the season you lost your innocence it rained exceptionally hard
and all the kindergarteners that would come over to sing and swing and chant in the yard
started to frown in your direction
or half-smile with a cloudy membrane sheltering their eyes to you, or so it seemed

and people would walk their dogs with a tighter leash, afraid that they could smell
your ruin

ing body, plastered in a cold, hardened defeat...uneasy sweat

and you took off that child-like headband you'd been wearing for months on end
a little worn now, that terrible periwinkle satin and lace

too Lo Li Ta for liking
now that you finally knew what it was like to be a ******* in the lion's den

Let's talk about the letter x.
It's one of the weirdest letters we have in the English alphabet. It's a prized letter in the game of scrabble. It's a stumper for some kindergarteners who need to know that one word that starts with it to move up a grade. It's a symbol for a spot. Sometimes it's treasure, sometimes it's a target. Sometimes, it's a word. Sometimes it's a rating of a thrill or a cheap way to get off alone with some tissues. Sometimes it makes things extra small, and sometimes it makes them extra large. Or sometimes it's a way to describe someone.
Ex.
Like an ax to the wood we severed into thousand of splinters. I never thought I'd call you by that letter. I had a different future in mind. One with yellow green and white. One with your forehead pressed against mine as I pushed out creation. One with a chalk board wall full of poetry, lyrics, and sketches of light houses with suns rising in the background.
Now all I see is a big red x over all those dreams.
My treasure map is torn and burned and I can only see the target, but will never find the way to your heart again. My scrabble board is missing letters, and as I search for a way to forget them I keep putting down the letters to your name. I can't move on, like a child stuck behind their innocence and unable to comprehend what is next. I have to only imagine our bodies touching like those two thin lines on a paper. Intersecting like a comet to the atmosphere, colliding but burning up with terrible destruction.
My poetry doesn't have rhythm, and the rhyme has gone awry. All I keep seeing are ******* x's over every line I write. Because none of them put me and you and love together again.
The letter x is so strange. It's a weird thing we chose it to be a way to describe the end of something. One line going one way, the other a different way. But somewhere they meet and for the brief encounter there is hope that the lines will curve into love. But the lines have to move on, and so do we.

Sympathetic empathas saying words,
That are read from a script,
No one knew how to write,
It's early and cars,
Driving to,
Another paid bill,
Or whatever Thomas said,
Expierences fulfilled by fuel,
Maybe they aren't driving,
Or drinking,
might just be,
making babies in the,
Basement,
Or whatever Keats said,
Distantly dancing,
To kindergarteners and,
cancer patients,
Just another Thursday,
With mystic music,
Lofting around,
The empty dance halls,
Falling up,
With Christopher Robbins,
To the stars,
The bus is on time
Or whatever Dylan said.

Every time we talk, this cherry child has me hypnotized
Empty eyes and beautiful voice has my mind tingling
Itching like my palms.

Every time she comes in the room, the air gets colder
Leopard-skin lover with a pompous soul and a vicious need for attention
I am her mediator, showing the love she desires and cutting through previous facades
Calming like my kisses.

Every time we lock eyes, this being of wonder gets me star-struck
Woman of wonderlust, being of beauty with hips so vibrant as to cause movement
Dancing like my footfalls.

Sensuous beauty with the world on her back and a lot on her mind
Sitting on child swings like kindergarteners and just thinking of her past lives
I place my hands over yours as I guide you through the air with each push
Swinging like my fingertips.

Crazy as it is I’ve made no choices, as the loves I’ve felt were real
But there’s something about helping a person who is down
Deep conversation turned theory on love turned burden upon burden’s release
And when all is said and all is done, there’s nothing left to do but listen to the music of us two.
Sitting on the swings listening to the rhythm of the air, my love, I must choose you.
For no other can offer the sweet satisfaction of watching a young bird soar through the skies and be her wings, no other can offer the kiss of one who’s done it least, no other can show such truth.
So I’ll always cherish those talks on the swing-set and the problems uncovered as we chatted the day to dusk.
Steady pushing you higher and higher, letting you escape the hell and tears and lifting you.
Ever Swinging like my fingertips

I'll pretend that was your way of dropping a hint
And cling on to it like kindergarteners do to their parents on the first day of school
I'll probably hold on for dear life for a while
But before long I'll realize school isn't so bad, and the rest of the world still has a lot to offer,
so I'll  let go and never look back again,
Almost as if I've forgotten you,
But then you'll come back
And I'll run up to you and jump in your arms as if I've been gazing out the window the whole time, waiting for your return

Until next time, my friend

I was once a kindergarten teacher,
And I wasn't terrific.
Heck, I was probably a showcase of "least friendly"
Or maybe the most "lacking motherly care"

I made mistakes.
I overlooked digging in the dirt
And encouraged childish behaviours.

I appreciated
Kids that built towers
Only to knock them down

I watched children trip
Take a tumble, then a somersault,
and I patted them on their ***** head and said,
At least they didn't break an arm.

But I had fans, somehow.
Fans that had me bartering for alone time.
If they could run the whole circle, I'd give them a push,
Next time they ran the gym.

And my fans were, somehow,
Genuinely fans.

Their sticky, germy smiles,
And the security blanket that was
Both my scolding and my handholding,
Made the work worth it.

I think I fell in love with your laugh.
The way your lips curved up ever so slightly, and your eyes creased as your face crinkled up.
The way you look away and glane back just to catch me staring.
Maybe it’s not just your laugh, maybe it’s your smile too and your eyes.
The two planets God planted into those deep sockets, a beautiful concoction of blues and greens.
Your smile is imperfect but I love it all the same.
Your teeth pushing for room like uncivilized kindergarteners forming a line.
Each crease in your skin has a story to tell, and don’t get me started about your scars.
Their very existence proves to me how strong you are.
No matter what the world has thrown at you, you’ve pushed yourself to give back twice as much.
You see yourself as broken, yet I just see you as a different form of art.
Yes you are different, but that doesn’t mean you’re broken.
Your form has a lot to show the world. It has a lot to prove.
No one stops to think when they look at a beautiful painting, painted to perfection.
Yes they will stop, but do they think?
I don’t think they do.
They don’t question it, that piece isn’t ingrained in their minds.
They see it and they forget.
You’re that piece of art that catches every eye
Not necessarily because it’s beautiful, but because it’s so different.  
You were made with delicate strokes, strokes full of thought, passion, and thrill.
Your artist had fun making you, and its evident.
They enjoy watching people walk by and stop.
The questions that must go through their minds…
The thoughts you must spark.
How were you made? Why were you made?
Why blues and greens for the two planets in those deep sunk sockets?
Why not grey and brown?
Why does your smile seem to hold the answers to every question asked by mankind?
Your wrinkles seem to hold such sadness and stress, yet your eyes say something different.
You often look into the mirror and think you are broken.
But when I look at you, I see beauty, intelligence, and the strength to overcome.
I think that’s why I fell in love with your laugh, because for once it wasn’t fake.
I heard joy, an abundance of it, and this time it was real.

Our lives are the space in between
The war of good and evil
Darkness and light
on opposing sides
And we’re the dusk somewhere in between
The gray we see in black and white
On the static of an old tv

Here i am to be influenced
Or mislead, I decide
As I stand where the West skies meet the East
There I see my sin,
Sitting right Where God left it.

Would he even care if I took it back?
So I could make myself feel condemned again
****** if I do if I Don’t

To hell or high water where I’m just looking up if I drown
Down to Sheol in a Creole mix of vudu or hudu, and “who did You say that you are again?”
Yoo-Hoo! You who breathes out ******* stars, gains the faith of the humans just to send them out to war
It’s a double-edged sword
These lines hand-drawn, into sand, thrown up by a whale, and out onto land, down by the bay to the gates of Hell
It’s the day and the night
With Blades drawn for the fight

Where the dark meets the light once again

Here I am to be influenced
Or put under influence
Or crushed underfoot
Like the serpent I’m grinning but losing this tooth
For the healing heel of my chosen Christ
As it taps into the god’s vein of gold
I see gray,
since I live under a rock made of slate
From old chalkboards
That that were never quite cleaned all the way
Dust lining my nose, Coke lines down the road, and a chalk-outline in the gutter

Where the body you made, to break only to fix again,
died so you could give it a new one
My brain is made of metal
Metal is gray
Gray matter and static
And the cobwebs in the attic are grey
There isn’t one color
But only the black shade of gray
And a white tint of day
Could peel me away from a life of which colors to see

If I don’t decide, live a monotonous life
And stare at the eyes in the screen
I live on either side of black and white,
Where I’m only ever to be seen by the faces lacking shading to be anything more than 2-d, anything thing less than deep
They’re flat like walls, screens, phone calls, steel beam conspiracies, and white girls before a wedding, the starving living in Haiti,
they’re all ******* flat and it’s bleak

I’m having to answer to cancer, and vandals, and rebels, and low profit margins
But I’m just advancing, the random and dumb scribblings of pencil, from a self-proclaimed celestial
And lack the knowledge fit for kindergarteners

And they’re still...  GRAY!.

But if I lean towards artists
And arson for grills made of sulphur and charcoal
The fire consuming a trail of addicts and some chain-smokers
Sinners in chains left like food for the vultures

And cities made of concrete and sin are still gray!
And so is the smoke they breathe out when they burn.
And drill bits dig as they turn into the thoughts, as my brain turns to gray, the gray pickaxes of seven dwarves
as they mine for ores or nether-regions, either or.
leaving God but still believing, ashes are not black in the shadows of factory smoke-stacks
Ashes, ashes, ashes, are ******* gray.

Even the diamonds we see through, to find the dried, white **** on the other side,
Black diamond slopes for the frequent skier, stretching into to the sky, even higher
Than the Everest in your viewfinder
Which still made of gray, is covered in white,
But when **** meets the black and snowballs down the other side, all you see are grey stars as it turns out your lights.

All that we see through is fake
anything less than opaque,
all that we through is clearer
As charades disappear into mirrors
You realize the line between darkness and light
Is a great work of sculpturesque figures
Made Of gray clay
Lodged in history of the gray clouds that rained out the world
A rainbow appeared but it was gray
Because god is not the color we see
And not picking a side is a travesty

So this line I walk doesn’t exist
Blissful in my ignorance
I choose bad or divine
But cant see down the line
But if I could it’d just be ******* gray

Love is more than like
Love is like that bursting heart
Waiting for a kiss
Love is two kindergarteners on the see-saw
Love can pop you into the air
Or throw you low to the ground
Depends on who you love
Might be your soul mate
Or maybe a betrayer

It was like he was holding a breath he didn’t know he had
          It was like thawing snow when the sun finally has its control back in its grasp.

The buzzing, the chatter, had quieted. Someone had turned the volume down and the contrast up,
           highlighting the differences.

Yet those differences were the same, they resembled each other in the strangest way. Everything was the same,
                but so, so different.

He didn’t know why or how. Just that the world was now viewed by him in this way.
          He wondered if he could go back,

to when the hateful words were just things people say,
to when global events didn’t matter
        because all he wanted was to cook a perfect loaf of bread.

Now they were all connected.

A bombing in Pakistan sent shards into his heart,
climate change weakened his very being,
that boy being bullied for his sexuality was a stabbing into his gut.

He felt it all.
The feeling was almost too much.
He felt too much.

The ants being stepped on as kindergarteners made their way to school,
the elephants being shot for their tusks.

Every word,
      every shot,
  every flame burned within
him.

I trumpet the withdrawal
of democratic contender from out the presidential race.

Breaking headline news story
courtesy rumor monger premieres
showcasing emphatic groundswell
against feeble minded incumbent.

Extraordinary turn of current events
immediately enlivens the United States populace
injecting much needed lively discussion
about gerontocracy deliberating for the electorate.

Though ill suited for any storied role in American government
yours truly (a sexagenarian) could vouchsafe for entrusting the
beleaguered state of the union in the hands of a qualified female
or male candidate born within Generation X Born 1965–1980.

Upon growing national groundswell of alarm
agonizing, capitalizing, eulogizing, galvanizing,
initializing, jeopardizing, polarizing...
voters (née namely citizens) of United States
plus capital one, buzzfeeding learned folks
linkedin courtesy webbed wide world,
an earthshaking crisis emboldens an erstwhile
average joe (biden his time) suddenly
chose to loose his humble opinion
across the Internet to affect

an immediate emergency session
of government officials
to address inexorable lurch
toward absolute zero democracy,
which liaison of Democrats and Republicans
necessitates closed door session
to resolve and allay the shear madness
lurking within the outer limits
of the fast approaching twilight zone
where dark shadows

creep toward utter chaos,
cuz our country tis of thee
teeters on the brink of
the astute heads of state,
and even popular stars
in the limelight beseech, implore,
and knead the malleable consciences
of sensible sons and daughters
genealogically linkedin to storied personalities
fomenting the American Revolution.

Outright riots promise to spill blood
and sacrifice the lives
of at least one anonymous worthy wordsmith,
(who might possibly
be an English Major incarnate)
in tandem with militant posses submerging
the land of the free
and home of the brave into anarchy
already terroristic subterfuge

rallies quintessential pronouncement
hinting quacking ducks lined in a row
where progostigation of dystopian future
impossible mission to detail
a scenario one cannot even conjure
from an overactive imagination
such as mine flirtation
with the Brave New World
already reflecting the absence of freedoms.

Not much effort required
to hypothesize severe limitations
and even harsh measures
taken against me for merely
sharing a what if scenario
barely even approximating
fallout from writing something
so passé as the following.
Haint no walk in the (Linkin) Park
(like back in the day
during the twenty fourth year
of the twenty first century),
I remember fondly as a sexagenarian -
shooting the breeze
on many a temperate
mid summer nights dream,
or later at four after midnight
nodding off to sleep
listening to deep sleep music

courtesy scouring youtube
then mostly free
from the electronic eyes of the government,
cuz soon sophisticated spyware -
linkedin with augmented/
virtual reality and microchips
incorporating sensors record
critical nodes' details traversed by each bit,
where computer hackers given free license
to explore weaknesses within system of the down.

Afterwards rigorously tested apps courtesy
south of the borders penned up
(think veritable sweatshop) preschoolers,
or applications put thru their paces
by kindergarteners similarly encaged
laboring with their collective cute button noses
to the grindstone sunup to sundown
exception made for little fingers reprieve
come holidays or birthday of product tester
prior to software being installed
on every machine sold for personal use) -
ultimately allowed (rather mandated)

by fiat and enabled a self declared autocrat
to obtain covert information
about another's computer activities
by transmitting data covertly from their hard drive -
espying websites visited
accumulating treasure trove of data -
possibly unwittingly hitting the bullseye
when subtly targeting and ingeniously
lampooning agent provocateur
cleverly communicating hidden messages
subsequently courtesy from said wiseacre.