I've learned to let people go.
Because no one stays
and in the end everyone fades
you have to learn to let go.
And accept.
So I let them drift
out of my life
and I try not to scream
because I've built concrete walls
around myself
but I'm still wounded
from the times they damaged
my memories and threw them
into abyss of bitter agony.
But I'm an hourglass
with no sand and
my time is standing still
and I can't breathe
because my lungs
don't carry wind anymore.
And I've wasted too many pages,
too many words,
too many metaphors
to explain this emotion
It's so palpable that I feel it  
throbbing in my severed veins.
But I can't I can't I can't
fill this hollow inside me
and I've learned to breathe
with drowning lungs.
I've learned to be dead
with a beating heart.

I'm floating in amnesia
I can't remember
the last time I took a breath.
I'm emptying my eyes
through these tears,
until they're hollow —
so hollow that you wouldn't know
that vacancy could ever feel so full;
so full of emptiness.
This ever growing mayhem
cannot be contained
within my brittle body.
My scars might break open
the next moment.
I'm not very sure if I know
where they came from.
I know I'm afraid —
I'm so afraid of letting them see
the void I carry within.
I can't let them see
that my lungs
are pale sheets of broken muscle,
my heart is a shattered mirror,
scattered and buried
in the seemingly bottomless black
of my broken body.
Sometimes I remember my memories,
the screams and the nightmares and —
you.
I see you through veiled fences,
laughing with crinkled eyes
shining in a new shade of blue;
glowing with another
bittersweet betrayal leaking out
in your unshed tears.
You hold my hand
when I'm about to fall into chasm,
your precarious grip faltering,
your careless eyes vivid
and abyss-deep.
And you remember to let go.
I remember you let go,
and turned away
and I know your strength
because you never looked back.
I know the skyless ocean
is your home because I've bee there,
floating in something
I can't quiet remember anymore.
But you tell me it's amnesia
and I can't remember your name,
I can't remember
to remember something
— someone who can have
the precise blue of your old old
old eyes,
almost as though
they're too young
but I can't remember the difference
between old and young
but you seem so young and so old and —
so beautifully, delicately human.
I can't remember you letting go,
it's as though I'm insane and I am.
I am insane but why do you tell me I'm not?
My delusions are wilder,
they make me see me if you let go.
But please, please don't let go.
I'm not weak and pathetic
and I promise to forget you
(because it's the only thing I'm good at)
but will you never go?

This is where I came from,
and the place to which I shall come back at the end.
I have been away many times,
and between the setting out and the returning
there are towns, villages that are home to others,
rivers and mountains that are familiar to them,
but all are strange to me.
The people that I meet, good people for the most part,
even those with whom I travel some of my journey,
are not my people, and I am not sad
to part from them.
So I travel on, and each time
my journey brings me to the same place,
and I am happy to know it again.
Sometimes, alone and far away,
I see men and women happy to be where they are,
and notions may come to me in the night
that I too could be happy somewhere else,
that another place could be home.
But with the sunrise, as the mists disappear,
I see those phantoms for what they are,
the ramblings of a lonely soul, fantasies,
imaginations of what might have been.

I have been aware of your presence close by me in a crowd
I have seen your smile
I have felt the soft touch of your hair on my cheek
        I have known what it is to be enchanted

I have felt the pressure of your hand replying to mine
I have felt your body melt when I surrounded you with my arms
I have felt your lips brush against mine like leaves in the wind
        I have known wishes come true

I have heard your voice tell what your words could not say
I have tasted the longing in your heart
I have seen the tears behind your eyes
        I have known tenderness I have not had to earn.

If you read somebody’s poem and it makes you want to say,
“I think this piece is wonderful; it really made my day,”
just go ahead and say it – feedback like this is good,
but saying why you like it will please them (well, it should).

If someone that you don’t know says, “Please comment on my writing,”
and you look at it, and find it … let’s say, rather unexciting,
then don’t forget – be tactful, find something good to say
before you start on finding fault – don’t ruin someone’s day.

And if you think it’s terrible, be careful how you speak.
Some people write as therapy; their life may be quite bleak.
Don’t be too harshly critical and leave them feeling worse,
but simply go to look elsewhere, and just ignore their verse.

Some poems, though, may leave you with a puzzle or a question,
or even make you want to give some tentative suggestion.
There’s nothing wrong with doing this – just get it off your chest,
but don’t think your ideas are necessarily the best.

With members, though, who claim they are God’s gift to Poesy,
(if there’s nothing to commend them as far as you can see)
you can state your own opinion – of course you have the right –
but don’t forget the golden rule: *be honest but polite.

Nobody can understand how another person's mind works.
Nobody can travel across time.
Nobody can be in two places at once.

So if I were Nobody, I could read your mind.
If I were Nobody, I could time-travel to where you are.
If I were Nobody, I could be with you and still be where I am.

But is that the way it works?
Sadly, no.
It is all a fantasy,
just playing with words,
totally impossible.

In any case, I don't want to be Nobody.
I want to be Somebody,
to be a part of your life.
But I can do nothing,
except give you my love,

and hope you return it.

These children
round-eyed
absorbing what the world offers them
or silently wandering in their own
imagination
must lose their innocence and grow
older but not necessarily wiser.