I love you
Your gentle touch
Your nervous giggle
You caring smile

I love you
But I'm not in love

My hand clenches around my heart
Constricting its beating
Forcing it to step in time to the wrong dance

I'm slicing m own soul apart with this quandary
But the knife is so sharp I hardly notice it
I only think of your face
What you will do when I tell you

I love you
But I'm not in love

The hurt pouring from your eyes
Like blood from a wound
Not windows, but floodgates to the soul unable to close

As your eyes furrow
And mouth turns, open in surprise
Glasses a shield for me
Or you, I can't tell

I love you
But I'm not in love

Poetically I'm the best thing you've ever seen and I don't mean to be cocky
I'm not social enough to have friends to stop me
My head is still in the clouds like your favorite rappers baby picture
I paint like the black Picasso but nobody can see my bigger picture
I'm just looking to find my calling in life and hoping I'm poetically gifted enough to have people study my words like bible scripture
Mathematically and scientifically I'm far behind the pack
My love for nursing is still as alive as ever but I think a career for me in nursing is where I take a step back
I can't comprehend the formulas and equations like the others
Maybe I'm not meant to be in the hospital environment like the others
Ink and paper is where my bread could be financially buttered most
I just wanna shine bright like a diamond
And have confidence and stop hiding
Behind my poetic commas
Buy a house for my mama
And make her proud and be a better man than my papa
My life's calling still hasn't called but I'm trying to be patient
It feels like centuries ago I knew what I wanted to do but now it feels ancient
I'm at the crossroads of my life
Unsure whether to cross roads hoping they lead somewhere promising or be a trooper and see this current route to the end and see what'll happen with my life

Empty
Drained
Forgotten
Strained
Pressure
Mistakes
Death and
Fakes
Life challenges us
To face
That in which
Lay behind and ahead

I'm leaving, and it's okay.
Yes I'm leaving, and there's no way anyone's gonna change my mind.

I'm leaving, it's okay.
I'm dreaming, there's no way you can take my mind off of what is mine.

Your truth is to blame for my insecurities. That tugs and traps my heart in a never ending sticking, lashing pain.
  And because of you, I continued to decay inwardly through transparent hurt.   Hurt that gave me the courage to suffer daily despite the effort to conquer the distasteful fear. That built-in machine , that wreckage of my soul.
Dusk til dawn I lay in my cold and wet bed of tears . Giving myself up to the distant voice that fed on my weakness.. Night and day it tormented me, comstantly writing  wistful memo's to  steal my commitments. I was distraught, a wrecking shame to my faith .I was a disappointment to the dignitaries and  a lost cause to my integrities.
I had no hope, being restless and destroyed. I was covered in my own blood. Which bled from my eyes to my toes,that stained and uncleansed my skin . I was in a frenzy for eternity . Pitying myself in confusion. And just when you thought I  was over, at the end of my misery .. I made a decision ... I decided .....no more...

Serenity, my new disease
Quiet contemplation
Competitive despite the lead
I eared with this predestined invitation

Love trumps all
But my Heart beat is quite thin
Felled like millions far before me
Now, this lonesome addiction has set in

By what metric I self evaluated
Is not your **** concern
Self loathing and self love are fine
Until you realize, they're
Followed by self hatred

Because what you forgot, opinions are not
Something that can be altered by
What you believe
What the world cares to see
The faults you've tried to hide
Are more than definitive
Through someone else's eyes

This solitary empire burns
With the feeling of resentment

Every note of color spurned
From the palette now turned grey

Harmful opinions to no one but me
No one can get in the way of my barbs
Self righteous heroes of a world assumed fleeting
Denied sacrifice can never be free

Who needs the criminals
With the strongest of wills
It won't be much longer before all the hills
Start calling out your name
As it turns to a scream
Try to wake up, but this life's not a dream

Shelter is easy, but hiding is hard
The stars make it look easy
But uprooting's really
*******
hard

The back woods keep drawing
The corner of your eye

...

The trees quiver in the cool winter winds,
Dancing silhouettes soaking in the rain

Analysis, analysis, paralysis, I will be the end of us
Incessant thoughts swirl through my mind. I cannot
Control their poison spreading through my veins,
To my nerve endings, shattering all illusions of control

We were birds soaring in the sunlit sky
Majestic, wings flutter and stabilize
Blinded by the sun, unaware
Of the details
High with adrenaline, on illusion

We are birds, shying away from the gray
Gloom of the winter sky when it is
About to rain.

The woman lives
When the shadow of the moon
Falls ebony on the earth
And the trees of her forest
Are like burnt matchsticks
on scorched field
She lingers then -
like smoke in the dark,
Until we meet
In the appointed place,
Two black holes in the abyss of the cosmos and
She opens
A nightmare mouth,
words slithering forth
-the tip of the tongue the teeth and the lips-
dripping from her chin
in jet black ink
"Are you ready?" she screeches
A crow
A banshee in the graveyard
I cannot speak, cannot see anything but the ink that rolls like a wave from her lips
Dark and terrible
A blood moon
"I See you" she calls with open arms
A lover's embrace
An eternal escape
But the shadow is receding
Drawing you to the heart of the forest
And she reaches for you once more
Your hand twitches
The path is tangled
Brambles whip and thorns claw
and you both understand
Time is up
"Never again." She croaks splayed against a treetrunk "Never again"
The woman fades with the last of the shadow
She cannot return
And you are alone again
Hands shaking in the sun
Lips covered in ink