your mouth is a door,
and someday you are going to be told that it's just better left closed.

your eyes are the windows to your soul,
and someday people are going to tell you to draw the curtains.

your heart has been unpacked from the basement,
and someday someone is going to tell you to put it away.

and your optimism is a candle in your windows, and someday everyone's going to try and blow it out.

i'm telling you this,
because when that someday comes i want you to know what to say.

you say,

"my mouth is a door, and i hold the key."
"my eyes are the windows to my soul and i'll wash them regularly."
"my heart will not be put away, it goes with everything."
"my optimism is a candle, and it keeps me warm."

when that someday comes,
i want you to know what to say...

you say,
"this is my house, and it's not for sale."

It cost nothing to make your presence felt/
I put my money where my mouth is, speak from the heart
and this.....
I present my wealth/
theoretically imagine fashion/
into existence fathom/
for if not envisioned  it never happens/
what's being realistic I'm asking/
answer boundaries limits fasten/ yourself to belief forever lasting/ identify pursue conquest grasp it/
although the outlook bleak  defeat it doesn't matter/
you can whine or climb I suggest  choose the ladder/
or the latest/
I forbid you shall not forsake this/
it's evident they need evidence exhibit A your greatness/
you give everything you got tell them here take this/
they give negative feedback relax be come e·va·sive/
maneuver manipulate shift originate anticipate twist/
their views until they see as you do prove/
by the graces/
zoom to the moon with the stars just like spaceship/
Spoken word theoretically except I didn't say shhhhh!

Why
do you love us so much

The one
Who spoke existence into existence
Was thinking of you
Us

Little us

Before
Beginnings even began

Look at you!
You can't even fathom it
Begin to imagine
The love that was lavished

On you

They say we drown
In this love
Like in an ocean

How?

You drown in oceans
Because oceans have depth
length and width
A surface to which
One may come to draw breath again

You can't drown

In an ocean
So vast
It ran through your future
In your past

Before there were even paths
To run through

All of infinity
Was trailblazed by love for you

There is no air to go to
In this ocean

Why

Are we
But dust in the sky
Worth lashes in your side?

Worth

The glance
To even be considered
The apple of your eye

When you
Place in us your breath
The normal pattern of life to death
Can't help but go from death to life

For death is an ending
But you are our everlasting beginning

Made to rise by your
Resurrection

God
You are so much perfection
That making us a mere reflection
Makes us diamonds

Those days,
I remember them clearly-- the ones decorated in violence.
There was no one left for me to fight
but the distorted figure glaring back
in the ***** mirror,
the reflected face that suffocated my gaze,
exhaling new nightmares like shattered glass fragments of insecurity
dropped from every creaky fire escape
overlooking the collarbone roads
of my own demolished city.
Those days,
my heart hurt more than it desired to beat.
But the pretty words flowed out of my fingertips like honey,
poetry never hiding at the back of my throat
like something that was afraid of commitment.
It filled all of the empty spaces,
cursive loops imprinted upon the edges of time,
the gaps between my own hands rubbing together in the winter,
black ink serenading pale paper.
Never lacking, never losing.
But the war has since ended.
The battlefield no longer exists in the trenches of my mind,
monuments proclaiming love rather than defeat.
I now rise to the bittersweet taste of victory,
morning bells chiming in my ears
as if this is my first time hearing music. Days have blurred into warm colors and melodies of laughter, of faith, of newfound innocence.
I have learned that it is easiest to swallow life by adding a teaspoon of sugar.
It is easiest to live without the weight of failed attempts.

I miss them so.
The words rarely visit.
Rarely call.
They are quieter now, poetry confined to corners I cannot see.
They were only ever around to witness the gore, the blood, the fickle sweat.
And once they had witnessed the scars fade into pink,
they did too-- just like all of the hurt that had risen up out of my tender bones
and into the stars.

I miss the days when I would find poetry resting peacefully on the kitchen counter, hiding skillfully between the cracks of the tile bathroom floor. Back then, it shuttled out from the tips of my fingers like golden lightning that kept my heart pulsing, my eyelids propped open wide with all of the secrets I had been struck with.  

There were nights I found it in the soft flutter of his eyelashes against my cheek, the glowing warmth of his hand that held mine like something he would never grow tired of carrying, even though that was where I kept all of the words that had been stolen from my lips since the first moment I knew that I loved him.

But back then, they were everywhere-- the words-- nestling in high nests perched upon branches I was always tall enough to reach, settling in the pockets of worn denim overalls and the creases of watercolor smiles I had secretly painted on strangers with no names to match the dim light of their faces.

There was a time. There is a time.

Now, I sit at my desk with trembling hands and words stuck jumbled and uncharted in the aftermath of the past. And poetry no longer spills from the cracks of the baby pink teapot, no longer falls with every tear that still remembers how to emulate the rain.

But it is here when I am with him, his arms becoming the paper I have spilled my soul onto back before I memorized the melody of his heartbeat. In the sound of our voices filling all of the vacant spaces that used to haunt my bones, in the hushed music that plays every time my name drips like honey from the edges of his laughter.

There is a time. It is now. Poetry was once written, now it is living.

When I was young,
I thought that one day
I'd learn to shave my face
and wear a polio brace.
This might seem absurd to you,
but I just thought it's what you do
when you become a man.

My father wore one of his own,
His left leg, withered to the bone,
and Dad was the first man I knew,
so I thought that was just what men do.
He walked with a limp,
but his head held high.
He looked life, no shame,
right in the eye.
He didn't let a moment pass him by,
because that's what men do.

He went to college, and got a degree,
and earned his keep most honestly.
He never asked for charity,
though he said "there's no shame
if you have to."
He was always humble, but not insecure,
of mind and body he was always sure-
for he kept them healthy, kept them pure,
because that's what men do.

He was always smiling, and quick as a whip,
his dinner parties were always a trip-
watching him and his guests exchange quips;
he was the funniest guy they knew.
And if a loved one was down and out,
he was the first one there, without doubt.
He said you should never let one do without,
because that's what men do.

He had a strong mind, and the heart of a bear,
He faced even tragedy with savoir faire
But his strong calm demeanor didn't hide his care,
The world knew his heart was true.
He stayed faithfully by my mother's side,
as the cancer took her and she slowly died,
I understood, when he finally cried,
that that is what men do.

I grew up and learned how to shave my face,
but not before Dad went to a "better place".
Still, til his last breath, he faced life with grace,
with a smile on his face, and a polio brace,
because that's what men do.

Your a good good father...
It's who you are. It's who you are!
I am loved by you.
It's who I am. It's who I am.
Your a good good father!