We are all stories. That is why sometimes I stare at strangers when they don't realize. We carry stories on our skin, in our eyes. We tell them no matter how desperately we try not to. They emerge, no matter how we disguise them, and throw off light, and god, people are beautiful. Look at them someday. In the park or the cafe or on the subway. Look at someone's eyes. There's a soul in there. There are fears and desires and shames and obsessions in there. There's art in there. And you get to live in a sea of souls. Ever think of that? You have the dubious privilege to spend your whole life next to some of the most exquisite beings ever created. You get to look at them, to touch them, sometimes, to love them, even, and speak to them. You could change them. Like adding a brush stroke to the Sistene Chapel, you could be a tiny part of the vast, perfect, incredible work of art behind someone's eyes. You get to decide whether you deface these souls you live near, or add to them. You get to write a part of the story they carry.
Me, I want to tell stories. I want to tell stories for people who don't have the words, don't have the courage, don't have the means. I want to tell beautiful, complicated, messy, elaborate stories. I see these people and they're just... They're art. They deserve to BE art. They deserve to be set upon a stage and shown to the world so that their rawness can carve pathways, can start fires, can change souls by the thousands. I have no desire to be myself- I want to tell stories. Stories I see in strangers' eyes. They crave to be told. And I crave to tell them. It's true- myself, I am not vast. I am not loud. But I don't need to be. I need to tell stories. And whoever will listen to me will listen. And that's enough for me.

Look, all I’m saying is
I’m the cracks in the sidewalk
That they warn you not to step on
Or you’ll cause chain reactions that
Cause you to question whether or not
Blood is thicker than water. Because maybe,
You want her dead. Not in the long run
But in an instant where she drags you
Across the room by your hair, and
You break the ******* mirror
Because it shows you who
You’re not. All I’m saying
Is stand up and seep up the
Remnants of how much your daddy
Loved you, once upon a time, crumble
His cards and flowers made of prison cigarette
Packs and he said “I always thought of you,”
Meaning you’re a jailbird tattoo artist’s
Well-meaning card that he swapped
Cafeteria lunch cards for. And yes,
You were hurt, but the teacher
Tells you hold your tongue
And your bladder, even
Your first ever girlfriend says
That it’s not as bad as you make it,
When you realize you can’t love her,
You can’t love anyone you run so fast
Your legs squeak, you never want to run
Back to a house where they killed your dog
And your dreams and strung them up like laundry
On hot days. Eventually someone uses the “A”
Word, the “V” word, “victim” of “abuse” and it
Only hurts because deep in your swollen,
****** up core you know that it is true.

Oh, will you ever return to me,
My wild first force, will you return
When the old madness comes to
Blacken in me and to burn
Slow in my brain like a slow fire
In a blackened brazier - dull
like a smear of blood,
Humid and hot evil, slow-sweltering
up in a flood!
Oh, will you not come back, my fierce song?
Jubilant and exultant, triumphing over
the huge wrong
of that slow fire of madness that feeds
on me - the slow mad blood
thick with its hate and evil, sweltering
up in its flood!
Oh! will you not purge it from me -
my wild lost flame?
Come and restore me, save me from the
intolerable shame
Of that huge eye that eats into my
Naked body constantly
And has no name,
Gazing upon me from the immense and
Cruel bareness of the sky
That leaves no mercy of concealment
That gives no promise of revealment
And that drives us on forever with its
lidless eye
Across a huge and houseless level of
a planetary vacancy
Oh, wild song and fury, fire and flame,
Lost magic of my youth return, defend
me from this shame!
And Oh! You golden vengeance of bright
song
Not cure but answer to earth's wrong

why can't I stop
thinking all these
harsh poems you
write are for me
I'm trying to
remember
what you
know
                                     are they about me?
                                     because I'm blaming
                                     myself for your unhappiness
                                     so I'm sorry
                                     please
just be happy

I want to run to you
I always run to you

A child with arms
outstretched, cradling a
butterfly worn with torn
wings, it
can't be real until she's shown it.
Can't be good til you've
confirmed it.
Can't have beauty til you've
admired it.
It can't, you give it life.
Without your breath
She lies bereft.

I have to run to you,
before I believe that it is true.

A child with a wounded knee,
hides the scar until
you've seen it,
once you've seen it,
then she'll ease it.
Can't have relief til your belief.
Can't look unafraid until
she's prayed to you.
She needs to limp to you.

I have to reach to you.

She needs you,
she does not wish to tease
your weary temper,
but she finds it hard
to always remember that
she's shown you it before.
A puppy jumping through the
door, happily places a cat's
treasure of a broken bird
upon the kitchen mat,
it's beauty trapped within the
meowing
mind.

I'm purring proudly up at you

Thanks for being so kind to her
menagerie, sorry for
getting confused by
internal imagery.
I forget how quite to empathise
that,
I think I need to change my tack.
But, this girl is sometimes trapped in
a loop.

Reminder: Learn when to turn on mute

An earnest, sad face standing before me
guitar in hand, at last
I hear the words of a song
written one year before, but never sung
whose score on pages had been let go
to be caught up in the wind
and played almost imperceptibly
in the rustling and swooning of tree tops
Had he said these words to me
I would have known
I would not have been buried
beneath a doubt so heavy
that I was unable to sit upright
fears and insecurities sowing seeds of destruction
aware that all our laughs and smiles
were nervously reaching, like wandering vines
grasping for a place to climb and grow
Leaving meant his feelings could not bind him
so music and lyrics were given
although he burst into tears
and could not finish its entirety
lips tremors speaking “this is not goodbye”
But I knew it was
and I was stunned. Paralyzed. In disbelief
standing barefoot in my driveway
watching his sobbing face through the windshield
without enough sorrow to make him stay
I honestly thought he could not go without me
But I was wrong, I was left
numb, a walking zombie
hearing myself speak
feeling my face smile
moving about as if I were still alive
through the changing of seasons, workdays and holidays
until gradually I belonged to my body again
For years, this remembrance hemorrhaged
with tears from a cancer ridden heart
But now I exist  
on the other side

I'm weird
When I sleep
I leave my TV on
Because I fear the creaks
In the night
And I fear the dark
Because I sense there are
Always monsters
Lurking in it
I get deja vu
And I remember most of my dreams
They always seem vivid
And so real that I wake up sometimes
Crying or afraid
Or just plain confused
Sometimes I can look at a person
And tell if they're "vibe"
Is good or bad
Sometimes I like to look at people
And make up a story about how they've
Been damaged
And sometimes
I think I'm just plain crazy
For all the little things I do
Or all the things I feel.