1: "She won't touch your stuff because she doesn't want to do anything." Including but not limited to getting out of bed, meeting your friends, talking to you, watching a movie, or hanging out with you. All she'll want to do is lay in bed, staring at the ceiling the entire time because she's too tired to do anything.
     #2: "She'll probably forget you borrowed money from her." And she'll forget your birthday, your anniversary, her birthday, and whether or not she had even eaten at all that week.
     #3: "She's a cheap date." More than likely, it's because she doesn't want to be there, she just wants to lay in her bed until she dissolves away into nothingness, until everyone who knew her just forgets about her. Because the minute that she climbs out of bed, her insecurities are buzzing in her ears and clawing at her throat, making her feel like she's drowning in her own lack of self-worth.
     #4: "She probably doesn't want to meet your family." Because she's terrified that they're going to judge her, that she won't be good enough for them. Because she knows that once she leaves the safety of her room, that she has just been served on a silver platter, a target painted on her back in bright, neon colors; once she leaves her room, it's okay for everyone to judge her, for them to say terrible things about her, for them to use her like one uses a ******.
     #5: "She will probably get drunk and you can have *** with her." She'll get drunk easily, because of all of the meds she's on, and then you can have *** with her and it's okay, right? Because she's drunk and she can't say no, because she's not thinking straight, because she's drowned her sorrows in alcohol and that's what she gets for being sad, right? Because she is nothing more than an easy ****; that's all she is and all she'll ever be, right?
     #6: "You can get free drugs!" She'll realize that she's missing some of her anti-depressants, that some of her painkillers are gone, and that you're the only one who would have taken them, but she won't get angry. After all, she's just being selfish to think that she's struggling and needs them. After all, who needs anti-depressants when she has you?
     #7: "She has poor memory and a short attention span." Because the minute that she focuses on something, that gives it the opportunity to hurt her. Because the minute that she remembers one thing, all of the bad memories come flooding back. She'll just plod along through life, wondering whether it's Monday or Friday, if she has school today or has to go to work, if she has even eaten a single bite of food that day.
     #8: "She won't talk that much." Instead, she'll sit there and listen to you talk, and she'll find a way to turn your words against her. She'll find a way to twist your words into a criticism about her, about how she's not good enough, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. She'll just keep on listening until the words that you never meant to be referred to her infect her insides with their ugliness, staining her skin red with her own blood and her cheeks with her own tears.
     #9: "She'll pamper you because she's sensitive." She'll give you everything you ever wanted because she never had someone do that for her. She'll buy you that new game you were wanting as an apology; every time you receive a gift, there's an apology hidden inside of it that you made her too scared to talk about! "Here's that new Xbox game you wanted": I'm sorry I'm hurting; "Here's tickets to that basketball game you talked about": I'm sorry that I'm not good enough; "Here's a new watch": I'm sorry that you have to sit here and watch me die!
     #10: "It'll make you look better." Because she's just a charity case, a way for someone to look better; she's just like a case of make-up or cologne. You put her on and you immediately look better. You'll drag her around on your arm like a bag; she'll just make you look perfect, won't she? It'll be so easy.
     Until you have to start hiding the steak knives in your house and hide all of the meds, keeping them locked up as you lay in bed wondering if she can manage to drown herself with the water in the sink, worrying that you might wake up and find her dead body laying on the ground.
     Until you start having to be careful what you say, because every negative word you say becomes another slit on her wrist. Until you start to have to take away every sharp object, every rope, every sheet, every cushion, because who knows what she could do with those? Who knows what kind of harm she could inflict on herself with that?
     You can romanticize the pain that she lives through every day, pretend that she's just being a whiny little girl and that it can't really hurt that bad. You can sit there and watch as the tiny grains of sand in the hourglass inside of her broken heart dwindle down to zero, leaving her an empty husk. You can sit there and watch, and say it was supposed to be easy, but you can't ever say that you were a hero.
     This is what depression really is, and you ******* signed up for it.

I was happy before I met you. Content with how my life was. And then you made me happier.. Happier than I had been in years.. I could have feelings for someone again. You taught me to feel and then broke me for my feelings. Then fixed me again. Broke me after. Fixed me. Broke me. Fixed me.. And then dropped me for good.. Like I was some toy in your game. You once accused me of leading you on, of not telling you things.. All along it was you. You blindsided me. I told you how I felt every single time. But you were never honest with me.. Not really.. And now you're okay. But I'm not. And I won't be for a long time.

Dear Estranger,

the only boy who has called you father
is your buried best friends son;
Sorry but Secretly, sir I don’t think I would have wanted
you as my dad.
I was never the athletic athen or the sporty spartan
I was the kid who could create.
Create a world with words and word those worlds
into a willed waistband that held my reality up on the hips
of hypocrisy.
Although, I never could see
what you expected from me
because I tried to wrestle,
wrestle the writhing rapids
of emotion I now choose to hide.

Dear Estranger,

You choose to stay out late
Keeping the company of neatly lined papers
and that was a stab to our hearts, a ****** with a rapier.
I garishly grinned
grabbing at a grasp.
grasping your grip
a grip with a twist
or rather your twisted grip on reality.
I never could see
what you expected from me
because the lawn grew overnight
overtly obfuscating all the golf green
grass grinding I had completed
just to please you.

Dear Estranger

Your television shows are
brimming with bottles
sans ships, but full of ****
just like you I guess.
“We are what we eat”
but
“You are what you See”
and I hope that that mirrored mirage minimizes
revealing the rottenness
wrought on our innocence
I never could see
what you expected from me
because I tried to make a movie
filled full of wounded warriors, you collected my camera
and gave me **** sans soldier.

Dear Estranger,

When I was 7 years old you
chucked a block of cheese at my mother
when we should have been at chucky cheeses
enjoying the recess
of the life afforded to youth.
Where are the kids? 'Who cares” he carelessly
croaks
I never could see
what you expected from me
because i grew grumpy and grim
from despairing disapproval and
maybe just maybe thats why my sisters cite
superficial substantiation
on their lack of physical attraction

Dear Estranger,

the life of a rockstar
is the life of a shiny silver stone
set in a slimming silver ring.
Pretty to look at. Not much else.
Beauty is what you seek
but the shriek of your ugly soul
seeps through into our toxic home
Lullabied loathing lasts longer than you think
and is heard louder than they speak
I never could see
what you expected from me
because I spent time with celebrity
and celebrated there celibacy
of a live lived fully
and quite frankly
that life just doesn’t seem very fulfilling

Dear Estranger,

I can now understand
who’d stick around
when there is people to please
saying pleased to meet you
words filled with friendship
a necessary work trip
well let me tell you our ship has sailed
I am lost at sea and no one is out
looking for me and I wish I could just drown
but I still can’t see
what you expected from me
because the other boys built boats in boy scouts
with their dads,
While I stayed home building lego dreams
stuck in the fad of boys with a too busy dad

Dear Estranger,

Pictures this, framed photos floating
on the sides of white walls.
Full of a fake family that
feared their father
Strangers are dangers
and nothing is stranger
than an estranger
in this the mormon Mecca called mesa.
Yes I called you a danger
so would the slits on your daughters wrists
and the poems pouring out of your poor
sons lips.
I never could see
what you expected from me
because you never told me.
Christmas came and you left
my eyes were left bereft of tears and
my journal was stained red from the dead
I felt when my shoes wore out and your
feet dated dockers new from the box store
Mom sold her ring to a rock store
to pay the studios electric in may
may I suggest you man up
or get the hell out.

Sincerely, a ******* who found his father ******* around

If you stay awake with me long enough to watch the sky give birth to the colour blue, long enough to watch the moon finally deny it's 7th encore that night... if you stay awake with me long enough to see the streetlamps go out... I will be 6 feet under before I forget your name.

It's ironic really. Had actually been that far underground your sound would still pound across every surface it found including... my sleeping skin... and in the face of anyone who asked you, "Are you trying to wake the dead?.." you'd say no... the people at this party are already taking a break from living... the dead you speak off is everyone dancing, everyone singing, everyone drinking and getting really ******* annoyed at the one guy with all the red shells in super Mario kart. This is our Día de los Muertos. Our day of the dead, organized by the dead for the dead. Death was seen as the ultimate escape, but we're too young for those kind of commitments, so we fled the world in what little ways we could. Often found in bottles or cans, or in the arms or hands of others. Some get lost in the beat, let it travel from our ears to our feet. Greet our friends in dance moves as if there is so much noise in the air, it's the only language we can still communicate in. I ... invite you to the sofa... where there is already a gamepad with your name on it, and what we play is never nearly as important as the fact that we're playing. However... at some point I will expect you to play super smash brothers and if you dare pick Zero Suit Samus I will call you a ***** and show you the grave error of your decision... Unless you beat me, at which point I will commend your skills with the utmost sincerity... *****....

Regardless that's my 2nd favorite thing about parties. The thing I love most are all the people being more than how they appear. Spilling life stories of their glories and tragedies, watching the guy with the with the topknot become the warrior who survived several broken bones after a motorbike crash. See the girl who loves flapjacks become the next Beyonce in the making hear her voice light fires in the in the minds of those who had forgotten what talent looks like outside a TV screen...

See the the one in the corner with a mouth like a clam shell, finally show her pearls. She told me told me about all the things that were hurting. All the people she's scared of losing all the drugs she was using and all the people here... who were amusing. The fact that she can feel so broken but still hold herself together here was a greater compliment than anything her clam shell mouth could articulate. She had finally explained all the bruising, all the excusing, all the substance abusing and she found it confusing that I was still approving. I said 'tonight what you told me was moving. You've proven you're more human than what people have been assuming so.... smile for me' ... It will be a long time before I forget your name so I want whatever I remember of you to be good.

If you stay awake with me long enough to teach me 1 reason you're hurting but two more why you can keep smiling, long enough to have us make memories out of cheese burgers and tap water, Carl, Danni, Matt, Alex, Eden, Jade, Sean, Sebastian, Katy...  If you stay awake with me long enough to watch the street lamps go off, I will never forget your name.

She said I want to be a mother.

These words froze me.

She was an old manager of mine. When I'd spend my days on the phone, sold products like stones thrown at homes of customers whose windows were only mildly less valuable than the stones I broke them with...My manager looked bored, So I asked her... "What would you rather be doing than this?" she said "I want to be a mother."

At her managers post she earns more than most but would rather play host to...a baby girl or boy, trade orders for toys, she'd write work programs for her maternity like vows on how somehow... She and her partner would raise a baby.

I asked her... "That woman you're with... Do you love her?"... Yes.

I couldn't find the words to articulate how I felt so I told her what she said make me feel like the opposite of my heart breaking.

I don't know much of her past. But with me having more unexpected oddities than anything you can purchase for less than 73p from BnM bargains I know how hard it can be to be anything less than normal... And despite how far we've come in accepting women who love women or men who love men, I wonder how many people have told her... She couldn't be a mother without a father around. Whatever deep-rooted bigoted or religious grounds they may have found, it's not an excuse to put you down. They'll turn their feelings into frowns wear their ignorance like crowns and do everything they can to prevent you wearing a wedding gown.

You wanna know what I think.

Love requires patience, and patience is a liver. It can handle a lot of toxins and forgive a lot of poisonings, but overload it and it will die. For that reason... I went through puberty without a dad around. I had one war monument of a woman to ensure that I would grow to be a man who wouldn't poison livers. That compassion would be my arrows and respect would be my quiver. I'd send shivers to the spines of anyone who dared me to be anything less than everything they could see and... That I'd be a boy to be proud of. A woman and a man gave me bricks and cement, but only one woman helped me build a home in me... So imagine what two can do. It's such an outdated cliche just because you're gay doesn't mean you can't raise kids the right way.

I mean... Do you think two grown men can't change a *****? Can't stitch love and care into the clothes that child would wear, they pull out the hair stressing about the same questions that a straight dad would...How warm should this bottle be? Is it normal for him to eat this much? Is now a good age to have the talk? You can be a child's guardian but father or mother is a title that must be earned and with no doubt I believe you'll tick every box.

You've been mum to this office floor for more years than I've even spent in employment. Your throat holds the best kind of resume that no one can takeaway,  and when you make the transition from manager to mother... I know your child will be loved like no other.

I wrote you a poem, about why I'd write a poem for you. You caught me one time trying to tame my mind with lines of rhyme, when I told you it was about a woman we both knew you said, next time... why don't you write about me? I said because you don't inspire me. The easiest excuse for writers block... I need to be inspired. I need to be hotwired into a matrix of men and women who are driven by every feeling they are giving. I need rhythm and words. The pen is a decipherer and the page a treasure map where we will write our way to gold. We sold ourselves on the belief that we could... write smiles onto people...

So we write. Muster our might and write light into the dark times. Stitch beauty into the scars of the harmed,  arm ourselves to the teeth against those who act beneath what is considered humane. With ink in our veins we write like we fight. Unafraid of a broken bones because the next blow we throw will be through our throats. We are mouthy poets, and the most powerful weapon in arsenal is our battle cry. And should one of us die on the field we'll uproar, we'll outcry, we'll encore and we'll breathe life into what remains of our fallen and give them the best ******* send off ever.

And when we finally reach home after our time together ... We'll keep writing. We'll write worlds out of words. Write instructions to the sky and orders to the ground will write love notes to sound and have this all down before the next sun swings around, with metaphors abounding and similes astounding we don't clown around with the words we've found.

We write in skin grafts. We talk the hollow into wholesome entice oppressed into the inspired and paint the lonely as lovely. We fill in the gaps. We are the ifs the ands and the buts following the 1 word answers to the big questions. Do you love me? What are you angry about? How do you feel?
And we'd say, yes! If I was terminally ill and have the doctor prescribe me you, because you make me feel more alive than I've ever felt!
We'd say, everything. Sometimes I just feel trapped in my own skin like the society that we live in has made jail cells out of my skin cells!
We'd say... Okay. I feel like his smile told me, he'd catch me if I should fall. We write so we can say it all.
We write in passion and love, we write an apology, we write in admiration, and affection. We write in absolution as much as uncertainty. We write in purpose as much as apathy.
We don't write because we should. We write because we can and It's everything we are and everything I am.

This!.. Is why we write.

A dramatic pause.
Some dramatic irony.
A dramatic tone, a dramatic dress;
A dramatic thought process.
Set the dramatic setting!

Picture a place...
A place where the mountains are too tall,
The oceans are too deep,
The rivers are too long; a place
Where only dramatic blood will seep.

I am an artist, therefore I am dramatic.
I paint with vibrant colors to
Catch the eye in a most surprising way,
I clench my fist with such severity
When I preach that the knuckles
Not only turn white, but are
Purely translucent.

I will pound my fist in the air,
A mighty pound against the air molecules
That have done nothing to me
But give me life,
And I will add insult to injury
As I raise my fist higher and higher,
I will TAKE a breath,
Inhaling deeply and I will say with a jump:
   "What, dad? It's called a fist bump.
   It's all the rage.
   You should try it sometime...
   Might diminish your old age."

Like the game of chess,
I am best known for the way I may test
The cold, human mind
And the way it rests
Glory upon the heads of the best of the best.
If you're only the best of the best,

Are you better than all the rest?

You're submerged into only a handful
Of contestants at that point in time,
I am having a hard time seeing where
You could say you have skills above mine.

Because I did not try out to be a "best".
Oh, no.
I simply tried out to be a P O E T:
A person of words and of worldly flow.
Yes, I am clean!
But I have soap in my eyes,
And I can hardly see.

I cannot see the gorgeousness of the greens,
The beauty of the blues,
The raucousness of the reds...
Oh, I forgot to mention.
I'm merely color-blind,
I thought that went without being said?

Don't!

Look at me in that tone of voice.
I am not to be looked at!
Unless, of course, I'm lookin'
Pretty fly today. Then you can
Look all you want because I am not afraid
To show off every once in awhile,
To boast,
To be audacious! ...

I often wonder why I never got to a
"Ready, set, action!"
Or a
"People! places, places!"
But then I remember why;
The persons on stage?
They are only acting.
They are actors.
In that moment, they do not really feel!
They are acting, don't you see?
Simply put, artists just the same.
Only, their art is also simply feigned.

People always ask me,
"Why are you so excited?"
"Why are you so loud?"
"Why do you say things of that might?"
"Why would you ever act so proud?"

And of course the reoccurring question of,
"Who are you again?"
But that's irrelevant.
I don't know why you brought that up.

And I always answer these questions
The same way.
I am an artist. Therefore,
I am dramatic.

People rush through life without
Paying respects to the little things.
Artists are humans too,
They are no exception to this rule.
We have faults, we have flaws,
We all have things
That need to be improved.

However, an artist can rush
Through life with such grace,
That it is no longer rushing.
Somehow through the blinding speeds,

they can see.

They can see what you can't.
Rushing, rushing, rushing.

I was hurrying out of class
And down the stairs the other day.
I rounded that corner
And began to descend only to knock
A poor female down unto her
Gluteus Maximus.

The situation was intense,
But I walked right past it.
I kept going, down those stairs,
To enter the bottom hallway...
And from up above I heard a soft, sarcastic voice,

"Um, excuse you?"

I couldn't help myself.
I had to turn around.
I told her,

*"Now you're just overreacting."

I've walked through the locked doors of a mental ward to go and visit someone considered a danger to themselves. Half starved girls make short steps past me and I double take to check if I'd seen a ghosts.
But ghosts are the ones looking for their mortality not the ones looking to drop it. So I turn my face away... And despite the nature of where I am I manage to crack a smile because somewhere on this floor was a small room with lost and found and I had some misplaced love to turn in. The young women on this ward have been here anywhere between weeks to years and they considered it a hell away from home. But the Afternoons I got to spend there will continue to be some of my greatest memories.

There's a lot going on up stairs. Between our 10 fingers 2 eyes 5 senses and 1 voice we're going experience this place one way or another, and your experience will be unlike mine and mine will be unlike his but we can go to sleep knowing that what we felt was real.

So I imagine it's scary being told by a medical professional that some area of your viewing experience is not as it seems. There's dead pixels in your screen. You've been meaning to redeem the warranty on that broken dream of a reality you've been living. But the company that sold you your world is out of business. That is to say when you check into insanity, there's no reception to show you to your room. Every spoon you're fed tastes real, but the people sitting across from you sees no meal. You feel scared.

And yet through all the poor unfortunate souls to behold on this ward one of them taught me beauty in the crazy, and seek these lessons in all of the other people. I want OCD to teach me to arrange my audience in such a way that you all look perfect. I want ADHD to teach me speech. Let me cradle impulse in every corner of my mouth and when it finally flows out let it roll about like a newborn who had it's mother craving haribos and red bull for 9 straight months. I wanna start speed dating for the narcoleptics and insomniacs and see if either can sleep on their wedding night. Watch them grow old together and have no concept of time passed because who the hell knows what time is is when your sleep patterns been ****** with. I want tourettes to teach me that this feeling is uncontrollable let our hearts be uncapped, every open armed come back, every face to face sweet embrace you give to those you love feels so natural that words like 'can't ' or 'no' become unfathomable.

But I can't pretend that these are easy gifts to accept, so many tears gave for the labeled and named, asking what's inside my brain, can I be called sane?

So my friend in the lost and found department of the ward taught me, recovery and stability are part of the beauty. Her dress size was the fine line between happier times or a cut short life. But now the time she's kept out of hospital grows like her smile. She's come miles and miles and and all the while is a living monument to the phrase 'things get better'... and that's all this is. Despite reality itself being an uncertainty and and the skies throwing all kinds of weather in the end, we're all birds of a feather that flock together and we need to remember that the sad times aren't forever, so this is a handwritten love letter to the things that get better.

She wore a smile like a scented candle. It was warm and comforting but… too easy to extinguish. This other girl existed on one end of a knotted piece of string suspended between 2 tin cans… It was hard to reach her, and when you did, her tongue seemed as knotted as the string.

But on days where these two can’t seem to stop smiling. When their bow tie tongues make phone calls sound like miracles… we say things like..

Don’t jinx it.


When underdogs bark like poodles but bite like alpha wolves. when the up-and-coming upstarts undercut higher overseers. At the risk of burning too quickly or too brightly, we say…

Don’t jinx it.


When the meek and the naive achieve more than we perceive.

When we dream on Christmas eve of what we may receive.

When we say things like ‘We’ve been through worse… she won't leave’.

we say…

Don’t jinx it.



The human condition demands so much caution and fear, we shed tears and rub our eyes till all we can see is the least of what we can be and we… live like slaves to the thing that stole our confidence away… ourselves. Somewhere down the line or self belief was found K.I.A so when we try something new, we’re already D.O.A.

So when we play pika-boo with our power, appear like a shower of rain in a desert when you’d already chosen dehydration as your only way out, we dare to tell ourselves, don’t jinx it.



Ladies and gents, boys and girls, you don’t have to rule the world. You don’t have to cure a disease or discover new species or banish hatred from the hearts of man or travel the and experience sights and scenes that only in your wildest dreams did you think you’d see. You don’t have to do a single thing!

But you can do anything.

When Martin Luther King said Let freedom ring, he didn’t fear jinxing a single thing.

And when the Beatles sang love is all you need they weren’t deceived by the forethought that their song wouldn’t be well received. They believed that they could plant the seed that would lead  this musical scene into places unseen.

They believed that all you need is love. That they had the stuff to turn lyrics into legends. They wrote songs so deeply entrenched into our musical history... you’d need a yellow submarine to find them all and… they didn’t care about what they jinxed along the way.

They held their hearts like David held his sling when Goliath told him he was too small, and so should we all, we should stand taller than our legs can and every man or woman who said you can’t you, you shouldn’t will fall! Fall silent like when the voices in your head are all in agreement and are screaming yes!



Confidence is a bag of marbles with a hole in it. You’ve got to think back to where you’ve been to find it again. But whether you’re happy with your marbles, still looking for those you’ve lost or if you lost them entirely… we can share. We’ll stir sweet smiles into your coffee, stitch compliments into your clothes and we’ll garnish every plate and bowl with the untold hope that you’ll believe in yourself.

Like I believe you. Because I do believe in you… and I won't jinx it.

The first time I couldn't get out of bed, I shook so hard I feared my bones would shatter.
My mum never taught me how to deal with this excruciating emptiness inside me,
she never told me one day I could wake up and feel
like nothing in my life would ever matter.
She never told me there could be days and nights that pass by
in the blink of an eye
days and nights when I lie on my bed
and force myself to breathe --
because even breathing feels like a tedious chore.
She never told me I might wake up some day
and feel so tired, so tired that no amount of sleep
would ever make me un-tired again.
She never told me
I might sit on the bathroom floor some night
and feel the water run over me
feel it seep into my bones
and I might just sit there, for hours on end
until the boiling hot water that could leave my skin blistered
went ice cold and made me shiver --
She never told me that
I might sink nails and blades deep into my flesh
like voracious beasts because
it might take the pain away somehow.
She never  told me that
I might stay awake trying to lull myself
every
single night
while voices in my head
churned and churned and churned
that I was useless, that no one would ever love me, that I was incapable of being loved.
She never told me that my bones
would feel so feeble, fragile, that I would always, always feel
so cold.
She never told me
that I would sprawl myself on the bed, eyes wide open,
stinging
and I would wonder why nothing at all
mattered to me.
She never told me
that I would end up fearing the blinding daylight sneaking in through the curtains
because it means another day
of apathetic existence.
She never told me
that I would feel like a graveyard,
and she never told me that
a day might come when I look in the mirror
and see a ghost.
She never warned me
that the world might turn gray, she never
ever
ever
warned me
that panic would sometimes sweep me off my feet like a tidal wave
and I would lie on the floor/in a hole in the ground/on a bed of nails
and struggle for breath
and force my heart to keep beating --
for what I do not know,
because she never told me
that a day might come when nothing in the world would have a meaning.
She never told me
I would walk past snowdrifts and wish for peace
and crave to lie in one and let the snow cover me
until my lips were blue
and my skin was blue
and my eyes were cold
and I was finally as blue on the outside as on the inside.
That I would want to die
simply because there was nothing to keep me living.
That I would stuff myself with pills
so I could fall asleep at last.
She never told me.
She never warned me.
So when I went to her with my wrists ripped open and ragged
my hands warm and sanguine with my own blood,
she told me
We can get through this like family.
I don't know what family is, mom.
I only know what it's like to shake like a leaf from the chill, down to your very bones, when outside it's summer.
I only know what it's like to paint a porcelain smile on my porcelain face and feign interest
because just like porcelain I will shatter.
I only know what it's like to forcefully drag myself in the shower,
to forcefully wipe my chin from the *****,
to scratch slurs on my arms,
or else, to be ecstatic.
I don't know what family is, mom, because I've always pretended.
I don't know what family is, mom, because I'm made out of plastic.
I don't know what family is, mom. Dead girls don't have families.