I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

Maybe if I were a
hummingbird. Wine-throated
in Guatemala, would that be
far enough away, or is it such
a romantic notion to want to
to be fast enough to escape but
beautiful enough to be noticed

As a teenager who writes poetry
I get some weird reactions
I’m sure some people who hear I write poetry think
Oh my god, another teenager writing angsty poems
Then they read my poetry and think otherwise
How can I not write of the beauty and sunshine of life?
Of love?
Of happiness?
Like everyone I have down days
But those pass in due time
My dark poetry can’t last long
Not in my mind

I looked into the darkness
  And they were there
Some were barely twenty
  A few a little more.

They did not move,
They were dead.

And the war went on without them.

Back into the jungle
Like deadly ghost we went.
I looked behind me,
They did not follow

They did not move
They were dead.

And the war went on without them.

A flash of fire, a terrible pain
  I cry out to my mother.
Wait for me I cried
But no one heard.

I did not move
I was dead.

And the war went on without me.

These are the moments poets write about, paintings waiting. Quiet city streets at sunset, building, highrise sentinels of man's unquenchable thirst for conquest, and all of us together under one sky, waiting.... This radio screaming in my ear, Bon Iver, Conner Oberst, the other poets that wander these lost, lonely alleys. Sun's rays fading, as city lights rise. The soft blue becoming the strange azure, that fades to my indigo incandescent familiarity. This nighttime refuge of lost souls, wandering the frozen streets, and becoming something more than the sun can make them. That soft, ragged, imagined power coming from within each of us, in the open darkness of a concrete river. Nothing has changed but the light, and the new light makes each of us something more than we were in the rays that preceeded it. There is nothing to take away, nothing to subtract, nothing to glean. Just this place, this almost-lostness, betraying in itself the proclaimed divinity of dark. Stepping back, without looking behind, not knowing that the fear in front of you cowers before the monster behind your back. Just. Live. Be, let the being become you, and embrace this inner-self so few have seen, so few have touched, so few have truly loved. realize that all things wear a darker form, and the things that lay in wait under these city streets are dangerous. The way a chainsaw is dangerous in the hands of a child. There is no way to know who will get hurt, and once the chain of events is initiated, there is no way to safely remove the weapon from the hands of the naïve. Things that bite, hiding in dark corners, and laying wait for the lost, weary, and heartbroken. Lighted hallways, entrances into the other realm of indoors, torch-lit passages into forbidden and mysterious kingdoms. Every stairwell lit. The bannister to the lower, and upper, a stripe on walls as I drive on. Two million bulbs of nightlight security, and still this city finds shadows in which to hide fear. Dark corners for the lonely, and blind alleys for the lost. Every heart beating, fresh hot blood, and no warmth to share. Scared and alone, wanderers all, until the burn of the light we call home beckons us there. This passing of time, a gift, from gods unseen, and hands unheld. Colded fingers for want of a lovers touch, or the precious gift of familiarity in a foreign land. Alien landscape, and this, my unfettered direction of ambiguity. Directionless wandering for want of a chosen path, and no choice but to take the offered road. The fear secondary only to the loneliness, oh that curse that comes again.