Nothing makes you dissect yourself more completely
than discovering you want someone to like you.
A thousand internal worries rattle around my head all night.
Trying to find all my flaws before you do.
Life has had an easy time of keeping me low.
so it's hard to tell where my good luck ends and you begin.
Your eyes say safety, but your lips taste like danger.
I guess this is what they call a calculated risk.
I've grown old making the best of bad situations.
You make me feel like I'm catching my breath.
For now, I'm stuck between enjoying this moment
and the one where I eventually drive it all away.
More afraid that what you'll say is jump instead. 
I won't be able to stop myself from leaping.
You make me want to tear a hole through every sunset.
Scream at the sky and dance in the rain.
Believe again, in all the happy endings.
Even if it all burns down, in the end,
we will just laugh madly and carry on.
But I've known this since I heard you laugh,
and again, and again, every time you say my name.
We'll fall together, and maybe we'll fall to pieces.
I'll be your parachute, and you be my safe place.
We can sort it all out later or never at all.
So just say so, we'll swing recklessly through every night.
High on each other and completely consumed.
Because you've crashed into me and lately,
I'm not sure I care if we ever untangle.

I can feel it already,
a steady stream of dopamine.
It's flowing right beneath your skin.
I can tell there will be no wading in here.
I don't know yet if this is harmony
or the calm quiet before the hurricane.
Or if I care one way or another.
Or which one of us is the storm.
I worry because I worry a lot more,
Smile a lot less.
These days I manufacture my happiness.
You do strange things to survive your demons.
Was easier to develop Stockholm, then slay them.
I'm still the same down on his luck kid.
Chasing away ghosts in the streets.
I'm on a cyclical self-sabotage trip.
It's not until you might get what you want,
that you wonder if you deserve it at all.
But it doesn't matter,
I'm already drunk on you.
It never feels the same twice.
But it's the best drug I know.
And truthfully,
You seem worth the overdose.

He said, "Son, you're taking the high road."
I said it sure felt like the low.
But I have a habit of self-obsessing.
In between sessions of self-critical second-guessing.
Sometimes it's just more how you feel, less of what you know.

Somehow, along the way I lost who I was.
Found more about who I really am.
I found home in a saccharine smile.
The first who feels worth all the while.
Sometimes it really as simple as just because.

You are like the perfect song coming on at the perfect time.
You are like the warmth in the last rays of a vivid sunset.
You are like petrichor and the electricity before the storm.
You are like the sweetest half-remembered dream after a nap.
You are like the feeling from a fire in the coldest winter night.
You are like the ocean with secrets and unexplored depths.

I think we become crazy for the ones we love.
I fell for you and never considered getting out.
You feel inevitable and as familiar as a holiday.
You mean things that I could never hope to convey.
Even if its nuclear, I'm staying for the fallout.
Sometimes a soul really does meet a mate.

I don't write poetry anymore
I was lying on my bed lost in my thoughts and I realized I don't write poetry anymore
I used to write so much that my fingers would be sore
and that my words would almost become a bore
but now I don't write poetry anymore.

At some point in the last two years I stopped writing
blame life, blame time
blame the fact that maybe I forgot how to rhyme
Okay, I didn't forget how to rhyme but maybe I forgot to be passionate.
I don't write poetry anymore

Words and thoughts and ideas used to pop into my head
and I could not keep my fingers on the keyboard as they fled
fled from my head
fled to the page
whether fueled by passion or by rage
I had things to say and words I wanted heard
and now it seems so absurd
I have no ideas, no thoughts come to mind
I know poetry takes time
but
I don't have much time
things to do and people to see
the world seems to expect so much out of me
two years have passed and I almost forgot this task
task of passion and of heart
task I had fallen in love with from the start
words mean so much and I love to write
I guess that is why I am here tonight

I had this thought and it shook me to my core
this hobby I used to adore
time I used to feel I had a purpose for
but now my fingers have forgotten how to soar
my thoughts and ideas are poor
I guess that's why
I don't write poetry anymore

She packed the grief neatly, stowed away in a suitcase. Every now and then she’d pick it up with just one hand. Look how strong she is.

sometimes
                                                       ­                         my
                                     ­ brain
                       doesn’t
                                                       ­     work

right
                                                ­                               and

                             my

                                              thoughts

     ­                                         scatter

               ­                                                    like
                               beads

                                     spilled
                               on
                                                              ­                 tile

floor

To wake up
feeling isolated.
To drive to a job
I was supposed to love
with dread weighing deep
in my stomach.
To be surrounded
by people, by voices
all day, and count down the minutes
until I get home
to an empty house
to feel less alone.

How could I not be called brave?
I, who have summoned my heart from my throat
Shaped it into pen and wrote with it
Weaved my soul around my fingers
Touched it to keyboard and left residue of that brightness,
Took all the scarred skin and made papyrus
How can you call me coward?
I have lain my body at the alter of sacrifice
Time and time again
Bled out on these stone steps for years
That creation may be birthed and witnessed
To break my skull open and feed you from it
It is the most courageous thing I have ever done