Not all cages have barred windows,
some captors build walls
around
themselves.
The mirror holds me, keeps me
captive,
bleeds me, leads me
only to loneliness.
I sit with the door
locked
and the window
locked
and my life
locked down.
Comfort
holds the key,
and I'd be best to
break free from my confines.

Sometimes you've got to stare at your feet.
Like when time stands still,
blood curdles with news
and shock takes over your
already white, emotionless face.
Like when you see past, present, and
maybe a lack of future,
all at once. Like when
you yearn for morning sun
because sleep eludes you.
Sometimes your feet aren't the
most interesting thing in the world,
but a bore might just delay or mend the cure.

Bay Street Bus Terminal at 2:23 PM

A small bird travels between the feet, one joyful hop at a time. It's accustomed to the careless giants that move about,
and it knows nothing but doors and trick glass and steel and cement. I doubt
it's ever seen a natural, unabashed forest in its lifetime. Nor have I, but I belong to
the rapists of land, molesting everything natural that should ever cross our paths. I'm not an exception, I type poems
on my smartphone and wear nothing but name brands, I travel by burning oil and I consume everything from plastic cases and my protein comes from animals
that sit in cages, their feet crushing old food and new ****, but I don't like to think about it. So I won't,

and I'll keep on enjoying the company of a small bird that can't even conceptualize a forest.

A friendly smile makes
distance irrelevant. Home is
where your friends are, and time
will pass.

Pizza boxes sit at curb sides every thursday.
Bottles and cans fill most weekends, some
week days because why not?
We celebrate in ***** rooms, letting liquids leave all sorts of stains.
Semesters pass and we pass (sometimes),
with nothing left in our pockets but long-term debt, friendly conversations lost in the haze of moderate alcoholism, and memories that we feel will last forever.
Youth is wasted on the young, they say,
but what better way to spend a Tuesday than day-drinking in eternal ecstasy?

Generations change.
People didn't trust the radio or newspapers or television or social media or or
Or
anything new, at first.
And some people don't see the comedy
in posting why the next generation is unsuccessful on social media,
but it's there just as
the next generation is, and as their trends will be.
Change is not scary, I'm
telling you that it's coming and
fear, in this case, is a waste of time.

No,
I refuse the blues. Excuse me,
for I fail to see as you empale
my ecstasy. Reflection, I will
not mend our relationship. I'm
not seeing you anymore.

All I see at bars is bouncing, smiles,
and laughter full of sad eyes and
repression.
A bunch of lonely
                 people
                        looking
for a warm night and a cold morning.
Connections built to a beat, and you
      have to blame
all parties
because that's what bars are for.
A house of human fluid,
dank floors filled with
feet and fluttering hearts,
moving parts when all
any of us needs
is a real caring conversation.
A real daring contemplation,
I know, but though I'm a young
anomoly, I honestly believe
these thieves of youth are used to their
dishonest truths.

We don't even know it's a problem.

This isn't about me, but I can only
speak from my own lips. This is all
about you, really my perception of
you, so excuse the bias.
You're gold.
From the inside, you shine by
giving your time without personal
benefits. You glitter my littered eyes
with a blistering brightness. You're fearful,
so I'll give you an ear full of whispered compliments and knowing glances.
The world doesn't give
a ****, but you're without a any left to share, having cared every **** to the ******. You are the new dew on morning grass, you are light in darkness, you are gold among rubble, you a sandwich to the starving world, you are everything I could ever hope to be (with).
You are gold, shining on those who've forgotten their lustre.

Mom put "White Christmas" on
and we sat around the TV
while yelling and talking and not
really watching. We drank and I thought
of Hemingway and Bukowski, because they
drank and wrote a lot.
And I sat down to write,
without worrying about editing,
and I wrote this particular poem. 8 glasses of
cider later,
I sit in silence, listening for inspiration.
I don't think any is coming, but
often good times don't result in poetry.

Mom,
We'd like to give you the world
since it's exactly what you gave to us.
Given our current financial limitations,
it isn't possible at the moment.
So how about a winter coat instead?

The dog has to ****.
The whole city sleeps.
The dog won't go more than five feet
from me.
I walk five feet from a bush, listening
as the buildings slowly inhale, pause,
and let out a restful breeze.
He sniffs the bush, apparently unaware
of the cold.
I look up, naked branches catching
my eyes and the breeze. They shiver
as white flakes of heavens tears
fall softly all around. The dog finishes
his business, then comes for some
attention. The city still sleeps,
time stands still, and we go back inside.

To those of you with screaming demons,
I ask you to speak with conviction, with
pride,
because behind even the most tired eyes
lies empathy. And if you see no listening ears, please God seek them out.
It's true that there's no voice as loud as your own,
but as you lay awake just know
that all great heroes have at least one weakness.
I'm listening, waiting and hoping to hear
anything you have to say. Please,
don't hold back a single syllable.

I could never really tell you,
because love in my house was shared using laughs and insults.
Just know
that when I say
"You make me want to *****,"
I don't really mean it.
And know
that just because I can never find the words,
it doesn't mean
I don't feel them.
I'll always regret
not being able to say what you mean to me,
but just remember
you smell truly awful.

Until snow speckles the skies,
winter hides joy from colour-laden eyes.
There's no sparkle
from October to December,
as leaves lose their lustre,
as beaches become wastelands,
as sun-tanned skin fades to pale.

When stars finally fall to the earth as
flakes,
darkness is shaken away. Skin quivers
with the cold,
shivers growing more common and less discrete.
Little flecks of brilliance
reach down to the blinded,
returning vision to those
who hope only for a little bit of colour.
The first one to touch your nose,
having
come from the heavens,
describes more colourful times.

"Patience," it whispers.

I've spent hours, days
wrestling with grief. I've watched
as it gnawed at flesh, taking
pieces of all of us... as if we never needed to be whole. It
doesn't care what you've
been through, what you've done. If you
let it, grief will nibble every inch
until there's nothing left.

It creeps through everything I do
now, nibbling. I see it there,
taking from me
what I never knew I had. No,
mine is no different,
but I refuse. It will not
define me. Grief can feed
all it wants, but my
patience
makes it mute.

Light is a funny thing.
In abundance, it
blinds.
In lacking, it
blinds.
Sometimes the right light seems to fade,
evading those who need it most. Sometimes
just enough shows through an
overturned car,
reflecting off the shards of glass,
showing those with aching bodies
what they need to see.
Sometimes light
is wrong,  but
who's to
say?

I reach
for colourful images, while trying not
to sound pretentious. Often, I fail
but that's alright.
I hate that poetry
has to be searched for, and
is not understood by the masses. I want to write for people, and not just those who took a creative writing elective, or those
that went to high-profile schools. I want to write
so that people have something to read,
to inspire others to create. Art is only for those that can afford the time,
and it seems to me that
there's plenty
to go
Around.

Sometimes I feel like a shadow, merely
flowing through the background,
affected by light and dark and not
really
changing anything.
Sometimes I feel like a
supporting actor,
unimportant
though I'm writing the script.
Sometimes I pretend to believe
in something greater,
just to make the day pass
with a little less friction.
Sometimes I write sad poems
about things I don't really believe
just to pass the time between classes.

I start with a single idea,
smoldering sweetly like a single
piece of coal.
If I leave it unattended,
too much time and moisture will combine
to cool the sweet heat
of creation.
If I write before it's ready,
time again becomes a factor.
A hot coal needs time,
the unwise smother an otherwise fine fire
with sticks and leaves and logs.
Some are attracted to the
bright sheen of gasoline,
but all I see is a brilliant facade
that fades within seconds.
It burns too hot,
the heat isn't appreciated
and the living leave for darkness.
A good poem, like a good fire,
needs time and tact to survive.
It needs to be nurtured, worked
and tinkered with. A good poem
needs varying heats, complimentary conditions
to grow.
It needs time to breathe, room to
become a bonfire or a forest
fire. Either way,
I try to bring the bright heat
from the warm coal of creation.

It rests indignantly behind eyes,
and in the creases that hold them in place.
It's a permanent gaze,
a glazing of hope and health and most of all,
it's a loss.

Embedded in failed careers and lost dreams is this
listlessness, this blisslessness that some
try so desperately to hide.
I know some don't try to mask their masks
and I'm sure that most don't know
the parasite from their own
black sparkling souls.
The diamonds in their eyes have lost their purpose,
and pupils cannot regain their lustre
easily.
It takes divine intervention or more,
whatever that means,
to shine on darkness.

And sometimes no amount of sunlight
lets broken souls glisten; for that
I have no answer.

Man will hang from his own creations
with the pain taken a little more
as every shaking twitch finds its fit,
crawling down the spine.
Every aching itch flaking away
with every passing day.
The chord pulls tight under the weight of mankind,
and one day man may find their loss, but I guess
hindsight sees all.
Find sight, see all.
Find might, be all.

But maybe that's the problem. Too busy searching
for the cause of the ache to pause and wake to what
we've created.
Self-medicated, in need of a mediator
with the creator hiding between our ears.
I hope one day it's clear that our destiny rests in
me and you, I hope that we drop the dope and
clear the smoke that's choking us to death.

We climb mountains and buildings
and risk everything - well, some of us -
                                                                   for what?
For achievement? For a good story to impress girls?
For pride? Because no one else has?
No,

           it must be something more.
We climb into spaceships and airplanes and
elevators
          to be higher than anyone else,
      to see things that have never been seen,

                  and to be further than anything
                                  than anyone
before.

We climb to improve, to live, to love,
and because up is unlimited.

My heart beeps
and grinds but mechanics
apply WD-40 and I grind no more.
I am plugged in (only to charge now)
and soon I'll be free
to travel as far as the wi-fi
allows.
It's new ish,
my technology
and a lot of people are afraid.
I am not
the Terminator.
I can not
fix myself.
I have no
mind
but
people are afraid
because I'm not what they're used to.
If you fear
me,
then don't watch colour
tv
or
use digital clocks
or
drive an automobile
because they're new ish too,
just like
me.

God must be human
because
I didn't really cry at my uncle's funeral
because
I couldn't stop crying at my dad's
because
a girl I went to highschool with just died, she was 22.
God must be human
because
mistakes have been made
because
World War
because
I can't seem to remember my locker combination.
God must be human
because
I look just like my dad
because
every day is a reminder that he's gone
because
that couldn't have been intentional.
God must be human
because
no omnipotent being would allow for such destruction
because
no omniscient being would ignore such destruction
because
no omnibenevolent being would withhold goodness.
God must be human
because
because
because
because
I am.

The bus whirrs and shakes and brakes and errrs
and I think of you.
It stinks and clanks and clinks
and I think of you.
Its silence is screaming, its distance is gleaming
and I think of you.
I'm far away and exhausted and the bus excretes exhaust
and I think of you.
I burr and shake and brake
and I think of you.
and I think of you.
and I think of you.

My question started with Rives and Op Talk.
Only an idea at first, a spark,
convention that I can not help but mock
because spark rhymes with hark and bark and narc.

Write to make the bones of Shakespeare shiver
and this is awful but who is to say
that a young artist cannot deliver,
cannot produce a lyrical ballet?

It is not important. But it is special
because I cannot speak and speak and speak
and the world is not always so gentle
to warrant an outlook so very bleak.

Not all of the lines will always rhyme like
A sonnet sonnet sonnet sonnet has to.

Sirens will sit, stand, sprint, and lay with you,
if you let them.
Sirens whisper of an incoming life
while sometimes, on the same night,
discussing one that is outgoing.
Sirens have told the people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Dresden
that their air would be turned to ash,
sooner rather than later.
Sirens pull you to the side of the road
to tell you that you're going too fast,
so maybe slow down a little.

Now modern Sirens have taken the face of man,
the voice of man.
They whisper not to the sailors;
but to the people in their cars,
in their places of work
and in their homes.
(buy my product)
(become a member)
(Listen to Me.)
Maybe control is swaying
and man is being changed,
persuaded to
sit, stand, sprint and lay
with Sirens.

Bear with me,
but we are the generation of social consciousness and laziness and internet and poetry and netflix and instant messaging and everything-at-your-fingertips and catchy pop music and brand names and

we often lose sight of what is important,
so I'll keep it short.

Put your phone away,
sit outside for a while.

I've been climbing that hill for a long time
Every time I ascend on my way home,
     I see the red and blue lights that were
     strewn across my lawn
just the one night.
     And I still don't know what that means,
that I'm reliving the one moment
before my world came crashing down.
Maybe it's my mind trying to return to the uncertainty,
     sitting in that little blue car just seconds before
     catching a glimpse of paramedics trying to
breathe life into my dad's lungs.
              Maybe I'm trying to return to a full family
or maybe it's just a memory
              that won't go away

until I stop climbing that



hill.

When my dad had a heart attack,
              His friends bought him a LazyBoy
                                                reclining chair,
as if to say

"rest up, buddy

we've got your back."
                                        Now a man myself,
               I know that my friends

would pitch for a chair,
too.

With leaders and life coaches
          mental doctors
they must have discovered the
                                                                                 Right
way to live.

With dreams broken down
crushed into a dust,
and structurally analyzed,
                                              they must know.
We exist from 9 to 5, monday to friday,
breathing in and out only for a

bi-weekly

paycheck.

Our lives revolve around
                                             one thing.
Religion has taken a backseat to this new obsession
that people fight and die for.
Now, we battle over
paper and metal,
pressed into coins, printed as bills.
Kind of makes you wonder
why you are
really

here.

Even the darkest night is followed by mo(u)rning

Buckets filled with tears,
          filled with effort and sweat,
            blood and exhaustion,
will fill a well-used life,
                                like a small apartment with a leaky roof.
This apartment is dark,
                                         dreary, and nothing more could fit.
Pain is written on the walls,
  stress lines the floorboards.

Sure, you could move to a new place,
    one with clean walls,
                  empty spaces to walk,
    a TV with satellite,
    but you stay in this dark hole in the wall,
because it's yours.

Through all the sweat,
                     the buckets filled with negativity,
       the dreams turned to nightmares,
a single droplet, glistening like the sun,
         appears to descend, stopping

just beyond your reach.

No matter how many buckets, tables and chairs you pile up,
it sits, staring down at you.

One day, this hope,
        this unprecedented sense of achievement
     falls,
  landing softly on your tongue.

The taste is unlike any other,
   and the pain melts away.
      The blood, sweat, the tears,
         all become necessary.
The dingy apartment
     is well-lit, clean,
     and the pursuit of this perfect droplet
becomes The ideal.
This second of sweetness
                      makes bitter fade to memory,
                      makes the darkness warm and bright,
illuminating existence.

I know it’s selfish
... but I wish you spent six weeks in a hospital bed.
I wish that I could have spent seven fifty on parking slips
every day for those six weeks
Just to say goodbye,
properly.

I wish that hospital smell
grew familiar in my nostrils.
that I could walk the route with my eyes closed
to room whateveritis
and sit in a familiar chair,
slowly watching,


waiting,


for you to die.

I wish you had a nice view out your window

one filled with trees,
one that birds flew in front of regularly
because you loved watching them.

I wish I didn’t leave you
drinking merrily with friends
joking about everything
because I wanted to spend your last moments by your side.

I wish I could have observed your strength




slowly fading



as your smile was
quick to appear.

I wish we could have talked
once more would have done
although I wish that conversation could last forever.

I wish you could have ******* about hospital food
like you did when you were sick before,
and I wish we could have laughed about it.
         wish we could have joked about sneaking beer into the hospital.

I wish the beeping of hospital things drove away silence.

I wish we could have stared at the ground
as we discussed life,
death
and other important things.

I would have wished

that it wouldn’t have been awkward
but we would have known
what to do with your ashes...

Instead of leaving them on top of your sound system
and never looking at them.

I wish you were able to stand with us today
instead of swimming in a pool of regret,
instead of somewhere else.

I just wish you didn't die

and take a part of us with you.

all of these Important
people
walking to and from their Important
jobs,
talking on their Important
cellphones
about the upcoming Important
meeting...
   i
   n  
   t
People
   r
   t
   w
   i
   n
   e
   d

with their Important,
            complicated lives.

Their importance
           showing through their fancy attire, their better-than-you attitude.
   If they're all so IMPORTANT,
Why is it that I feel like I stand apart,

in my jeans and t-shirt?

I had an idea
that guns should shoot in both directions when fired,
to rid the world of assailants intent on


killing

another human being.

To the public, I still think
                   this an effective method.
To military men and women,
                   this is no solution.

           They fire on orders,
they fire on enemies of the state
they fire because they have to.

I think that for every shot fired on an 'enemy',
                           politicians should be shot.
Non-fatal, of course.
   Just a warning,
                 so these decision makers
                   can truly understand the

                                      cost
of war.

I remember that night you met my dad.
     I'd packed it away,
                  like one of the boxes that mom put in the storage locker,
         only to one day bring it back
when I need it most.

I'm not sure I need it most now,
                                             but here it is.
I remember after dinner,
my dad talked to us for about an hour.
And I told him we were going for a walk,
because he was a little drunk,
       and he loved to tell his stories.
I remember standing at the lookout,
                             my arm around your waist;
I knew I loved you then,
     but I didn't say it.
That was a perfect moment,
                           forever in my memory

But if I had known it was the first and last time
you'd meet my dad,
I'd never have mentioned that walk.

For another average moment with both
                            you and my dad,

             I'd throw away that perfect walk,
that beautiful sunset.

He abandoned me when I needed Him most,
plucked my heart from my chest
and let me bleed out,
much like the rest of my family.

He was hidden in the bushes nearby,
as we all lay in a clearing,
quivering from everything but the cold.

He saw us staring into space,
seeing everything fall apart,
watching me slowly stand up.

He watched as I tried to lift my sisters,
mom,
as I still try to do so.
I don't know what gave me the strength,
what keeps us all moving forward,
but He wasn't there for us.

We were able to lift ourselves up
from the wreckage,
and keep moving forward.

Sometimes I still look back,
past the clearing to the bushes,
and I see nothing hiding,
                                 as nothing hid before.

While you lay asleep and dreaming,
          I sit, conscious,
                             writing and thinking and
                                                                     dreaming.
When you awake to work as the sun rises,
            I lay in bed
      asleep,
                              but not dreaming.
When you work
        and complete all your given tasks with relative ease,
                I dreamlessly rest.
This, so that we may dream at the same time
                                                             about similar things
                                                    and I can trap our dreams in print
                                         always together,
                                                                   harmoniously
                                                                                                       like us.