Give me all your pain,
your faults, your anger. I'll keep
them like they're my own

I can tell you about the girl.

Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.

She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.

Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.

One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.

I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.

She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.

After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.

Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.

Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."

I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."

She asked, "We will be okay, right?"

I hope.

clawing between soft sheets I find your large hands
clasping through the gaps to find my softer inner parts

little do you know I am crumbling
though I give you the power to tear
what I forbid myself
to surrender

Create art with my ****** mess.
I know you never will

It is sad that you are gone
but I am waiting,
gluing my self back together,
trying to find the bits and pieces
I've shed in this process
of stabbing and
grabbing and itching newness
of youthful closeness
and the fusion of two.

To write food in the stomach
Of every hungry child.

To spell war as peace,
Metaphorize flowers into the barrel

Of every gun on Earth.
The poet has responsibilities

Beyond those of mothers,
Of kings and presidents.

I refuse to give up hope;  
This could be a poem world.

Come on, write your worst piece
Of literature.

Even misprints may give other
Meanings to a word,

Write me a green sky, blue dirt,
Trees the colour of air.

Sometimes the best poets
Have the least to say,

So keep writing, write until your
Fingers fall asleep.

Write until you havent slept
For weeks in search of that word,

That one right word,
Then rest on a notebook pillow

And dream the world right.
Write the world right.

There is no such thing as
Wasted poetry.