Why did you bring me to earth?
To break my soul,
Stamp on my heart,
And crush my dreams?

Why don't you believe in your own daughter?
Just put her down,
Break her spirit,
Even make her lose her faith...
In herself, everything and everyone around her?

Why will you let your own flesh and blood,
Child,
Family,
Be discouraged,
Sad,
Insecure,
By you?

What are you?
What are you really?
Family don't do that,
You're not my family any more.

You don't deserve to be called my mother,
You're nothing more than a dreamcrusher...

Somewhere between not yet and no longer.
Do you know it?
You can find me there.
Sit, please, tell me how you hurt.
Share with me all the thoughts that keep you up at night,
and indulge me in the little quirks you've mastered
to fill that space between not yet and no longer.
I have cigarettes and all the time in between.

I believe some people were born to be lonely,
and I'm believing more and more we were born to be seen,
and not understood.
But I don't want to be seen or understood.
One is too humble,
the other too grandiose.
I long for some place in between -
I long to be heard.
What an incredibly lonely place that is.

I know not how to remedy the gaps
between two opposing chemicals.
Too happy.
Too sad.
Too alone.
Too needy.
The cycle goes on and carries me from here to there,
too quickly,
or too slowly.
I just do what I'm told and take my pill.
'ONE at night'
and self medicate with caffeine and nicotine in between.

Now I smoke more than I ever have.
I don't know if I'm trying to fill a space
or **** something inside of me.
Either way it passes the time between now and finding out,
between not yet
and no longer.

Anxious.
Like the attachment style.
Becoming involved,
and over-thinking everything.
That's what you called that, right?
Over-thinking
these old insecurities that I can
never seem to
quite push
away
for good
while my pen bears its ink
down into and past the current
page because all my muscles
are tight
and my stomach is
sick
and my mind
is distracted.

You. You. You.

She'll pick you up,
put you down
once she's read your pages
and harvested your words.
Is it true?

I've been discarded before.

Tried to trap the bird,
what a foolish mistake,
and it flew away
leaving my hands full
of ashes.
I've pushed too hard
and clung too tightly
and lost it all
many times.

I get nervous, but I know my center.

I see your wings,
a magnificent ocean blue
which have been carved
through years of struggle.
Never think that I do not.
I would never deign
to clip them.
I would never make that mistake again.

But I, too, have my share of books
which I have picked up,
read fully,
or half-way,
and put down,
discarded.
I have lifted from branches
and flown further
when I've been trapped,
clipped.

I get nervous.

I want to stay,
more than anything,
but there is fire in my wings,
and fire in yours too.
We are certainly
birds of a feather,
so I wonder,
can we not,
could we not,
should we not,
fly together?

Silence twists around my throat,
serpentine in the inky light,
as the paint sticks
and dries beneath my fingernails.

Ideas claw at my solar plexus
threatening sycophancy
treason and madness
in a world of stale passion
and stuttering ignorance.

They wake up and shower,
****, shave, apply the mask
with painstaking detail.
They die before they reach thirty
and go on walking about
as if they know the secret
to eternal bliss-
it's possible that they do,
after all.

I mean, consider the alternative-
an artist haunted by the colors
that live in a winter sunrise,
a nomad reaching for no one
as he chases the sun
across mercurial landscapes,
a writer living through ink
because there's no other way
to quell the storms,
a human shedding expectations
for beautiful things
that will always be broken.