How can her smile be so bright
While her heart is so dark?
How can there be a twinkle in her eyes
While her body is full of marks?

Dearest Max,
Handing out the words like christmas presents
Poor, yet rich in both presence and spirit

Oh Rudy,
Giving bread that you had once stolen
Confident, yet reserved under the Book Thief's gaze

My dear,
You're presenting me with dilemmas
Don't you know?
Reminding me of literature is not the wisest play
When my heart lives inside these pages

like a redheaded tiger
i too have stripes
red ones on my wrists
thighs
forearms

like a tiger
i can stand the fire
red hot welt
on my freckled forearm

like a tiger
i have claws
they are
silver
i cut at
that which harms me -
me

I have had this by my side
Since my days of youth
A very valuable priceless gem
I'd like to share with you

It's not made of silver
Copper or shiny bronze
But of the purest gold
You yourself can pass along

It doesn't really matter
What your race or creed
Or even to what god
It is you bend your knee

If it is we all did this
We would change the face
Of the world we live in
The entire human race

Words spoken by Jesus
That hit the vain of truth
No need to be a Christian though
For it to speak to you

For lack of a better name
It is called the golden rule
"Do unto others as you
would have them do to you"

I know that it sounds simple
And yet it's so profound
That this little gem of gold
Could turn the world around

Like I said before
I've held this since my youth
It was given to me to give back freely
As I pass it on to you

If I could, I would take all your worries as my own
It wouldn't be too large a task
Worry is my bedfellow, the cold sweat keeping me awake at night
So, a little more cannot make much difference
If I could, I would have you hand over your worries like armfuls of melting snow
They would fall out of your arms and melt along mine, becoming sweet, vaporous, spirits
Place these heaping piles of worry into a small place in my heart
Create an eternal snowman within me
Not out of wild obsession or ulterior incentives
But because I would never wish worry on anyone,
*Least of all you.

My scars show some type of
Calculated insanity,
An organized sadness
That has the potential to eat
At the flesh of my thoughts.

My scars show some type of
Undefined insecurity,
Repetition proves this
Like science- is that all we are?

My scars do not own me
though, they speak of adolescence,
and the unbearable
hollowness that aches, a dull knife:
“The human condition”

Are we not so hopeless?
My bones cry out in objection
I should think not, they say
No, my scars do not own me, they

exist as a part of
a whole, made of bones and tissue
and something else- striving
to be heard among the clamor
of waking each morning

Something that rumbles deep
and is heard and listens when the
rain kisses my forearm-
each glorious drop is a bell
ringing deliverance

“Before I go”
The words that oozed down from my lips to the floor
On the last day I felt the warm progress of your sleep
Standing naked among all the eyes of dawn’s early flowers
****** to death by passerby’s and
I empty all that hangs from my intestines unto these dry hands
A distant fake glimpse is all I get from being a dull **** to the appalling petals of your youth
Hopeless and desolate…waiting for the rain
My ugly mirror ball devouring the inches of a developing a soul and slowly the fractured stains strangling my interior
Have all been spent
The slow motion of your breath up against me
In doses I have taken the cheap blue masquerade
From your lips
I have stolen the thoughts which deliver sour milk to the
Icon babies of yesterday
That apocalyptic look-alike glue makeup on your face has kissed me naked in sunlight
Our figures loose their beginning and end
The fascination of pushing my sleep drenched hands into shallow water merely putting you to sleep
What if the world enjoyed the twist of your body breaking into the mirror deep?
Ascending across the wet brush strokes of some painters dreams
In my eyes your smile
It was the very last thing