She counts her shells

her feet sand ribbed
her toes ricely white
her hair windy vagabond
her eyes low tide sea.

She gives me back my years.

Through tears
I count eternity.

Cormorants face east
to blood-rimmed clouds
holding the morning hostage

they await silver
resonance humming
through weighted bone

wings angled toward
the radiant blindness
of an eternally rising sun.

Reach and fail
Reach and
                   fail,
Coming to terms with who is who
And what is what
What gifts have been given
What gifts will never be delivered
Where the darkness reigns
Where the light rains
Where love remains

Coming to terms with the four white walls,
What is projection?
What are delusions?
What is truth and beauty?
What is it
we are grateful for?

Each step taken
One step forward
Two steps back
Honing
Moaning
Calling out into the night
Looking for the dawn
With words that
Pitter patter -
Tears that are wet for a moment
but evaporate on the floor -
Calling out
"come on, come on -
Give me some
At least one more time"

In this awkwardness
In these limitations
Of vocabulary
In the flatness of these
Rhythms and rhymes
While others create spaces
and lines
Pieces expanding to the skies
Maybe even a little bit more than
wise - touching the divine

I'm
Twisting and falling
Holding on
Coming to terms with who is who
and
What is what
Still gotta try to find
the true poetry
One more time
One more line
Gotta do it
Before I really die.

beyond the lighted city
past the festive crowd
beneath the melancholic halogen
outside the shut doors and windows
upon a lane paved with garbage
amid an air stenched with *****
between two wooden wheels
head resting on holed rexine
arms limply down from heaven
feet embracing the dirt
sleeps another night
from the ashes of day
dreaming just enough
to muscle
another
morn.

We were born into a world of shallow minds and deep disturbances of young millennials mimicking mindless mimes because we were told to stay in line but be yourself but follow me but think "originality."

A generation full of copycatting individuals with monotone mindsets mulling over social ladders and trends dictated by invisible monarchs of industry inviting and spoon feeding insecurities masked as improvements.

A generation spending more time pretending not to care than on passions stifled by our peer pressuring playmates who are all prescribed Vyvanse, Adderall, Ritalin for their incurable imaginations deemed "learning disabilities."

A generation of temporary friendships because no one can connect with each other but we can connect to the internet and chat with strangers and share thoughts, photos, and secrets to a virtual audience that loses interest in an entanglement of wires forming a noose around our sincerity.

Oh, sad Poet,
cartographer
of the heart,
mapping the geography
where sadness
is the topography
of your soul.

Oh, Cousteau
of the changing tides,
like an oceanographer,
an admiral  spying
the enemy on the horizon.
Your sorrow comes and goes.

Oh, builder of sad dreams
in your house of many rooms,
but one door. Like a grave,
a casket shellacked with
black paint, a mural
of a shadow on the wall.
Architectural sorrow.

Oh, you sad Poet,
open your eyes,
paint us a poem of a rose.