For ShirleyB*


Feel your heartbeat quicken
For these pasta-salad days:
I am bringing chicken.

Bulging bellies thicken
Laden with crab hollandaise.
Feel your heartbeat quicken.

Sweet Siobhan seems stricken
By the puddings and soufflés.
(I am bringing chicken.)

Insert thy toothpick in
Anastasia’s canapés:
Feel your heartbeat quicken.

Beatrice (she’s Wiccan)
Brought a heap of warm beignets;
I am bringing chicken.

Jealousy shall sicken
Those who brought their best entrées--
Feel your heartbeat quicken:
I am bringing chicken!

I miss the sky
I know it’s above me,
held in place by angels hands;
their wings, fluttering
rearranging the clouds
and our lives

I miss the sunset
I know it’s before me,
painted by surrealistic bristles;
it’s edges, softened
by the hands of a man
who cried last night

I miss your love
I know it’s in me
passing through my heart;
like a lost puppy
waiting for you
to come claim it

What a dream once said to me
   is what a dreamer said to you
I hope what I see when I look at you
   is what you see when you look at me
What a dreamer thinks awake
   is what a dream never forgets
I hope what you feel when I touch you
   is what I feel when you touch me
What a dreamer dreams to be
   is inside the dream of another
I hope the way I want to live with you
   is the way you want to live with me
What a dreamer hopes to be true
   is what a dream told me about you

Was is really that easy
To lose all sense of innocence.
Eyes once so bright
Full like oceans.
Full like oceans.
How easy it was to abandon ship.
How long did you wait for the water to dry up?
No more seas of dreaming in your soul
But puddles of shame in the corners of your mind.
You pretend,
I know you try to see yourself stomping through puddles.
Your boots are not quite tall enough to keep the dirt
From staining your blood.

Why are there so many sad poems?
Did the old masters write sing verses about depression and anxiety?
Or is that a new feature?

I don't ask to be pretentious.
To bemoan the state of the new generation.
But I have to wonder,
Has the poets changed?
Or have I?

Our generation has learned one thing:
How to break over and over and over and over again,
Barely piecing together the pieces before they shatter again.
So is it a surprise to anyone that the poets speak of heartbreak and pain?
It is all we know.

Or is it all in my head?
Do I simply think I see more tragic poems because I seek them out?
Only remember the poems that make me cry,
'cause sadness the only emotion I can feel anymore.

The sound of a highway that is really the wind
pushing down the wrong side of the street.
He stood there with a voice so timid, I wanted to cry-
no- hug him- no- laugh- or-
lay down on the cobblestone right there and
scream the poetry of that moment at everyone
walking by- but- I didn't even
give him a pound because by the time
my heart began to constrict, my legs had already
told me to keep walking along- but-
all I can think about is his hands in his pockets
and the white piece of paper
on the ground at his feet, telling him
the words to a song that he knew by heart.
And there was his stubble and where is his family?
And his hands in his pockets
and I just kept walking.

I watched a hopping little frog
He bounced across the road
He landed upon a mossy log

My feet got wet in the smelly bog
It looked to me a warty toad
I watched a hopping little frog

I heard the barking of a dog
Casing after a ball was throwed
He landed upon a mossy log

T’was hard to see through the growing fog
I considered a shade of green unowed
I watch a hopping little frog

Just a piece of the ecosystem, a cog
Dashing across grass freshly mowed
He landed upon a mossy log

I sipped a glass of eggy nog
And thought of pictured I’d been showed
I watched a hopping little frog
He landed upon a mossy log

This is my space
Here, I'm nobody
A different name
And all new identity

I can be myself
And I'll be judged
And it'll fair
Coz there will be no grudge

So here I'm
Expressing myself
Hear me, you,
And know your self?

This is my space
Here, I'm nobody
Still the same
Passion, love and tragedy

**** the happy people that depression never struck
**** the happy people and all of their good luck
**** the happy people who've never known this strife
**** the happy people who've never used a razor or a knife
**** the happy people that the monsters never came
**** the happy people with no voices in their brain
**** the happy people that with the universe they have no gripe
**** the happy people and their ******* happy lifes