Some people speak
In riddles, but I
Speak in quotes.
One day, I will find
My own words to
Say what I'm thinking,
But, until then, these
Half applicable words that
Someone else wrote
Will have to be enough.
Maybe, one day, I'll
Have the courage to step
Out from behind someone
Else's florid prose.
But, until then,
Shakespeare and Dickinson
And Eliot and Twain and
Dr. Seuss and Homer and Dante
Will fall from my lips
As trees shed their leaves.

They say that I have problems:
Schizophrenia and such.
There’s a lot more, but
I don’t understand very much.

Am I crazy?
I can’t possibly be!
There isn’t anything
Wrong with me.

Why am I in this cage?
Just because I can’t remember my name
Doesn’t mean that I am insane!

If these walls could speak, what would they say?
Would they grieve for the loss of those who had been in this room,
Not realizing that their time was wasting away?

Or do people enjoy losing their minds?
Do they like the sense of clarity that it brings,
Like knowing why the caged bird sings?

The visitors I had today,
The visitors do not exist,
Or so the doctors say.

I told the doctors about the knight
Who showed me how to make pictures with raindrops on the window.
They simply said that my mind is in limbo.

The dragon told me a story
Of how he rescued the knight from the princess,
But the knight got all of the glory.

The princess tells me about the voices,
The voices, the voices that whisper all around
As you slowly feel your sanity giving ground.

“No! Stop! Get out of my head!”
At least, that’s what I wanted
Before my sanity fled.

Quiet
Peaceful
Room to think
Noise
Friends
Clarity
Reason
Chaos
Insanity
Infinity
What a luxury
It must be
To lose your
Mind
Completely.

My friend, what if you are the one who is in chains bound to this earth,
And I am the bird, the one who is soaring free?

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.

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.

Twirling around.
Heart thudding.
World spinning.
For a moment,
I'm so infinite.

I won't stop
Until my legs
Collapse from
Under me.

As I'm twirling
It doesn't have
To ever end.
The moment I
Stop, I'll crash
Into the ground.
My reality so
Off-kilter and
So distorted.

I'm dreaming?
What? You're not?
Why would you
Deny me my
Moment of joy.
Reality will strike
Soon enough.
Let me have my
Fantasy moment.  

You're still here?
Don't hold your breath.
I'll keep spinning until
Reality crashes in.

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.

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

Two o'clock in the morning
Is my best friend.
The steam from my
Fourth cup of coffee
Curls out of my chipped old mug
To caress the frost-kissed window.
The golden glow of my lamp
Disguises the cold light
The moon casts upon the ice shrouded garden.
Two o'clock knows
All my secrets
All my tears
All my schemes.
My cup of coffee and I,
Holding the universe together
Just by our existence,
By our very essence.
For two o'clock in the morning
Is not for the faint of heart.
It is not for the lovers
Or the mundane
Or the sleepers.
Two o'clock in the morning
Is for the writers
For the poets
For the dreamers.
It is for the desperate
The passionate
The obsessed.
They join the stars
Dancing in the winter sky
In their wanderings through the darkness.
Once the mundane fade
Into the realm of sleep,
Heaven's teardrops pour
Their favor on upturned faces,
The faces of those who look to
The stars
The dark
The night
For guidance
For wisdom
And for inspiration.
And so, the daybreak finds me,
Something small dwelling with something enormous,
I and the universe.
It is, however, a part of me,
And I am a part of it.

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.

"That's the right word,"
I say to myself,
Writing the next line.
Before I can finish,
My thoughts are interrupted
By my boss's yelling.
"Come on," he calls.
"You've gotten your fix.
Now back to work."
My head ****** up,
My scribbling hand stilled.
The boss's words smart,
But I must work
If I'm to eat.
Back to routine's kingdom
I voyage, utterly chagrined.
Memories of my escape
Join the mist's evanescence.
Like the treacherous ocean,
I am always running,
But forever fated to
Return to the shore.
The dictates of duty
Govern my restrained passion.
And thus, I yearn
For escaping through words.
To put it succinctly,
Mundane reality is terminal,
It will **** your soul.
Art is the soul's
First and best defense,
Whether words or pictures,
They represent your soul,
Fighting for its survival.
Survival in the escape.
Answer this for me:
Having just once escaped,
Why would you even
Want to come back?

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.

There are cracks
in everything.
They might not
be obvious,
But they're there.

Rocks and caves
have cracks,
And those cracks
admit light.

In the exact
same way,
People have cracks.

You won't always
see them,
But they're still
there, anyway.

Beautiful people have
their cracks,
because the cracks
let light
Into their souls.

The light shines
out again,
Broken souls illuminating
the world.

"Here's a challenge for you,"
He told me one afternoon.
We were finished studying
And boredom wasn't an option.

"Fire away," I answered,
Mind and pen already craving the task.

"Describe the colors black
And grey without saying the words."

I had an answer ready.
"A perfect villain."

He smirked. "You're a poet.
I know you can better."

I had another answer.
"Let me tell you a story.
But, be warned,
It isn't a happy one."

He rocked his chair
Back on two legs and
Folded his ink stained
Hands behind his head, waiting.

"He'd never killed anyone before.
The occasional art forgery, sure.
Dabbling in counterfeiting, guilty.
But he had never hurt anyone.
Now, as he looked at the man lying
Lifeless at his feet,
A part of his heart joined
The victim in the grave.
His life was over.

Twenty years later.

He didn't really keep track of time.
What was the point?
After all, we were all destined for the grave.
Might as well not count down the days to it.
He and death were old friends,
Well acquainted from many meetings.
He was Charon,
He ferried the dead.
Neither good nor evil,
He just was.
One day,
He wouldn't be."

My friend gave me one
Of his favored smirks.
"See? I told you
That you cold do better."

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.

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

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.

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

You'll never see me in any photo
But I'm always there.
I'm the one behind the camera;
I take the pictures.
You need a picture to
Remember people
When they're gone,
But I'll never forget.
I'm the funny face
Behind the smiling faces.
I'm the countdown
Behind the "cheese."
You are the spoken words,
And I am what you don't say.
You will fade away
and I, I will remain.

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 want to stop;
To never do it again.
I've wanted that before,
But I could never make it,
The threat, couldn't shake it.
This time, I have to do it,
Then, it'll be no more.
Six times that has happened,
But there was never any change.
So what's different this time?
Each time I was desperate,
I hate how that feels.
But never hated it enough
To stop what I was doing.
I can't look at myself;
I can't live with it anymore.
I'm tired of the hate,
I'm tired of the shame.
Maybe that's what makes
This time so different.
All the hate has piled up,
A ticking bomb,
And if it explodes, then I'm gone.
I don't want that, so I
Decide to try again,
To lie awake and wait for morning
And see what may come
With the breaking of dawn.
If it is the breaking of me,
Then so be it,
But I will be real.
Real and broken,
But forever rid of the
Mask and the nightmares
That it brought.

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

It was during a spring rain that
I finally understood my desperate
Obsession with poetry.
With writing.
With why I write.
It was in the silence,
In the drawn breath between the
Impact of the first raindrop and
The shattering of the second
That I remembered something
I had always known, but never
Given voice to.
I write, not only to put a piece
Of myself on paper,
Immortalization, in a way,
But because I was searching
For something. Searching for some
Forgotten and lost part of myself.
Thinking, maybe in the words I say
And the words I don't,
And the reasons in between,
I would find my missing piece.
The other half of my soul.

I glimpsed a man
I'd always seen
But I really saw him
Today. Saw the
Furrow betwixt
His eyebrows
And the relentless
Tapping of his fingers
Against hand-me-down
Blue jeans. Today,
I really saw,
And I could tell
From the way
He moved
That he yearned,
Hungered, and
Wanted something
With a desperation
I couldn't begin
To understand.
Compared to
Him, I merely
Existed. He
Was alive
In every sense
Of the word.
He knew what
He wanted and he
Knew how to get
It. He was following
The path to his goal
With such an
Unwavering
Determination
That I knew
Heaven and hell
Would scramble
To his aid.
I don't know
What it is he
Wanted, but I
Know it wasn't
Me. I wanted him,
But I couldn't
Possibly want him
The way he wanted It.
I couldn't clone,
Reproduce, or
Replicate his
Desperate craving.
I could not be
That fully alive,
That awakened,
That aware of
What I craved.
But what I did
Want was for
Someone to see
Me as clearly
As I glimpsed him
In that moment.

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.

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.

I sit here in the dark
Staring at the stars,
Halfway between lost and found.

Don't turn on the light,
It burns my heart.
I'd try to save it,
But there's no point in
Protecting something that's
already dead.

I'm not waiting.
My heart ain't breaking.

I'm halfway home
Half a world away from you.
Maybe that's as it should be.

But I always wondered
You, or home, which is
Lost and which is found?

I think I know now.

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.

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.

A storm is rising up
in the south,
and it is softly singing,
singing,
singing my name.

I can hear its voice
in the wind
that whips through my hair
as I'm standing on
this mountaintop.

I can feel it in
the raindrops that
hit my bare shoulders,
not hard enough
to sting,
gentle enough to caress.

The wind and the rain
and the storm are
singing my name.
The grass is bowing
before me, honoring
those who stand upon
the mountaintops
in full wrath of the storm.

And so, before the wrath
of the storm in the south,
I stand, the master
of my own soul first,
then the master of
everything around me.

If I am the master of myself,
then how can the wind and
the trees and the storm not
know my name?

She held a hurricane
inside her heart.

And yet,

They wondered
why it rained.

Each moment that we experience is a paradox.
It is both the greatest and worst of its kind.
It is the first breath of one, and the last of another.
It is itself and more than itself, but never beyond itself.
These moments, the love and hate that fills each,
Define human beings for the rest of their moments,
For every other moment, though none will be this one.
These moments, they will fade like a lie in the light,
But what they make us will remain as long as we do.

And beyond.

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.

Swept off my feet
At first sight,
I did everything
That you wanted.
We danced and
We played and
We frolicked around;
Then you got
Distant and cold.
Then you left,
And my heart,
My heart broke.
You came back
And my heart,
It became whole.
I was happy.
You left again,
And I was
Sad, not broken.
You didn’t return.
I moved on.
I later learned
That you were
Playing with me
And my heart.
You needed me
More than I
Really needed you.
You thought that
It was a game,
But that’s okay.
You can have
Your petty games;
I’m not playing anymore.

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.

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

Hey you,
We've got things to talk about.
I left, and you deserve a why.
I grabbed my bag, left you behind, and
I resolved not to cry.
It was mutual, I broke up with you, you with me.
I'm lost in the versions of the truth.
One of us had to be the adult,
We're both grown, toying with youth.
You were the chaos to my chaos
When my chaos needed calculations.
We were both hurricanes in anger
And too proud to make reparations.
We began as a whirlwind, all instinct,
Spinning too fast to make note of what passed.
You, in love with the idea of me, me loving the idea of you,
The thing about storms is that they don't ever last.
Of course there are questions now I'm gone:
Was it love? Was it real? Will we ever really know?
I couldn't answer them, and I still can't.
I wasn't sure, so I decided to pack and go.
Maybe I was a coward, but I left to save us both.
I broke my vow, I cried rivers of tears,
But I saved you from us, the volatile us,
The lovers who wouldn't have lasted another two years.
I don't regret a single moment and maybe,
Maybe it was just doomed from the start,
But I suppose I'm grateful that I learned a lot from you.
You, who, reminded me to think with my head, not my heart.

~ Sincerely,
A different me

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

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

I raced a hawk
On the way home.

I had the gearshift
Under my trembling knuckles
And a deserted highway
Waiting for the impact
Of my screaming tires.

The hawk was armed
With the open sky,
Three dimensions in which
He could escape gravity.
Unlike me, he came
With his own wings.

It was actually fair,
Or so I contend.
Both of us masters
Of our respective elements.
Both of us feeling
Absolute freedom, but in
Our totally different versions.

Neither he nor I
Will ever know who
Won and who lost.

The race itself is
The only thing that
Actually mattered to us.

Through the mist
Are two points
Of red light.
I momentarily recoiled
Thinking a monster
Loomed before me.
As I drove
Closer, inching along,
I came to
The realization that
The red lights
Were a monster
Of another kind.
The lights turned
Green, allowing traffic
To continue along
The vacant highway.
This monster wouldn't
Eat my body,
But it would
Destroy my sanity.

They say that your destiny
Is at your feet, just waiting,
Waiting to be seized.
They say that you have
A great future, the many
Things that you will do.
But if you really think
About it, they all have a
Plan in their own minds:
A mold that they are
Preparing, you are the
Wax, waiting for any of
Them to shape you.
Wait just a minute!
I am the one that is
Supposed to have the
Destiny, but you don't
Care unless it fits into
Your scheme for me.
What happened to my
Ideas, my plans, my dreams?
What if I want no part
Of your manipulating schemes?
Time for a reality dose,
And, yes, reality bites,
Especially when your
Timid pet thinks for itself.
You can't hold reality captive
So, get out of your delusion.
When it's time, I'll do what
I want to do, not be busy
Filling your mold.
Molds break.
Paradigms shatter.
Stereotypes snap.
Puppets pull their own
Strings if you don't
Look away.
You only see
What you want to see,
So, you might as well get
Your eyes off me.
My dreams don't meet
Any of your grand schemes,
But, since I'm nice,
I'll give you a choice:
You can either support
Me, the real me, all
The way, or you can
Move off the tracks and
Get out of my way.
Whether you like it or
Not, this wax, this clay,
Has decided to mold itself.

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.

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.

So the one you loved
died And now comes
the tragedy: The
Endless eternal
Lines of those who
Wish to give you
Their sympathy.
In plain words:
Your loved one
is dead
And all you get
in return
Are hollow words.
Mom tells you that
They mean well, but
they don't know
what to say.
Most don't know
The way you feel,
The way you want
To rip apart the
Foundations of this World.
Others do know
The utter feeling of
Loss and emptiness,
But they can't put
Their thoughts to
Words so they just
Get in line.
They ask if you
Want to "talk"
And the answer is
Always no;
You don't want
To talk. You
Want your loved one
Back, but that can't
Happen. They expect
You to know that,
So they're always
surprised by that
Desperate wish.
It's great for them
To know that the
Dead are in a better place,
But you don't care
at that moment because
you just want them back.
Denial, bargaining, anger,
Guilt, acceptance;
If you hear those words
one more time,
You might snap.
How dare there be
A "process" to
A state so raw and
So devastating?
Simultaneously wanting
To destroy everything
In your path and cry
In some forgotten corner,
Both such utter forms
Of loneliness.
In a way, it is all beautiful,
If beauty is defined by
Heartbreak and chaos.

You are one half of
Always; I am the other,
Making forever.

My life is So full of
Half starts, incompletion,
Should've, could've, would've,

My regrets ride On my back
Like I'm the One they've saddled.

I have mastered
The very elegant
Art of inexistence.

I've become so
Totally lost In being afraid
Of my life That I've forgotten
To even live.

This isn't living.

Don't hate anyone.

Does that include myself?
Scratch that. Currently lacking a self.

I'll stumble into faith. Or life.
Or faith in life.

No more. Never. Can't live like this.
Scratch that. Not really living.

Caffeine may keep me awake, but
What can coffee do for an empty soul?

The answer is nothing.

I can mend an empty soul. My empty soul.
Even as I dream of paradise while stuck on the ground.

Time to live.
Time to wake up.

There can't be any incompletes this time.

You left two months ago.
There's no pretty way
There's no polite way
To say what you did.
With barely a word,
You
Packed
Your
Things
And
Left.
I healed. I recovered.
I moved on.
I haven't seen or heard
From you in two months.
I haven't really moved on.
Here I am, wide awake
At three in the morning.
Tell me this: if I've moved on,
Why are my lips begging to
Speak your name?

There will be a day when time itself is
Split in two: before today and after today.
But, for right now, I'm still stuck in this moment
Caught between the pendulum and
The impact. That irreversible moment when time was rent.

My arm snagged
On a thorn
In the woods.
A thousand thoughts
Came crashing in.
Many contained swearing.
As blood welled,
My thoughts stuck
On one thing.
Every last drop
Of my blood
Reminded me of
Just how painfully
Alive I was.
Without the pain,
My life is
Nothing but good,
Floating and dreaming.
With the pain,
Good and bad,
It is real.
Beautifully, incredibly real.