Sometimes I just step back,
Look at the lives of those around me.

I see the boy crying on the street;
His mother died in a crash now he’s in foster care, trying to keep the system from crushing his fragile soul.

I see the man on the cold, concrete steps, head in hands;
His wife suffers depression, she’s having a bad night and he doesn’t know if he can handle it.

I see the mother clinging to her baby girl;
She had three miscarriages that she blames on past sins.

I see the young woman hailing a taxi;
She’s afraid to be close to anyone for fear of her heart being broken again.

I see the teenage boy trying to hold his head high;
His mother committed suicide and his dad’s a drunk, he’s afraid he’ll end up like them.

Then I look in the mirror and I see nothing…

Complete;
That's what you make me when we touch.
Never;
That's how often touch me.
Happy;
That's what I'll never be.

The tears of the blind
And the lies of the deaf.

And the people who wish for their death.

So many people lying in unmarked graves
And the people that we don't even know their names.

as a kid I believed

I thought of the stars as high in a sky grown

from the ground up straight for a hundred years

in the eye-shaped pattern of sight I

with my *****-shoes dug slugging heaps in steps eighty-years

long like there was somewhere else to be or go but o this is it I'm

stuck in the awe of an out-of-focus centre and infinity that scares

me but is truly just a blurred hour glass fallen on its this side

the sorrow drips down like avenues
of cobbled mornings.
when you feel like writing a novel
but only manage a phrase--
when your thoughts can't make it past your brain,
let alone the page.
you breathe,
and exhale the frost that cracks the windowpane--
a touch and it shatters
the security and warmth,
to curl in bed and watch the stars on your ceiling.
the stars that blink out one by one
as your mind's eyes do.
but those of the human you love
supernova in front of you
your anchor to sentience ripped from the sea's
living room floor.
the living room, framed with pictures
of the ghosts and the whisperers--
and limbo' s pale door.

alas in my mind,
the last eye wanders down those avenues
and as your streets cobble too,
it shuts.

Love settles in the back of my head and chest, but if love was a thought it was a feeling in the time of sadness which is all the time of course, sadness does not exist without reality and reality be nothing without despair. The balance of life is not black in white, yin or yen,  or happiness and sadness it is sadness and less sadness because sadness with always cover everyones head with the veil of death because death, is inevitable and death brings sadness therefor sadness is inevitable.

Death lines the corners of my mouth waiting to be inhaled as i smoke my first and maybe last cigarette maybe last because I can die at any moment.

I realize I’m young
I realize life is unfair
I realize I shouldn’t hurt myself
I realize my life will only have value
if I decide to be valuable
I realize some things are difficult
I realize I don’t have to be perfect
I realize not everyone is nice
I realize things will be forgotten
And that some things never will
I realize I don’t know everything
And I realize death is a promise and life is an option
But when will you realize
That in my dreams
I don’t wake up
You won't
You like it when I stay quiet
-{ksf}