June 29th, 2017
It’s been 1 year, 4 months and 19 days.
For 1 year, 4 months and 19 days.
Count the acidic tree rings
Nearly 504;
Bright
A.m. eyes
On East Ferry,
in contrast of noir
I say, man;
June 29th, 2017.

It’s time to get a new calendar,
Cause I count 5,000 dollars later
and not a sense of a cent
was fined for my remorse.

I’ve been fine and fined.
Holes in my pockets
dropping seeds of change
planting fines

Into puddles
and potholes
showing deep interest
into the alignment of my car
stalling my engine with debts.

19,000 dollars and growing later;
I learned what trigger warnings cost
and ironically
I wrote a paper on it.

Don’t get me, wrong I am grateful
But, I had to rip holes
into all my jean pockets.
I mean, **** it,
I never had much going in
And I should quit smoking
My lighter is dead
Only blue and red
Sparks lived well in my mirrors
On, June 29th, 2017.


From the wall I was chained to,
I enrolled into college
My mom drove me home from my first class.
My lawyer wasn’t much of a lecturer,
He spoke math for 1,400 dollars

250 and 9 weeks.
106 a month for 52.

That’s enough math for this semester.

I drank with my night instructor on Mondays after 9,
He wanted to hear my music
We drank whiskey salted potholes on Allen
I counted his tree rings to 4/4 measure in regret;
20 years steady.

I graduated on a Tuesday morning,
I didn’t call him back to thank him for the irony.

I acknowledged our acidic rings
With glass cheered laughter
Swallowing thanks for each other’s company.
9 weeks and I don’t recall ever leaving the room.
43 went after,

And today life is that,
Paid for in lessons,
No need for pockets

I am those potholes
bumping coffee all over me
20 mins late to my first class.
I can repave them
but they won’t stay filled
It’s OK to want smoother roads to school.
I’m late but I’m here

I’m a mess.
******* would see art.
People have his eyes on me.
I want to be framed and splattered
on the walls of your home
A household mess .
It’s OK to have a passion.

Look into my tree rings
How old am I?
Its restorative to count
27 rings of rebirth
Look at me still growing
I believe I can grow in Paradise-lost fire
Or in Buffalo salt

I am my flaws
I counted them

My alcohol abuse,
One beat of 2,653 in 2017
I don’t know how to put an apology
On a music sheet.


The Jazz fills my potholes in the morning
before these hallways

My grey area is stained glass in Villas library,
Each step is eclectic
From shoe up and over is stand still art

Lighters flash cigarettes burning
But prints pictures of thankful new memories

With all of you in it.
Thank you for helping me with today’s date.

for Daniel,
                   and anyone else who cares*

I'm relatively new at this,
if you consider that I've
never done this before.

And this is the only time I'll read this;
this is the cherry
exploding in your mouth,
between your hungry teeth
digging into the skin.

You are a window pane,
but you are not stained glass.
You are less clear than that.

You make less sense than
the spider veins of a kiss imprinted
on a bus window.

You make less sense than kissing a bus window,
arching and aching for that semi-perfect,
seventy percent reflection of yourself
as you float above and before
birds picking at beetles in the grass.

You make more sense than a thousand
kisses on a bus window
the driver has to keep cleaning off because
who really wants to kiss a bus window, anyway?

And still they're there, the oils and grease
immortalized for a few months,
the impression of imagined romance
pressed against the scratched glass on which someone tried to write,
"*******," backwards with a safety pin.

This is my first time reading this,
and the last time I will say it,
though it sounds much better when
the man inside my head so charismatically reads it aloud
to his audience
kind of like a dry comedian would tell a joke.

This is my first time standing before you,
and let me say that sometimes
I might offend you,
preachers, and speakers, and pew sitters;
evangelists and full blooded, God-fearing sinners alike.
And maybe you can forgive me
if I occasionally step on your closed-minded toes
in your sensible shoes.

Or perhaps they aren't so sensible.

And I got a haircut recently--
and here I'm expected to say something profound.
Something that perhaps sounds like,
"I got a haircut recently
while you stood in the bathroom with an electric razor
and shaved ten months of memories from your scalp."

Scalp.
The word makes me think of natives,
and it makes me wonder how long it takes
to collect the bleeding wigs from
the hairless children you left in the street.

Street.
That word makes me think of--
and here again I must choose my words carefully,
because the next thing I say will expose myself
poetically and psychologically--
spinal injuries.

All the careless children walking down sidewalks
not thinking of their mothers as they step
on every single crack in the pavement.

But what if everything we were superstitious about
were real?

Would we repave the world every week
so that there would be no chance of breaking
an innocent woman's back through carelessness?
There will be no cracks for thoughtless children
in their sneakers
they are too young to tie on their own.

Or perhaps the world would be covered in grass,
and every day mother would wrap the scarf
tightly about her son's ears and whisper,
"Don't step on any rocks today, my love.
I'm still recovering from last week."

But that's ridiculous.

I suppose it's surprising to me how many words
the man in my head can say while staring at a
Manhattan Morning in black and white
hung on your wall by three thumb tacks.
The lower right corner hangs idly where I took
the fourth one out to make this poem sound better.

There is a solar system in your ceiling,
did you know that, my love?
It is not in the asymmetrically placed
glow in the dark stars you placed at random,
nor is it in that one dolphin that seems to
swim amongst the Saturns and galaxies
that make no sense in context.
It isn't the seahorse, either.

Would you say that the Milky Way is made of wishes?
When I lie next to you in the darkness
uttering soft lullabies, I make wishes to your ceiling
that my voice doesn't crack
and you don't wake up again.
And also that perhaps one of us is wrong about God
and maybe he is out there after all
and mass-delusion doesn't exist.

I still think I'm right, though.

You make less sense than a kiss that means nothing.

But you, my love, you are more than a thousand kisses.
You are more than the thousand words
a picture may be worth.
And if I were better at saying things
maybe I could preserve you in a poem.

But I don't think anyone can.
No one can shape words and pages to your figure,
the fullness of your lips and
the strength of your nose;
the holes in your ears and
the life between your legs.

I got a haircut the other day
and cut twenty months of memories from my scalp.
It feels nice to not remember,
anymore.

Dear self,
Tonight is hard.  
You are being flooded
With memories and dreams
And your soul is heavy
With self doubt and destruction.
Your hangs heavy
With thoughts of disgust
And the emotional scars
Sting just as much as the physical ones.

But hey

You are tracing old marks
In your skin
Please, Do not repave them.
Remember all the nights like these?
Your lonely tears will wash away.
And while I cannot promise you that tomorrow
Will be better
But it will be new.
Every path we make
Will diverge into unknown territory
And I promise
You will smile
Again

walk into a bookstore where a poetry open mic is going on. the man previously nursing a lager in the back now has all eyes in the room on, flowin to the beat like drums to a song, this is all he has left that doesn't feel wrong.
"these words are all that matters," he says. " ’cept poetry, liquor, and the duality of man, i confess, these pages store my sanity and reveal my real friends, so i'll keep writing until these calluses have bled."

Lately I’ve been talking to Michael Larson in my head
And yeah, I know it’s a little weird to have a real imaginary friend
But we all need someone to turn to when feelin like we’re burning at the stake
To remind we’re still human and there’s no end; ending’s a mindset you create
There’s not really walls to hit unless you tell yourself there is,
just the narrow hallways in your mind where you lose yourself to negatives
See, you can always bend to be more
but you conceive a break, cause breaking is what you do
when you think you can’t create

and if you spend too much time wondering if you’re a particle or a wave
your thoughts manifest into the mental circles you repave
self fulfilling prophecies are subconscious misbehaviors
ignoring synchronicity in the universe’s behavior,
always waiting there for someone else to come along and save ya
caving in you dig a shallow grave, crawl in, and lay there,
blaming everyone else and yet expecting a savior?
from the wayward pain of exacerbating these anticipated cracks,
you still can’t seem to break, just blister and bounce back.
from this controversy in the name of your unsure authenticity
each flaw you extract from your skin is your own vulnerability
the world is not black and white, flat, or statistical see
just rife with impenetrable culpability
so everyone grows up and grows out with restless mentalities
time and age are isolated perceptions of our static reality,
cause we’re changing and flowing together, and we always will be
the only differences between us all are the ones we want to see
to comfort our dogmas and convictions as we atomize our selves obsessively
what matters are the paths we pursue and the wisdom we seek,
not our genetic abnormalities or the ways that we feel we are weak
when everything has innate duality, there’s no good without the bad
good’s an infallible syllable completely unpaletable til you realize bad
can only be in your heart if you perceive that’s what you have

there’s just your belief that you are either trapped or free
and realizing you want what you always had, eternally
if I’m gonna live this life, I will not sit and wait,
I will skin my knees and bleed and then get back up and create
In public Michael Larson’s hanging in my headphones loving the attention that I pay
Telling me earnestly not to worry, cause everyone is a critiqued critic these days
In burn fetish he tells me, “empathy is the poor man’s *******”
And now Krishnamurti is on my other shoulder repeating once again,
That “being well adjusted to a sick society is completely insane, the end.”
everyone gets nervous on the first dinner date, and everyone craves the safety of a friend who has their back
everyone feels like a literary hack the first time they take a paper to their thoughts and attempt to translate them into rap
we all feel a bit misdirected, and a little bit hated, but collective requires an equalibrium of giving and taking
while these days everyone treats each other as if life’s just about getting your own slice of the cake
and blatantly crazed by the toxic disarray
of our modern society transgressing and yet we just stand by and wait

Michael looked shy on camera as he expressed to me that, “what makes us human
Is how we’re a collection of our mistakes and the reactions that we have”
And what makes us individuals isn’t our lifestyle or to whom we pray
The stratosphere here that stops us from cooking to convection
is just a collection of perfections formed from love within the human condition
the gravity that keeps us from falling, is the art that we make
self actualized individuals, not feeling so lonely or crazed,
because paradoxically, art is also how we all relate.

Washington was the first, helped emancipate,
His skills as a leader, nothing less than great.

A founding father, during the Revolutionary war,
America's first general, British trouble was in store.

Crossed the Delaware, while the English slept,
On the Limeys army, his troops had crept.

This historic victory, both clever and tactical,
Thoughts of independence now were practical.

Now victory assured, not bowing to the king,
Colonists were free, here there voices sing.

George rule the colonies, we put you on a throne,
Let's start a new democracy, he said in a gentle tone.

Served as the president for eight strong years,
Loved by the voters, respected by his peers.

The next great man, to hold political reigns,
Was our counties leader, during the time of great pains.

Born in the woods, his character strongly built,
His passion for equality, never did wilt.

Families torn apart, North against South,
The Emancipation Proclamation, wisdom out of Abe's mouth.

The Civil War now over, abolished was the slave,
The social order of the States, beginning to repave.

Lincoln wasn't alive, to see freedom abound,
Shot by Wilkes Booth, the world mourned the sound,

Heard at Ford's theater, that fateful night,
His spirit is alive, it continues to fight.

For freedom and justice and the American way,
Both Washington and Lincoln are honored this day.

Visit poemsbypaul.com

Dear America,

I’m really disappointed in you. It’s a harsh way to start a letter, I know, but that’s truly how I feel.

Our leadership (if you can call it that) has unveiled the deep rooted White supremacy and sexism that this country was founded upon. And that means that there are enough people in this country that feel this way that a man like Trump was able to get elected, that a man like Mitch is able to run the show in Congress.

America as the land, it isn’t your fault. You would’ve been happy to never have been invaded, carved up, forced to be witness to slavery and war and watching your beautiful indigenous people die and be culturally erased (in many ways still today). You are beautiful, with your mountains and trees, your beaches and oceans, your rivers and streams.

You are ugly, though, with your systemic oppression, kids in cages, Black people shot by police, housing segregation, gentrification, fatphobia, mass incarceration, capital consumerism, transphobia, misogyny, lack of mental health and addiction support, no healthcare for all, no equal right to education without stock piles of debt, and you always make a way for the wealthy and White,  but you box out anyone Brown without extra expectations or attempted White washing. You pave ways and repave them, neglecting potholes and broken bridges for those that need, deserve, should have them more. You are the birthplace of internal wars, internalized sexism, colorism, homophobia, racism; you’ve made us hate ourselves as much as you hate us.

America, I expected better with the version of you I read in textbooks. But then, that version of you was written by those whose roads were paved with gold, and they profit from its retelling.

I don’t like you, America. I don’t know what hope there is for us, but I do know that I love my brothers, sisters, siblings of all genders, colors, and creeds who too want to unravel you, America, and build you back up into something better, something equitable, something for all of us.

Maybe there’s hope for you, America. Maybe there’s hope in your (r)evolution.

-Meg

I woke up
In a brick circle
Golden leaves
With ruby veins
Falling from a bird cage
Up above onto me

Two great door appeared
I walked through
For with nothing else to do
Curiosity overcame fear

A polished voice
Echoed all about
As I stood on a leaf
Sprouting from a
Crystalline skeleton
It told me
Keep moving

I went on the path
Paved with all intentions
Lined with attempted interventions
Tales of failure and wrath

The road began to crack
Swallowed me up
I became a mist
Never missed
Yet the voice screamed
Keep moving

I, obliging, stepped to the pool
With indigo waters
And platinum daughters
Ever so frigid and cool

I swam down to the earth
Unearthed many a stone
To repave the path
To stone the statues
Cold and unmoving

I have done my trial
My song falls flat
Rabbit, back into the hat
Walking the path all the while