I was asked why I write poetry.
So here are the facts,
and just to recap this sometimes called rap.

This is poetry.
It is in everything we do.
Poetry is your family stress,
your pregnancy test,
and your house cleaning mess;
and poetry is me
because it is in me too.


This is the sense that blind Vince sees in.
It is the movie young Julie wants to be in.
It’s the last minute Jack and Coke for alcoholic Jack
and the last free **** for a broke bloke to smoke.

Poetry is how a grieving widow copes.
Also a good joke told really well
because poetry is a heavenly punch line
and a one-way ticket to find hell.

It is the way the leaves pile up on the ground.
Every intricate intertwining of
never mind me, step on down broken brown.
Poetry is the “how are you this morning”
(a stranger wrote that line)

It is the "how-to-book" to have when times look boring and
“Poetry is the loud fan that sounds out over the snoring”
(an ex-girlfriend wrote that line)

It’s the epitome of a perfect day.
The rock and hard place when things don’t go your way.

It is the time spent learning  miracles at public schools
and I learned that “Poetry is all around. Class... Isn’t that cool?”
(my ex-teacher wrote that line)

But if it is all around then why have I found
the need to constantly write it down?
Why do I find that when times get thick
I find writing a really good poem does the trick?

Who can tell me why it is
when a girl falls for that guy
she fills up her notebook college lined
with a poem of his blue eyes?
“But I have green eyes”(a rejected me wrote that line)

Poetry is the captain’s stormed ocean.
Poetry is the pilot’s warm sky.
Poetry is like trying to throw knives
like words.

We exist where they hit
and we need to quit getting absurd trying to hit things.
Poetry is all about the truth,
getting kissed in ink.

You have to tattoo what the words mean to you.
The only thing I wish to do is find a Sharpie
and sharply write the words I’m sorry
because that’s the only thing I know how to say.

Poetry is spending the last 20 minutes looking at the words
"I love you" written across their ceiling
and not wanting to risk speaking them,
making the roof fall down around you.

Who on Earth needs the bright and yellowed Sun,
when you possess the full filled Moon like mine?
Her bright and whitened rays of light are dun,
cool and pale shining in this night of time.
Those who worship the Sun do so in loss.
Enveloping me in her snowy hues,
my own faithful crescenting albatross,
is beauty’s epitome full and new.
Every man knows the toils of the day,
contrary to my own lunar above.
For in her presence troubles sleep away.
At day I sweat and burn, at night I love.
          Shame, my lovely Dusk is shrouded by Dawn.
          I shall wait for Apollo to be gone.

Frozen in a time before this new one began.
Memories in black and white, don’t ask me why.
I can’t understand.

Glass wall, left. Sun, above. You, right.
Can’t exactly find what time I switched on my life.
Can’t go further, no matter how I seem to fight.
Recently seeing you in nightmares with my greyish sight.
Remnants of a laugh. Awake long into nights.

Oak tree, with rope swing.
Take flight.

Now, I’m 22 reading the Daily Bugle
and I see that you died and I lose control.
Start screaming!
Faded memories becoming the sole proof Life had meaning.
And yea I know that sounds conceded.
But that’s not why I’m without feeling.
Wasn’t expecting life checking in so soon with it’s dealing.


Her smile in the paper made me self-aware again because
the sun was above me and her smile was colorless.
This isn’t supposed to happen to people like me,
my age.
We are supposed to be immortal and have worlds in palms of hands.
But now I’m holding onto an image saying her death wasn’t planned.

Man, of course it wasn’t, no death ever is.
Something we forget about as adults and have no idea about as kids.
We forget to remember important people and opportunities are missed.
Then all of a sudden we stop. Someone else we know is in the obits.