Rose tinted shutters go off when I blink
Infinite heresy, each second passed
One thousand words paint a picture in ink
To make time's fickle framed flamed folly last.

The air grows thin as chemicals ignite
Our hearts and our veins wane, burn, wax, and glow
Temporal sands turned to glass cast a light
Voracious reflections, tentative, grow.

A crusade for knowledge here we begin
To know each other plain naked and bare
To quest and covet for what lies within
To examine our faults, our sins, our tears.

Two way mirrors peering into our souls
Laborious, fleeting, seconds made whole.

Drunk on love
Is a phrase I have never understood
Until now

It's the way you say lollipop
It's the minute bobbing of your hair when you laugh
It's your ability to fluster me and leave me speechless when I normally pride myself in my rapport and
I wonder what you're thinking right now
Is any of it the same?
It's your curiosity and your genuine soul and spirit and your tentativeness and your fear and

It's that the whites of your eyes
Remind me of home
Sun kissed skies
And a longing to roam
The horizon

There's a familiarity and I get a pit in my stomach that tells me I miss you.
I notice the difference when I reminisce, you-
The difference is, you don't smell like cow ****.

You smell like crisp morning rain
And bath salts.

I don't actually know your scent.
What I meant
Is that I'm calmed by the crashing of rain
And the other supposedly drives you insane.

You provide me with both:
An overwhelming peace
And an ever-growing crease in the folds of my mind
As I try to rewind
To the first time I met you.
Burned into my brain: the first time you set two
Boisterous, beautiful, brown gold orbs
Patiently on mine as you tried to absorb
All of the pieces of me
Contrast and contour
Not one fault ignored.
And by no fault of yours,
You sat and you listened
As sunbeams glistened
And my heart raced
And my mind doted
A smile donned your face
And my emotions exploded
Amidst this maelstrom of noise
These powerful currents
Distant echoes grew poised
And struck me recurrent

And your laughter sprang forth
From your buttercream smile.

Time slowed, and I thought: please stay for a while.

Residual raindrops grew reluctantly silent
The insecurities of my ever-racing mind resided
Dim in comparison to the fervor you'd quelled and excited

I could feel my legs keel and go weak
When you returned stolen breaths as you started to speak

And they told me to "be careful"
And "not to fall too fast"
But this vertigo feels lovely
And I'd rather it would last.

I am a hopeless romantic.
That isn't to say I don't believe in love
But rather I find myself perched high above
Looking down on it.
As if there's something wrong with it,
As if the siren's song has quit,
Has lost it's allure;
No longer demure, but somehow obscure,
I look down as if it's impure
and I'm unsure why
we've let love die.

As if the idea of forever
Was ripped from me
And all that's left
Are fleeting memories,
preconceived ideas of what constitutes the eternal bond of

Tracing eachother's dichotomy into your muscle memory
The shape of their face, the texture of their skin, the curve of their lips
Recalled by brushing fingertips

or

The promises made when two mouths meet
Chemicals called bliss, cut bittersweet
Because parting is such sweet sorrow
And so you sprint towards tomorrow
Hoping that as you race
You'll find that place
Where you're as breathless as before
As restless as before
To explore life

And you collapse on opposite ends of the world
Hurled to bed
Dreams don't dare disturb your head
Because reality is finally enough.

This irreverent flame
Has been replaced by fickle games

It all seems empty.

I feel like I'm going through the motions.
Adrift on some tide in the ocean
Intermittent waves of love, labor, loss,
Each one with compounded cost
Greater than the one before
And I just wish I could come ashore
And stop drowning.

People throw pennies into wells
And wish for their dreams
I throw a flame in the sea
And wish to for the reams
Of uncertainty to unfurl.

I don't want this love.
This consistent inconsistency

There's something about romance I can't help but be
Attracted to
And this **** isn't it.

It's not as if the experiences aren't real
But the substance isn't there
The idea to me is surreal:
Love without care.

I just can't do modern love.
It's as if you're caging a thousand doves
Asking them to sing
Clipping their wings
Then releasing them from a cliff
And asking them to fly
Then turn around
As you leave them to die;

A plummet towards the fish in the sea,
But as we plummet, we just might see
A few flames drifting idly past
Fading flickers fighting to last
And reignite our ideas of love
Ashes to life, Phoenixes from doves.

Always. Anytime anyone asks about always, but before brutish chance can coerce, clashing choices decide destiny. Everyone except the exceptional few feel flustered, frustrated, foolish, faint, and frankly, ******. God gives graciously, gestures gestating generosity. However, he has his intricate intelligence of intimate ideas and ideologies. In jest, jubilee, and joviality, a juncture. A joust for the jugular. Keen and kindling, kindred killing, keelhauling laughter and loitering love, mankind makes mistakes. Many mistakes. Mortality is... notorious. Openly obstinate, obfuscating perpetual pain with quick, quiet quarks of rotating rationale and regular, radical, senseless self sacrifice and sacrilege; Stop. Time turns tumultuously, ticking towards tomorrow. This thing, these things, take time. Understand. Ultimately, unhappiness vexes vivaciously. Without withdrawal, where would we wander? I wonder. Yearning for yore, zealots. Zephyrs on the wind.

It doesn't matter if you're wrong or right.
It only matters that people hear you.
It doesn't matter if you cower, or fight.
It only matters that people fear. Who
Are we to have an opinion? How dare
We voice our own thoughts and care
About matters that matter to more
Than our own life?

Strife runs rampant and the source is "unknown."
Every problem we face is unrealistically blown
Out of proportion. The right to free speech
has become "the right to blindly preach"
What we think is right to those we deem wrong
And everyone joins this cacophonous song.
We cannot hear their cries through our screams
We cannot hear their sorrow.

Though it seems
As if we are taking a stand
All I see is a contraband market where
People get off to the pain they inflict
Where individuality is slowly stripped away.

You're left, or you're right
You're right or you're wrong
There's only black or white
The grey area is gone
You're with me or against
Blind obedience is the best defense
Against the constant oppression
Like a Catholic in confession
We are down on our knees
Worshiping over their pleas.

And nobody's listening!

Two sides with no purpose
You're just another number
Not another person
And the numbers don't add up
No matter how much you know
And you look at all the data
It just goes to show we
Like share and comment
More than we
Might care to stop it
Our six seconds of fame
Matter more than the shame
We might bring to other parties
When we play our party games
Our brains are electronic
Our hearts made of stone
There's an ice in our veins
And a chill through our bones
We are a nation that doesn't care
About the lives of any other
We are a people who won't share
In anything but the belittlement of our brothers.
Divided in arms, United we stand.
Black white and red
Are the colors in this land.

So let's paint a mural.
Color this pain with epidural
colors and strains to color the gains
and not the losses.
Let's put down all these guns and crosses
The bullets, blood, and vindication
Let our voices and hearts
be the "Shot felt 'round the nation."
And not just one anesthetic *****
But an allergy test. Like the child so quick
To forgive the pain he's endured
When his gaze is lollipop-licorice lured
We have to grin and bear it if we want our reward.

This burden is ours, let's share it and move toward
A brighter future. A colorful tomorrow.
An energetic empathy to replace all of this sorrow.

There's blue for when you're sad
A purple tinge for melancholy
Scarlet, crimson mad
For all the times they said they'd call me

A bright-pink first kiss
Gently laced with gold
The silver tinge of wisdom
That comes when time has told
Your story to the world
Thrown your colors on display
Shown that who you are is compounded
Across a spectrum of yesterdays.

There's green for when you're sick,
Dark hues when you're alone
A white fog that falls so thick
When you don't know where to go.

There's the violet throes of passion
The infinite shades of art
The color that seems so quick to change:
The fickle human heart.

Let's condemn the colors we're supposed to be
And forget our indignation
Let's make a mosaic we're proud to see
Out of the true colors of this nation.

And when the rest of the world looks at this state
Let us show them we are United.
Our palette is a blend of every shade
And we will no more be divided.