Beautiful one, you are more Beautiful than a Golden Sunrise.
You are more Sweeter than a whole bakery restaurant too.
You are the driving Sun warmth brushing against my face.
You are the fresh Pool of water that feeds the thirst of the thirsty.
You are everything that I always need and want as well.
There is none other that I would choose over you always.
You are the Fresh Fruit that fills my Hunger every time.
You are the sweet sound of a new born first cry too.
You are the touch of the warm breeze against my arm.

Where once my warrior soul reigned
Now I find it sadly lacking
Though it carried twice its weight in pain
Now the art is all that matters
I fall in raging winds
But never find my footing
And if this night is to end
First it must begin.
There is only room for understanding,
So I, tightly tethered to my essence
Find I am calmed
By poetry’s presence
No longer wilting
Words become my water
No longer melting
Nor walking meat to the slaughter
I begin with my father
And end with my daughter
In her eyes infinity
I see hope for eternity
But she is just a seedling
Formless fiction of my mind
Changing with my seasons
In angles I still hope to find
Allows these withered roots to grow again
******* greedily at the soil.
Hope helps me thrive, my friend
And gives me reason to toil

-Joshua Amos Graff 2011

To be in the age where dreams began
Smoke and mirrors, silver plates
Rotating presses
Books to be made
Page begat stage
Films to watch music to hear
Radio Waves
I am afraid
We have lost those days
Sacrificed our sense of wonder my dear
The awe of hope
The love we dared
If I could I would revisit there
Bringing back that childlike smile
I’ll take you there in a poem
Seeing our inner children
So once again we can know them

Anguish fills the heart and love is broken into pieces. The eyes glaze over and the tears flow freely. The ground is covered with the salty remnants of a broken heart as it grieves for the love that has been ripped away. Not all things are of human doing, sometimes the fates are cruel. In the instances when love is suddenly lost, the bereaved can only mourn what might have been and let tears fall until they become upon the ground like the rain of a cold and lonely day.

It's been over a year since my dad put a gun to his head and sprayed his brains all over the house that I grew up in.

I wasn't there when it happened, but just knowing that it happened that way haunts me constantly. My father had survived cancer, and fought with that for most of my life, so I thought he could survive anything. I never knew how sad he was, and now that I have been slapped in the face with it, I can't shake this terrible feeling. I feel like I wasn't a good enough daughter to him. Like i failed him because i thought he was stronger than he was. Like most little girls, I grew up idolizing my dad. Thinking of him as a super hero. A rock. An unstoppable force who was going to be by my side and in my life forever. But that was not the case. He left me in a blood-stained memory, and all I can do is think about him. Everything comes back to that phone call I got saying he was gone.

There are so many days where I feel all I can do is cry and think about every moment I ever spent with him. Some days I'm just bitter and ******* about everything and I want to punch everyone in the face who's having a better time than I am. I think about his death constantly. I dream about it. And I have become so dependent on substances to fade away the reality of everything, when I try not to drink or smoke, I end up feeling everything 100 times stronger. I just want to be numb. I want to stop feeling all of this. I feel too much at once, and I just hate how much this event has taken over my life. I loved my dad more than anything. He was always the one I could talk to when things weren't going well, or the first person I'd want to call when everything was going great! I have no one now, or at least it feels that way. I am not the same person I was before his suicide, and the people who love me might not love this new me. They might only love the old me, and she's never coming back.

it was two weeks before my 25th birthday when it happened. Everything near his death date is tainted. My birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I don't want any of it anymore, because it will never be the same.

All I ever wanted was for my father to see me succeed. And I'll never get that chance. He died knowing I was a loser. He died knowing I hadn't become anyone yet. That I hadn't done anything with my life. Well, I'm doing something now. At least, I'm trying. I'm trying to get my art out there. I'm trying to get my life in order. I've quit smoking for over 5 months now (and I want to break down every minute of every day and smoke, but I'm staying strong). He'll never get to see the woman I'm becoming. It tears me up inside when I realize everything he's missing. And then I just start to get angry, because there are so many times when I've wanted to give up on everything. But I haven't. I'm still here. I'm still here fighting with my own pain, and now on top of it, I'm fighting with his, too. It's so much weight for one set of shoulders to carry, but I'm doing my damnedest.