The truth is, I’m not really sure who I am.  She told us to draw ourselves and then to draw our souls; so I drew my face scratched and uneven, just as I’ve always seen it, and frowned at the result both in the mirror and on the paper.  The only soul I’ve ever really known was the one that shone through the strokes of the keys I punched, the scrawling of ink on paper in mismatched arrays of awkward thoughts, disorientated and unorganized, shaded different spews of emotion and rearranged through the lens of ever last viewer’s eye.  Even so, this soul that is composed of words that defined me painted a picture vivid in its contrast, though blurry from both afar and close enough to squint, no details able to be made out.  These words that have wrapped around my soul rubbed raw from the time my skin first flinched at the cool March air cannot be deciphered by their author, though I know somehow that their letters flowing into one another say more than any curve of my face ever could.  These words are black and white, two extremes crafted in the pallet of the Universe’s toolshed, and perhaps that’s exactly what I am.  Black or white.  I’m dark and lost and scrounging for some rusting wall or tree branch to cling to as to ensure the shimmering waves, onyx and charcoal in their nature with the flow of blood in its spine, do not flood into my mouth at a rate in which is too quick to balance myself upon them, or, I’m white, drifting snow from a cloud scraping the vast expanse of brilliant blue gazing as a sky above all the world, pure, innocent, unscathed with the potential for creation in vibrancies yet unknown, or to be ripped to bits, scattered amongst piles of cream and autumn leaves drained of their color beneath months of shivering frost.  And so, perhaps any physical representation of my being would be all wrong, because that’s not what I am.  Myself, my soul, it resides in the murky depths of heights I’ve yet to discover, tethered endlessly and uncertain among the caverns of my inners, pink and mushy, stirred and ******, untouched from the harsh light of a world encased in brevity.

In the midst of the horizontal black and white
Color is lost vertically within the silence
The ever bleeding captured vibrancies
Taken by those crude color blind tyrants
Fair-weather rainbows shining through the muck
Sailing beyond light stealing clouds
Where happiness colors often get stuck
But the sun still knows the moon
Our bright white in the cold black
For two things so far apart
They sure do interact
In the strangest way…

The myriad of possibilities
enliven my ******* semantics
somewhere to go when
my slippers tell me not to

The words that i exhale
are the engine that fuels imagination
something to sustain when
my noggin is void

The vibrancies that rattle me
attribute to the found experience
somehow they strum
when my heartstrings are mute

The mountains that topple me
serve demise to my slippery friends
someways i have adapted
now i listen to blue boots

Sometimes you meet someone
who just seems to click.

I met that boy,
at a concert of all places.
He made me feel beautiful
and full of vibrant life.

Today we met up for coffee,
and he told me we weren't "working."
My vibrancies have vanished,
the butterflies
I wish we could have shared
through intimate exchanges
have escaped,
unplanned.

*I am numb

Become the young
Breathe the bitter air with vibrancies
Intake the lucid eye
Though you’ll never see it again
Once the juice runs out
Glide with hands spread on both sides
Scream death away
Kick the rain
Believe you can return it to the sky
Know that when you age
You’ll be there too
High as a kite

Dear mom,

You’re not perfect
I know you never will be
Maybe I hold you too high a standard
That your legs and arms can’t reach
Maybe I hold grudges I shouldn’t
And I know that makes you feel upset
I have a hard time forgetting
But I do forgive
I’m not perfect
And you know I never will be

You’re my mom
Sometimes I act like you’re not
I’m guilty of spilling words of regret
I’m guilty just as you are of mistakes
I’m your son
Sometimes you acted like I’m not
You’re guilty of intolerance
You’re guilty just as I am of mistakes

Words have escaped our lips
We both know shouldn’t have been said
They lay in the past
With pain and regret
They’ve sprouted into something better
A feeling and movement of love
To conquer those bad vibrancies

It doesn’t take 24 hours to restore a wound
Yet I see your love through your actions
Wrapping itself on my scars
Eagerly wanting them to heal
And I hope as time passes you see me Walk through the pathway you’ve started to build


Often, we take one step forward and Two steps back
But we are always improving from the person we were yesterday
Hence progress that wasn’t always there
And I’m appreciative of the energy you set forth into me

Thank you.