Let us be like trees in autumn.
Let us turn colors and leave the landscape of this world more beautiful than it was before.
Let others bask in the purity of our evolutionary changing leaves.

May we not be afraid to shed our skin.
May we know that even when we are most barren, like the branches of winter it will not last.

Spring will come again.
It will put bark back on our trunks.
It will feed our roots that we embedded deep within the earth.
It will allow us to bloom again.

Pocket full of Marlboros I don't know when you started smoking
But I do know
That you still know me
Here on this darkened street corner
You still see me
And it scares me
That I could have pressed so much of myself into your hands
And that you didn't let it go
Even though the back of your hand is all I know
And I know that you know me
But is that enough to bring us back to the people we used to be?
On that sacred hill or in your old house in the city
Apathy isn't pretty
But I'd like to try it on for size
Somewhere inside of me in the darkness cries for all that we once were
That smoke doesn't hide you it just blurs the sadness in your eyes
The weight in your sighs.
(I'm not angry anymore, I'm heart broken)

Gentle souls have their own way
Of recognizing each other's existence
Under the burning, unforgiving sun
Expect none from him and you may find
A thousand wonders and surprises
He is not a poet and neither are you
But none of it matters, truly
For yours is the only song he wants to sing

It's determined not
By your flow of words
Nor the rhymes
That makes a rhythm
Those are countless

It's by the courage
You simply give
To the new ones
For that shows
The love of poetry

Best Poets Are Among Us

We reach a time in our lives
Shuffling along our own dusty highways
In the warmth of a whisky stained dusk
Watching the honeyed heat of our future seep along the horizon
Into bruised sky of overburdened past
We each meet the same crossroad of decision
The two sides of our soul extending welcoming arms
As we stand, a prize in the feud between mind and heart
Practicality and passion
Security and sensuality

Who am I to choose which gravelled path to follow
Whether to take the wrinkled hand of prudence
And crunch the stones of wisdom and logic with each familiar step
Does my future lay ahead
At that point where the sun kneels to kiss the ground
And throws its glowing arms across the earth in a blanket of safety
Not in passion, but affection
In the comfort of routine
The reliability and purity of what is, and what has always been

Or does it sit within the flicker of a fiery heart
In the sigh of breath that creeps along with the breeze
That trickles down my spine
And dares me to turn my head, to look down roads of impenetrable darkness
To embrace the possibility of the unknown
And the leaping tongues of flame that might lie where those paths end
To be engulfed, and to know myself within that destruction.
Is it the voice that whispers inside my veins
"should there be more than this?"

I stay static
Leaderless
A spectator to the conflict of the soul
Stuck fast in a deadlock of inertia and indecision
Awaiting that moment
When the last glimmer of sun has bled through the cracked earth
And I open my blurred eyes to icy silence, shapeless and pure in its clarity
To see, without obstruction
That the decision is clear.
My future transparent.
That there was only ever one road I could take.

Sometimes my mind runs,
so my feet walk.
My brain is an unsorted file,
and my body is a disconnected server.
There are moments in life where I am so in love with it all that I cry.
Moments when I am so upset, I laugh.
I can not fully understand the loops that my mind takes
over and over.
But I still ride along them.
When I was younger, I use to be so scared of the mess in my brain.
But the truth is,
I am full of clutter.
I am the home of loved objects that is messy,
and lived in.
I am a cloud of multiple thoughts
that lead me to sing at the wrong times.
Love harder than I should.
Feel every emotion at once.
We are all cluttered boxes.
I promise you,
you are messy
but full of love.
And I promise you,
we will all be pulled
from the attic
and taken
back home.