“I have found what you are like” E.E. Cummings
But you are not like the rain
An Addiction
Oreos
You are to me like a black and white cookie
Rough edges
Filled with the best part
Ugly to the world
Ugly to me
Once.
Three bites to be exact
And that was the end to my drug free life
One month to be precise
And that was the end to my clear head
I have indeed found what you are like
A temptation I struggle to not seek out
An Oreo cookie

They’re ****** into your life for a reason
She said
You have to push them out
She said
You have to learn the lesson
She said
Control
A powerful action exhibited by the smallest of people
Childlike fingers crushing your esophagus as though their life depends on your suffering end
Vomiting words onto your shoes in hopes that some of it made it to your ears
Smothering you with everything you never said and everything you can never say
No, you listen
I’m talking
Look at me he said
But you can’t
Because your eyes are glazed over and the bruises around your sockets are swelling and all you can make out are the shapes of terrors you can never wake up from
But you have to learn the lesson
She said

You realized.
It took a crowd of people
9 months
One couple
But you finally realized
I'm here
You chose
Leave or embrace what we are

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

I'm in love with summer.
Standstill air,
dandelions drifting
the weight of the sky
pressing white heat.
Cold, waves beating the shore,
ceaselessly into the past,  
of when I was drowned
in your dreams.

I'm in love with autumn.
Crisp air,
Nudging leaves off gnarly oaks
and tall, regal cedars.
Lost in the anagram of colors,
I see fire,
      I see blood red.
I see a Faustian bargain
            but we won.

I'm in love with winter.
The biting cold in my fingertips,
the solitude of confinement,
walls of windows show snow
that blankets every edge.
And the birds that have left,
to warmer places.
Opportunity, that's what you said.
And your bags, and you,
were gone in the blowing snow.

I'm in love with the spring.
The clear blue waters,
and ferryboats beating against the current,
the gardens bursting into light,
the promise of growth and
of future
and of hope.
but, I guess, we weren't meant to grow old.
And the sight of spring flowers
and trees with bright green buds,
makes me sick to my stomach.

I am in hate with the spring.

BREAKING NEWS
Lights flash:
a shooting in a church.
A white man who hates the black--
he thinks he can get rid of their "poison",
their culture,
       their beliefs,
             their stories
with bullets and higher-than-mighty flags
stitched to his jacket.

They call it a "tragedy."
          (it's terrorism)

A few words of sympathy,
even Hollywood is tweeting about it,
holy cow!
Isn't it crazy that they care?

Ten seconds later,
we're on to trending, trendy topic number two:
         something about Samsung cellphones.

I think, maybe, these news people
(journalists, they call themselves)
they must be in denial, too.

Cause no way,
no way,
would they brush that under the rug.

The little girl who played dead,
as a man physically lodged his
"beliefs"
into the heads, the hearts, the blood
of her brothers and sisters.

It must be denial.
I pray that they will stop
and see the mural
in Charleston, SC,

and help the paintbrush drop.

Because 400 years of this
supremacist crap
is 400 years too many.

And if a picture is 1,000 words
let's start with one:

equality.