Thank you for breaking me
And making me
A better me

Thank you for hurting me
And making me
A stronger me

Thank you for shooting me
And making me
Bulletproof

Thank you for burning me
And making me
Fireproof

Door slams-- it wasn't me
Echo of a memory

Haunted past means haunted home
Down the halls the spirits roam

Shadows dance across these walls
Screams running down the halls

Demons whisper in my head
Monsters play beneath the bed

Skeletons in closets
Make for restless ghosts
To all my long lost nightmares
I am now playing host

Ten words are not enough
To explain life is tough

The darker side of my mind is where
Abstractions of fragmented poetry breeds;
A baby lies dead in a Hong Kong gutter,
And my lines fall into place.

Broken hearts sing lullabies to me,
Two savage beatings spare me a verse,
New Orleans lends me four at low interest,
And throws in a haiku for free.

The old veteran quotes me three lines
And gets buried with the last.
The rhyme festers with his body;
Both soldier
                      and verse
            are
                       free
                                       again.

I can't explain the beauty I see
In the dying faces of the abandoned ones,
Nor tell you why, if the bomb were dropped tomorrow
I should weep in both anguish and delight.

I can only tell you, should it all end,
Should all modern horrors dissapear,
The future will weep for the joys of the present
And smiles will dissapear forever

Words are harmless, so they say,
That's where the problem starts;
Sticks and stones
May break our bones
But words will break our hearts.



Words are harmless, so they say,
And point you to their charts;
It's harmless fun,
No damage done.
But... Who will mend our hearts?



The x-rays show no damage
Where words have scathed across,
But it still feels hard to manage,
And leaves you at a loss.



Words are harmless, don't complain,
That's where the problem starts.
It's quite absurd-
A single word-
Enough to break our hearts!



But words are harmless, they maintain;
The subject of their parts,
No less or more,
So let them pour
From all our broken hearts