Since when did darkness
Become my only light

We speak too often of "love"
The power
The ability
The emotions
The breaths taken away

These words will never be enough
So I want the silence to drip into your veins
A protest from talking over my own tongue
Attempting to convince you of our "love"
Confessing a white flag surrender


I will hold my breath to show you
The intensity
The magnitude
The ravenous
"Love" I possess for you

Desolate spaces filled with stories, love, despair. Lives lived through tubes and screaming machines. Channels comforting the wave of medicine crashing into veins. Flooding sloppy hopelessness into the oxygen we call life. It's okay dear it's only temporary.

So I hold the hand of strength. Walk me through this town of pain. Breathe into me, grab me by the bootstraps. Pile my issues into a storage room. Puffed up chest acting bigger than the sickness. A kick to the lungs left deflated birthday balloon. Pump me full of it, I'll take the bullet

Common sense doesn't apply here. Making words out of these hieroglyphics. The writing on these walls is in sharpie. Struggled effort blown into the wind. Experience life with me. Here. Now. Forever.

Take this place out of your blood pumping heart. You belong elsewhere. Somewhere of comfort and peace. A day of content together pure. So I'll take you away. Away to that place. To elated smiles, moving hearts, unfiltered bliss. I love the way strength radiates bodies. Flex one more time for the cameras. This show will play on repeat

I hate planes a lot. Mostly just the cabin pressure. It makes me feel real uncomfortable. Like peer pressure in the 8th grade. The snacks are good. I love complementary trail mix. Reminds me of filthy peanuts in a biker bar somewhere in montana. So here I am one seat away from a new destination. A new place where people know me... Or they don't. Either way I'm surrounded by strangers. Here on one side of me I have a California king. I'm not talking about a mattress here. I mean a man so tan his skin looks like stretched leather on a cowboy boot. Flip flops to match the watch that tells you time, or how much money he spends on accessories. He sits big in his little chair. Like an over filled glass of milk. A tan mark where his wedding ring use to sit. Divorce was spelt out along his confidence. And his MacBook.  And on the other side we have hello kitty. Dropped out of a commercial with zebra print pillows covered in comforted teal stories. An Asian girl. Traveling alone with a mouth full of things she will never tell me. Like " I hate that you hog the arm rest" " I don't like flying" and " where are you from?" We separate ourselves with awkward tension that you can't place in first or last. I'm 3 inches away from two parts of complete that I will never get the chance to know. So I realize this is the closest we will ever be. Me and you. In this space. Sharing this peer pressured air. Stuck between you and a compliment. I will never know what to say in these situations. So I will step of this plane miles away from anything I believe in. I'll drink a beer in the memory of every moment I did not take advantage of. Maybe I can step off this plain at 30,000 feet and fully recognize the brilliance of our time here.

If I gave every part of myself

I wouldn't have anything else to offer you

If I take every part of you

I will water your roots daily

If I throw my deepest love into the air

Then raindrops of forgiveness will engulf us

If I weave our love into puddles

They will rise and fall upon us on another day

I went rummaging through my mistakes tucked under my bed behind the closet. I have skeletons sleeping back there that don't exist in the future.

When I opened my heart to grab onto my spinal cord and snap myself out of it I found mirrors of my childhood girlfriends, a picture of the time I went to McDonald and got the chicken nuggets when I was four, and a bucket hat that my mother never should have bought me.

These were things I wish never happen. Hannah, she cracked my femur with the pressure of a goodbye laid across the never happen. We were 1822 days old and going on stronger than ever.

It was here that I learned that I love my stuffed animals too hard, because I often wear them down from all the attention smothering their jugulars and stitching my loneliness into their knee caps. We were. There is a storage space so wide open and full of grace waiting for a  soft hand to lift its spirits, i need a drink.

It stands two feet tall in a colony of insecurities so intricately woven into patterns of bad ideas that i don't think it ever had a chance. I've never been good at telling the difference between the color of the floor board and the bleeding pattern of the ceiling.

And I could never fully grasp the reason why ***** packs are not only socially looked down upon but completely misunderstood. Efficiently storing every secret at waste level.

I have a lot of regrets. I'm not proud of most of them. But from them I was drunkenly spit into my present form. And from here I will always wear ***** packs.

Shall you never let your god hold you hostage
As your god shall hold you gently like your mother
May your god never frighten you
Your god shall comfort you in times of despair
Do not let your god speak for you
This god gave you a purposeful tongue
Never force this god upon yourself
All your god wants is to be understood
Love kindly of yourself
Find your god in simple accidents
Not in burned books

Love me so hard

that I end up being like the earth.

Spinning wildly in orbit exposing every surface to your touch

Love me so hard

I find myself hung over from drinking the wine of your skin

Causing me drunk in a tumble of forever and a inebriation I never want to stop

Love me so hard

I forget what day tomorrow is

So I can live in this moment for that much longer

Love me so hard

the glacier of my past melts

Into a sea of forgiveness

Love me so hard

I crumble onto one knee

Asking you to melt your last name into mine

She asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up

I told her many things

Like a fire truck
Something large enough to put out the fires we create
Glasses
Shaping things up and making them look better
Let me be an iceberg
Built from breaking down and re freezing

There are other things I would like to be as well
Like a father
A husband
Or a man
I want to fill in the occupations my father
never grew up to be

The purpose of this day
Will be to own each second
As if it will never come again

For the time is now

Tomorrows clocks has stopped
Yesterdays clocks erased
Today's clocks are still moving

For the time is now

Do not let the ticks slip away
Tuck them into your present
Take a deep breathe

For the time is now

I want to be torn into shreds.

Take me apart at the joints.

Break the best of me.

Destroy all the human in me.


I need to be rebuilt.

A new start.

Something better than before.

Build me into complete again.

Tell me things will be better tomorrow

For my words are jammed

Locked brakes on my jaw

A stop sign on today

Arriving in late fashion

Without me

I had to watch this boy go from 8-26 with a full man in his chest in less a moments notice, he was so angry from the sudden unwanted growth upon his being. The growth started in his collar bone, spread to his elbows, and exploded through his cupped fist slammed through the dried wall. I have see a lot of anger in my life. I've see small dogs get so angry that we follow them around everyday, their tails that is, that a circle is what makes sense to chase their feeling around the room. The dictionary says there are a few different synonyms for anger, like indignation, rage, and my favorite piqué.... Now this is my favorite word because the definition of pique is to affect with sharp irritation and resentment; especially to the pride. The image this draws across my neurons in the dome of safety behind my eyes ;just  imagine a king standing strong, chest out, flexing his insecurities across his cheeks. These cheeks have seen little girls cry from all the mothers taken away in the daytime hours to feed their needs to be alive, torn hair out of tomorrow because it looked too promising with potential, and a smile with deception lining each tooth. This king was confident in his worth. Then I watched the king wake up from his dream with an anvil on his throat and Grenades in his shoulders, ready to blow on anything with the ***** to step, to only realize he is standing in a group home with bare walls around the meds on the table. The pique sleeping in the beast will stayed subdued, the meds are kicking in. This is the image I imagine, because as I live life with this human machine I have watched the state shuffle his chess pieces into Chinese checkered closets to make it through the weekend. Mondays bring another day of forgetting families that ruined mind sets, but the families still lay on heart strings still playing come home to me. You were not made for this life happening before your eyes, you were made for much more, like changing lives. And you have shape shifted mine. You have shown me what strength is, because I always thought strength was being able to lift the most baggage off hearts broken like glasses in a middle school mix up. I was wrong. Strength is mustering up the courage to step out of bed when the world screams to you no, and your mind is heavier than the world under your tongue that you have yet to tell of. We both know you can change a life, it's just hard with the restraints placed across your ability, I'm sorry. To be honest, I know he is a king with a heart made of palace, bones of gold, and a head made from broken crowns his family has never fixed.  he has directed more life night lights than staff members have told him stop. He will not stop with the directional force of an ocean in his footsteps. I have never told him that he can move mountains with his voice, lift reality with his left arm and a fist with the other to show the power that he believes he can't possess. Buddy, I know they have held you down for so long, and that you despise them for it. I believe with everyday of my ****** heart that one day, you will change the universe. Because with a king like you, there is always a revolution.

Delicately run your fingers across my neck

You will find the scars

Freshly healed

From when lonely

Clawed its way out of my throat

The acrylic style that found a gap in my brave flavored fortune. Writing me off like a bad tattoo at 15. I found the ink left in your blood dripped house on the prairie. Discovered fossils of ancients. Left the air heavy around the place. Dusty shelves filled with eyes that have watched lives move around for years.

Discovery found in the cobwebs in the corner. All eyes on the show. The one on repeat in black an white. Playing static on hollow walls, Inner ears and plastic heart beats. Detected the frightened feelings inside the couch. The imbedded body parts left over time. Avoiding the obviously oblivious.

Cans line the walls of denial built on falsified rumors of comforted table cloths. Crock of **** that was. Crock pots are the best. Just let everything boil all day, then accept and devour. Heated heaven in a porcelain platter dished up by perfect palms pausing to elate you. Here have another one.

Avoidance techniques only hold their ground for so long. Winter will wander off and this ground you stand on will thaw. Those footprint will stick in the ground like the ink the typewriters would explode on papers untouched. Stuck. Leaving particles of life across the windowed season.

This body
These limbs
Those second hand organs
Part buckshot
Together forming a symphony
Of bad decisions
Inflating the punching bag lungs
Behind my sewer grate rib cage

Persuading my blood
To stay on track
With the veins i've been given
Finding embrace in fires
I can't put out yet
Boiling reasons to feel again
Falling thrift shop short
Heart lunging out
For new parts

I'll bottle up the fragrant sea breeze
into tufts of baleen.
Scooping up secluded.
While pressing frequent calls of
loneliness into the fabrics of air
inside of us.
Breaking up the ice sheet
with a warm heart.
Joined by precious
ocean lull.
Ice holding moments
that already passed us.
Poor some whiskey in
let us release the past.

There is a small village, tucked under the arctic circle, in this village I met lonely. He was a stand up guy.

His shoulders,broad and spread apart. Ready to lift broken spirits and alcohol bottles. This man gave my heart a chance to truly palpitate. To rhythmically shock my ribs with a frequency unheard by the human ear.

This mans eyes, were deep. Swirling ideas of not coming back and don't pick up the phone. A land far way laid behind that iris. One where family was unknown and friends were ever changing.

His smile, crooked. Bent between the weight of the sky. Melted from the suns happiness.


We talked, for a while. He convinced me I was better than that. He told me that I didn't need anything more than my heart and mind to discover freedom.

From that moment, I could breathe. And when I started breathing, I started living. From this point on will be history.

On days like these

I wish I could hydrate myself

With the oxygen of your heart

Gulping every ounce of your presence

Into the darkness of Alaska

Forever filling the void

Of yesterdays distance

Do not let a day end
While lacking gratitude
Sew your merit badge upon your heart
You are ******* incredible
Stop acting like a deflated parade balloon
Your heart is a trophy
Keep that **** polished

We ran out of words
So we spoke with our bodies

We are silent film directors partitioned into different reels of reality. Quietly yelling sign language in the direction of creating something more than ourselves. If silence were love my poetry would walk away without you.

Her clavicle found me weak
Surrendered aside my confidence
Melting into each curve
Found under the sheets

We fell hard into tomorrow
Missing pieces of ourselves
Writing history in the dark
Telling stories about god
And freedom

Two things being discovered
In the gold rush of sleep in our eyes
Fixated upon allocated perfection
Her body spoke to mine

I have reached my hand threw our spaces
Over 2000 miles exhausted
Wishing you would grab hold
You clenched my throat
Choking out the words I want to tell you
Words along the lines of
Please don't surrender
Stop walking around like it is Monday everyday
Like your mind has made up its decision
and your existence is pulling the covers over today
You can borrow my heart for now
Anything to make you feel warm on days the sun gets unplugged
You were meant for more than this
More than a post it note heart and feeble arteries
In 7 days we will both remember why you can't give up
Like a sign god put up in our yard during elections
Begging for another few years to stick around
Our days are numbered my brother
Stop crossing out the days before they happen

When I was a volunteer fire fighter I found out that when a human being is trapped inside of a house drowning in fire, often they do not burn to death it is the smoke that kills them. My biggest fear is being burned to death.

So what's it like to inhale so much smoke that you quickly become it. You drift through the broken air full of charcoal grays attempting to find anyway out. A floating wish of a better tomorrow.

A window, a vent, a mouth. How much longer must we test the the water slide of convincing cancer. Smoke can lure you in oh too easily. Inviting you. Reaching for you. Holding you.

Boy there are so many thing I would rather be held by. Like koalas. Loosen your grip and follow me away from this place. You deserve better than an empty promise. I know dad conditioned you to eat them up.

But this is a broken promise. One that is going to break a family of two when you break a family of two you end with one. I know you want to feel like mom did, but she should be endured that pain and taught us how hearts can break when perfection is drifted away.

My friend, step off your pedestal. Mercy won't stay with you forever. And you know for a **** fact we don't have forever.
Open the window and flee. Drop your cigarette and grab my shoulder, we're in this together.

So when I realized you are in a house fire. I understand you are not going to die from the fire alone. I get that you will smoke yourself out before I get the chance to save you.

We are fire fighters. Mom taught us, so put our your fire.

The times when our hearts interlace their deepest roots.

That's when I feel the most sober.

When your voice is the honesty I swallow.

That's when I feel the most sober.

The times your eyes promise me an upside down future that you flipped right side up.

That's when I feel most sober.

I want to be sober every moment with you. Because you are my finest form of inebriation.

Silence spoke the loudest today
Rendering another 1000 miles between our destined destination

Loosely leaping for compliments
Falling into black holes who are still angry they exist

Empty rattled anything in nothing
Leaving shattered constellations in unknown galaxies

Gravity will not bring this closer
Swimming in a sea of going no where fast

Finding lost satellites
Projecting incorrect displays of what it means to be forgotten

Giant Pandas can defecate up to 40 times in a day.
Dragons spit fire around 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
And the words that come out of my dental cavity are not always holy.

Although I don't consistently speak truth I often hindsight the difficulties in my speech ability. The ability to speak proper, well, or complete is not always present behind this broken breath. In a desperate attempt to square away my oval thought process I thumb words into a pixelated infinity of memories. Letters typed out across the fog covering lower layers of hazy thoughts. Filling up neurotic gaps with logged cabin pressures. On second thought I would rather not think about it. Not think about the imperfections in our complexities. Why not just paint these walls with compliments and thank you for every breathe that's ever graced my space. I saw you as a star, so I looked up to you and never really told you how god dam beautiful you are. Because I knew my words would cease to paint the sky like you do. Giving hope to children around this world that maybe, just maybe their dreams will grasp with reality. That they are small gifts on this earth wrapped in skin tight wrapping paper that exfoliates excellence. Small bundles of hope giving me reason to smile on days the sun forgets to show its face. You give hope to the frazzled packages that don't have a home to gift on empty holidays. You breathe there is a tomorrow into the yesterday's broken promises. I have never understood much about the constellations, but I think I do know that you are a stand alone constellation that shines brighter than the moon. You lit footsteps for those who don't cope well with darkness and eloquently gave direction to the dizzy, when all they wanted was to hear that they will, be okay. Burn promise into my eye ***** with your persistence presence. I know there will be cloudy days in my head. Days I won't see you above. I know you are there. What I don't know is why the hell I'm still looking into a light that burnt out 1 light year ago. I guess I'm simply here sharing words. I guess I never wanted to to accept that your light is gone.

I know a sailfish can swim up to 68 MPH
And that frost dragons are completely illegal in city limits.
I still don't know if what I'm saying is true or not. So I will free my thoughts for now, this dental cavity needs a cleanse

His heart

felt like a word misspelled

in a spelling test

cursed at, then erased

replaced by new formations

without comprehension

Our curtain split in a tangled obsession we lost. My voice didn't reach off the stage. The crowd didn't applaud my entrance. The play we have been pretending to reenact is not one many have completed. Unsuccessful, we fell and the curtains draped over my pride. Pathetically practicing ways to apologize for my part I didn't comprehend.

Inside our dramatic hearts we take tally of broken parts poorly performed. Dancing intricately around life practically promising failure. I failed to see the signs. Your hips, they participated in my existence. Writing letters in a language historians can't grasp. Those letters still play in my head on a rainy day.

Our play ended with a subtle ignorance. Ignoring our ability to love. To dance away a night and pretend like we are someone else. People so urgently rushing to become something they are not. That will never be us. We will exit this stage with a bow, a broken heart, and too many lines never shared.

As the volume settles in this confined cube of a classroom
I lay one sheet of paper on each desk
I tell my students to prepare them for a test
I tell myself they don't need another test
I do it anyway

Now I want you each to answer with precision
Give me your mind and stave the heart for now
Allow your finger tips to work in ways they have not been taught yet
Do this correct
The way they are going to expect

In the top right corner please write your:
Name
Date
Eating disorder
Depression
ADHD
Food insecurity
Anxiety
Family issues
Lack of sleep

Now leave them there and focus
There is no room for those here
Not in a classroom
And not in a test like this
Human does not belong right now

This test determines too much
To show that you are not enough

So good luck on this test
When you are finished
Sign with your everything
And hope for the best

Hold me together
Pierce me with your silver
Mend me

It's writers block I promise
I want to write you love songs
I wish to inscribe the clouds with my thoughts
To deeply embellish is the tide of my words washing over paper
I keep waiting for the right words to say about you
Cliff diving off dictionary back spines
Finding grained wood eradication
This block has become this
A feeble attempt to feel my way onto paper
Driving my heart through this forest
To find its way back home

This boy ran into the forest at dusk. For he knew that big brother does not reside here.

The boy quickly became the trees. Standing tall above every terrestrial object at our feet. Accepting his guardianship over the noon lit sky. Loving the idea of growing into everything he is not, and everything he could be.

The boy melted into the mist, hovering over our lives. Chainsaw quiet, laying down his best guard. Seeping into the moisture of these lungs. Watering the soil of your next words. May you pick them with confidence.

The boy ruptured from the crust into the sky. Throwing up volcanic past times and reasons to stand on two feet. He needed to understand bravery. Exposing every thread in order to create opportunity.

The boy became moss. Overlooked and beautiful in his silence. Over viewing this place of fast talkers and truck stops. Studying footprints and shadows, falling quickly under the day light bright. Growing in places people may not notice.

The boy became soil. A simplicity few would acknowledge. A support in the storm of tomorrow. Break beat nervous for wake of forgetting. Fading slowly into the past.

The soil. Still present 50 years later. Growing crops. Building families. Giving life. Turning his bones into maps using his heart for ink. If only these people knew of the boy that gave his life for these lands.

The rain came in a frenzy
Of shattered storms
When he yelled at the gods
His voice shook the air
Quivered into an echo
Shape shifted into agreement
And fell silent

The sky an open apology
To his unanswered rage
Blue under its darkness
Absorbing every breathe he took
Wanting nothing more
Than to find praise in the fact that
We.. well we are still breathing

My joints have dislocated
Stretching out to find the truth
Finding empty bottles
Broken pencils from writing
and a whole lot of ghost poems  later

These times have left me with
Bones engraved by promises
Inscriptions I can't read
Dreams replayed on bad records
Grasping for relief of mind

Never underestimate

The gravity

That exist in the core of your tongue.

For the words of strangers

Have grounded me

Todays sun felt lonely
Drenched in isolation
Melting for acceptance
Draping light upon empty carcasses
Feeling the gravity of the space between

An embrace no one can fulfill
Without the proper tools
The days will be spent empty
Full of giving solar flares of its former self
Begging for a better understanding
feeling altruism at the core

My skin longs for your touch
A phenomenon so easily taken for granted
Given but a few minutes of your time daily
I will never forget how perfect your body felt against mine
The sun hides so sweetly here in the Arctic
Each day my body walks my skin
Searching for the horizon
That has this star tucked behind it

The wind swallowed the warning of blood red skies
Sunsets are shifted into nightmares about days evicting themselves before our arrival
Pretty
All balled up in herself
Earth delicately ballets around the sun
Lacking all modesty and full of beauty
All eyes have been on her
God writes stories on her existence

My heart my favorite sweater
Warm and worn on my sleeves
Zipping up my ribcage
to protect myself from the elements
Pockets to hide secrets of my past
Hooded to keep me hidden
from the bandits in my dreams
Mine to wear in the fall
Yours to borrow in the spring

Please
Strong arm rob me
Of all the precepts I hold against love
Take them away
Wash me clean
Show love
Instead of the prism I created in my mind

You grasped my hand with your cold fingertips attempting to give me all that you have. I took it all. I wanted it. I took the clock and made it rethink itself for ever thinking your days were labeled by numbers. Numbers are for math we both know math doesn't tell the difference between a heart beat and a morphine drip. So I held your hand to slurp the pain out of your veins. It didn't work. Because electricity doesn't pass through empty spaces. This heart doesn't conduct sparks. So I held your hand to feel yours. A spark so ready to burst out anywhere but here. No I'm not holding your hand for comfort. I am simply too unstable for that. I'm holding this flesh because we are one. A united force of perpetual movement. Pen to paper. Peanut butter to jelly. My life to your effort. Complete harmony. I hold this hand to ease the pain. To  just maybe steal some of it from your fingertips. I'll rob you of this ache so you can get some rest. Take deep breathes that come from wretched lungs. Ill hold my breathe for you. I hold this hand so just maybe I can breathe life. This life you created. I want to give it back. Any of it. All of it. I want the enjoyment received so freely, paid back in full. I hold this hand because that is not a possibility. The end of this rope is too frayed to tie knots. No solution to grace. Facing trials like moving mountains. The ones that fold over rivers. We will never make this what we intended it to be but I will hold this hand because you held mine. Led me through the puddles, through the storms, led me along Side of you. Greatness in its purest. I give back through this pulse. Fully flawed and not ready. Too young to be so wrecked. I hold your hand to fight back. To attack at the weak points. Fight against the odds. That one day maybe one day, we can see victorious celebration. Elated moments spend through our unity. Be in that space with me. I hold that hand because I refuse to give up.

The boys body was deflated
Eyes sunken from late night adulthood
Age 10 never felt so 45
Posture of regret
Mind wondering why hunger always hurts
Why food never comes easy
Face frostbitten with anger
Hands trembling
Wanting someone to finally hold them
Callused they are
From days of playing father
As he walked into my classroom
This student displays a holographic smile
Hangs his coat on the hanger
Wonders what it feels like
To be left out to dry

Main idea

Realize the importance of the stampede in your bones.
Know that this is not the end of the story. There are years of details still to be written about the craters you will cause on this earth. Long lasting impressions with extensive lab reports of how you changed the world.

Infer

Read between the lines of tomorrow. Know that it is not your best friend and will easily take your lunch money without a guilty conscience. So guard your intelligence, smile brightly and say excuse me in the hallway. For tomorrow will not know what hit it when you come through that door with a straight spine. Confidence is everything when compared to things that have not happen yet.

Problem and solution

Every moment can be your biggest problem if you let it be. The itch in our eyes tells us our brain has the power to resist self defeat. Bring me the solution that tells about the optimism in your footfall. Solving all the worlds problems with all of the education and none of the motivation. More of the issues with less time allowed to fix them. This education system is failing us.

Summary

Stand up and fight. Give every ounce you have left in your existence. Please understand you are going to be short changed in this life. You are the one with the power to gain knowledge. Read between the lines of your past. Don’t fall into the same learned helplessness. Let me help you with the solution. I promise the equation is within reach. You are not alone.