As I sit here hopelessly
I hope
You will find me
Past the river
By the sea
Come meet me here
We'll sit and dream

We used to look up at the sky
And watch the clouds
Drift on by
The sun would set and we'd see the moon
I knew you'd leave me soon

I see the mountain shout for your love
You're the one I'm thinking of

The moment went by so fast
I wish we had made them last
I just feel so far away
I only wanted you to stay

We sat around counting the stars
Just like them
We flew so far
As I sit here hopelessly
I hope you will find me

*I see the mountain shout for your love
You're the one I'm thinking of

Her blank canvas
Empty, but promising
To become something good

But her masterpiece took an evil turn

She used only one tool
Strokes of only deep reds
Letting the paint drop to the floor
Where it would then stain

She hid her canvas
Until the deep reds had faded to pinks and purples

Then she unveiled it to the world

It wasn't a masterpiece.
It wasn't a piece of art.
It wasn't beautiful.

It was ugly.
It was disgusting.
It was horrific.

No one liked it.
Except for her.
So she decided to continue filling the canvas

This time experimenting
Different tools
Yet still the only color she used was red

She went days
Weeks
Months
Years
Adding to her canvas
Until one day

She couldn't

Her canvas no longer meant anything to her

So instead, she burned it

I'm not a person to you,
my subtleties are lost in a constellation of tally marks,
the strikes against me in your mental map of our universe.

My buttons can’t be hidden from you you’re the one
who tied them so loosely to the cuffs of my sleeves
and the bulk of my 20 cent words form the change in the linings of your pockets,
where my hands used to be.

The pads of your fingers find the freckles on the nape of my neck but the worn feeling of you thumb prints against my pulse reminds me
the pigmentation is no longer cute to you
just another imperfection for the list..

which is running through the front of my brain
like your hands used to run through the creases
of my smile.

It’s the poetry to the empty screen your face used to fill
that reminds me some pills are better off untaken,
and that sometimes empty yellow bottles are filled with the hope that is left behind by the promise
that sickness requires it to be refilled again.

You are the scar in the form of a freckle
on my left pinkie,
the one that tells me people don't last forever but marks do.

How ironic that the symbolism of a mis-colored dot
of skin should be the reminder that you are now out of place in my world,
the wrong color, where your pigment discolored mine.

They tell me I wore my heart on my sleeve
but that would imply it's place on my person,
when the place it currently resides is between your fist.

You used to tell me your knuckles were swollen because you were beaten a time or two,
but really the pink puckers show more of your own fights and the matching
color of someone else's scar tissue.

I was told I deserved better than smoke filled hands
but I'm pretty sure what I really deserve is more than alcoholic lips.

They tell me if you have to ask if a story is true, its not.

I'm guessing in terms of a love tale, the same would apply to me and you.

people should come with sodium labels
so we can know ahead of time- how much salt one carries to throw in our wounds.
how much of the pounds they count- have the potential
to become water weight from caused tears.

maybe if people came with a nutritional warning
we could better see who had the propensity to be hazardous to our health.

my mind moves faster than my mouth could ever hope to
and i so often find myself in self-inflicted messes,
embarrassed at my painfully apparent lack of finesse
when it comes to crafting syntax in a way that  actually makes sense.
endlessly i stumble, desert-throated, over meager words
that could never accurately convey the hurricanes inside my brain;
no matter the conviction with which i speak them.
the war for stillness rages on in the chaos of my skull,
shaken by tremors of memories like atom bombs.
my mind is screaming but it's all in a language
that i can't understand no matter how hard i try.
reduced to heaving sobs and irrevocable disgust for my inability
to to speak due to the lack of air inside my lungs.
thunder crashes and lightning flashes through my synapses,
looming in the form of opaque storm clouds above my bed.
i am sinking, no, i am absolutely drowning,
but there is no water around to be found for miles -
so i guess that makes these waves my thoughts,
and that must mean i waved goodbye to sanity's shorelines long ago.

- m.f.