Back home,
There is a boy
With red hair, freckles,
And eyes the shade of blue
His mother calls "lady killers."

He's colorblind;
At least enough to believe
In jellyfish.
His father builds houses
With a rib-less heart
The boy calls home.

His mother,
Sews trust with her spine.
And thirty years later
They still find love
In the lonely isles of
The local Laneco.

His teacher says
He needs a pen pal,
So after school
He writes to me:

"Hi, how are you."
"I'm fine, thanks, and you?"

And then he asks me
What it's like to be
"Grown up"
And just how many
Stars I've scarred
With nothing but the rusty
Edge of my name.

So I fold the
Envelope of this
Crinkled heart into a letter
Of tattered Bibles
From hotel drawers of
Lost loves and dead friends
And find the courage
To tell him what
Being a man means.

I tell him:
We call it growing up
Because boulders
Always roll down.
It's refusing CPR
For every time you drown
In your own pride.

It's loving a girl
For every time she tried.

Tried to
Convince your tunnel vision
That her body is not a cave.
That respecting a woman
Is more important
Than how well you pave
Your parking lot heart.

Shallow like a baking pan.

This is an apology.

For every man
Who ever thought a woman's body
Is the only temple worth praying to.
Making four leaf clovers
From petals of roses
Trying to get lucky.

I know it's not lovely,
To kiss someone who
Is so constantly
Full of *******.

And I'll admit it.
I'm not yet
Where I need to be
But I thank God
That I'm no longer
Where I use to

See I'm used to
Smoking way too many
*** scenes to know that
There is not enough
Alcohol in the world
To ever clear my mind.

And I have caused way
Too many Prozac commercials
To know that there is
No effective dosage
For this disorder
Of indecency.

To know that it is
No measure of good health
To be well adjusted
To a sick society
Of mechanical men
Always worried about
Who and when they're going
To plug into.

So I tell him:

You are not a robot,
A computer, or a program.
And your choices are the only
Thing that will ever make you a man.

So strap up your boots,
Bury the ashes,
Shake the dust,
And dandelion your
Heart in every
Direction of home.

But most importantly,
Go easy on the ladies;

Because
The older I get and
More I learn about myself
The more I'm writing
With my eraser
Than with anything else.

My mom
Tells me I'm a gift.

She says love
Is what keeps the atoms
In you and I
Is the moment
She caught my
Father's eye
Is the day
My grandfather died
With a candy kiss on his cheek
She had never tasted something so sweet.

When we were little
We played kickball,
The ground is lava
And hide-and-go-seek.
As I grew I knew most days,
It was harder to find myself;
Let alone somebody else.

And I have been around
Enough center city playgrounds
To see the rich
Pump every bit of spare change
In their veins fighting
A cancer that they
Never learned to put in their past.
To see the poor
Wage wars with themselves
Trying to pick up
Way too much,
Way too fast;

Nobody really knows how to make love last.

So put your prism your heart
Beneath the moonlight.
Refract the wavelengths
Of your wonders
Into ROYGB-eautiful like the sea,
It took a lot of jellyfish to let
people see through me.

And even more mirrors
To find a place I was comfortable
Praying in.

Fraying in doorways
Where I learned hope,
Is looking both ways
On a one way street
Cause it can be so easy to thank God
While you still have bread to eat.

I have never prayed
So hard for a healthy meal
Than the days I remember
The heart is a muscle;
And sometimes the only
Thing we need
Is to "work it out."

And I know that some days,
My doubt hangs my
Smile like Jesus Christ
I never quite learned
How to bleed right.

But if there's one thing
I found from cleaning
The crosses out of the
Empty hallway of my character
Is that you haven't experienced loss
Until you've held two outstretched arms
For years waiting for your innocence to come back.
Nothing, weighs more than the guilt of your past
And nothing throws punches
Faster than the ghost of who you used to be.

And I know it's hard
To stop looking for yourself
Under every bed you
Left nightmares in
And I know it's hard
To be comfortable
In your own skin

But sometimes bars
Aren’t the only thing
That builds a cage
And sometimes
The only way to live
With yourself
Is to stop digging
Your own grave.

You can spend years
Listening to morticians
And never get grounded.
Surrounded by the
Square roots we all share,
By the same air,
We've all got to learn to let go.

To learn that
Holding your breath
Has never been how
Living things
Learn to
Grow

Hysterical.

They hate us,
when they also talk
about destinies.
People are fond
of breaking hearts
then fixing it.

We will build castle
out of the bricks
they threw at us.
Love is beyond
any beautiful scenery
in the world.

Never let go
of the things
for the unknown.
They have hatred,
we have love;
we are love.

Time doesn't do anything
But make you numb
To some of the moments
You felt
The most.

Sometimes it's okay
to swallow, choke on the numb;
another drink, please.

I am very numb
I wish I could feel something
To know I'm human

lovely silence brushes over me
in ribbons of forgotten promises
and the wrong kind
of contentment