The soul starts off pure and humble,
unscathed from the thoughts of man.
But then we grow up and we begin to mold,
trying anything just to fit the plan.

But why must i be in a box
when i know i'm undefinable?
It scares people not to label me
they feel vulnerable and viable.

I'm not a punk i'm not a ****
i'm not anything that i do.
The only thing i really am
is undefinable to you.

And if that really scares you
and you have to label me,
then please choose not to focus on
that which doesn't define me.

I'm not the clubs i do
or even the music i choose to hear,
i'm not the guy i hooked up with last night
or the movie that brings me to tears.

What i am is much more deeper than that.
Its what i choose between whats right and wrong,
and maybe the special lyrics i like
from my very favorite song.

We're all a bunch of different things,
and experiences, and pain.
But to try to box us into categories
just seems downright insane.

i really just don't understand,
does it scare you i'm not like the rest?
not a sorority girl
not a hipster
not an activist at a protest.

one thing i will protest though
is smooshing me into a box.
because i really won't fit anywhere
i'm eternally, utterly lost.

but not the kind of lost you get
when you have somewhere to go
i'm the kind of lost thats wander
and i'm not really lost at all.

Blue eyes you are the one,
the hurt, the pain, the sadness,
it's what I feel inside,
everytime I watch you walk out the door,
I find myself on the floor,
tears flood my cheeks I can't take this anymore,
rug burn on my knees,
eyes swollen red,
it burns,
someone help me please,
I hold on tight,
let it all out,
thinking of you,
gone,
I cry all night,
The empty pit inside of me,
it defines who I am,
It tells me who to be,
with it I'm not free,
If you leave me here,
don't come back,
hope is what I lack,
I'd try,
but cry,
don't lie,
love me now or let me die,
******* hole on my heart,
when I saw you what was I suppose to do,
pass up the greatest thing that could ever happen to me,
just to be free,
to give up the pain,
what would I gain,
loving you opened my eyes,
in my cereal box you were suprise,
changing my life inside and out,
we danced on the roof,
screamed and shout,
movie nights,
sweatshirt hugs,
sumo fights,
smooshing bugs,
you were my one and only,
best friends,
together,
never lonely,
too bad it's all over with and done,
boring memories,
you left none,
if I wait for you,
will you stay true,
my heart broke not once,
many times,
shattered into pieces the size of dimes,
I love you it's true,
come back to me soon,
I'll be waiting here,
having no fear,
because you're it,
your profile fit,
searchng for love,
I'm done,
blue eyes you are the one.

I found a spider crawling up
the drainpipe and it freaked me out
for a minute until I realized
that I am bigger than a spider
and no arachnophobe at heart

I am no arachnophile either though
and so I smooshed the spider
with a paper towel into the wall
thereby ending its life and sparing
me and those I love from spiderbites

(from this particular eight-legged foe)
And likely sparing the flies as well
But that's not so great
But I still forgive myself
for messing with the natural order of things

And I forgive everyone who kills spiders
and everyone who chooses not to **** spiders
And every spider who eats a fly
And every spider who bites a man
even if that man dies.
I still forgive the spider, even if
it is not my spider to forgive.

And I forgive every web-spinner and maker
of things which are stronger than steel

And I forgive you too if you let me
but I won't forgive you if you fear the spiders
and I won't forgive you for smooshing them
if it's irrational and not for the sake
of saving the potentially bitten,
or at least for the sake of the flies.

I can't ever forgive you for that
anymore than I can ever stop thinking
about you and what it meant to be your friend.

What am I doing? It's after midnight and I'm up. I have school at 7:55 in the morning. I don't want to sleep. Nightmares. Plus, I keep waking up panicking that this couch is smooshing me. I'm drinking coffee, mixed with hot chocolate, but coffee still. I won't sleep. I'm so tired of life, but I won't sleep. I saw him today. His hair is growing out and he wore a baseball cap. He doesn't wear baseball caps. He used to have a golf cap that he wore when I first met him. I loved it. I think he's sleeping with his ex. Not that I care. ****. I've ****** two people since we broke up. Okay, so maybe he broke up with me . Whatever. It was basically mutual. I don't think I love him. I don't understand this feeling. It's like I miss something. But I don't know what. Am I pretty? Because I wanna be pretty. And now I'm crying. Do you think I'll ever find somebody? I want to. Somebody who gets my crying and buys me coffee and tea and lets me make a mess in the kitchen and somebody who I can yell with and fight with and **** with. I'm not a good person. I know that. And maybe this ****** life of mine is karma for that. But I swear to god. I'm trying. I am. Will you love me? I miss love. Even when it got messy. I want to sleep with somebody. Feel something. I'm not nice. I can't have a nice guy. I'm sorry. I can't. I'm rough and I'm a ***** and when I make love it's passionate and fleeting and everything. Will you be there? I want to spend less time faking. I want to take midnight walks in the park and swing and go to the store and buy gelato. I want dates and kisses and doing that thing where you hold me and I rest on your hips with my legs around your waist. You don't have to like me a lot. I don't like me a lot. Just be there. I don't know who this is to. Maybe it's you. The one reading it. I do have a fantasy about meeting somebody through hellopoetry or tumblr or anything. You'll be reading my stuff, smoking a cigarette or eating or just sitting and you'll think "She's crazy." But you'll smile. Can that happen? Or is that just a sad girls fairy tale. I don't look like my picture anymore. I cut off all my hair. I'm not pretty. I'm not like the others. I'm me. And I"m different. I hate coffee, but I want to do slam poetry in a dark coffee shop and drink dark coffee. So, I'm teaching myself. It's late and I'm rambling and I don't have anyone to talk to. Sorry about that. One. Day. I'll find it. My *** of gold isn't money. It's you. I don't know if soul mates exists. Or somebodys. He was right. We think we know, but we don't. But even if you are just my somebody for a little while that's good. I just want to meet you. Be my best friend. Please. I'm so tired of being alone and pretending like it's all okay. I don't have to pretend on here. I don't have to pretend. I want to spend less time pretending. Help me.

I'll write this to you, father, in the first person. First person narrative is your preferred narrative  This was my midnight dream between the days of Sunday, March 31st and Monday, April 1st, 2019. You have been dead just three years and 14 days.
Your honorary NCAA basketball pool bracket, in which I enter in your honor every year, was busted last night when the Duke Blue Devils lost to the Michigan State Spartans 68-67. Your bracket name was Ogre1. Just as it was in real life.

The dream was bizarre, as most dreams tend to be but you walked hard in this dream and I still wondered, as I woke, which places in my subconscious you walked so hard to convey your message to me.

We waited for you. The three faceless and I. And there was a child. Perhaps an eight year-old boy with us. He was waiting too. Faceless. I imagine he was me but there's no real telling in a dream as there is no real telling of any dream. Just scattered attempts at placing all the players and places and things in some justifiable juxtaposition…

We waited. We waited for you to arrive after your board meeting. The four of us. And the boy. Five together. The other three adults were too familiar. We waited in your 1972 Buick Estate Wagon. The four of us across the bench seat in the front. The boy laid in the back back.
I knew he was there as he periodically popped his head up in anticipation for your arrival. He began to look a bit like you. A bit like me.

You appeared as a hurried specter across the lawn of my childhood home. A lawn I had mowed a thousand thousand times. It was raining slightly and I could see the lawn as it grew in the night air. Your obsession with fertilizer and having me mow it egregiously throughout the seasons had awarded you your goal of having the best lawn in the neighborhood. I will forever mow your lawn in all dreams.

A cigarette lingered in your right hand, you held a smart, tight satchel of work papers in your left. You got in the back seat and laid down. Face up at first, until you finished your smoke. After you had extinguished it in the clean, shiny metal ashtray in the armrest attached to the door, you turned away from us in the front seat and laid on your side. The boy peaked over the seat at you. You winked at him before closing your eyes.

I could not tell if you were awake as we pulled out of our driveway. The driveway where you had single-handedly beaten the neighborhood kids in basketball games. Beaten us a thousand thousand times…

We drove off in the dark and slight rain. I had no idea where we were headed. And it didn't much matter as the three other faces became clearer. Each face dreamily and slowly morphed into characters of my psyche. Obama was driving. Next to him was Hillary. Squeezing me against the shotgun door was Trump. Supertramp's “Goodbye Stranger” played purposefully on the AM radio.

The two were smiling. And laughing about something. Mr. Personality next to me was complaining about how someone had said something about him and much ado about something being somebody else's fault. My disdain for him only grew when I checked over my shoulder to see if you were okay and I caught the stench of his lies right in my face. It tainted my nostrils and contaminated my mouth as I turned. His breadth, his revolting self, was bleeding into my space. I detested him for intruding in my dream… my dream about you.

He was there, however, to build balance. A reckless balance. An ugly, reckless balance between us. Your wife and I often contemplate whether you'd lock horns with this particular buffoon if you were still among the living. Or would you continue your downward spiral of consuming your daily allotment of FOX News propaganda channel horseshit and play today's version of Archie Bunker??

Lois and I tend to think you would see right through this malevolent con man and wave the old Republican flag for Kasich, McCain, and those who fought the good fight. But here he was. In our car, with us, smooshing me against the door. Belching foulness. And going with us wherever we were headed. Headed with unnecessary balance.

We arrived at a retreat.
A recreational retreat somewhere in what could easily have been deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains. An early evening summer day.
A warm, almost purple twilight glow laid over the entire forest like a visible snow globe, encasing us as we each headed to our cabins.
The three politicians faded but the boy remained.

We wanted to follow you to your cabin. Follow you to make sure you got there safely. You had aged suddenly, during the ride. You walked tenderly, with purpose, favoring your lower back and your knees. I called after you. You didn't look back.

The retreat had scheduled activities. Most were hokie and I knew you'd pass on the therapy and “treatments”. But they offered a jacuzzi crawl and that fit the bill. I knew you'd enjoy that one.

I hovered now, like the specter you once were. I could see the compound from above. I watched as the boy went to retrieve you from your cabin and accompany you on the jacuzzi crawl. You had gone ahead. I was now a prisoner in the mind's eye of the boy as we, as I, raced through the encampment. Looking for you, searching for you.

A trail of mild destruction led me after you. A lawn chair knocked over, a picnic umbrella on the ground, low branches splintered…
It was if we were tracking an obnoxious and ornery silverback toward his next jacuzzi!

Then I found you. The boy found you. You were floating ever-gracefully in the jacuzzi on the aft deck of the Crown Princess. We were sailing to Hawai'i and had at least another day out before arriving on O'ahu.

This, the dream, and this realm, was the last earthly jacuzzi you enjoyed. How we found you, Ogre1, here in this dream, is a mystery.

April 1, 2019

The six stages of life her parents engrained in her were:

Graduate high school
Go to college
Get a good job
Get a boyfriend
Get married
Then have kids

then she could be successful and fulfilled
In these achievements she could find happiness

But
To her
a life worth living
could be discovered
In something
Much smaller then that

In the warm sip of coffee while listening to the streaming flow of traffic outside her office window

The first face smooshing greeting of her lover after arriving home from a long day of work

The meal shared over her childhood dinning room table eating only a steak her mom could make

The careless laughter of her best friend as they talk about their weeks as they wandered in the mall pacing from store to store

The jolt of her puppy jumping up on the couch to snuggle her feet

The excitement of turning to the first page of the second book written by her new favorite author after waiting months for its arrival

Those
small
moments
Those were her memories
Those were her life