maze some people
find a place to rest.

i am the kind of kid
who when i think of birthdays i think
eighteen instead of twenty one.

i have been wanting to vote since before
it ever even occurred to me to look forward to ***** shots.

so fast forward to 2015, gearing up to the 2016 presidential race
and guess who of all people is in first place?
donald trump.

and it’s funny
because i had an argument with a friend the other day
over the importance of voting.
politics? he says he just doesn’t care.
  
he doesn’t understand.
ignorance is not a luxury we can all afford.

donald trump is not funny.
he is far too scary and far too real to simply be a caricature.
make no mistake, donald trump doesn’t care for people like my father,
whether they’re here legally or not.
donald trump doesn’t care for people like me,
whether we were born here or not.
his compassion ends within a five mile
range of the the rio grande
and donald trump wants to “make america great again”
by building walls around us to keep anyone south of the border out.
donald trump wants to run this country like a corporation
with the HR department cut.

make no mistake, donald trump is not funny.
donald trump is not funny,
he is terrifying.
he is reminiscent of a past we cannot afford to repeat.

apathy is not a luxury we can all afford.  
remember: we are responsible for our own ignorance
we are just much of what we put into this world
as we are what we take
out of it.

if we don't like who is playing god
and we don’t like the way he pulls the strings,
we have to remember who handed him the bible
so he could swear himself in.

good artists copy, great artists steal,
and the best artists reinvent what they’re stolen.
so don’t think of it as stealing,
think of it as borrowing.
everyone who has ever created anything
puts out something new for future generations
to leave their fingerprints all over.
and i’m hoping for a change in the weather,
rearrange my life into something better
frankenstein a poem in an a love letter.
all us poets, we've all been writing the same old things.
we're just regurgitated, agitated,
trying to say something that hasn't already been said.
but i've heard every story follows the same seven plot lines.
all stories are the same narrative essentially
but all stories are still worth telling.
no idea is original
but there are ideas worth being repeated, reinvented.
so i steal from the greats, piggy-backing off the shoulders of giants
and borrowing from my betters
in hopes to better myself and them.
legacies exist because of people taking great things
and continuing to strive to make them greater.
legacies exist because they are given away
to everyone who hears them,
kept alive by tongues and hands and hearts.
when you write you are contained inside yourself.
but when i am here,
when i am on this stage, i am uncontained and free;
i’ve given myself away to all of you.
the thing about art is that once you put it out there
it doesn’t belong just to you anymore.
i’ve got just as much ownership over my favorite song
as the person who wrote it does because i feel just strongly about it.
i’m writing poems for people i’ve never met
i’m writing a love letter that i’ll wake only to forget.
so i think it's funny people call writing solitary.
it's funny to me that people call
the purest form of communication in art a lonely pursuit.
because i think really most writers are just trying to use what we're best
at as an intermediary, a middle man,
trying to make a connection with someone.
every writer has written something down
and hoped desperately that someone a hundred years from now,
someone on the other side of the world
will feel something when they read what they’ve written.
it’s funny.
most people think that writing, that poems,
are something i do instead of something i am;
taking away my words would be like taking away my bones.
i have a deep, passionate need to be heard
so i will scream until someone tells me they are listening,
until someone tells me to shut the **** up
because i cannot imagine a time when the untameable need
to tell stories, to string together fragments of poetry,
will not be bursting out of my veins.
something is not real until i write it down.
so we take photos as the titanic sinks.
we pull out our phones as the twin towers fall, call everyone we know.
what else would we do? just watch it go down silently?
i think the most basic of human instincts is the urge to communicate.
to make people understand
our love, our joy, our anger, our tragedy.
we are just spectators to the tragedy, guilty bystanders to the crime;
we have front row seats to the end of the world.
and when the sky is falling
you know we’ll all be calling each other saying,
“you’ll never believe what is happening.
i don’t know how to explain it,
but i’m going to try.”

i guess i’ve always
been something of a
storm chaser.
and i guess that’s why
i kept chasing
after him saying,
saying,
“this hurricane won’t hurt me,
no, i’ll be just fine…”
but i guess i’m **** at predicting
the weather
because, baby,
i was still learning
that when it rained, it *******
poured
and i was standing there
without an umbrella
begging him to
please, please stay.
but the car’s already running
and my legs are shaking
like they should be too,
because i shouldn’t
be here,
this isn’t how it was
supposed to go, not this time
and maybe if i run away fast enough
this storm won’t get
in between us…
but my feet stick
to the pavement like it’s july
and the tar beneath my feet
is so hot i might melt
into it.
god, what i’d give
for it to be july
again because i swear,
i swear you loved me back then.
but i asked him
where he was going
and he said,
“somewhere where this hurricane
can’t touch me,”
and i’m still trying
to figure out if
i was the hurricane
or the mess in his head was.
and i never wanted
to be his demons
i just wanted to know their names.
and i never wanted
to get caught up in a storm
like him
i just wanted to believe
it could rain again.
so suddenly i didn’t believe
in rain,
i believed in
hurricanes,
the kind trapped in that jar
on my kitchen table.
and when my mother asks
because she’s gonna ask,
a mother always asks
i’m going to say,
“i had to go,
it was like i was suffocating
when he held me
but it was like drowning
when he was gone.”
it always felt like losing
with him.
and it really was.
so when i ran into him
for the first time since i learned
the definition of a
hurricane
we crashed into each other
like a collision course,
like we always did.
and the back of my mouth
doesn’t stop
tasting bitter for a few days
after
because i realized that’s
all we ever were
going to be.
for a moment
almost more terrifying
than the last time he saw me,
i didn’t know what else to say
but to breathe out,
“i’m sorry,” so softly
neither of us
quite know what i’m
apologizing for
and he knows better than
anybody
i never knew how
to apologize,
neither did he.
but i’m learning
and i hope he is too.
our mouths
have already made a mess
of so many good things
but i don’t know how
to bite my tongue;
i’m just too terrified of bleeding
and i could never ******* help it
so i asked him
where he was going
and he said,
“somewhere it doesn’t rain,”
and i…
i really hope
it’s dry
wherever you are.

when i was a sophomore in highschool
it seemed like half of my class gave themselves stick and pokes,
homemade DIY tattoos out of india ink and mom’s sewing needles
etched dot by dot into their skin.
we were sixteen;
we all wanted to be something permanent.
but even the ink fades eventually
and all that’s left is discolored skin and scars.
everything fades eventually.
even we all decompose eventually,
but i’ve been trying not too hard to think in terms of a legacy
because words like that are so heavy.
i don’t want to work so hard to have something to leave behind
that i have nothing while i’m here.
everyday the number of our hours fluctuates
with every little decision we make,
everyday the length of our legacy is determined
by what we’re leaving behind in our wake.
i'm afraid i've been taught to plan for the future so thoroughly
that it has stolen my lust for the now.
i could tell you my five year plan
but i’m not sure if i could tell you why i want to get up out of bed tomorrow
or what makes me excited to be alive.
in planning i’m always looking down at my hands,
always looking ahead of me but never right in front of me.
i’ve been trying to build a monument
but i forgot to make it mean anything.
so wash me away like footprints in the beach,
i was never really here unless i was with you anyways.
i have an ink-stained love letter and camera roll full of memories
as a testament to what was, or better yet to what wasn’t.
and everybody told me not count hours, but you know i never listened.
none of us ever listened, cautionary tales like warning signs
and we ignored them all.
we were all sixteen, getting chipped down and broken up
for the first time and we all wanted to be whole again.
you can put back together fragments,
but you’ll still see where the cracks were.
you take your broken bones and you learn to splint them
until they heal up,
until you only remember when it’s raining and you’re aching
for something you thought you buried.
we just a bunch of fistfight kids getting out of love
with ****** knuckles and smirks like “you should see the other guy”
we were all each other’s punching bags
and i think we all liked bruises
because we thought if we pressed them than they’d scar,
then at least something would stay permanent.
but it was 4 AM, all the hours flew away and all my tattoos were stick on.
you were always right and i was always wrong.
so let’s pretend that all this empty street in front of us is really ours
and let’s get pulled over for noise disturbances
like we were always laughing too loud, scared shitless
and staring at each other’s faces
in the red and blue lights until everything looks purple.
let’s stay out until the sun starts to rise like we’ve got nowhere to be,
fumbling around with bottle openers and each other’s hearts.
let’s do things not just to collect experiences,
let’s do things not just to say we did.
let’s do things that will only be immortalized by stories
because i think that’s why we tell stories, or at least i know that’s why i do:
the need to be remembered staves off the fear of being forgotten.
and i am no exception,
i don’t care about the slowly expanding sun, i just… want to be someone.
you see it’s just that a lot people want to go out with bang,
but i ain’t trying to go out at all.
because i used to be terrified of being forgotten,
i used to be terrified of leaving this world without so much as a foot print.
i remember i wanted to be quoted,
i wanted my words to live forever even if i had no pulse.
i wanted to know about immortality.
and i’m not all talk, i’m all writer’s block;
unable the eloquently string myself together like poetry.
because i’ve learned words don’t make you permanent,
they just make you a little harder to wash away.
and photographs don’t keep things from fading,
they just make it hurt more to remember them.
i’ve learned words just prolong death, they don’t dispel it.
so let’s do this.
it’s the closest i’ll ever get to the fountain of youth,
to undeniable truth, to lasting.  
let’s do this, let’s tell stories, let’s talk tongued tied with poetry.
again and again, every night.
let’s get on stage and root around in our chest cavities,
try to find where we misplaced our hearts for a start
and then try to find all the truths hidden inside ourselves
we always swore were there.
because this is the only time i feel like the world can’t knock me down,
because this is the only time that i wouldn’t even care if it did.
because i always want to feel like this.
i want to feel like i matter for one fleeting, fleeting moment.  
because if i could capture this moment in my hands like a firefly
then it would still die.
it would still die even if you had to pry it out of my cold dead fingers.
so something is not good because it lasts.
something is good because it matters while it did.

charlie chaplin
once told his daughter
that her naked body should only
belong to those
who fall in love with
her naked soul.
now,
my soul’s hardly naked.
it wears layers and layers
to keep hurt out,
sometimes to keep love out.
but if you can manage
to strip me down,
my soul bare,
and the rest of me clothed
but ******* shivering
like a little kid who got
caught in a blizzard,
trying to catch snowflakes
to keep under my tongue;
if you manage to pull that
all away
and strip me down
to a mess of
private parts –
the parts i don’t tell people
about,
the parts i sectioned off
and hastily labeled
mineminemine
because i wasn’t ready to
share myself,
and the parts of myself
i deemed too fragile
to withstand
your gaze.
you see,
i don’t dismantle
my walls
for just anybody.
but if you strip me down,
past the things we all use
to hide out,
maybe you could love
my naked soul.
i’ve never been the kind of girl
who liked the idea of
“belonging”
to someone but
there are much worse fates
i could think of
than belonging to
you.