Despite what even the most may modest say,
there is always an element of narcissism in art, the vanity of preference.
Be forewarned the parts of myself I want to show the most here are meticulously vain.
There is a whole lot of preference in my language.
In the way the carpenter is with his tools
I want to carve into you with some hardened truth.
Taking lines, forming letters, producing sounds and pictures

touching a place in people that exists
before words.
The closest thing to us being all
right here,
feet planted, on the same world.
Of course, then there is the sad reality of countries.  
Borders for what you belong to.
Tourist! Do not bother,
only the homesick may enter.

You won’t find this sort of thing on any map.
Pens aren’t so precise, our hands too clumsy
all our tools right down to the thumb incapable of enumerating glory.
What with all of it’s digits
tightly wound around it’s bigger stick
the only kind of glory that is heard of
simply because it kills.
But my kind of glory is dying to meet you
somewhere inside, under, between, around, outside,
after, during, before my language..

With that said,
Here is the mission statement;

I pledge to be right with this moment.
To cast myself out the furthest a mind can carry one in any given
instant and bring back more of the goodness that serves
instead of white noise that moves nothing
or clutter that just makes it hard to move.
As I realize we are objects being moved by all that is around us,
for instance;
thinking of the same person every time you enter a particular room.
Romance does happen to those who know how to look.
You do not look by containing anything with separation.
The walls must heave and collapse like lungs
because my body is mostly dead things that are just now
learning.

Will is a wish that your birth charges you with. There is a quartet of letters given to each generation, a formless trinket tossed around the human flame like some universal kumbaya that always had a face. We could learn a lot from where were aren’t if we let ourselves imagine it. Dreams of what it looks like when I poke out the eyes of my love. Nothing begging something, the body of a bonfire song. Is it not each flick of the tongue? Is it not a federation of sounds finally reaching accord? Hurt like hell to learn when I should stop asking questions.

A room.
Need to displace to move.
Arrangement of places you’ve been
******* you in like some Kansas twister that swept you off your porch
just after you open the door for the first time today.
I awake from a dream.
I don’t remember what was said.
Clumsily laying letters over felt footsteps.
A semblance of something too big to tell you.
I cannot move it but I’ll say whatever to mean it.
A body subject to the wind
ringing against the world, accenting the edges in sharp cries
like a dinner bell that never rests.
How’s the sky taste Major?
You think Bowie really cared for karate?
Only superficially because in some perverse way it was a form of art.
A Darwinian heyday exhibition for the human condition.
I’m alive *******, let’s keep it that way.
In every way.
Don’t want to be too narrow.
Need some space to move.
The past that comes to us now,
first came from our future.
Even the ones that wilted under the shadow of satisfaction.
Even the objects flowing through this wicked light show of so much contained in three tiny axis’
Please chart your love according to x y and z without dimensionally reducing the picture.
Don’t worry darling I’ll wait, remember it’s there we first met.

I still find myself
feeling your skin
in the spaces between
bed-sheet creases

and if
missing you is like
swerving into
oncoming traffic,
then tonight
I’m sleeping
in the road.

You had to be me
talking **** about Aristotle
then finding him in the poem on the next page.
We had been talking about how rhetoric makes students of analysis
feel like they live in some intelligent matrix.

You had to be me
to know that was very topical at that time in my life.
To know what wild bewilderment meant
at it’s actual size.
Two eyes, about the size of spare change, must of been going crazy,
but I couldn’t know unless I was you.

You had to be me
to feel as if you were enclosed in open space
feeling simultaneously,

empty objects come to life.
Tugging at the connections in mind
I was bound to make because of where
those same mechanical hands
had already fostered me.

Making me think something like god
could be construction lights over my exit sign
creating a tunnel out of the kind of darkness
night tells tired protagonists
exists to make you stronger.

You had to be me
to know that strength is a metric of preparedness,
and preparedness is a metric of memory.
I forgave mine.
I only know an instant,
the past shrinks under the weight of my experience
like a shivering body
under a bed sheet.

My strength dreams quiet fists and
sweats from voracious hips.
Unlike the stories,
the night has made me a tender man.
Unlike the stories,
that’s ok.
I’m dying just as fast as any hero with much more romance.

When I was little, every Sunday I’d go to Church
I was a child drunk off of fairy tales and day dreams
And I loved the idea that we could go to heaven when we died
And the pastor looked me in the eyes and said
"God is with you."
And like any 5 year old would, I believed him

My family bowed our heads and prayed before every meal
But halfway through dinner they’d start yelling
And I remembered what the pastor told me
So I covered my ears and asked God to make it stop
But I felt all alone
And that’s why I’m an atheist

At school the kids would pick on me
I didn’t understand why they didn’t want me as a friend
And I prayed to God that they’d stop
But I also prayed for them too
Because I was a good Christian
And good Christians love their enemies
But nothing changed
And that’s why I’m an atheist

I remember the first time my mom hit me
One time during a fight
She told me I was stupid and worthless
And after a while I started believing what she said
I started to wonder
How could someone so hateful
Call them self a Christian?
And that’s why I’m an atheist

I prayed that God would make me beautiful
Because I wasn’t skinny
And I knew I wasn't good enough for that boy I liked
But every time I looked in the mirror, I felt the same
So I stopped kneeling in prayer
And started kneeling in front of the toilet
And that’s why I’m an atheist

I haven’t prayed in 5 years now
I have only one request of God if he exists
That he end the pain right now
But nothing happens
So once again, I will have to do things on my own
And standing so close to the edge
I think about how I used to love the idea of life after death
But now I’m obsessed with the thought that when I do
They’ll be nothing coming after
And I can have eternal sleep
And that’s why I’m an atheist

I'm not out to project my own down going.
I love him whose soul is fickle despite chance
As the world's retort.
When they told me how you got cut
I bought enough drugs to put monster under
and celebrated for the both of us.
They weren't my limbs that were lost
but I reached for and sprinted towards
a wholesome grief
and couldn't carry it all.
Took me a month to even talk
Poetry sounds so selfish
When you are needed to help another walk.
The first night,  a friend had called
Said, "Get it all out
For tomorrow you have to be strong."

Sorry ain't enough and my sorrow's only purpose
is as a reminder for what needs to be done
And to forget about any lesser want.
My darling, I can't know without losing my leg
In a hit and run
But I know now you wear the same smile as before
My god how could I have known something
With such a fragile frame
Could be so tough.

Most folks, myself, a poet included,
Speak of greater reasons
And ponder tragedy's meaning.
Like us,
She knows she doesn't deserve all she is made to
Suffer.
And I've found the greater ungodly glory
Most folks are looking for
In her unbroken joy.