I don’t really know why I’m writing this, except somewhere, to someone, to no one, I owe an explanation.  I also deserve a small rant.  The past two months have stripped me of everything I believed to be true, and all my perceptions have become a gallery of laughing spectators. This whole big thing we call life is absolutely insane and has severely twisted ways of tripping us up and holding us carefully at the same time.  All I can say is that I got a second chance at it, and the blows keep coming harder and harder but all I can do is roll with them, because giving up is not an option any more, and there is beauty underneath all of the suffering, and an exuberance that emerges in survival.  Every day, we are fighting, fighting, fighting to survive.  I’m not the right person to say if it’s worth it or not, or to give advice how to swallow the pills we’re given, or how to show humility, or give forgiveness, or find a little corner of happiness to hold onto when we slip.  But I know there is a reason why I am here, why you are here, and why time runs in circles, and why things happen the way they do.  We are both slaves to destiny and masters of choice.  We have an innate bilateral symmetry that manages to be both.  Someone told me there are no do-overs, but there are don’t-do-agains.  I may not care for this person, or perhaps I love them wholly.  I think it could be both.  When these scraps of wisdom float by, grab them and put them in your core, no matter who says it. It could be an ex, a professor, your mom, a stranger-it doesn’t matter.  They are giving you a gift. Try it all, and if it doesn’t work, move on.  Hurt people and get hurt.  Go out of your way once, and if it doesn’t prove to be in your best interest, walk away.  Do what you want, but don’t destroy yourself getting there.  Just keep walking in the direction you feel is best.  Everything is difficult, and it will always be difficult.  That is why this life is so ******* magnificent.  Each day we can celebrate that we made it.  There is nothing more pure, or more raw, than moving forward and understanding that no matter how hard things are, and how ****** everything looks, if you just keep moving, and don’t look back in order to bring the past with you, it’s not horrible at all.  Each rough patch is just a foothold to climb on to.  We all have to be up to get down, and down to get up.  No matter what choices you’ve made, or the guilt you carry, know that tomorrow you can wake up and check that baggage at the door, and simply walk away with a list of things you can’t do over and things you won’t do again.

I dropped her off on the other side of the city
Lights blur past my window
And I lose focus
A different kind of space travel

I don’t know why I drove here instead
The house on Ellen

I had always imagined it as a sad thing
Keeping the shape of comfort
Waiting lonely for me to come back to it

The shattered window
And the holed walls
The singed edge crop-circle in the living room carpet

I broke in
The place smelled new
Like fresh paint
And good credit

I am not a vandal
But these places don’t feel like home
Unless something has been broken

Tonight
It was just a lock

My tires hugged the road like it didn’t want me to be there
Like hydroplaning without the rain
And every red light turned green
Just after I hit the breaks
Like a bully placing a hand on my chest and then saying
“Nah, I’m just ******* with you. Keep on going.”

There’s this place I sleep most nights
Only
I am still in the parking lot writing this
And I don’t want to go upstairs yet

By my parking place
Frogs ribbit
They sound content
Though they live along the water drainage line that seems like a stream
Only there are more flies and crickets to eat here

Home is a funny place
So I have decided this

Not that I believe in God but
I’ve decided
His hands are as big as the world
So big it is easy to feel like no one is holding you
Even when you're being hurled a million miles an hour

And maybe that is why I feel I have no home
I mean
Hold me like you are small too

Before,
Chaos reigned each day
The ground quaked with the weight
Of every fresh pursuit
Such debt I've yet to pay
For years of inane deeds
I explored man to excess
Until all thought turned towards lust
An insatiable beast that feeds
Upon its eager flesh
I craved things evil and benign
(For both I wished to feel)
Though now they are malignancies,
That no human eye could find
But just as storms will peak
And give way to idle skies
My story is now a fragment
- nothing more to seek
Though plateaus are pleasing
To walk upon at times
Extended paths exhaust the mind
Just as anything unceasing

Cigarette smoke and **** colored beer
Family is a suckerpunch epiphany
For people who’ve spent so much time
Saying they no longer had one

I swore forever
Mine was missing parts
This heart carved shells
Let’s swap odd shapes
Re-sew them and **** up our beats forever
Together

If the world is ending and you find me here
Kicking up the earth
Dirt scatter to the wind
Brown blood spatter
That’s just me trying to escape faster

Join me or leave me
But I got this beef with gravity
Like a severed head tetherball
This face senseless

You make me senseless

Numb to all the bad parts
In the same way salt makes everything sweeter
You make everything sweeter
Your salty skin
Sweet mouth
Sweet speak
Sweet laughter

Make me feel a little less stupid
About giving in to the movement
This mouth
This body
Like a knee-buckle kick to the gas pedal
And I peel out by accident

And you can still love me
Like family
I’ve slept in so many beds
And on so many floors
All so much more comfortable than my own

I swear I have bed bugs
Drinking my blood as I sleep
Getting drunk most nights
Them and me
Wake up itchy and fatigued
Like an allergy

But you
You smile like a hammock
Held up by strings hanging from your eye squint
To your dimples

Without speaking
“you can rest here tonight”

This is for the beds
For the people who say ouch when I hug them
For the family I thought I never had

For the appreciation that
Every moment of sadness
Means I’ve known so much joy
To feel that way

I’ve known so much joy
Thank you

Funny how we woke up in the morning
and pretended that tomorrow never happened—
strutted naked in mirrors celebrating our youth,
laughing, knowing suns and moons couldn’t do the same.

We borrowed our arms from the fridge
and peddled bicycles with bad breath—
trading war stories ‘cause we knew
if we came back alive
life would still be the death of us.

Forgive me for forgetting
The purpose of this poetry

I got lost in the prose
And diluted the feeling
Distracted enough
To not kiss you completely

I feel like a man who has eaten
Food with onions in it
Self-conscious syntax between my teeth

My tongue attempting to describe
All the things your lips are like

I forget that I am supposed to feel first
Then write

I have had many highs
And fooled around with lows
Felt nicotine’s sweet sigh
After mans savage blows
Caffeine runs my morning
And sedatives my night
But you came without warning
Of side effects to fight
Addiction is my sin
Though lately I've been true
Yet every single bone within
Is still a slave to you