I’ve always loved
The brutal honesty
That comes with winter.
It is, finally, every part of
Creation laid bare.
The trees become black silhouettes
Against a grey sky,
The sky is granted permission
To release all of its fury,
And members of mankind
Are brought face to face
With one another
As they try to hide
From the cold winter winds.
Even in its cruelty,
Winter drives us together,
And that, in this world,
Is a kindness.

I can't help but wonder what you will remember of me.
That's every man's fate, isn't it?
To become a scrap of detail that snags or escapes a stranger's memory,
Stuck in a grate in the floor where it fluttered, discarded,
Or lodged in a permanent frame, dusted off every so often
to be a reference point
or to be a defining moment.
It isn't up to us how we are remembered -
- what is a rainbow to the blind but a refreshing mist on the skin?
And that's why we obsess: we have no control,
hard as we try, contour, conceal, and coordinate.
And that never stops us from trying.
But for a moment, consider this superpower that others will never have:
You can remember them.
You can't escape yourself, but you can remember them.
Will you remember them kindly? Will distaste be tattooed in your mind?
The things that are going to happen will happen.
And we can act according to how we want to be remembered.
But we cannot change it.
But our remembrance cannot be changed either.
It's a little spiteful optimism, isn't it?

“”Hope” is a thing with feathers...”
Only, I don’t think it is.
See, feathers mean it’s a flighty thing
And belie its true belligerence.
Hope may yet have feathers,
But forget not the claws.
Hope is a thing with brambles;
Hope has a tendency to stick in crops.
This little burr adheres to the underside,
Never noted unless poked.
It clings tightly in the smallest gap
And can’t be ignored once evoked.
Now, I grant you, Hope may seem rather rare,
But lay on your stomach at night; you’ll find that it’s there.

If you'll be the moon,
I will play the sea.
Wherever you go,
Love, call back to me.

I have found,
You can endure anything,
If you have to.

At first,
You think that you can’t make it until the next minute,
But,
Suddenly,
The next minute is upon you,
            then the next,
                     and the next.

At an agonizingly slow rate,
Those minutes will turn into years.

This is how you survive.

We are so quick to blame the familiar.
Once fault is laid,
then the matter may as well be settled,
and it becomes someone else’s responsibility
to atone for our faults.
After all, there is nothing so unfamiliar to a man
as his own self.

Growing old is gracefully (or not)
accepting the passage of time.
Generally speaking,
you have no choice.

Growing up is being slapped
in the face with the understanding
that you must be the hero
you have been waiting on
your entire life.

Growing up and growing old -
there's a difference,
but both will break your heart.

Let me tell you a story.

When I was young, I was convinced one of two things would happen:
I would either die young or I would live ignorant.
And I was allowed to believe it.
I was careful, avoiding snakes, spiders, dirt, human beings, love.
I horded books, enough to give myself a doctorate in any field.
And I was called paranoid. Idiotic. A fool. Freak. Doomed.
But, I kept living anyway. Destroyed, most of the strings in me cut.
But living. And I was allowed to believe it was a gift.

Of course, this is a fiction, lie, metaphor, but the truth stands.
Children are not born to be afraid. They are taught.
Fear is conditioned. Rewarded. Considered a virtue.
The wildness of youth is tromped upon by cleat-clad "caution."
Gone are bright eyes, reckless smiles, heads thrown back. Life.
Dull glances, insurance, cul-de-sacs, and bitten tongues reign. Fear.
And fear is one of the deepest scars we can inflict upon another.

This story is not mine, though I have been the one to tell it.
But I am human. An ocean. A fault line. A candle facing a storm.
This tale, in some chisled fascet, mirrors my own.
And it will continue as long as I draw breath.

If I ever to do anything to excess,
I hope that it will be kindness
And not its antithesis.

You wonder why you feel chained to your life - trapped in your circumstances. You just want to go, and you don’t know why.

I know why. The answer is easy when you’re not the question.

It’s because something long ago and far away has gotten its roots into your bones and you know - you just know - it will never let go.

-"What changed?"

-I did.

See her? With the impeccable taste in fashion?
She's top of her class in calculus. You probably didn't know that.
See him? With the fearless glint in his eye?
He's studying science, but he has the soul of a poet. Tests lie.
See her? Buried behind a stack of books nine tall and three deep?
She's terrified that she'll get a B, because, to her, that's failing.
See him? Museum-quality doodles and red ink decorate his papers.
He'll be president one day, if he can find something that he loves.
See me? No, actually you probably don't see me. Why would you?
I've managed to dangle from the rim of the outskirts of life so far.
Someone once told me that seeing gifts is a gift itself. Maybe it's true.
But, didn't they ever tell you that geniuses doubt themselves, too?
That we doubt ourselves most of all?

It seems that the universe
Exacts a curious revenge.

As our hearts are broken,
We are being repaid for
Every single heart we
Shattered.

You see,
Revenge is a comfort
When we are in the right,
But what if we're not?

Pain plus pain equals agony,
Not happiness.

Pain has an infinite life cycle.
You will fall before it yields.

Oh Darling,
If we're all sleepwalking together,
Then it looks like we're awake.
And I've been sleeping for oh so long,
I'm ready to wake up next to you.

Three years ago today,
We were strangers,
And I almost wish
We still were.
Almost.

Two years ago today,
We said goodbye
To each other.
And I haven't seen you
Since.

One year ago today,
I realized the lesson
To be learned from
One year of loving
You.

Today,
I thought about you,
And "almost" finally
Doesn't hurt anymore.
Finally.

-“Tell me a secret”
-I love you. “I don’t have any.”

I've told this lie before.
Every time, you believed me.

Love is a lot of things:

A feeling.
A passion.
A choice.
A revolution.
A voice.
A creation.
A language.
An action.
A sacrifice.
An interaction.
A crime.
An abstraction.
A blessing.
An affirmation.
A life.

And, it's just one word.
Imagine what we could do with a thousand more.

The biggest struggle
I have with the concept
Of death
Is that one day I’ll die
And leave some
Piece of writing unfinished.

The struggle
of being
a modern day prophet
is that you are ******
to see all of the things
that others can’t
and you can never
explain them
to anyone else
so no one else
understands
why you’re so sad.

The kingdom rejoices
The prince has found
A maiden to marry.
But she wasn’t the first.
We all know the story
About the innocent
Young girl the prince
Fell in love with and
He is a hero because
She is telling the story.
She doesn’t know better.
He loved another, you see,
And she who would have been queen
Gets shuffled off to somewhere quiet.
Told to never tell
And left to obscurity.
That was their mistake.
Princes are born,
Born into privilege
Born into power
Born into position
But queens are made.
Made from steel
Made from secrets
Made from smoldering ashes.
They are royalty of themselves
In whatever domain
And they rule.
The point of this tale is:
The kingdom threw away a princess
But they made a queen.
Long may she reign.

If life is a war,
Remind me again which side
I am fighting for.

Maybe there's no stopping it -
The anthem of the bored and lonely.
Muted melodies of drumming fingertips
And repetitive rhythms of eyes tracing
The same paths along cracked ceilings.

The same dregs in the *** for three days.
My phone battery's been dead for two.
We're all just looking for something.
And you can't find it in a ceiling.
But that doesn't stop us from looking.

People don't bare their souls-
but books do.
And-just for a little while-
when I'm buried neck deep in their spines,
I don't feel so lonely anymore.

I am looking for what's left of my broken heart
In the space between four and five thousand rpms.

There's a dark chocolate Milky Way in one hand,
And a noisily rattling gear shift under the other,
A steering wheel under my left knee, espresso
In my cupholder, and my right foot on the gas.  

As if tearing my way through the entirety of Virginia
With streetlamps illuminating tear-stained cheeks
And a voice gone silent from too much screaming
And eardrums dysfunctional from too-loud music
Can unmake the pain riding in my passenger seat.

I already know the answer, but I like playing dumb.

I know I'm just running; I know this is not healing.
But, for right now, it's helping. It's a local anesthetic.
It stifles memories of misplaced trust and heartache
And things that I know were not my fault but I blame
Myself for anyways. You. I blame myself for you.  

So here I am, world illuminated by insomniac headlights,
Looking for the face of God in a Christ-haunted world.

Dear One,
I don't have much time,
Just a random assortment of heartbeats,
But there's something I must tell you.

Love.

It's a noun.
It can be a thing.
Or a feeling.
A flush of the cheeks
Or a steady hand.
Or a quiet understanding.
But, one thing is true.
It's worth living for.
I promise.

Love.

It's a pronoun.
It can be a name.
You are "Love."
They are "Love."
Either way,  
Committed for life.
Desperate and Chaotic.
But, sometimes, it is the only clarity.

Love.

It's a verb.
It can be imperative.
I mean it as a plea.
Love something.
Someone.
Love something so much your heart hurts
With the enormity of it.
Love the sun. Love the stars.
Love the flaws. Love the blessings.
Let love consume you.
You won't regret it.
I promise.

Oh, Dear One,
I am old.
Even if I have thousands of days left
When my heart will still be beating.
I have loved, and
I am young, but I am already ancient.

Life is a question that,
sometimes,
Only eternity can answer.

The mistake was the look
     -He won't see-
     -It's just a glance-

So I looked.

And he saw
     -Caught my eye-
  I looked away.

Too late.

I can see his eyes
     When I close mine.

I am betrayed
     -Not by love lost-
     -Not by him-

But by that look.

Here's to ridiculous happiness.
To laughing until your sides hurt
and not knowing why.
Here's to the reckless happiness
that laughs in spite of pain.
And absentminded happiness,
laughing at nothing.
Here's to joy.
May it always find you.

They're the ones who live poetry.
You know who I'm talking about.
The ones whose motion is meter,
Those whose words are lyrical,
Whose actions are epic verses,
Whose thoughts must be rhyme,
Those to whom heaven is likened,
The ones that you can't help but
Fall in love with. Those people.

I am in love with Autumn
(a scandalous affair, really),
Because, you see, Autumn
Is married to old man Winter.

Autumn, ever elegant, dons
Her best calico raiment
And dances and whirls
Across the mountains,
Shimmering orange, yellow, red.
The entire world bountiful underfoot.

Even the heavens are in love with her,
Giving her cobalt skies.
Kissing her lips with sunshine,
And caressing her cheeks with rain.

Her mouth a radiant sliver of the moon,
Teeth glinting like the stars above.
Life is her joy and so she dances
Before her jealous husband
Can secret her away.

The wind catches her hair,
Wishing it's turn to dance with her.
But, just for a season,
It's my turn.

We were a pair of whirling stars,
Hurtling around a supernova
And wheeling above planets.
You see, stars form in pairs,
And wander the universe
In a fumbling dance.

-Until-

They collide with
Something else and are ripped

-Apart-

Our seams split.
Our fingers strain and scrabble.
Trying to keep a grip on our other half
Until gravity takes hold
And
Flings
Us
To
Separate
Sides
Of
The
Universe

We search and search for them.

But, we are ever apart.
We rise and fall and collapse,
Our last light shining the brightest
In a last homing beacon.

-Until-

Human beings,
Born from dust,
Stars in our veins,
Weave together.

Stardust of one calling to the stardust of another.

Remembering the time
When we skated across the universe
In each other's arms.

Once upon a time,
I spiraled
Into madness and
Enjoyed
Myself so much
That I
Never bothered
To climb
Out.

She held a hurricane
inside her heart.

And yet,

They wondered
why it rained.

In a world of puddles,
Dare to be an ocean.

Even exploding stars wear strings of pearls.

Holding a conch shell to my right ear,
I can hear the whisper of the sea.

The thing the shell wants more than anything.

It makes me wonder,
If you were to listen to my heart,
What would you hear?

Would it be your name whispered
over and over and over again
or would it be something else?
What would I hear if I listened to yours?
If the sound tells what we want most.

One word and we pause,
        Hanging suspended in space.
        Limbs the very picture of elegant restraint.
Two heartbeats before release.
        The tension is shattered.
        Feet once more on the ground.
Three bodies moving together,
        En pointe, flying as one.
        Somewhere, I became the tulle of my skirt.
Four limbs is all we have.
        Our limbs and our hearts,
        And the dance already owns them.
Five positions we move through,
        Having already etched them
        On the pillars of our memory ages ago.
Six minutes the music endures
        And we along with it,
        Transfixed in time by tradition and passion.
Seven criticisms we each weather,
        Holding our breath,
        Grace comes with a hefty price.
Eight beats and we move once more
        -Folding and unfolding-
        Balanced on a knife's edge, we can breathe again.

Once upon a time,
I knocked on the gates
Of paradise and asked for a secret.
Saint Peter said to me,
"Live boldly, youngling.
Evening stretches on
Longer than the daylight."

Awake again, I smiled
Because I had indeed
Been given a secret.
But it wasn't what old Saint
Pete had told me.
The secret was
That I already knew
And I smiled anyway.

The day I turned 18,
I took a look at my life.
Searched out every little
Thing that I didn't like,
And cut it out.
Some of those things
-Like fear-anger-hesitation-
Kept trying to come back,
So I took little things,
A ring, an elastic, a piece of string,
And I used them to remember.
I could have gotten a tattoo.
But I didn't.
Because, I won't need to remember forever.
One day, I will win.
I won't need to remember to be brave,
To be kind, to be passionate.
One day, I will be all of those things.
I can shuck off those training wheels
Because my life itself will be the reminder.

I watch the sun and long for the moon,
Endure the night and crave the dawn.
Their eyes were watching God,
With their minds upon themselves.
Angels newly fallen from heaven,
Climbing onto a shelf as ornaments.
We scream for progress in one breath,
Then lament the past with the next.
Give me your burden and your blame
So I can pass it along to someone else.
Give a man a fish to feed him for a day,
Watch him steal one tomorrow morning.
Go with the flow, take the easier road.
Get what you want in the moment, but
Never satisfied for longer than a heartbeat.
Take no risks-life under an outcropping
As wilder spirits dance in the rain.

In loving memory of Kurtz's last disciple:

Welcome to the circus,
A three-ringed show in
The center of the dark.
In our multifoliate arrogance,
We seek out a familiar face
And forget to turn on the light.
Fumbling by touch,
Grasping at straws,
When faced with the truth,
We crave the lie instead.
Each and every one of us
The architects of our own catastrophe.

Two heartbeats in.
One scratching tempo out.
Living like we're immortal.
Fingertips scribbling out history.
Ink blots on cream paper.
So desperate for memory.
We settle for stains in place of words.

Maybe one day you'll let me
Trace the constellations of band-aids
On your patchwork heart.

Maybe one day I'll tell you
The story of the ink on my skin.

Maybe you'll give me the words
You want to forget.
Maybe I'll tell you why I need to remember.

Maybe.

Heaven and hell in five letters.

If you were a poem,
I'd hold you real tight,
Crumple your fragile edges
In a white-knuckled grip.
I'd study you by candlelight
And your secrets quietly allege.

If you were a poem,
Would you even be mine?
Would such a lovely thing
Belong in my desperate hands?
Your heart could contain answers,
But I'm still questioning.

If you were a poem,
Could I ever be brave enough
To share the wonder you see
With the world you love?
The thing is that you were the
Selfless one; it was never me.

If you were a poem,
I'd memorize every stroke
Of your artful frame.
Then, with your words
Stowed in my heart,
I'd set you aflame.

I take all my thoughts of you
And throw them in a pine box.
Have to sit on the lid though,
Because they all pile up,
And the lid won't shut.
My feet can't touch the floor.
The box gives a rasping cough
And little memories tumble out,
Scraps of technicolor confetti
In my hair and on the floor.

Toy soldiers resume their guard
Over that pine box with a beating heart.
Draped in a veil of translucent lace,
Hold me together or pull me apart.

Music making my eardrums bleed,
It's all just catharsis in the end.
Confetti on the floor,
Base in my pulse,
Take my heart and do the work
For a little while.
I'll sit here with ink bleeding from my fingertips
Until every single thought of you is gone.

The two of us were, me and you, you and I,
Two ugly truths and a lovely lie.

My prayer is that one day you will understand,
Maybe, understand what I did,
Understand that I did what I did for both of us.
But mostly you.
You see, it was never about me.
Not even now.
You may think me cold and callous
-heartless-
But I'm not.
You see,
I broke my own heart to save yours.
You will put yourself back together
And move on one day,
But I will still be stuck an infinite loop
Of mind games and second-guessing.
Maybe one day, you'll understand
That I shattered us (me!) because I loved you.