"Because I could not stop for death-
He kindly stopped for me."
It was horrific,
A kind of backwards birth;
A gulp for air,
A pitiful sob,
The intimate undoing.
Death may have stopped for me,
But it wasn't me he took.

I read somewhere
that we dream in
              Black
          and
white
       So,
           why is it
that my dreams are vivid,
                         and life is dreary,
          only colored with
                              crimson blood stains?

It's our number
I've worn it since third grade
You had it sewn to your shirt in high school
It's the date we first kissed
In that ****** bar next to my ****** apartment
24
It's the day that you asked me to kiss you only
You were going to say something by the ocean
But your nerves got the best of you
So you asked me in your car instead
And I said yes in the passenger seat
24
It's the hours a day that I have you on my mind
Always thinking about the taste of your lips
And the way you make me fall in love
More and more each day
And it will be the day that I ask you
To spend the rest of your life with me

I am the sea
Make for me
Rivers in the sand

Flood the world
And come back to me
I am the sea
And the tide is me
And the sun swims softly in

I can reach
And you'll be there
And I'll pull the world in

I am the sea
Make for me
Rivers in  the sand

You say i scare you.
Yet you are the lion,
And i am the lamb.
You have power enough to save me;
Then rip my heart to shreds.

It will be hard for me to let you in,
Because i've met so many lions before.
And i'm tired of being the lamb,
Of seeing all my blood
Spilled all over the floor.

But i can still be held at fault,
For i'm the one who's spilled the most blood.
I've used my own like paint,
To color my life bright red.
I needed some proof i wasn't dead.

I've even killed some lions,
But not without cause.
They couldn't see how they were slowly killing me.
I had to get away before it was too late.
I've made my mistakes and stayed.

I trust that you won't burn me,
Won't tear me limb from limb.
Apparently, i'm the lion to you.
But I'm just a weak lamb,
Afraid to die at your hands.

If i never let you see
How fragile i really am,
Maybe you can't hurt me;
Maybe you'll think you're the lamb.
And i'll look stronger than i am.

I don't know if you've seen my scars,
The aftermath of war.
I hope to god they don't scare you,
I'm not fighting anymore.
At least not now.

It seems I've slipped some rhymes in,
I guess thats what you do to me.
Once again the words found me easy.
You've given me the color to paint my empty canvas,
I just hope it won't be red.

Every night
It's 3 am
Dead hour
The heals are awake
The heals are alive
A body without a soul
Is a corpse of course
Lifeless limbs
Still walk
In the dead hour
Some say they're gone
I say just broken
Hickery tickery tock
Hourglass breaks
There goes the clock
Birds chime away in the heads of the insane
They are searching for something
In the nothingness of black
Staring at the ceiling
Does the ceiling stare back?
They think about outer space and stars
Insomnia and insomniacs
And healers and mystics
of all kinds
But there is no light to be seen
and every night
It's 3 am
The dead hour

Isn't is amazing how there are
a finite number of words,
that try to describe my entire
existence.
They flow from my hands
like honey across computer keys.
My life in forty-seven lines.

It, to me, is inconceivable that
a text box can contain a person,
like a frame might contain a photo.
So those words
might have flown from my fingers,
but they are not me.

I am in my work.
Puzzles solved and projects planned,
each one has a small part of my
self within it's ink-stained pages.
My poetry and photography
represents me far better
than forty-seven lines.

If a university turns me away
based on a personal statement,
I would not be ashamed.
After all, those forty-seven lines
are not my words.
They belong to convention.
'Interpersonal skills' and
'self-confidence'.

I know those words are not me,
although I'll write them
because I know they are what
you want to
see.

I stopped writing the day I left you
Because with 1300 miles to seperate us
I am slowly forgetting what it feels like
To feel gravity pushing on me through your body
Or to hear you whisper me to sleep

I quit singing in the shower
The moment I got on that plane
Because no bathroom echoes the way yours does
And no water can rinse you into me

I've been turning into something since that day
Something not made of my particles
And I think it has to do with
Them still sticking to your skin