Lord grant me the audacity.

To again be a 23 year old marshmallow
Partying every night at the campfire with a bunch of skewers.

The audacity
To feel outstanding
With an underdeveloped frontal lobe
Floating around in cherry bombs and Stroh’s

To survive being invincible and brave and strong enough to make bold and terrible decisions
And blessedly wake to another sunrise

Never grateful to be alive.
******* *****.
How does anyone survive their early 20s.

Sheer audacity.

I’m an imposter.

I’m an imposter and no one can know.

I may end up on the street in rags that once were my clothes.

Money isn’t everything,
But being poor blows

And I’m facing the clock.

What then felt like freedom now feels like a box;

Like a long leash
in a big yard
Where the gate’s always locked.

Look around and tell me, who’s happy?
Isn’t happiness the goal above all?
Or rather to avoid feeling sorry
For ******* away the springtime in spite of the fall?

I’ve been thinking a lot
Almost obsessively
About identity, how’s its tied to self worth
I self identify as an artist
It’s what I’ve always wanted,
A gift bestowed at birth

The very word was full of glamour and mystery
I couldnt possibly be chosen as a vessel
When in reality, it changes with each donning,
morphing size and shape to fit the figure of the dresser

It’s always basements
Or attics
Whichever puts the most air
Between the dreamer and the sleeper
Always utility space

Accommodate

Moving so slowly
Eventually the music will absorb
The slow tide low tide rhythms of the night time

The negative of the blueprint is the true intention of the dreamer
Living in a palace built by the sleeper

This morning
I woke up late like always and there was almost no time To
Comfort your crying
I thought it was a nice weekend and I wasn’t hungover
So I made you breakfast
Of the breakfast you made me when we were feeling so good
Potatoes and cinnamon rolls
You said the alcohol sugar kept you up all night
Hands in your hair.

It’s a poor paraphrase of I think Maya Angelou
that when people show you themselves, you should believe them the first time.
What if all you know, all they show,
Is what they’re not?

Tomorrow morning if you’re crying
It’ll be the same thing
I’ll wake up late
As I wait for you at 2am to join me in our bed
After coming home to an empty bottle and you
Feeling better

“I think there’s something wrong with you and that’s okay,” she sings with all her heart
and strums the guitar with my pick.
I’m in charge of the chords,
holding the guitar so
she can reach it where she sits.
We dream it up together, but
I phone it in
I admit.

A, D, E - 1, 4, 5 -
arbitrarily chose.
She keeps it alive with her prose
Just 5 years old
A poet with her eyes closed.

You can be anything you want to be, and that’s okay as long as you’re happy.

Like she knows
The greatest longings of the whole of humanity,

Like she’s peered into the depths of the vast ocean of broken hearts,
And know this is the best place to start…

Like it’s easy.

“It’s okay”, she sings with closed eyes,
and strums the guitar in musical bliss.

And it is. For that moment. For a heartbeat.

It is.