What I don't seem to understand is...
before you become a man and
everyone cradles you,
holds you by the hand and
fills your thoughts with these dreams and aspirations,
(no exaggerations...just genuine life expectations)
but nothing is impossible,
you are fresh.
Not to death, but from birth.
A brand new mind that has yet to be tarnished.----

Through adolescence,
you start to learn adult lessons.
Cowboys are no longer real...
President's have to wear a tie!
And if I become a stuntman...
then I'll probably die.
I can't be a wrestler on TV if I actually fought?
I need...what!?...on my SAT's to become an astronaut?
Reality, Gets In.
Our Ways, Set In.
Goodbye Dreams,
Goodbye Imagination.--

"Today you are eighteen years old,
you are an adult."
God, do I hate the way they say that.
An elongated "u" as if emphasizing the key component that I am an, "adddduuuult"
Then to agitate my irate sense of frustration they ask my for my declaration:
"Now, just what you want to do for the rest of your life???--
You don't have time to think.
This is it, hurry.
Choose.
Now!
Did you figure it out? No...?
Now you're already behind!
Wasting mine and your own time.--"

Time...the only thing that remains omniscient.
Time...the real gift to represent the present.
Time's up.
School's over.
Time to get a job, a good ole' nine to five.
But, I can't listen to that:
For I know that it's lies.
I know sitting in an cubical in an office drinking water from a cooler pretending to be cooler
will be my own personal demise.

I believe everybody has hopes and dreams.
From the oldest person alive to addicted drug-phenes.
Never write a person off by social means.
Never let the American Dream become the American Scheme.
All of us have our own devine-mind.
Life's a playground, don't *** on the slide.
Re-capture that child-like spirit.
If they tell you: You Can't.--
Don't Hear It.
Jump out of the line!
As the rest watch from behind.
No more: Stress.
No more: Fear.
Disregard all: Turmoil.
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

.Peace.

When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.

It was the time of summer where every kid had silently realized that it was ending,
No longer halfway through, no longer half full
Leaking and spilling out,
like the gas in my twenty two year old car
We couldn’t stop it,
And the moments of high school summertime
The moments that supposedly turn into stories we tell forever
Hadn’t seemed to have happened.

Both of us on the swing lazily swung
Dizzily from side to side.
Climbing forward, falling in reverse
Our combined bodyweight shifting back and forth
Tanned legs kicking up in an attempt at unison on every backwards glide.
Gravity hung us there,
Pulling the swing toward the ground no matter the rotation.

I sat on top.
I wore bleached shorts and bleached hair.
I worried that gravity or more so my value to it
would crush him.


At the same time, I felt unbelievably small.


The air pressed in on me from all angles,
it touched my bare legs
it easily waffled my shirt.

“Mel, if you were squishing me, I would let you know”,
he assured with a cocky tone of his very own that somehow made me feel special.
I couldn’t help but think he was only trying to be tough
Attempting to let sheer willpower overweigh my well earned quads,
My six foot frame.
The awkward body I never quite grew into
Never knew how to masterfully control
Never knew how to fill.
Though I secretly (wanted to) truly believe him

On this humid night I felt like the ball was in my court,
Like I could do anything and everything.
That nothing could go wrong
That the boy that I was sitting on was genuine
And that I could simply drive off to wherever.

(I had a full tank of gas and enough money to get me to Alabama).

I felt small in this,
in this infinity of possibility all around me.
Like a weight was pushing into me
Putting on pressure that couldn’t be ignored
That shrunk me just enough.
I felt powerless to fate
Powerless to this planet
To this grand, glorified hunk of earth which was so much greater than me
(and surely my insignificant weight anxieties).

I felt like the gas was leaking out faster than I could use it.
I felt like my infinity was disappearing as I swung within it.


Just like that, I let the ball drop and the gas leak out.
We just kept swinging.
Laughing,
Wasting,
Talking,

Dying.

They say you hurt
The ones you love
The most.
I wonder how true
That must be.

I can't even bear to think
Of hurting you.
Yet you give out hurt
Like its a hobby.

With all the pain
You've put me through
You must love me
More than I could ever
Love you.

When I rain, I pour.
But this year broke me.
Sank its fingertips
into my shoulder blades
and tore me asunder.
Nailed me to the
floors of this apartment
that weeps like a willow.
While you wrapped yourself in goodnights
I screamed into the floorboards.
I licked at your fingers
like a dog.
No matter how deep I dived
I never reached the ocean,
And I cried.
Sweet Jesus, did I cry.
But men aren’t supposed to,
so I begged instead.
At the age of twenty
I discovered shame.
I felt like calling for help,
but my voice cracked
like a frozen lake.
You’d tell me you were going out
with a few friends, and I’d beg you to stay home,
but my guilt tied my tongue down
with fish hooks.
When I rained, only ashes fell.
And no phoenix clawed its way out.
Only my naked back, flayed by the chains of the prison
I forged for myself,
bleeding out poems that I’ll never see
again.
******* out air from music notes
in order to survive.
This year I discovered guilt.
I could never count how many times I said I’m sorry,
but I tattooed it to my chest
so when I made love to you
I wouldn’t have to say it out loud.
I used to burn.
Burn so loud that
when spoke
smoke climbed from my lips,
I lived my life like a car crash
but sang like a music box.
I plucked smiles from strangers
and drank up the voices
of girls
like wine.
I played loud.
And at the age of nineteen I found myself unworthy.
I inhaled smoke instead of speaking it,
and never let the car
leave the driveway.
I cried ink from my fingertips,
and used you as a telescope to search for God.
With you, I discovered far too much.
I still feel that only shackles embrace me,
but I want to shred open my rib cage
and the let the songbird
out of my chest.
Pull the hooks from my tongue
so I can say
I love you.
When I rain, I want to ******* pour.
So the world knows my heart’s beating.
My wounds are canyons,
that I’ll stitch up with poems.
I want you to know me.
I want you to hold your breath
when you press your hand to my chest.
I want to scream so loud these
walls split open
to let the ocean pour forth from their eyes,
so I can swim to the surface and write my name on its face.
Sing the moon into my hands.
And free that fire from my music box,
so I can find my way
home.

Most days I wear flip-flops because I am too lazy to wear socks,
and I like the feeling of summer somewhere close to me,
and I like to watch my feet move. Do you know, there
are so many small little bones in there! it amazes me.

My mom used to massage my feet to wake me up.
She's been the best foot-massager of all, better than all the friends
and the boyfriends. Better than the early morning
sleepy-satisfying stretches, better than the feeling of sunlit
warm wood on my bare feet. Better than grass. Her calloused hands,
and softly hummed melodies. Tattooed arms, faded turquoise. Sun on her
skin. If I could see my mom in myself every time I looked in the mirror
I think I would be relaxed. I would play more music. I would spend
my next paycheck taking a day off with a pina colada and
tattooing a turtle, on my foot, just like hers.

Flexing my feet. Cold night air. Flip-flopping on the concrete. I wish
I could dive into the ocean, ice-cold, something worth laughing into
the nighttime. So much seriousness all the time, I think that people
need to eat more butter and not take skin to mean so much.

Silly, really, I guess. But a Mom-massage might just mean the world
sometimes. And smiling with someone is like a Mom-massage, right when I need it most.
To everyone who's been there, thank you.

May I lay to rest
While I still might be missed,
And my unaccomplished dreams
May be spoken of,
Not my successful mediocrities
Forgotten--
When my potential may
Be actualized in the
Generous imagination of
Those who mourn
Instead of my living disappointment
Realized in old age,
When none of this amounts
To anything more than
The life of a person
Served better by early death
Of breath
Than by early death
Of spirit.