When you were younger,
you were told about the pain of a broken heart
you were told about the mean people
you could find along your path
yet, you were not told about
the dark holes that
can find home
in the deepest part of you

You were not told that
one day you might wake up
feeling nothing but lost
lost in the outer space of your existence
where gravity doesn’t exist
and you are just floating around
looking for a path
you think will lead to the brightest star

The truth is, you keep floating around and around
you see millions of stars
but somehow
you can’t seem to reach them
no matter how further you stretch your arms,
you can’t get to touch them
and even when you are finally
so close to them
they turn into deep black holes that
with all their strength
pull you around them
only to eventually devour you

and this
over and over again
until you get used to it
until you get used to feeling this lost and consumed
until you forget how to feel full

What is the crisis
a quarter of the way
through life?

Existentially existing in the moment,
I'm constantly inside of myself
while also out.
Conundrum of being up while
I'm also down,
freedom within a blockade.
Oxymoronic hodgepodge of
tantalizing confusion,
tastes sweet on my brain
and thoughts ponder bitter on
my tongue.

Half and whole,
part and full,
questions answered with questions,
seeing things through in simultaneous
interrogatories.
Top here, bottom there,
rights are right,
and lefts aren't wrong.
Phone, texts and emails,
vibrating inside my skull
as I laugh and I cry,
as I seek to find.

Orange to yellow to green to brown,
seasons coming and going
inside my soul,
and I constantly blossom
and refreeze.
Everywhere feels like nowhere,
nowhere my somewhere as
I await a somewhere that's
everywhere.

Losing myself as I find it too,
letting some parts sail away
at sea,
and too there comes new
horizons,
as I surf, skating on the
foam, on the water's edges.
Wading into one crisis,
I'm swallowed by a
wave,
until I burst through the sea and the
salt;

and then the next wave
comes...
for life, it seems,
is salty and sweet,
one tide coming in to sweep itself away
in place of another.

matter can't be created or destroyed
and something inside of my head tells me that i matter
or at least
tells me that i cannot destroy myself

i have always existed, in one form or another
it's just that i've only had a body for 21 years
and the rest of the time i was a little less than human

i have two choices
to be
or not to be
but i don't think Shakespeare ever took a science class

we have-- to be
and we can decide what to be
but we cannot decide if we are or are not

we never chose that

our existence
is a beautiful mystery

one that i wish to understand

there are only two choices
to be
or not to be
like God

we are the pilots of our own experience

where will we go
what will we look at
who will we look up to

will we absorb everything the night scene has to offer us
or will we open up in the daylight like the flowers growing from a dunghill

we are stuck on a planet poisoned with
pride
****
pieces of the devil lodged in the crannies of our soul

but who am i?
i have to be--
i have to be--
something
(but my choices haven't defined me all the way yet)