We went walking on the ocean
it wasn’t even summer yet
a little cold, we were happy, I was seventeen years old
He wrote on a box of shells we found
said "keep this around"

that box is gone now
somewhere between inhumane moves
and people I don’t talk to anymore
but inside of me
it stays
drowning in the dream

I’ve always loved the water
always the first to dip my toes
no matter how cold
and even now, id go wandering in deep waters unknown
barefoot
still
wishing to grow
up
but I'm always drowning
in the dream

I love with all my heart.
until he shows me who he really is
and then I wonder if
my father was the last man
who ever truly loved me

grief sits beneath my eyes
a broken heart is
too heavy to pick up
and fly
and I really try.
god, do I try.
but I always find myself
unable to walk steady
Maybe I'm not
one for the land

I’m always drowning in the dream
lipstick smeared in titanic movie scenes
Pretty words and a golden helping hand
But it all turns to quicksand
cant stay steady for too long
maybe I'm not one for the land

sea gentle and soft, then a storm on the brink
Love in white lace and dads handwriting in black ink
I try to run, I try to stand...
But baby, I may not be
one for the land

Im always drowning in the dream

O fairest Michele, a white rose torn
Ere I had breath, thy soul was mourned
a fragile star in heavens keep
blonde angel lured
into a cold blooded sea

hearts turned dark and secrets would creep
In silent nights
where the angels weep

Upon the twelfth of cruel May
The moon wept tears that veiled the day
He lured the blonde angel, I was fallen
a baby girls wings were clipped
pain became my calling

My father’s heart did break and die...
As the bottle drowned his anguished cry.
If magics hand could stop time
I'd save her
shed still be alive
and so would i

Upon the twelfth of cruel May,
The moon wept tears that veiled the day
He lured the angel, I was fallen
a baby girls wings were clipped
pain became my calling

Michele, I still wear your diamond ring
inside of me, it’s everything.
stolen from my hand, just like you,
Murdered love, an angel true

Blonde Angel in the spring dark, forever mine
a love that bleeds outside of time
The gun has gone off in my heart a thousand times,
cold fire burning through these fragile poetry lines
I was a baby, the pain came too soon
Michele's shadow following me like a dark perfumed room
the gun.. the love that’s gone
I carry it with me, all life long

This poem is for Michele Vitagliano.  It is also for Shanda Sharer.  Two Beautiful angels lost in the burn of a lying loves flame

you came into this world with time pressing on your neck
A child of dark shadows dancing near death
The doctors said you for sure would not stay
But even then, sickness couldnt extinguish your flame

They never saw the boy inside
you were lightning on the blue green sea tide
A misunderstood lullaby
but if you were ever searching for Love
I think you know
you found it
in me, your baby dove

Pain is the only true friend youve known
It got you bad, so now its something that doesn't even make you bleed
You are my beauty
and my beast

the sky turned blue green velvet
just like the way you had told me it would be so
i saw the shimmer of orion's belt, soft and slow
like you still here, but letting go

your eyes once held the ocean deep
now silence is the song you keep
you fade like daylight through the magic night mist
But I still feel you in all of this

the world forgets you, but I hold tight
to your ghost
dancing in the night
you
are
the
northern star

you are the light behind the stars
the whisper in the dark
the candlelight that somehow still remains
even now, just where you are
you are the light behind the stars
though your voice has gone away
your love will always stay

the world forgets you, but I hold tight
to your ghost
dancing in the night
you
are
the
northern star

the world forgets you,
but I know
you are the most
Beautiful
and they don't know

In the heart of the
predatory jungle
all the best deals are on the rise
monkeys are counting their rainy day pennies
all the big bad wolves are out
searching for the real prize
through their yellow tawny eyes
lions flex their heart muscles
spirits as sharp as their claws
elephants selling everything and their mother
its a ruthless stampede on all the laws
Stifling orchid vines and cloaked palm trees
Money talks on every breeze

Diamond miners digging deep
Foxes play the market steep
Owls watching close and they never sleep,
Trading secrets
Talk is cheap

Who’s the real king, who’s the real pawn?
In this parched rainforest, the birds fight for their song
Pragmatism rules the nights power
Survival is the call of the hour
Dog eats dog beneath the silver moon’s glow
Keep your bow and arrow close, don’t let them know

As for her, shes got heart but she’s got fangs
She don’t bite unless she’s backed to the wall
Shell love you deep but cross her line
You'll meet the howling wolf
every
single
time

In this predatory jungle
there is a woman
the beast
that beasts obey

Her heart is a bear
and she'll scare the hair
off a real one
But, she really is the real one

Woman
Predatory jungle
She has absolutely captured fear
and ripped it apart
with her fanged soul
Don't **** with her

I first pondered my own existence when I was just a girl
growing up in the mid to late 1990s of New York City
We lived in a small alley apartment
where the walls knew all my mothers secrets
my father exposed the brick wall underneath the plaster, a cool look before its time
ahead of his time he always was, but he couldn't reveal it all
his tongue was tied
and those linoleum floors held echoes of his singing voice
the one he buried when life pulled him too far from himself
imposed upon to hide

This was when women began having a voice
when the Spice Girls screamed power to the world
I'd walk to the street corner deli and get Spice Girls gum and lollipops
I looked like a little version of Posh everybody would say
A neighbor Cindy loved Hanson more than anybody in America
those boys sung of some kind of lively electric hope
this was when Titanic broke my heart
before I even knew what love was

Clintons name was said often
Monica was a shadow they threw stones at
and we were told who to blame
before I even knew what shame meant
Blue nail polish on my sisters nails
my uncle dying of stage 4 cancer
he wanted to spend his last days blasting his favorite music
this was when when I began to sing
and soon
a Patty Loveless twang was born into my throat
and the Rolling Stones blended into my blood
"To have you Back Again," playing in the car on the way to the hospital
The Tattoo you album I used to trace my fingers along
and study
now I do the same thing to my own heart and soul

NYC summers were spent intensely looking at flowers grow out of concrete
those pictures mom took of me outside on those plastic chairs
the Twin Towers were still touching the sky
the smell of roasting caramel vanilla cashew nuts
my Muslim friends
when innocence knew no end

Dinner at five
Walks to the bakery where Grandmas friend Franka
wrapped semolina in a napkin like treasure
We’d give our leftovers to Russel
the WWII vet with war still in his eyes,
and Krissie, his precious dog who knew
how to save a man without words

I played with Barbies
because my sister left me
not slammed door left
but drifted
somewhere sadness took her first

And Mom was there
but more shadow than mother
Checked out.
Anorexic.
Shrinking before my eyes
more ghost than woman
I recall being afraid of her

I was safest with Dad
and I wandered into his tool room
he lined up his screwdrivers like dolls
and I held the heavy metal in my small hands
solid like his love
if only he could tighten the world back into place

My cousin like the flame of a candle gone too fast
taken by something too cruel for a child to understand
The grown ups spoke in coded grief
their eyes red
their silences louder than screams
and I felt it
Grief had an empty seat at our dinner table

now I'd give all my dreams
and give up my home if I ever had one
and all I ever did know
to have those days back again
its not behind me
its the love that reminds me
I have not changed Patty

id stand in the rain and drown in the river of time
to have those days back again
oh 90's let me back into your arms

She's kept her secrets like pearls in the ocean deep
Sometimes I'd look at this hauntingly beautiful mermaid
and wonder what she dreams about when she sleeps
Is she swimming in her cold sea?
Does the water wash away the lies
beneath her feet?

Id like to think that she wishes for the beauty of a truth filled land
but I think she wakes with the salt still in her wounded hands
Maybe the summer really tries to make her bloom
But a cold heart can make it hard to take a stand

Oh, Eileen
I love you

Before you hold me, please understand
I am the daughter
of an Italian and Latin mixed man
whose dark skin did not sit easy
in a white bred world
he wasn't liked for the scars on his hands
or for his off the beaten path ideas and plans
Not a man of suit a tie, rather of heart, strength and internal fight
A man whose father never loved him
And so he learned how to taste pain, even down to the nerves under his teeth
until even agony
couldn't even make him seethe.

Before you guide me, please understand
My first Love was Him, a dad daughter bond in its very own special box
Don't even bother looking inside, it's Locked
And Even when you see the wrong he’s done
I don’t want to hear a single one

Before you hold me, please understand
I am the daughter
of an Irish girl from a large Catholic clan
who was never taught to fight
Instead she would vanish in the night
to survive by silence
to bury the truth so deep
that it forgot how to beat inside of her,  how to slay
She never wanted me to be a fighter
But I became one anyway

Before you hold me, please deeply know
my sister’s love was slow to show
She was for a long time sick, and I was small
and she barely even acknowledged me at all
So I learned how
to be sort of an only child
I didn’t cry much
just waited,
hoping one day,
shed love me
without me having to speak
but in the end,  I wound up jaded

Before you hold me, please understand
There are pieces of me
you will never find and I don't want you to.
not because I hide them,
but because they were taken,
Left behind,
or broken beyond even any kind of recognition

Before you hold me, Please understand
I do not want to solved,  like a rain drop felt in the palm of a hand
I am not a riddle
not a broken "thing" you can pick off the street and
and attempt to  fix into your version of "normal."
love is not a project
and I will never have a blue print to give you

Before you hold me, Please understand
I don't like to bluff, the cards Ive been dealt have alone been enough
If you need someone whole
someone uncomplicated..then Im not the Queen in your game
But if you can sit
in the stillness of what’s left of me
You might not lose but gain

Before you hold me, please understand
What's included with me is stories
of building shelter from wreckage
I wake and sleep with a heart that has known a million different homes
and these homes have all been stolen from me, condemned
but they all live in me like old forgotten friends

Before you hold me, know this part of my life
I am a singer
before a girlfriend, a lover, or wife
My voice was my stronghold
my shelter, my start
the sound that stitched
the wounds in my heart.

Before you hold me and study my skin,
There lives a scar on the inside of my knee
I was ten, I almost died
A freak accident I can’t hide
Playing Basketball, a piece of window frame steel,
A cut so deep, never to heal

Before you hold me, please understand
I do not come untouched
but I come real
And the thing about a broken woman is that when she Loves,
its with every single thing she feels

I lay on my bedroom floor
I scratched my own soul like I got nine lives
I could take care of another itch but im hungry for more

how do I say it kind, I know you're a little sensitive and scruff
Im in heat, but not for you, you're not enough
Im in heat, but not for your cold touch, don't want your huff and puff
little boys just make me blue
but don't get me wrong
I really like you

I move like a cat
I see all with my glowing eyes even in pitch black
maybe I'm meant for disease
maybe its the streets that I need

I got a quick response, sometimes its all hissing and flaunting
I keep coming back I don't know how I'm still here, its daunting
I'm starving
for a mate sometimes,
and sometimes it hurts so bad I cry
after all, I'm just a woman
Just Feline


Im in heat, but not for lies
Im in heat, but not for you
In heat for something real and true
Little boys just make me blue
but don't get me wrong
I really like you
but I'm in heat and you're too cold for me
im in heat
for
some kind of belief