In a better world...

every TV, in every house hold,
comes with it's very own blindfold
so that the children won't be able to see
the horrible, bloated beast
that media has come to be.

Time and time again
I have raised a hand
or a fist, or a blade,
to destroy this thing I love
and all the things I've made.

Perhaps it is this skin,
that encompasses me
like an unwanted lover,
that makes me see these flaws
in one thing or another.

It is most likely me,
not you or they,
who created this unholy rage
that has made me hate this art
and set fire, not pen, to the page.

The foolish churls
and putrid youths
who plague and prowl these hallways
who abuse this sacred art and leave it
lost among the daily craze.

While I may applaud your work
and hand out digital hearts,
there are others amongst the crowd
who pervert the most basic concept
in any way that they are allowed.

I swear to the eternal void,
to the primeval seas of blackness,
to all that will ever last
that if this kind of beauty can be ruined,
then we all should die, quick and fast.

There is just something I want you to know.
We knew that we would never be great,
we would never feel fire in our heart
when we congregate
in the libraries and alleyways.
We have lost our edge,
our static charge, our blaze,
and it beyond us recover it.

We were amazing at something
that the world had no patience for,
so in those moments when we shone
the world chose to ignore.
Now we have lost our flair,
we will never have another encore...
Because we were spectacular at something
and it has rotted away
like so many of our hopes
and aspirations
and this tired procrastination
has gotten us nowhere.

We made a world, for every and anyone
who chose to share it with us...
but it has drained away
from the land and sea,
now us tired artists
must join reality.

We watch time fly out
our window sill
and yet we still
try to capture this moment
hold it
as if holding it
will keep it here""
but it sinks into the atmosphere
the moment you let go
and you must let go
because the flame that is smothered dies
and there will be no rise
from ashes, no cries for help
no morse code dots and dashes
there is no running
not now, not ever
and you don't need to be
the most strong
or the most clever
you just need to be you
because you are a miracle
in a world that is content
to let science explain everything
we don't need a flow chart
to know the heart
we need faith
not in gods or crosses
or wins and losses
but in our own reflection
not self correction
in us
we
are
all we are
and all we are is
the answer to a question
we have been asking ourselves
since the last time we felt lost
since our lullabies became embossed
on text books and bibles
since we were held liable
for the actions of generations past
we are not the last
but we can be the first
since the day we were cursed 
with this desire to be more 
in a society rotten to the core 
and no amount of rhyming 
or perfect
...
timing
will cure that, 
we all have our own tin-foil hat, 
but if someone is trying to read 
your mind 
think something worth a **** 
stop trying to find meaning, 
stop preening,
stop everything you are doing 
and simply be.
I am no authority
on living a good life. 
Grief and Suffering are my in-laws
because I married strife 
but if you believe a single thing
that I ever say
believe that you are not stuck,
there is always another way.

I am a poet,
connected by a network of poets
to thousands of poets...
but we are all still lonely
because we live inside our own heads.

Who?
When?
Why?

Me.
Now.
Why not?

I've been teaching people
how to be poets.
Now, even to me,
this sounds like canned *******.
But I believe that there is more to it.
It sounds so elitist to think
that you were just born with poetry
in your heart and mind.
That it could ever be so hard to find
inner meaning where there is none.
Even love is an illusion
the same way color never existed
outside the eye,
your beauty never existed
outside my heart.

Now before I start,
let me go back to square one.
I find it hard to believe that someone
can't be something just because... they aren't.
Poetry, like all art, is a skill
and like all art, you don't need to be good.
No-one is judging your art
unless you ask them to
and if it ends up in front of their face,
you've asked.
It's a skill, you get better and worse,
good days and bad days,
but some people just need to realize
what poetry really, really is.

It's not about rhyming, or even sounding good.
It's about meaning.
What's the deal with this flower?
This flower is art.
It's a piece of chlorophyll, who cares?
Because the flower is beautiful.
What makes the flower beautiful?
Because I choose to believe that this flower is more
than what my eye percieves.
Boy, this art **** sounds like
a bunch of crap.
*It really is.

Just let these feelings
sit inside
and subside
let the tried and true
come to you
through the two
rules of this life
One
there is no rival
for love
Two
there is no love
if you can't face it
embrace it
UPPER CASE IT
because if you can't
give it
than prepare to live
a life
of receiving but not having
and traipse the edge of the knife
sort of like
a tightrope act
walked until cracked
in half complete
on cold concrete
with no one to say
goodbye to.

No-one would even remember you.
Love is the lens we see ourselves through
and it will all, one day, come into focus.
None of this 'meet and greet' hocus pocus,
life is an encounter
that you step up our back down to
but if you can come up,
then you will not go back down, you
are ten seconds of sunshine
in a night where no-one can find
anything,
you are the something,
you are the exception
we connect ourselves by strings
like hearts made of tin
there will be lonely days
when the path ahead
splays out like
a million highways.
But you can be a moonbeam
by which everything that would seem
impassable,
insurmountable
like boot set in dirt
so hard it takes up root
all these things
become moot
when held to your radiance
because there are gradients
in all life's creatures
but the greatest teachers
ever summoned to our side
will be our reflection
in the pond
do not abscond from this sight
you will die...

if you do not fight.



Alright?

Santa murdered Christmas,
by excluding the Christ
and only caring about the Mass
of how much one can get.

No-one gives a **** about Christ anymore.
Myself included,
but I didn't need a perverted holiday
for that to be a thing.

I will hone my skills
to the peak of my potential
and whittle the most beautiful thing
that mortal eyes have seen...
**Only to destroy it
and set fire to it's ashes
because even though it was rooted
from my own fingertips
it was flawed
in my eyes...

I wanted to say something about love
that has never been said...

So I said this... ahem

"My love is like a tiger with no fangs hooked up to a nuclear power plant headed over by a Rottweiler who can't stop the imminent nuclear meltdown because he doesn't have fingers."

The next poem will be a little less different.

A question mark
is only an exclamation mark
that strayed from the straight path
in search of answers.
A period is only the end,
setting tracks for a new beginning.
Ellipses
are only thoughts
that never got...

I do not know what the future holds
any more than any other man,
but if I can somehow picture
that you will be with me,
your hand in mine...
Then who the **** cares about crystal *****
and tarot cards?

You are my stability.
My steady footing.
while you are here,
all else fades into the background.
Your voice,
makes all else white noise,
and your touch
melts all false pretenses.

When you leave, I will be destroyed,
but I will never forget
or forgive
myself for letting you go.

If you could promise me one thing,
it would be that you'd never change.
No matter how many ways I rearrange
these meager words,
they will always find a way to spell out
"I love you"
And that's beautiful.
But we do not worship beauty anymore,
we bend our knee to concepts such as
violence and objectification
in a culture that paradoxically forbids it,
for every vulture picking the bones of something
that once was amazing,
there is a man getting fat off lies
and grazing.
This is for every child who will die this year,
who will take it upon themselves to make a message
that people will choose not to hear.

This entire atmosphere is clouded from the fumes
coming out of the hallways and classrooms,
where each flower blooms
only to close it's petals up again in shame.
Where each name called is meant to stand for
horrors and destitution
and our prostitution for convenience
will always shift the blame.
This is for every bully that got pushed back,
for every attack returned
and good night's sleep earned.

This is for you,
or anyone like you,
who has ever had to feel the shock value
summing up to totals we could never coalesce
and I will not digress from this topic.
It has burned holes in our armor,
into our good judgements and mind
where our credit cards will be declined
because we didn't take charge.
Problems like these will only enlarge,
we will never be happy,
until we deal with this.

Fish would not be caught
if they could keep their mouths shut.
Same deal with people.

It's all nameless splendours
and 'return to sender's.
Without the clarity to make sense
and the rarity to be heard,
we are blurred together
like colors on the canvas.
Where I settle in and make my home,
it's insanity and ****** sea foam.
        Straight lines where everything careens
               into smokescreens and blackened eyes.
                       Cruelty in disguise.
                              Lonely demise.
                                Unheard cries
                                   Dark skies.
                                       Lies...
                                          It is here... I make my home.

It's too often in this life when we pretend
that every deep-end is a wading pool
and every fool with a dream
is a philosopher in disguise;
because we weave lies into silk and grieve
every time a tree falls with no-one around to hear
but we still appear to fear our past paths
more than our futures.

We live in a world built with false pretenses
and barbed wire fences,
but we still make wire cutters for every time
he mutters of freedom reached our ear.
We make the road ahead clear
with a You Shall Not Pass mentality,
swapping between dreams and reality so fluidly
it seems that we will never truly wake again.
If I could make amends for everything I've done,
I'd take a pass,
because sometimes you'll only be sorry
if in the process you look like an ***.
But everyday, in the looking glass,
I see a man just a little older than the day before
with the worst day behind him
and a new one in store
and a future no bright, no-one could even try to ignore.

My poetry is hardly crowd control,
but I'd like to think that winter night's stroll
through my mind wouldn't be hard but it would.
Because even the urge to do right and do good
gets lost in translation
and each radio station is broadcasting spells
and each songs just a hermit crab in an already used shell.
Am I expected to enjoy that?
I'm not better, but anyone better would crush them flat.

I digress, I suppose what I'm trying to say
is that this sorry mess of a love story
has gotten to a gory conclusion
and I can still make magnetic fusion with the ashes left.
It's hard to carry on when each footstep leaves behind
a memory people can use to find you,
but my heart can still beat black and blue
and I know that I'll have a place
no matter where my road takes me to.

I wasn't very good at poetry when I was young.
I would stumble over the concept of rhymes
and at times couldn't hold an idea in my head.
I'm still young,
but somewhere along the way
my mind evolved and my heart
found it's voice.
I guess you could say
I grew up...

But I was never planted in the soil
of complete certainty.
I was watered by aqueducts dripping
misfortune and misdevelopment,
as if gripping reality had become a chore
and at some point I guess
I grew bored of it.

I didn't come here to cry.
I didn't come here to spin tales
of how my childhood was worse than most.
But I think we are all somewhat haunted
by our juvenile years,
as if each playground became a ghost town
and each classroom became a lost-and-found
for what we should know by now but don't.

I wasn't very good at poetry when I was young,
but somewhere between now and then
I grew up.
But only candles grow shorter as they grow older
and I will never again find sanctuary
among the monkey bars and tire swings.
I never felt welcome
but I was.
I just wish I knew that then.

We ****** ourselves upon labels,
like an acrotophiliac forcing his legs in a beartrap
that just won't close.
As if this world could ever be as generous
as tales and fables.
For every time we let ourselves feel,
we are allowing ourselves to be peeled apart
by those that think themselves better.
For every heart bleeding,
paper cut on a love letter,
we can find enough pain to store away for later.
Pain to share.

Every time I walk out in the world,
I feel pins set on every inch of my skin.
Every time I let someone in,
I'm rarely exposing myself to anything other
than a bull in a china shop.
But still, every time I drop to the ground,
I can make myself believe I've found
a reason to get back up.
Even now, I've got pain.
Pain to share.

In a world built on lies, oil
and the sweat brought from toil
of people overseas,
we can still somehow see an enemy
in who once we called a friend.
Till' the bitter end,
we cry tears like rain,
condensation on the window frame,
but it won't be over any time soon.
We shoot for the moon,
with the hope of landing among stars,
but we find ourselves frozen husks
within an hour of our departure.
Because, I fear,
there was always a reason we had an atmosphere.
But it's not perfect
and these 'exceptions' are starting to fall near to me.
But whether I die right here,
or there,
or anywhere,
I do and always will have pain.
Pain to Share.

You use my greatest fears
as slings, rocks and arrows
meant to draw not blood, but tears
hitting the earth like meteors.
You bend and twist my limbs
in a figurative way.
You train my hopes like a dog,
telling them to stay
and you never come back for them.
You stockpile sharpened words
and hails of insults.

You used to be what I called friend,
but I was always aware of your simplicity.
Perhaps it was how explicitly
you framed desire and hatred
in the same portrait.
You made sub-cultures fit into your own identity
and always found a way
to make me feel unwanted.

You were a ****** friend,
but the way you brought about the end
like a hammer crushing the skull
of the decades I have left to live,
THAT,
I'm not sure I can forgive.
But when I wake up tomorrow,
and I look into the mirror,
I will not see your face staring back
but you always will.

And for this reason I still find it in myself
to feel pity for you.
The same pity I feel
for those short of food and clean water
because for every time
you put my dreams to the slaughter
you put another notch in your belt.
The same one that keeps you fastened to your hate.
You'll be padlocked there until you find the key,
hidden in your own humanity.
To win against hate,
you have to not want to participate in it.
When it comes to mine,
it's still there,
but everyday it grows dimmer.
Not dim as in, you,
but less strong.

So this is our swan song.
You asked me to write you a poem
and after today,
I just couldn't say no.

Dear Shane,

I do not worship celebrities.
I see them as humans doing their craft
and it might seem daft
but I have to sometimes remind myself your a human.
That your just like me. That you
put your pants on one leg a time.
When I first met you, Shane,
I didn't say much.
I made a fool of myself really,
What I said was "You're awesome."
What I wanted to say was "You saved my life."
I have no sob stories to offer,
I've lived through plenty
but this isn't about me.
You killed monotony.
You put my fears to rest
with a glass of milk and a bedtime story.
You made everything seem doable.
You practically sweat tragedy,
with the life you've had.
But you remind me to take the time
to take the time.
You are the message in the bottle
to a man shipwrecked.
If I am a castle, then you are my architect.
You're just a man,
but the hubris of believing that it only takes a man
to turn speaking into an art form,
has to be part of some god's plan.

You got me into this hobby,
mostly because I enjoy it
but also because you make art with such ease.
You can make words resemble a breeze
and then a squall in the same moment.
Even if that was all,
you'd still be above amazing.
"If I knew you better than I know,
I'd know that fast isn't the way to go,
so how about this?"
When I do my own poetry,
I have to separate it from yours
because your words are closer to my heart
Than my own.
People tell me I remind them of you.
I've never been more gracious of a compliment.
I've spent so long trying to sing a swan song
worth anything more than anything at all,
just so I could try to hold a candle
to the wall upon which your name is written
in the hall of the greatest poets.

I could speak forever at this rate,
but I'll close with this.
You have changed me
infinitely for the better.
If you ever get this letter,
I don't expect you to read it right away.
I just want you to have it,
so my words will be with you
as yours have been with me.

Break me completely!

My shards will still cut your hands,

trying to fix me.

Here it comes again.
The stinging of the nose and eyes
that gives rise to tears rushing,
color flushing out from the recesses of your face,
the airhorn that signals your heart to start to race.
All of the ****** secrets in life, all at once,
become painfully clear.
As if we are in a car with no brakes or wheel,
we do not feel
as if we can steer off this crash course.
Like a dead horse that nobody will stop beating,
your weaknesses begin retreating
to the most obvious places in your body.

This is one of those times
where depression becomes less like an ailment
and more like an obsession.
Leaving you smashed
on the sidewalk of your life,
just trying to hold on that extra while longer.
If it's ever been a question
of who's weaker or stronger,
then it clearly has been a losing hand
since the begginning.
You're not winning this one.
But we are the victors, us who managed
to survive ourselves.
To dust off photo albums off happier times
off forgotten and ignored shelves.
We are still here
and the end to this suffering is near.

Just hang on.

That ******* the corner,
she used to have dreams.
Now she only has deadlines.

I have so much more
to offer
than just tears.

There are some that live with their lives,
walking around with their heads bowed
to keep tears hidden.
Bed-ridden from the sound
of their own steady heartbeat.
With little thought to spare,
some turn to religion just so they can feel
like they have a prayer.
When every dream is a nightmare
And they tear open every morning
to reveal reality,
just to remind you it is still there.
Despite all our best hopes,
there will be no escape from our binds.
For everyone who finds the rope
instead of support,
let this be the rapport by which
your memory still will echo within us.
To lift an entire heavenly choir to your name
and your legacy.
We will not forget you.
Until there is no one left to pass your torch.
The children you never had are echoes
bouncing off flesh and bone,
finding no way out amongst your corpse.
They will die with you,
as much as your memory eventually will follow suit.
The mute will one day find the voice
to cry out for the horrors done to you,
but until then, you must fight on
so you can live to see that day.
When every exit looks like another highway to hell,
you must find it within you to dwell
only in the light places
, to turn to friendly faces
no matter the pain,
to make all the slings and arrows hurled against you
thrown in vain.
We will not forget you,
but only if you are willing to echo
in our ears just a while longer.
. Flow like a river and
blow open this world like a volcano.
Leave your torments behind you on the bus home,
they will never reach you again.

If I could shoot lasers
out of my eyes,
I'd use them to carve your name
into the moon.
Just so I could remind you
Every night,
You're beautiful.

When death comes
and funeral drums proceed me,
Death will not concede me
this one last victory.
That I will get to see
the look of pure misery
curl into a smile
as the razor opens my throat.

Heavy clanging of funeral bells greet
newer, bleaker days in the same turmoil.
Men and Women alike run fast to meet
greener grass sprouting out the same black soil.
I cut laugh lines into my pallid face
and throw my head 'neath freight trains each new morn'
I find little solace or change of pace
in carving the page to express my scorn.
My dark fantasies of death and sorrow
plague my night and cast shadow over day.
The other souls are simple, vain and weak
that shuffle on wires with little to say
and no fighting spirit of which to speak.
For each smile, there runs a bitter tear.
Just let me sleep, wake me when Death comes near.

The truest bliss you impart upon me
sends a shiver down each column of my spine,
etching track marks over all my body,
a drug no-one can perfect or refine.
Your visage leaves lightning bolts on my eyes
and a heart palpitating in my chest.
Your body silhouetted in night skies
melts my deepest poetry to mere jest.
When we touch, it smashes my composure
into oblivion and far beyond.
When we lock eyes, I'm chilled from exposure
but for certain, only I feel this bond.
Although I strive for a day we would meet,
with the others, I could never compete.

Too often now, I see your face,
it's all it's mournful glory.
Denied are you, a sacred place
within the pages of our story.
Alas, fair maid, we are far gone.
The breeze no longer sings for you.
To live is to shine and we have shone
and our stories will begin anew.
I ask you not for empathy,
for that would make my logic flawed.
Your eyes no longer imprison me
nor anyone else behind false facade.
Our paths will one day cross again, I fear.
When my heart beats quicker, I'll know your near.

The broken
and the odd
seem to cross my paths more than most.
For each and every riposte
that I deliver past the ever advancing guard
of Fate,
there is a blow that slips through my vigil
and hits me square upon the heart.
Each of these damaged souls is a part of my
grand design.
I find happiness in giving them love
and acceptance they've never known.
I find their problems to me mine
and their tears shed from my own ducts.

I do no see myself as superior to these people.
I see myself as in the position to good,
because under the hood we are still human
and there is no denying someone that.
There will always be an exchange of hats
now and again,
when it is realized that there is
nothing wrong with this
is when anger turns to peace
and sadness to bliss.

Upon your return,
I will be gone with the breeze,
never again seen.