I’ve got a jar
Full of little slips of paper
Little happy moments
All the good things
I write down
On purple slips of paper
And put them in this jar
And save’em for a rainy day

I wish it didn’t look so
Empty
Wish there wouldn’t be so
Much Rain

I kinda wish I had you
Written on a purple
Slip of paper
I kinda wish
I didn’t wish so much

You could probably fill the open space
And make my jar look full
You could probably sit quite comfortably
In a sea of happy notes

But I fear the color purple
May grow dull and sad
For it isn't a pretty color
When it’s the only one

I fear you’re not a fish
Happy in a glass bowl
I fear I cannot keep you
In a jar just for me

For while the sun
Hides in the rain
You will glow just fine
But who would I be
To keep the sun mine

So I kinda wish...
I kinda wish…
I didn’t wish…
This on you

So I guess I’ll write your name
On a different card
And hang it in the outside
Let the world greet you
And not keep you all to me

I’ll keep on writing purple notes
And fill my jar
And maybe when I need you less
You’ll want to come inside

I can't imagine why
A person can take a life...
A life of someone they didn't know
A life that has barely been lived

I can't imagine how
You can look at the face of a child
And not see prospect
Aspiration
Potential
A life yearning to spring forth
and live...

I can't imagine
Taking a life
After seeing their
Face
Not once...
Not twenty times...

I can see the man in the moon tonight
I could never see a face in the craters before
I just simply thought it was something people invented
In an attempt to personify what we don’t have a connection to
A giant face in the sky is more comforting on a cold night
More comforting then a reflective rock
Maybe I was right and so there isn’t really a face
Maybe I just need to see that face tonight
That face to tell me goodnight and that I can try again tomorrow

My room’s vacancy pools into a dense silence
Like an estate open house or thrift store:
Evidence of people once being here
Without those people still being there

A small lamp braves the dark of my room
Daring to edge its toes into the dark water around
I tell it to just jump on in
The water’s nicer once you adjust to it

My hands ***** out into my empty bed sheets
There is a silver lining in here somewhere, there must me
Maybe it’s just too dark for me to see it
I guess I’ll wait until the morning

I never really understood
Slam poetry
There was a man, a mic, and a spot light
There were words put on paper and words said
There was an eb and flow and there was this rhythm
Everyone seemed to speak the same
Getting faster getting slower
Getting higher getting lower
And there were profound words whispered over coffee cups
Obscuring the chocolate drizzled over latte’s foam
It seemed odd and foreign
Until I became a slam poet
After all I think it’s how they say
You never know a man until you walk a mile in his shoes
But it’s because I used to look at those words they said and
Over analyzed them
Over scrutinized them
I filed them
Color coded them
Cross reference and proof read them
1+1 had to equal 2 but with slam
It equaled like eight
And I could double check again and again
I couldn’t get 1+1 to equal two

But it was because at that time I was a straight A student
Reading seven books at one time
And doing thinks like science fair projects for fun
Because I had realize,
even without knowing I had
That if I was up to the rims of my glasses with books and papers
I couldn’t see my life around me
I paid less attention to the dishes I had to clean if I had equations running through my mind
I never saw how much dad drank if I was reading and writing
I took all those gold stars and straight A’s and plastered them over the cracks in my life
I joined everything I could
I did choir
I did drama
I was the editor of the year book
I did extra credit and went overboard on home work
I made my projects with blood, sweat, and tears
And my academics were my life...
But soon the time came that I got a B

And it didn’t fit quite as cleanly over the hole in my roof I used it to patch
And I didn’t shine bright enough to block out the darkness
And I began to see
A simple column of letters
Two letters
6 A’s and one B
If put it under a microscope it would be made out of the same black ink spatter on pulverized and pressed trees
It would still bleed the same if I dripped water on it
But it was different
Darker it seemed
And at night it didn’t lull me to sleep as well as
An A
It was only 80%
Not my usual hundred and with
less zeroes it couldn’t block out the
sound of my surroundings as well an A could
I couldn’t wrap myself in it and hide
I couldn’t click my heals and have it take me to a happy place
No
It was a B

And I plastered my report cards over my cracked old windows
But there was now a hole where my B would have been

Light leaked in through there
Light that shown on my house
Casting a shadow down on the floor
And the gold star and sticker coated family looked fine standing before me
But the shadow silhouettes were of scary people
Hurt people

And I never saw it all along because a smiley face with bright purple letters saying thing like
“GOOD JOB!”
“GREAT WORK!”
“EXELLENCE!”
Had been neatly peeled from perfect tests
And as gently as it was lifted it was placed onto my family’s faces
The stickers stuck because of their tears
The tears that no longer existed
once hidden by a sticker
I then began to see that the light from outside could show me the world
I then went and stripped my wall and windows
Of reports cards, essays, and projects
I shut off my computer with power points of greatness
Flipping slide
after slide
    after slide

I then opened my windows let air and light flood into my room
And it showed me things
Beautiful things

But then the light flooded into the rest of my house
The breeze became a draft and invaded the rooms
Illuminating the ugliness and hurt

And I tried to shut that window
I tried to glue back up the papers
I tried to sow back together ripped up gold stars

But I was not fast enough
Me
like Pandora
tried closing that box again

What was done…
Was done

It was too late
I saw it all, if only briefly
And now that room full of academic tokens of my achievement
Seemed darker
Even with the windows open
It was darker
Light shown in
A dusky twilight
At noon
And my heart beat faster
My breath quickened
My scream scratched at my throat
Trying to get out but not finding a foot hold
It just clawed and kicked
And on an intake of breath that scream lost its hold
And fell back down my throat
Landing in the pit of my stomach

I then walked out of my room and into my house and looked at my family
I saw the ugly stickers on their face
And peeled them off
Without care and in a haste
I was frantic
And desperate
And afraid
Under those paper adhesive masks
I didn’t recognize the faces
And now I was in a house full of family I had never gotten to know and I was afraid
Not like a scary movie
Not like a dark basement
More like being on a stranded island
Watching a cell phone with service
Get carried away by a seagull

I then looked to see the panic mirrored
In my “families” faces and didn’t find it

I then walked back to my room
And cried myself to sleep
In the dusky twilight
At noon

And when I awoke I found a composition notebook
And a pencil…

I could smell your polo cologne from a mile away…

It wasn’t an overpowering smell but I knew it was coming
Even before I could smell it
I can still remember walking to the shower and passing by your room
Fumes drifting out like the vapor in a Hollister doorway
Only the dark clothing store was never as inviting as your room
Not in a comforting way, like a quaint house or camp fire invites you closer
                But in the way that apple invited Eve
   As if to say… “I dare you”

I will never hear jingle bells the same
Or be able to listen to Mac Miller without your voice singing in my head
Because it was so annoying having you loudly sing at the side of my head
But now it’s quiet, too quiet
Your croaking voice isn’t mutilating the symphony of car horns and street noises any more
I realize now however I preferred the musical chaos of having you hang out with me

This is not a love poem
This is a…
This is an…
This is an I guess I know how I feel too late poem
An I guess I should have said this poem

But without the absence of something we often don’t realize what it meant to us

You’re gone…
Not dead, you didn’t leave me, not a dramatic departure
You were forced to move
Due to your own stupid actions

After all I guess it was me who told you the reason to stay in a certain place can’t be a person

I would eat my words in my sleep if I could, because my common logic won’t allow it
but in my dreams I will; in my dreams I have a hopeless side of me, not counting every tick in a day to make sure it still runs the same as all the others, unlike the waking me does

But when I wake up those words still hang in the air and I realize they were best left said anyways

I think I wish I had said good bye
But with one too many letters un-replied to, I wouldn’t know how to say it
Because I don’t know which you to say good bye to
The you sitting in the hall with me at midnight
                The you who’s face drifts a little too close to mine
The you who can cry and admit he isn’t perfect
The you who knocks over stuff and makes a mess when we are cooking
The you who holds a stapler over his chest saying “dare me”
The you pretending he doesn’t know me
Or the one pretending that he hates me
I saw your many faces and don’t know which one to say goodbye to

So it’s probably best no good bye was said at all but I still feel unresolved
You stick to me, like a burr or a thorn
This feeling that I could have done more
I could have told you how beautiful you were so you wouldn’t try too hard to fool people into thinking it
Because your price tags and diet made you look appealing to some but not me

No… I was drawn to your eyes and how they always match your shirt
Your chipped tooth framed in your goofy smile
The laugh that escaped your nervous lips as you say something I know you don’t tell most people

I wish I could have told you it was going to be okay:
You would be okay if you learned who you was
It would get better if you stopped trying so hard
You can’t help your ****** orientation so you need not hide
You don’t have to hate yourself because you think some people hate you
Because some people didn’t and you made them want to try…

In ways I was an improved vision of yourself
And you were an improved vision of myself

If only I could run the football field, be attractive, be cool
Have people wanting me and wanting to be me
If only you were confident in who you were, able to sing, dance and express yourself,
Have people trust you and see that you aren’t afraid of judgment

But I’m not you and you aren’t me, I smell like trees and you smell like Polo
I am not afraid of myself, and you are
I try to be honest and you try to be someone else
I am still standing here and you aren’t…

I tried to wrap my fingers around the world once
  But like trying to have a finger in every cup of cupcake pan:
I couldn’t
I ended up with handfuls of soils and clouds swirling through my fingertips

So I decided to get a different goal
I would traced every star with my fingertips
Lying on my back in a field I saw them all
Making dot to dot pictures in the constellations spilled before me
Each star I traced had two more coming after it and the numbers never ended

Did you know some of the stars we see aren’t even still lit?
They burned out yet still their light travels too us from light years away
A lake I heard about in Montana has crystal clear waters
Though you can see the water’s floor it is still incredibly deep
The shallow look of seeing every pebble is simply an illusion
I wish the sky were like that
The stars could look closer, feel warmer, despite their distance

Maybe I only wish that because the thought of space makes me uncomfortable
I like to think that this is up
And that is down
but the world’s not flat
It’s quite sadly round

My night is day in another place,
on this earth
What time is it on mars, on pluto, on planets we don’t know about?
How small are we really in the grand spectrum of it all?

Because I assure you if you dropped a grain of sand into a bag of rice you could find it
If you tried and tried and tried
And looked at every grain of rice
We are here, we can be found in it all
But we have hid ourselves in blankets of space
And wrapped ourselves in other stars to make us hard to find

You were wrong about me…

You were
Wrong
About me

And I am glad I realize this now
Because you would never have been the one to admit it
And now I am done
You gave me nothing
Except snide remarks

You never had a good thing to say
        Never had a kind word leave your lips
  That is until it was greased with black velvet

Then and only then
They pour out, slurring and sloshing
Like the last drink before bed

Only your words don’t come with ice
Like your ***** have to

But some times
More often than not
No words are said at all

For more than a year at times
Nothing was said

No Happy birthday
No merry Christmas
And least of all
A Hello

So now that I have spent time without you
Out of earshot
I am starting to see how wrong you were
But I am also seeing you for who you are
You are no longer the reflection
Looking up at me in the broken glass
                              I had to swept up from the floor
You aren’t the spontaneous, Unreliable
Dad who goes out and buys a sailboat

No instead I see who you really are

Hurt, Scared, Defensive
Only you can’t raise a child  at arm’s length
I can relate to your child hood
After all I too know what its like to try and sift pearls of wisdom from the fountain of inebriated words pouring from a parents mouth
Maybe I just got better at it than you
It takes time and you generally just end up with handfuls of ash but every once in a while you see the shimmery white bead of wisdom standing out from its dark surroundings



I do not
In anyway
Condone what you did
Do
But there comes a point that I realized
Part of where our relationship being muddled messed up and painful falls to me
It is not my fault you did what you did
But it was mine that I expected any different
  A bad night
  Ending in tears
  Harsh words and slammed doors
  And profuse apologies the next morning
  The usual every other court mandated weekend
None of which my fault
But the four-hour car ride home
In which I usually decided to forgive you...
     That was
I should have never believed after the second or    
    third time that things would change
After the eighth or ninth
    Or when I lost count
I gave you second chance after second chance
Hoping one day that old ugly saying wouldn’t be true when I woke up the next morning

That saying being:
“I have three priorities
*****
Smokes
And my truck”

I guess I can’t fault you for being honest but when you said sorry and you looked so sincere is when I wanted your honesty to come through while in actuality that’s where it faltered

So it’s not worth me holding a grudge
Getting back and trying to get even

When you hold in all of that poison it hurt you more  
  than who you hold the grudge against

So
   You were wrong about me
I thought you should know and one day if you don’t yet, you will see that
One day I will look back and see how wrong you were but not resent you for it
It's when I realized this I started to forgive you
It may not be okay what happened
But I will be okay so I can’t waist myself on being angry, it only hurts me


So you know what dad

I forgive you