I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,

but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't
untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't
untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

You're not your body.
You're not your mind.
You're not your own,
and you are not mine

I'm not my heart,
my fleeting mirth,
my hidden tears,
my death, my birth.

We're not the world's
and it's not ours.
We can not own
the earth and flowers.
We can't sell the groves of trees,
we can't buy the land and seas.

Yet our hands build cities,
and our hands spill blood.
Our greed yields envy
while our hearts seek love.

Let us hope
that someday, we
can let it go
and simply be.

Maybe we all have a story to tell.
Of a ruined love affair.
The powder on your Dad's hands.
Your Mother's luke-warm beer and smile.

And please don't bother to tell me.
I'll just nod my head.

So believe in what you can't see,
And don't cry to me.
When the bottle sits in your hands
And the company is caked in coke.
And you can't wish it away,
Or blame them.

The pattern on the cigarette burned rug is fading fast,
As are your excuses.

And I'm just shaking my head.

dissect me into pieces
mathematical
manic
make me
make sense
solve the pieces
like a puzzle
break me
then make me
intact
but I'm not built
of numbers and facts
when you filed my edges
you created gaps

If I ever had a kid,
I would tell them stories.

If I ever had a kid I would tell them of my mother,
my father,
and the loving family we had that fell in the *** holes of the long winding roads.
How I came to grow up
alone
but never by myself.
How i got to take care of the loving mother I had.
She needed the help and I did so.

Of the lake i swam in
never going farther than I could;
my grandfather's living spirt
pulling back to shore
and
keeping me safe from the untold creatures
lurking far under me
waiting to strike up.

How a father stepped in and out of my life
every month,
every hour,
and every other weekend.
I never got them back.
I never got him back.

A house ever changing
anger ever present,
resentment,
hatred,
never ending pain of not exsisting
when right in front of the man who is supposed to know you are there.

I would tell them of every summer
spent in a different world.
The world of adults.
Life slowed to a heat dazed crawl
nights spent in a haze
dazed
high on life
that wasn't my own
living as a different person
one who danced with swords in the rain
with electric lights
Daft Punk and coffee
smiles and lies
stolen hats
stolen memories
always remembered.

If I ever had a kid,
I would tell them of a brother
who loved me,
hated me,
supported me,
killed me and brought me back
only to **** me once again.
An ever changing persona of who i could be,
who I should be,
and who I will never be again.
The things we talked about
that I could never tell,
other than a kid,
who would understand the meaning of its imaganitive exsistance.
as I did
when I was a kid.

I would tell them of my loves.
How much they meant to me.
How they hurt when I left them.
How I learned to love better because of them
and how through the pain of my mistakes
I lost a family,
gained them back,
lost myself and wished it back,
and loved.
A military man
A lumber jack
A theater geek
A sountherner
A northener
A shade
and all the other loves in between.

I would tell them of my friends
the stories we made together
of magic,
and science,
and mysticsm.
Dungoens
Dragons
Wizards
Rouges
A bard
the story teller
the Dungeon Master
Ajani's Vengence
his pride mate
An ageless entity that gained my life and gave it back with each deadly strike
rendered by titanic ultimatums
a surprise attack
never ending how I wished
for it was expected by my masters
and teachers
but not by the underlings I chased after.

They would know the story of a moonbeam.
Her never ending starshine.
The lights they wove together in the dark of night
during the witching hours of peace
and secrets untold
but understood
when unspoken.
How the moon chased its star
the star chased it back
and neither won
nor caught the other
but remained in the tormenting cycle
that was their life.
shared
seperated
and forever together
through a bond unbreakable
by time
space
love
hate
pain
joy
and life lived in the moment.

If I ever had a kid
they would live to never understand me.
my life
the things I went through,
the things I knew but should have never learned,
just as I couldn't with mine.
As I never will with my mother
or father
my brother
my sister.
Our lives seperated by an unchanging opinoin
always wrong
always right
and never accepting of the others.

For they did the same when they had a kid.
As I would if I ever had a kid
trying to teach lessons
experiencing the learning moments
the advice that went in one ear
out the other
and fell in the *** hole on the same winding road my family ended up on.
How I could never see
through their pain
a life they tried to better for me.
How my eyes
20/20
20/80
would never be strong enough
to see past the unreal
to what was right in front of me.
Love that went untouched for so long

If I ever have a kid
I would tell them how it all came back to me.
When my father stepped back in
as the others finally walked out
and
only one came back.
How my mother finally had the health to be happy
How my sister
gave me everything
that i tried to give her.
How my brother didn't except me
and i excepted that
finally
letting go .

They would know
how one dream
of amnesia
brought back the me that died
so long ago
when I choose my heart
over the one's who had put the heart there in the first place.

They will marvel,
they will hate,
and they will learn to love all the stories
both true
and fiction
that was me
and may they learn
as I did.

For if I never have a kid
then my mortality is gone
for what is our lives
without those to forever remember
as we sail out on our voyage
to steal the great ship of Bassette.
and sail to the world of peice we earn.
Once our future
understands our past

This is not a poem
                          a legend,
                                            or myth.

This is my story.
       This is my rescue.
This is my redemption.

This is a young girl who
wore her shame like chains

                                      it never set her free.

Tugging at her clothes
trying to get the tightness to stop mocking her.

Wanting to be any body but herself,
be in any body but her own.

She wore approval like static electricity,
                 she always c
                                   l
                                 u
                                   n
                                  g
                                        to it.

Even if it never came.

She’d scrawl the words

SOME DAY

in black ink down her arms

so when the other kid’s words
       caused her to hang her head
               she’d look down and remember

some day is one day closer.
some day is just one day closer.

She learned to carry herself like a flagpole,
                                                   it’s all she had out there.

Until she met Him.
He who canoed about her arteries and
wrote books about the things she couldn’t see in herself.

He who gave her someday, everyday.

Who showed her how to break the chains of shame.

Who told her the reason her clothes might feel a little too
tight, was because they couldn’t stand to be too far away from her.

She stopped hearing others insults and only felt His love.

His name?

His name is Jesus.

He saved me from myself.

I think we poets know best
that these words inside of us
can either be
anchors
or they can be life vests.

Choose wisely.

Someone else’s life could depend on it.

They tell me, I don’t know what pain feels like.
Because of the color of my skin
and the numbers that roll in on my daddy’s paycheck—
                                                                                         I must not know what pain feels like.

Any maybe that’s true
but then again,
maybe it’s not.
Cause things—
                                                              they’re rough all over.

I come home and my heart rips apart
when I see my mother’s broken heart
has finally escaped from her eyes in the form of tears.
Because she only has three fifths of her senses
so she’s different,
                       not normal,
damaged.

But enough of the Helen Keller jokes.
To you, she’s just some dead lady with a
problem with her eyes or ears or something
but to me, I see part of Helen Keller in my mother.

She was born with Usher’s Syndrome.
One part hearing loss,
                                 one part vision loss.
She had her first pair of hearing aids by the time she was five
and by the time she was thirty—
she realized there was something wrong with her eyes, too.

There’s nothing more we can do for you,
doctors urged.
Filling her with empty promises and false hope
with every,
“Maybe it won’t get any worse.”

We know now, that’s not the case.
They’ve put an expiration date on her vision
five years,
ten if we’re lucky.
But still my mother remains unbroken.
I mean she has her bad days, but most of them are good.
That’s why my definition of strong,
begins with the word “Mom.”

But no Mom, you’re not alone.
At every 11:11 I wish for it all to go away
or at least slow down so you have a chance to catch up.

I utter midnight prayers,
face decorated in the light cast off from my alarm clock
whispering I plead
“Dear God, what did she do wrong?”
But I’m not angry anymore and I don’t blame Him.
I know she of all people, can handle it.
But if it were me
I would have cracked years ago.

But if the day is to come,
blind due to genetic defect,
I’ll be here.
I’ll proudly grab her hand in public,
just to give her walking stick a rest.
I’ll be the guide dog she hopes she never needs.
I’ll take her hands and help her trace out the
outlines of every sight she never got to see
but really wanted to.
I’ll put her palms over the heartbeat of the grandchild
she may never have the pleasure of seeing.
I’ll spend forever divulging every detail of my loving husbands face
she may never have meet.
I won’t let her miss out.

And on those days where it’s too much to handle,
I’ll be the whisper—
smooth like the wind, delicate like honey.
“Don’t give up, you’ve made it this far.
Plus you look really old, you don’t want to see that anyway.”