the most beautiful thing
that god does
to people

is that he gifts them

to each other.

desperate times call for desperate measures.
they say.
it's a life lived in desperation then.
a desperate hope.
so near to despair.

every morning
i walk into this space:
a classroom.
i turn on the lights,
open cabinets,
set the tables
with paper and pencil.
i tell myself that i will teach you what i know,
which is not much.
i read you stories, tell you about poetry
and i let you play.
in exchange,
you teach me what you know:
to laugh at myself, to play,
to look at the world around me
and take notice of it.
every now and then i wonder,
who is the teacher?
is it me
or
is it you?

I wonder how the dark makes mirrors of windows.
It's sad.
That when i look out, past my existence, into the darkness, all i see is a reflection of myself.
Why do the nights not allow us to see others?
Where does the dark hide goodwill and love, that it so fiercely doesn't let us find them?
And i wonder about windows and mirrors.
for is glass ever so transparent that all you will ever see is through?
Or can transparency be tainted by transient plays of light and dark and sun and moon and stars. By ourselves and our perceptions that we limit with the games of lights and shadows that our minds play.
and i think that if darkness makes mirrors of windows, empathy makes way for clarity and understanding.
For i was staring at my reflection in the night dressed window when my light went out.
within was now as dark as it was out.
And in the darkness i was able to see what i couldn't in the light.
the fickleness of glass, and the lies that mirrors tell us.
To make us think that we are alone in a darkness when we venture to look out.
To blind us of everything by reflecting only our selves.
inevitably its the imbalances; of light and dark, of inside and outside, of myself and others, that blind us.

sometimes the only way out is through.
they say.
I wonder though.
because I don't know what is at the other end of
through.

it's okay to be sad.
it's just not okay to stay that way.

don't tell me how to write poetry or how to write stories or how to write at all. don't tell me there's a rhyme or reason to this; don't tell me that i should be using iambic pentameter or separating each line into delicate sestets or  molding metaphors out of things that were never intended to be meaningful. don't tell me that there are rules i need to follow and that nothing i ever make will be precious and valuable and wholesome unless it conforms to the artistic, intellectual way of doing things because i am not artistic and i am not intellectual and i will write however i please because my writing is imbedded layers beneath my skin, so far down i could never tear it out in any way that wasn't raw or real or rustic. don't make those parts of me insincere simply to hold them to ideals set by different old writers in older times with different old feelings and dreams and beliefs than mine. don't tell me how to write. don't tell me how to not be me.