Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and
choose the sign of your day
The day’s divinity
First thing you see.
A vast radiant beach
in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it’s quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the woolly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.
Choose, they croon, the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon,
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

my mind moves faster than my mouth could ever hope to
and i so often find myself in self-inflicted messes,
embarrassed at my painfully apparent lack of finesse
when it comes to crafting syntax in a way that  actually makes sense.
endlessly i stumble, desert-throated, over meager words
that could never accurately convey the hurricanes inside my brain;
no matter the conviction with which i speak them.
the war for stillness rages on in the chaos of my skull,
shaken by tremors of memories like atom bombs.
my mind is screaming but it's all in a language
that i can't understand no matter how hard i try.
reduced to heaving sobs and irrevocable disgust for my inability
to to speak due to the lack of air inside my lungs.
thunder crashes and lightning flashes through my synapses,
looming in the form of opaque storm clouds above my bed.
i am sinking, no, i am absolutely drowning,
but there is no water around to be found for miles -
so i guess that makes these waves my thoughts,
and that must mean i waved goodbye to sanity's shorelines long ago.

- m.f.

Her currency was heartbeats
She only shopped with time.
She paid for things with seconds
As she waited in a line.

You cannot put heartbeats in a money box.
To save for a rainy day.
You either use them or you lose them
Heartbeat’s are made that way

She would spend heartbeats on strangers
As they shared their troubles and woes
Because kind hearts are worth more than riches
And go much further than money goes.

She would spend a heap of heartbeats on moments
Visiting old and precious friends.
Who wondered how she was so happy
With so little money to spend.

But money only buys possessions
While heartbeats buy much more.
They buy  you friends and love and laughter
And a warm  smile at every door.

It a fact you can’t buy heartbeats
When you have used them they are gone
So spend your heartbeats wisely
For one day you will have none.

They said,  "you're not a poet"
"You don't write about love"
"About beauty and harmony"
"You should write with a quality of light"

I replied, "what about the pain"
"The torment within the soul"
"The expression to feel rejected"
"For l see light through darkness"

They said, "You have no meter"
"Your words lack any rhyme"
"You should write with rhythm"
"That is what poetry is about"

I replied, "I am a reflection"
"I can not be anything else"
"My words come from my mind"
"For my poetry is about.......me"

I filled your veins with water and wrote you down on white paper so I didn't have to read you back anymore. Girl's got a suicide pact across the pacific and all I can do is taste the dust.
2. There is a certainty in the way your body moves out time with itself when you think too much.
3. You told me you wanted to be a saint but you were too afraid of the sight of god. When you asked what belief tasted of they told you: fresh buttercream and a wasp's sting. We didn't see you for days.
4. There is a certain tension and it only exists between the bends of girl's legs and the concrete which holds them stronger than any arms could.
5. I want to run every cliche by you and watch you hold hands into the night with it instead of me.
6. Some people can be replicated entirely out of candle wax.
7. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO ******* SELF AWARE ALL THE TIME. You can't even watch yourself.
8. You know you're a halfway house of cells and who are you to say I can't keep up?
9. Say would you tell me if I was just a little off key?
9. Would you tell me the answers to the questions I never asked?
9. Would you play that evening differently if you could turn back the hands that bind you?
10. I burnt you a bridge and sent you the fire like we could ever fill a room with your god. I want to ask him what he thinks of our sins.
11. There is a fluidity in the way your words turn back on themselves.
11. There is a fluidity in the way you turn back on yourself.
11. There is a fluidity in the way people leave doors open for you.
12. I don't think I'd even know what to say to you if I saw you.
13. I only feel comfortable on even numbers.
13. I guess I made myself an odd number.
13. I don't know what we're left with.
13. This is not how we were supposed to end up.
14. I wish you could see the holes you left in the back of my throat.
15. Loving you was as easy as leaving the lights on.
16. And that walk to your parents house was a floodlit symphony like you capitalised every word of every passage I wrote about you with
17 reasons to stay.
And 18 to leave.

The first was the last time I shook like a guard rail and you were a concrete staircase, and I swear, I ain't never seen nothing like you yet.
The second: my fist on your name. But I am here now, like a lit splint bursting into flames, you won't ever find a ghost like me again babe.
The third. And you just want to **** everything. I said you just want to **** everything in your Berlin Wall house.
Your girl's got a bullet hole for a mouth and when it rains, it really does pour round here.

The dirt and the heavens have sat and shown us everything at once, telling about the heart has grown gray hairs on it's brim waiting to be groomed.
I say they are roots, not hairs.
I say all the words anyone can ever spill into you are a rainstorm or a desert and they are going to make you wilt or drown you but either way you are as much of yourself as you can be.
We live in a world that is plagued with shadows that are taken apart by sun beams and sparks of the moon yet they do not know how to stop coming back to our hips like black horses that ride with what we allow Them to ride with.
And they sleep like they know there is a tomorrow, they have courage welded from wind and reverence from the cathedrals of giants that do not know how to be anything less than their very own purpose.
I think of the chapels of light, and the towers of dark, and how there are not even kingdoms filled with both of them, and I am reminded that they love each other too much to be consumed with the presence of one another knowing the world may stop it's dancing.
I hope come to be that way.
That I learn to love someones precense so much I cannot bare to be around it.
Infesting the night or the stars dictating the day as if something that cannot be held is not worth hoping for.
I think of what does not return and what does return, and ask that I have the wisdom to know the difference between what keeps me from seeing, and what has spent it's entire life giving my eyes gifts wrapped in flesh and blood and bone and filled with secrets not made to be kept on shelves or shoulders.
This world is not a child that can lie on your chest in slumber and fall asleep as easy as it wakes up. And I say, there cannot be evil where there is music, and that both what we give, and what we take, are the mosr beautiful thins our bodies can produce and that,

that is what is hidden in between shades of the Earth and her silence.
And from the loss and the blind places of land,
we run.

At night
I lay my head down on my tear stained
Pillows
And I wonder if it will begin again
The crying
The ache
The hunger for your touch on my skin
You fell asleep hours ago
And who knew that love makes you feel things they never showed in the movies
I feel knives taunting my rib cage
When I heave for air
And it was nights like these when you used to hold me
Tell me we were okay
You were honest
Brush my hair and wipe my tears
Tell me
I am a ******* mess
And flash your teeth at me playfully
Say "baby, I love you. You are the only one for me."
Because it was written on the script you had engraved on your palms when you started out in that play
It was the line you used for everyone
I'm trying not to worry about this girl
But all I can taste is ******* acid when you are away
I will never know the truth that lies beyond the lights of your phone
I will never know you
But I am trying still
Why is that?
It's because love makes you sick
Love makes you ******* irrational
And when I fall asleep at midnight
With school in 6 hours
I don't think
"Wow, this must be love"
I think about the dreams that I've been trying to escape from
And lately, no one realizes why I have been so sleep deprived
It's because I cannot escape you
This has taken a downward turn towards words unspoken
These words have been filling my chest cavity
And they are going to burst
If I cannot tell you them

i want you to imagine standing in the middle of an already collapsing house, and having everything suddenly flip upside down; or after years of homelessness, picture yourself being told you had somewhere you could stay for good, only to wake up just before being handed the keys. these are some of dangers of making places out of  people.

1. don't ever turn a human being into a home unless you are prepared to be evicted without warning.
2. when you start to notice their arms taking the shape of a roof over your head, you have two choices: run, or wait for it to cave.
3. if they ask you to stay and burn with them, you have the right to say no.
4. it is not your responsibility to save anyone, and it is not your fault when you can't.
5. salvaging the photos from a house fire will only re-break your heart every time you pull them out to look at them.
6. when the basement floods, hold their hand.
7. if you are not a strong swimmer, remember that the difference between love and codependence is that one of then will drown you.
8. love will never drown you.
9. i knew this from the start but let you hold me beneath the waves in spite of it, just so you could stay afloat. i can't do that anymore.
10. i don't think i'll ever set foot on your hardwood floors again, but i'll pray that someone new moves in soon.

- m.f.

what you need to understand about me is that i am nothing more than misplaced passion and a pair of blindly swinging fists that tremble with unrighteous anger. so allow me to apologize in advance for the fires my subconscious starts. i am a clumsy compilation of ill-suited lines that will never see life in your poetry. at least, not like they used to. you are a book filled with with pictures i never got to take, and every day i am forced to sit idly by while she starts a new roll of film. the missile crisis reincarnate is inside my chest, so forgive me for not being able to control when i shake. forgive me for fumbling with syntax so crassly. i know better than to spew hate and call it poetry. please understand that the endless series of sinking ships in my head makes it difficult to form coherent thought. my thoughts, will **** me, if your absence doesn't first. i think about your hands more than i am proud to admit, and when i picture them reaching for her i feel so sick. i'm sorry. i am so sorry that i haven't yet learned how to moderate the volcano in my throat. i'm so sorry for spitting fire with my eyes closed. forgive me for confusing anger with bravery and burning down too many houses to count. in my misguided thirst for blood i weaponized memories and threw them like daggers in every direction, but the only one being hit is me. i am so tired of bleeding, i am tired of this one-sided war, i am tired of being a war. i tried so hard to be catharsis personified but i have to face the reality that my arms would only hold you like a grave. i loved you like rainwater, and lost you like time. you were never mine. you were never mine. you were never mine. i have to say that to myself every day because it eases the pain of watching you belong to anyone else. but i can't ignore the surplus of "what if's" wreaking havoc in my consciousness. i think that's why i get so angry when i picture you laughing with her instead of me. i am blocking out the memory of the night you told me my laughter could cure your sadness. ******* it. i am trapped in a nightmare where the walls of the home we built are lined with photographs of her. this is why i can't breathe at the thought of her smiling when the flash goes off. they say that nothing good stays; i have never been good at leaving, so i guess that makes sense. you once referred to me as an anxious mess you would spend the rest of your life cleaning up, and i can't get that out of my head. i hope you know, that after everything, i would still sit and collect dust on a shelf in your house forever, if that's what you wanted me to do. but i know it's not, so i'll go back to apologizing. i'm sorry that my rage doesn't have an off switch. i'm sorry for being a literal spitfire. i'm sorry for being an earthquake under her glass slippers. i'm sorry that my mouth is a loaded gun and that i have ****** aim. i swear to god i'm trying not to shoot so often but this is one of the hardest things i have ever done. so until i learn control i will burn in silence with the safety on.  

- m.f.