My 2 Cents

“the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.”

Let me start by mentioning that I don’t usually get involved with political matters, but in this case, I’d say it’s more of a basic human rights matter.

I’m a man, and I’m a feminist.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a home with three women; my mother and two older sisters. Growing up with them gave me an enormous amount of respect for women, (even though I may have lost a certain amount of socially expected masculinity along the way), and their current lives continue to increase my respect for the opposite gender.

My oldest sister is leaving to study abroad at Oxford in less than a week to major in philosophy. Philosophy. She also graduated high school with a 4.0 and was involved in power lifting competitions and is enlisted in ROTC. Simply put, she’s an animal. She’s worked hard her entire life and I’d hate to see a world that put that hard work to waste.

My other sister is working three jobs to pay her way through college and is planning to major in psychology. I’m always envious of her work ethic and level of commitment to not only her education, but to her friends and family as well.

My mother has been my backbone since I was a child. She was always the one I turned to in times of trouble, and continues to be. She works hard everyday, while going through mentally straining marriage problems, and comes home and still asks me about my day. She has given me nothing but unconditional love for my entire existence.

For these reasons, it boggles my mind why anyone would ever be anti-feminism. I am genuinely confused as to why, because their bodies are different, women get less privileges, respect, opportunities, and even money. I just don’t get it.

I am also disgusted that women are seen by most men as walking ****** organs. l will admit genuine guilt to using the number scale to “rate” women. It’s something I grew up with, but now it sickens me. Assigning a number to a woman based on your misguided views on how she should look, whether you would **** her, is something I find repulsive. There’s nothing wrong with admiring the opposite ***, but no one gives a **** about your stupid opinion, especially the woman.

I hope someday if I ever have a daughter that she will have the privilege of living in a country of gender equality, tolerance, and open-mindedness.

Anyway, I just wanted to put my two cents in.

I am a man.

I am a feminist.

Peace.

I've recently fallen into an elite group of individuals: youth diagnosed with depression by their mothers.

I can't argue with her; she is licensed.

But I can't help but feel that my case is different, minor in comparison. I'd like to call it loneliness but it's more developed than that.

It's like a cancer that started in my fingertips when they realized there was nothing to hold on to, and has since spread to my heart or my brain, whichever is responsible for the distribution of numbness to my bones and vital organs.. I'll call it 3rd stage loneliness. I'm saving calling it the 4th stage for when it starts to feel terminal.

"Lonely" is kind of a **** of a word, like "love," or "beautiful." I think people like to use "lonely" like teens use cigarettes. It taste good when it falls off the tongue. And by my observation, they both cause cancer.

Everyone wants to be "lonely" but no one wants to be alone.
So I've put it upon myself to separate loneliness into subcategories, based on mortality rate.

If you're wondering why I'm lonely, don't bother. I'm wondering the same. I have friends a family that loves me, and the rest of the chemo-esque **** that's suppose to nurture you back to health. But
I've still got that tumor buried under my skin where no one cares to look.

I ain't got many friends I can talk to.

I've concocted a list of side effects of 3rd stage loneliness, if you're interested:
1.) Insomnia - the inability to completely shut the third eye on your skull because it persists on looking to the future.
2.) Selective Hearing - the inability to listen to supposedly happy music and instead sulk with the sounds of Bon Iver or Bright Eyes ricocheting through the canals of your brain. Music your friends "probably haven't heard of"
3.) Loss of Appetite - Don't worry, you still crave food and other survival necessities. You simply lose the appetite to expand through the universe. Loss of Ambition, as the form would say.
4.) Improved Acting Skills - You'll eventually learn to manipulate the stringy muscles in your face to pull up the corners of your lips when you feel you are expected to. Not all side effects are bad.


I am not one of those darkly dressing teenagers that complains with visible angst about being misunderstood. But I do have the hair for it.

I am not suicidal. Maybe I would be, but I seem to have been struck particularly hard by Side Effect #3.

But at first mention of depression you can see their faces squirm and contort to resemble a clumsy soldier tap-dancing through a minefield, while simultaneously conducting open-heart surgery on himself.

5.) Exaggeration.

This poem is not meant to sadden, to depress. It is simply for the public awareness of 3rd stage loneliness. If you know someone suffering from this disease, please call this hotline:

1-800-462-5663
(1-800-IMA-LONE)


The more you know...

I grew up in a home
where words like "atheist" and "agnostic",
if uttered, were shoved under rugs
or place mats or quilt-work sentiments reading
       "God Bless This Home"
And so I too, would hide from those who hid
from God.

But then amongst the distaste and disregard of things
less than God,
I Became An Evangelist!
Ah, yes!
Because whose soul doesn't want to be saved
by a thirteen year old with a clever Christian
saying on his shirt that's a size too small?
But not only that, no.
I dragged my friends along with me.
We were, in fact, a regular children's crusade.

But I was a little bigot.
I pushed away those who
pushed away God,
shocked at the thought
that anyone could not believe
in what now seems
completely
unbelievable.
I even scorned the science teacher
who had the audacity to introduce
the evil of evolution.

I was on fire.

But then the Devil himself
put Kurt Vonnegut on my lap.
Yes, I accredit my loss of faith
to a crazy science fiction writer.
At least, he pushed the first domino.

And my God, I was afraid.
Afraid of feelings of distance
Afraid of questions that never seemed
to have an answer.
Afraid I was losing myself.

I struggled with the traditional questions, of course:
Why would a benevolent God send good people
to hell for not believing? Is he that insecure?
If he is omnipotent, wouldn't he know what
he was getting into when he created such sinful
little *****?
Why should we be indicted simply because we
were born?

How does He expect me to give Him my entire life?

Fast forward about four years.
I'm eating lunch with my oldest sister,
a philosophy major, no less.
She tells me how she experienced almost
the exact same thing I did.

And after an inward struggle of four years, finally I had the courage to admit my Agnosticism to myself.
I simply did not know.
How could I?

But now I'm left to deal with my friends,
and most of all my mother.

I should not feel guilty for my beliefs, or lack thereof.
I am an agnostic.
I am a humanist.

I am on fire.

Now you're breathing champagne
I can feel it sparkle on my skin
while you revel in the falseness
of forgivable sin

Now I can feel the air around you
deflate and search for words
to stop your own from hemorrhaging
and to heal whatever hurts

Now you're breathing champagne
while you stumble to the places you once called home
like the park behind my house
and the west end record store

Now you can feel the world behind you
nipping at your heels
like the hundred hungry hounds
and the weapons they conceal

Now you're breathing champagne
like it's oxygen
and you are
lost at sea.

I wrote a note on the bottom of the bottle
you can read when you're in pain
"keep the memories in your chest
and keep breathing champagne."

It's like floating,
sinking in a deep pool
of potential raindrops
that are destined to fall
on your head.

The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that love is inescapable.

Love will find you. Find you naked, shaking in your darkest caverns clinging to heartbreak and faded polaroids with trembling hands. Find you locked up in towers fortified with fear. Find you upside-down. Find you alone once again walking the streets at one in the morning praying for street lights to fade behind you. Find you standing before tombstones or ice cream trucks or a preacher man. Find you hiding from your mother or God or both. Love will find you.

Love will take you. Take you to the place you parked your car that night and noticed for the first time the way their skin in the moonlight had the unspoken power to shatter your own. Take you through the annals and ventricles of your heart and peel away at the scars like super-glued band-aids. Take you to the hills and home again. Love will take you.

Love will bind you. Bind you to your family like the pages in the cookbook your mother used to prepare your favorite meal. Bind you to the girl who makes you shake when she's cold or the boy with eyes warm and clear blue like hot springs. Bind you to yourself. Love will bind you.

Love will break you. Break you down to jigsaw puzzle pieces your grandparents attempt on Friday nights, hands shaking with arthritis, and leave you incomplete. Break you away from your callused convictions and shove a blunt fist into your softest spots and leave you covered in scratches. Break you the way earthquakes break buildings or alcohol breaks families and bones; unforgivably, irreparably. Love will break you.

Love, desperate and strong, simple and tenacious, fiery and fierce.
Love will find you, take you, bind you, and break you.

And you will not escape.

"Have you ever seen someone create a rainbow with a 12-Gauge shotgun"

10
I'd thought about that new year's kiss
even during the months no one cared
about the holiday
Only to find my crush
with her ex, trying to decide
who's tongue tasted better

9
And while my ex
is receiving cute texts
from a new man,
I'm higher than I've
ever been
nurturing a borderline
****** relationship
with a bag of Doritos

8
And my friends were laughing
in the back seat
because I said
"The moon is sideways"
and I guess
they couldn't see the
poetry in that.

7
And though I didn't receive
a midnight kiss,
I'll most likely be receiving
a ticket for Indecent Exposure
in the mail.

So it wasn't a total loss.

6
And instead of wishing for happiness
I wished for the ability
to properly express the rest of my emotions
in hopes of achieving it.

5
And I hoped to dis-acquaint
myself from feeling lonely
in rooms so full of people
I can't even move
or think

4
And my friends are close
and I think they were
expecting more

3
And my sister
inadvertently became the
goddess of drunk girls

2
And seeing love fail
in nearly every direction,
I closed my eyes

1
People shout Happy New Year
but only truly wish it on
themselves

I don't want to *******.
No, I want to be the midnight air
seeping into your pores,
witness the horrors
of your mind
and make them no more
I wish to row,
                    row,
                           row,
gently down your stream
of consciousness
and to arrive safely
at the solutions
to all your heart's
conundrums
and hope to God
that I am one of them.

I'll make love to you,
if you want to, too,
or lie silent in the night,
syncing heartbeats,
never touching you.

But I don't want to *******.

I want to set sail to your words,
to conquer the ebb and ride the flow,
establishing allies and vanquishing foes

I want to know the history
of every mystery
that you find compelling,
to correct your m̶i̶s̶p̶e̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶s̶  misspellings.

To be the lyrics to your favorite song
to be the sunrise when the nights get long
Yes, I long to be the object of your sideways looks
and to sleep between the pages of your favorite books

To stare in admiration at your eyes
like constellations
and wish on every star
to know every part of who you are

To have my sun-baked skin
be consumed by the waves
on the curves of your face

To trace and map
every landmark
on your effervescent skin
and be the nervous sweat
that clings to it

I want to let your strong lungs intake me
and let your cool air sustain me
and pray that you might save me
a spot in your heart

I wish to start pulling your mind's
fibers and wires
and to start a fire
under your frozen tongue
and be the unsung hero
who rescues you from yourself.
I want to silence your loudest thoughts
and embrace your silent tears
and I want to make this clear:

I do not want to *******.

I want to be inside you.

Sometimes I pretend
I never met you.

I pretend that the laughter
that occupied my head
is now just an echo
of an irresponsible child

I pretend, when you contact me,
that you are a stranger
you have the wrong number
no one you have ever really loved
lives here.

I pretend,  when I see pictures of you,
that the feelings are not scratching and biting
their way to the surface.
You are just another
S̶t̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶G̶o̶r̶g̶e̶o̶u̶s̶.̶ ̶B̶e̶a̶u̶t̶i̶f̶u̶l̶.̶ Pretty face.

I pretend that your words
are not engraved in my disfigured skin.
every sound that poured out of your mouth,
rolled sweetly off your tongue,
is now smoke in unforgiving wind.

I pretend, when I write poetry,
that I don't always think of you,
That my words will not give you
the satisfaction of knowing
I think of you always.

I pretend that my lips
never met yours,
and that I am, in fact, able to stand steadily
when I think about it.

Sometimes I pretend,
Sometimes I wish
I never met you.

I have never crossed an ocean,

there are parts of me the world will never see

I may never conquer mountains,

fierce ranges scraping thundery skies.

Or forge paths through matted jungles

sticky darknesses and wildlife.

Forgive me, myself

for I am not yet of able mind

to be the adventurer you wish to be.

And when I'm filled with solitude, silence, and sin
and the warm smell of nothingness seeps its way in
I hear the bell tolling and your voice in my head
so I start to clean up all your words that I bled
When I reach out for you, feel the coldness of air
Miss the grace of your skin, and the smell of your hair
And the raindrops start falling, mist in my eyes
Find there's nothing as hard to swallow as that last goodbye

Mr. Isaiah N. Felix had overslept. Again.
He put both hands on his face and grumbled a long, sleepy
"Fuuuuck."

Mr. Felix rose from his bed, resentful of most everything
including himself.
As he stood, he breathed "****" once more before heading to the bathroom.

He made his feet move toward the seashell themed bathroom
his girlfriend had insisted on decorating,
even though she had her own apartment.

While he ******, he thought about the dream he'd had.
He was a child again standing in the fun house,
afraid to go through the spinning tunnel.

He wondered if it had been a real memory.

He didn’t' have time to shower or shave,
but he hurried to get dressed,
and didn't notice he'd missed a button.

On the way out the door he noticed he had a voicemail.
"Mr. Felix, I'm calling again about your father,
please call us when you can."

He coughed into his fist and walked out the door.

After the short walk to his office,
he incorrectly swiped his keycard,
and the machine sang out its small cadence of rejection

It sounded familiar.

Once he sat down in his cubicle
he was called into his boss's office
by a plump women who wore too much blush, he thought.

His boss cleared his throat and said "Isaac-"
"Isaiah." Mr. Felix corrected.
"Isaiah, I'm sorry to have to do this, but you've been coming in late..."

He continued, but Mr. Felix only closed his eyes, slumped in a squeaky leather chair
and thought about the spinning tunnel in the fun house.
He packed up his things and was gone within the hour.

He found himself at the park, sitting on a bench covered in bird ****.
He looked down at the words scribbled on it,
and amongst the profanities, he read "I will always love you guys"

And he thought that was really beautiful.

Then a pigeon **** on him from somewhere way up above
and he thought to himself,
"Man, I really should have seen that coming."

Mr. Felix decided he would walk to his girlfriend's apartment and surprise her.
He picked up two roses on the way for $9.95
and thought that was a little much to be spending on flowers.

After knocking twice without response he used his spare key.
Inside he found his girlfriend with another man,
******* under seashell sheets.

He thought, "She must really like the beach."
And then he thought that was
a strange thought to have at the given moment.

"What are you doing here?"
"Why aren't you at work?"
"Are those flowers for me?"

Mr. Felix fell to the floor
and as his girlfriend rushed to him covered only in bedsheets,
he noticed a reoccurring pattern on her ceiling.

And then he said
"Do you even love me?"
And again heard a small cadence of rejection.

"Isaiah..." she had said.

As his now ex-girlfriend filled a vase with water for the flowers,
he stood and left her apartment, and thought maybe he felt blood on the back of his head.
He heard her call from the door, but marched forward.

He stood in the elevator feeling slightly dizzy
and remembered the time she had wiped vanilla ice cream
from his chin, and kissed him, and said something very beautiful.

She said, "You're always going to remember this moment."

And then Mr. Felix passed out.






He dreamed again he was standing before the spinning tunnel.
He wanted to walk through it, but for some reason
he knew he shouldn't.

When he opened his eyes
he realized he was in a hospital.
The same hospital that his mother had died in.

He blinked.
And then he thought maybe he should cry,
but he didn't. He couldn’t.

His now ex-girlfriend noticed his eyes had opened.
She stood next to the bed holding a bouquet of flowers
and Mr. Felix wondered how much she'd spent on them.

But he didn't ask.

The nurse said that the damage was not serious,
and after a few hours and a few tests,
his room had been replaced by a young girl who had been struck by lightning.

Incidentally, she had been the one who wrote the really beautiful words on the bench.

His now ex-girlfriend had driven him back to his apartment,
and they were now standing in a silence only she thought was awkward
when Mr. Felix noticed he had another voicemail.

"Mr. Felix, um," the voice began,
"I hate to have to do this over voicemail,
but your father has passed. We've been trying to reach you...”

He continued, but Mr. Felix only closed his eyes, slumped on the floor.
Again he saw the spinning tunnel, this time a kaleidoscope appeared at the end,
and the thought he would walk through it.

When he opened his eyes again
He found he was on the roof.
He wondered if God had carried him there, or if it was just the fire escape.

He wasn’t sure which one he preferred.

Mr. Felix stood on the edge of his twenty-story building.
He noticed that from here all the people looked like ants,
And he noticed that he felt like one.

Mr. Felix closed his eyes once more
And saw the kaleidoscope spinning
In front of him, around and around.


He was amazed by how it was constantly changing,
But somehow it was always how
it was supposed to be.

And it was always beautiful.

Mr. Felix finally summoned the courage
To step into the spinning tunnel
And into the colliding colors.

He thought about his funeral,
And how much they would spend on flowers.
And then he wondered who “they” would be.

He thought about his now ex-girlfriend
And how she cared more about flowers and seashells and *******
Than him.

But she could say some very beautiful things.

He tried to think of what his father would say
And then he tried to remember
What his mother looked like


He heard a sharp wind howl,
Maybe an angel singing,
And a scream he thought might be his own.

He heard every small cadence of rejection.

He heard his grandmother playing her grand piano
With arthritic hands
And a gummy but perpetual smile.

He heard someone say,
In a voice both happy and sad,
“I will always love you guys.”

Mr. Felix heard many things on his way down.
Sirens, shouting, and a love so heavy
It was collapsing on itself.

Mr. Felix finally heard the sound
he’d been waiting
His whole life for

The infinite, the sweet,
The intimate, complete,
The absolutely beautiful song of acceptance.
And then Mr. Felix hit the ground.

I am sympathetic for Pluto
Not because I've lost my long-standing planetary status,
But because I am aware of how it feels to not fit Earth's criteria
and society's standards

I am not all a planet should be.

I am a leaky faucet in a flawless world,
Drip-dropping chaos into the absurd
I am a quiet brain saturating in happiness chemicals:
Serotonin and slow love songs.

I am an observer of the malicious mankind
Building, destroying, and leaving behind
I take quick visits to the sky
When I am lost in my mind.

I am a collector of things less than fine:
Quotations from poets and antiques from cloud-nine
I am the comforter of Plutonian souls our simple world forgot
I am supposed to be a planet, but a planet I am not.

I read somewhere that Nemo is Latin for "nobody"
and the way you look at me confirms,
you see only a long haired mess
and a box of childish thoughts.

It is a strange feeling, wanting to die but not being selfish enough to **** yourself. It is not a good feeling and it is not a bad feeling. Just strange. Like wanting to step out of a moving vehicle but the door is locked, and you're the one who locked it.

It's liberating, in a sense. To sever those stringy limbs that are clutching on to life and all its irrelevant attachments. Unbinded by society. The friendly release of death, all the familiarities of living still in tact. Immortality stolen directly from the suicide note. Shot through the heart, but still very much full of life.

Some pathetic hermaphrodite of irony and despair.

I think it stems from this futile awareness of a futile existence. I could live with a futile existence, but by some divine cosmic punishment am forced to be aware of my place within society. My place being an insignificant cell in a cell. And no body cares about a single cell within it. If one cell dies, it won't even notice it's gone, but simply continue as it was. But I refuse to give it the power to ignore my death. To stay alive is rebellion. To love and to live, in spite of life, is pure anarchy.

A man walks into a bar...
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
A man walks into a bar,
the same bar every night.
The same seat,
the same drink,
The same friend by his side.
Swallows his fear and chases with beer
and fumbles with the question:
"Why are we here?"
His friend snorts and he spits
and he laughs and he chokes.
The man says,
"What if my life was merely a joke?"

Now your blood floats in my veins, sweet toxic cleanse

Give my best to my family, and the rest to my friends

You're the cold flesh of winter, the ache in my bones

Watch the blacks of my eyes sink away like they're stones

So please tell me, please let me let myself in

Now my shoulders are heavier, than they've ever been

Burn all the photographs inside my head

Malevolence and memories are better off dead

When you live your life like I do you will find yourself assigning meaning to mundane things like broken shopping cart wheels and lonely cigarette butts in tired playgrounds.

You will dream of girls who sit in ***** hotel rooms letting the smell of smoke settle into their nest of messy brown hair and chemicals and guilt.

You will become envious of Dorothy and empathetic for the Tin Man.

You may begin to dabble in the dark arts of poetry but will never quite grasp the art of conversation.

You will live in fantasies of romances with girls who live in fantasies filled with music, and you will die in them.

You will demand happiness for all the broken girls at the expense of your own

Don't live your life like I do.

I was asleep in the backseat.
At least I pretended be.

The man in the driver's seat
began to spill insecurities
on the cold steering wheel
and into the woman's ear
about how his children
judged him too harshly,
were too emotional.
That he'd done the best
he could with what
he knew.
That man was my father.
At least he pretended to be.

I was asleep in the backseat.
At least I pretended to be.
But my mind was wide awake
flashing angry colors I couldn't
comprehend.

I could not comprehend how
the man in the driver's seat
believed that his actions,
his infidelity,
would roll off his children's
shoulders like warm rain
water.

I could not comprehend how
he felt sorry for himself
because we would always see
him as the bad guy,
the cowboy with the black hat.

I could not comprehend how
he'd expected us to feel.

But we were all okay, now.
At least we pretended to be.

There once was a boy with too much substance.
He breathed mostly in sighs
He battled heavy eyes
He had too much substance.

He thought life would be easier if he was like the rest.
If he didn't over-think everything
and if he didn't fall in love with every girl who smiled at him.
He sighed.

He wished he could listen to happy music
and that his bed was warmer.
He thought the substance should keep him warm.
It did not.
He sighed.

He did not consider himself to be particularly intelligent
or better than his peers.
He longed for someone cursed with substance.
He was lonely.
He sighed.

He did not wished to be loved,
but to be understood.
He sighed.

He wished he did not have to write poetry.
But poetry has substance.
He had a strange love for metaphors
and hidden meanings.
He sighed.
He had too much substance.

They told me you had a past, and I guess I should have listened.
But who was I to deny the way you cried when your laughter was genuine?
  And I think I fell in love with you when you played your violin
But the music you played no longer resonates in me.

  You told me about your past, because I was the first one that would listen.
And I saw pain in your eyes that I wanted to steal and inflict upon the man that broke you.
  But you told me you were not broken, and I apologized in my head.
Not because you were right, but because I could not fix you.

  And for a short time I lived in the confessions you made while we drove through dirt roads
But now I reside in the first time you told me you were addicted to me
  And I wonder how easy it was for you to quit cold turkey
Because it's almost impossible for me to quit you.

  I told you that I'm empty and you told me you didn't think you'd ever be happy
And it felt like a shot to the heart because that's all I ever wanted to do for you.

  And now I'm not quite convinced there is a cure for what's ailing us.
Other than every moment you spent in my arms,
  the smell of your hair,
and each other.

I know very little. I cannot say why or how the moon tells the tides to shift. I cannot decipher The Whispers of Springtime mist.  I do not know if death himself dons a black robe or if his kiss is soft. Or given the chance if I would turn myself off. I cannot Define the feeling that floods my guts when your Whirlpool eyes sink into mine. I do not know if we discovered or invented time. But I do know this. When I think of paradise I'm in a car and it's dark and I am with you.

I was never one for silence,
Those times I hear nothing but the earth
moving along with a wheezy breath
pushed wholeheartedly from my chest

I was never one for quiet,
the heaviness of unmoving lips
the weight of every moment held
on a tight, tense string

I was never one for stillness
I revel in the way chaos moves
with steadiness and deliberation,
she makes no mistake.

A girl with dark hair and true eyes.
A girl wrapped gracefully in self-confidence
and unconventional beauty.
A girl with a heart so heavy it takes two to hold,
and with a hole in her soul she tries to fill
with poetry and sad music.
A girl who will sit on the floor
at odd hours and listen to old records
and not say a word.

Seeking:
A girl who knows how to love
but just barely.
A girl who is too **** sad to care
because I can't care either.
A girl who knows I can't love
and will learn not to love me.
A girl who will lie next to me
and lie to my face.

Seeking:
A girl.
A warm body and a soft pair of lips.

Forget everything you thought you knew about love
because I'm here to tell you that love is poison.
It's in all of us.
Killing us.
Making us depressed
and discontent.
But the anti-venom
is the poison of someone else.
Someone who will let you cut them open
and see all the filth inside them
and you will drink their poison.
it will be bitter
and sweet.
It will be strong at times,
and sour at others
but you will drink it.
All of it.
and they will drink yours.

Timid angels
do not whisper
they roar

do not ask why

you watch clocks
like children watch
their parents cry

silence is a virtue

your heart pumps
blue oceans
and ash
and burnt paper

your words explode like atom bombs

your eyes are
shallow puddles
flecked with
circling fins

you are footprints in the snow

I am the reason
you fell from grace
I am
original sin

we are not contained within our bodies

"If timid angels
roar imagine
what the
loud ones do."

Me against her, her against the wall
we found parts of ourselves in each other

In her eyes I saw an anchor
and in mine she saw the future

She was slipping into the blueness of the evening
disintegrating fiber by fiber into waves of music

I kissed her temple and she fell apart
I touched her lips and I watched them part

I asked her what it means to "be"
and then we ******

Kissing every part of her face
I watched it metamorphasize into a picasso painting

Her heavy, red and rubber eyes widening
so she could see everything for what it is

Then she muttered "huh"
and closed them while her lips curved

She fell asleep to the lullaby
of my drumbeat heart

And I said "You're beautiful"
both to her and to no one in particular

When the earth is quiet

And the children stop laughing

I swear I can hear God breathing.

And it seems to me that He

Is struggling for breath

Hey,
It's me again.
I just called to say
I miss the way
you'd sigh
when you kissed me

Do you remember
the night I offered
you the moon? You
refused, so I stole you
the sun instead
and you laughed.

I know it's late
and yeah, I've had
a few. You know it
makes me think
of you
and the music
of your breath
escaping and
expanding in the
cold air.

I can still smell you sometimes,
when the world is particularly empty.

I won't call again.
I just wanted to tell you
Goodbye. I love you. Goodbye.
Enjoy the Sun.

You will find nothing here.

I am a balloon in the slippery hand of
a child standing idle on the boardwalk
and in seconds or years I will be released
into the grey sky

And for a while I will fly there
Hell, I may even die there

But for now I'm lying in the darkness
letting the summer ants crawl on my skin
and in the s p a c e s between sad songs
i ask them their opinions

and they tell me
You will find nothing here.

Tonight my room has me pondering
how something still so fresh and foreign can also feel very my own.
Cram a couple of out of tune guitars
and a dozen dusty books into four walls and I will call it home.
And I will wonder of those before me who had also called it home,
and of those destined to
long after I have gone from it.
And we will always share
this deafening bond
of discarded skin cells clinging to the walls, buried clumsily under the thousand secrets we've thrown at them.
How many prayers have been whispered that only they could hear?
How many tears soaked up by the floorboards?
How many pleas for redemption have they ignored?
Painted in the shades of our voices howling our favorite songs,
stained by those erratic epiphanies that blew our brains all over them.

To the Great Big Something,
Please send my sincerest good feelings
To my Wall Brothers and Sisters

In the spring
her teardrops
flood the flowers,
Those soul shaking showers
Making way for better days

And in the summer
She draws whispers
deep into her lungs
Those secrets given to the sun
In return for shining rays

And in the fall
she changes color
and she hides among the leaves
those love notes hidden under sleeves
And wishes winter winds away

And in the winter
she lies on the ground
and lets the snow bury her body
Those snowflakes only she can embody
And keeps her darknesses at bay