Only poets read poetry
Only liberals watch msnbc
Only conservatives watch fox
Everybody is entrenched
In their own sound proof bubbles
A perpetual echo chamber
Where lies are repeated
Until they turn into truths
There are no debates only battles
One preconceived notion
Forever pitted against
Another preconceived notion
It is the duty of poets to humanize
To use our pens as swords
To burst our bubbles
To show that we are all humans
But only poets read poetry

so we’re not always perfect, and memories aren’t all good. But I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you, more than anything else on this entire planet, and my mind may be a mess and I might panic far too much and often  and I find it impossible to put my feelings into words but this is how it is. And like If I could capture the strength of the ocean on a stormy day or the smoke from a wild forest fire surging through the mountains in words on paper with my pen I’d write you the greatest love poem the greatest love story there ever was because I love you in natural disasters and I guess there is no other way to describe it. Because when we kiss the earth shakes and a thousand miles away a large city on the west coast experiences an earthquake of magnitude 10 and for a second life and time as we know it stops and stands still. And god when you touch me a warning comes on television and suddenly there is a tsunami crashing down and washing away the whole town and suddenly I don’t care because with the waves crashing around all I can feel and all I can see and all I can think is oh my god he’s touching me and my nerve endings are on fire and my heart is screaming can you hear it? You must hear it because it’s pounding out of my chest and it’s pounding for you. A tornado brews in the middle of a thunder and lightning storm with clouds and rain and fog so thick I can’t see and I am choking and I can’t breathe and the thing is that I open my eyes anyways and I breathe in the storm anyways and I run around and splash in the puddles anyways and I let the wind whip through my hair anyways as I stand up, throw my arms back and laugh into the wind. Because I am so tired and I am so sick of hiding under the trees to stay out of the rain and carrying around a fire hose to fight the fires around me. I can’t stop the waves but why would I when they can just wash me away? Because I keep hearing stories about people I know and how they keep the doors locked and keep the windows closed and wait for the storm to pass. And I am so ****** tired of locking myself up and waiting it out. I threw open my windows and blasted open the doors and ran from my house into the mass that surrounds it. There’s a state wide blackout in California from the way you looked at me on our first date. People scream in terror and my heart screams for you. An active volcano threatens to erupt and there is a nationwide panic. And through the ashes burning and molten lava all I ******* see is you. Hurricane Katrina broke Louisiana but my god it did not break our hearts. Because I love you in natural disasters. Big, destructive, dangerous, terrifying…beautiful.

I walked down the well worn path
As the sun climbed up the sky
Light seeped through the trees
And the heat pressed down on me

There was a large rock off to the side
Like it was placed there just for weary hikers
I climbed on top of the rock
And sat there for awhile

There was something carved on the side
"Kate+Roger summer of 87"
A day, a relationship, an act of love
Forever memorialized in stone

I wondered if they are still together
If thirty years later they come back here and laugh
Or maybe only one of them does
And smiles a bittersweet smile

I am built backwards
I sleep most of the day
And stay up all night
From midnight till dawn
Those are the best hours
When I gaze out of my bedroom window into the darkness
I don't see a black void threatening to swallow me whole
But rather I see a calming and tranquil ocean of shadows
It makes me feel like i'm the only person alive
Because after I turn off all the lights
After I stop looking at my phone
All I am left with
Is the soft embrace of the silence of the night
Except not quite
Because within that silence
I can hear my beating heart
The air flowing through my lungs
The blood coursing through my veins
And my brain is flooded with thoughts

You've been living in my head
You’re three months behind on your rent
I posted countless eviction notices
But you ignored them all

You've barricaded yourself in there
You linger like a disease
You have infected my memories
And soon they will start to fester

When I smell fresh bread in the morning
You used to make breakfast
When I hear Ben Folds Five
That was your favorite band

In the middle of the night
In the darkness and the silence
I can hear you moving in my head
And it keeps me awake

It took a while to wake up today
My alarm went off before the sun had even risen
I kept delaying the inevitable by hitting the snooze button
But eventually I gave in and got out of bed
I bundled up, braced myself, and opened the door
Walking into the cold was like being submerged underwater
I could feel it trying to infiltrate every opening
It was slowly seeping through every layer of my clothes
I could feel it burning in my lungs
I could see it when I exhaled
It made the air seem quiet
And the sun seem dimmer
And in the dead of winter even time moved slower
The trees had long ago lost their leaves
And now the bare branches
Stretched upwards into predawn light
Like a thousand skeletal limbs

I haven't been able to concentrate today.
Everything is out of focus,
except for you.
You are in painstaking clarity.

You are flooding my mind
and I am drowning
Submerged in memories
that play on a loop

We've become entangled
and we enjoyed it
because we only considered the present
and ignored the inevitable future

Now its crashed all around us
I'm struggling to untie the knots
Because I don't want to
Because I'm afraid you'll drift away

But then I remember why I fell for you
Because we have an insane amount of things in common
Because you are fun to talk to
Because we make each other laugh

Thats when I know
that everything will be alright
That I can breathe easy
That we'll always be friends