Where are you
Amidst the trees?
Hiding?
No, not you
You noble valiant thing

I thought you were a king
Not a refugee
Leaping from page to page
From thought to age
Evading the tinkerer's jail
Of memory
Paid ransom by some other script

Take a rest
You've been running for infinity
But you've finally run right into the wrong time:
Yours
Pass into potential's clearing
long enough
For my swift stab
Aha!
"Penned" to paper

Shall we begin
The inked interrogation
To see what lies within, o suspect
Accused of rhyme?

Yeah,
I've kept quite and figured the pen ran outta ink
The message wasn't too clear and these days it's been hard to just sit down and think
Let me stop for a min and take you back to where it all started
Half the people I grew up with are non existent- but all them departed
I get on this and self proclaim myself the realist and smartest
Thinking outside of the box but boxed in my own words
Keeping my talents to a minimum and remain so modest.
They gon run they mouth before they ever talk to you
Saying a whole lotta nothing's, thinking they logic is the truth
Feel like I never say much but there is a lot to know
Feel like the difference between us is really starting to show
I've stepped away from my heart and suddenly forgot the meaning  
Forgot that feeling of being a young man - fearless and optimistically dreaming
I'm not saying I'm back im just saying the pen is lit so you better keep caution
Or I'll let it all leak out like its blood comin out the faucet
With slick metaphors and play on words that don't really play
Subliminal bullets with SHH names that I  shouldn't say
The reigning king you'd swear I'm bringing victory back to Cleveland
Celebrating with my team and all the people who never stopped believin
I've stopped thinking about what they thinking about and watched my success finally rise
You can glare at him all you want but can't take the determination outta this poor child's eyes
The hit came outta no where
You know the haters don't like the art of surprise
Their whispers are the inspiration
We grow from their doubt and constant congratulatory lies
Shake your hand - saying they feeling you but quick to stab your back
Look out deeper in the woods, snakes are everywhere and not just in the grass
I lost a step but gained two more, hop scotched over what they didn't know I could do
Tired of talking past pain, my father and most of all about you
Progression doesn't start unless you finally start to rev your engine
That green light come on and your drive should push you to that happy ending
If you don't lose sleep thinking about your dreams you ain't truly dreaming
If you ain't cry a few times while working you ain't really putting in a meaning
If you have the same amount of people in your circle when it's all said it done...
You ain't truly make it
If you never folded once under the pressure
Your point never truly hit breaking
This the formula that shows the good from great
She says she loves you but how much of that love can she truly take?
Money don't buy happiness and that logic remains truthful
But the change from the change still helps keep one's life fruitful.  Crazy.
But this concludes the ending of Dougie Simps and simply forgetting what it meant to let the pen do his talking
I've run out ink - the blood all over my hands now. Imma see ya when I see ya. (He turns slowly...and continues walking -away.)
- I'm Gone

Twentysomething Emo
looks at teenage Emo
and laughs.

It was something purely aesthetic,
with brain chemicals churning
and wiry bodies yearning

under the guise of straightened bangs
and perched beanies,

skin tight black outfits
parading the dusty grounds of Warped Tour.

Twentysomething Emo is the real deal--
lamenting over high school salad days
because real life is so unsure,

college degrees and full-time jobs,
watching friends and lovers come and go in our lives.

After a long day of responsibility and groveling,
we drive home (or somewhere just as distant)
with our emo anthems blaring through the speakers.

We scream the songs back at them,
truly feeling the words for the first time.

I'm the same age as William Beckett, Adam Lazzara, and Pete Wentz
when they wrote these songs--
and though the bangs have receded
and the jeans have slackened,

I am perpetually Emo.

The unrequited love and the nearing distant future--
it's come too soon.

I hope thirtysomething Emo looks back
on my meandering twentysomething Emo
and laughs--

as he plays the melancholy tunes pouring out of the speakers
with some more of life fading away in his rearview mirror.

This town gets smaller every day.

I have spok'n of you to passing clouds
And to the endless sky
Each wisp of far off thunderhead
Has heard my lovesick sigh

I've waxed poetic to the wind
And confided in the stars
The rain has matched my many tears
And washed free my heart's old scars

Each blossom in each spring kiss'd field
Reminds me of your face
And the gentle caress of the summer grass
Falls short of your embrace

I have passed my secrets to the earth
To stone and bud and tree
To the world and all it's beauty
My love, I have spoken of thee

I seek and quest about the world
With hands both harsh and tender
To see the flag of fate unfurled
And all of it's cruel splendor
I seek the songs e're gone unsung
And singers not yet made
For these are echoes not yet rung
And heroes not yet bade
Pity not my humble task
Though humble it may be
For when it's found this 'I' and 'you'
Become a stronger 'we'

So what if I use simple words?
So what if I use cliche scenarios?
So what if I do not rhyme?
So what if my metaphors are lame?
So what if my stories are incoherent?
So what if my thoughts are obscure?
So what if I prefer free verse than iambic pentameters?


I write to express,
not to impress
So please, mind your own style.

You write another poem,
You sing another song,
You found another lover,
The feelings were so strong

It's harmony! It's melody! (No!)
I feel it isn't long
Before the strike of midnight fright
The lyrics were all wrong

They say:
"Get a different style every day".
They want you to become
a mannequin of the year.
They want you
to become one of them.
More they recruit, less sad they will feel
being mannequins.
More people join them,
better excuse they will have.

Don't listen to them,
it's mannequin talk,
it's a sad, fake life mannequin way.

Listen
to yourself.
Don't change.

I, the humble poet,
who counsels anonymously,
is cursed with complexity:
seeking endlessly
for structured simplicity,
trekking tirelessly
through modern mediocrity,
and examining closely
at psychological obscurity
and sociological hypocrisy---
aiming to teach attentively
to those who read closely.