Free

Silence
A stillness so strong that it brings me to my knees
Throws pride to the ground
Asking my legs why they are running

Stone cold
Apathy rid my body of joy
And left me.
Painless.
Without any happiness to speak of
But painless

I need a solace
A year of sleep and some peace
A place to lay my head
And a place to pray
... just until I am whole
Just until I can stand up again with feeling in my body
Asking to live a life worthy

If God can redeem my time...
I need 22 years worth of redemption
And a new life

I need my baby
I need my family

I want life away from this place and an eternity
This world has failed me
They said it would but I just kept fighting
I couldn't stop fighting
The pain
Just long enough to realize that it wasn't the enemy

I don't need a life that's easy
I just need Love

Love me
Set me free

I cry in cars

I cry. by myself. in cars. once in a blue moon.
And even then
It's embarrassing

Away
I'm always driving away when I cry

If I was asked where I am going
It would simple be... nowhere

I'm driving away from a past
A disappointment
Another thing that I painfully pull my contractured fingers away from
In the name of "I guess that's just life"
And it has been

My tears
They store up
They sit in my chest cavity
Knocking politely on my sternum
Asking to be free

After time I can only pretend
That the movement in my chest is me breathing
Barely
Like oceans
And bilateral rails

The cage
It adds to my guilt
That I can not give tears to my sadness

My ocean stopped my lungs completely
Begging me to move
To sit on the floor
Face in hands
And let go
It was the least I could do
After flushing my baby down the toilet in the Target bathroom...

Fear is the dam
The stop in my natural thoughts
And I was afraid
That I would sink into the floor
And become a part of that bathroom
And stay with my baby
Thinking that her heart would beat again

That God didn't spare her from a poor excuse for a dad
And maybe even me...

I am a statue
I am cold as ice
And steady as hollow stone

Despite the lack of depth
I always look the same

I made myself this way

I was told that no one was coming to save me
And I decided that even if there is nothing inside me
At least I look held together
Like someone you could lean on

The sarcastic voice
The heels that make my 5 foot 7 inch stature tower over everyone saying... "I'm aright with you looking up at me."

I thought I was strong
I thought it looked like strength for so long
When I've never been strong enough
And at the end of the day

I'm not sure what strength looks like

Dreams

If eyes really are windows to the soul
Than he knows

Our DNA just held hands
And he can feel my sadness
It transcends reality and sits on our shared chromosomes

I gave myself set amounts of time
To be destructive
Angry
But sadness won't confine itself to my time
I can not bind it and force submission
No music is breaking me from it's claws
And sleep doesn't seem as easy to come by as it once was

This is my problem

I'm barely post adolescent
And this was when my life was supposed to begin
This is my moment
And it looks just like everything I dreamed it would be

Did anyone tell me?

Dreams change so quickly
Maybe that's why they slip through my fingers
Dancing in breezes right in front of my face
Reminding me that I can't hold them

This was my dream
Until 4 excruciating months ago
And who would have known
That my dream is missing little fingers and toes

I can not communicate
I can not write
I know nothing of this sadness
Or microscopic heart beats

I know nothing of these dreams

Wish My Life Away

I walk.

Sidewalks made of diamonds and gold. The water was flowing into pearl gutters and I may have noticed, had I ever looked down.

I promise.

I would not have tripped had my dreamy head not been stuck in the sky looking for airplanes going somewhere ... where the grass must be green.
While crayon stained greenery lay around me.


I may have looked that child in the eyes one more time and noticed that they are not so different from mine, had I not been sitting around writing the "To-Do" list for my life.

I could have seen how beautiful my life is here and now if I were not always so bent on being somewhere else.... right now.


I would have loved better.

Asked for more solid things less likely to slip through my little fingers.

I would have seen that you needed me and cared enough to go.

I would have set fire to the street and pained our hearts on graffiti stained nothings.

Just to prove that this is my life and I'm right where I belong.


Fear never held me. My walls are cold and tall reminding me of all the places where only other people can go. I would love more. I would be fearlessly unafraid.

I could have been a good many things.

Had I not wished my life away.

Funerals

We should get together and cry.

... or have a funeral.

Please, tell me the difference.

We should pull our sorrow down to frail finger tips and hold hands compounding the distance between our minds.

Funerals are familiar faces.

They said that there's nothing worse than losing a child, but I never knew until I shook uncomfortable hands with her eyes. She said that it's like living through your own death and you no longer belong in this world or the next.

Her earth is a holding place.

Much like the girl in the next room.

Sometimes I think I can hear her soul begging to be set from from that shell of a mechanical body and I can't help but wonder.
What have we done to her?

I never thought death would look so merciful.

His hands were stiff blocks of ice and I could see the black sutures in their poor attempt to bring his lips into harmony and silence him... forever.
We have the same eyes and I was begging that he open them one more time.

He rose and conquered the grave.

Etched into my mind making an epitaph at every funeral... every wake.

I never said it out loud. I knew it was crazy before the thought was born, but death was sitting on my shoulder and I couldn't name him friend or foe.

He just was.



I will dance at your funeral if you promise to cry at mine.

I will hold your hand so tight that death has no choice but to take us at the same time.

Conscious

Tossed back and forth between my hands
I juggled the thought halfheartedly
Half keeping my distance

Partly rolling around in my brain
And mostly laying on the floor trying to breathe again


I was supposed to move on
Wake up and decide to be done
With little to no pain

This was supposed to be a minimally invasive procedure


I stayed too long...

I like pain
It's an old friend and oddly comforting like a blanket
... in reverse

And I'm pulling away
Slowly or quickly
Whichever feels right


... I'm moving on
One conscious decision at a time

There's nothing natural about this feeling

Natural Disaster

The ground would shake beneath us

Much like earthquakes we shake
Live on fault lines
Standing between revealing everything
And keeping just enough secret to cause a tremor when we speak

I knew that your love would be bigger than me
Bigger than my will
Larger than my abilities

Only your love
The size of quaking catastrophes
Could tear down my walls
And at the end of the day
I lived knowing that
God knew only an earthquake would shake me

We'll live like tornadoes
And love like tsunamis
We'll care like floods
And in the end

We'll always make a way
We'll always Believe



It will be worth it, only when I know that I would be better with you than I ever was without. We will love more, live more, care more, and do more. I've been living afraid of giving up my dreams....

But your my dream.

My dream.

The Things I Hate

You're like an ocean
I can't breathe in your presence
And if I were ever under you
I would surely die

We're Communists
We look great on paper
But we don't actually work...

Just another bad idea


And I've been kicking it with Amy since I was 17 and I wish we weren't so much the same but "I'll be some next man's other woman too"...

I've been drawing this out with other people's lyrics
With mistakes that I've already made
But at least I know how it ends
I've been waiting to get angry enough to want something different
To love enough to know that I deserve more
To care enough to shatter into a million pieces
And lay knowing that's where I belong

...


I've been painting my life with green dreams
And purple promises
Breaking
Looking much like what I said I did not want
But am too afraid to hope for... more
I want more

I'm taking these moments in strides
I'm refusing to wish my life away
And from the outside
This is my dream
And I'm living it
Selfishly

I guess I'm still too young to realize that time is a gift
Not a right of birth



I used to hear Your voice in sirens
See You in street lights

I used to find You in broken lives and beautiful faces
I found meaning in Your arms
And hope in promises
That for the first time in my life
I knew would never be broken

Your voice was in whispers and screams

And I swore I would never look for You again
At the bottom of my own bottles of truth serum
At the end of joints
In the silence between my sarcasm

Why do I do the things I hate...

Cold Hands and Summer Days

I loved you long before I knew how...

That was my favorite shirt. I don't know why, but I've always looked good in yellow. It shone like the sun straight over us and all around us. Your eyes were the best part of my day speaking words to me much more sweet than anything that ever leaked from your forgetful mouth.

You were so much of heaven that I forgot to hate earth.
A peace in my chaotic mind.

When you looked at me... serenity met insanity and they bred beautiful babies who looked just like the space between our eyes.... stop. Take a breath.
Some call it fate, but I refer to it as creation.

Like waves meeting at the shore to kiss... our blue eyes. Blue eyes.

I might should have been a little more tactful when I told you never to wear that shirt again. I should have walked a little longer. It didn't really matter if there was a hole in my jeans, we should have kept walking.

My new flip flops were hurting my feet.

There it is...
I didn't want to tell you in the moment because I was embarrassed, but that's just how selfish I am.

I just wish you would have told me that you had a month to live. I promise that I would have kept walking. I promise.

I adored every rock you kicked.

It was the first time that I feared a good feeling and it felt like insanity pained like a goddess.

You always felt like a dream come true. A boy I stared at from across the room in middle school and barely dared to wish for.

You told me it was alright when I awkwardly walking in my body. You taught me to stop hating. You taught me to live before you died and I kept on mostly because I knew it was what you wanted. I wanted you to have my life, and I wanted your eternity. Ironically enough I got it on earth, but I never meant for it to be measured in months. I was thinking decades. I was thinking babies and foreign countries. I was thinking about us.

Your hand was cold, maybe it was a foreshadowing. It was the middle of the summer...

and your hand was deathly cold.

Sparkle

I will stand
Until the sparkle in your eye returns to the stars
Until life becomes so normal
That I'm waiting for the next you to roll around

The time doesn't last as long
The moments are only half as sweet
And denial is more difficult that it ever was before
But this is it

This is what I prayed for

I'm Ready to tell the Story

Had I been born brilliant
I would have kept you guessing
Sometimes it is best to preserve the illusion
At all cost
Illusions have no skin

I found myself rolling through hills
Lacking the ecstasy
Tripping through the city
Searching for my LSD
I landed drunk on your door step
And stoned on your bed

But I'm in my right mind
My right mind

I've been legally down for years
And those were my prescription bottles
I swore
I swear

You're pathetic
And I am more so

Because I wanted you
Even if it was just for a minute
A terrible minute

I am best alone
I am best here
To compete with my mind
And never for your attention
Giving you the false illusion
That you could have ever been
... worth the fight
Worth the trouble

You were everyone else
When I thought about it
Outside of your persuasion
I was sad to find the truth
Hiding behind your smiles
That sadly
Very sad
The world is just as corrupt
As I knew it to be

I knew you
Long before dinners
And attempted dancing
I have known you
Always confused
Always searching for a new destiny

I've always wanted more

Sand

Going back
To sleep or to live
Relive
A dream

Backwards
Strange in movement
And it never seems the way
It is so fondly remembered

Those moments will never be here again
And he'll never been the man I knew back then

A sad understanding
A calm contemplation

It's a hope
So small that the light flickers
On and off again

It will always live in my mind
A sacred space
A corner in my heart that I cleaned up
Just to store these times
These moments
These memories

Time is moving
No matter the resistance that I place against it
It's moving
And taking me

I hold firmly to sand
Slipping through my fingers
Quickly
And I'm exhausted
But I'll hold on to you
At least in my dreams
In the few memories that have yet to be tainted
By the distance
By the apathy

The love
That I still hold for you

The last pieces of sand I hold onto
Sitting on my palm
Reminding me
Of where your hand used to sit
So perfectly

Let Go

I underestimated my circumstances
My feelings
My life

It was so easy
For so long
Believing these lies
But I sit in doubt

The first time things did work out I was told that maybe it wasn't my time, maybe it was a chance to learn to how to let go.

I said it again
The second time
The third
And every single time since the first time I realized
That life wasn't like my movies
Or even my dreams
Life was just a series of things
That probably won't work out

I've been letting go
This has been a journey
A long road
Of learning to let go
Learning to be the next best thing
And then watch
As the next next best thing rolled around
I'm letting go

I have been letting go

Let
Go
Of
Me

Your weakness sits in me
A constant reminder that one day
I'll forget how to hold on
Forget how to believe that in the end
I'm am strong
For better or worse

Depending On It

Like most things
It was over before it began
And I started mourning
The day we met

I held on like my life depended on it
And even now
I believe that it did

Not Yet

Death is like a wind

Feel it coming
Never knowing exactly when it will arrive

Death is a thief
Running in quickly
Just so we can never wake up
To know that everything is gone

Death is a game
And we're all playing

Death showed up on your door
And I saw him
So clearly
He showed up
In the form of god-like masses in your body
Taking at will with no one to tell them

That's enough
It's enough

He doesn't respect age
Or at least not from what I have seen
And I should have told him
You're too young and it's not your time
I should have told him

I should have done a good many things
But this wasn't supposed to be about me
Because you may never open another birthday present again
And that's the feeling...
The one that haunts me
The one that begs me to run off the face of the earth
And never stop

This one is for you my friend
This one is for you

He doesn't have you yet

Bricks and Endings

I had been uncertain of our future
Midst the concrete of our past
And somewhere along the way I grew enough
To know the difference

There was a storm that took us by surprise
I was more surprised that it took so long to get here
And you seemed shocked at it's presence

You told me I was pessimistic
But we were a time bomb
Waiting to explode
And when we did
I walked
Shrapnel clinging to my body
I ran

They said I was heartless
They said a good many things
But I survive
I've been surviving
Since the day that cord wrapped around my neck
I learned that live wasn't going to hand me anything
Including my first breath

You were not a victim
I painted you as a glorified bystander
And you were
You were
A bystander that I loved enough to break for
Picking up the pieces as I ran from our past
And crushed our future
I still love you

You were a rock made out of sand
And I was a block of ice with a pretty face
We were made for each other
Neither of us looking like what we really were
A facade of sorts
So oddly familiar
That I melted right into you
And hoped you wouldn't be angered
By the mess

Take life in strides
Keep your running shoes tied
And you'll never be disappointed
Until the last mile where you realize that you've been running alone
Trying to win a race of one
And that seems to defeat to purpose
But who said there had to be a purpose
Breathe a little
Breathe
Breathe for yourself

It fell on me like a ton of bricks
I wanted so much to believe in the world
And the words sunk into my bones
Floated in my blood
And buried themselves
Deep in my brain

"In the end
Take care of yourself, baby
Because no one else ever will"

The end

Everyone Else

I've been trying to trust you

This isn't about you
I've been fighting a lifetime
And if my memory serves me right

You won't be here for long

My guard is down
And it's slightly difficult to stop anticipating the shot
It always comes when I stop looking
And I've been standing guard
For years

You are the enemy

You're another person to lose interest in me
And I'm burning

I'll burn again
And again

When you tell me that I'm everyone else
The same person I've always been


I've been waiting for you to leave. I'm more trouble than I'm worth, come back to earth and look at the facts. You're no match for me.

Forward

The streets were calling me
Begging me to walk
To run
To get from point A to point B
Begging for anything

Still

It's never been my strong point
But don't worry
I'm still trying to believe

The city called me

I was too little to know that my soul would be buried
In the bottom of an eternally tall building
I just wondered how they got that way
Without falling on top of me

The wind took my hair
Only down because my mom was out of town
And my dad doesn't know how to make a ponytail
Correctly...
Remember dad, if we are nothing else
We are correct

That was the same day I learned about the tunnels
You know
The way the wind blows between the buildings
And with the lack of moment in my legs
That were just learning how to walk
Correctly...
I started walking backwards

Backwards

I didn't know much
But I could swear that I was propelling my feet forward
And that damn building was getting farther
And farther
Away

Until my dad picked me up swinging me over his shoulders saying...
"Maybe another day"

That was it

I was too little to spell my name
And I was unsure about what I was supposed to be
But I knew I would grow up eventually
Two eternities away
Stretching across my favorite galaxy

That was it

The day I knew that when my eternities passed
When life beat the hell out of me
And I stood back up

I'd be back on this street
Propelling my feet forward
With no one to help me

I found myself
In the middle of that street 16 years later
With a few more bags under my eyes
And a little less innocence
But still wanting
More

I found myself
And stood
For what was my new eternity
And kept walking

Dad, I kept walking
Forward

Chemistry

This is the missing
The inspiration
The touch

The way that you move me

And we move

Dancing
We moved

My sighs are so deep that they shake the earth
I sigh to catch my breath
Or muster up the courage to sit down
And my flat feet are left trembling on the earth

You move me

I am moved to tears
And beyond...
To care

Your breath covers me
And your fingers beg to dance on my skin
Like you just rediscovered your 5th sense
And it feels like heaven

You can be my heaven
In small moments and great distances
That make me wonder why life continues outside of this
Is there really anything... outside of this

It was the same feeling. It was the same feeling as the first day of 6th grade, my first time in school since I was 8 years old and I wasn't really sure what to do with people. Biology is strange like that and I felt a rush of who knows what when he sat next to me. It was just sitting and I swear that if I could have written back then I would have filled the earth with love poems from that one feeling in that one moment stretching across two wavering desks.

Too many years of homeschooling
And that was my first lesson in Chemistry

And when your strong hands
Found their way down my side
It all came back to me

Chemistry

Changes

I never felt like I belonged anywhere
Couldn't you see it?

I awkwardly sat in my seats as if sitting was foreign and I wasn't speaking the language. I flipped my hair and accidentally nicked my face.. I didn't even notice until you pointed out that I was bleeding. How embarrassing.

I was shy
Painfully shy

Not quite sure if it was more painful to be... or watch
But eventually
It never really made a difference

My body didn't look right
And I wasn't exactly sure when I was supposed to get boobs
But... the future wasn't looking too bright
I patiently waited
Never really saw another option

I was a little girl for too long
Just the way my parents planned it
And I was too angsty to realize
That maybe I should step out of the shadows for a minute

It was awkward, around and upside, it was awkward. The more I looked at it, the worst it got, and I could have swore that I had planned on having a different life.

So,

This is to dreams coming true.

The grass is green.

In My Mind

I called what came over me, a rush
But...
It was calm

It was the feeling of you
Building a home in my mind
Where you would contently reside
.... without my permission

You're an ass

Then again, you always were
Doing things without my permission... that is

Go Home

I dug graves for you
As deep as my sin
The depths of my longing
And even...
Further

My heart sunk into your palms
Where you wistfully toyed with the idea
Of crushing me
So swift
That I would never know the difference
Only a sharp pain that felt like
Home

I tried to be happy
But even that felt like dying
Every time you found me
I drug another grave
More deep
More precious
Right next to
... your father

I mean to be crude
To tell you
That I would have never known that no one cared
Had to never pillaged through my town
With a torch
And a tank of gasoline
Burning me to the ground
I burned
For years
Never ending
Never seeing

You were the devil in my eyes
And when I screamed
I literally meant
"Go to hell"
Only back from where you came
I thought that maybe
They were used to you there

I buried you
Never the way that I wanted to
But in my mind
And you sneaky little fool
You keep trying to dig your way out
Right when I knew
That by now
You had to have run out of air

But maybe evil doesn't need oxygen
It just needs to know
That the desolation
That you so fondly brought out of me
Could be begging
For your wounds
Digging a grave
To live in misery next you you
What I knew...
For so long
So Long

Dead End Road

I hope you know
That when this all ends
For the love of my emotional health
Let's say...
Sooner rather than later

I will never cry for you
I sit with all intend of having control
And I do
I've been saying it over and over
But you're not listening
Not speaking and not listening
Serving as an irrelevant member of exchange

I know it's who I am again
And I know that I did it to myself
And I'm just a little disappointing

I will always be the distraction
I will never be the one
Never the love
Never the lifetime
I will also serve to divert reality
With my smile
My laugh
That find themselves grounded only in the
Uncertainty

Every time I do this to myself
I distrust the world a little more
And I'm oozing the loathing that I've been nurturing
All these years
Of realizing
That maybe this is all I will ever be.

I will never cry for you
But I may shed a tear for those before you
If only I had known
Where this would take me...
A dead end road

Still Blinking

I've been trying so hard
You have no idea
About anything
Because you left before I got to tell you that I loved you
At least to your face

When I found out you were gone, I swore that I wouldn't be angry. My hands remembered so tenderly the way that your fingers once lay in mine and your thumb moved across my hand like you were memorizing.

I miss your hands

Sorry, I didn't meant to say it
I swore that I would be strong
And I have been
Oh, you have no idea

... because you aren't here

Not here when I need you

I don't mean to sound angry, but the day that I knew they were putting your hands into the ground laying gracefully over your chest hoping that you rest in peace... I realized that a part of me would always be 6 feet under in an unappreciative lot. The place where no ground would understand what they held. But me, oh I would remember like I remember yesterday and fading like a dream. I begged your face to stop fading, but time took me while my back was turned and I can't get you back. The concrete substance of your fate is still killing me to this day... and I was too young.

I didn't mean to blink
When the bullet left the gun

Body Sized Hole

I lay naked on the hole ridden streets
Pretending like I wasn't slowly falling into eternity
With every breath
So shallow
So deep

When he left, this was the way he left me. It's the same story, but I'm willing to bet that he will continue thinking that he is... special. Smashing the streets as he wills finding a hole the perfect shape of my body to bury me. This is the way he lives finding places for people like me.

I've been here before
So many times that this out of body experience
Is nearly comforting
Like a horror movie that I've seen before
It's not so bad when you know what's coming

And this graffiti stains my world in technicolor
Like a dream
That I wrote before
Except in the last one I'm pretty sure that I was tripping
Find it
And tell me
I'd like to remember something

I want to publicly say something
Vulgar but sincere unsure if anyone
Would catch it flying by
To quickly to really see it coming

I'd like to be explicit
If I'm going to lay here half conscious
And half dying
That I should at least be honest
While I'm waiting

This is what I've been doing
Waiting for life to catch up with me

She May be Living

She was chronically ill
The entire time that she lived
She was dying slowly
So slowly that no one bothered
Noticing

Her pale complexion perfectly masked
Her slowly fading color
Life leaving her face
One painful day at a time

In the end she found only
An increasing desire to surrender
Everything

Dying was the final surrender
The destination
That one only takes in a blind faith
Believing that what is left on the other side
Is somehow
Better

It was exhausting
Her life was draining
From everything
Dragging the life out of everyone
Only to get vengeance
On the pain she was feeling

And when she died
Took her last breath
And surrendered to the light
I felt...
Relief
As if a burden had been rolled off of my shoulder
The Pilgrim's Progress
Was ending

It was the birth
Of me

She was resenting

I am made complete

My denial of her
Nearly my undoing
Forgetting that somewhere
Somehow her ghost wanders
Setting herself free
When no one is paying attention
To the creeks in the hall

And then...
I saw her walking
Walking around taking as she pleased
She was so real
So life like
That for a moment I found myself wondering

Was her death
Her ultimate deceit

Moving

It has become my solace
In the form of movement
Swaying in a silence
Taking in my breath
And handing it back to me
Just to let me know
... I'm still breathing

These are the moments
The ones I have come to crave
In the chaos of seemingly
... All my days
These are my moments
Where my heart is laid bare in my movement
And I don't have to say a word
Not
A
Single
Word
Just move and breathe
And stop looking at things from the outside
Reflecting back to me

I am perfect
In this moment
Nothing could go wrong
And everything moves
In slow motion
I'm in...
Slow motion

Take my breath and let it cover me
Movement that was always meant to be
Coming from this body
My space
To shake off yesterday

Finding something new
With every turn
Every heart felt beat
With all the energy that will ever be left in this body

This is where stillness found me
While moving

Estranged Eyes

I am an adolescent
With estranged eyes
A wayward heart
And much to be expected
A will of stone

I will never let you know
What goes on in the dismembered heart of mine
But I'll never stop hoping that you know

Did I forget to inform you
Of how much that smile means to me

Did you not know
That I come in this store everyday knowing
That you will be the only person today
Who simply asks me
How I am doing
And it means to world to me

It's the glance
The smile
The kind words with all the sincerity in the world
Sitting behind those eyes
My world is small
My life is short
And it's the small things
That will make it work

Trust me
These estranged eyes are not hiding
They're begging
To be set free

Shallow

My feelings are shallow
Flying below to radar
Scraping the ground

It used to be but moments
But now there are stretches
That lengthen into time
Measured by years
Where I feel
Really feel
The life-will-never-be-the-same
Eat-sleep-breathe to the depths of human emotions
Laying on the raw humanity of all things felt within
Sort of emotions

I may be preoccupied
Too busy to feel
I may be shallow
Preferring puddles over the oceans where I once swam
... or drown
I call it how I see
Which changes
Depending on the day

Or maybe
Just maybe
This is what they talked about when they condescendingly said
"You won't feel this way forever
One day, you'll grow up"

Is this growing up?
Is everything still intact?
Just presenting differently
With the time that tends to morph all things

Will I skim by on the ice of this life...
Feeling little but the hint of cold beneath me
Is this the way things will always be...

Waiting

Sincerity is a destination
Maybe a lifetime worth of a journey
But I want to start traveling
Anyways...

I am sincerely hurting
And it's the happiest I will ever be

Honesty once set me free
And again
It will be the only key
To my freedom

So, here is honesty
I am painfully living

Existing in the knowledge
That it all happened again

And it's in all the wrong places
Faces that I don't understand
And every last bit of my safe spaces
Have been invaded by this

I don't understand

Time
Is all I have to give

And if time brings understanding
Than I will wait forever

I am done burying
Done fearing
Half way living
Scared to be honest

I will wait

I will wait for the Lord
For Honesty
For everlasting Love
To come set me free
And I am prepared
To wait up until my last breath and all the time that I am warranted
Thereafter

Life is a surprisingly short things
And I am tired of waking up wondering
Why time didn't heal my wounds
And why the man in my bed didn't make me feel any better
About all the others

I am tired of waking one day older
With half the wisdom and energy

I will be here
And I will be waiting
For freedom
For understand

Words

Words fail

I speak not with words of much value
Much meaning

The words I utter
Are loud and off kilter
Sarcastic and vulgar
Laughing and insincere

If words are my melody
Than I am singing off key

Words speak nothing of my feelings
Nothing of what is going on inside

Words are merely another mean by which I'm lying

This all seems shallow
All seems below the bar
And I'm drowning in the lack of depth

It was so long that I tried not to care
And now I can't find the words to say
That I love you

It's the irony of life

It's not just the cat that has my tongue
I'm a chronic mumbler

Chronically saying all the wrong things
Hoping that one day
I will be a little more honest about
Everything

Just a little more
A slight bit of something sincere enough
That it's worth the burst of anxiety that I get
Knowing that I am at my weakest
Where I find strength

Soul and Body

I am not quiet
I am not a mystery

You just simply
Misunderstood me...

Words would have laid me bare
Far more expose
Than my naked body

The silence
The blatant desire to keep you quiet
It was protection

Take my body
But you can't have me

An unnatural disconnect
The soul and the body

Miraculous

Beauty has risen from the ashes
And we have something to celebrate

What starts off as a tragedy
Doesn't have to end that way

The life of a phoenix
We rise from the ashes

What was once desolate
Is reborn

We take desperation and become fulfilled
The hope of salvation
Of something more precious than our own humanity
This is a life

Life
To be living
With a story of grace
Of love

We are broken
Fallen
Seemingly abandoned
In the illusion that we work for what we get
An innate sense of what should be
But isn't ... fair

In the place
Where the Lord gives and takes away

Our story
Is still our own
One of the only things that we can cling onto
And can never be taken

It doesn't have to be a tragedy
It can be
Miraculous

He Listened

In a perverse way
I felt understood

The first time that someone asked
"How was your day?"
And wanted more than one word

I breathed in his presence
And felt as if for the first time in my life
Someone just wanted to know
To be there
Caring about every word that spilled out of my mouth

It was a God thing
It had to be
After all the beating
God sent him to me
A band-aid
For a broken child
Midst a storm
Standing naked
Alone
Feeling the first signs of life
Creeping up behind me
It was a miracle
At least to me

I swore that he didn't mean to grab my hand
Was that not innocent
He didn't mean anything by it
My best friend

I promise
That's the last time that I'll turn around
After he grabbed my ass
He's still listening

He listens so sweetly
He's here for me
I know it
I know it
Let me believe

Needing to be mended

Trying to convince myself
That his wife knew about us
It was an innocent kind of thing

Like everything else in my life
Nothing comes for free
And after months of talking
He could have my body
If it meant that he would still listen to me

17 isn't that young
I'm swear that I'm old enough
Old enough to know the difference

40 isn't that old
It's not that old

Take me

Please take me

Lock me wherever you want me to be
And I won't fight anymore

Just love me
I'm begging
Can't you hear me

Do you hear me

Why aren't you listening?

Love is Deadly

I can not tell you
How long I believed that my love killed you
It's poisonous
That's what they've been telling me
And I believed

I didn't mean to love you
I just didn't know that when they spoke of poison
They meant the literally kind of death

And you breathed in my fumes
Living dangerously
Out of everything that you regret
I always prayed that at the end
You didn't regret me

Cycling

I cycle rapidly
Four years of cycling
And I'm still going

Through you
Through me

And that one
He was just disappointing
Slightly convincing
And another reason to feed my hate

They don't have faces
The same dozen faces on different bodies
And humanity is funny like that
When it was sucked from me
It was pulled from everything I see

Guilty
Or guilty by association
It's all the same to me

And if I pull your heart right out of your body
It's the same as pulling his and the same to me
A pleasure
A high
A sweet sense of controlling something

It's what we do in this life
Haven't you seen it?
Over and over again
A melody in my ears
Abuse me just before I abuse another and we can keep this going
I told you
I'm cycling
I'm cycling
It's a cycle
And it's never ending

My dad told me I was insane
Doing the same thing over and over
Expecting a different result
But I'm still playing
Still chin deep in the game
And I'm starting to see the irony

Take back that ring because you're not good enough for me
And my arrogance keeps breeding
Because I can't see
I can't see
I've been blind for years
And I walk around like a tornado destroying everything

I don't care who hurt me
I will burn every last one of you until I feel better
About... something
And then wish for more
I'm always wishing

A dreamer with no direction

I told you that I would come back around
And around

Everyone falls into the same category
"They're all the same"
Catchphrase
I play the same game
Because I know the rules better than my name
And it's easy
Just like me

I told you
Shut your mouth
I'm not interested in talking to you
I'm interested in using you
And your hair matches my shoes so walk with me tonight

I'm Sleeping

In some ways
We all choose the life we want

I just want to know that He is near me
Called a crime
Or an uncertain reality
Faith if what I preach
But not always what I'm practicing

Deemed right the eyes of whomever
And the person who said that
Right after them

See, it's confusing
Slightly convoluted

And they said that we'd see him again in heaven
In heaven
Would you like to point out the direction.
Or are you better at drawing
Maps

See, I don't blame you
Any of you
Because I'd say it too

Right now I'm sleeping fine at night
So it must be working
It's working, right?

Was that not the point...
To make me feel a little better about this life
A little better about what I do
It's what I'm doing tonight

This is a slight collision
Your car and my bus are going different directions
On a way street
And I'm tipping... tipping...
Slightly

Call my bluff right before my rambling
But I'm sleeping
Soundly

So tell me again
That our God is forgiving
Right before you tell me that few will enter
Heaven...
Wherever that is
Eternity is just a few houses down
And one street over

And I knew a God
I knew Him
And He was merciful to me
I just want to know that He is near me

Near to me
Because I can't always sleep
As well as these half truths sedate me

Quietly

The quiet moments called
Out of the chaos of my life
Coffee to stay awake
And wine to sleep
Day to day blending perfectly
Into a mass confusion

The quiet was calling
Quiet was the distance and destination

Quiet is an unpredictable demon
And staying too busy has a predictable
Sort of unpredictability...
A lack of thinking
Instantaneous instincts.. and I'll decide if that was a good decision
Later

Later never comes
They told me once
And I'm still not listening
I walk through life with my hands over my ears
Screaming "Just point to the right direction"
Can you hear me?
Because I can't hear you...

They tell me to do more
More and more
Be better and better
And no one is telling me when more becomes enough
And better becomes the best
And how do I stay there?

I'm talking too fast again
But I don't have time to speak slowly
Don't have time to beat around the bush
To tell you the point that I'm trying to make

QUIET

... my stillness
My solitude
Seeing clearly
Only serving to confuse me
More

I know my demons are still lurking in the shadows
And it's the quiet that lets me see
How frequently I dance with them in the madness
That they are at the bottom of shot glasses
They are in between the sheets in my bed room
Around me

Quiet

It's where I want to be
If I were more brave
Had a little more feeling in my hands

Quiet

Remind me...

... that He loves me
And I burn deeply
As if someone has been watching me this whole time

And He wants me

He wants me
And I want to burn
Burn with the joy of feeling
The ground beneath me
Standing still
Quietly

Chances

It was a desperate place

Mostly consisting of open legs
And shut mouths
Just the way you like us
Perfectly content to fit into your own definition
Of women


I wondered if things would be different
Growing up
If getting older would make things better
And suddenly someone would want to take me out to dinner
Without laying down his back seat for the ride home

I wondered

I think
You know I think

Things will be the same

I know
Maybe I know

That this is the way that life will be

I could change
Oh yes, I could change
Just give me a few moments
A pair of scissors
And some tape
I'll be different before you know it
I promise

It's true what they said
More maybe it's just that no matter what I try
The truth won't replace these lies
Sitting in my head with a cocktail and a cigarette
Planning to stay, at least for the night

You ruined me
And I ruined myself
A couple of times and over again
Just to make sure that I didn't leave any work unfinished
I hate half way done... jobs

I swear that this wasn't supposed to be my life
I swear and I beg
And nothing will change
My story is the same as it was yesterday
And equally painful to remember
Thinking of all the things
That I no longer get and no longer deserve
I didn't mean too
I was young
I was too young, you know
Have you been there before?
You must have
Because you're old as dirt
And I really don't think you were born that way


.... breathe
Once for me
And twice for the memories


I know that I will never be whole. Not on this earth, not in this lifetime. I know that I can never erase the past or my memories. I know that he will stay with me. I know that he is with me. His ring clad finger still sits on my hips while I'm walking. This is where I found God. Have I never told you? As selfish as the day I was born. I found God hoping that I could believe. That even if my story never changes. The only thing I really own. Maybe I could be whole after death. Maybe there is such a thing as ... second chances.

Children

My solitude stood still

In the incandescent lighting of a child's face

Brilliantly placed in the middle of my world

Where I stopped... running

They stood looking at me

Through me

And straight into my saint and unworthy

Seeing only

Me

Laid barren my guilty conscience

And ask with all the courage of those

Too young to know how to be afraid

"Why do you fear?"

Life always was

And always will be beautiful

Through tile floors and skid free socks

From holes in our chests

And wheezing from our lungs

Punctured veins

From used up vessels

We are blessed

Life is short

And life is long

We are everything and nothing

Just soon enough to figure out

Than we want something that we don't have

Just breathe

It will be alright

In the face of a child

Who knows not of short lives

Because everyday is one more lifetime

And every laugh feels like the first time

And from those faces

I found meaning in my life

Stop thinking and start living

This is life

And we are blessed to be at each other's sides

Holding children

And the hands crippled with arthritis

Begging us to try and not think about

Getting old

And dying

Death is a new journey

And these children

Dared me to live unafraid

Dancing on the edge of eternity

Easy to Let Go

I thought you were there
Long after you stopped loving me
And I was always forgettable
Easy to grab onto and easy to let go

I was young
And I thought you would love me
Through everything

Maybe it was just me
The youth took hold of my common sense
Or some desire to be loved for a lifetime took hold of me
And blinded me from how unworthy you were of me

It's what everyone said
Everyone said I could do better
But I never wanted to do better
Or worse
I just wanted you

It was the way you looked at me when I was lonely
The way I thought that you believed in me

The feeling that I got when I stood by your side

The way that I dreamed about a lifetime
With you
And a lifetime had never seemed that interesting to me

My Dreams

I liked it

Here it is
As black and white as it will ever get
And I'm confessing

I loved being that girl
Your girl
And when you said that I was the only one
You ever wanted to come home too
I melted into the carpet and became your puddle too
Hoping that you wouldn't step on me on your way in the door

Step on me
And step through me

I was the face on your mind
And I was supposed to be the woman in your sheets
The one who raised our children
Who burnt chicken
While you swore that you wanted pizza anyway

I would have ask you to speak
When the world didn't want to listen
I would have stayed by your side

For awhile I was your everything
And no matter what I said
That was my smile
My song
My dreams

Your Legacy

He rose and conquered the grave

Through these streets of bloody messes
Smashed faces
And gasping lungs
Through the thoughts of our past
And our graffiti stained hearts
These are the things we hold onto

Through the battle that we fought to get here
And the fight to leave
We live on the streets




You're so still, and so alive. You are so present and so far away. A presence, a soul that senses how close we are to each other transcending our hands that lay laced as you squeeze with your last breath.

I went back to the house. I went back to the house that I've known for 21 years, and you were always there. Your face marks the picture frames hanging on the wall and all those reminders to take your pills in the morning aren't going to do you much good anymore. Your life floods that house with your old records and pictures that may or may not be the first ever taken. I want to find your soul in the captured smiles and finger prints. I want to find you again, like it was the first time. I'm your legacy.

Leaving

I knew that you were leaving
But I never thought it would come so soon

And in the midst of your struggle
I find myself still
So selfish
So absorbed in my own thought
My endless journey to run from death
And the thought of leaving
So soon

They said that death was coming for us all
I just didn't believe them
Until these small moments
When my breath has been taking away
And death stands in front of me

Taking people from me
Everyone leaves
In the end

Weakness to Breed

I feel you so near to me
So incredibly near
Indescribably close
Magnificently present

I feel you
The same way that I always knew what you were thinking
And somehow we were connected
On a level so much more intense
That the lack of movement
That radiated through every half-hearted
Action

Don't tell me you love you
And please don't forget
We were much more than what we speak
And much less that what fills me now
Begging me to go back to that place

And with it the weakness that you breed in me
The loneliness that you planted in my uterus
Until it could kill me 9 months later
Just like you
Just like me
Truly a product of it's poorly planning parents
A product of our design

Your favorite song
Slowly creeping up on the bridge
With a meaningful melody
And a chorus that cut me to the bone

Your poorly tuned voice cut me to the bone
Every regret and everything that said
I couldn't do better
Never to love better
... and never to be seen
The way that your lazy eye saw me
So... lazily

An after thought
And meaningless period of our lives
That dragged on long enough to tell me

That I'm not sure if I believe in love
If I believe that I have anything
Left to give
Worth the taking

The Doing and Undoing

Is there hope
In building a life
From scraps
And broken dreams

It is possible
To keep playing the same scene
Over and over
While everyone else moves
Farther and farther
Away

Are there possibilities?

In a life of questioning
You're my other half
But you can't fix anything
In being together in this thing
But having our own journeys
So different
So distinct

In all the puddles
And all the oceans
A oneness
And loneliness

In hoping that a few bad decisions
Didn't destroy everything
Undoing the course of my own life
And painting it will lonely nights
Wondering if he's really staying late for a meeting

In all the fear and confusion
The "I'll be damned if I ever let it happen again"
Only to jade myself out of another happy ending

I don't fear doing
I fear not being able to undo

It's not the wedding
It's the part when I regret ever getting married
And even worse
When you feel the same way about me

Presence

I was looking for inspiration
Somewhere between classes
Between awake and sleep
Maybe before or after work
Dancing
Or day dreaming

I have been looking

Looking to forget
And looking to remember
Something that will bring creativity
Out of the mundane lull of my life

Turning my lack of thought
Into brilliant poetry
Lying somewhere in the back of my mind
When I remember to remember
...forgetfully

I have been searching for a passion
A life lesson
A kick start
A shock
To bring me back to life
Put a little kick in my step
A smile on my face
Or a fire in my heart

I've lived a life
Looking to be a hero
Something of meaning or worth

Always being active in fixing
When all along
I've just needed to be present
To be still
And here
In this moment

Sometimes our souls say more than our mouths
And the very act of being so near
Is healing

Nastalgia

It was the spark
Of what seemed to be incandescent lighting

It was the beginning of what seemed to be
A new beginning to my forever
And forever after

He was my confusion
My clarity

He would live on
More so in a fantasy
Than the touch of his wondering hands

His memory is unshakable
Unattainable
Stored in my heart
Locked up by stained glass walls
And bared windows
Trampled by never-going-to-happen
And breathing with I-want-you-more-than-anything

His wink was my world
His walk my after thought

Possibly the last person
I've ever had these thoughts about
Coincidence?
I think not

He sucked me in
With the fumes of wordiness
That I may have been warned about
But didn't care to mention
It was a daydream
In black and white
More vibrant than any colors
I had ever seen

My little piece of everything
Holding out for nothing
And I became perfectly content
To let him live vicariously through me
As long as I got his everything
In exchange

My perversion
My preservation

Our Guilt

We buried our faces
Under masses of concrete
And the names that we gave our sins

Put our fists through walls
The depth of our dreams
And then claimed
That this is the life we always wanted

We sexed away our guilt
And smoked away our pain
Fell through never ending
Feeling
Nothing
With faint memories of what we once wanted
Before we ruined
Everything

Cigarette Stains

There were small holes all over my dress
Marking the places where my burning ash landed
Flying off of my lit cigarette
To the same beat as the wind coming through the window

There was a bit of mellow-drama
Leading up to that car
I over acted the entire night
It seemed better than the truth

No one wanted to know
That I had an hour long conversation with myself that morning
Trying to convince myself to get out of bed
Telling myself that life would go on

The goal is not to fall below 50
Not sure that anyone would find me
In a state like that

The goal is to keep getting out of bed
No matter how little sleep
How much sleep
Or how often it seems that life has stopped
And only the bed
Being honest
Acting out the solitude in my own head
Will bring justice to the time
And the truth

The car ride was shorter than it should have been
And I haven't worn that dress since

My Poetry

I go back to the beginning
When my art was born
And everything was so new
So raw
So...
Alive

I go back to the beginning
Born out of sorrow and heartache
Stretched in a million directions
And no one could make sense of my life
Most of all
Me

I go back to the beginning
And today I realized
That this became a haven
A safe place
Away from my fear
Of
Wearing an emotion on my sleeve
Emotions are for private
Tears of for solo car rides
And thoughts
Are for poetry

I think that I made it all up
There is no place in the world
For these thoughts of mine
I just hide them under blank stares
And notforlong empty sheets

This is my crazy
This is my sanity
My poetry

Apologizing

I am apologetic

I have apologized to you
For being too young
Being too old
Being the baby
And being an adult
For being bad
For being good
For never being enough

I have been apologizing
When we both know the truth
I did nothing to you

I have been running towards perfection
My entire life
And yet, I still apologize

I will never be enough
But neither will you

What a waste
Spending my entire life
Apologizing for being me

Your Eyes

I have been looking for you
For years I have looked

Accepted that it won't be... you

But please
Something that looks
At least a little like
The devil in you
That found the desperation in me

Take all of your perfects
And leave your flaws

Keeping always that perfect spark in your eyes
Right before your face would light up my world
With a smile
Perfectly pointed in my direction

I find that spark flying by me
Tempting me
Letting me know
That there is always a possibility
That something
Someday

May look like you

My secret deception
All of the hidden things
Wrapped up in one sly
Charming man

That still looks like my
Everything

Comfortable

Treat me like an object
A material
Or a fine wine

Treat me like your favorite pet
Or a car that you will soon trade in

Treat me like anything...

But if you treat me like a human being
You will suddenly become foreign to me
The pain is like being awakened after a long sleep
Too much for me

Keep your distance
I have no time for uncomfortable feelings

Treat me like you half hearted-ly love me
Or get like me
And just come out and say that this is a weekend
Kind of thing

Feelings have no place on these sheets
Between you and me
And we have no place out in the world
Out of this bed
In public places
Like we care to hold hands
Or exchange adoring glances

That car was made for the road
And I was made for the bed

I'll be an object to you
Because it's everything I'm used too

Comfortable
Stay in my comfort zone

A Little Cliche

A master of disguise
An apparently contradiction
Well hidden

Everything that is different
And exactly the stereotype
Expected

Everything you weren't supposed to be
A little too much of everything
I've already seen

A New Beginning and Old Ending

It was beautiful
And painful

Everything that it should have been

I couldn't make the thoughts stop
Along with the tears

I remember everything

The past 9 years of being there
Always there for each other

Best friends

That white dress fit you perfectly
And lacing up your corset
One impossibly string at a time
Was the only place I wanted to be

It's the way God intended it to be
The joining in holy matrimony

And me
I'll go on
Visit on my holidays
Look at pictures of cook outs
In your new back yard
Wishing I was just as much a part of your life
As I was when we were 13

Knowing that we will always love
With the new beginnings and old endings

Playing

I may have always been too fragile
A stone wall crumbling from the inside out

Most of my life
It served me well
As a good game to play
A nice grown up substitute
For boardgames

I made my own rules to the game...
I know when to play
To fold
To get up and run like hell
When to smile because it was
Oh
Too
Simple
Begging like a child

Maybe the years stole my intuition
Or my looks
The way that I walked away
So seemingly unaffected

Age gave me a desire for more
But everyone's still playing

And it was all fun and games until I found someone
Who was just a little better than me

He should have met me 3 years ago
And things would have been different
I swear
This isn't just about my pride
This time it's about my life

I'm tired of playing
But everyone around me is knee deep in the game

Even from a thousand miles away
He found a way to hurt me

Should have kept my arms up
And my face down

Lifetime

They were right
It's a journey
And no one knows when or if it ends

Sometimes it's just the ride
The ride that keeps me going
Keeps me living
With my head out of window
And the music high

It's the thoughts that I don't think about
The ones that throw me out of the car
And taunt me to get back up

That's where the joy ride ends
And I begin
Where my sanity is questioned
My insecurities are wrapped up in pretty boxes
And left on my doorstep

I guess this is a lifetime worth of troubles
Worth of guessing
Praying
Hoping
Learning to love

Learning to live
Before we die

This is a lifetime

Desperate

I long for the joy of the Lord

Today it is far from me
Joy is in the distance
And I
But a human longing

I have prayed with all the tears that I can find
Cried with desperation
As if it were the last time in my life
I am thirsty in the desert
Hungry in a famine


I am so low that the ground is trying to comfort
So deep that the ocean water has filled my lungs
I am gasping
Deeply
With all the sincerity that I possess

The Word
Sits no where with me

I am questioning and left
With no answers
No peace

I am alone
And no one can find me
I am longing
Searching for purpose
Meaning
Something that once filled my life
Kept me alive
The only way I have ever been able to survive

And now I am a shell
A child who can not be consoled

I am choosing again
The difficulty lies in the day
The hour
The week
The months

Where God seems to be no where
And I've never searched so much in my life
I've never longed so much
Never been so sure of Who I need
And unable to find Him

I am weak
Where the joy of the Lord was once my strength

I am holding on
Dangling over a cliff
Saying over and over
"I believe"

This is where faith runs into a reality
That has fallen on me like ton of bricks
And every bone in my body is broken

Now I have to believe
With but memories
Of what it was to feel God near me

I have to believe that I am not forsaken in this desert
I was not left to die here

God has given promises to me
And I am holding on

Holding so tightly
Asking humbly
"Will I know peace, again?"

Possible

It's quite possible
That I just went crazy to the sound of this room
The lack of movement in the walls
And the slightly monotone voice inside my head
Constantly telling me what I'm doing wrong

A Little Bit of a Good Thing

You were the good thing I was waiting for
The light at the end of my tunnel clouded by smoke and no names

The one I was waiting for
The wild card
Changing the game
One unexpected turn at a time

You lit me up
Bouncing from side to side in my brain
Telling me that things were not the way
I had come to expect them to be

Good things

That's what you were to me

Twist number 10000000

Three years later and you're no where to be found

But I still believe
In good things
Maybe that's all that you were meant to be

Learning experience number 1000000

A little bit of a good thing

Art

Art is the way we speak
The way we dress
The way we move

As if mountains crumble beneath us
And we awake fearless

As if all emotions are equally valid
And we tell our story
Beyond hushed screams
And soft tragedies

Where we can be contradictions
In gentle hands from the street
And raging shots from what should have been
A happy home

Where we find joy rising from our sadness
And depression among everything going
Too right

Where we are the same and so different
Finger prints from hands that seemingly
Look just alike

We are art
In our breath
In our voice
A creation

I Mourn

The foam falling from your mouth
Like your own self destruction took human form
And fell on a bed with one sheet
Shaking under your convulsing body

You may have been a friend to me
To many
If you were not so desperate to leave

So desperate to starve away your demons
To drown out that ex-boyfriend
With a bottle of vodka on the rocks of an empty pill bottle

Your shaking body under my hand
Made me wonder what earth has done to us
When did life suck you dry
And leave you trembling under my right hand
While my left frantically dialed 911

I mourn for your soul
I weep for the part of you
That will do it again

The part of you that is already dead

Closet

The closest tie I have to the past
Is my closet

Silly it may be
But that's how I remember all the years of me

I kept them because I still smell my home church
Sitting on the sleeves of my favorite dress

I smell the cigarette smoke on my mini skirts
...17

I can smell the weed on my hoodies
And the sex on my jeans

My grandpa's cologne is still on the only half cashmere sweater I own

The tiny shirts
That I remember fitting me
Once upon a time

The shoes that I tripped up the stairs in
Right onto the feet of my first crush

The scarf that covered up my hickeys

The things I want to remember
And everything I wish I could forget
Sitting in the closet
Asking me when I'm going to walk away

When the cologne fades
Will I forget what it felt like
When my grandpa would hug me?

I fear forgetting
Like I fear losing myself in the arms of a lover
Or getting caught by death before my time

I never want to forget where I am from
All of the shoes, shirts, skirts, and sweaters
Telling a story
Only to me

Only to my memory

To all the things I used to be
All the places I have seen
The love given and lost

Maybe, it's time
To face an empty closet

Time to walk in a new pair of shoes

To put away the memories

A Second Chance

I walked away
With a slight bit of regret in my footsteps
Smashing the nevergoingtohappen do-overs
Between the souls of my shoes and the worn down cement

I took the pages written
Turned them into flames from my back window
And watched it burn
Took the evidence of life
And let it go

Told you to keep walking the other way
With my hand held out
Pushing against your chest
A friendly reminder
Of the distance between us
Keep walking

These streets claimed me when I wasn't looking
Took the best of me and blended it with the street signs
And subway stations
The graffiti
And the people dancing on the streets
Seemingly unaware they only they hear
The beats blairing for their headsets

Sometimes the memories flake away
Like mascara from my eyelashes
And polish from my toes
As my always exposed feet
Hit the sidewalk over
And over
Music to my ear

This smog is my friend
Speeding up my mortality
The way that cigarettes once did
But without that comforting feeling

Oh the buildings
I breathe them in
Each one a second chance
Half of which I took

Dispite the unwelcome words that were given
This list is perfect
Nothing that I can't reach
With a little ambition

In love

They say that if it doesn't break your heart... it isn't love.

They're right

Broken hearts are not always losses, not always sudden or fast. Sometimes it's the side effect of loving a human being. A person in all of their imperfection. In all of the getting let down.

It's sticking around

Knowing

That one day

Eventually

We all lose

We all die

In love

There is always the knowledge

That one day the heart that has been breaking all along

Will be broken

In life and love

We are all together

We all know

The moment when it's unclear

Whether we can't breathe

Or we just don't want too

Grey

We held hands at inconvenient times

I believe that we may have been slightly
Inconvenient

There were several moments
In between the sweat that are hands were exchanging
Where I found myself wondering

Who I am replacing?
You held my hand more tightly than how you knew me
I wasn't born yesterday
Who am I playing today?
Who am I pretending to be?

Used...
But I guess it's alright
Because I was using you too
I wasn't ever planning on going anywhere

With you

But your hand was nice to hold for a minute
Just to remember what it felt like
And how little I enjoy it

They always try to tell me
Tell me
Telling me
Always

Because being highly uninformed bystanders
Makes them the appropriate people
To...
Tell me

Apparently I will feel different
When I find the one..
When the time is right...
I will feel differently

They say I will love that way
One day

But I'm not sure that I want to
I've never loved that way
And the whole...

I love your guts can't live without and don't want to live without you eat sleep drink and breathe you in... kind of love.

Doesn't strike a bell
I just have a creative sort of imagination

I can love a friend
Even a stranger

But soul mates?
I don't want you to know me

I guess I will just believe
That maybe they know best

Or maybe God isn't so black and white
Wrong or right

Mother but not a wife... ?

Grey is all too familiar

Paper Cuts

I found this poem among my non-posted items from back in the day. So, I wrote this several years ago. Because of the overflow of memories that came back to me when I read it, I decided to post it in all of it's glorious vulgarity.
I'm slightly amazed at how different life is now.



Those words came out of my mouth a thousand times
A thousand fucking times
And you still can’t hear me

Get the hell
Away
From
Me

There it is
Spelled out

Not that it matters much to me…
Anymore…

You heard me
Oh you heard me
10 minutes before you said
“It’s alright baby, I love you”

Loved me?
You covet the virgin you took from me

You ripped my favorite pair of panties…
Ass hole

It’s possible that I don’t hate men
I hate you
And the voices of women abused
Cry out in my head
Begging for justice

They follow me on the streets
Tape on their mouths
Begging me to use my voice

Maybe the next voice will cry out
Cry for them
Cry for me

My only regret in life is my… silence

I should have stolen the breath right out of your lungs
The skin should have disappeared from my fucking knuckles after you checked my wrist

Slit my wrist for you?

You’re not worth a fucking paper cut

Drown in your unworthiness
And let you’re conscious suck the life right out of you
I hope to never see you...

Never again

But if I do
Lift your wrists
I want to see the damage
That life has done to you

Slipping Away

Can I pull you from that mind
The mind that holds you so tightly
Locked up in it's prison
Staring blindly from behind cages

I may be selfish
Or I may be a hero
Depending on how we paint it today

I wish to take you
And shove you into your potential
The potential that I predestined for you
The second we met

Slightly pushy
Like a dreamy mother
Or the controlling fist of a husband
Painted like a friend
I am a friend

It's best
Don't you know
That I always know what's best

It is best that I keep projecting
My fear onto you

I fear your mind
Taking you from me day by day
You're slipping through my finger

You're the best friend I ever had

Don't you see
That I want to keep you away from your thoughts
Keep you here with me

Stranger's Bed part 3

It runs deep
The feeling of having been here before
And I have
My memory serves me well
Imprinted permanently
When I fell to my knees
And swore that if God would save me
I never be here again
Again
I am here again

For the first time
Regret runs so deeply
That I can not see life outside of me
Not for this moment

Sex for less

She thought of the situation
As little consequence
She had sex for less
For love

Where was the point?
Hidden under stained sheets
And futures that traded themselves in
Daily

She fears falling in love
The same way that she fears death
A trapped
Uncontrolled feeling
A good 200 miles per hour
Right down a mountain side
And no rails would save this time
It's a hopeless abandon

A life gone wrong too soon
Too late
Too much of everything
Except what she needed

Take a Chance on Me

I remember an affection
That I often threw in your general direction
And then

I remember a liking
When you weren't talking

Because I already endured two years of you chatting away
While I sat there wishing that I could hear something
And wondering why my time is an easy target
To be wasted

I wouldn't say that you disgust me
But my pity for you ran out
Four hand fulls of nothing ago

I am trying to put my finger on it
But placing it is hard
Blindfolded with nothing to go on

If...
I had to say something to try and justify my current feelings

I would probably choose your selfishness
Or wait...
It could be the way that you talk yourself up
Like you're not human just like us
You always wanted to be ... different

Or maybe I am slightly shallow
And easily bored just like my mother told me
Maybe it's just the way you walk... so slowly
Or the way you sit
And everything in me wants to push you slightly
And see if your paper thin image falls apart

Then try to say that this all has nothing to do
With you calling me out
For disapproving of my own social drinking
(I never said that I don't contradict myself)

Maybe
I just woke up and realized
That I wasted my time
Just as much as you

And I need someone a little wild like me
A little fun like me
Looking at life
In all of it's short longings
And ready to take a few chances

Take a chance on me

Eternity

I never lost the drive

Everyday I want God more than life
More than anything
I beg to see Him
Beg for more

I have never forgotten

Where I came from
The places I know
The things I have seen

I remember deeply

Like sucking the breath out of me
I remember
Every face
And almost every name
As if the cry of desperation marked my life
Forever
And I would never have it any other way

I wish to move

That God would pour direction into my life
And let me overflow into the streets
Leading me
Leading me always

I have said it before
More times than I can count
I have said it
And I will say it again

Everyday waking up
To the sweet silence
Knowing that my first Love
Is so near to me
In my breath
In my dreams

The best of all feelings
Something I never knew to hope for
I never knew to feel

But now know
That I will feel it for eternity
Eternity starts today
With You
With me

To Wonder

I have wondered

The feeling after taking a breath
And never taking another

An under-reported feeling
Bring them back and ask
What it feels like to die
To take death over fighting
And loose the desire to keep breathing

I have seen the dying
I have heard what it feels like
Knowing that death is around the corner
And life is behind you
Everything you know
Forever lies in the past

Yet the feeling
The lack of feeling
Lack of breathing
The moment of exodus

I am left to wonder
Left to beg for another profession
Another road
A large dose of denial
Or a prescription for anti-depressants

Wondering
I know the feeling

My Garden

You are a flower
Planted in front of the tree
Referenced as light

Stuck in soil
Very to near to my conception
And my tomb stone
Near to me

I can never be quite sure
As to why you exist in a space
That makes up my story
But ever so often
You are slightly pretty
A painful sort of beautiful

I wonder if this was orchestrated
If the conductor of my garden
Wanted you here
Making music with your pedals
Playing softly in my ear

It is a mystery to me
As is all else

This garden was planted for more than me
Slightly more that my bent tree
Trying so desperately
To grow a little more straight
A little more tall
With a slight wind of acting
Like I know what I am doing

I still wonder
How you made it into the scene

Closer to my tomb than my conception

Maybe in everything
There is a least a little speck
Of meaning

Sorts

The way the mind goes
Back and forth
My own version of rapid cycling
A manic state of sorts

A depression faded

The need to keep going

Settling

I can not breathe

And life is uncertain
A dream that is faded

I should have written it down when I woke up
Because I'm reaching

Into the distance
And trying to go back to sleep
Trying to believe

That life is not a series of vivid dreams
Before we wake to a reality
That commands us to settle

I'm tired of settling

Supposed to Be

It was the way that he looked at her
Something about the way that I set the scene from there
Knowing that they were meant to be
In the sweet untainted thought of a four year old
It had to be
Love has to be

Things never seem to turn out the way I think they will
But can I believe that everything worked out of the best?
Not with me
Everything turned out conveniently
Maybe what is now was never a love thing
It is the product of circumstances
It could have been anyone

I wonder if they're still in love
If this will be the last time that they look at chances gone by
And say what we want to believe

"I guess that everything worked out the way it was supposed to be."

Existing

I love you like life is never ending
Like nothing will ever take you away from me

Maybe there is a part of me
That remembers you holding me
When I was a helpless baby

And all of me feels the love
That is never ending

Death can't break us
It will just be another part of existing
In love