Excuse me if my edges are a bit jagged
If they cut and scrape you, I am sorry
I really didin't mean it, you know

You might think I'm an eyesore
Not worth all that much or very useful
But I fooled you, didn't I?

For I'm simply a chunk of coal,
Seemingly dark, rough and lumpy
But you know what happens to coal, don't you?

It takes a heck of a lot of pressure
And it sure takes quite a while
But in the end it is a diamond, clear as crystal

Its many facets shine up in illumination
A valuable, precious gem to behold
As many of us are refined to become

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

I think it
might have
maybe
been yesterday,
or the day before,
when it happened

Noticed the room was
different, and the silence was
all of a sudden empty

Realized what a glimmer is
because it
wasn't

Reached and grabbed air
felt my own nails press into my palms
squeezed my eyes  and i think a
tear dropped
swallowed into the hardwood and the silence

I think I stopped caring
I think I finally lost myself
in a memory forever
or a dream
it's so much easier, after all

better to be alone than to feel lonely...

there used to be a mirror in the corner,
and a window
i think i remember

i have scars from the broken glass
i'm white as a ghost
but i don't notice
besides, i'd rather not be
seen
i'd rather hide my red-eyed reflection and
the dust in my hair

maybe i died
but i don't know because that day,
yesterday or the day before,
i stopped feeling

perhaps it was
maybe
actually
a few years ago.

Hallelujah sings the golden crow
different from the rest, walks and talks
and sings and sings
and loses wings
and loses wings its wings
have shrunk to fit inside a business suit
a dark black fitted business suit

Cough coughs the golden crow
the blackened business crow
who no longer sings
no longer has wings
no different from the rest
no longer knows the simple things.

I swear, the summer never looked so vast
the clouds never looked so far and full
though lonely
and the sky never looked
so purely, tearfully blue.

I think I’ve
fallen a little bit in love
with that sky, with the sun,
with the song
of the fire in my belly
and the sea in my eyes
and the hole my chest.

I cry, and love
because my youthful muscles
are running on empty.
It makes me free-
like I’m at the bottom of a pool
looking up from the deep
at the rippling blue dome,
hollow arms stretched out to
take it
with my curled fingers.

I reach out and
plunge into the heavens
the summer heat devours
my palms and
I can own it and
shatter the air like glass
in my big sky summer.

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the ******* of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.