Storm clouds raging
in my head
for days on end

Feeling temporary,
heartbroken,
stuck within.

Lightning strikes,
thunder echoes,

each boom feeling like

a shock to the heart,

and I'm trying
my best
to not
fall apart.

I try to find
that spark inside,

and I know the light
hasn't faded

because I know
I may be numb, but
I'm not dead inside.

Riding the storm,
it's hard to hold on

when I don't know
what the future holds.

But I know
to get past
it all,

I've got to
press forward,
process,

and move on.

if i were to find my place in this world -
i’d rather it be on a mountain top,
or the bottom of the sea;
somewhere - where my silence is not a bother to me,
where the voices cannot travel to tell me i don’t belong -
or that i need a voice.
i’m not sure what i’ll do there, though.
but i think i know -
i’d bring a laptop with me;
a broken one.
and i would punch away at its keys with my fingers -  
my poems, all my poems…
again,
and again,
and again…
for years, for ages
until the rhythms girdle into a symphony;
something only i could sing,
something only my heart would know,
something familiar.

and then i would cast it out into the darkness -  
where it belongs.

i believe it was a tuesday morning!
i remember i had a reason to wake up -
to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste
from the tube.
to get right back in the ******* loop.

i believe i caught a glimpse of a child
through the foggy bathroom mirror,
laced with my minty breath.
it felt strange...
i took offense at his looks,
the way he eyed me down.
in his defense though,
i had caught him with his guards down.

he didn't say much,
not that he did anyway.
just nodded softly at me,
whispered almost,
'alright! guess i'll be going then...'
with a flicker of a smile
never to be seen again.

i believed at the time it was best for him
to not see the light on my face go dim
didn't realize then i'd pay such a solemn price;
as I let him go, not thinking twice.

i believe it came quite naturally to me -
finding good reasons not to be.
that day, i found yet another;
it was just enough to help me see -
the error of my ways...
like a rat in a maze, how i end up
reliving the worst of my days.

i still believe i could turn things around.
give the kid a reason to be proud.
i'd whisper softly into the foggy bathroom mirror,
'we're ok, little buddy...
everything's going to be ok!'
i believe i could get him to say,
'alright... i'll stay!'

he lost his way, he knows not when.
chasing false idols he mistook for men.
he'd lose the child, if he only knew then -
he'd find a way to be a man again.

the past caught up to me
and I

couldn't run away
from it this time.

a fork in the road,

decisions to be made
and I'm waiting, wondering

is life just one big show?

the outcome,
nobody knows,

we're all in it for the ride

trying our best
to keep our heads above water

and not get swept in the undertow.

it's all a game of chance,
and survival

the final destination,
a to-be-determined arrival.

a fork in the road,
decisions to be made,
and I'm waiting, wondering

how long it will take

to break this cycle?

Love is not a circus.
Still, I watched her perform.
I watched her spin around in circles
And pretend to fall.
I watched her paint her face red
And smear her clown mouth.
She laughed at things that weren't
funny, often mixing up the punch line.
Still, I watched her perform.
I watched while she loved another,
A man that didn't know she was there.
The audience could tell.
Any of us could.

None of the balloons that she carried
Seemed to float,
Pretending to trip and fall into our hands. The smeared makeup around her mouth twisted into a smile she didn't recognize.

After the show, she asked, if she really did fall would I catch her?
One of her smiles telling the ultimate truth, Smeared left then off right.
Like she brushed against something.
The start of the next show.
Those ill-fitting clothes weren't so ill
After all.

She fell towards his arms,
Hoping that he'd catch her.
Love is not a circus,
Although their stay is temporary.
Painted faces tell no tales.
Not all injuries heal the same

It could have been different.
Don't you think?

If we never lived.
The lives we did.

If fate didn't have other plans.
If death didn't take a vacation.
If one thing changed our direction.

We could be indescribable.
We could be unrecognizable.

Trapped in another time.
Destined to never meet.

It could have been different.
Somehow we could have changed.

Never be who we were meant to.
Doomed to forever stay the same.

Fate is funny like that.
Still we wonder.

Only in another life.
Things would be better.

Sometimes you're a footnote.
Others can refer to.

Other times you're lucky enough.
To be a whole entire chapter.

Some people go.
So they turn into a page.

As they wonder why.
They're not mentioned,
Again by name.

Other people's stories.
Will stay estranged from you.

While others will weave,
Their way into your world.

We are all just living stories.
Wanting to be heard.
Needing to be seen.

Trying to find a home.
Among the margins.
Of life.

We are all just stories.
With something to say.

That we are here.
Even if it was just,
For a chapter or two.

We all become stories.
At the end of the day.

My love is the shape of canine teeth and claw marks
I leave around your neck,
the way I leave poems decaying in an unforgiving landfill —
the gods have turned away in disgust
as I sit and lick, like a rabid dog,
the maggots chipping away from the inside —
the entrails of my grief, all pulled out without mercy,
without a deathbed confession,
without a god to listen.
I long for something else to unfold;
something sacred and beautiful
when you turn my body inside out, but lo.
This is as deep and far as we go.
Tell me, I beseech, does my filth look better inside out,
uncovered, on display,
penetrating your very skin?
Take what you need, love, they are all yours —
my sins, my wounds, my impiety
in exchange for your darkened heart — I’ll spit it out
and swallow it back
down to my underbelly where no one can ever take it —
not you, not the gods, not their fallen, forsaken angels.

Forgive me — forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
Forgive my unforgiving hands, forgive my unforgiving poems
if our sick, twisted, defilement is all they ever know.

Such a classic mortal blunder to lay
my spine as it erodes, graceless, inelegant
on Galatea’s cold, ivory arms;
such delicate carvings can never be human, look human,
feel human under my lonesome bones.

I long to see you flinch and break
into fine, liquid, rain of dust blinding me,
covering the walls of this room
in a blameless shade of white: a new asylum ward
for my kind of insanity,
you say.
It envelopes like light around my awe
and my forlorn limbs,
tangled with Galatea’s unmoving ones.
I look for comfort within brittle carcasses
scraped of everything they could ever give.

The quiet persists eerily.
But here, Pygmalion’s gifts remain untainted:
the apex of auger shells, the beak of a songbird
the blunted ceriths, the rusty chisels
all impaling my spinal bones.
Yet the sculptor’s kisses, long erased,
the careful carvings, long defaced,
long reduced into a Grecian ruin.
I bury my body on your arms yet they find no rest
against the ghostly pleas of mammalian tusks.

How many for your fingers?
How many for your hair?


Tell me, Galatea, were you carved to bear the weight of
all the sea salt I swallowed as I drowned?
Soften under my meandering thoughts; I long
to see you flinch and break — like all the dead elephants —
any reminder that you yield pliantly to the voice
of the love goddess, that you were once turned human.
Break now, your solid arms, under my own collapse
over the sea foam caught on fire.

I am no longer bending and weeping to pick myself up.
Here it all goes down and ends:
my bones,
and yours,
burning,
snapping.
Nothing —
nothing less glorious will last after us.

— Fray Narte