Through the looking glass I see myself
But what do I really see?
This mirror gets a little ***** sometimes
And soon I can't see the real me

My thoughts and reflections confuse my view
Who am I really? I say
And sometimes my view is prejudiced
By how I feel today

"All's wonderful" I like to say
But those who know and love me
See my scars through their own looking glasses
And observe a different story

I wonder sometimes if they have a better view
Of the isolation I feel inside
The walls that I thought didn't even show
And the hurt my own mirror hides

I think, like most people, I prefer my glass
A little fogged up sometimes
I tell myself my life looks much better
Through this protective lens of mine

But sometimes love wipes away the fog
And I see what God sees, the real me
I dance at my happiest in those bright rays of truth
For true love brings such clarity

You see, true love loves me despite my faults
But true love doesn't fake or pretend
In fact, true love, like God, is the only thing
That can truly clean my lens

Contamination seeps and weeps from pores and migrates from your skin to mine
I cannot see it but I feel it, sliding over me and sinking through layers
Through my skin and my nerves and my tissue down right to my bone
Where you pause; take a breath, look around;
Try on my internal machinery for size and speed and duration
Drag and rip and tear my insides for a sign and the very spark of life
Then, once located you break through, right down and into my marrow
And consume all it is there that makes me immune
Become a part of me in the parts that I was not even aware existed
A lovely parasite who feeds on my secrets and bathes in my blood
A darkness within which perfectly mirrors that already present
Both of me and alien, twisting the two so intertwined that no lines can be drawn
Until we are but intermingled and so all is lost in bones that have become yours
All that skin and those nerves and those tissues, lost unto me and gained by you
To be devoured through duplicities of dancing and deception  
A most beautiful way to die, to simply cease to exist to be
Devoured by a love so consuming and false that not a trace will remain
When you do not falter but dance on; playing out your parody of happiness
With all of those who once thought that they too knew the steps

But now what remains at last knows better
And as it burns it both regrets and adores you
It both loves and it hates you
Wanting but denying the need for a being so superfluously mendacious in their meaning
So extensionally versatile with their morals and reduced in magnitude by their ploys
Now the ash can rise above, constrained by no sentiments to bind nor naivety to hope
To fade into comforting insignificance as you compose a ******* of life with bitter strings
Tying irreversible knots in all others connected to your skin; secured by but the very finest of threads
On the edge and ready to leap; always with a larger hand in sight and the treachery to take it.

I want to write a poem for you
But I don't know how
I don't know how to put it into words
The hatred or love I feel
The confusion or pure clarity I feel
The
I feel
I feel everything and nothing all at once
I want to write a poem for you
But I don't know how

I’ve been saying, “tomorrow,” for the last three months, dreaming again in a bent and hollow sort of way, shoving myself into all of my crooked corners. I’ve purposely avoided it up to now, trying to dodge it, like an expert lightning runner —my sad attempts to slip unnoticed past the inevitable summer months.

It denies my wishes for a moderate temperature and ruthlessly tortures me with its slow crawl in my direction, wrapping its clammy hands around my throat to pin me to hot pavement; sparks within me and kindles unkempt fires, burns me at the shoulders like Memorial Day fireworks —feels so potent I can almost see it tucked behind the horizon. Waiting.

I want to taste a sky that slowly darkens, bowing its graceful head to welcome a storm that may never come, existing only to fool me into praying another day for rain.

Sometimes we live our lives out of fear.
Sometimes we are unaware of what is actually real.
Sometimes we take things for granted before they disappear.  
Sometimes we need to break our glasses to see in the clear.

Look around and what do you see?
Beauty lies within the nature of every facet you perceive.
Take a moment to suddenly pause time;
becoming aware of your zen state of mind.

When you observe droplets of water falling from the engorging sky,
visualize that moment frozen in time.
Become mindful of the chemical process elegantly combined;
as you experience the moment before it passes by.

Clarity will suddenly reach its remarkable peak,  
after reliving the vicarious journey of the droplets feat.

Sometimes we stop living our lives out of fear.
Sometimes in the mist we become aware of what is real.
Sometimes we cease taking things for granted after they disappear.  
Sometimes we need to fix our glasses to continue seeing clear.

By: Michael M. De La Fuente

A rampaging torment flows
with every passing wave,
escalating regression
and stockpiling the rage.
Clarity, now a fading memory
wilting in the shadows of a cave.
The price of congenial lunacy,
satisfactory for those who enslave.

Pinch yourself, resist the slip;
Give your body breaks on leather wakes.
Take stock within coal seams that quake.
Criss-croos, mis’lign and jump again.

Letting off the city sleep,
Or, mattress stuck in toxic seats;
A drug, it soaks as wheat, it eats.
A dream, it’s known, they start at ends.

Blinking eyes at whorling lies,
Or, telling words and shepherds’ herds;
Clearness burns within absurd.
Criss-cross, mis’lign and jump again.

America the beautiful,
Or, Greek and Roman, British rule;
In vain, it pays to play the fool.
Daedalus: nine. Peninsula: dead.

***-aware , oo, era waxes;
Left and vexed, et al. complex, or,
Desperate: long to reach, connect.
Criss-cross, mis’lign and jump again.

A drunken wind, with knees to head;
New lovers heat to keep you fed,
Whether spilling wine or breaking bread:
An outlet towards which light shall bend.

Oh, take it out, or bring it in.
The spin and glow of broken snow.
What the cat drags in it’s hard to show.
Criss-cross, mis’lign and jump again.

Swept away with moving floors,
With secrets kept behind closed doors;
Move and seep in/out of pores.
Close those ears and play pretend.

Drawn in by the waters pull.
The belly aches, but it’s not full.
Tides ripping through that which was stole.
Criss-cross, mis’lign and jump again.

Come lumber through the urban nest;
Inside these heads: infinite jest.
Expand, progress, all to the west!
Say, no man stands to this extent.

I wish I felt like clarity and nothingness, or that intangible vapour like stuff which comes off of a power washer at a car wash
in a dark car park
the car's owner absent, away shopping

You were the one who put your fingers in my mouth
I'm supposed to be embarrassed and disappointed
I am both

I suspect you are a good person
you have a sister
who you love
I bet you are different when you go home
I bet you are nice
I hope they know what you do
You are a classical easy ****

But I'm just syllables and escort clothing
For a while I quite liked that
In fact I'm proud
My friends find it funny

You liked the smell of my hair
And gradually I'm piecing these notes together
I think that if I had more crushed up note pages grinding into your back
You would have remembered me

I'm pretending that if you taste that scent again, you'll know
I still have some of you attached to the garments at the bottom of a full laundry basket

Wind whips
through my hair
heavy
with the scent
of change
and as I smile
I know deep down
that everything
is going to be just fine