When I can wake up beside you

When I can wake up beside you

I swear your butterfly eyelashes taunt me
As they blink
Revealing the heaven I knew before I was born
(And the one soon to come)
 When I see how talented God is at creating
You

You whisper
It sounds like hummingbirds saying I love you for the first time
The first time I kissed you
Our mouths stayed together for more than a moment
Locked and defying any search for a key
We kissed until biology reminded us that we need some of our own breaths too
But you make me wish I was a tree
Not just to have such strength
But that when we kiss, carbon dioxide is good enough for me
Maybe I could be a tree
Kissing you makes me feel alive
And when your long lashes roll back
The green in your eyes reminds me where I’m home.
And when your cheeks dance there selves into a smile
That melts me like an icicle sword in the warmth you beguile
And yet you wear no mask
Redeemed though you’ve been broken
You love with heart open
My arms
Bury yourself in my chest
Fall back asleep snuggling your curves to my heart
If it’s still dark
Press yourself against me
Let me know you
Every dimple, every curve of your skin
With no light and only my fondest memories to guide me

I wake up every morning and still have to ask if this is just a dream

When You're too Damn Beautiful

“to the girl whose eyes will help me recognize heaven, to my living dream, to the one God’s pointing me towards, to the girl I can whisper with, to the girl I will dream with, to the only one whose made me smile this much, to the girl I can’t wait for”

 

When you’re too damn beautiful
When I behold you
When I hold you
When your fingers slide home between mine
When you speak like angels took over your mouth
When your song sounds like a throne room
When you put the stars to shame as you walk outside at night
When you make creation jealous
When I feel you relax for me
When I hear your soul like my future heartbeat
When I sense how much of you I live for
When I almost but don’t tell you I love you
When we almost kiss
When in that trance I find why I’m here
When I can no longer go to sleep
When reality is just that much better with you
When I’d rather talk to you than do anything else
When you make my mind wander
When it wanders too far
When you tell me yours does too
When we don’t know what to do
When I reach my hand in tomorrow for more time with you
When we figure it out
When we don’t
When I can’t see life without you
When we plan our future
When we outdo it
When you dare to be beautiful
When you fall for me
When I catch you
When you tell me how you feel
When they let us be real
Your smile is cemented on the back of my eyelids
Your eyes known more by my retinas then my own
Your perfect form molded just for the puzzle piece of my body
Your question asked just for me to answer
Your laugh the best sound of all time
Your hands around mine
Yours
Your Jesus
Too perfect for me
Too many better moments with you
Too many tomorrows I want with you
Too many bingo cards in our retirement home
Too much love in this heart
Too close to give up
Too many breaths of mine you’ve taken
Too much of you in my dreams
Too much of you to do anything but be with you
Today
Tonight
Tomorrow
To you who makes my heart speak like a saxophone,
Damn
Spelled D-A-Y-U-M-M-M
Damn every picture
Damn every thought
Damn every living instinct for just me
Damn every bad word I’ve spoken
Damn my lies
Damn my arrogance
Damn my sin that almost didn’t let you in
Damn the pride I should’ve fell from
Damn all I will do incorrectly
Damn the past of all it tries to hold
Damn, when I see you I melt like a cheap advent candle
Beautiful
Beautiful I will never know how many colors glorify your eyes
Beautiful like our first sunrise as a couple
Beautiful like making breakfast together
Beautiful like family
Beautiful over pain
Beautiful who I can’t get out of my brain
Beautiful who washes over me like dew
Beautiful, Beautiful is you
Beautiful like sundresses and winter coats and fire places
Beautiful like hugs and kisses and sweaty palms
Beautiful like no kisses lost
Beautiful like Proverbs 31
Beautiful like the air I can’t get when you are around me
Beautiful, I can’t breathe

Finally

Your eyes are one of the few things that make me smile

They light up when I talk and my insides are on fire

Your voice is pure and imperfect like Katy Perry without auto-tune

It beats the drums in my ears like the heartbeat of a blue whale

Your hands are always cold

But I will hold them in the dead of winter so you are always a part of me

Your legs are slender ivory towers

Often caressed in tight denim and all I can do is want you more

Your hair holds more secrets than any chamber

It is dark like the night but then

Your smile shines like heaven in Paul’s eyes

It’s so beautiful it could kill a man

I fell in love with each part of you

I fell in love and wrote 7 different poems

All about a different part

Idolizing each individually because the thought of them together

Was too much hope for my cynical heart

When you came along

It took me way too long to see

I looked at you and saw only my dreams

My heart blocked off everything about you

You were like pictures in a mansion I was unworthy to look at

When you let me in

When you let my heart search and know you like the back of my eyelids

I shot myself with hope

Drowned in the galaxy of your mind

Melted into your subconscious

Found a place to sit with you

I sat with you decades under the stars

I wrapped myself around you like a blanket

Folding myself into your curves tucking you in

To my memories

So I knew you weren’t my imagination

I wanted to borrow God’s breath

Whisper the stars to you

Hurricane the moon to earth

See it light you up in my dreams

As we watched tides that were way too large

My mind longed to watch you every second

Clicking photographs every moment

Watching you change

I zoomed way too close on your eye

The camera exploded in green and gold

Like the sunset of resurrection

Your eyes, indefinable like an eagle

Played freeze tag with mine

In space

And comets struck the chartreuse plain of your iris

Colliding and fracturing bits of emerald and flecks of gold

And at that moment

As planets spun in your eye

As your face looked like every smile you’d ever wore

Dancing with your hair

Like Etta James, “At Last”

I realized

You were the one I’d written for

Almost Christian in a not so almost hell

This poem may hurt.

It may make you want to cover your ears

And you might as well close your eyes

Because you’ve already closed your heart and mind

It’s amazing how comfortable you are in your masks

For some of you it’s light because you’ve eaten away all of the you that used to fill it

You’re now just an echo in a shell
You are a snow machine hooked up to a beeping lie detector

Some of you can hardly carry your mask

But you insist on pushing it in front of you like a Grand Piano playing a tune you wish you spoke

This is for you social drinkers

You one time smokers

You just a kiss turning all-nighters

You who make out in tinted windows

You who blame it on the alcohol

You barely survivors

You who speak at your parents

You who don’t speak at all

You electric smilers

You hypnotizers; Womanizers

You aborters

You thieves and robbers

You joke-too-far-ers

You liars

You lusters

You over-trusters

You who cheat on homework but not tests

You who cheat on multiple choice but never short answers

You gamblers

You judgers

You hypocrites

You insulters

You who step on other's backs to keep your head afloat

You who don’t give a flying fuck

You attention whores

You gossipers

You pillow talkers

You one-nighters

You people over God-ers

You blasphemers

You self-servers

You who raise your hands because you like being looked at

You who cry so people will give you a hug

You gorgers of selfishness

This is for you.

Mr. or Ms. First Priority

God

He looks around

He can’t help but ask, “Where is everybody”

Where are the altar prayers?

The scar free prayer warriors?

Where are the Amen-ers?

The hand raisers?

The Jesus shouters?

The VBS-ers?

The church dinners?

And he looks down from his throne fashioned of grace

Into a pit he intended for fallen angels

He will find you there

Confused and thirsty

Gnashing your teeth

He will see you Oh Almost Christians

And almost wonder if His way was too narrow

As you wish you were in an almost hell

He will remember calling you

Remember knocking on the door of your heart

Having the key but not barging in

He can still feel what stone your heart is made of

He remembers your memorized prayers

Your go-with-the-crowd lifestyle

Your “I am God” attitude

Your lack of real belief

How you tried to cover his creation

How you failed to create your own

A tear falls

But it evaporates just before your parched mouth

You were soldiers without scars and this is your share of hell.

Your Hands

Your hands are cold.

But they are soft

Closing

Opening

Folding

Praying

Your hands fit perfectly inside mine like the underside of a boat

We float

Your weaknesses covered up with my fingers

Connected

This union is endless

Sometimes when the world is too loud

When your eyes are too beautiful to look into

When it feels like time is slipping away

I reach out and grab your hand

So I can enjoy saying something without words

Saying I am fragile

Saying I love you

Sometimes I hold onto your hand too tight

It is because I don’t want you to disappear

When time sands down the puzzle pieces of our fingers

When it bedecks our hands with wrinkles

Like someone who stayed in the pool way too long

I will still hold your hand

Still weave my fingers inside yours

Locking them into place

Listening to the echo of the silence

Like the sound of the ocean in a conch shell

Conducted with sound waves

To the rhythm of raindrops and beating hearts

The first time I held your hand

It was wet

My hands sweat like an equatorial noontime

I was nervous as hell

You pretended not to notice

You grazed your long left forefinger on my palm

As if my hand could melt any more from your touch

And best of all there was a second

And a third

I held your hand this morning for the 4,982^nd time

When I hold you tonight

When I stop kissing you to reach for your hand

When my fingers finish their tango with yours

When they slide into their place

In the valleys of your knuckles

When they squeeze you one last time to make sure you're still there

When they open musically, like an accordion for air

When they let you slip away

Hugging the space between your fingers

Letting go

Defying before we sleep

Any thought of not being we

4,983

Vampires (a question poem)

Maybe the reason vampires live forever is because they never have to see themselves in a mirror.

Maybe it’s because the dust of deceit can’t rest on their skin
They never have to wake up thinking themselves in a different age.
Never forced to paint themselves for a judging world
Modest out of necessity
Because sometimes the truth is too much to leave bare
They sniff out the lies of the masses like fresh meat
Chasing it down with alacrity
Biting the deception from the jugulars of the adolescent
Bleeding their own truth in
Sucking out the falsities that define us until we shine.
Truth glitters.

Do You Hear Her

It’s her Birthday today—

They don’t keep track

In a culture that’s more about building houses than making homes

Always growing out and never growing in

She has only a fake fireplace

As a candle. No cake.

Confetti.

The shrapnel of a broken family.

She sits in her room with her door locked

IPod in to drown out the domestic abuse she never passed out as party favors.

All of the silences when they aren’t around.
 

Do you hear her?
 

She sits in the back of the class

She has seen too many masks and heard too many fake laughs.

She lost her own long ago.

Leaving only black eye shadow

Like paint

To cover her empregnant eyes to deep for any other color
 

She wears hoodys and bracelets

Failing to hide the shame of her scars

Refusing to be called on

Too many people have walked on her opinion

Her wings are clipped

She no longer believes in flying

Just getting by and...

Hoping that she only has a little while left

Before she finds a decent way to die.

Searching for the right last breath.

One as dissatisfying as her life
 

Do you hear her?
 

She speaks with the scent of alcohol in the  stagnant air

Dripping herself out of her wrists

Longing to cover herself up

Fully convinced the only way was drowning.
 

She is tired of being wanted like a victim

For her waking up is something

Breathing, not nothing.
Every second she makes a burdened and conscious choice
To re-enlist in this debauchery of life
Only out of fear
Not dying is her life
The passion is dying away
 

You sit in the front of the class

Making bad jokes

Whispering your loneliness away.
 

She hears you.

 

A Letter to the Galaxy

I wrote a letter to the galaxy today
Just to tell it that 2 stars had moved to a better home in your eyes
And I postcripted a question to God
In case you really were an angel
You didn't understand what I was writing
But as you laughed
I can understand why the stars flung themselves from their thrones
As if the only thing that held them up were broken yo-yo strings
And when I look into you and see the star that sparkles each pupil
I sense what it must have felt like when they collided with your eye
With the color of a golden butterfly wallowing in an Oregon sunset
It was too beautiful
It forced the lines around your giggling eyes up
Like a sandstorm kneeling in prayer
Yet even when your eyes are closed
You lullaby my traveller's heart to sleep
With the violin and cello duet of your eyelashes
Blinking
You put me at peace like a jazz chord that sounds more like summer rain
Evaporating
And then you let me swim in the floodwaters of your kiss
Drowning you in it
Just so I can save you
Filling your lungs without air
So you know how I feel when you aren't beside me
When you smile
I want to hold you
Like the big dipper holds the sky
I want to dip into that infinity
And find even more time to hold you
So I can squeeze you like Orion's belt
Let me orbit you like Mercury, you
You can be my sun
And I know i'll get burnt
Because I'm way too close
But I don't ever want to know what it's like to not feel your warmth
When you die
If I can still breathe,
I will blow your ashes into space
Where they probably ought to be
And you can trail the back of a star
And I will wish on you
Crash into the sun
So I can dream you ever into my tomorrows
And every time I open my eyes
I will realize
Just how much you take my breath away.

Your smile

The first time you loosened the hinge of your lips and smiled in my direction.
I sacrificed myself to hope
And tried to drown in it—
Just to see if hope can still float
I want to float on your dreams and never let go.
Darling you are the lone tenant in the galaxy of my mind
You embody the entirety of my subconscious
So even when you aren’t in my arms I can still hold your hand.
And we will dream-date above the clouds
So it can never rain on our parade
Beloved, I want to be the sole proprietor of your ring finger
I want to love you ‘til our bodies sing songs our mouths don’t yet know the words to
And relish every moment of silence
Because I know it’s simply that we haven’t had the time to make up enough words.
And in that silence I want to hear your heartbeat and your breath like your first name and my last
At last
And let our hearts beat to the rhythm of one drum
So that together, together, standing next to you we could be music.
Let us love like a flood
Kissing with open mouth
Sharing the same breath we can live our lives under the water on your inhale and my exhale.
Let our teeth shatter with the weight of our kiss,
And I will die for you daily to prove I will resurrect in your memories—
In your thoughts                                                                                                                                                                
And your dreams.
Crucify me on a cross of myself
And let me bleed every lustful thought of everyone else
Bleed every other woman out of mind so you can fill me only with yourself.
Tattoo my name on your lungs
So I can be all that you live for.
Carve yourself into my smile so you will always be in my conversation.
Pierce me with your soul and shatter every mask I’ve ever put on
Like a 12^th bottle of whiskey
And when I run for them keep your eyes open
So I can always find my way home in the light house of your iris.
The first time you laughed.
I melted.
But you fit me with myself
Now fit me with you
Like two puzzle pieces and pray,
That as time sands down our edges we fit just the same—
And pray that God adds this sawdust to the sands of our love-story
And you can be piglet and I
I will be Pooh,
Because I have a thousand daydreams
And not one.
Not one.
Is without you.

A love poem

I want to be the leader that deserves the following of my shadow

To lead you as well.

I want the surface of your heart to be found with my fingerprints

I want to be the rolling stone you can't resist turning into rock

Your rock
I want you to be able to stand on me.

When it feels like your drowning

Breathe and know it’s only my love.

I want to be the sole proprietor of your ring finger,

To be the lighthouse that forms the sparkle of your eye and always guides you home

And we can be piglet and pooh

Because I have no daydreams that don’t include you
And if you live to be a hundred
Let me live only that too

The first time we said hello

I took all the butterflies hurling themselves down the corridor of my stomach

And I put them in a jar of my uhms and mumbling and handed it to you with my head bowed

Because I saw too much in your eyes

And yet you relaxed your lips and smiled at me

And spoke to me

And you’re voice was worth all of my nerves

No one makes them feel like you do.

And that first time when you spoke

I sacrificed myself to hope

Crucified myself on a cross of my dreams hoping to bleed into yours.

The ones in the day

The ones you could act on.

Darling act on me.

And I would bet the reason you always wear a coat,

Is because you wear your heart on your sleeve

And I want to hold you and make it a part of me

And let our hearts beat to the rhythm of one drum

To the tune of my knees when we kiss

And the strings of your eyelashes when you blink

And let it be the drum-line for the greatest song of our time

Let it never play a last song.

You own the whole property of my mind

Consuming even my unconscious so I could see her in my dreams

And stand beside her in the day playing the music of our love.

I give myself up to be next to you.

Your Beautiful

Your knees shake like Native American tambourines in the sunset. You shiver like an autumn breeze on a street in Brooklyn. Your hair waves unbounded by the wind. It carries you off. Your eyes; they are too half-moons that almost but don’t fit together. That have seen too much shit in the world to sparkle themselves with hope. But your body is a war zone covered in Never-land lingerie and when I touched you for the first time and felt the infinity of your scars, I swore I heard them shout at me. With a malady of hate like a praying mantis his head halfway eaten by his wife, and you didn’t move away. I don’t know how this will end. If my love can carry us both if you can learn to love again. Because I would carry you across the ocean if you let me because when we kiss breathing in and out we could live days without coming for air. And I don’t know what you're feeling or who you are thinking about on those nights when you lie away from me in a dark corner of our room trembling like a leaf, when the scars you bear screech in your soul and you wish God let man live alone. When your past hits you like a train coming from the wrong direction and carries you off on bad memories and old feelings. But when you drown in your tears because the icicle shell you’ve formed begins to melt and water seeps into your scars and floods into your heart, I’ll be there. I want to be the tree that makes sure no matter how bad you shake I will fling my roots further into the ground to hold on and when you blink with the orchestra of your eyelashes and kiss me with reckless breath and sharp tongue and I feel you pour into me and bare the soul in you sneaking out, I will promise you I will be there. Because even though I don’t know how we will end I can’t see my days go by without your face close to mine and one day I want to read the wrinkles on your face as the greatest novel ever written and I want to watch you cry a happy tear. And see a shooting star so you know that flying can sometimes feel like falling but that you can never love too much and when you feel empty like a vase I will fill you with the sweetest lemonade since you don’t care for wine and I will kiss you with you kissing back. I want to wish you into the sunrise so that you know how to get up after you fall. And I want to bless you with my fears so you can bandage them over your own and I want to find what makes you smile most and etch it into my lips like a tattoo so that every word I say would sound like you are beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful...

In the Name of "They're Christian"

This should not be taken as an essay or a position or a vignette. This is merely a rant.

Sometimes as a Christian in this tolerance-turning world we feel a sort of pressure to promote Christian art and Christian artists and chick-fil-a and any other person or company willing to slap a bible verse on a cup or close on Sundays or play Christian music or say that they pray or an athlete who points the proverbial finger to the heavens. And all this may be good in the ‘us not supporting sinfulness’ kind of way, but what’s the middle ground? How seedy does a great song or artist have to be to warrant a boycott, how unmerited does a Christian song or artist have to be to not forgive him because he or she sings or plays or writes for Jesus? It’s not that I necessarily have a problem with this first question as there are songs that I don’t listen to because they take me into darkness rather than lighting my way, and I think this list of songs is different for everyone but is surely not one that can be exclusively genre based or one that can be a list of songs to listen to because there are way too many edifying, powerful, bold, telling, and truthful songs out there that to create a list of ‘do’s is too small a thing. It’s this latter question that has been much the struggle for me as a 17 year old soon to be 13 year-running Christian school graduate with a church and family walling me in with whatever heaven, hell, punishment, forgiveness, judgment, or mercy they need too to keep me within those walls. For the most part I haven’t wanted to live outside of those walls but only because my ultimate goal is living inside God’s will and when that fits in the walls it works great and when it doesn’t...well…it doesn’t.      

 Neil Gaiman in a commencement speech said that his life was entirely centered on getting to the place (he called it the mountain) that he desired to go, and he said that sometimes he had to say no to good jobs because it would be taking him away from the mountain whereas if those jobs had come earlier he probably would have taken them because they still would have been closer to the mountain then where he was at that time, but sometimes those very good things if they are the wrong choice can be very bad things. Christian music, Christians in the arts, Christians in sports—it’s all wonderful…done right.

God is glorified when anyone raises their voice in praise to him— even so far as to promise that one day the rocks will cry out if we don’t. But does that mean every Christian ought to be a singer or a musician. Certainly every aspiring athlete that does their best does not make it to the pros, yet those that do get inflated to demigods and skyrocket to stardom on the wings of religion. Similarly, I feel that as Christians we forgive poor talent in the name of Christ when what we ought to be doing is praising Christ for those with talent and praying for these people to praise him as well. I am tired of turning to the Christian radio station to hear a 3 chord song screamed by an average singer with lyrics that are so shameful I’d think it was a different God. My Jesus is not a deity fitted with appropriate words only the explicit ones and the imaginary ones can get at his majesty so why do we forgive these artists for shanty songs? Because they said Jesus in it? Because they have a good testimony? Is that what we pay for? Because I’m tired of hearing Jesus’ name on bad art. Jesus is not the good that makes bad art not bad he is the good that makes sinful songs and sinful people’s actions reflect glory to himself. That’s my Jesus

Your Voice

I’m tired.
Tired of writing so many love poems for someone that doesn’t exist
Or at least for someone I don’t know yet.
So instead I’ll write about your voice.
I’ll write about how it is music
Music that drowns out my stuttering
You, you breathe like a symphony and you speak like a song
A sultry mix of strings you have yet to go wrong
When you talk with the wind each word is just strong
enough.
And when I reached for you in infinity and could pull out only this voice
You shattered me soon after I believe
With the sound of silence
With the evaporating sound of you not speaking
Into me
When you talk to me you take each piece
And with the intricacy of eternity you mold me back together
From the ends of eternity you gather me and fit me with myself
And that’s enough
For now
Because I have run out of dream to keep making things up
And your voice melts me
And then floods me with sweetness
Drowning
In a sea of your smile and your words
I haven’t to say if I lived before but I know not like this
Not like now
In each moment you’re here
Playing orchestras in my ear
Without fear
And part of me wants to kiss you
But then I’d have to bear the silence
With you not there to make such amends

As to open your mouth and fill me

With the one thing you can--

With your voice

Life's Short (especially if you're an ant)

I ran over the top of an ant hill today with my lawn mower. It was the 2^nd time in a row I had done so with purpose, though I run over it every week regardless in order to cut the grass. I sat and watched as hundreds of ants scurried from their caves widening small holes in the surface like an inverted meteor shower scampering on top of each other with a unity about them arming themselves to fix their fort (from my intruding blow) with alacritous speed and burdened backs. I came back around the circle of my side yard’s mowing circuit to see about half as many ants  as before still working like crazy even though I could no longer see the imprint of my tire in their mound. I thought about how disheartening it would be for the ant to work so hard to rebuild their fortress only for me to knock it down every 7 days on Saturday. Does the ant know this pattern? Can they predict when it’s coming?

The average ant lives only about 40 days which would allow them to see their hill destroyed only 5 times at what would feel like 12 year intervals for a human. I thought that maybe I shouldn’t feel bad about it (after I convinced myself that it may have been a little more vindictive than necessary). But then I thought that perhaps just once is enough to ruin a life. Even an ant’s.

The "Weed Culture"

I haven’t officially written on the subject of marijuana though I’ve had the conversation a myriad of times. This is not all I have to say but merely a small portion of a large and influential topic. I will begin by saying that I do think that it should be legalized, that I believe there are positive effects, that medically there are few negative effects. I am neither a Doctor nor a licensed professional in any related area and I can speak only from what I observe. I hope these claims allow you to keep reading for it’s mainly the smoker that I write.

Not once have I lit a cigarette or joint or cigar or pipe or sucked by any means any illegal substance. I do not write this as a fellow smoker but one having known a number. I write this knowing that this already lessens my credibility, but I hope you continue because it is that very feeling—the feeling that no one has the right to tell you differently, that I see as the real problem with weed. Marijuana does not necessarily hurt people. It ought to legalized however, for a different reason: because marijuana infiltrates people. It becomes all they can talk about. It’s a not-so-secret society of shared experiences that in this present state is special for their “moral resistance” and bold face defiance of government’s imposition on their personal proclivities. This is what is wrong: the weed culture. It has flourished because of its illegality and it has almost demanded its constituents to engage in its culture exclusively. The drug may not in and of itself take people away from functioning sober society but the culture almost demands it.

Like all secrets it becomes so much more glorious when someone else knows. But now, that someone else has turned into a society, one filled with long-boarders and beanies and cut-off jeans with Rastafarian shirts. Not to say that these any of these are bad, I possess many of the items but it has come to define a culture—one that everyone knows exists but no one can make assumptions about. How many old women must we stop to justify searching the one way suspicious passenger? If it bothers them then they should act less suspicious. The problem with this “Weed Culture” is that it centers on the ecstasy of being suspicious, the effervescence of flirting with the line of law. No one changes and pretends they aren’t a smoker because they enjoy being one. It is their identification, the group to which they call home. Most people can’t call one group home. Most people have a much harder time searching for people like them and growing themselves to make that happen. Weed offers an escape from this. It is an all unifying bond that allows anyone to fit in somewhere. This is nice; a high in life, but it can’t last. It doesn’t last. There is very little addictive in the substance yet the culture is nigh impossible to resist.

I believe that this government must relinquish its grip on controlling marijuana. They are doing an awful job and in an obstinate effort to remain stringent on their past rules they have allowed this culture to grow and grow and expand further and further into the youth of the country. I firmly believe that when my country steps in too close violating God’s laws that it should be dealt with passive or even violent resistance however, just because marijuana is not bad it serves no good and necessary purpose for me and while being a long-time proponent of legalization I’ve often wondered whether I would smoke or not, but I realize that my desire is only for the culture, that fitting in to a mold, and when that is removed I, along (I believe) with many others will move past the immaturity of weed. Some will move to other drugs but I refuse to believe I need them. I refuse to believe that my mind cannot reach the same level of depth on its own. My philosophies are no less certain sober than that of someone high. Weed now is grown up. It’s mature and idyllic like driving a car at 14 before you are  supposed to and not wrecking. But just because weed doesn’t wreck me doesn’t mean I need to get in the car. This maturity is façade. This whole culture stems out of insecurity and immaturity—considering ourselves less able than we are, rushing towards ease and comfort settling in anywhere whether than striving for somewhere.

If I had invented the moon

If I had invented the moon it would have been 3 times as big as the earth so that the Light would kiss everything. It would have been able to smile so that those who don't dream could close their eyes. It would shine through walls so that I never have to live in darkness, nor open my eyes and not see you. It would have earth orbit around it fast enough that we would feel like we're twirling, and the world would be a stage and nothing could stop me from watching your performance. It would be so bright that my dreams would become reality because I could not close my eyes. If I had invented the moon it would be weightless on a yo-yo string tied to my hand so that I could push it away only long enough to know how much I missed having it so close, and never push it far enough away that it can't come back nor push it so far as to erase that smile on its face when it comes flying back to share itself with me. If I had invented the moon gravity wouldn't exist and we could float to its surface as it shines through us and i could put out my finger and conduct you. I could charge you with the light of the moon. And in a way it would be only our light and though other's would see it, only we could feel it. And I would kiss you and it would shock you because we would be charged with each other; this light would be ours only, and from a million mile a way we could touch the same moon. But if I had invented the moon it would be all I could do and my imagination would never do the justice of inventing you.

I stood there (a second attempt at spoken word on wasting opportunities)

Rain fell that night

You and I dripped in the house

Sweat and summer rain formed puddles on the hardwoods but we didn’t care

It felt like kissing in a pool; the water in between your mouth and mine

I’d swim that ocean however long if your lips were on the other side

And we stopped and I saw that question in your eyes

I said, “don’t close your eyes I can’t bear not to see them

And I hope that’s not a tear

And it wasn’t,

You blinked and I kissed you

I missed you

My hands landed somewhere on your back I guess

Though I wish they were elsewhere.

I was feeling much now

You leaned in a little more and kissed me back

This time I stopped confused as to why a woman like you would want to do so

And you did so

You smiled unfreezing me my mouth dropping open

You numbed me and filled me flying inside

And I stood there.

I longed to love you and wondered how

But all you needed was me present, now

And I stood there

As you played the lead

And I not an actor more like a stage

You poured yourself into me and I let you go through

You poured out my ears and out my nose

You dribbled out of my mouth and fell like sand through my fingers

And I stood there

Later that night as you did all that you could do

You left as I stood in thought

And as I pondered,

You wandered

I wondered where

There

in your bed you fell exhausted, disheartened

As the rain washed nothing away

You loved that night

I thought that night

You cried that night

And I stood there

Did he really say no?

It’s a sweet irony—love. I don’t ever claim we had it, just that one night, that first night—and what can you even say of sex in a bed, that conventional bullshit. It’s meaningless—perfect only for drunks in need of comfort and old married couples grown out of spontaneity. Despite this, our first time soars with the wind lost among whorring clouds—a terrible night with too much passion thundering the entirety of my mind. Affairs can do that I suppose. Increase passion. Such is the case with filling any need. And here I am on the ground looking up and you seem to be flying through me that stolid expression. Am I a ghost? Like a tissue for your adulterous sneeze yet unable to wipe away your tracks— like water in need of washing itself. My knees burn from this rug (I don’t know why in hell you keep this ratty thing). Will you not say anything? I come at you begging at your door; in your house, but you can’t give me a response. You stand there leaning on that vomit of a sofa with that contorted and grotesque face of confusion. (You never like to be confused—you can’t be confused, you run too fast from it.)

Oh now you want to talk, now you think you have some words—no. You don’t think this has been hard for me. That every phone call I want only to hear your voice at the other end, how when it doesn’t come I hate myself for hope. This isn’t easy! Kneeling  alone with you standing right there as like a mediocre tapestry my life and my dreams unravel themselves and sweep hope in the dust pan and recycle my future—our future. I don’t know her, how she makes she feel, how she does the things that I can’t, how she says the things that I won’t, how she makes love to you. Wake up! O don’t give me that look, with the red in your cheeks, 17 months ago that was you and me and those cheeks were not red, that mouth was not so dangling. What has she done to you; that girl, you deserve at least a woman. Or maybe that is the biggest irony of all, me on my knees I think all stand up so I can you look in your blank eyes. That’s what you deserve, to be penetrated by a capable mind, to be looked at by someone able to judge. So I’ll have a look not that you’ll mind nor could you say so if you did.

Still no response but that half opened maw?[she says with a laugh and a grin] However strenuous my earlier efforts forgive my mendicancy for I have found myself no longer in the emptiness of your eyes. Your smiles corners no longer contain me.

Thank you I guess, I’ll just go ahead and go

Wake up (and get a new rug),

lock the door behind me

 give that little girl a hug

Wake Up Dreamer

As beckon Twilight rises moon
And bed to me it calls
Reconciling me afternoon
My sleep in dream it falls

Away to fantasy whisked away

Freedom by me alone, it rings
And shadows and death die and play
And about I dance and run and sing

The road is marked with candy not yet bit

In a rabbit suit, a constable
Waging a wagging, long-eared fit
Erupting with a high scream pitch implacable

And the rose faces in the sky twist and moan

And the green sun sets beyond the smoke
Of the house that sits upon a stone
On a single side unbroke

With shudders rusty and of purple roof where

Inside drinking sugars fit not this world for

In I enter and welcoming there

Is my furry family matadors

They fill me a pour though small am I

In their great big colorful world
Clapped we our feet and fly we tried

And sometimes we even could

Happily in land this me ‘til with alarm arisen

And see otherwise my eyes

The loss this sun has driven

In morning with its lies