I had twenty
Beautiful souls
Following mine in a line
To a crooked, poetic summit

But two were lost along the way....
What have I done?
My leadership
Is crumbling.......
The peak is still so far away....

Don't deny your desperation for me, darling.
Don't you think it's decent of me to decry you of your dire need in return?

A tree,
It stands.

Ruler of its own universe woven through thickets of golden brown branches and emerald green leaflets.

Refuge for all and for none, offering solace from the cruel, hot sun.

Holding its arms in a triumphant stance, letting its leaves dance in the wind to their own tune of rustling and clapping.

A tree,
It feels.

It starts slowly at first- a slow seep, an unintelligible infection....

The glistening Mercury winds it's way through the veins that keep the being ruler of all and slowly infiltrates all the secret chambers hidden in knotholes centuries old.

Black like coal, white like fire, none can tell its appearance from anything but extraordinary and yet the tree does nothing. It waits.

A tree,
It wilts.

Ruler of the universe, it hands it's legacy off to the many saplings it has taught how to breathe from the grounds below it.

Refuge for none but itself, the emerald leaves lose their sheen and fall to the ground like a dancer who has twisted her appendage.

Reaching its arms towards the ground in a silent last prayer-last words- it caresses the faces of its children in the soil, giving a sweet silent goodbye.

A tree,
Crying tears of dripping silver onto its children below.

Then it is no more.

Mercury--evil--has won.

A stump.

But it's legacy lives on.

A sapling grows....and who knows.....the cycle begins again.

Then leave.* Her voice lilted like light on snow, the snow that was fast to fade.
I... My heart beat faster, faster, faster still, and I closed my eyes.
I want. I need. But I....I can't.
Her eyelids fluttered. *Well, as long as you're here...

When you can remember apologizing a thousand times in your head
*But can't remember if you said it out loud

To define the ever changing facets of love is to pin a crashing wave upon a rock. In the same way, to tie you down by your wildly streaming mane to a gold ring; how on earth would you survive?

Your soul’s sustenance is the freedom which comes at the cost of only the deepest and most committed type of love which rarely chooses to show its face to the world. Your racer’s tan marks all you do, your love for being out in the open permeates the very fabric of your being, stains it with an irreplaceable scent of the grass blades rustling in an open field, uninhibited by the struggles and chains of this modern world.

But then where am I?

The clock with the metal rim
Lay it flat
And see us inside
Sprinting away from the hands
In hot pursuit
And trapped in different quadrants....
Will you love me
Two hours behind
Eight states away
And a year apart?

If we were truly together
would it feel like all the roses
you ever gave me in these past six months
were so dusty that if you sighed a single breath as
you do every morning when you wake and I'm not there-
would it feel like that dust would fly higher than you ever had
into a vortex, a cyclone, a twister that devoured all you are and ever were?

Even though every thought in its entirety eventually wears me down....
I could never entice myself into ever letting you go.

The words that dropped from my lips were laced with glamour. An unseen mist but breathed in by my beloved was all that I could emanate with what few syllables I could utter. What joy is there in isolation?

Their words were the briefest perfume I ever chanced to smell; brief, but honest. You can never hide your inner breadths and the breaths that keep you held together like a foggy glue.

Blue raspberry and then fifteens and suddenly my whole being is enamored of a scent that is not my own, swirling wisps of a greater, higher being. Alone, yet conformed to a blue caterpillar's wanting to leave his wall-less house yet too afraid to step one toe into greener grasses.

What beauty is there in smoke that infiltrates the mind and bares the soul? Reader, I'll tell you. It is the minimum of affections we are bound as beings to release, the inner crevices of the mind breaking free into a form more beautiful yet formless, more intricate yet dispersed than the mind itself. How is one to define this glory?

Inhaling these words as they are increases my inevitable downfall, and I can more clearly visualize my ideals crashing on the shore of my rising chest like bombs on a beach. Yet words, words, flavored words.....everyone believes them.

if petals droop too far
without sustenance
what harm will slicing them do
if it brings back their shine later?

When the camp counselor told us at age five
"Go take your night meds!"
I never thought that eleven years later
I'd be sitting in bed
Wishing that my remedy
Was holding me tight

Do you know
That you
Are a drug?

You're my marijuana.

I don't know whether to use you as my vice
Or as my healing.

Choice, choices....
And you don't make them easy.

******, the pain is worsening......
So do I medicate?
Or do I ignore the pain in my chest
And deal with the withdrawal......

No.
I'm not
That strong.

If lyrics are just poetry...
     why are they so hard to write?

How come you didn't tell me
Your lips are equipped
with defibrillators?

All your best relief efforts will, to your surprise, save me.

But you seem to think at excommunicating me will help.

Did abandoning the Titanic as it sunk beneath the glassy, ice ridden waves save many lives?

Does leaving a lonely girl alone help her overcome her constant state of isolation?

I'm not asking for a life raft, a canoe, or a power boat.

All I'm asking for is your hand.

I think I'll store it all somewhere special.
A simple black box
Collecting cobwebs under my bed.

Upon sight, it's empty.
But it's full
Of memories

And most importantly
Your words.

And our rose,
Wrought by the careful skill
Of our joined
Silver tongues.

Is it bad that I dance constantly
with dishes in my hands
and dubstep in my heart

but the only kind of dancing I want to do
is against your experienced hips?

Pardon my enthusiasm.

But I want to be rocked until the chair is broken
until the horses have run away
until our bodies are torn to pieces

with nothing left
but the beat

Harder than ice, I believe
Stricter than the Amish
Colder than the Artic, I say...

You can weave your best iron together but it takes
little but a rainbow glint from my eyes to see through it.

I know you, best not to say so. I know more than I let on.
I know, I know.

So weave your titanium shield and hope for the best,
and I'll sit here harvesting rainbows and waiting for a sign, a break.

Perhaps one will never come.

There are numbers
that add up to
the madness that is
my heart.

They subtract fuel from my being
and divide me
from my goals.

Hashtag Madness.
Hashtag Maniac.
Hashtag Morbid.

Perhaps a hashtag
is really just a buffer.

Give me my godly gain....Gables of green won't guise my tremor for the guilt I feel.....Give it to me.

It's funny. They say with progression comes ease of life. However, this has not proved to be true.
Straight A's? Check. But a 97 on a test tanks my average since it's currently at 100.
Working out every day? Covered. But now that I've lost so much weight my clothes don't fit.
Internships? Got them. But the work they're taking leaves me exhausted and unable to maintain the idea of finding a job right now because I haven't the time.

Success is great. But don't ever let them tell you that there isn't a bad side. Even relatively.

I just want an 85 to feel like a victory again, one day of working out to be enough to go out and get ice cream for, to be able to make money for myself.

But god, why does swimming feel like drowning?

Dressed in red and clothed in sheets
Across the creaking plain she creeps
Undesired, then consumed in fire
The branches open with raw desire
Up the trunk she shimmies low
And that's when all the thoughts begin to go...
Fire first lights the leaves and the bark,
And overhead, her face is stark
She moves with grace and much cold poise
Caressing the wood with nary a noise
In and out of knotholes, her fingers threaten
And on the tree, a deep shiver sets in...

The alarm clock sounds,
     a hand shuts it down
          and silence- SILENCE-
               just lay back down, little tree...

Even if you didn't have the body of a god...

I don't recognize that girl in the mirror.

Eyes dark, shining with manipulative malice;
Lips red and ready for a deep, deep sin;
Hands twitching to unravel someone's mind;
Heart....wait, what?

Where her heart should be is a gaping hole.
Flies fly by, and breezes breeze through
the emptiness, craggy and grey
like her entire being.

ropes are stretched over her entire being,
worn, weary, strung tight

how much longer until she
-like this mirror-
begins to crack?

it has begun.

There are those times when certainty comes easy.
Why have they fled
The panting hands of my clock
That are sprinting to catch up
With them?

That black and white circle is like
A racetrack from hell,
One no one can ever escape
And a race one can never win.

So how is it
That we find the strength
To keep on running?

How did I not realize?





How was it not clear?




If we dwell on the past, we repeat the past.
If we just sit in silence, the car radio isn't going to turn back on.




We have to reach a hand out to fix it, to help the music blare, to make sure it doesn't fade.
Within ourselves.


There is none who can fix a society- it takes a village to raise a child, so doesn't it fit?- but we can all fix ourselves.

Together.



We each have our own bubble. Though we can push each other's into unwanted territory, no one can pop our bubbles but ourselves.


I'm not about to let my bubble or anyone else's pop over the past.


Perhaps ours have to float a little farther from each other's than we would have liked. We can still wave hi from afar, as we are carried on different tempos through our journeys of life.


We cannot learn from the past if we are still living it.



We can only inflate our bubbles with music.



And never let it fade.

All the words I want to poetize have already been spun

the silence is deafening

your heart is like stone

what else am i to say?

i feel so
unoriginal

The brushes have long since been rinsed out,
the water now a dull grey.
Lifeless though it seems,
tired are its' dreams
yet awake it is
today.

But if you waited just one more second before
pouring it all out;
Just one second
would have shown you
the incorrigible beauty of
a streak
of neon green.

A streak.

One single, solitary stroke.

It has come back.

Do you know what you desire, she breathed at me.
I do, I said, my breath creating spirits from the whirlwind of my lips over the snowbank.
Tell me*, she muttered, her eyes creating criss crossed laser sections of white fluff beneath us.
Never.

It's not the taste of his lips
It's the smoke they imply
that keeps drawing me
in
i  n
i        n

it used to be so easy to just
sling whatever emotions i had
onto a blank page.

now it seems there are too many
for me to possibly try to push them
into a sentence or two.

Tis no more a question of life and of death,
tis no more a query of "what if" I had left,
tis no more a concern of thy troubled mind;
tis no more a thought. Darling, leave me behind.

When I tell you I don't in any way, shape, or form, deserve you, you just smile and kiss my words away till they're nothing but a faded memory in the back of your mind, where they'll soon be forgotten. But not for me. I'd always said you were my saviour, my vice, my distraction; but, perhaps, am I yours? Living the life of a hero, with its' pain, sorrow, and guilt- your doting on me, covering me with sweet words, is this your distracting? You say, then, love is a musical, and we are the actors. But you omit who else ventures onto the stage, beloved. Have you forgotten our old nemesis, Jealousy? She wears jade and loathing, and is the lead soprano. Cloaked in all her majesty, hypnotizing with the voice she sings, you remember her well, as do I. Yet lo, from stage left, enters a dear acquaintance- it is none other than Hope, dear old Hope, donning her tattered rags of lost dreams and wasted words. But all is lost when the orchestra plays, conducted by the one who rules over us all- Fear has come back, placing doubt into our minds, our hearts, our souls. We said once we were intertwined, yet how can we venture to regain that conscious feeling of royal sweetness? It is lost to the stage as the music plays louder and Hope falls to the floor in a scene of tragedy. There is no much more to say- Fear has overtaken me, love. How will our musical end?

There are feelings I know my genes
have erased from the nerves
within myself

that I know may never awaken again...

...but then there's you.

Not a girl, just a ghost in the mirror
a sad little being who can't be seen clearer
wisping and watching she quietly waits
for life beyond the rippled glass, oh

Twas pity that did **** her soul,
a murdress make her be,
but unkempt passions of her mind,
did bind her soul with thee.

Fie, the storms of roiling brew,
for shame, the frolick'd waves,
thy heart and head under wilt go
till she unmasks her grave.

Well, considering my part time anorexic
All of 110 pounds,
That's good to hear.

Thank you.

The strawberry drizzle
Sat among the mildewed stars
And wondered what exactly
It was doing, what business it had
Fraternizing with the upper crust
Who were more sour than she

Standing upon a lone cliff
holding his sword high for his damsel in distress

A hand reaches from behind him
and plunges it deep within the recesses of his chest

She wipes the blood off her gown
and pleads for help from the next passing knight

He is still healing from the last damsel
and no longer wants to fight her own fight

So they agree that the swordplay will cease
and their love will be bland, tired, and tried

And the two of them are happy-not really-
But that's how relationships worked after chivalry had died.

Do not cry, my dear, my sweet,
Another fellow you shall meet.
With manners and a handshake greet
Then you'll begin to feel complete.

But Mother, Mother, understand;
My time has not now come at hand,
He'll never be gone in my mind's land
For he infiltrates all my plans.

But darling, dear, a brand new face
From your mind will he erase
And retreat at his fastest pace
To live in a cold, dark, lonely place.

But Mother, see, he's done no wrong,
Although his visit did prolong.
I see him in every sainted throng
And wait for him, though the wait is long.

My sweet rosebud, why do you wait?
When another, you will take?
Don't you try to change your fate
For fear of looking like a fake.*

Mother dear, my guardian still,
You believe I've had my fill
But his memory leaves a cold, stone chill
Which can be relieved from no magic pill.

But what with?
a stick
a stone

How about
my broken heart

it matches
the shattered pavement
anyways

Just when the peep toed bear
tip toes past the sleeping yellow jackets
that stole their gold from the Sun's caverns;
Just when the cross eyed birds
sweat across the blooming icebergs
that hold insanities from the lost souls of underworlds;
Just when a tiger pounces
on a large gaping shadow
that can never be picked up by hands of man;
We will be free

Just because I can't sew my own shadow back on
doesn't mean that I have failed
For where the soap I use won't tack on
there's room for it to be nailed.

For one day I will be a being
that pillages and loots and harms
the hearts of many young girls that I'll be seeing
And my shadow will run from their arms.

To what extent will wonders cease?
They fail to bloom, fail to please.
When I have folded every last crease,
He’ll be flown like a flock of geese.

He sees not tears in these brown eyes,
Feels no sorrow for our goodbyes.
I fear he’ll someday break our ties,
And leave naught but deceit and lies.

Who can tell why loves goes away,
Why yesterday is not today?
Who wants to live that darkening day
When for our lives, the price we’ll pay?

We have just hit a milestone-
I gave a secret of my own.
To you, from my lips it has flown
To be read in your baritone.

Your voice is music to my ears
Through the silence, through all my tears-
You’re the sole my conciousness hears
As the time that we reunite nears.

I wonder what will happen then-
Will we kiss? Or be apart again?
I guess I’ll just have to pretend
That no love there will be there to defend.

His eyes block out all that is wrong,
Brown irises sing their own song.
A song of love, forever long,
That shows his heart, where I belong.

But yet, he says there is someone,
Who he does love more than the sun.
I thought that I had finally won
But yet my work has only begun…

And now my heart in hell does burn.
It seems that I shall never learn.
I watch couples kiss at the stearn
And know that now, it’s not my turn.

I hear him laugh, I watch him smile,
They make me wish he’d stay awhile.
Instead, I choke down bile
And watch my tears fall onto cracked tile.

Nothing is broken, Nothing whole;
The price of love’s a heavy toll.
It takes your all, leaves you a troll
To go home crying to your dark knoll.

our friendship is always there
prone to love and prone to tear
but our friendship is always there
and time is not eternal.

If more cataracts consisted
Of that gel like substance
Flowing with honey and sparkles
Like the ones that alight in her hair
Especially when I hear that silver screened laugh
The world would ultimately be
A much better place