Suppose there is a reason,
After all,
For why I grumble at dawn
Yet fall short to day-ify
The night

My mom never forgot
The time I was born:
12:48 pm.
I was born into daylight...
On the outside walls, of course.

I don't usually think about
My birthtime too often;
If I happen to catch this minute by sight,
I know then I am well alive!

A bishop accused of ****** harassment,
My behavior out of control:
Screaming, frustration, anxiety-anger,
No girlfriend
Even with the effort,
Pushing others aside,
Welcoming new ideas
But later parasitizing their freshness
By shunning those too,
New people
That become not-so-new
Annoying me,
Hospitalized,
The strain of the workforce.
Fine, the rest of the world can handle it,
But there's something in me that just can't
Win, that can't hold up my person.
Looks like it's back to square one...

Hey it's just Brian.  Again, know I should be posting just poetry, but I just want to let you who are following me and those outside who have seen my poetry know that I sincerely appreciate it!!!!! :)  This is a blessing to be able to relate to writers/viewers like you all as distant as virtuality may make it seem.  Just wanted to extend a bigger appreciation; I know I should thank each one of you individually instead of being lazy and sending out one message for all like most bogus automation does, but be assured I am grateful to be connected to others who have some affinity for writing and particularly poetry.  And shout out to the maker of this site Emily; Emily, this site means more to a person like me than you'll ever know.  This is a great site and I hope it stands as long as possible.  Anyway, just me; poetry on, peoples! :D  Also, I really apologize for not remaining true to my word in saying that I would read more poetry outside of mine than post more of mine; it's just that when I have ideas in mind I have an anxious tendency to want to make the idea come to life in text before I  lose it, but know that I am not inconsiderate about the mass collection of poetry that extends far beyond what I have contributed (if it's a contribution at all) to this site.  Maybe I shouldn't promise, but I will try my best to remember and see more of the poetry from the greater poetry community.  For it's better and should be better for me to give than to give for greedy gain. Peace Carolingian-script bards! ;)

Tip-off.
The stands are filled with fans
As rowdy as Romans
Awaiting the demolition
Of flesh.
On the court, however,
The dirtiest demolition
Is having another losing score of points
Reign victorious.

Fans from both sides
Yelling at the referees,
Telling them how to do their job.
I wanted to defend the referees right
There.
But then I thought, "How could I plead my case
Regarding a sport that most of the audience knows
Better than I do?"
I rested my case in my head.
Even the coaches were mocking
How they could make better calls
And how many the referees missed.
I guess that's why my dad and brother
Didn't give a **** about the tension.
They've seen tension not only from me
In the family,
But they have an awareness of sports
That my experience cannot contest.

I have thin skin, I can't let these situations slide.
I couldn't be in an arena
Where every fan was booing the officials.
I had to leave; my hands are still marked with
The filth of unsportsmanlike conduct
On every animate being.
Sure no sport can come clean,
And everyone in my family and most outside my house
Had to remind me in basketball, piano, football,
That it's "just a game."

I left this so-called game early.
I wasn't really rooting for any team;
I don't even think I was watching a real game.

The people,
The land,
The waters,
The opportunity,
The selflessness,
The confidence,
The change,
The error,
The sights,
The air
Can form any terrain's person and pride
Into something magnificent county-wide!

Sure, there are events
That mnemonically make sense,
But the entirety of that day, yes,
Slips as we take new steps
Toward the promised morning beyond our essence.
Trials become more, we grow to become less,
Something we need not confess,
For it cannot be concealed, even in our code of dress.
There are groans for the day to cease and those for the day to onward press,
How can this opinionized split be reconciled? Unless
Our own lives we assess
And remember those moments that still impress
Our minds and attitudes, this can we address.
When the day and our remembrance
Of it seem to fade in all hopelessness
Of retrieval, remember at least the happiness
That kissed you in distress,
That lifted you like incense.
A quintessence
Of what it’s like being on the fence
When time unleashes an offense
In weak defense
Against what we hold nevertheless
Not with hands, but with dense
Feelings, those with irreplaceable innocence.

Until now, I never realized before
The beauty in the Beast
Or how Beauty is so beast!

You have heard of the “monster under the bed”
Or “the boogie man in the closet.”
But nothing is more frightening
Than mistaking things as having life
In broad daylight.

A car
Its headlights are eyes
Its anterior insignia is the nose
And the area between a car’s front lights and symbol
Is the mouth that never moves.

An electrical outlet
Still though it seems
Stares at you from its wired soul
Through rectangular slits.
An outlet is never happy to see you,
It’s mouth the top half of a semicircle.
Ha! Take that!
A plug will keep you quiet!

Floral patterned curtains
Fool you with detail.
Much staring can lead
Into seeing dotted swirls as eyes
Curved arcs as brows
Or even a flower’s center as the face of a ghost
It’s ******* seeds molding a drooping face.

So, remember when next time you’re at home or in the public
The population may be larger than it seems.

I wanted to voluntarily give my time
in 2011
without any parental/outside influence
to build my own heart
and my own destiny.

I’m sure people have had plenty of dates
with Destiny,
leaving Fate to pay the tab.
What Destiny didn’t tell me
at age fourteen
are that churches that mingle together
are still different populations
with different works of focus.

In the Catholic tradition,
any Catholic can go to any designated church
for holy communion,
holding constant how anyone can attend anywhere.

I received more than the church
when I wanted to go to camps
with another church outside my family’s church.
Rather, I got a helping of obedience, discipline,
work, teasing, trouble, uneasy fellowship,
and a deacon who I believe was never true to the words
he preached.

This deacon, Dave Galvin, was not a personal
heart-to-heart person.
All he did, at least to me,
was assign me to loads of work,
answer my problems by pooling for other people’s answers,
and keep camps and youth of his church
[yes, not even being the lead pastor]
on as inflexible of a schedule as possible.

I almost think some days
he wanted me to starve,
because suffering makes him smile.
Most times around this minister
I would take my life as a failure
if I didn’t understand his instructions
Or didn’t have a faux homily lined up
in less than a minute
for a homiletics competition among
other high-school guys at the time.

He rarely smiled during services
unless the priest made a joke.
Gossip says that his family cheats
with religious obligations.
It wouldn’t surprise me
if this man’s family were another
cover-up story.

There’s no genuine fun with this man.
Being around his church and his mannerisms
almost trapped me permanently from recognizing life
outside being pruned as a seminary prodigy,
trapped as a Trappist.

And yet most people mimic him
and reference his motives and leadership.
Being the only one at most church activities
with Dave
from an alien church of another town,
I tried so hard to keep my mind from being controlled
and of being intensely Catholicized
to the point of breaking down.

Now, what I make of my former interactions
with Dave’s church
is meat for my resumes
and stories to recount.
I thought I was free-will from the Divine
not Dave’s puppet.

Loss
Of
Virginity
Exclusively.

Among a group of children, there is an adult;
Among a group of adults, there is a child.

O Lord,
With my hands clasped together,
Never let me forget my friendship with you.
O Lord,
With my head bowed low,
Never let me forget that You are the primal origin and I am the secondary creation.
O Lord,
With my eyes closed,
Allow me to look into myself so as to see beauty in me,
That I may see and feel equal beauty toward what surrounds my life.
O Lord,
If my prayer requires me to silence myself,
May I be attentive to the sounds I hear,
And accept the aural in the air so as to let nothing bother me from Your Love.
O Lord,
When I conclude formal prayer and time set apart for You,
Never let me forget that You are with me always in life
And that it’s worth more to abide in You than any other dwelling in this world.
Amen.

Without mutual communication
Concerning an act,
How do I know if
What I'm doing is right?
Or how do I know
Others are thinking
Of my same internal interpretation?
Also it is for the benefit of learning
To say a reflection aloud
Of a deed done
To better understand the done deed.

Without action,
What good are words
Or any language?
If words make things happen,
But if action speaks louder than words,
Get demonstration's megaphone
And put it at full blast!
I learn by doing,
I normally stare and pretend
I'm taking every word in,
Unless I catch someone's
Oral flaws.
I like to listen to people though,
But there are times where what we learn
And practice
Needs movement
And emotion
And exertion.

Just like with every action
I eventually need some level of a break,
And with every still-based working
Moving becomes a break from stillness.

But stare off in homework and assignments
And grow weary of your fitness regimen.
If there's no temporary escape,
Who can keep their act to words
Or their word to act?

There stands a mental tendency
To match a certain emotion
With a particular person
And call it ordinary.

At some point in time,
That person’s usual emotion
With take a detour,
Blinding the eye with unrecognition.

Somehow and in some way,
Someone will be bothered
By the sudden shift
Of what seemed to be emotional normalcy before.

If it’s too good to be true,
Then guilt will press the one affected
With the motivation to bring back
What was before.

When it seems that the world
Returns to its original axis of position
And that person acts like themselves again,
We rejoice that what was seen as a dream
Was fleeting,
Because as long as pain tampers bone,
We’re still on our way.

Curveballs can be hit,
But dodgeballs are impossible to dodge.
Comparing dodgeball to a summer’s day?
Shakespeare, try again.
Dodgeball, you are synonymous
To a hellfire confined to a perimeter
That destroys everything it touches,
Especially at summer camps.
I walk away from dodgeball alive,
But dead in self-esteem:
Always getting hit,
And any clever maneuver of mine always seems to be a violation
Of game rules.
Dodgeball, you only fuel my aggression.
When I am the only one in play,
And see beyond the half court line
Stronger, more agile and athletic demons
Ready to pelt their confidence against my hope,
My mind defaults to “bad-sport” ideas
And just wants to get the match over with,
Lose or win.
With a POW!
Or even the slightest brush of orb to skin,
I give in
And have to wait until opposing victory cheers melt
Before grudgingly submitting to a pointless rematch
That tortures me, vaccinates me with sulky feelings.
Crying over spilled milk is negotiable,
But I cannot undo the rash from the whiff of a dodgeball
By screaming “That’s so not fair!”
Instead, I force out good sportsmanship,
My eyes wincing, my throat and mind hardening
In the struggle to keep vengeance contained.
If only the interest in dodgeball would cease
And suffocate on the taste of its own humiliation.
Boy, would I ever love to burn some dodgeball rubber.

Get out!
Stop ruining my life!
Your words, they destroy my future,
Like a bullet, bomb, knife.
In other words
Shut up

Sorry for not making this entry a poem, but I thought I would take the time to spread that, if you ARE or if YOU KNOW OF anyone in middle school or high school who likes writing poetry (or prose/essays), please consider checking out/having them check out this poetry contest website: https://www.poeticpower.com/index.php?page=students

No joke, I have been published by this company before, and even if you are not the final winner, whoever enters can still at least be published in the book that comes out seasonally.  For more information, please see the site or I can try to answer questions about it (no promises, though, considering I haven't been active on that site since...well...high school lol).  Thank you!

When the earthen season of fall arrives,
I fall with the leaves;
I don't descend in spiraling motions,
But drown easily
Into the fogginess of what's next.
Hopefully, the leaf that takes my place
Will make up for my err in the air.

If a picture’s worth a thousand words,
Then a window contains a library.
A window is set apart
From any canvas or oil painting.
You can see artistic scenes through a window,
Unlike most other art forms, which, of course, can be windows,
But they lack an outside,
A tangible and believable portal,
Sustaining the natural need of an environmental presence
Even within closed confines.
A student seated in a classroom with windows
Is more likely to gaze out a window
(Imagining escape, perhaps?)
Than to glance at even the best possible art around the interior space.
One purpose of art is escape,
And windows are a visual escape from where we are,
Luring us with the bait of what stares beyond.
Like all art, be a steward to windows,
Keep them clean and free from breath fogs.
Be grateful that a window
Gives you a view and protection from any disturbance
That may hinder your admiration.
Take advantage of a windows feature:
Open them up!
Feel the wind of the art on the other side!

Someone asked me recently
What drives me to write in a journal,
Just a page or two each day.
I have been waiting to answer this question myself
And was amazed that an outside social-media voice
Prompted my response.
Here's what I had to say:

"I want to remember the person I actually turned out to be at this point in time and not let poor memory resort to stereotypes to describe my 20s. I made a mistake I think not writing earlier because there’s a lot I don’t remember from the previous decade.  I want to remember the ordinary moments and to record where I showed my humanness and where I failed. I want to remind myself that, as swelled of a head as I can have most times, that I am human too and I’d like to be that person who has stories and moments that can relate to what people consider embarrassing or wrong so not to shame themselves for actions and words stumbled across by people left and right. It’s one thing to feel guilty about something; it’s another thing to feel like the world ended because of one moment, like how I have treated a lot of my own life moments."

I don't journal for myself entirely,
Yet I do take pleasure in that time of concentration.
To live in the present is the goal,
To live in the future is understandable,
But to remember how I lived in the past
Reminds me I have been human all the way up to now.

Jittery, jittery,
My skin knows
When I don't know
Where I am.

Acting like I've been through this
Lands me between
Amateur and professional.
Pick your choice.

Round one...
Rules, regulations, and blood
Pin me on a cushion.
(Squeeze)
One pump of blood through a tube,
And squeeze again.
I can't shake the feeling,
The feeling shakes me.
There goes
Some of me to restore
Hope and vivacity.

Two...
I know how everyone
Has their own definition
For them...
But really?
Twirling the hairs on my chin
Just to remind myself of masculinity?
Puh-lease. It's gotta go.
I don't care if my razor is a manual,
My "beard" never looked right anyway.
(Strokes along shaving-cream spots)
Owwwwww!
I had to apply cream twice
To shave the hairs in the under-corners
Of my jaw
And to clot the blood
For just two figurative seconds.
Paper towel after paper towel after...
The trash is red,
The tile floor has blood circles
Forming a macaroni path
From my dorm room to the sink.

One could play connect the dots
On the sorry face of mine.
I looked like a quiet ******
With each rub and dab I ran
Along the blood eruptions,
Not slowing for me to catch them.
Blood gravitated
Toward the skin inside my shirt collar.
If life really is a game,
I hate this round, match, etc.
Bound by ethics
To clean the ruins from the battle of hygiene,
I had to at least see
If a paper towel could suction
To the blood tears on my face
So I could use my hands.
Catching my look in the sink mirror,
I looked like a desperado
Wounded along a tight bandana,
Around a mouthless casualty.

I guess the Anglican insert of "******"
Makes some sense,
Since most things come about
Through blood and words.
Sometimes for me
It can feel good not to feel good
Just to remind myself I can still feel
The world around me.

For all that blood does and for the many times
It leaves the body,
It's too bad it can't escape
It's own cells.

After seconds of cranium rehearsal,
I think I know how I will say what I want,
Until it happens far from how I planned to say it.
****, it sounded so much better in my head.

Burning for truth
Running his mouth
Isaiah 41:10
Again, I try
Never to lose.

Guard the pawns,
Forward the rooks,
Center the knights,
Queen comes on a ‘coach,
Beware of the King [James]
Who can put you in check
With an ankle-breaker
You’ll not soon forget!

They wear big-*** antlers
That make you say "Oh deer!"
They got an attitude
That jolts them to fully charge...
But they don't get LODGED in your throat.

The international fraternity
Of the Moose Lodge,
Unfolding a new chapter each day!
A fraternity that works together,
A family that comes together.

A night of karaoke
At the Moose Lodge
Will make you forget
Your rough week ever happened

Charity of Moose, Moose Haven,
Conventions,
Many ways to be involved,
But only one moose to choose!

I’m for sure not a Barbara Walters
Or Bill O’Reilly,
But, sure enough, I have scholastic interviewing experience,
And I see it all around.
The questions I ask, the questions beckoned toward me
All seek answers,
Whether the questions are true and thoughtful
Or fillers that fog up the air.
At every meeting or get-together,
Whether casual, usual, professional, etc.
Words will be spoken,
And unless serious objections arise
Or more than two people are circulating verbal clauses,
You, my friend, could also be simultaneously under review.

UCF XGF ACX AKGW
EHAEBW WKGW
JMU KL BXM LEKH
BXU'HH FOFZ QZFOEKH

There I am,
The first light pole,
Waiting for my ride.
I wave to a few,
And receive consolation
For a life struggle.

There I am,
The second light pole,
Under the shade of a green canopy of leaves.
I receive a greeting of consolation
By a friendly whack of a paper bulletin
Ruffled up into a conic shape.

There I am,
On a rock,
And my ride is here.

I wonder how people
Would get along
(Myself too)
If religious icons and statues
Didn't exist
And were never made
(Like thinking if technology shut down suddenly, to reference a friend).

Would that challenge minds
To dig up more imagination?
Or panic
About an afterlife being no life
Without post-apocalyptic relief
Through pictorial prognostication?

There's no cost to death,
Only a cost for living.
Death is an open-door,
Anytime and anywhere
Policy.
No charge.
No refund.

Does hope die
Out from a dying person?

I know a little about solely
Learning a job on the spot
Or opening a college textbook
Right before an assignment is due,
But conversion at death?
Doing anything for another breath
Is like wanting more water
When no longer parched.

Here I am
Spending nights at school.
Seeing scenes and sights
That are everyday
But that I don't see every day.
I feel like I need to return the favor
For feeling good.

Oh wait...

I am in debt already.
Even though there aren't signs
Everywhere
Telling me that my grace period is fleeting,
I know the consequence of feeling good
And doing something for me.

Where there's good felt,
There's a bad waiting to co-mingle,
Such is the yin-yang
That shapes a circulating balance of events.

I sit to stare at a nice small brick waterfall outside
The education building,
But I'm still walking debt.

I jog around campus
Air crisp, the sun only seen by final red luminaries,
The feel of the seasonal conversion
From summer to fall...
But I'm jogging debt at this point.

I enjoy my meal plan food,
Good-tasting food I'll admit
In my own opinion,
Getting my fill of a surrounding
Variety of eats...
But each step is a step toward the realization
And back-hunching weight of debt.

I enjoy sitting at a swivel desk
At all my classes
And meeting and talking with new people...
But all at the expense of debt's presence.

I have my own room and
Free ride on the public transit...
But knowing that someday there will be a price
For all this.

The pleasure of seeing campus' sexiest women
Will also crumble
At debt's feet...

Debt to friends,
Debt to pay back the school
In currency and by achieving
The education I am pursuing
And hope to keep with.

Listening to music
While running the track,
Shooting hoops,
In my dorm,
Lifting weights,
All to the tune
Of D-E-B-T.

Again, it's all worth it though.
As of today, this is what I've been craving,
What my spirit sought as freedom.

Loans, debt,
Reimbursement,
Costs, expenses,
Purchases,
I escape these words in fun and fascination,
But I will feel the fleeting effects.
Fun makes time fly
And debt is never late.

But suppose there was no debt at all:
No debt to self or anywhere or
To anyone besides.
If exchange was only a fantasy,
Then there would be no incentive
For the societal life,
And freedom may as well
Be isolation.

Debt gives me something to work for
So that life isn't just handed to me.
There are things I should avoid,
But if I can't,
That doesn't mean life ends,
Rather here would be an indication
That my life story isn't supposed to
Achieve the norm.

Maybe the debt can be forgiven,
But only at the debtor's expense.

I can't always run,
But my hiding's not too bad.

A former boss told me
To stay longer for a work shift.
My lips said yes,
But my mind said "Hell no!"
Clocked out,
Casually stepped outside;
Upon passing the host window,
I blitzed to the car, fidgetted with my keys nervously,
And whirred the blazes out of that parking lot.

Each New Year of mine has begun with relatives
Crashing at my family house.
This 2019, I take the interstate back home
To be around the out-of-state.
It's been a long-lasting tradition
And I did what I could
To break apart from that tradition
Even just this time.

At a bar on New Year's Eve 2018,
I relaxed after having made prior reservations,
Just me,
And having moseyed away from family
For just one night.
I'd go to this bar again too:
**** dancing, stellar drinks, young blood...
**** dancing.
Didn't mean to be a Scrooge and mostly not dance,
But at least I escaped and saw new faces around me.

The escape that is never too far away
And is always open around the clock
Is my journal book.
A journal doesn't have to have continents,
Oceans or clouds
To be a world
That revolves around the author.
Natural the paper,
Preserving the pen[cil].

I'm not implying
That I escape this world,
But what a world there is
In escapism.

Though night and day cover the same earth,
Their worlds are far unrelated;
Yes, the two portals of time
I know have skies the same,
But what one attracts
The other scares away.

Having lived a campus-student life,
Later departing to seek rest,
I was attracted to Scarborough’s halls
When darkness would ink the above
And when the daytime student traffic
Minimized, which freed space hard to claim
With the sun exposed.

Rays of LED lights flash
On the library’s main outside portico,
Students’ shoulders magnetized to the foundational pillars,
Bodies slanted, neutral-faced and minds set for commuting home.

Perfect!  Though other peers plan according to the daily rush,
I know there will be a chair for me and a platform to stack my books
Inside the library.
I neck my head heavenward
As I ascend the split-foyer stairs,
Seeing if others descend so as not to run over or be run over.

The second-floor is a puzzle,
A maze of paths edging the perimeter,
The space columned with light-brown shelves of books.
Let’s see: Study room?  Taken.
A free table along the main communal hall of the second floor?
Eh, I feel watched there.
Aha!  A fine venue!
A single-person desk, an attached light,
Room on the desk for layering my backpack’s own library,
And side wooden indentations to conceal my peripheral vision.
I never would have expected to lust for nightly library moments,
But I believe, now, that my visits were past due.

It doesn't feel right
To be angry,
To be sad,
To have envy.
We want to just have
Peaceful, happy living.

But they are called emotions for a reason:
It's not just the happy and hopeful,
It's also the dark and scary,
The distracted and tired.

It has been said
That the body is a "field of sensation."
A field may have an abundance of the same produce,
But different sections
Can receive different presence.
Presence...

Living in the present
Does not mean that everything will be fine,
Yet also does not necessarily mean vice versa
Either.

When a wrong isn't done toward a party,
When wrong is only pumped inside the body,
The body feels balanced and cleansed
For when the happy feelings return.

If foxes have holes
And birds nests,
So wrongs share a duplex with rights
In the body's quarters.
After all, did not life
Originate from darkness itself?

Some new can be the same
And some same can be new.
New can be same
If there are the same results,
The same viae
To arrive at the same loci.
Things are different though
All the same.