"I'd like to speak
like I'm not struggling,"
he said quietly, as if he
were the only person in
the room who cared to
hear.

"But here's the truth,
I am struggling, and
I'm fighting, and at
times, I'm drowning."
And as he looked out
the window, rain
beat against the pane,
and he felt oddly free.

I realized,
After a good amount of time
I don't know you at all
And I'd rather die
Than I agree to what you ascribe to

What's worse than feeling
Betrayed by those you thought
Saw things your way?

Death to those most innocent.

I'm listening to Chance the Rapper
And there's some whimsy in these veins
Some
Give me a weeken' of sleepin'
I think I can come around after that

Hashtags
Yolos
Swags

Take a tire iron to the side of my face
My mind's lost its wheels

All I want to do is *******
Just to feel
******* to self-sabotage
Explosions of regret
And possible highs
of Seratonin and Dopamine

Let's get high

It's weird
When I was a kid
My goal was to make everyone
Stop smoking
Seeing that white puff
Trail from the mouths of adults
All I wanted was for them to realize what they were doing
The un-healthy choices they were making

And now
all I think about
Is buying a pack
Just to cut the
Edge off of
whate'er
the ****
I'm feeling
Keyholed poet

See what I did there?
It was an on-purpose accident

Am I really meant for priesthood?
Is that something that's in my life?
I mean, what, 4+ years solo?
Dates in between,
and ladies, thank you
For the times where you remind me
I'm worth a ****
Or an hour of your time.
But for the most part, I'm solo

My mom, God Bless her, has been single
Dates in between
For 7+ years
Maybe I'll catch up.
Maybe I'll outpace her

She sent me her will the other day
You're looking at the guy in charge of her life
Should she be unable to make decisions.
Well, I guess you're not looking
You're reading, some half-assed-therapy foreplay
Ladies, love me, I'm a weird, depressing sack of ****.
Aww, poor baby
Maybe
Pick yourself up off the ******' floor and make something of yourself
God willing, there's something
I just gotta put on some different
Lenses
These are getting dark
Maybe I need to drop off the map
And find a cleaner
Do they have those for rose lenses?

Cataracts in her eyes told her differently
But the world continued to lie
"My dear, my dear
The world is so much better when you can see;
all you have left to do is cry."
For a good time, she believed
What she heard
Her blindness meant she was lacking
That she was lesser
She fell to self pity
Fell to self ruin
And on the brink of despair
She tried to knock on Death's door.

She's lucky Death doesn't like solicitors

Instead she walked back to herself
From spirit back to flesh
And with a gasp of life, she realized how precious
The things around her were
Not the "things"
Not her possessions
But the people
The life she can give
And that people give to her
She has cataracts, sure
But she sees so much more.

I hurt in the most sincere of ways.
I'm struggling to keep composure
And to keep the ripples
I've created
from doing what they do

APA hates American Typewriter,
14-point font,
and loves that double space,
But as a writer, I have permission to dismiss.

Topsy-Turvey,
Backwards motion.
I once, angry, ****** in ocean,
And drank seawater with mayonnaise.
I freaked dolphins and made crater waves.

X-ray
Baybay
Snuffleupagus
Pay to play
Win the day
Ruffle-up-opus

Eye-spy
Night by
Night by
Nigh by
The swiftest hand
Comes night by
Weirdly flowing blind sty.

Pierce my hands for understanding.

I
"I never thought," said
She awaiting responses
I cared none at all
II
Bring about all change
Said the women in the hats
Voting for switched thoughts
III
Irreversible
Unexplained, mispoken thoughts in
Slightly elder speech
IV
Steampunk, take old junk
Make them into something grand
The robotic hand
V
If I were asian
I'd eat my cultural food
In Panda Express
VI
Ironic, lightly
Grazing lions on the grass
The Antelope hunt
VII
Haikus for all yous
Travelling down the dirt roads
Win Sobriety
VIII
**** jokes take folks and
Make them into prudes, so rude,
But I keep joking
IX
I'm at nine, can't stop
I'll keep writing till the drop
Of the pen runs dry
X
I pay no heed to
All the words said by Sifu
I am poor student

Do you want the long or the short?
Quite the odd sort,
But yes, I was there, though I hardly knew thee.

Your language; beautiful
Your mouth
Moved flawlessly
And with each and every word
I fell deeper in love with you

You asked me how I enjoyed myself
In the most basic translation
I had the time of my life

I just wish you were in it.

His breath tasted like ash
His hands felt coarse
The softness that once pervaded his personality
Gave way to a jagged precipice that was him incarnate
Why treat someone right if you have someone on the side?

Everything that I once recognized as beautiful
Now burns up in the wreckage that is his smoldering BMW
Maybe that ***** in his bed will get the message sooner than I did.
With a strike of a match, and about a gallon and a half of gas,
I go places,
But he won’t be able to.

Gunshot
Bloodbot
Food-bourne illness
setting rot
Taking time to *******
and thinking of the give and take
and give and take
to *******
Masticate on words of rhyme
and with beer and lime
take the appropriate amount
of lemon juice
and squeeze directly into the
all-seeing eye.

With no fear of reconciliation
and no idea for recollection
and no money for the collection plate
I'm left at odds with the fact
that I used *******
three times in this
jambalaya of words.

Gadzooks

I take a look home,
The title itself it quite ambitious
But unbelievably apt,

That's where the poems lie

The stars I follow all reside there
Burning with the brightness that only
Can be brought with proper wordplay
And thoughts most fine.
Sentence structures verging on infinite
or broken
Or infinitely broken
Dot the websphere
And tingle the senses

What was once a lack of ambition
Becomes the opposite
Just by being "home"
I can feel the poetic energy coursing
I've yet to read,
But I cannot wait to engorge my mind
With the beauty, eloquence, and raw-ness
That is interspersed within the typed thoughts
Of writers who just want to share their voice

I love being home
And, with my time there,
I will journey inside the minds of others
I have been away for far too long

He sees a way out for himself
| But he won't take it  |
|   He never takes it    |
|             Never             |
|                No                |
|             Never             |
|   He never takes it    |
| But he won't take it  |
He sees a way out for himself

A home is called a house
Unless it's found within a heart
House-heart
Heart-house?

What's the equivalent to arson
to a heart, son?
Said pops to the squatty flour-child.

Slow insanity is better than speeding.
No tickets that way, he says to himself.
What's to quote, Shakespeare or shaken
spears?
Romans put their enemies head on pikes.
Mike's Hard Lemonade is like the adult Kool-Aid.

We take everything.
We take nothing
but
everything.

Writing is getting sloppyer
as ded sed won day
**** te frunch an' all dey sed.

Sanity slips in the house
The heart-house
The house-heart
Sanity slips