They tell me

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
but I hate you.
Walking under a ladder is bad for the soul
but I like to.
Don't break a mirror you'll have bad luck
I broke them all so I could no longer see.
Don't do drugs
Why?
I was hoping it would **** this monster
in my bloodstream.
Don't inject
I'm dependent on everything else.

Don't cry
but I don't paint my face.

Flowers are growing
on my body where your hands
touched me last time.

I am a collection of scars.
Each tells a story.
Some from a childhood of laughter and a carefree attitude,
others from lonely nights in the shadows with anxiety riddled thoughts pressing down on me;
as I pressed down on the blade.

Heal thyself poet
let words be your salve
let loose your longing
set free your sadness

Let them run wildly
over salt-damp parchment
Let them wail at the moon
and weep silently in corners

Throw them to the wolves
that your pain may sustain them
For it has nourished you
long enough

Let it all go.
Let it wrench from your soul
with glorious abandon
Let it scream from your lungs
Let it bleed through your skin

It matters not that you are broken,
that your scattered pieces hold no form
Only that you are here.

So write, dear poet.
Heal thyself.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

it
takes
a lot of
desperation
dissatisfaction
and
disillusion
to
write
a
few
good
poems.
it's not
for
everybody
either to
write
it
or even to
read
it.