The birds are singing before I’ve found my way to sleep.
I’ve curled myself around my waiting dreams and a purring cat
But something inside me won’t stop,
There are words struggling to be freed from the confines of my skin
And so, I turn on my laptop and dutifully type.
I must let these words write themselves, lest their nagging never cease.
I am a servant to the stories bottled up in my head.
Sometimes they send me on great adventures to amuse themselves.
Sometimes the stories throw me into crazy situations, make me go home
With wild men, or salacious women.
The stories will only be satisfied by excess, rebellion and insanity.
Am I these things? Am I this wild being?
This night sprite?
A slave to the foolish urges of unwritten stories?
Yes.
I have chosen to run the winds and let down my hair, long and luscious
To throw myself urgently into the chaos of living
To be always on the precipice of being and creation.
For I want stories to spill from me like blood from my veins,
Or breath from my lungs.
I want to be the greatest story I’ve ever told.
I want one day to lay on my dying bed, laughing at the things I have done.
I want my memory to be a reason to dance and to scream,
My name an abbreviation of cautionary tale.
I want always to burn with passion
And never deny the heat between my legs
Or the inspiration in my heart
For I am the story of a wild woman.

Some poets have degrees,
Be they Bachelors or Phds.
But a poet, a poet is really qualified by experience,

And the ability to distil language to the dance of written form,
To transpose observations into song.
Etching stretches of moments too short,

Into something long enough to match the longing for it.
Weaving yearning with touches of genius,
Abstracting epiphanies from cracks in the pavement,

Extending the halls of learning by
Stencilling truths onto toilet walls,
So that even to **** is to experience the profound.

A poet is one who can make meaning out of madness,
Pluck obscurities from the air, exposing the  bindings of being,
Or explain how words, in their whirling make the world go round.

But a poet,  a poet does not understand that ache inside,
That ache that drives them to write, to whisper and to yell
Words, metaphors and similies, in the constant attempt

To quantify that special kind of hell,
That haunts them, as ravings in their head,
That inspiration that is their constant torment.


And sometimes, sometimes its heaven instead,
But that’s when it’s hardest to write
Because suffering, when transformed to stanzas,

Is somehow easier to ignite
Than that intangible something we call joy.
For something as simple as a smile

Cannot be matched by any extravaganza
Of words no matter how we try.
But a poet,  a poet will spend lifetimes trying

To describe that very sensation, that fleeting
Sense of something greater than oneself, greater,
Even than the offerings left in ink at the poet’s
Altar of a page.

And sometimes it will be so hard, this attempt to transcribe
Emotion into a form decipherable to others  
That the poet will feel only rage,

And exhaustion,
Till even the point of the pen begins to expire
But a poet, a poet, even in the pits of despair,
Does not retire,

For there, lingering somewhere
Above in the air, is a glimmer of truth
Just waiting to be shared.

I see no past,
no future.
No way in or out,
Only labyrinths
of riddle and rhyme,
With sphinxes lurking
And looming
Amusing, strange.
Seeking ways
to pass the time.

I see no past,
no future.
And thus nothing changes;
I am still sitting here,
In this void of mine.

Stuck in a maze of ink,
the letters
coming together as words
to form prison sentences.

Sleep is distant.

Sanity is a mirage.

And there are no faces here.
Only unending, ever winding
Phrases that lead back to
Themselves.

In a solipsistic haze
I phase in and out
Of knowing.
Or believing in
The existence of
anything
Beyond my words.

When thoughts themselves
May even be false,
Who is to say
We are not our minds?
For if we are not-
What then?

If I do not exist
Can my imprints
Mean anything?
Or are you just reading
From the delusion
of your own mind?

Only my words touch you
Were that it could be my lips

Between us
Every moment lapses
Into the agony of desire.

I miss you.
It’s that simple.
But, like every good cliché,
It’s true.

But it's truth
that's gone astray.

I can’t seem to
Comprehend
Just why exactly
Did it end?

I tried to move on
To the next
(And very nearly succeeded)
It’s complex,
But honestly,
I never really wanted to.

Because, all things
Conceded,
After him,
I still wanted you.

What we had,
I can’t define it.
Because in all your attempts
To refine it-
To what?
To something not
Definable as romance?

In all that,
I never had the chance
To say that I don’t care
About labels, or stigmas
Or even the promises
And fables.

I just want
To be able
To be
With you.
In a park,
In a bed,
In a car.

But we got stuck
Somewhere between hazy words
And what we actually are.

Sure, I miss the ***
(You know I always
Loved that part).

And though I lament,
I never really meant
For you to be mine.
So, you will never
Really be my ex.

I can never lose you,
Nor need to find you.
I cannot miss you-
For we are never
Truly apart.

You are,
As always,
In my heart.