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.

You aren't the first to walk these roads.
These lonely, gravel trails  covered in broken glass and nails.
Every time a rickety car breaks down and fails
it leaves it's wreck along the side of highway,
just watching the traffic pass them by.
They are monuments to every effort we have made and given up on.
They are why you MUST try.

Whether you live in a town or a city,
there are going to be some pretty ****** moments in life.
It takes a lot of strife to get a small amount of satisfaction
but the chain reaction
of doubts and down 'n' outs
is drowned out by the radio static and
I don't mean to sound dramatic but
I understand.

I just want you to know
you're not going to go on your own this time.
Every moment spent crying is time that could better spent trying.
If I told you I don't have these moments,
well, I'd be lying.
Because I've felt the color drain from my face
as I try to remember the last place I left my courage
because it's not at arm's reach this time.
Sneers and eyerolls draw spirals around me
like I'm at ground zero of an M.C Escher painting.

I can rephrase suffering so many ways.
But at this pace, I still can't outrun my own thoughts.
I find my courage at last
but there is no sticking place to ***** it to,
so I just say "***** it."
I can't say I knew it would end this way,
but if all this poem comes down to
is a whiny teenager trying to be edgy
than I guess I...

I feel like going back to those days,
when I could feel and not fear it.
When I didn't know the world's ways
and I didn't yet need my fighting spirit.
When I could simply have a romance,
nothing complicated or categorized,
that would come up by happenstance
with no limits needing to be devised.

I miss those days, I could awaken
find another body next to mine,
and not even be mistaken
in thinking this won't be the only time.

I miss those days with a passion,
too often I feel like I'm crashin'
straight through the mud and the dirt
all the pain and the hurt.
I render my poems inert,
when I stare in the mirror,
see myself crying and dying,
insanity getting nearer.
I one day hope to rise from it all,
stand from the ash, proud and tall,
but I know that after I do
I'll eventually once again fall.

I miss those days
in more than a million ways.
Watching my eyes glaze over
thinking about days over
again.
I flow my heart into this pen
put my soul into what I write
now and then.
I know I'll be that happy once more,
I've got that joy kept in store,
for a future when I suture
this wounded pride and mind.
I've got a stride in mind,
for when I return.
See the surprise in their faces,
I bet they thought I would burn
up in the anger like butane.
I'm just too hard to contain
and I walk through cold rain,
thinking about once upon a time,
through sweat and grime,
You were mine, I was yours,
now it's vice versa.

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.

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

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.

Remember?
The beginning,
there was only darkness, right?

How could he?
He disturbed
a still void, vacuum of light.

Perverted
instigator.
Life was a weakness absent.

The bible.
Kama Sutra
for how to twist our soft minds.

I let the mountains teach me how to not be moved.

I let the stream teach me to flow undeterred.

I let the embers teach me how to fight the dark,

and I let the wind teach me how to be heard.

I don't know how I can relate this to all of you,
but you guys have really been pulling me through.
Yeah, you. The one reading this.
You're support, to me, is like water over scorched earth.
My hearth can be without fire, but your praise keeps me warm.
This is what I want to do with my life.
I want to make you smile
and if I know that I've done that
than I can find an extra mile within myself.
Thank you, my friends.
All 15 of you.
I know, I know...
Behind the keyboards and computer screens
you could easily be mexican jumping beans
that grew arms, legs and an appreciation for literature.
But it is always a treasure seeing someone leaving me
any small measure of their day
just to stop and say
"This poem didn't make me *****."
It means a lot, guys and girls.
I don't know if I'll ever be famous
like Shane Koyczan or Sarah Kay,
but if I just manage to get this far...
this is good enough for me.

We're not all the stuff of legends and fairy tales. We do try sometimes but we more often then not are doomed to fail, because being held to a standard that you're better than human is a hard burden to bear.

We don't all have the natural dramatic flair that makes us fare just that much better on the stage - But whether or not we will ever be like Aladdin, we rub every lamp just in case.

In the face of overwhelming improbality, we still find a way to get ourselves to say 'Maybe this time, it'll be different. Maybe the innocent will not suffer and maybe this time they'll catch the bad guy'.

Who am I to dream? Who am I to make more out of something than what would first seem? Every one of these stitches and seams that run across our bodies like patchwork, every scar from every time we've gone to far or raised the bar, they are ours to wear with pride.
Just because something has been denied to you is no reason not to seek it again, but this twicefold. I may not be Rumplestiltskin but I'm going to keep trying to turn this straw to gold - because the dreams that come to us are ours to hold. Ours to clutch to our chest lest they grow cold.

It is because of these mistakes that we are where we are. When you fail, if you can re-trail what you did wrong all the way back to core of the problem, then you've got experience to store away until next time. I only learned to rhyme like I do through the impromptu misteps that we are all going to go through. And you will learn to be better.

Every, single, letter that goes into writing one of these little soliloquies has to come out like a summer breeze or they should not be put down. You can't squeeze your brain like a grape hoping that pure wine is going to come out. Inspiration comes from the funniest places and I guess you could say that you've been inspirin' me but there is still fire in me to temper the metal.

And I know I'm not going to get a medal for this, otherwise I'd probably do it more often. But each and every one of you needs to know that it is only through challenge and adversity that we grow into these monoliths we hope we one day become. If you can manage to stay strong, live long and keep is simple your whole life through... who knows? - Maybe they'll write the next fairy tales about you.

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.

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.

I once told you, Miss,
that your poetry is so edgy
that I cut myself on it sometimes.
Well, I've been reading more
and I feel
at a loss for blood.

A wise man once said,
that what starves us carves us
and I have never been anywhere near you,
but I imagine holding you in my arms
would be either the worst or the best experience of my life.

You've got some jagged bits,
but I bet if you put your best part forward,
you could split a man's heart apart
in the best of ways.
Make him think of you for days after,
caught in the rapture of the pain you bring.

If I could capture a joke out of thin air,
I'd find you and give it to you,
just hoping that maybe it might possibly
make you smile.
'Cause ****.
It must be a supernova waiting to happen.
Only the death of stars could live up to such an event.

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.

You.
Who ARE you?
You, who I have dreamed of many a night,
who has always given flight to my imaginations
and fancies.
My aspirations of an angel...
but you are lost down the wishing well.

Evanescent in form,
but always representing the same thing.
What are you?
You
are perfect.
The woman in/of my dreams,
who it seems I have never met
(...and never will).

Still... You haunt me
and taunt me with what I can never have.
So haunt me,
for I will never complain
about seeing your visage,
seared in boiled tears,
behind the lid of this eye...
...and the other.

She used to stand on the tips of her toes so she could kiss my cheek.

I've cherished these memories through and through and while there is no digital proof that our love ever existed, I remember that September with an indespensible fondness.

But I feel these memories fading away. Slipping through my fingers like wet clay and each night that passes I can spend one less moment of the day recalling how your lips felt against mine...

...or thinking of how I could gaze into your eyes for the better parts of eons, but we are all peons of fate and our innate sense of duty pulls us from the things we are drawn to.

It is then that I remember that you were not taken away, how you chose to leave and that is okay.

In my agony over the loss of someone who's name no longer clings to my lips, I chose to cling to your hips and not let go.

I know better now, but I was afraid.

The memories we shared grow ever harder to remember, but that September you reminded me what love was.

It was fleeting and it was depleting, but I no longer find myself needing your touch.

I let go and I already know that you did so long ago,

but it stills brings a smile to my face when I recall how you stood on your the tips of your toes so you could kiss me,

I suppose even angels need someone to look up to.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When the very ground beneath me cracks
and my brittle sword lies broken
then I will ask that no quarter be drawn
andwhen the victor next sees the dawn,
no words of regret are spoken.

When I approach the pearly gates
treading upon the clouds above,
I will not weep for you nor I,
for I know the code we both live by
and the cruel gods that we both love.

When the victor has met his demise
and meets his victim in the next world,
let us let the past be the past
and not allow our anger to last
for you cannot shake hands when your fist is curled.

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?

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.

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 told Halie she was beautiful today
And she smiled and said “You’re handsome.”.
I could tell immediately that there had been miscommunication.
I returned that smile as if I could ever hope to mirror the beauty of hers’ and changed the subject
but honestly, she was missing the point.
‘Handsome’ refers to features that are aesthetically pleasing whereas ‘beautiful’…
‘Beautiful’.
It’s a word I try to avoid defining because I don’t think I know enough
but just talking to her…
Putting our foreheads together instead of our lips,
I feel like I could write a bible about what that words means.
I see more than anyone has seen of her yet.
Sadly, herself included.
I love you like a blind man, Hail
Where it isn’t your body that keeps you in my mind,
It is everything you are to me.
You are the symbol of innocence, even after all this time
I still find myself searching for words to say
that could do you justice.
Now I wrote a poem for Amy because of her looks.
I wrote a poem for Megan because of the pain she caused me.
I never wrote you a poem, Hail.
Maybe I was afraid my words would fail
To describe in detail the way your fingertips strike my nerves
as flint strikes steel and throws sparks
into my heart.
I want to let words fall out of the front of my face
and land at your feet
as if they would have any semblance of coherency.
When we’re touching, I can’t make words.
I can’t rush to my first line of defense against the outside world
because I don’t want to be defended from you.
People hear my brazen declarations of love and I know
They’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking.
‘In the grand scheme of my life, our relationship is the blink of an eye’.
But if I can make you one promise
and if I could only make you one, this would be it.
I’m going to remember you, girl.
Life is the tide that washes over the sand castles we've built together
in this sandbox we call an adolescence,
but I promise you that I will always remember
the times I laid my heart bare
for you to see how much I care.
I promise upon this fluttering pulse
I’ll always be
Your something else.

Break me completely!

My shards will still cut your hands,

trying to fix me.