What is a name?
Is it a species, a link,
Something to tell us all about something?

And what is a face?
We make faces for everything,
From courage to beauty.

For us,
Captain America is courage,
Or Theodore Roosevelt,
Our mothers,
Fathers,
Sisters, family, friends.

We have names and faces for beauty as well,
Like someone who has always kept fighting,
Or Wonder Woman,
Or a favorite actor or singer,
And beauty is personified.

And what am I in this?

I am not beauty, or grace, or anything else.
I am just me, and I have a name.
But my name to me is the name I wear,
And I'll forever be known by
That fateful, eternal, unbreakable-

Name.

Hello, darkness,
With your black, inky folds,
Seeming closer than ever now,
I've found you again.

Hello, sorrow,
With your tight, crushing embrace,
I still bear the marks,
Like a child's scraped knee.

Hello, anger,
With your red-hot grip,
You left scars on my soul,
For all to see.

Hello, sadness,
With your drowning, blue tide,
There's still some liquid,
Left in my eyes.

Hello, again,
I can still see you.
Waiting in the shadows of the horizon,
Like a predator about to catch its prey.

Can you
See me
Standing here
Quietly and full of fear?

Should I
Disappear
Back to the shadows and back to the fear
Back to the ghost of yesterday?

Gossip spreads,
Tears drop,
They break up and get back together.

Teenagers.

To whom am I bound,
On this winding road,
As I dream of better things,
But with chains that bind me and pull me back,
Two steps for a single one,
The world at my fingertips and yet so far away,
Dirt on my weathered boots,
I sing a lonesome tune.

How do I make a poem?
How do I take the blank page, my canvas,
Dip my brush in ink,
And write well enough to make others cry?

How do I make a poem,
One that is like a bird,
That flies away into the minds of the readers?
That makes a nest in their very soul?

And what are the words I use?
Are they big?
Small?
Uncommon?

I think I know the answer.

You don't write for others.

You write from the heart,
The soul,
From yourself.

Who cares if it's unpopular? It's your poem.

And that makes it beautiful.

"Do you believe in dreams?
In love and hope and happily ever afters?"
His eyes are intense.
"Do you believe in change?"
I shake my head for no.
He laughs.
"Me neither."

I've always been good at logic.
That's what kept me sane.
Even with strange people around,
Logic helped my brain.

But with emotion,
Logic is as useless
as a:
Worm or an appendix, to list.

How do I solve this puzzle,
One that spans space and time,
A great mystery,
The one that spreads its feathers across history.

It shows itself in little traces,
In many different places,
It might be just a glitch,
Or it might just be the cinch.

It shows itself in small ways,
Over many different days,
A word, a phrase, a sentence,
And dims down brilliance.

Have you ever
Had emotions roll over like a storm,
An orchestrated catastrophe
Of words and color and sound,
Crashing over you until you want to drown.

You look up into stormy skies,
And remember when,
All there was
Was
Silence.

can you see me?

can you tell what i fear?

can you stop this?

i'm looking through thick windows

you seem like a mirage.

Sometimes I dream
Of secret, flitting things
That dance in my memory like dew on the grass
Dissolving in the sunny rays
That awaken me each morning.