I'm completely intoxicated from you,
drunk off each of your sweet words I swallow
and high off the smell of your cologne
I can never get enough.

Hugs so tight I lose my breath,
kisses so passionate I lose myself,
Embraced in your arms,
I become lost in you.

My love, you have become my ecstasy
My sweet intoxication,
You have everything I've ever wanted or needed
I shall never have enough of this sweet madness.

Standing on the corner stranded,
no inkling on which way to go.
Everyone else is moving in one direction,
but I can't seem to make sense in where they are going.

My map seems to be filled with nonsense,
a seemingly perfected uncertainty of  truth.
I try to make meaning out of what it is trying to tell me,
but my mind's friend -numbness-
has paralyzed me.
I no longer trigger.
Consider me the clock on the wall with no batteries,
useless.

I hesitate, but move forward,
however, through the stumbling and swaying,
is it really forward I am moving?
More like backwards or motionless.
Static in one moment of time.
I stumble, I sway, perhaps I even fall.
It may be that falling is the direction this map leads to.

"Sir, here is three dollars,
May I have a new map please?"
Laughter in my face,
"Ha, If only it were that easy, my child!"

This place smells stale,
actually it smells like horrible.
Who am I trying to kid?
Ding- goes the elevator,
here come more people.
All forced here.
No where to go.
Crowded.
Uncomfortable.
Eerie silence.
Stiff chairs
Ding-goes the elevator,
here comes more people.
Lights flicker,
No air circulation.
Cold cement walls.
Stuck.
Ding-goes the elevator,
here comes more people.
Focus.
Distracted.
Annoyed.
Leaving.
Goodbye library.

The rain kept falling today,
caught in the cruel storm again.
I embrace myself as I step foot outside
the bitter reality bites my face.
Another day of rain,
Another day of disappointment.
“Oh the sun will come out tomorrow”
I can’t even find the melody to that song anymore.
Beginning to forget how the sun feels on my pale freckled skin
and even when the days begin to dry,
no hope is found in the puddles,
only mud and disgust is left behind.
No beauty is bloomed from the flowers,
now beaten to the ground and broken.
The only hope and beauty is in tomorrow
And what it may bring us,
That is—if you continue on for tomorrow.

Silence stretches through the sterile room we sit in
everyone stares at the sandy colored tile below their feet
Salty tears slip past our cheeks and hit that same cold floor.
The exchanges of glances are few, smiles--even fewer.

silence

Not sure what time will bring, but time is it all.
It holds the answers that this room has seemed to captured.
When will this nightmare be over?
What can we do to turn things back around?
and of course the hardest question maybe of them all- Why?
Why him?
Why us?
Why must anyone at all suffer through this?

silence

Time can't seem to go any slower,
the clock on the wall seems stuck.
The walls moving in on us
bringing us closer  to the brink of insanity
When will this nightmare be over?
When can we leave this hellish place for good?

*silence silence silence.........

I want to scream or shout,
anything to help get me out of here.
I can't even seem to leave mentally
a moment never lost in song or dance.

Instead everywhere I look
I find constant reminders
of how I feel.
Books- covered in dust,
longing to be picked up and read.
The old  red bike in the shed,
hoping someone will share a beautiful summer day with it.
The little black dress in the back of my closet,
crying for night filled with oohs and aahs
while making heads turn.

But the books they are on my shelf,
the bike-- in my shed
and the dress in my size.
For I am the only one to blame
for leaving these once so prized possessions behind.
Forgetting them, leaving them in the past.
Although never used now,
they serve as the reminders
I dread to face each day.

I open my eyes each morning
to see the glistening of the sun,
as it hits the dew on the grass
spreading images of glitter across
the ground.

I close my eyes to the harsh words
headlined across my morning paper.
I don't dare reach out on my porch step
in efforts to grab that folded piece of garbage
screaming words of death,  poverty and war.

Instead I open my ears to wind,
the warm breeze that brings to my ears
the sweet music and rejoice sent to me
from the heavens above.

I close my ears to the voice on the t.v.
the cold, cruel voices,
only there to reinforce the
bitterness I find in my coffee.

Instead, I lean over the rose bush
smelling the sweet fragrance that
seeps into veins,
generously filling me with
happiness and life.

You see –we all have a choice.
See, we can all chose to live a life
of joy or a life of pain.
You see, many of us chose to share the sad things in life,
and while there are times when sadness is only right
we cannot allow it to take us over,
like a flood after a long storm.
And even when the biggest flood of them all,
is over and sun has dried up all the rain,
the roses will bloom again-- a little brighter than before,
the birds will sing a little again—a little louder than before
So choose life.
Choose love.