It's not that today doesn't mean anything
And tomorrow seems empty
Because that's how it always is
How it's always been since that day
The day we changed
And I doubted it all and everything

It's not that I can't taste the colors
I can't hear the hues
Because I never could
Not without you holding the mike
And a speaker beside my ear
Leading your voice to my soul

It's not that the sky is empty
Without the presence of your fabled creatures
They wouldn't fly without you
Or even give me a second glance
When I begged their return

It's just that I'm lost without you
Without us I've no sense what to do
The world is a tattered, gray, lifeless stone
Cast from the heaving pit of Hades' stomach
As a penance to the sun
And it is no consolation to know

How openly we forget
When memory is not maintained
The truths and lies and promises
Of past are not contained

How solemnly we drink
The spoils of our plunder
The feelings acquired
Before fate tore us asunder

And when the door cracks open
The sun will light upon my skin
I will suddenly be lifted
From the depth where I have been

I shall take my hat in hand
And alight from yonder stair
I shall throw the window open
And sing out without care

For the darkness cannot hold me
I've escaped from it before
And the lifting of the light begins
When you open my door

Writing poems but who are they for?
Are they secret notes to myself
To read
When I'm old and gray?
Are they
(Perhaps)
Simply lyrics to
Songs I'll never sing?
Are they my
Crudest representation
Of
My soul?
Yes they are.
Maybe.
I'm not ceratin.
To be honest
I have
No clue.

"Everything wants to be free," said the girl
"Yes, everything wants to be free.
A dog to its owner would say,
Should it talk:
'Please take this leash off of me'"

"Everything wants to be free," said the girl
As she looked from my face to the sky
"Even yourself, though you don't know it yet
Every man, woman, child, and I"

"Everything wants to be free," spoke I, soft
And she stared with her deep, endless eyes
"And yes, you were right, I did not know it then
But to me, this comes as no surprise"

"Everything wants to be free," said the winds
And swirling around us, they came
And whispered the thoughts that we hid in our minds
While calling us gently by name

"Everything wants to be free," said the world
In unison, voicing as one
A merging that started from this very girl
A unity that she'd begun

Stuck in the waiting room
Forever and always
For now

Snap my neck, you *****
You've done it once before

It hurts
Because I feel like I'm draining
The life
Out of you
Depleting what matters
Because I sure as hell don't
Stop loving me
All of you, please
It will only hurt us both
Because I'm not worth it

Woah.
Hold on a moment.
I just told her
"I love you a fuckton more than a fuckton. Plus a whale made of Jell-o."
I'm not even sure what that means
Does anyone?
Probably not
Maybe they're just words, but they seemed to make sense
When I said them

I'm making an example out of you
Though you may not see it yet
My own inflicted wounds paint your reputation black
But you wouldn't know; you're too good to notice
You don't know what they say about you
Manipulator
Tease
Player
But I know
I started them all
Without a single word, my dear
I use my misery to convey the single belief that all others like you
Must be brought to justice
For the good of men like me

I can belt out rhymes
Haphazard and quick
I can make up ditties
That tragically will stick
I can write a speech
That would move a nation
But I don't know what to say:
Evolution or creation?

It's that sort of day when you sit alone and cold
Just thinking about everything and nothing at all.
It's that sort of day when you zone out
Because it's better to hear the emptiness in your brain than the crowd outside.
It's a day when you exclude everyone
So you can appreciate being with them.
When there's nothing you want more
Than to sit and drink coffee at an outdoor cafe.
It's a day for you to be you, with no one else around
Because these days are reserved for you to revel in
The nothingness
The completeness
The fractured whole
The minuteness
The magnitude
That is your heart and soul.

I christened myself in the church of Chaos with tears

I pushed myself into my own
Grave
And buried myself alive
Someone had to have the guts
To do it

"Daddy's sleeping," they all said
"Daddy went to bed"
But I knew that wasn't true
Somehow I knew him dead

I say “Which wrist?”
Her hands twitch as she reaches down
Pulls up the sleeve with such strength to reveal
The places she tried to carve herself anew
Like a bowsprit to guide her ship
I say “It’s like Van Gogh
Because Michelangelo didn’t deal
With those hues of red
And I know you feel like a Picasso painting
But you are a never-before-displayed original
Valued priceless because the world knows
You are incomparable”

They say I'm lazy and unmotivated
That I don't apply myself fully
What they fail to say is that
I'm trying to cope
With the drowning feeling of
Depression
With the thought
That I'm a worthless ****
With the idea that I'm wasting my life
And that I may just be potential
Nothing more
They forget to say these things
But I don't hold it against them

She asks me to love her
Totally and unconditionally
To be hers and hers alone
Forever

I accept with a smile
But all the while
Doubt is gnawing at the back of my mind:
*She made love with another man...

You slapped me today
In the face
On the jaw
And I need to tell you
That you slap like a girl

Depression is the contagion
I'm allowing to seep back in

If you know to whom I speak,
Know this:
I write for you
. . .
And sometimes for me, but mostly you!

Maybe someday you'll see
The pieces of me
That you left, shattered on the floor

Maybe someday quite soon
When you glance at the moon
You'll see me looking back from the core

Maybe someday when I'm
Quite out of time
You'll think back and remember the day

The day that you cut
My heart through my gut
And casually threw our love away

Melancholy midnights spent waiting on your touch
But the head on my chest is nothing but mem'ry
As you stay away and I stay alone
Waiting and waiting
Til you break this stone
Emerges the heart from out of its case
And there you stand, hammer in hand
Breaking through to me
Melancholy midnights imagining your touch
But the feeling of warmth is just in my head
The truth of the night makes the stone fill with lead
And cemented, encased in a lead-fashioned jacket
The ***** within is protected from your radiance
As portrayed by my mind
And I stay alone
Waiting and waiting

Maybe Dylan's right, so I'll ****** my hand up high
And try to grasp an answer 'fore it blows across the sky
He warned me once of how the unchanging never fit
Into this world that always has to change at least a bit
Oh Dylan how your words can gently lift
My head from down where it has been in the darkened mental rift
I need your songs, your words, your cheer, because you've given me
The Vague Hope that I've needed to have the strength to be
An aged oak, a sapling pine, a brush of little mind
Thank you for your wisdom, Bob, you're always much too kind

The woman in red touched my elbow and said,
"What do you want from this life?"
I looked in her eyes and said with surprise,
"I haven't the slightest idea."
She smiled with a wink and it got me to think
That maybe she knew all along
I smiled at her too because that's what you do
When a woman in red takes your hand

Because you know **** well
I'm turning the **** around

Clouds may blow past
But memories last
And the sun in this sky
Hears me wondering why
Today is the day when I realize the truth
That the young are wasting our youth
And the wind in my hair is the only one
That will blow in this moment with the sun
Every moment is its own and nothing shall repeat
All these inaccurate snippets, soon captured and neat
Compiled together, this scrapbook's our life
Whether glued with our tears or cut with a knife
All images, candid and raw and most honest
Our life under wraps is the one we wear on our wrist
For the whole world to see if they'd only look close
It's the version of life that is not shared the most
But this version is always the most needed read
For to know all the person is to know the whole deed

Elizabeth Ann, Elizabeth Ann
You write lyrics to life as no one else can
The notifications let me know right now
That you've stopped in to write of the who, when, and how
I'm clicking the heart, but sometimes I just read
So it seems like I just sort of glance through your feed
To be honest, your poetry gives me full thoughts
That I harness and grow when I set up tent cots
Manual labor, when I let my mind flow
Along the river of dreams with a piano I know
It's not just your words, but thine poems are abundant
And bounce through my mind whilst I am recumbent

Destroy the idea that I am perfect
Because by ****, I am anything but
I am the epitome of a Trojan horse
I'll win you over with my understanding nods
I'll say things too loudly, and you'll think
"This level of ridiculousness must be trusted"

DO NOT TRUST ME

Please oh please protect yourself
I will destroy you
I won't mean to, but I will

I will be the train and you'll let yourself walk on the tracks
Loving the aesthetic
I will try to stop when I realize what is happening
But you will be flattened nonetheless

I will ask myself how you did not see
I will wonder how you could have even gotten on the tracks
I will remember putting up warning signs
"I love me some strong men" I said
"Love me some ****" I said
I pantomimed blowing a dude
And checked out the guy jogging
Still you were on the tracks
And I will know that it was my fault

Somehow, somewhere along the line, I was ambiguous
Because I'm always ambiguous
Because I can't stand the thought of someone being hurt by me
And I think that if I remain shielded by ambiguity
Maybe everyone can win
I will stay alone
But everyone else will be happy

It never works out
I always **** up
And someone gets hurt

They asked why I punched the wall
Why I let my knuckles bleed and drip on my shoes
I love those shoes
But I led you on
And I deserve to be punished
No one will understand, because I am a Trojan horse
I have won them over with my understanding nods

I punch the wall, wishing you were punching me
Taking payment for my ****** actions
Do not be ambiguous with your pain
Transfer it to me
Let me shoulder your burden, because I would rather be miserable
Than believe for a moment that someone is miserable because of me

I am barely a man, more of a boy, really
We are a dime a dozen
And my kind are *******
We are not worth much
And I need you to realize
That I am ****

That my breath will always be left at your feet

Count the omens, count your toes
Remember that which no one knows
For only those in darkness see
And that which blinds will set you free

**** rules.
I'm immortal, *****.

It was a night like this, ten years ago
That your mother and I were snowed in
There was no way for us to get out of that cabin
I looked at her
Her eyes were filled with terror
I took her hand
She kissed me
And we conceived you on the kitchen floor.

So caught up in changing me, I changed us both.

The wind doesn't whistle so much as it lightly breathes over this bottle that is where we live
The bottle of Earth
Or at least my city.

It's breathing with the sense of misplaced importance, like it's sure it's a foreboding wind, but it doesn't have the backing
Or the heart.

I hear it, feel it lap at my bare calves gently, as though I'm swathed in the tide that's just come in, just trying to hang.

I feel the wind, hear it, and wonder how much of what I hear is the airplanes on their path back home.

How much of what I feel is the memory of a trip I took to the beach once, where the bottom of my foot came in contact with a reef in the wrong way and I had to hobble back to our sitting spot on one good foot and a fresh-made blood-fist of a foot.

How much of tonight is fueled by the pills I took an hour ago and my own anxiety and stress and unease
How much of me is fueled by needing someone in my life
Needing an older guide
Needing someone with a couple of light-up popsicles to show me the way

The way back home from this humdrum, bottle-blowing existence.

Stephen King says to keep writing writing writing
Even through the days when I have nothing to say
The days when it's like fighting fighting fighting
And the plot like clouds on fingers slips away

And lo did I wish for a glimpse
A glimpse within the looking glass
Not at myself, but at just beyond
And lo did I lean in and behold! now
Now has the mirror cracked
Cracked for my too-strong desire
A desire to hold what was just beyond
To squeeze it close to my breast and relinquish it never
How sweet she is! How lovely!
But crack not o, mirror!
Let me lean in and hold that sweet and lovely which I so desire
Let me hold close to my breast that which is just beyond
Let me hold her without her cracking
Let me touch that which is perfection and leave not a finger mark nor scratch nor strand of hair
Let me love her without changing that which makes her perfect

Carve me a day from a thick-wooded tree
***** it and select it to represent me

Paint me a day with a rainbow cloud
And wizards and lizards that make me proud

Just give me something to call my own
Like a day, any way that you'll have it grown

Just like The Narrator I seem to be
An emotional tourist
Sampling now what I once brewed
Unfamiliar with feelings which made me who I am
Suddenly aware of feelings which made me who I am
Horrified and excited and empowered and hopeful about who I was and will be and might be still
I enjoy who I am now, but some of the old returns sometimes
Catching me off-guard
Making me stumble
Tripping my feet on the grin that is the rug
Falling into the creases of a frown
Yet I emerge as Birbiglia
Hands held high
I love you and I don't mean to slip
I hate to slip
We aren't ice skating anymore, but please still hold my hand
We aren't in band camp anymore, but please still ask me to ask you out
We aren't in high school anymore, but please don't forget about me
We aren't what we used to be, but please remember that you used to love me and you still do
Please remember that I used to love you and I still do
Remember that I'll love you for as long as forever, and even longer
For as long as forever and longer I'll stay by your side
Through the **** and the swell
Through the longest of darks and the shortest of lights
Through the ugliest and the prettiest
Through it all
I want to be the one who grows old with you, our faces blending into one amorphous mass of fleshy wrinkles as we fade into that eternal sunset
I want to hold you as my arms fail me and my lungs collapse under the weight of a thought formed as word
I want to die to the sound of your breath with mine
I want you for eternity
I want to be yours for eternity
I ache for you
And my emotional tourism seems to have given me a ticket
To the old me
The me of before
The me of before who loved you but was too stupid to know it
I love you
I'm smart enough to know it now
I always have loved you
We're smart enough to know that now
And I believe in us
I love us
For as long as forever and longer

These gaping hole don't hurt no more
I don't even feel the pain
I numbed it with some bottled scotch
They don't hurt no more

I told the doc to take them out and lo
He did as he said, took them out of my head!
I don't feel 'em no more
The doc said he'd take them out like a cork

I don't remember what was that made them hurt so
Probly the **** grenade and dirt and metal
Maybe I got hit? But Laud, son, I don't feel a thing
Not anywhere in my head, or anywhere else

I don't hurt no more, and I gave my eyes to see the end of this war
'Corse none them guys know that I did
But they'll know when I go that I'm letting them know
It's time to put down the gun and drink up

Hello world, did you miss me?
I am alive again.

I yelled "I love you" off a cliff
My voice echoed and contorted
Until I could no longer recognize it as my own
The meaning was lost
All that remained was a vague ringing
And I think that's what you hear
When I tell you that I love you
I think everyone before me
Everyone you let in close
Said the words
And now that I'm saying them
The meaning is contorted
Because everyone before me
Carved a cliff out of your heart
And I am yelling off of it
But the echoes twist
The echoes change
And the ringing remains
I'm sitting here speaking to you
And I know the words go right through
As if these words of mine
Are only ghosts
My ghost words and I
We love you
And if it takes a thousand nights of haunting
We will reach you from beyond the grave of love
Because, darling, I don't need you to love me
I don't even need you to care
I need you to know that I'm not lying
I need you to know that I love you
Yes, I am being selfish
Because my days of being selfless ended
When I found myself in you
So here I am, shouting off the cliff
Waiting for the echoes to reflect my message

The glass felt cool against her cheek
And she wondered when the day would end
The train was moving, racing away
But she was not gone
No, she was not gone

She closed her eyes, shut out the world
They pushed back in with vengeance
And she could not leave them behind
They stayed on her like an overcoat
And they dragged her to her knees

Crying now, she tries to think of
Happy thoughts. None will come
Her red balloon has popped
She hated the thing
She hated the world

They gave her problems and pain
More than she wanted
More than she needed
They assaulted and drugged her
With their words and sights and sounds

She opened her eyes
The world was still there
She blinked and tried to disappear
But she was not gone
No, she was not gone

There are some things in life that just don't add up,
No matter how many times you read Euclid's work
And history is bound to repeat itself if you bind it in a book
And title it "stagnant"
Because history is anything but
The past is constantly affecting
The present is constantly affecting
The future is all we have
So banish the idea that textbooks are detached
You are very much attached to them
And the way your mind interprets the information will dictate
How you act in situations
That just don't add up

I bet you thought that no one saw
But I did
And I made a note
Now here you come with an innocent smirk
And your stupid hair
Acting like it never happened
But it did
And I saw it

Did you think I wouldn't see?
That you were invisible?
I'm the one who's invisible
She doesn't see me with you around
She doesn't see me
But I saw you kiss her
And I made a note to throw out these flowers

Were the streets to be paved with diamonds
Such that the light of the sun
Blinded all who walked upon them
Still would I walk
Were the skies to be filled with smoke
Such that the weight of the air
Smothered all who breathed it
Still would I breathe
Were the blinding streets endless and
Suffocating air omnipresent
Such that the air and light
Could not be escaped, except for hiding
Still would I remain exposed
For I have seen the pleasant side of Hope
And all that remains is to retain it
That it may allow sight and breath
For I have seen the spoils of being Vulnerable
And so shall I gamble

Read me first says instructions on the desk
But who reads me first?
I'd be an open book if you took me off the shelf
I love you.
Could you read that on the spine?
I'll say it again, if you think I'm stuttering
I love you.
All these fears, I'll put them away for you
Because, **** it, there's no place in love for fear

Someday, someone might find my poetry
And they'll quote me
To me
And I will tell them they are wrong
But you said it here, they say
And they'll point down at the page of my writing
Sorry, I'll say, I couldn't have written it
I sold my hands to buy cigars
Then I'll light a match
And walk away

listen to your rhythm, child
work it with the rhyme
and sew together a poem
for me