Let me repose
For a while
Beside
Your
Calm self.
You
See,
I
Am
The opposite,
I
Need
Composed.

Beside you I recline
Beside you I unwind
Settle with time...

YOU
Listen ,
You care
You
Hold me,
Stroke my hair, say, "There!"

This life
You know
At times, gives me the shakes.
The
Things that go on
Get
A bit too much to take.
Think
I'm going to break,
Shatter
Into space.

Then...
I think
Of you...

I come to you...and,

Beside
YOU
I recline,
Beside
YOU
I
Unwind...

Settle...

With
TIME.

Where does it go
The descent is never slow
The best years of my life
Rope burning my hands like the string of a kite
As the wind whips it away
I can’t tell if it’s trying to play
Or if there’s something it’s trying to say
Will I miss this day when my hair turns grey

Now I’m choking on my spit
‘Cause I wouldn’t take the bit
And my skin it does not fit
Even tender caresses rub raw like grit
When the sun rises I’ll smoke my last cigarette
And I’ll bite where you kissed me to try and forget
That it all falls down

Now I’m drinking in the sound
Of the dust as it gently makes love to the ground,
It used to be our home
But now I’m free to roam
Back to the ocean who’s always alone
Where the tide will dissolve me back into seafoam
Right where I started a neat palindrome
There’ll be nothing to bury in no catacomb
I’ll be everywhere

I’m the answer to my own prayers
So I’ll fix on the mirror a far away stare
And say nobody promised that this would be fair
So I’ll kiss where you bit me to soothe my despair
Oh my honeybear

You ever love so much
That you're afraid of yourself?
Power coursing through your heart that compromises your mental health?
Well I've been down to the basement, to the depths of my mind and amidst the rubble of uncertainty I looked up to find an indestructible light that's always me, always now
But I can't know why it's burning, let alone how.
It's made of desire and her reflection, fear
Composed of all the love I feel for those who I hold dear
This light has no color, no face and no voice
It's all that I'm feeling and to stand in it is a choice
There's nowhere to run but it hurts to behold
I'm certain it's pain but without it I'm cold
So you see, I can't separate you all from my heart, it's a beautiful problem with no end and no start
The fact that how I know myself is through kissing the coal
That burns for the people but then implodes into a blackhole
“Bottomless pit’s” another word for unconditional
The only escape is through sedation that's medicinal
Hooked on states of mind that crave substances additional
I lie to my own face, swearing that it is nutritional
Because given the choice between numbness and pain, it's easier to hide, sacrificing all the gain
than facing the flame
But it was indifferent nothingness that made me go insane, so it's time for me to realize that there's no one but myself to blame
For the passion that consumes me that will never lie tame.
My love is a volcano, and you're the shifting of tectonic plates
It doesn't matter if you want it, I don't love you for your own sake
I can't separate you from my love of the rest
Including myself who I strive to love best
To fear my own capacity is death to my soul
So I welcome the pain, cause it carves out the bowl that holds all the joy that pours in from the source, so I'm thanking you now, forget about your high horse
Thank you for being, so I could feel myself shake
And learn how to trust myself not to break
Can't you see now the paradox of this game?
How I can thank you, but to my own heart lay claim?
**** the numbness, kiss the flame.

i don't watch home movies
hate them
reason being because
when i was young
i was looking for a movie
my mother
had recorded for me
and accidentally
put one in the vcr
that i'm not sure
i was supposed to see
i know the obvious response
"uh oh, ****"
sorry to disappoint
they were only marked with dates
  1991
on live television
montel williams asks my father
"how can you just throw
your child away like a piece of trash?"
   1994
i spend so much time
in the emergency room
that my parents stop
penciling in growth marks
on the frame
of my bedroom door
i always thought
it was because they believed
i would never grow out
of this sickness
sometimes i believe
the reason that they
never bought me a dream catcher
was because they never thought
i'd live long enough
to see them come true
   1996
i am eliminated
from a spelling bee
because i didn't know
the 'dad' is silent in 'family'
   2013
before i got into poetry
i used to do standup
none of my jokes were funny
one of the other comics
tells me my skits are dry
sometimes sad
he says "why don't you joke
about something like your family?"
so i say
"i never wore any sunblock
because i didn't want anything
to keep me from my father"
i say "what do you call christmas
without lights or heat?"
before he has a chance
to answer
i say "1997. better yet
why don't you
make like a dad and
leave"
   2014
every time we drive
past the hospital
my mother reminds me
how much it cost to save my life
like she'd rather
have her money back
she doesn't have to say
that sometimes she wishes
it was me who had died
instead of my brother
i can hear it in the way
she says "love you"
sometimes i imagine
that if i were to die
that she
would pick out a casket for a child
because she never loved
the person i became
yesterday i told my father
how close i'd been
to suicide lately
and he said
"that's my boy,
livin on the edge.."
and i can't remember
if i laughed
or cried

You know that feeling, when you’re dreaming
Like something matters, like
There’s a point
Cause you’re so close to the answer
And your thoughts sound like a voice
And last night I made it farther than I ever have before
Everything felt so familiar, I went straight for the right door

Sometimes I remember how to fly
There’s a muscle that you flex,
And then you feel it in your spine
Don’t forget to let go of your mind
Your thoughts they are deadweight tethers
Of an old finite design

And I don’t know what this house is
That never seems to end
But I think it might be me built by my soul to make amends

There’s a room full of blue bottles
And a thousand trampolines
There are rice paper sky tunnels
That curl when my house breathes
There are portholes behind paintings
Balloons that fly me up to space
And I can’t tell if I’m going deeper
Or trying to escape

And when I was a house
She was the space between the furniture
And when my dreams took me down south
Maybe she felt like I deserted her
And I know that that’s not fair
I had her songs sewn on my sleeves
But I don’t really care
Without her space it’s hard to breathe

I try to keep a sense of humor
keep both sides in view
but I have always been a runner
escaping me and racing you

My truth burns in my throat
its urgency accumulated
but these are just assembled thoughts
and they were born disintegrated

can I even lie?
I find that when I try
My outsides reflect the secret reasons why and
I can't hide, I can't hide

because my ride blindly guides me back
there to where I reside inside
where I collide with my intention,
back at the beginning
I see through my own inventions

till the shame comes and leaves
me grinning, all this sinning
just fuels the thinning
of the woods between my mind and I
and that's the point
thats why I have to hurt this time

I strive for balance like a war in God's name
praising habitual risks and
taking pride in taking blame
and then I turn around
reverse the contents of my frame
till I can only see myself as guilty
in these ugly games
but it's the same
sunshine or rain
the whether is weathering me
with its change

I try to keep a sense of humor
grasp and seek and strain
to count the sands of time
touch each and every grain
but this life isn't something I can do
with my brain,
so take my symbols, they're insane
but they could wash you off like rain
or give you even sweeter pain
than flame

It's all the same

you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

They left behind little tokens of love,
fragments of memories with pieces of their souls.
There lays his pacifier, that would close his mouth for afternoon naps.
The laptop charger that allowed YouTube videos to be played when daytime T.V. was too plain for his expontental mind.
The room that they slept in; still coaxed in their fragrance the bed still wet from his drooling mouth and the tears that were shed as I said goodbye.
I promised I was not going to cry,
but when he held out his arms from the car seat with no awareness of where he was going,
I needed to let him know through my face that I was upset that he was leaving,
that the drooling, smiling from lobe to lobe, Micheal Jackson dancing five and half month nephew was not aware that he was breaking his aunt's heart.
The pacifier still sits on the counter, I'll leave it there for a few days.
It's pleasant to have a fragment of his soul for good luck before I leave for college.