time is going kind of slow today
like it’s waiting for us to catch up to it
and i guess that’s better than how it used to be,
when time was running out and away from us
you checked the time every five seconds,
you're afraid of showing up late to your own life,
and i tipped over hourglasses just to watch them run out,
just to feel like i was in control of something
and i'm always told
that time won’t wait for me
but if time is just something we created,
if it’s just a concept, then i’ve been thinking
that maybe it doesn’t have to scare the **** out of me
maybe i don't have be counting my hours
like they're finite
because i’ve spent a lot of my life afraid of time,
afraid of it running out, afraid of there not being enough of it
i'm stuck in my head like a shut-in,
never got out because i forgot to let anybody in
and i don’t write poems for people, just figments
and it’s not lonely inside my head, it’s just crowded
you just told me to stop thinking so hard,
it’s only monday and it’s too early in the week for me
to be so far down the rabbit hole like that
and i guess i stopped counting hours for a while there,
just let them roll by and drag me under like the tide
and when i looked back i’d lost a year of my life
or something poetic like that, something pathetic like that
and i guess i stopped writing for a while there,
pretty words with no substance
didn’t do me **** when i was ten feet under
and still searching for your heartbeat
when notebooks that were full of you were empty
and you and me, we’re just the ones who didn’t make it
and you and me, we’re just the kids who couldn’t fake it
yeah, we could’ve been a song but then you left
without a note
and i don’t know what went wrong
and i don’t know what went wrong
and i don’t know what-
and i don't know-
and i don't-
but i guess i do
obsessive, i go searching for people in snippets
to make them whole
so maybe i should have expected
that when i held too tightly,
clutched my curses close like they were gifts,
it was all going to shatter
in my hands
i missed you when i didn’t know how to

she told me my Seizures were INCONVENIENT for HER
That they were UNIMPORTANT
That they should stop

And I wished I had the guts to say

I  agree
They ****
But they are not Unimportant
They are major
They are painful
and so are you
You dont care
You have no regard for human life
You dont matter to me
I wish......

I wish you respected me
That you understood
But you dont
And that is not my job to teach you
It is your job to teach me

I am not unimportant
I am amazing

if you listen to album enough on repeat,
you can almost hear in the intro to the next song
in the last notes of the one still playing.
if you talk long enough, i can almost hear how the disjointed points
you’re making flow together in the same way
with their stitches still showing,
you were never much good at sewing.
you’ve got a mouth like a rock ballad, sweet in your bitterness.
crooked chords that still sound good with the way you smile.
you’re a record-breaker and i’d never skip a single song.
i’ve a got a list tucked in your pocket of songs that make me cry,
you are at the bottom of my list and the top of my lungs
you were like good music;
your notes didn’t always sound right
but you always made me feel something.
a number two pencil drumming,
tapping out at the opening to some love song on your desk
like the steady beep of a heart monitor,
proving that you’re alive with every hit you make.
you never stop moving.
once you told me that you kind of think
if you sit still too long you’ll never manage to get up again
like an old, out-of-date computer
that might never turn back on if you switch it off.
an object in motion tends to stay in motion
and an object at rest tends to stay in rest,
and sometimes if you get into to bed you never get back out.
procrastinate your way out of your problems
and into to bigger ones.
sometimes to get your life together, you’ve got to take it apart.
a butcher with a butter knife, a knight with a wooden sword.
i’m scared of taking apart things i don’t know how to put back together,
and i’m **** at reading instructions.
because i guess sometimes when i write you poems
they're more about me than they're about you.
i don’t have cold feet, just cold toes, and sometimes i think
if i paint my toenails ruby red then my feet might magically take me home
to the house i never wanted to be in when actually i lived there.
life’s funny like that.
you never want what you have until it’s framed in your rearview mirror.
so i snuck out my bedroom window and i fell through the roof,
and when peter pan told me to fly, i just fell.
the sky was too polluted to find the second star to the right.
i guess i just didn’t believe hard enough.
and if believers never die then maybe cynics never live.
it makes sense i guess,
you were born out of a coffin, you were born in an abortion clinic.
even you can see the irony,
but i think you just were too stubborn not to exist.
you were a mess way before you ever learned how to clean yourself up.
birthmarks on your ribcage, consolidated rage
i memorized every piece of that you let me.
you told me that you’re not a shield, you’re just a bullet.
you’ve been a long-standing fistfight with meaning
ever since you were old enough to throw a right hook
and get your tongue tangled up in the chorus.
past your prime and still throwing punches,
i guess i respect the tenacity and pity the lack of self-awareness
at the same time.
you never knew when to bow out of the ring.
you never knew when to give up.
you never knew which fights were losing ones.
and you say “i’m no good” and it just makes me wanna get to closer
to find out for myself
and you say “leave while you still can” and it just makes me wanna stay
to prove you wrong.
guess i’m a glutton for punishment, i’m misery’s permanent tenant.
the only one dumb enough to leave behind roots in the riverbed
and expect them not to get washed away.
now you’re always on my mind,
i keep seeing cars like yours drive past my window.
you were lanky and you hated ******* that word when i said it,
laughing into your mouth
but you were all limbs, and now i’m missing you like one.
i go searching for addresses to buildings
i know that are probably still abandoned just see
if any part of you still lives there.
the neighbors tell me it’s haunted,
little kids cross on the other side of the street to avoid the chill.
but i’m stubborn, and i’m not afraid of the ghosts.
a foreclosure sign is still in an overgrown front yard.
a mailbox with the flag still up.
furniture all covered up in blank sheets like the paper.
it was all over before it started, you moved out before
you even unpacked all of your boxes.
i think you left some behind.

if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.

my mother is a journalist
and my father is out of work
she’s spinning stories
and he’s just staring out the window
you are recording my mistakes
and i am selling yours onstage.
so i’ll give myself to strangers,
and flinch away when you touch me
it’s always too much and not enough.
i’ll plaster my heart all over the world,
and refuse to read you anything.
i write too much and i don’t speak enough,
my entire bibliography a tour de force of silence
and the things i wish i’d said.
you could cut out my tongue and
not notice the difference.
sewn shut lips with a poem slipping out,
i'm too scared to read it out aloud.
but i’ve been learning that being scared
just means that you give a ****.
words have always been easy,
saying them is so much harder.
and i’m not looking for anybody to color me in
but i’ll keep writing you poems until you feel something.
i love like somebody’s always
looking over my shoulder
and i know, i know
that’s no way to live.
how should i expect to bare my soul
if i’m still scared of it,
don’t i know that half-truths will
never compare to it?
cause and effect, expose and protect
i’ve got a notebooks full of ****
i wish i was brave enough to say to you.
but i'm tongued tied;
half of me is still in my head,
and the other half is stuck in my heart
and i’m trying not fall apart,
i’m trying to keep my ******* head
separated from my ******* heart.
i’m trying, i am, but i think there will always
be part of me that sees you
and memorizes everything new like a line in a poem.
it’s a song without a chorus
it’s an anthem without a single verse
we are actors with no lines to rehearse
we are missing everything we were supposed to find.
but if i tried to tell you this
i’d just stutter my way through
and all the sentiment would get lost in the  
“um, but, uh, like, i, er”
on its way to you,
my nervous system’s got anxiety
and i want to be seen but not scrutinized.
i am in the room full of my mistakes
and they are telling me ghost stories about you.
i’m stuck so deep inside my own head
i can’t find my way out,
i’m just hiding out in the ruins of my own life.
my mouth’s not good at small talk
when gravity’s holding me down,
these words are loaded but the gun is empty.
and i remember the way
you used to talk about your dreams
like you’d forgotten them, tongue heavy
with nostalgia as you told me
about all these bright-eyed ideas
that you now called delusions of grandeur
with a shake of your head and a grim set in your mouth.
and i remember how you looked at me;
i don’t want to be just another thing you regret.
and i’m tired of being less afraid
to shed my skin onstage than in front of you,
i’m tired of choking all the things i’ve never said.
a penny for your thoughts and
a dollar for your heart
ask me what i’m thinking,
i swear i won’t flinch.

i have had people say to me,
i don’t want to die,
i’m just not sure how interested
i am in being alive.
i have had people say to me,
i don’t want to die,
i just want to sleep and sleep
and never wake up.
i have had people say to to me,
i don’t want to die,
i just want to press pause.
i have held a lot of shaking hands,
begging them to drop
their knives and trying to
hold their wrists.
i have said the same things.
so i’m not saying
that i’m always better
and i don’t if you’d still call me
a good person
if you could see behind my eyelids
because sometimes i am terrified of
the demons lurking
in the corners of my own mind,
but then, if you got to see people inside out
with all the ugly and unseen
and we-don’t-talk-about-it
then maybe nobody would dare to
call each other good people.
and sometimes i don’t want to keep going;
there are days when we all feel
like the universe is pressing down
on top of our shoulders,
crushing our lungs.
but gravity's just doing its best, and so am i.
and even though sometimes it feels like
i’ve running on empty for the last thousand miles,
i’m fine, really, i’m fine.
most days i wake up
and i’m happy, most days i wake up
and i am not thinking about unzipping my veins.
i am thinking about
all the songs i haven’t heard yet,
all loves i haven’t loved yet,
all the poems i haven’t written yet,
and *******, i want to be alive so much
more than i ever wanted to die.
i swear, there is universe is out there waiting for you
if you’re willing to go out and find it.
the world won't wait for you
but it's always going to be there.
and i swear the darkness isn’t
too distracting,
i swear i can still see clearly.
happiness isn’t a destination
or a journey,
it’s a fistfight with sadness
and i want to keep getting back
in that ring even if i keep getting the ****
knocked out of me every single time.
getting better is uphill battle,
but at the top there is peace.
at the top there is reason.
at the top there just might be
what you’re looking for.
and maybe it’s stupid
but i believe it’s not all hurricanes,
and i believe it does get better.
i believe that twenty years from now
i will wake up and look at my beating heart
and be thankful i didn’t **** myself.
and i believe that you will be too.
i really do.  
and i’m not saying that there won’t be days
when getting out of bed feels like
scaling the grand canyon
and even tying your shoes feels impossible.  
it isn’t going to be an epiphany,
the universe shaking your shoulders
in its steady hands and telling you to
cheer the **** up, kid.
because sometimes the universe’s hands
are shaking just as bad as yours,
sometimes there is no reason for it.
it will be more like a gradual realization
that world can be ugly and cruel and brutal,
but that doesn’t mean that
there aren’t things out there
worth living for.
it’s not always easy to find
any ******* sunshine bright enough,
and sometimes i am so scared
i might die before
i find anything worth living for,
and i don’t always have a good enough
reason to get out of bed
in the morning, but i promise
that i’m looking for a better one.
i can’t give you a reason
but i hope you can learn to look, too.
i hope you can learn to look at the sunset
and see all the colors in the horizon,
a sky painted with temptation,
and not just see another day ending.
there’s a difference between
living and being alive,
and i hope you
stick around long enough
to get to know that
difference.

the first time i went to a real concert
i thought my heart was so full it was going
explode all over the speakers.
it was a ******* patronus moment,
you know the kind of **** that’s gonna drive away
all my demons like thieves in the night on buses out of town
when i think about them now.
and you know how hard it is to find somewhere
where the people don't make fun of you
for singing the wrong words?
because listening to the same music is sort of like
instant camaraderie, all of us singing off-key
to the same beat,
even the jaded twenty somethings
who complain about how all the music theses days
just has less words and more synth.
we’re all hearts without ribcages tonight,
and i didn’t care what they said because
i swear i didn’t even feel the broken bottles
under my shoes when i was walking home after that show,
i was so far on cloud nine.
it was like the best kind of high
only i was sober as **** and i didn't need to
take anything i was offered
because it felt like i already had it all.
and i knew what to do with my pain now:
take it and dress it up in it’s friday night best,
make it into something everyone will know the words to
and suddenly it’s a lot harder to hurt you
when it’s not still rattling around in your chest
like parasites disguised as butterflies.
and maybe i’m not punk rock
enough to rock a mohawk,
because to be honest the only band
i’ve ever been in is the marching band,
but i still got **** to say even if it doesn’t have a chorus
and my pen’s bleeding ink all over my kitchen sink,
because i’m not afraid of myself anymore
and i’m not afraid of being alone anymore.
and i never had a punk rock john
or any type of pete wentz guru in my life
patching up my knuckles,
just the music
and it was enough.
so i think i’d rather watch people cough up
their hearts onstage
and come home smelling like *** i didn’t smoke,
X’s still on my hands,
than cough up mine in the bathroom,
in my bedroom, all alone like i used to.
just because i’m not afraid of being alone anymore
doesn’t mean i really want to be
and kids like me we want immortality so bad,
why else would we write?
why else would we go to concerts,
spend all our money on experiences?
so maybe that’s why
i’m spending all my money on concerts tickets
because i know we either grow up to be rockstars
or parents sending our kids to their shows.
there isn't much in between.
and i want to scream myself hoarse
before i run out of breath.
because tonight we’re all just kids at a concert,
pressed in on all sides and dancing even though
no one has enough room.
we’re all just singing about the same things tonight.
because life is a lot like crowd-diving,
it’s scary and i’m not sure i’m cool enough for it
and you can’t be sure anybody’s going to catch you.
because when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
getting the hell out of their veins at one time or another.
when you’re fifteen,
i think everybody thinks about
disappearing at one time of another.
and i think inside we’re all kind of still fifteen sometimes,
whether we’re twenty-one or forty-five.
no matter who you are, sometimes you wake up
and you’d give anything to be somebody else.
and sometimes we’re all kids about to get trampled in the mosh pit,
but you know the rules:
when you fall down
somebody’s gonna pick you back up
if you don’t get back on your feet yourself,
i promise.

my church doesn’t take attendance.
my church just wants to know what color you see the world in.
my church won’t fight your battles for you
but it’ll patch up your knuckles, it’ll cheer you on
from the empty bleachers.
my church is full of repentant pickpockets
and former ****-ups and kids with crooked teeth.
my church coughs up the word religion,
my church doesn’t believe in anything bigger
than its own two hands.
my church has never needed to.  
my church ain’t trying to fix you but
it hands out bandaids and lollipops for free.
my church doesn’t ask questions, it just holds hands.    
my church doesn’t exist until it’s 4 AM and you’re all alone,
coming out of your skin.
my church doesn’t believe in sinners or saints, just people.
my church doesn’t focus on the after-life, just the one we’re in.
my church doesn’t have pews,
my church has hiking boots and ***** feet.
my church doesn’t want your worship, just your love.
my church dances barefoot.
my church writes songs about you.
my church is open 24 hours but it ain’t a liquor store.
my church is the radio, my church is every song you’ve yet to know.
my church listens to heavy metal and bubblegum pop
and always sings the wrong words.
my church is anxious, my church is tapping toes,
my church hates public speaking but loves to be heard.
my church is the first day of spring after a winter so long that
you didn’t think you’d find your way out of it.
my church is crying on your best friend’s shoulder.
my church is reruns of the shows you grew up on.
my church is your mother kissing you on your forehead.
my church is dr. seuss is snuggling up
between shakespeare and j.k. rowling all on your bookshelf.
my church is poetry, my church is finger paints.
my church is i’m sorry and my church is i forgive you.
my church is in love with you.
it always has been.
my church can't jump high enough for a leap of faith.
my church is the last kid picked in gym class,
my church breeds underdogs like they're laboradoodle mixes.
my church has overgrown front lawn full of dandelions.
my church has neighbors who talk **** on it.
my church doesn’t always finish its homework on time
but it finishes every story they’ve start telling.
my church doesn’t give a **** about your GPA,
but my church wants you to learn everything you can.
my church wants you to always ask why.
my church is late with the rent check this month
because it bought tickets to a show,
my church regrets absolutely nothing.
my church is still figuring it out, too.
my church is falling apart,
and sometimes the congregation watches
and sometimes they pick up the pieces, keeps ‘em in their pockets.  
my church is home to anyone would believes in
friday night and sunday morning with the same intensity,
my church has its doors open to
atheists and holy men and godly women and those who just don’t know.
my church is home to the non-believers,
my church doesn’t like to tell them they’re wrong.
my church calls them baby
and says that we don’t believe in much here either.
my church doesn’t care who the *******’ve been praying to,
my church doesn’t care if you never have.
my church is honest, my church is choking.
my church is broken, but it
believes in you.

like everything else,
you never see the collision
until you’re already crashing;
all the coins in your cup holders raining down
to be suspended like copper stars,
our hair floating around us like we’re underwater;
we are drowning in mid-air, we are just a car upside down,
headlong towards the water
rushing to a date with destiny we had wanted to cancel.
we are just an airplane shot out of the sunset,
blazing down like a comet.
and if you have only seconds left,  
have you lived a life you’re proud of?
would you change your regrets?
who are you thinking of as it all goes dark?  
who would you call to tell that you love them
two minutes from the carcass of a plane crash?
why don’t you call them now?
but see the thing is, most people don’t start living
until they’re afraid of dying.
we are creatures of comfort and comfort is in habit,
and until the car crashes
until the plane falls from the sky
until the bank is held up
until death’s staring us down,
just trying to see who blinks first,
most of us aren’t going change anything.  
we all know that the sun is going to expand
and swallow us whole,
but we won’t care until it’s singeing our eyebrows.
we like to talk about death
as if it’s not inevitable,
and we like to ignore the last page
until we’re on it.    
we are all the in between, we are all in transit,
we’re all nomads and lonely hearts and wanderers.
we’re all bandits, we’re all thieves in the night
illuminated by our emergency flashlights.
we’re all stars destined to be either
black holes or supernovas, imploding or exploding.
so maybe we’re all destined for destruction,
but i don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
not to me
because it’s all about the drive not the destination,
it’s all about the story not the ending.
and i don’t know if i believe in any god,
if i think he’d be the clockmaker or the caretaker,
and i don’t know if destiny damns us
or if we ***** our own selves over.
perhaps life, perhaps the end is predetermined
and we’re all stuck in our circuits,
we’re all mice in our own mazes.
but there’s something to be said for the middle, isn’t there?
the story doesn’t stop meaning anything
just because you know the ending.
and perhaps each of us is the director of our own existence,
and perhaps we are the chorus member of somebody else’s
and perhaps we’re just caught up in the details of it all.
what i’m trying say is,
we’re all a little ******* up
and we’re all a little messier than we let on
and we’re all just trying to figure it out.
because i have at least two existential crises a weekend,
i’m just trying to beat the world to the punch
i’m just trying to unravel the universe
before it unravels me.
i’m trying to unravel the universe with
my tongue like a cherry stem.
the hand we are dealt is not a choice
but the way we play it is
and i don’t know much about fate
but if you’d tell me, i’d being willing to listen.
i think too much about the past,  
and i can’t tell you about the future,
but on the off chance the fault is in ourselves
and not our stars, i just want you to know i love you.
if i don’t say it i’ll have no one
to blame but myself.

question is and always will be:
am i dead when my heart stops beating
or am i dead when everybody forgets about me?
do i matter because people tell me i do,
or do i matter because i say i do?
i think therefore i am, i over-think therefore i wish i wasn’t.
because existence is a tricky thing;
you don’t want to die but you’re too scared live.
and maybe it’s futile, and maybe it’s pointless
maybe i am struggling with
my gifts and curses, poems and verses,
looking for a meaning that just isn’t there.
and maybe it’s ironic,
how we waste our lives wanting to die
but just because you have
doesn’t mean you don’t ache for what you haven’t
and sometimes being grateful is hard
when you’re supposed to
and you know, this world, it’s rough all over
and everybody gets cut up at little.
nobody wants to grow old but nobody wants to die young.
i want to make a mark, but i know it’ll be forgotten.
and i don’t want my marks to be blemishes
and i don’t want my marks to be scars
and i don’t want my marks to be footprints on the beach
and maybe there’s no meaning,
and maybe there doesn’t need to be.
all i know is that most people don’t think that
the vastness of the universe is something
to tell bedtime stories to,
but i’d tuck myself in with the stars even after
they reminded me again how small i am in comparison.
so either i’m too stubborn or too smart to talk to god,
paint me anyway it fits
paint me any way the lighting hits
i am open for interpretation.
because you’re semi sweet and i’m completely bitter
you’ve got an altar i don’t know how to worship,
you’ve got faith in all kinds of things.
and i’m cynical, i’m altered,  
i’m ****** up in the best and worst ways.
i write poems just to keep my hands busy,
i write poems just to keep myself from writing eulogies.
and i know, what a ******’ contradiction
the dreamer who doesn’t believe in anything.
i am the only one inside my head,
so would it be classified as a tragedy
if my dreams bled out with me?
nobody knows me like i know myself
and if i die then a library full of words crammed
inside dies with me, and dying young
is only a shame if you had something to live for.
maybe i am the end and beginning of my own legacy.
i don’t know about our ghosts and past lives
lurking behind our eyes, i don’t know
if you’ve got somebody else’s smirk on your lips
or if i’m loving you out of a second-hand heart.
but i think, but i like to think
that while my bones may be borrowed,
matter not destroyed or created
just redecorated, that my soul’s not recycled.
but i’m not looking for a dictionary definition
sometimes we’ve got to stop and cut the ignition
before we crash like waves,
i’d rather going somewhere slow than going nowhere fast.
and it’s not like i’m a visionary,
it’s not like i’m even really much of a poet;
i’m just a ******* kid with a thesaurus
and too **** much to say.
and i’m trying to tell you a lot of things,
but i don’t know how to phrase anything.
so maybe we’re old souls
and maybe we’re brand new,
maybe i’m borrowed and maybe you’re blue.
and maybe it’s all random and maybe it’s all planned out,
and maybe fate is for suckers
and dreamers drowning naïvety
and maybe fate is all we have.
maybe we’re looking at the world through
totally different lenses
but maybe somehow we’re seeing
the same things.