I wander aimlessly,
And people say to me,
"You're gorgeous, and
Pretty, and perfectly
Happy."
But is that because of you?
You weren't there for me,
My Grrandmother raised me,
My mother was M.I.A.
And I would cry.
I understand that
you have problems,
That he hit you, and
Cussed you out, and
Drug you down.
But you kept promising me,
Kissing and hugging and
Crying to me.
But I was little,
Too young to comprehend,
Too Juvenile and naïve
To really understand.
And then it got worse.
I grew up and
Began to see.
No longer blind
I saw
What you had come to be.
My pain began.
You were never
There for me.
My Daddy died
And while I cried
You did drugs with
Men so fowl and snide
and painfully
crude.
I tried to hide
My tears
My cries
My pain.
I died;
A little inside,
Each time you lied.
You promised me you wouldn't
Leave me,
You'd choose me,
But No.
You chose the men,
Time and time again,
Over your kids.
I barely know
My siblings because
Of what you did.
I'm all grown up;
An adult of forty
At the age of fifteen.
Because I helped
Raise the only
Brother you kept
While you acted like
It was you in your teens.
And then February.
It was February,
You almost died
And you don't seem to notice.
You lost your children.
Do you even care?
Life seems good for you,
But those burdens I carry
Were meant for you
To have to shoulder.
Where am I in your
Mind's picture of life?
Me and my brothers
And my sister too?
Oh, Right,
Were right next
To the bible
Laying on your shelf,
Right next to the rest of your dignity.
And P.S.
While I'm at it,
Can you tell me you
Love me,
Just this once,
Like Maybe,
You might really mean
It this time?

I use to stand in the middle of the road, just so she'd see how if feels.. to think that you could lose someone at any moment.

Exacting this kind of revenge is impossible if your target is someone you love so instead… you must tug on their heart strings.
This… is for you...
This is for the chosen few that never knew they had a blurred view. This for all those who withdrew themselves from the belief that they were cared about. This is for all those who dared to doubt. Paint us as the visually impaired scouts send out to find something valuable in you. This… is for everyone were still clinging to, and everyone else who fell through.

Machines break sometimes. When something is used frequently it has the potential to encounter hiccups in its regular cycle... and I am yet to find a machine more complex than the human body. And as forgiving and loving individuals we understand that these things take time. But not everyone sees those stood by their side. When someone loses their heart or their mind you'll often find… they lose their eyes. This is for the human beings who live like mechanics. Fashion spare for those with broken hearts. Sewing handles on their own bodies when others feel they have nothing to hold on to. This is for anyone finding reasons for someone else to smile.

We are so protective of those we love because we understand how much of them make up ourselves. This is for the mothers who ask ‘Are you sure?’ after they receive an answer to the question ‘Are you okay?’ This is for the parents of dead youths who slipped away from us far too prematurely. This is for anyone who hears a buried name and sings the phrase ‘if only!’. Because if only we had known, if only we could have done something, if only you had spoken to us, if only you were still here… This is for Anthony... whose gravestone flower bed is still kept watered by the tears of my brother and my sister. This is for all those who suffered in silence, the victims of violence the play things of tyrants whose sadness grew like a virus. Their minds start riots.

For those who feel alone... I do not mean sound angry. But it’s not your decision to choose to what extend we will love you. We love you! Love you like it hurts! and it does hurt because finer points of suicide are… when you hang yourself, you do it by the heartstrings of other people! Whatever toxic substance you choose to line your throat with will leave an unending hiccup in the throats of those who spoke your name with some semblance of joy. However many painkillers you take in under 60 seconds will never be enough to alleviate the affliction you leave behind. This is for we. We the engineers of empathy, we the deciphers of understanding, we the overflowing, we… who just want to help.
It’s complicated. I know we might never understand. But we all have better things to do'' than argue about how it would feel without each other.
So if you know someone… who feels alone…. tell them... “shhhhhhhh”
Then….. hold them.

ink bleeds dry in my veins
the words coiled around my tongue lie still for a moment
the quiet hush of happiness settles in my lungs
and i find myself aching to reach inside of my chest and break my heart again until it remembers what it is to bleed.
there is no beautiful metaphor for the way joy feels coiled beneath your ribs
there is no sonnets written about the steady rhythm of life working itself out again.
i dont beg for his lips on mine anymore
i beg for his fingers digging into my neck
and his cigarette smoke to linger in my hair and stain me for months after.
im no longer yearning to be complete
but im ripping out my stitches and cracking healed bones again
scrambling to find whatever i lost inside of myself.
Saturday night i lay broken on the bathroom tiles
my heart barely fluttering
my eyes too heavy to hold open.
words spilled from my wrists onto pages and i cried out everything i ever felt for you.
sunday morning i woke up in bed again
and i havent felt that way since
blank pages blank mind blank heart
who knew happiness would make me feel so empty

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."