O' bitter timber
Set there--his limber
And blighted eyes.
Thou old timer
Belched in ember,
Set to keep my eyes.
Midst shallow December
And falling November
come forth your rise
of notorious power
In the last man's hour
his splinters shall rise

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

I wanna be the hero, I want to be the good little boy, but all this life has me down
and I can’t live in this little town, where everybody frowns, and people walk around with crowns
Looking down because you act a little different and weep yourself to sleep.
It may not be just this town the destroys little boys dreams,
But I’m not going to stick around to watch my home split apart at the seams

My first memory I told my momma that I was the ugly duckling from her story,
she whispered “goodnight son”, and rolled her head back chuckling
She must have known for a long time that it was truth
But she insisted on tucking me in so I showed her my pearly white tooth
Because I thought she made the world all better
But when she kissed my head she told me a lie, and It was all to stop the bed wetter.
And it worked for that moment of time
I was too young to understand that other people wouldn’t be so kind

And when my daddy read me stories the next night it was no different
I told him that I was the black sheep that cried wolf, but he was indifferent
He just told me his stories even louder to stop my interruptions
From breaking the perfect bubble they wrapped me up in complexions.
My father told me about the three little piggies and how I was the strongest of them all
Because the big bad wolf could never blow down my bedroom wall
But what he didn’t tell me that all along he was the wolf in disguise
He was eaten himself, and I was next to be gobbled up; a pig who won first prize

However, I never got the chance to go weeeee weeee weee all the way home
Like every six-year-old kid dreamed of on their first day gone.
Within ten minutes of being in reality, I was told that Santa wasn’t real,
That stories were just fiction, and broken hearts won’t actually heal
I ran home that day fertilizing the grass below
It felt dead inside the kick to my reality was low
The grass I ran home on had been bone dry for six years
But I never really knew what to name crying since Elmo never really showed any tears

I wanna be the hero, I want to be the good little boy, but all this life has me down
and I can’t live in this little town, where everybody frowns, and people walk around with crowns
Looking down because you act a little different and weep yourself to sleep.
It may not be just this town the destroys little boys dreams,
But I’m not going to stick around to watch my home split apart at the seams

From the crib to the high chair, from the training wheels to the big boy seat, I was off
Off to meet talking trains, dancing zoo animals, and bright smiling people lit like Rudolf
I wanted laser guns shooting at me, ninja stars whizzing past my face
And everyday boys like me saving the day from bad guys that I'd have to chase
But nowadays criminals are for the news crews, and fights were for action scenes,
Adventures and joys were six planets away in Pluto’s playful puppy dreams
But I distinguished reality as fake because your fake was my reality
That I so desperately tried to hold onto since it was more lively than gravity

I was told the easter bunny had died and my cat didn’t go to the vet to rest;
the Superheroes were just drawings on a piece of paper destroying the forest
Not fighting the joker nor galactic alien ships; not even raising a finger to save a cat,
But I watched thousands of people die on my kindergarten screen in a concrete grave.
Superman never showed up to stop either of the hijacked planes,
And Mrs. Burger, the only teacher to ever give me a red light, cried for at least an hour in pain.
Before this, I had no idea what death was, but it had become blatantly clear to see
That whatever it was, where ever it took people, I swore up and down It would never take me

Because I wanna be the hero, I want to be the good little boy, but all this life has me down
and I can’t live in this little town, where everybody frowns, and people walk around with crowns
Looking down because you act a little different and weep yourself to sleep.
It may not be just this town the destroys little boys dreams,
But I’m not going to stick around to watch my home split apart at the seams

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We ***** together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Let me tell you about how I run
There are a couple of ways but none of them are fun.

There's a "move the **** out of my way" kind of run
Shot at by some man with a gun
Running over old ladies and children
To get the hell out and save my own skin
Kind of run...

And there's the "cliche blonde running through my head all day"
Where I don't get exercise, but she seems to sweat away
The pounds of brains until I'm dumbfoundedly dumb
And I find myself passed out on the couch with a bottle of ***
And a headache that makes me want to blow my brains out
Cause I can't get some Aspirin and a good woman to ******* out
Kind of run...

And there's the angsty little man that runs from home
Fighting his abusive dad and his best friend "hormone"
When he gets a kick in the nuts named reality
and a left hook to the face named puberty
by Mike Tyson riding a bison
Who leans over and whispers "you lost the fight son"
Kind of run...

Then there are the times when I run my fingers over the typewriter
Making more mistakes than a single stared wasted waiter
Running my imagination that nobody wants to hear on a page
A ******* that nobody will ever notice on stage
Lost in cut out hearts and origami cranes
and on washed out newspapers on old broken trains
kind of run...

However, there is a time when I actually get off my *** to run
But It hurts cause I'm a beached walrus with my *** in the sun
Flopping on land and trying to swim through concrete
Unable to see that I have 2 feet
cause there are 2 feet of fat that is constricting my view
Of who I am and what I'm really able to do
Kind of run...


And this is the part of the poem when I run away to Spain
Clearly, I can’t run that far so I guess I’ll take a plane
And I’ll bring the beautiful blonde with me in a first class spa
And I’ll walk into Spain saying “Su casa es mi Casa
But it will never be the other way around
Cause if I see you on my property you’ll be six feet underground
Kind of run...

We celebrate annually a time of new.
Like time itself is a new concept.
Millions of people celebrating one moment
to hold the rest in our sweet memories
As if this one party could capture life's wrath
and life's breath in one glimpse.
Why celebrate now?
When every gasp of breath
is a feat in itself worthy of kings.
When time ticks every other precious moment
we mope around and wait till time ends
for us to spill out our gratitude for what was.
In the end of time, we list what we could fix about the past
when the past has gone into the void of the nothing.
I challenge you to a new resolution,
a revolution of tradition
worthy of breaking.
Embrace each hour
each minute and second
with the same exuberance
as the first, the middle, and last
like no other moment before.
With all the moments you breath;
as the sun rises and sets
and loved ones descend into the darkness.
Do not wait till next year.
Party like no other celebration ever to come,
for no celebration is inevitable.