Have you ever been told as a child
that you were difficult to deal with
because you didn’t want to sit down,
or limit your drawings to a paper sheet,
or make all of your homework during the weekend—
all of our family came over, please!—
or didn’t keep quiet when adults told you to,
for you always had the answer right under your tongue?

Did they ever call you
hyperactive, or
a monkey, or
an airhead, or
simply trouble?
Did you just get on their nerves?

I wish I had been like that,
a difficult child.
Why would I say that! That’s nonsense.
I wish I had known how to stay away from the
little adult factory.
When I spoke my mind, it felt like a slap in everyone’s faces
because I had always been silent, and a kid this quiet
when speaks his mind, oh, he roars.
I was talked down when I finally did something I enjoyed
and felt accused because I was,
as they said,
breaking out of my shell.
And if that was a good thing
why did everyone make it seem bad?

If I’m getting my wisdom teeth that means
I can go to the movies with my friends, right?
Not that they’re already going out at night,
or whatever. I guess that’s a word I use now—
whatever. Puberty was when I got the most difficult,
and I wasn’t even that bad.

I was born an easy adult
and I can’t even adult right.
I guess that’s because I was never a difficult child.
I don’t know how far I can push myself
before I fall off the end of the world.

in the morning I feel burned out
a tossed match, colored with shame
I count all that was once mine
the shore, the lake, the forest
even the flaws that hit my arms and my legs
they were a blessing and a curse
and I remember when I was alive,
ablaze, catching fire, burning bright,
I felt it all at the same time, and I was
incandescent

refine me
until i’m edges only
and then wear me on a ring

I dance alone
And I sing alone
I’d lose it all
For a broken bone

A broken bone
Or for broken discs
I’d break my bones
With soft whisks

If you could slide your finger
In the waterline of my eye
Like the sea caresses the coast on a bad day
Make sure it is because I am not crying
For I do not cry, ever

I’m a lot of metaphors
I'm the subjective side of them
I'm the illusion and the almost real
I'm the part that itches
I'm halfway through the end
And then I never leave
I make wonders—
I make you wonder
Which part of this metaphor
I am

Laying back in the tall grass
in the place I was born.
The shape my body makes
is a heavy sadness.
I sigh as if it made
the weight leave my body.

The sky is always bluer in the mountains,
that’s something to be learned with age.
To be ten years old and to hear that
childhood is archetypically
the best years of your life.
To be ten years old and to not realize
the freedom there is in that.

As if clouds could hear thoughts,
they cover the sky from time to time
just so I forget about my narcissistic thinking.

I close my eyes.
The grass feels like a sea of threads.
I’m in a constant state of waiting
for the needles to ***** me.
I am certain they will arrive,
but I do not move.
Laying on the ground
will never keep me grounded.

Laying back in the tall grass
I feel smaller.
I have failed, I have thrived.
The answers to my questions hover over this field
but the wind is too quick to pull them away
and I know where they are.
But the hard ground
is starting to feel comfortable now.

My city feels like a prize
That’s how commercials play
They make it sound like paradise
Palm trees, beaches, sunset all day
The bigger the hotel, the higher the price
Doesn’t matter where you lay
You’ll feel like fire within the ice
The people will make you want to stay
But they just want the moving device
It’s money if you couldn’t tell, by the way
But come here, though, take the advice
There’s even a place to pray
And lots where you can sin. Twice.

I return home the same way the waves return to the ocean:
after breaking.

the world can be a small place
when people want to hurt each other
and it can be oceans and oceans
when they want to love each other

Neon signs telling me what to do
Where to go
I didn’t even obey my mother
Left her so
Broken, wishing I’d come back
Told her no
Have to take more of what I lack

I filled a bottle up with my emotions.
It flooded.

the best outfit
I can pull off
is my own skin

When I was a kid
We’d sing nah nah nah
When I was a kid
We’d ignore the law
When I was a kid
We had no plan
When I was a kid
I was a better man

Is it worse
To break a broken heart
Or break one
That hasn’t fallen apart?

“Who am I when I’m alone?”
Hm. I flinched at the question.
I was surprised. Not sure if
surprised at the question,
or at the answer. Probably
at the lack of the answer.
Who am I when I’m alone?
Who am I most of the time?
Am I different? Am I the same?
Who am I, at all?
I realized I took too long to answer.
I guess that answers for me.
Anyway, I still said,
“I’m somewhere between
the sea bottom and the surface.
I’m not something, I’m at something—
here and there,
halfway or beneath,
at some point or not there at all.

I’m a place,
and I am my favorite place.”

beside the river of words the youngsters stare,
a battle of emotion with no due resolution,
as their own bodies hover on the water’s hair
with nothing but themselves to spare the confusion.

opposite the river of words the elder glare—
the crocodiles they see are no illusion.
they know the young see the beasts there,
and mirror themselves in them with no solution.

the young ignore the elders’ bridge in the air.
their biased perspective is nothing but pollution.
the young are dead in the water—drowned in despair for the older would not accept the nearing revolution.