See there's this guy that keeps me up at night.
He sits in the corner of my room-
Not on the floor, not on the ceiling, but just hovering there-
Just above my dresser.
And he just waltzes into my dreams.
And he says to me "Kasey, you know why I'm here."
Sometimes he looks like a woman without a face.
Sometimes like a child.
Sometimes he's a soldier or my father or my mother.
So I wake up. And I think.
About my Grandparents being married for sixty years
About working for that long at loving another person.
I think about who I am and who I want to be.
And where I'm going how I'm getting there.
All the while he's still hovering in the corner of my room
Telling me "Kasey, you know why I'm here."
And I won't leave you alone until you understand.
That to the left there is a path and to the right another
And one above you and one below you.
Through you and throughout you.
And there's no medium for which to make a choice
But your own two hands.
And you'll get up and write at three in the morning
For people who just don't care.
About things they don't care about.
And your migraine will not go away.
You know why I'm here, Kasey.
"You know why I'm here."

Don’t let me wake up please
I don’t want to wake up with thoughts like these:
Love? Is that some sort of cheese?
Don’t let me wake up thinking
I’m worth more dead than alive
I don’t want to wake up by your side
I don’t want to open my eyes
If you aren’t who I dream of at night

Don’t let me wake up with regret
I haven’t felt much regret yet, yet,
I feel like it’s coming faster than an air jet
Filled with important people I have never met
I don’t want to wake up
Wondering when it went wrong
Trying to remember, but forgetting the song
Wondering if I should have known all along

Don’t let me wake up as my mother
Don’t let me wake up as my father
I want to wake up like a lover
With roses by my bed and not a revolver.

You say doctors will
make the best poets.
They will search your emotions
by the skin; cutting open to reveal
and revel
with surgical precison.
They will play with
heavy drugs and blades--
nothing shall hide beneath
the armors of bone and muscle.
They know the anatomy
of the heart too well.
They will find the things
you have hidden in your chest.

I say
doctors will never be poets.
They are too mechanical,
too fast with their edges
and ridges.
They cannot see the pain
as pain but merely as an anomaly.
That sadness is black bile
not melancholia.
They cannot sing to you
but only clammer in medical jargon.

Poets will use their imperfect words,
and perfect rhymes
to find the secrets of your rib cage
with ease.
They will find every flaw
of your broken body
and make it the best story
you've never heard.

Doctors,
they will put love to define as
a momentary rush of adrenaline,
an arrythmia for another human
caused due to an imbalance of the heart rhythm.

Poets will tell you
that love is the first jolt
of life for them.
They will say love is a state of euphoria
that takes those irregular rhythms to perfect symphonies.

Doctors say that
veins carry blood
devout of oxygen.
I say that they carry your broken emotions
to their feelings factory
to mend it within its beautiful catacombs.

All those doctors
will find and fix you
with perfect solutions.

And these poets
will do their best
to be your perfect solution.