I feel it starting, like a prickle down my spine.
My rubbery lungs expand and push
against my ribs.
Organs start crawling
up my throat
leaving a hollow cavity
which I must seal.

My heart is pumping faster
but the only thing to get my blood moving
is to fill my emptiness.
Hands shaking I scrawl a haphazard
paper chain to keep me from floating away
as my love looks on concerned.

“Can I fill it with a kiss?
A caress? If I whisper to you
will my words fall through your ears and
weigh you down?”

But anxiety
is not like drowning
and a life preserver won’t reign me in.
The only thing to do is wait
for me to compress my lungs
and talk my insides off the ledge.

Let me close my eyes and breathe,
give me room to reassemble.
I promise I will come down soon.

When I can concentrate enough,
the Earth starts shrinking
until its mass rests on my pen tip
and I can write the blood back through my veins.

My soul

frowns as
it drowns

in the floods
of a broken
heart

tearing me
apart

must the
pain

remain
in me

you see

happiness
stays inside

but

theres still
days
where sadness
resides

it hides

for a while

but

when it creeps
i paint a
smile

up and down
days

in and out
phase

cut wrist
death wish

then i see
light

future bright

in the
stillness

of my
illness

i try to
figure
me out

my conclusion...

is pure
confusion

"home"
...

you could say it, sway to it, pray for it,
shake it away, it could take it.

if you stay, though, you might never embrace it.

It's the cold and the crash that strike
holes in the soles of your feet as you bash
and enfold into lichens and teeth,
and the places you breathe,
and you stop for relief

and the places, the places...
you were hanging on branches, raining long faces
singing sad praises of things that you wasted
and wish that you stayed for and felt some remorse for
and took to the graces encased in the

graves you've returned for,
days that you've paid for,
ways to pass pain over
tumults of things that you changed for

and all along, whistling a song,
wistfully thinking of a place to belong
sighing and singing of places to roam
you find yourself in this space you've been shaping
and realize you're home.

How is it possible,
That man can heal the sick
With a touch of his holy palm?
That he can still feel pain of bricks,
Stones and pebbles, despite his charm?

How can the truth be told
When the concept is hard to believe?
Stories of strangers bearing frankincense, myrrh and gold,
For a child born from a ******: it’s hard to achieve.

It sparks fires, it unknowingly kills.
A story, so harmless to begin.
Now it’s violent, aggressive and brings new kinds of thrills.
A story, now a rulebook to escape from sin.

Man’s greatest influence –
It’s crystal clear to see –
Also intends to be
Man’s greatest enemy.

you call things poetry when it is not
since for that words must dance
and these are tripping over their
feet

my arm is nothing more than an extension of my soul,
stretched parabola forming a straight line
towards heaven.
I stand on my soapbox with a sermon dangling
from my lips, this tired old street corner
this tired old man giving the world what it wants.
I am enlisted.
I am the bubble hidden deep
inside the bone.
I am the beekeeper creating a brand new colony,
stung by his own pride.

here, brother, listen:

walk with me while I tell you about the
accubation of life
and all of it's little lovers,
those tiny frail things so easily forgotten.
my tongue is nothing more than an extension of my mind,
soft, flattened, delightful
attracted to flavor.

a million spiders bred a million more,
and still their webs spread empty between the trees.

this is the way God works.

earthquakes,
tsunamis,
libraries engulfed in flames,
over-dosed artists,
a genius child sold into slavery.

we all become what we already are:
gentle creatures abacinated by society
fenced in and cornered by evil dreams.
we thrash in our sleep,
we wake violently,
we burst onto the scene like lions
from another planet,
hungry, oh so wild and hungry.

this is the way We work.