"I think therefore I am"
but
not this man who I see
whilst having my tea,

the bathroom mirror mimics me
and yet if I don't look
I won't cross the lines that meet
in crows feet.

Head's full of cotton wool today
and as if to say, I told you so,
cotton buds blossom
between each toe.

This cannot be real.

I watch as the faces
congeal and
set into one,
if I am
then it goes on too

Saturday mirrors me blue.

The wake up call
bells ring
rainfall.

It'll clear
and as I peer again
it has.

I still look the same
but different.

She once thought,
she wanted to be a poet,
but deep down,
she knew,
she wanted to be a poem.

I want to show you all the ways
In which you mean to me,
And I want to show you all that
You've done to heal me,
But I'm still scarred and bruised,
I'm still a little less
Than I guess
I could be.

And it's hard for me
To open up
To anyone
I don't know how to explain
The dreadful details
Which explain
Why certain things set me off
Why I shiver and I shake
Why I seem so defeated.

I'll tell you little bits
So it makes sense
But I'm terrified
If I tell you anything more
Than the little you know
That maybe you'll think of me
A little less
Than you did before.

I want to show you
How much you mean to me,
But I can't love you properly,
Until I learn to love me,
And part of that
Is letting you love me too.

I walk the Westside of San Anto,
The place I buried so many.

And the dead do speak
As they are in my words,
My very poetry.

Some have gone decent,
Others waved their final colors
With a kerchief ,now rest immortal.

So then I go back for them,
But move forward doing so,
To remember where I am
And where they shall never go.

If I am just a lucky guy
Who made it out alive when so
Many could not,
Then I cannot regret because the
Dead have no memory.

But why go back and visit
The desolation, the addicted
Nocturnal, the names who have
No faces?

Because I cannot reject myself,
The pistol I once lived by,
The nature of air and hope that
Escaped all in the ruins.

No, I will always return,
And my heart has not the words.

Now what?
Flowers for the dead and walk
The slab of names to rejoice
In what once was?

No, I come home,
The same as you,
As anyone,
Superfluous as this may be,
The return is necessary
If only to find oneself again.