Australia is on fire
and I imagine that I can smell
the burning fur and flesh of
animals I can’t even name.

I’m full of ****.

The truth of me is that
bushfires a world away
are not the reason
I haven’t been dry
a day since Christmas.

No
The World’s Problems
do not keep me awake.

Syrian children with melted skin
won’t ever feel as real as
knowing I have not looked -really looked
into the eyes of my own in months.

The m&m’s the Vraylar drug rep brought are real though
they are as real as the number on the scale.

Which is at least as real as my boss
when she used the words “corrective action.”

Which was at least as real as my ex-husband
who is back to the job of propping up his half of my life.

Which is at least as real as The Boy who is a friend turned stranger
who wrote the poem I stole those words from.

It’s turtles all the way down.

The day you told me
you would never change
Is the same day
I watch you become a stranger

Lies flooded from your mouth
Like a hurricane floods a town
And from that day forward
I built my walls back up

Since day one
We’ve been groomed to be best friends
And that is how it stayed
Until you made it come to an end

You called me heinous names
You took my feelings into your palm
And crushed them
Just for your own pleasure

You call yourself a leader
But you follow in others footsteps
Until you become addicted
To every drug they are

The drug of attention
That you’ve always craved
Because mommy and daddy
Didn’t give you enough

The drug of social acceptance
Because what is life
Without a thousand followers
And at least five-hundred likes per post

I have learned
To grow without you
To become independent
To stand up for myself

But no matter how hard I try
I will never be rid of you
Because you
Are simply blood.

You're not the subject of my dreams.
You don't haunt my sleeping thoughts.
You don't exist in my mindless slumber.
You've disappeared from the dreamscape.
You've escaped existence.

In place of you,
Another figure rises from the incandescent air.
As if you were never there,
The figure smiles.

You're not the stranger I once knew.
You're a blur in time.
You're the glaring of lights.
You're the whisper of secrets.
I don't know you anymore.

In place of you,
Another strange thing taunts me.
As if you never existed.

You're no religion to me anymore.
Unholy, unbroken, and unseen.
You're not Godly anymore.
I can't pray to you.
You’re a bad religion.

I can’t read you anymore,
Slowly tracing you with my fingers,
I can’t read between your lines--
I don’t know you.

So, who are you?
Where have you been?
Why don’t you haunt me anymore?
Up in smoke.

We are all a little lonely.

To
the man driving to an empty house after work,

the homeless guy wondering life & survival,

the lover plucking petals to feed his infatuation,

the last petal feeling alone before it's plucked,

the lonesome bird sitting on a branch without a mate,

the happy dog who was just left off at an unknown place,

I want you to know..
The breeze touching your skin,
Has touched me too
I feel you my friend,
Now this is my pain too.
I hope I could find you,
Share your loneliness with mine,
Maybe we'll meet,
30 years later, below the ground.

I see something behind that flower
Smile my way makes my day on fire

Perfectly stranger
I'll catch you later

As I sit 'neath the blackened sky,
inhale a faith with spirits high,
But doubts innate I can't deny,
Exhale a longing to defy.

The veil of nights extended sigh,
Impedes the minds of passerby.
To what is it I should rely
When but a stranger to them am I?

I look to God for reasons why,
Yet silence returned without reply.
Will divinity ever hear my cry
As troubling thoughts to mend I try?

No use to wipe my eyes, they're dry,
The depths of my abyss, I lie,
Tonight, I'm lost... Left to die
In the shadows where no truths apply.

Faith's a gift even as prodigies are gifted
But whereas prodigies are put on a pedestal
Truth's a stranger, exiled from the womb
And life's a harlotry in a foreign land