Some few things you should know about me
if ever I manage to capture your love.

To me, there is no such thing as casual ***
nor casual relationships, nor casual love.

It may not seem like that on the surface,
I may be able to act the part of what society
has told you to expect of a man...boy...thing.

But in truth I sit awake writing about everything
that touches me so deeply that it hurts.

Things that make me happy come with a price
called guilt, and that guilt drives me to abandon.

Stupid reasons and stupid logic born from
things done and almost done that I watched
so detached from myself that I couldn't believe it was real.

If you love me, don't ever tell me
don't do that to yourself.

Another soul gone elsewhere
life taken by their own hand
perhaps a kindness they showed
themselves at last to depart these
erstwhile longing shores.

I won't do his memory disservice
by attempting any sweeping ode
nor pretend that I knew him better
than some few others in my life.

But I will pray for him, though
prayer is not something I often do
nor believe in as a certain substitute
for actual action in the direction of suffering.

Had I known how deep the extant
of said suffering I would have done
more though that is indeed the paradox
that we as humans share: namely, we don't
know anything, really, about the people
we see every single day, unless we ask.

Never again will I not ask how someone is,
never will I turn a blind eye to that shuffling
gait or those hunched shoulders nor will
I ever forget that my own pain never has
been and never will be an excuse to not
be a reasonable human being.

Good-bye and Godspeed Andrew.
Put in a good word for me please
to whoever it is that runs wherever it
is that you have gone. And please know
that it wasn't indifference that kept
me from asking after you, merely ignorance.

Ain't it what it mean when a girl
tell you she like you an all she
really mean is she wan you to **** her?

Is that what I'm really scared of?

Am I writing garbage, still awake
at 5:23 in the ****** morning,
worried about what kind of a man I am?

Do I wake up and go to work,
with this secret fear that
all my beliefs and all my hopes
amount to jack ****** ****?

You bet your *** I do,
because I was taught and accepted
a long time ago that love
has jack **** to do with who you
are, and everything to do
with how well you ****.

What may be marked as times full of
hate and inequity, of racial scorn and
social injustice, of a seeming end to
the world of green and good things,
perhaps a falling away of what each of
us hold dear in our hearts.

I honestly don't think that this
division is what will determine who
we are as people, I don't think that
the color of our skin or our political
beliefs or standpoint on religion
is what really has any bearing in
the long run on what we choose.

We all want to be accepted yes?
We all want a safe place to raise
a family and we all want to be able to
be able to provide for them?

Whatever the composition of our family,
however it is that we find loved ones,
should it not be that we are able to do
so in peace, in acceptance?

I was taught that it isn't where we
come from or what we appear to be,
but rather, the quality of who we are
that determines who we are as people.

And maybe I'm wrong, maybe I do
live in a nation that was "born of genocide
and slavery", but even if that is the truth,
I believe in the idea of who we are.

I believe in a place that may not exist,
a place where all are welcome, peoples
of all backgrounds and all colors and
all faiths, a place where it doesn't matter
who your father was, but who you are.

How many?
How many dreams have died?
How many hopes have withered?
How many loves have faded?

How many futures have been shortened?
How many voices have been silenced?
How many friends have been lost?

How many shall have left us wanting?
How many shall have left us needing?
How many shall have left us empty?

Too many.

Miller High Life and/or PBR: for getting drunk for cheap.

Steel Reserve: for getting drunk for cheap and going to jail.

I remember that day,
complete loss of control,
feeling more than just drunk
more than upset at the position I found myself in.

I remember the self destruction
and the understanding that it was an experience
that I needed to have in order
to have something called legitimacy maybe?

Handcuffs are very, very uncomfortable
but so is waking up on a couch in
a building full of cockroaches
to realize that everything that brought
you there was your own fault.

I will never know why I was so angry
will never understand why I was such a monster that day
unless I give myself the excuse of thinking
that I had lost all hope in anything.

All I can say with any certainty
is that if somebody ever dares tell me
ever again that because I'm white
I don't know what it's like to be
picked up off the street, they are
sadly mistaken.

I'd like to tell a true story to you, dear readers. It's not exactly a nice story, but it's one I've only told to a few, so I think the time has come to make it public, especially since I know that the only person involved that would read it is me. This is a story that has changed my life, for good or ill, some experience that curdled my perception of how the world I live in works.

One night, years ago, I wound up at a house party in beautiful St. Augustine, and I was sober when I got there, very late, as I had promised to be the dd. But, we walked from the dorms back to Riberia Street, so I had no responsibilities once we got there. So, while drinking and partaking of other choice substances, I met the now famous Emily, she who I first started really writing for, she who set me free from some pointless idea of what was necessary. Dear God she had perfect *******, and could kiss like French writers wished their wives or lovers could kiss. I fell in love with her that night....and also was wounded at the same time.

Emily had three friends, a Latina from Miami called Natasha ironically, a White girl from up North named Lauren Ruotollo, and another chick from up that way who introduced herself as Kiki. I was in the middle of a conversation with Emily, when I had to ***. So, naturally I walked off the porch and did my business on the side of that house, and while standing there I looked to my left and saw a random dude shoving his thing into a girl's mouth propped against a tree. I thought nothing of it in that moment, and went back to talking to that perfect Emily.

What felt like hours or honestly was only minutes later, on the back porch with my tongue in Emily's mouth and my hand up her shirt, Natasha and Lauren found us; hunting for Kiki. I found her out back, not ten yards from where Emily and I were standing. She was the girl taking it hard from random *******, who left her with not even a thank you. Her skirt and ******* were racked up over her stomach, and when I picked her up, she coughed up *** all over my shirt. I carried her to Natasha's car and put her inside, yelling to God that He owed me one. Emily, Natasha, Lauren and Kiki then rolled off into the wee morning hours, and a little piece of my soul died.

I went back inside that house and couldn't find that empty *******. So I snorted an entire 8 ball and took off my *** covered shirt in the middle of Riberia and burned that ****** then and there.

So when you ask me why I have some problems that didn't come from the Army, I'll tell you this story.