When you fall in love you feel as if your heart is about to explode,

as if it can't take another moment in your chest.

You feel as if the world is more vivid, colours sharper, tastes sweeter,

anything is possible if you just try.

You feel as if your skin is tight, your heart racing, mouth dry,

waiting for a look or a touch.

The panic you feel is indescribable, incomprehensible,

because he is the One.

But when you see him with someone else,

it's as if your heart is about to shatter,

not able to withstand the constant tearing and breaking that has begun.

You feel as if darkness has surrounded your world, making you dumb,

blind and deaf,

nothing left, no sun.

You feel your body crumble, heart stop, mouth quiver,

on a heartbreaking, convulsing cry.

The pain you feel is unbearable, undeniable,

because he was the One.

I took three sleeping pills tonight
The other four waited as I concealed them in my fist
Unnaturally blue and felt like all the things I needed to say but were mere ghosts on my lips
Bare feet hit glossy, white floors. I'm praying aloud to a friend who does not exist for hope or penance or just to see other day.
It isn't my choice any more
But instead i just cried and lied
And watched the walls move in my bedroom
I need help, so much help but I can't bear to hurt the people I love
this is going to **** me, and I can't do anything but let it
It has branded scars on my arms, legs, and heart
Emotional pain shouldn't be so tangible
An adult sized monster under my bed
I'm hiding under thick blankets
Not knowing how the story's gonna play out

Anger, rage, and hate unbound,
forgotten souls who fill the ground,
As from his throne the dark one feasts,
upon his people turned to beasts.

Land of my heart, land of my soul,
Land of my blood, land of my whole,
This sacred and most ancient soil,
cursed by greed and dark turmoil.

Taken from these blood red sands,
lost to far and distant lands,
ever more my soul shall roam,
until again I find my home.

I've learned that happiness
cannot be found in the form of a little
purple capsule.
I've learned that Pisa will have to wait until next time.
I've learned that the third mushroom
held in my sweaty palm was not as
big a deal compared to the other two opening my mind.
I've learned that a part of me
died that night where we ****** in a
room with no furniture.
I've learned that life is work and that
the molotov cocktail of Dubrah and eay mac
that came spewing from me left an orange tang
upon the floor.
I've learned that pain is better than numbness
and that jabbing a sewing needle repeatedly in my arm
was an educated decision.
Most importantly I've learned that together we are better than alone.

Brown grassy mountainsides;
full of yucca and sharp burs and
stripped-naked trees.

(Your buffalo have all been murdered, America.)

atop this vertical precipice, the edge
of everything that’s never been,
before a white and faceless
Void: the sore thumb of a
boulder. A gray and
ancient troll.

There sits a changed and stoic
stranger wrapped in a wool blanket
against piercing winter wind and frost.
Sharing my thoughts. My organs. My perch.

Walking along this trail…
there can only be death.
I check my silent moving
watch. Time to turn back.

I remember crying during lunch my senior year of high school
My math teacher’s eyebrows colliding turning one plane into a fractal image
He had sat there every day for nearly four years
Helping me struggle through an unreal number of numbers
Literaly and figuratively
And again and again the numbers on my math test said
You are less than average
You
Are
Stupid.

But behind the eyes of a determined math teacher
Never read, what my insecurities where screaming
Refusing to believe the numbers, I sought one thing
Some unspoken meaning
I almost found it the day of my graduation
I almost found it between my teacher’s eyebrows
Wearing it like a point of pride
I was the first of my family to hold
Such a light thing as a diploma
Instead of a heavy head
Weighed down by ******
It nodding under all the pressure
The first to feel the lightness of feather
Instead of a sixpack
A lame back, from manual labor
I was flying
College was my next undefeated feat
Again I let an institution tell me what I was
Test scores tell me what I should meet
Intelligent measured by something
That couldn’t understand its diversity
Trying to tell me I was less than average
When I was just an individual
Above a point of comparison
Excelling in conceptual understanding
Debating and good energy

I could construct social interaction
Like gold, I learn to read people
The power in my phone
I learned that it wasn’t the diploma that I should be proud of
Not the thing I sought after
Not what I would show my little sisters and brothers
To show them how to live better, how to be stronger
Burn brighter. Burn longer.
So here I am
Red faced and scared
spoken word
was hiding, but always there
in between my math teachers scrunched brow
Was the answer
I could have cheated if I had known how
If I knew what question that needed answered
Had realized it was never in his book
I should have listened to what I saw
Not to the math test I took
I
Am
Not
Stupid
I haven’t failed by choosing something outside of school
That I am not defined by the score
By numbers or lines
By this institutional rules
Test scores or even rhymes
I am not less than average
I just don’t average out
That power isn’t really in a piece of paper
Power is found in your words
And chosen behavior
That silence and insecurity
Means nothing really
The answer wasn’t in his book
It was in his look
And his persistence to prove
I
Am
Not
Stupid
He just wasn’t good enough with words to prove it.

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb—
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

It wasn’t many weeks ago,

When you asked what God meant to me.

You looked down from your throne,

And told me I knew nothing,

Before I even answered.

You tally your Sundays and pin them on your chest.

“Humble yourself” under a God that knows you best?

Please.

It’s easy to say you know God, and to preach, when you’re standing on an altar of

mahogany. Gingerly stepping so not to scuff, but

I can’t hear you from that altar.

I can’t hear you behind those beige walls, dripping with the shame and regret, of children

raised to believe a checklist determines their everlasting life.

They can’t hear you.

I can’t hear you.

Let me feel you.

Actions speak louder than words, and honey, you’re gonna need to speak up.

Stand on an altar of the pain we feel, of our faults and all the ways we’re not good enough.

Where is God? Is he in that golden cross hanging from your neck?

What about the crosses ropes make, tied around necks? In sunsets?

It’s a big jump to make, saying that your words come from the maker’s throat.

I hear his voice in other ways. I lay down at an altar much different than yours.

I learned more from my grandmother. Her hands, knotted like the trunk of an oak tree.

Humbly, she asked. “Please bring me home.“ She smelled of flowers, and folded her hands

in prayer, even when the knots on her knuckles grew too sore for her to sew quilts.

The preacher man on Sunday, he’s got nothing on her.

I guess this is a running list of things I should have said,

When you asked what God meant to me.

I’ve seen him from my praying knees.

Felt him in the embrace of crying lovers in hospital halls.

In life. In death.

In tear stained prayer rugs, weaved with much more than just yarn.

When you see the reflection of your Sunday’s best on that shiny mahogany stained altar,

don’t mistake that for God.