What is Poetry?
Is it emotions flowing onto paper?
Or is it the tranquil sea that holds the world's tears?
What is Poetry?
Is it the outpouring of emotions onto
A canvas of beauty?
Despair?
What is Poetry?
Look around you.
The lives of those surrounding yours are Poetry.
Those feelings that extend and pour out to one another is Poetry.
What affects you, runs through your being and
Makes you who you are.
Who you are is Poetry.
Poetry, the undying form, style, wanders through the generations.
An emotion?
Love is Poetry.
An indescribable emotion flowing from the depths of the soul.
Such is Poetry.
Reader, listener, friend.
No poet can say what Poetry is.
Similes, metaphors, analogies,
All just chalk on the board of life.
A poet can't describe Poetry.
Even now I am left in the fog of understanding, contemplation, and wonder.
So, friend, again I ask,
What is Poetry?

I am death.
I am the knife that cuts,
I am the flesh that is torn.
I am the finger on the trigger,
I am the open wound.
I am death.
I am the murderer.
I am the victim.
I am the life lost.
I am the life gone.
I am death.
I am the cause,
I am the consequence.
I am the darkness that covers,
I am the beast that lurks.
I am death.
I am the disease,
I am the sickness.
I am the sadness,
I am the mourning.
I am death.
I am the life remembered.
I am the love that carries on.
I am the tear shed.
I am the joyful song.
I am death.
I am the legacy.
I am the memories.
I am the love felt.
I am the love remembered.
I am death.
I am the salvation,
I am the after.
I am the comma,
I am the ultimate.
I am death.
I am the relief.
I am the faithful’s pause,
I am the sinner’s eternity.
I am all seen and unseen.
Soy muerte. Soy vida.

A tear runs down my cheek,
Holds for a moment,
Then
Falls.

The Bell rings.
Forms rush past.
                             Intentions.
                                               Directions.
                                                     ­            Stand still.

When the Grim Reaper turns his head,
Others have run, others have fled.
When the Grim Reaper turns his head,
I sneer, laugh, and smile instead.
"You perform your duty," I admire,
"With dedication and desire."
He stares into my soul, and ***** his head,
He goes to reply, but I say instead,
"Others have feared you, still others run.
I would too, but you're just too much fun"
He cracks a smile, and I am fed
Not his voice, but his low cackle instead.
"One morning I may awake, cradled in your arms,
One evening you may take me, much to my alarm.
But while you smile and cackle, allow me to say,
Though this may happen, it will not happen today."
His cackling stops, replaced by a glare
Into my soul, which was not bare.
I know, he knows, I meant what I said.
When the Grim Reaper turns his head,
I politely turn him away.
Back, for me, he will tread,
But on that day,
I will decide instead.

A day beginning the norm
When disaster strikes the heart.
For from far below I see the form,
Of lives being torn apart.

This old factory of clothes
Is now a new crematorium.
This towering inferno shows
No safety ultimatum.

From inside I hear the screams,
From outside I see the death.
In all the world it seems
That screams are the dying breath.

Faced with a horrendous fate,
Some choose to end it all.
For from below I can not create
Words describing their fall.

A new noise enters my life.
That of people meeting the ground,
Of people jumping to end their strife.
None can know, unless one hears that terrible sound.

The ladders cannot reach,
The passages are locked.
In vain those seek to breath
That which stupidity mocked.

146 lives are lost.
All of who breathed a last breath.
That coldness grips the heart, that frost.
The heat of flame as wrought the cold of death.

Soft and sweet from these
Six voices does my soul find peace.
Harmonious, acting together and
Mingling in the air, clasping to a nearby ear.
I am the master of these voices.
I choose their sound. I choose their message.
However, I am also the servant.
When my ears are serenaded to the
Sweet song of another, I am under the spell.
It is the spell of music. I hear
These voices and my being is soothed.
Truly, the guitar is a being.
Its voices sing to me, and to the world.

Lies born deep within the soul
Soon arise and are conceived upon the tongue.
Ah, how the tongue can bring up and tear down!
It is with this that man sneaks and lies.
Lies, the children of sin, are born within the sinful.
Man is sinful, thus we are the fathers and mothers of sin.
Thus man conceives lies.
These are the children we don't abort.

Come, gather 'round, my fellow soldiers.
Nay, come gather 'round as brothers.
For you who fights alongside me is my brother.
Hark, a foul enemy prowls at our borders.
This ogre of an army threatens and tramples all, but not us.
They have oppressed all others, but not us.
We are the last stand my brothers.
This ground upon with we reside
Will be sewn with blood.
True! Blood will be spilt!
Bleed, and I shall bleed!
Fight, And I shall fight!
Draw your swords with me, men.
And we shall conjure up a threatening, deafening noise.
A sound so devastating, that the deepest, strongest
              War Drums of hell can not conjure.
It is the cry of a nation united.
A country that bleeds as its people do
To say "we," not "I."
For we sacrifice with each other.
My brothers,
I bid you, stand
And march for honor, glory, your wives, your families,
And your Freedom!

There exists A Question.
A Question beaten down by
Poets,
Authors,
Romantics,
Cynics,
Scientists, et cetera.
A Question oversimplified,
Over-asked,
Overused
Over time.
A Question under-appreciated
Undermined,
Underbought,
Underestimated.
A Question too simply asked
Without preparation for the answer.
Without knowledge of its contents.
Without trust in its meaning.
A Question asked
But not fully perceived.
A Question as to what is
Rather than what it does.
A Question who's answer
Is as complex as its source.
A Question who's action
Is stronger than its being.
I love this question.
I hate this question.
But, I can only do my best to answer.
Because, after all, 'tis only
A Question.

A glass in my hand and a cheer on my lips
Of a triumphant song to sailing ships.
Before long, I see no more,
And my stumbling body hits the floor.

JON
don't read
till you get
home.

I've never done this before
I think we should just be friends
It's nothing you did or didn't do
There has been a lot on my mind
And I don't think it's fair to you
If it continues
And I don't feel the way I used to
I understand if you don't want to talk to me
I know you're going to be upset
         And I know I'm horrible
I'm sorry
Very Sorry
I didn't want to hurt you
I understand if you hate me now
I still want you in my life

*I'm sorry

Beauty
Laying beside me breathing
Ever so gently.
Conscious worries take flight
When I am in her arms.
There she lays.
Beauty.
Next to me.
The World in all its vastness,
Right here next to me.
My world, embodied in one being.
Beauty.
Spoken on her lips,
Her need for me.
How can that be?
When I need her so?
The piece that completes,
We found in each other.
Lying here, seeing beauty,
My world, laying next to me,
I feel my being complete.
Her gentle breathing tells
Me the same.
Here I lie, beauty in my arms.
Content, complete, assured,
I fall asleep,
With the world in my arms.

I sit upon this cold.
The night surrounds me.
The chill attacks me.
Yet, I am content.
I look up to the night sky.
Stars shine, some, their light just now reaching me.
My breath dances before me,
It rises and soon disappears into the night,
Like a phantom.
Fleeting, changing shapes and finally gone.
I am content.
I am warm.
How?
Life keeps me so.
My life keeps me so.
Though the night and cold surrounds me,
I am warm.
I am content.
I am ready.