I want to be better. But not the kind of better you see on the billboards advertising gyms or the ones mentioned in the hymns sung by entire choirs of liars and deniers of bad desires. I want to be better in the worst way possible.

I want to play air-guitar concerts for stuffed animals, I want to be able to smile in a way that leaves contempt snuffed out like a candle-cap. I want to be able to rap in Chinese.

I want to be able to reinvent the word 'cool', hang out with absolute tools and not just because somebody has to. I want to be able to rule my own mind and mind my own rules. I want to find my running shoes so when I go to the fight behind the dollar store, I'll remember what I bought them for.

I want to be so much more and all these issues I can't ignore be much less. I want to make myself confess how much I love my friends, turn dead-ends into new beginnings and then spend my lottery winnings on a stranger because the only danger I see is never having been able to know them.

The truth is, I'll never be the icon of an attractive guy. I'm never be able to buy a girl a drink and not have her immediately think of what kind of a clod I am that thinks that kind of thing still works.

I keep finding myself trying to rewrite my history where the cliffhanger at the end has a parachute. Where minute details matter less and I can say I tried my best and people noticed.

I will one day be better but I'll always still be me and honestly, I think I'd still sell my inheritance to put enough money down the wishing well to make the two days you were in love with me swell into an eternity.

But we both have other things to be doing than loving someone. We have legacies we have to build on the our bare backs and suicide attacks that need to be led.

And let it be said that I have not  a clue-'n'-half how this turned into a love poem...

but in my head there is a world where in that time and place, I didn't need to be better.

I wasn't perfect. I was good enough.

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.

Is it just a loose porch board
that creaks just outside my door?
Is it just the howling wind
that creaks outside and nothing more?

Can I trust these sweat-soaked sheets
to keep a midnight prowler at bay?
Can I trust my frozen feet
to safely carry me away?

Is my room, cloaked in gloom,
inhabited by solely me?
Light, I assume, would only exhume
the tenants of my dirtless tomb.

I shall not be prey, I then decide,
I shall not fall to just any beast!
I'm not a feast... not their's at least...
The worms... perhaps, but them I don't mind.

"You're not getting me!" I scream,
I grab the the gun and run to the shed.
I turn and bolt the door and my hands
shake as I load an ounce of lead.

"I'm not yours to have!" I cry
My vision now becoming blurred
click
"It is I who shall have the final word!"

Throughout an empty forest, a single shot is heard.

How could you?
I hate you.
Please never leave me.

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.

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.

You make me want to take up skydiving...

Because I
                  want
                             to
                                      learn
                                                   how
                                                                to
                                                                  f
                                                                   a
                                                                     l
                                                                       l
                                                                        for you

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.

There he stands.
He stands where the crows refuse to land
and the tumbleweed tumble around.
Where green is a foreign concept to the flora
that rises from the ashen ground
and the whole field has the atmosphere of a dead place,
forgotten by time.
He stands like a scarecrow that has outgrown it's post
Where most would fall, he stands tall,
like a lamp post, that provides no light at all.
His expression is aloof, but not in an oblivious way.
As if to say that his stoic-ness portrays a tortured wisdom
that makes his knowledge look more alike
to a ball and chain than a virtue or asset.
His composure is limp as if the glue that bands him together
is weeping away and the heavens push down upon him
with both hands.

His palms are loose, his shoulders are sails that he no longer flies.
His hair hangs loose and grey, framing dead and bloodshot eyes.
His jaw hangs but his lips remain tightly knit,
never to part and split their seams
lest you learn anything at all from him.
He has no jouyous thing to share with you.
No pleasant memories that he would care
to cast upon the wall like the beam of a film reel.
The insights he has to teach the world are ones
that would be massly rejected out of repulsion or denial.
You gain nothing from letting this man, most vile,
teach you about the world or society or anything likewise.
You lose something instead.
You lose the peace of mind that you take for granted
as you go about your daily grind.
You lose your ignorance, but only by using it
as the altar upon which to sacrifice your bliss.
He learned much and he certainly learned this.
He eventually started to learn about the things that matter
and by consequence he learned that in credence with them,
his life was a lie by comparison.
He learned that if we are woven by the spinners of the comos
than we will al be found threadbare.
And so, by lack of care, he pas payed the toll.
Filling the spaces of his mind,
and emptying the contents of his soul.

He is the Hollow Man.
He stands far from us in his distant field
knowing well that such a mind
is a much more dangerous weapon to wield.
If you see him whilst on your way,
at least trust me when I say,
that you do yourself a service by staying
far, far away.

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.

Change.
Less like the turtle that peeks out of it's shell
and more like the orchid blossoming for the first time.
With little rhyme or reason,
the unwatched season will pass you by if you let it.
The fortune unfavoured or the sunset unsavoured,
they will pass well over the horizon
if you refuse to give them your attention.

So it is,
so it will always be
and so we see that every opportunity
that is given to us from the hands
of God... or whatever...
is a lesson that we must learn the first time
lest we have to learn again.
Nine times out of ten, what you want
is not just going to strut up and knock on your front door one day...
but on that one time where the stars align
in your favour and you are given the chance to shine,
you have to make. that. count.
If you can focus every bit of talent you have
and crush it down into the size of the head of a pin,
then that's many times better than spreading it out even.
Men live and die under the eye of criticism
and if you can rally yourself to what you want to do
and what you believe in...
Then you can make it through.
I'm not in the habit of making promises,
but I can assure you that there is not many thing in this life
that you can't overcome if you try your very hardest
and someone who will do their best 100% of the time
is worth their weight in stardust.

There was a time when I would've fenced down a giant,
but at the same time was facing a tyrant
when it came to my own emotions.
It was all false notions that it was too hard or too painful,
when instead of blinking the tears away
and etching a smile on my face,
I kept thinking that there was more to a problem with one solution.
You've got to try.
You've got to deny that there is anything
that can stare you down or tear you down,
you've got to plant your feet to the ground
and sound every alarm.
Because you are not giving up.
Not again.
Not this time.

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.

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.

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.

Your voice, it still does

reach me through these twisted halls

though I'm long since deaf.

We are not judged by how we die,
but how we choose to live
and I don't quite know why
but I feel just about ten seconds shy
of becoming a hero.
I feel like Nero, fiddling
while I watch my passions burn.
With no stones left to turn,
I find myself taking the time it takes
to leave myself alone.
With a heart encased in stone,
I watch angels give their wings away
for a moment of staying on the ground
and I see cacophonies jeer, shout and cheer
without ever making a sound.

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

It's not blood,
it's rose petals,
dripping into my sink.

Here we go again. Memories creeping in uninvited on their tip-toes to bring more of those forbidden thoughts back to the spotlight. Night after night, I play misery's favorite game of 'how many times can I say I miss you in a minute'? Anyway I spin it, I'm still neck deep in it - in this masochistic prison without a single vision of breaking out.
It's a life sentence of my glass always being half-empty and everything that could be said has been, so I'm carving poetry into the page as if this rage will ever equal more than pain and damage. But this stage keeps calling me back for more, with or without an audience, I'm going to shout these words out so loud it'd make the ******* Dragonborn proud.
Because truth be told, none of these rhymes will turn to gold and all these times I've broke the mold I've done it to make a statement. It's always come with an apology like late rent, but I've always known that I did what I meant and I meant what I did.
But you can bid a million dollars on a foot-ladder and it won't become the stairway to heaven. But see, I've got more fuel than a 7/11, I've got the energy and the drive to make this work. I'm not about to give you a play-by-play of my everyday just so you can understand me but if you can just stand me... it's a good way to start.
You clutch your bleeding heart time and time again over who did what, why, where and when and I might need a venn diagram to discern the difference between good and evil sometimes but the best rhymes come out when you aren't quite sure what you're doing and I've been chewing my nails long enough to know that anxiety is a side 'a' me that is slowly dying away. Until the day that roots plant trees and hairless dogs get fleas, I'm not letting go of these precious memories for they have made me what I am.
Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I become - everything I've ever wanted to be. The only thing holding me down was the lack of conviction, but now I've got an eviction notice for all these **** doubts I've harbored, so I toss them over starboard and now I'm on my way. Good day, ladies and gents. It's been a gas.

A sound.
crr crrraa
Not unlike that of an egg hatching.
But there is no egg,
There is only my skin...
And it's cracking.

Slowly at first,
with no hurry or hesitance,
cracking.
My epidermis is no longer flesh,
it is a resin.
A coating made to contain.
To mask.
To shroud.
But the clouds upon the surface
are waning enough to almost
see inside.

I crack.
Emerges pure hatred,
A spirit of vengeance.
I am no longer human,
if indeed, I ever was.
I am not NOT me.
I am more me than ever.

In seeing your horror,
your fear at what I am,
I retreat back inside my shell.
Ready to visit upon you visions of hell
when next I crack.

When did
your love for me
become a
*disappearing act?

Who?
When?
Why?

Me.
Now.
Why not?

There are times when the pain is too much.
There are times when we would do anything for a way out.
When we would drown ourselves
in the middle of a drought just so we
wouldn't have to be thirsty again.
We sometimes have to remind ourselves
that we are not alone.
Not yet.

There are times when I bet my soul on three lies told.
And even though I won,
I was payed back in fool's gold.
We grow up never thinking that 'up' means old.
We are not alone
and our paths have been walked before.
What is left in store for us
as we ride this tour bus to hell
is the burnt-out car frames of those
who didn't do quite as well

Father Time continues to soldier ever forth
and sometimes what we want is south
and what we need is north.
But I'm telling you that if you think
that you are the first, you are not.
You came from the smallest dot and now
you are a monument to those who came before.
You are a masterpiece created beyond compare,
built in the image of those who's blood you share.
Those who care in a way no one else ever will.

So next time you are in pain, remember,
you are not a waste.
You are an imprint left by two people
that will one day longer be here.
As the seasons change, realize,
there will soon be a year when
our fathers will die.
When we will be made to walk on our own
without knowing why.

So when the ground starts to eat at you,
pulling you down with a force so strong
that you don't even try to fight it,
let your monuments stand and know that they are not alone.
Because we all must return to the earth,
in one form or another.
So honor them while you still have them,
be they your Father
or your Mother.

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.

Once upon a time, a man once said aloud for all to hear:
"There is no need for poetry."
Once upon a time, he was right.
When the darkest nights fall upon us
like a barrage of arrows
we would rather just survive.
We strive to one day have a future
where there is no doubt, but
until that last creative ember in our souls is
snuffed out, we will have a need for poetry.

Because what are these words if not
just scrap paper floating on the breeze?
What is this idea if not
just one seed among a million trees?
What is this level of depth
when measured to the deepest seas?
We live in a society where wit is defined
by how well you can put someone down...
A society where smiles/frowns,
whichever it is, they are just masks.
Hiding who we truly are.
Each one of us is a star,
some brighter than others,
but each of us beautiful and powerful in our own right
and in spite of our differences.

On many a night
I would have extinguished my own flame
just to be able to name myself a martyr.
A martyr who died fighting his demons
and whether or not I will ever win,
I'll always be aware of it's futility.
But, you see, it's never like I ever had false visions
of putting this to rest.
It never was a battle between 'good' and 'bad'...
only shades of better or worse.

And yet we would stuff our one hope
against this darkness into a funeral hearse
and wave it on it's way.
With not even a hint of dismay,
I ask you all,
is there any need for poetry?

Up here, I feel like I can open up my soul to you.
Show you who I really am.
Through each word and pause
I have encurred the awes of people
I never thought could appreciate me.
So let us let this tragedy unfold.
Who knows what the future could hold...
or what it could let go.

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...

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

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.

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.

I have so much more
to offer
than just tears.

Another day.
Another day where I walk these same old halls,
these same stone walls, like it's  all that I've ever known,
where I am forced to live in skin that I've long since outgrown.
I hear the buzzing, the jeering,
the oppressive white noise bouncing off lockers
through the corridors till' they reach my ears and I...
know that I'm stuck here.
Between a rock and a system that thinks itself so big
that it can encompass my entire world,
that holds me tightly in it's curled fist,
that will insist on justice only when it suits them.

I see these people, my supposed peers,
walking these halls just like me,
clawing for some semblance of individuality,
chasing their dreams which will always be just
one more exam away until Graduation Day.
When we're unleashed upon this wide old world
like a nest of bees and it's about here when we realize how...
small we are.
This world has been spinning,
ticking and tocking while I've been on this tightrope walking,
this fine line between success and failure.
I've been given countless examples of what not to be
but I look on some of these examples of people and they're free.
Just like we all, in sense, should be.
Sure, they may have missed the bar
but who says that this is how tall you have to be to ride the wind?
And if it's because they didn't try then maybe they are where they should be.

I've seen the dregs of this society,
the lowest, the junk yard clutter
that this world churns out like processed butter
and it always makes me wonder how they got to where they are,
is it just a coincidence that most ones from the projects makes it too far?
I feel like I'm playing someone else's game,
like I'm being made to dance on strings,
like all these million little things that are supposedly special
about us don't mean **** if you can't cram that into a school bus
and cash them in for a good mark.
And the stark reality is that we're stuck here.
Between a... rock and a harsh set of ideals
where self-esteem is measured in percentages.
This antiquated, dusty arcade cabinet
where a high score is what your life depends on.

So if I seem weary, now you know why.
I'm sure we're all a little tired of being as marionettes
to implied but never uttered threats.
We might not all be able to express this anger.
But some of us do it better than me or anyone else.
What of those that lock themselves in like a security deposit
and hang themselves up like coats in their closet?
We mark these messages written in the blood of innocents
as the acts of desperate teens,
we never truly sit down and ask ourselves what all this means.
We're trapped.
Let us go.