When a child is raised in hate,
That’s all it will ever know,
But when raised with hope and love,
Only then will the child grow.

And since I received the former,
Not the latter of the two,
I’ll always be trapped in this dark world,
And I will never understand love like you.

Take my cold heart,
With your soft, tender warm hands.
Lead me somewhere far away,
I can only hear your demands.

Love me fully and completely,
Or it won’t be love to me at all,
Hold my hatred in your hands,
And like sand, away let it fall.

I need love like flowers need sun,
To even feel like I’m alive.
Love or pain is what it takes,
As o’er the cliff you watch me dive.

Hate is all I’ve ever known, boy.
It’s all I’ve ever felt.
But if someone knew just how to love me,
Maybe then my stone heart could melt.

Until I have a love so true,
I will cringe with every cut,
You'd think the pain may bother me,
You may think me just a nut.

But when I find a love,
More than anything I’ve ever known,
Then I’ll leave the world of haters,
And with the lovers, I’ll have grown.

Sometimes I think you're a druggie.
Because when I'm with you
I feel like we are
Redundant noises and images
And snorts of laughter
And we are holding each other tongues.
And I feel like
There are stars in your eyes
that are buzzing further into this dark hole.
In my mind thinking of you in a heavy coat
smoking when you're away.
You'll never know I write in cursive.
Because you want my words
From my lips instead
And you choose to peel them off
by typing letters into your phone
By thinking of what each letter in my name means
And you put the phone in your pocket
And think of the squack of a voice I have
And you picture my legs
thick with an ivory curtain surrounding them.
And the red on my lips speaking
Of the thing I know least of.
And that is love.

A walk through lilting breeze
Down memories of old,
Alone with thoughts of you
In sunset's sinking gold.

The boundary blurred by love
Where flowing hair meets wind.
In every calloused step
Those images rescind.

The echoes of my feet
A heartbeat brings to mind;
The old familiar friend
Now seashells in the tide.

Some call it moving on,
While some in madness hold:
But call it what you will -
The story stays untold.

I find as I get older
I have to censor what I say
I can't say that a happy man
Seems very, very, gay

I never got the memo
When certain words were made taboo
I never got that message
I' missed that one , did you?

My Nan would send my brother
To the shops to get her ****
I know we aren't allowed to say this
I've been told by P.C nags

I remember the old story
Of Black Peter and St. Nick
Now you can't say either one
or you'd be branded quite the *****

There, I used another one
*****, somehow made the list
Has anyone seen the memo
It's the one note that I missed

You must call someone Richard
You cannot call him ****
**** political correctness
Just brought me back to *****

If you sit and watch the telly
you can't put your feet up on a ****
that gets us back to gay again
The PC folks would hit the roof

Don't start me on Brazil nuts
Remember what we all called those ?
If I put that down in writing
I'd be PC'd in the nose

Men and Women are all persons
This PC stuff just makes me sick
But, just look at them both naked
There, I've worked back round to *****

It takes the fun out of saying swear words
You have to censor all the time
There might be a PC zealot
waiting for a language crime

So, in closing let me tell you
And I will do it with some class
They can take their PC memo
And shove it up their....buttocks (I think is the term used nowadays)!

Making love is an art.
Having *** is a *game.

Every person has a puzzle and rarely is there a key.
For each corner we turn around, we find another enemy.

Something's creeping, crawling inside.
Personal wars we make, where the bullets fly.

Killing for a name, for an upgrade, we **** each other.
Only to get *****,
Quietly...

Ducking for cover was never an option when you were raised painfully.
Words of love died why?
You forgot to sing to me.

I'm off to war dad, don't take it personally.
We all have a battle.
We all have temptations to feed...
Some love, while some greed.
Just remember to do it
Quietly.

Slowly destroyed.
Put down.
Stood up.

Every day she tried
To better herself.
But, in the end,
It was easier
To shut out and hide.

She tried to appear bona-fide.
But where her life was going -
She felt it was up to others to decide.

It’s not that she always wanted to be lead.
It’s that, when she really needed it,
No one ever heard what she said.

But when given the chance to freely express
Herself with no limit,
All the judgments she’s ever heard
Seemed to push their way into the spotlight,
Now well-lit.

Crossing paths with others
Who have done great for themselves,
She thinks,
I wonder how it brought them here,
Their trip through hell…

She needs no reminders of where she could be.
A look in the mirror
Is all she needs to see.

Even the physical scars of the past
Are evidence of
Where all these moments,
Called life,
Have taken her;
Right up to the last.

A slight change is never noticed
when the frame of time is small.
As children we grew each day,
only the the annual notch showed how tall.

You may be the one who’s static in traffic
caused by construction—a nuisance it’s true—
but it's  the one now home from abroad who says:
“Everything is so different, this is not what I knew.”

The paradox is queerly commonplace:
This feeling that from day-to-day nothing has changed—
except maybe which day gets crossed out—
yet time spent in nostalgic reflection shows
the sheer metamorphosis that has come about.

We always move forward with goals in our telescopes.
When the glorious day comes in passing, it will end and that’s that.
Like the student, eager to stop school when the flowers first bloom,
will soon see foliage—a punishment that time begat.

They say you never know what you have until it’s gone,
yet few of them pause to watch the world transform.
They tell us to enjoy each day like it’s our last,
yet they curse time spent inside caused by a cleansing storm.

Even I neglected the sun’s sky, who gave way to the moon now born.
Precedence was given to my pen and this foul verse without scorn.
Yet, only the sun’s birth can give rise to this sentiment I mourn.

I was feeling a little lost so I started looking for myself, I checked under all the couch cushions and behind the books high on the shelf. I even checked the laundry and behind the draperies, but I came up empty handed, it seemed it wasn’t meant to be.

I couldn’t be found anywhere, at least anywhere that I could see, but I knew that I would soon find out, I had too eventually. When my persistence paid off, then just maybe, if I kept looking there I would surely be, I had to be around somewhere, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t remember what I had really done with me.

I retraced all my steps so I could try to see, if I could find a clue or catch a glimpse of me. At least a little something, so I could have some peace of mind, but I didn’t give up looking, because I knew that in my mind, I had to pop up somewhere, I would, it was just a matter of time.

I knew it was important too, the me that I had lost, I knew that it was something that to me was beyond cost. So I scoured the whole house, from top to bottom, looking for what was mine, and wouldn’t you know it…of all the places…I was right here the whole time.

it is late
I get up from my computer
walk down the hall
in my underpants
to the bathroom
get three pills
walk back to my bedroom
get my glass
scratch my ***
under my underpants
go downstairs and fill up
the glass with coke zero
go back upstairs
to my room
take the three pills
lean back in my chair
and suddenly realize
it is late