Strength unbound
I am brawn personified
The blood of Hercules, Samson, faded memories of ancient Titans flowing through my vessels
No obstacle can slow me
No wall can break my stride
Running - jumping - crawling
I can get past it all

Constant running begets strains
Repeated jumping begets sprains
Crashing through barriers beget lacerations and fractures

Pivot to look at the destruction left behind
Now look at the road ahead
Plenty of pitfalls still to avoid
Walls have been fortified

A simple ladder can climb the wall
A plain shovel can dig under the barrier
A machete can cut a path around the brambles

But I chose the sledgehammer
Sprinting from the starting line  
And left everyone behind at the first hurdle

i am so sorry
because it wasn’t your fault—
it was set to fail

my apologies
for your words really did help—
i just could not see

though you did not see
the thoughts requiring this,
i know them all once.

to me: i’m sorry
i did not push away lies
so they were believed.

hindsight
is the ******* teacher
who tells you what you could have done to get an A
when you've already turned in your D level assignment.

have i learned anything?
we'll see.

First you say I love you without knowing what is meant
As though love is some money that is bought sold and spent
Then you say I love you as a sin you can repent
love hits forever it has already made it's sliver dent

Latter you will say I love you with greater caution
Knowing love is not something free or easy gotten
All the pains of love and sleepless nights that you’re caught in.
At the end you will say it's what you've been so lost in.

But it's only when you have lost that sweet bitter taste of love
And angels play their teardrop, heart string, harps from down above
Then looking back you see the push, pull, and lovely shove,
And from sweet bitter pain, it's only in hindsight that you love.

Sometimes I feel like I should slap the **** out of the next man who says he loves me.
Not during *** either
A slap for pain, not pain and pleasure

Hindsight is showing me a hallway of all the men who said they loved me
Under each frame is a heart
Under each heart is a list of the fuckery they brought to the table
The fuckery I accepted
The fuckery I said was okay because I loved them too

I believe in loving unconditionally
I'm starting to feel like that means hurting freely
It's like opening my rib cage, exposing my heart and letting out all this love in the middle of a war zone

Gotta be real
I'm not a ******* Care Bear
My love stare has been known to tame the vilest of monsters
But over time, the release of my love changes nothing when they have no respect
When they are mad
When they disregard my feelings
When its over

To the next man who says, "I Love You, Candace."
I say to thee, "*******!"
Watch out for the hook

Knowing what I know now,
And if I could go back,
Would I take the time to change,
Review myself and backtrack?
I honestly don’t know,
Only a guess I could make,
To say that actually I’d choose to stay the same.
The events of my life made me who I am now,
For better or worse,
I have have strength in me now.

If you could go back,
Would you change anything?
I hope not because to not be you would be a sin.
You are an amazing person,
And don’t you forget it,
To change that now,
Would make you regret it.

It’s difficult to comprehend that
this is the same skin that, a few years ago
frolicked around in bars, carelessly giving out kisses.

No fear.

Every scar carries more
ignorance,
my flesh, less young explains
the former stupidity I carried

Accompanied by confidence.

I was but a child, lost in the woods
unaware what dangerous animals lurk.

Even then, surprised by my own’s existence
Me still being here and
continuously breathing.

I was brave, but not brave enough.

The quick breaths during the
first attack.
I did not know they hit like a hammer, I
a hot blade

They were hardening fear.
Enormous, monstrous fear.

I was powerful and strong, every year
my height lowering, so that my
once clear voice turns into a
trembling
whisper.

An exhalation, kept alive by the ones
close enough to put their ear next to my
tickling lips.

What anger I contain.
How mutely I express it.

It was once powerful.
Erupted from my chest like
living fire,
burning the monsters far, far away from me.

Now it barely sparks when I’m reminded of
the long gone evil men
Mean, mean men who did mean things.

It’s not that I wasn’t fashioned to arrive at this point.

I was.

But the feet pressing onto my clay body did not help.

Now I’m dried and crooked.
My voice quiet, body
exhausted.

As I exhale smoke once more, I get inside
embrace my love and think:  


"**** it."

Cockcrow harbour:
the gulls whining like tethered dogs
about rooftops
paliophobic cars and
grounded vessels..
Look:
on the hoary horizon
a glaucous strip
beguils
with backwater.
Not putting on a show
the frigid sea benumbed..
Easily,
with a tail of emerald jelly
skim a vanishing lane off that
lustrous sheet
and watch
the trailblazing mainland
scuttle.

Now,
Only scattered dreaming is possible.

In it's bachelor pad,
cradling over crinkles,
away from the meretriciosness
of validating the real by sharing it,
THE WIND
blusters off any veneer.
Here,
stale but spry,
fare your way around the inoffensive isle
to it's most shyest of harbours:
a mouth full of silver
saving it's breath.
The windows facing the sea
seem
black & white,
their wooden frames hooked to the wind,
the splattered gulls meow
your name
in a way
that's
personal.
Of course comes to mind.
The pines
are demanding a visit,
They're whispering
so you can hear them,
each as different as every snore,
these pines know
how to grow in the sand
and still reach for
the Nimbostratus with heads in unison.
The spaces
between their trunks illuminating
the blazing needles
raining down
painting the ground
familiar
to your lover's
skin texture:
Feel her closeness
from jilted borderwatchtowers
as she speads her mire
like no one's watching:
weedy and sugared
with bellflowers,
the waves in her shallow armpit
billeting a pair of white swans:
demurely they float
sometimes as pillows and sometimes
as question marks..
Go ask the seasoned locals,
they say the bones she parked
when she let her ice sheet melt
are portals
to her noble underbelly.

Hidden in the woods
reminiscent of your heart,
the red
tank-sized stone
is sealed,
but what the lighting reach cannot
the rain shall sluice apart
dumbly.
And though her hair has
come to be
the moss
black and hoarse
as sailor's beard,
there is still time.
The void says
her noisy neighbour is nothing
to die for.
The theadbear car with absent doors
incites
to drive her
in reverse gear
to the first few
days of holidays:
her golden locks a-blaze,
her arm around your
hind-sighted doppelganger.