I am haunted:
Not by poltergeist,
but by my unlived lives.
Parallel universes
won't ever speak,
they took an oath
to keep from me.
I have words and voices
humming in my head
that will never be met
outside of my bed.
I have to accept
I cannot have it all,
I have to accept
knowing nothing at all.

Shoulders slouch

The limbs attached to the strings
In hands of the puppeteer

Do the dance, or do not bend

There is a chance
You dance

Or learn to ignore

The hands of the puppeteer

✨✨

watch the sun set red through wildfire smoke
from the roof of a battered minivan
that's weathered all the storms of
our Oregon mountain home--
we find ourselves here, repeatedly.
lost on rocky dirt roads by the cliff's edge,
trying to figure out what it means to be twenty
in a world that more and more these days
seems to be crumbling around us--
drive us somewhere never listed on the map,
with music blaring through broken speakers
we'll make our own destination.

Whether a comma, or colon:
Punctuation slows my rolling
I need no period. When I end
no Capitalization when I begin
Rulelessly I flow my art
  Not a single!
Exclamation mark
Are you not the one
Who'll know?
Where a question mark
No longer goes

Warp the structure
Bend the lines
Put in repeat
Let emotion unwind
Make yourself
Your poetry's the best
Be your own ruler
Pass your own test

Take your own road
Where ever it leads
Lover or hater
It's all poetry!

Life isn't fair,
But fair is unseen.
And what is unseen is unreal,
But what's unreal is your story
That you would one day share.

You can't always be happy,
Otherwise, you might fail to realize
The value of a smile after you frown,
The essence of getting up when you're down
The things you do when you try to have a lasting change,
When you try to have the priorities in your life rearranged
For even the darkest night will end,
And the sun will again rise
You are willing to be a new person,
But are you willing to pay that price?