For others, the eyes
are the windows to one's soul.
But his eyes are the keys
that unlock the rabbit's hole.

I promised to be careful,
never falling for them;
but there is a wonderland,
found deep inside him.

From the outside,
a mysterious gaze, a cue—
as he stretched out his hand—
"Let me show you."

You inflicted pain,
Spoke silence,
Your words would,
Cower before.
You settled in me,
Hate,
For myself.
A thorn grew,
Out of the earth,
Where a rose,
Should've thrived.
You became,
The worst in me,
As I live,
Down this road.
You rest,
I bid you peace.
I carry on,
A mask of the other,
The soul,
Of those gone.
I grew thorns,
Another came,
And cherished me,
Gave me flesh,
And I see the next bloom.
But,
Like the rose,
It would not last,
As a thing of beauty,
Never does.
You see,
The thorn was prickled,
Kept hidden to not hurt,
But the rose,
That was the other part,
Became,
What the world would want.
The cherisher,
Would look in a year,
And the thorn would smile.
It would be one,
Of false hope,
Because,
The pain,
Of a broken heart,
Is a realm,
Entirely of its own.
Few would dive,
And see,
The thorn would survive...
But,
Just barely.

Huddled in your castles like Prospero’s doomed revelers, sighing in the springtime of contagion, you evade and avoid the obvious. But the Muse has entered, unseen, and stands among you in her mask of elegiac splendor. She smiles as you mock her presence. She laughs quietly to herself as her influence wafts upon the very air, inspiring and infecting all concerned. You try to protect yourselves from the lyric epidemic, nonetheless her viral poetic molecules go forth, regroup, mutate, and attach themselves to the souls of her detractors. Her spores hang upon the very droplets of the mist, a suspended Parnassian miasma. The first tremors of poetic sickness begin to shudder deep within and among the most reluctant revelers. They try to dispel their fears; they brag and congratulate themselves, chattering about the uselessness of poetry, listing all they ways in which they have successfully barricaded themselves from her pestilential presence. But the Muse has entered and none can ensure her departure. Poetry will have her way and resistance is futile. Some will survive, but others will meet her as their avenging angel of the plague, and neither Egyptian magic nor sanitizing legerdemain shall deter the blossoming vector of her influence. Fear, oh unpoetic readers, this sudden lyrical acceleration, this verdant celebration:

               our poetic coronation.

i'm sleepwalking
through my youth,
touching things
that don't touch me back,
wanting people
that break my heart
long before
i can break theirs.
and i wish
i could just disappear,
wouldn't make
any difference at all,
'cause i'm wrong
in so many ways,
telling lies
to pretend i'm whole.
what's the point?
was there one that i missed?
lost the interest
halfway through,
turned to nothing
by half past noon.
i'm so sorry;
i've been sleepwalking
through my youth.