Dear Shyla
I keep the suicide note that you've forgotten you wrote our mother folded up in a small wooden box in the corner of my bedroom
It's there so that on my worst days
When I've run out of friends who will listen
I can remind myself that other people feel this too
And after all we've been through apart sometimes our depressions and our mistakes are the only way I can remember we're related

Dear mom
I've hidden a diary you kept while struggling through your ill-fated relationship with my father
In it there are weight loss goals
Vows of marital celibacy
Existential questions
But mostly just a whole lot of why's leading you to answers you wanted to hear
While all of the things you needed to say you left in the blank spaces between the lines on the pages you never made it to
Your favorite thing to say after the divorce was that you were grateful to no longer have to walk on eggshells to protect his feelings
It has been twelve years and you still can't admit the feelings you were trying to protect were your own
And your feet still hurt

Dad
I have an envelope of pictures of you and I
From when both of us were oh so much younger
In each of them you are smiling at me
And in every one of them I am smiling back at you
I don't remember most of them I was quite very young
And for quite very different reasons I can imagine you would have a hard time remembering them as well
When I flip through the envelope I'm left sitting criss cross applesauce on a tore up linoleum floor
Staring at the scales of justice
Weighing the honest love of a drunk
Against the stoic rejection of the sober man you've become
And I am ashamed with how often I choose love

I am the keeper of this family's pain
Somebody has to
Someone has to admit it's real
One of us has to stare at the elephants in the room and see them
To know how each of us actually feels

Dear family
We are nothing more than four misfitted human beings
Tied together with tin can and twine telephones
By an astronomer, who in an effort to console himself,
Confused a congregation of lonely stars for a constellation
And eventually that is going to have to be enough
For each of us to love ourselves
To carry our own pain
I can not keep carrying all of this for each of you
I have my own pain
Which on most days is more than enough
I assure you
On most days
It is more than one man should

All of us
We all just
SCREAM

Please help the last dying
man
Caress me gentle maiden
Stab me loving Brute
& destroy me
Ninth Crusade

Between all of these deeds
I’ve seem to be just a tad shy
on the pleas  provided by
We, the people

I just want the freedom I get
from preaching my internal
monologue
to be shared
amongst the gods and devils
on my left & right shoulders
The shrinks and pill-poppers
on my back & streets
Even to the minimum-waged
coke-heads over at the convenience stores

When a clear-conscious is crafted
and often misinterpreted
The mischievous misfitted maniacs
begin to adhere to the thoughtless
criticism and go forth to self and peer
destruction!
The man of non-discretional
flaccid progression stands high and mighty
before a crowd of unrestrained deplorable
rightists that never seem to get it right
Yet
We let it happen
We think it is a sitcom!

All of us
we just
scream at how funny it is

Yet none of us will be smiling
come the day of the last man’s death
The gentle maiden’s true intention
The limbs of Caesar and The Crusades
as they all prevail

All of us
will just
scream

Excuse me, have you seen my people?
They don’t all look like me or talk like me,
But when you see them you’ll know.
Because you know me.

Well, yes actually, I have lost something! My purpose.
It was here a minute ago with me on the dance floor; and then I seem to have misplaced it…
I guess I could retrace my steps but that sounds quite boring, even painful in places. Do you have any other advice for finding it?

Sorry! Didn’t see you there, I was too concentrated  on trying to figure out the source of my happiness. I’ve heard it comes from within, but I’ve only been taught how to look outwards…
Do you know? The outside can get ever so distracting with all these pressures and changes.

Hiya guys! I think I’ve found my personality, how are you?
Yes well, I was going to ask you actually if you thought I should change it… everybody needs an upgrade these days. Do you have any ideas?

Oh ****! I’ve only just clocked myself in the mirror! How long have I been looking like that much of a misfitted ***?!!

Wings stained with longing
cries of misfitted sound
Melancholy raging deep down
Soul the shade of a rainy cloud
Yet she wears them  proudly
With a matching gown and grey halo
"These wings are meant to fly,"they say
But hey,
What are they worth?

It's not the one who goes along
Who holds the real power
Nor the loudest demanding voice
That pretends, then cowers

He who holds Virtue's endowment
Doesn't command the room
The perceived misfitted outcast
Who, when dark, they come to