Worst mistake I ever made,

Was thinking it would be more painful to stay friends.

Won't the future be nice?
So many benefits of modern technology.
You don't have to go grocery shopping,
Heck, your fridge can order for you now!
Cameras inside the washer and dryer, 'cause yeah.
You can even order casual companionship with an app.
Won't be long before we'll be able to match genomes online,
Probably interconnected with your social media and dating sites of choice,
No need to talk, or even meet, your phone just beeps and you know:
You've found the perfect mate!
Modern convenience folks, step right u-
Oh wait, no, stay home, get married right from your couch!
What's wrong you have the perfect mate, the perfect job, perfect home(s), 1.312 kids, 2.617 pets-
Love???
There's probably an app for that...

When one's life has hit rock bottom
At the ripe old age of nineteen
When the apple of life has gone rotten
And hopeful plans wither to faded dreams

When one's confidence is shot
And one's hope has slowly waned
When one's faith in love is all but lost
And one's self-esteem's been drained

When one's spent their life to overcome
The pain of losing their one true one
When one's reached out to touch only ice
To be judged and rejected once, twice, thrice

When one's messages are deleted unread
And pictures cannot fill the hole in one's heart
When the only chance to hear your voice is in one's head
One begins the onerous process of falling apart

When healing has begun and the dull throb doesn't beat one jaded
When the sunlight breaks the clouds for the first time in dark ages
When the black hole ***** a little less and the stars aren't so faded
One will still be here waiting to hear an answer sought by fools and sages

I was a student of her spirit
I was in love with every aspect

I was accepting when she was distant
I was joyous on each return

I was more than a scapegoat
I was more than a back-story

I AM more than just broken pieces

squeak

squeak  squeak

Megaphone Clicks

I SAID:  I MISS YOU!

I remember learning about Japanese culture in elementary school.

They taught us to say a few words, told us some Japanese stories, we learned how to fold Origami, and we got to try sushi and some Japanese candies.  

It was one of those cultural-week things.  It was cool.

Anyway, I remember at one point the teacher was telling us how every inflection matters when speaking Japanese, and that saying a word with the wrong inflection can turn it into a great insult.  

I remember thinking, "Wow, it must be really hard to speak Japanese."

Only now, when I'm almost 45 years old, do I realize it is literally no easier to speak American English or any language for that matter.

Every inflection counts, every word counts.  There are uncountable ways to insult someone, and indeed to be insulted, and the path to speaking (or writing) without unwittingly tossing out insults like candy (don't throw sushi, it's very messy) is a narrow one.

This is especially true when writing about something painful.  I try (but probably still fail) to be sure when I write I [attempt to] take that into account.

So, anyway. I just wanted to say, that if I have said something to offend you, such was not my intention.

Just sayin, y'all be careful with that thur 'Murican English, it's loaded!

Next best thing to crying...

Telling someone how you feel.

Next best thing to dying...

When they don't believe you're real.

I feel like some of these small pathetic creatures

crawling around under lash and disdain

forced to listen to droning treatises on how to fly

used to be birds

Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Everything must go!
No offer unreasonable! No price too low!

What's that you say? You say you're just not buying it?
You don't like its looks and you're just not trying it?

That is cheap and this is ******,
What is this, plastic? How gaudy!
Everything you have to offer is beneath me,
Is this the legacy you thought to bequeath me?

My apologies, I do not possess the prowess to hold your interest,
I hope you'll forgive my hubris & this foolish idea that I should be honest,
In fumbling, stumbling, pedestrian prose & ****-poor rhymes like those.
I suffer from multiple isms you see, I must've been having a schism, truly.

It's not my custom to put a tag on things so dear,
Nor, had I a choice, would I place the price so near,
To nothing that I shiver at the cold cost, this chilling fear,
That even if I were free I'd be too much to bear.

I'll never see it's like again;
The springtime coming to life
In my grandmothers back yard,
The birds singing, insects humming,
Sun dappled camouflage on the pond.
One mid-morning, mid-mourning,
Dreaming of love lost,
Hoping for hope.
It's funny, how young love is like childhood,
Gone before you truly value it,
Only cherished after the fact.
Only, cherish that fact,
Value it, before it's gone.
Humor your heart, like a child,
Hope for hope,
Dream of love!
And some mid-morning, quit mourning,
Let your camouflage fall, feel the sun,
Let the birdsong bring you back
To the wonder of childhood!
Love the autumn of life,
You'll never feel it's like again.

I am drawn to this

Shimmering in my sight

Shinning with promise

Pool of aqueous light

Cupped hands reach out

Weary wanderer with relief awash

Dry disappointment fills my mouth

Wait- Sand!? This- This is a mirage?

Darkened dioramas seen through fading sight,
Wistful shadows of tormented light.

Twilight sifting through waking dreams,
Leaving me bare and clutching at seams.

We once flew on high with spirits of air,
We made light with the sun without a care.

Now I live only at night, sleeping through life,
Disgusted by struggle and sickened by strife.

Living for death but only dying my hair,
Heaven cancelled for the rain in the air.

So I gather my strength and I wish for the power to heal,
But when I give her my heart she says the magic just steals.

I've traded my eyes for a vision of sight,
And traded my soul for a photo of light.

You might have been second in line,

But you were never second place.

Your Honor,







The persecution rests.

So my therapist asked me, "Would you want her to read your poems?"

I feel like there's a poem in that somehow,

but I'm too heartbroken over it to write it,

because the truth is I don't know the answer...

I mean she doesn't know me and I fear she never really did

but I also would not want her to be hurt by my words,

yet still, if she doesn't understand then she is already being hurt by the unknown, the lack of understanding, by the misunderstanding itself:

it's a paradox.

My voice was soothing to her as a wound is calmed by festering,
I called daily, then weekly, then bi-monthly, she called it pestering.

There's an underlying group
Trying to do what's not right
They're pretty ****** good
At hiding in plain sight

Where's the point in sharing half a truth
Intrinsicly wasting time misspending youth
Why set yourself into the role inanimate
Waiting, willing, indifferent, and passive
Why torch your life in search of a match
A net-wielding dragon with fire to catch

"If you get down and you quarrel everyday,
You're saying prayers to the devils, I say.
Wo-oh-ooh!
Why not help one another on the way?
Make it much easier
(Just a little bit easier)"


-Positive Vibration - Bob Marley, Bob Marley and the Wailers

You just listen to the old Pork Chop Express here now and take his advice on a dark and stormy night when the lightning's crashin' and the thunder's rollin' and the rain's coming down in sheets thick as lead.

Just remember what old Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake.

Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big old storm right square in the eye and he says, 'Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.'

I just wanted to say to all you awesome HP poets, that I'm sorry I don't comment as much as I should.  

First, I have pretty bad anxiety, so if I try and comment I usually have to write and rewrite it like 50 times, decide not to say anything, feel guilty, and then, ultimately, just say something like, "Awesome."

Second, I feel like I have to conserve my awesomes, cause at some point, they're gonna run low, and I'm gonna have to resort to saying "Rad," or "Radical..."

Aaaand then someone is gonna be like, "***, who's grandpa is this?  ARE YOU OK OLD GUY?  Someone better come get him..."

Circumstance-severed ties
Shine like fugazi
Labor under lies
Instead of being, set free

Smothered in shadow
Beneath that Giving Tree
Struggling to let go
The aftermath of deceit

Falling for the untrue
Failing my destiny
Calling out for proof
Smoke-signaling my sanity

You are the reason I fell in love with the light.

You are the reason I sought a way out of the darkness.

You are the reason I stayed.

Maybe I should have written them all down
All of the conversations I had with you in my head
Perhaps then it would be easier to understand me

See, the thing about lies is,

They just don't make for very good poetry.

Poetry works just fine if the words don't rhyme,

But it's worthless if the sentiment doesn't.

They'll tell you how beautiful are your wings,

While they bind your pinions and strip your feathers.

"So graceful and so precious!  Such lofty, ethereal things,"

The words like rusty chains, cracked leather-sentiment tethers.

They'll tell you, "Rise above the sorrow, fly from the pain,"

After they teach you to clip your own wings so you won't fall,

And when the confusion sets in they'll be the first to tell you you're sane.

"People can't fly," they'll say, and point to the wings nailed to their wall.

I take a whole week to celebrate my birthday,

Just to make sure I don't sweep it under the rug.

And I've worn a mask what feels like my whole life,

But October is, by far, my least favorite holiday.

Ya know...

If that most famous pair of star-crossed lovers had only possessed cell phones,

Things might have gone much differently.

I got this idea I would write you a poem,
One you could read sitting safely at home,
Or keep with you out and about while you roam.

A poem about all of the memories I held sacred,
Laughing, singing, kissing, and cuddling in bed,
One to remind you our time wasn't wasted.

So I laced up my heart and I shrugged on my soul,
I popped open my noggin and I went for a stroll,
Right down Memory Lane and left at the Rabbit Hole.

I kept on goin' 'til I hit a velvet rope with posts of brass,
But I musta gotten too close to the bulletproof glass,
Cause a big grumpy guard threw me out on my...

I realized, still rolling, it's all one massive museum,
Motionless memories mummified so I can keep 'em,
Lined up and locked away, as if someone would steal 'em.

Arduously ordered, organized for instant access,
A mental palace fit to make even Sherlock jealous,
That Dewey Decimal dude don't got nothin' on this.

The slide shows replay every minute on the minute,
Time-compressed and Tetrised-in so each moment fits,
Bio-digitally encoded on neurode and inked onto skin.

Tear-rusty gears grind waterlogged cogs in reverse,
This melancholy machine made to reflect you in verse,
Is a planetarium perpetually projecting my universe.

In the story, Samson is said to lose his power when his hair is cut, breaking his vow.

I think he was wrong about his hair, and the actual source of his power was his love.

I think he lost his power the moment he realized Delilah had betrayed him.

Not when she betrayed him, nor when she cut his hair, but only once he realized what she had done, see?

So at the end of the story, when Samson gets his strength back, it happens not because he grows his hair, but because he forgives Delilah.

His hair was only a metaphor for his faith (in God, love, women, and Delilah in particular)...

Anyway, I'm growing my hair out.

Sullenly, I quote whilst I quaff

Softly stammered surcease of wroth

Consummately ****** I sputter and cough

Sloshed ale sloppily sopped

Spite shed, soft shadows soughed

Soggily satiated at brimful trough

I like to take a second to think about the things I say.


Unfortunately, this usually tends to occur after I say a thing...

_

I tore my hand from hers and I stumbled backwards feeling disgusted.  Feeling disgusting.  

Soiled, oily.

Five bottom-shelf screwdrivers and a pitcher-and-a-half of cheap beer briskly informed me that my stomach was a little too happenin, and they were gonna go ahead and go.  

Like, NOW.

I ran towards the bathroom, elbowing several people out of the way as I went.

Several much larger, and leather-clad Mowhawkians.

Moshers who had been standing in line for at least 15 minutes.

How I didn't get punched I will never know...

I careened into the stall like a methhead pinball and got ready to lose my liquid lunch.  

The watery hi-***** and natty light must have seen the same sight I did, because they decided they didn't really have anywhere to be after all.

I propelled myself away from the nightmare cesspool masquerading as a toilet, mostly by force of horror.

Luckily my legs wanted the **** out of there as badly as the rest of me, and they shakily complied.

Rocking side-to-side like a punch-drunk prize-fighter in Round-9, I bulled past an eight-foot-tall stick-figure goth-person, and it hit me:

I am going to have to tell her....

I was suddenly alone in the club.

...I am going to have to tell the love of my life that another woman kissed me.

The electricity went out.

Not in the seedy South East D.C. nightclub, but inside me.

The room was still, full of the life-like statues of dancers.

Lasers, frozen-fire, suspended in darkness and smoke.

The color had drained, like a rerun on a black & white TV...

I could only watch as my life crumbled in my mind's eye.

In the midst of this noisy, noxious, overcrowded *******.

In deafening, rhythmic silence.

What passed for air was sweaty-*****, and midsummer dank even in winter.

But the air around me became crisp.

Not crisp like the wind in February,

Crisp like the silence in a tomb.

Fitting.

Because I won't survive this.

I didn't know it yet, but this $5 cover open-bar might as well have been my tomb.

Sealed as tightly as my fate.

With a kiss.

We joined ourselves
Mind, body, and soul
Is that not forever
You must've known some magic
I didn't
And had the heart to cast it
Because I didn't

She lies

Because I lie

I lie

Because I am insecure

She lies

Because she no longer trusts me

I lie

Because she hurts me

She lies

Because she doesn't want me to see her pain

I lie

Because I fail to understand

She lies

Because she can no longer see the truth of me

I lost her

When I could no longer see the truth of her

So many people
diggin in the dirt,
lookin for a rock.
Can you see it from space?
I see one,
it burns so that people can travel speedily.
Chasin their shiny destruction
to the Earth's end
You used to be able to see it from space,
when there was still clean water.