Do you ever think
about becoming
someone new?
About unmaking,
Recreating,
Partaking,
In the life of someone -anyone-
Who isn’t you?

Hours and hours and days and weeks and months and years
I perfected, rejected, resurrected the art
of becoming someone new.

In mere moments,
a new me.
a new world.
a new dream.

A world to be anyone
or go anywhere
Or be anything.
When I just
Don’t want
To be
Me.

New demons and angels,
New shadows and suns,
New curves and new angles,
New characters
to become.

A world not like
my own.
The trees are paper.
The people move with a blink.
Grass is woven from knowledge and
Leaves are sprouting from ink.

There I go
at a moment’s notice.
Diving, delving, digging.
Revealing
an impossible time.
Where the improbable, inconceivable, unimaginable, unthinkable
occurs every
Other
Line.

I am disappearing into the books.
Invisible to the world.
Unmaking myself,
Recreating myself,
And becoming someone new.

paranoid automatons
surveying themselves
within
de-civilizing panopticons;
a missing guard
in a rich light tower
watching you
watch yourself

there's something about unfinished work
faceless portraits
hanging poems
dead plot stories
everlasting melodies

i don’t know if you were in second
or third grade. or what your favorite color was.
i’m not sure if you liked playing dress up or soccer
or if you were an only child or the baby of six.
i don’t who you had a crush on and i’m not even sure of your gender
but what i do know, is that today you were scared because you saw white
and then heard the noise of the explosion, and the screams of the injured
but i’m not sure if had learned yet in school that light travels faster than sound.
i don’t know why you were watching the marathon, but i know that you were excited
and impressed
that all these people were running for twenty-six miles, which happens
to be the distance from your house to your
grandma’s.
i don’t know if you died squeezing tightly to your mother’s hand or
if your last breath was taken alone, while hundreds ran in a flurry around you.
i do know that when you fell to the ground, no longer breathing,
you tripped a wire that pulled out
your father’s heart and sanity.
i know that you hadn’t yet felt someone
trace their lips up the divot of your spine
and i know that you will never get to sneak out of the house at
three am to get drunk in a park.
you will never see the next president or even what your best friend will wear
on his wedding day.
and i am sorry.
i am sorry that someone was sick enough to put
an explosive in the trashcan and let it detonate
i’m sorry that your death was the product of human selfishness and greed.
i am sorry that today you had to feel a warm liquid leak from your body
and that you lost so much of it you
couldn’t bear to keep your eyes open.
i’m sorry that you were eight years old when you died,
and that you barely got a taste of the world before it was snatched out from under you.

how often do you talk about the universe
how often do you talk about yourself

i wonder before i wander
for the corridor is empty
i know i have neighbours
are they here?
do they care?
do they wonder as they wander?

what do you want to say
when someone asks
"what do you do?"

do you want to impress the elite?
define it, perhaps?
did you want to impress yourself?
your father? mother?
"do what makes you happy," they said.
"follow your  heart, follow your dreams," they begged.

make a living,
or earn it?
live a vocation -
or is that dreaming?

how many will you ****?
how many will you love?
how many friends turn into rivals?
how many are lost on the way there?
anywhere.

will blood hate you?
or hunt you for treasure?
does X mark the spot,
or does it mark thy death?

what do you want to say
when someone asks,
"what do you do?"

One coffee
and a name
was carved into
my soul