Travel Light.

Shedding baggage like
Paper snakeskin
It wouldn't be so heavy if it wasn't worth it,
I suppose.

Finally took that awful step,
and was less surprised by how much the fall hurt
And more surprised by how very clear the sky.

Breaking.

Another one bites the dust.
Another dragon missed the hole.
Breathe yet another sigh of
Dull relief that I didn't take a deeper plunge
Commit a bigger blunder
Or drag that forever out for longer.


Sorry I was so mistaken
Poor judge of character, you see
See, thought it was me who faked it
Found out it wasn't what it seemed.

We all learn, somehow
One way or another.
Rings and posies all fall down.
Disassembling eachother.

Your pieces don't quite fit mine.
As much as I might try.
Your shoulder isn't high enough
My arms just aren't that wide.

So look at me, my handsome man
Tell me what you see:
Your fortune or your future -
All I see is me.

In the end, the question begs:
(If ever I could ask)
Why would you want to love someone?
Who just doesn't love you back?

The way I find home

Sometimes I just want out. Sometimes I can't stand the cage I've built for myself.
Sometimes I can't stand not to just fuck up and just be for right now and for what it might not ever be.

Sometimes I get bored.
Bored with myself
Bored with you
Bored with this work
With blue goddamn sky

and I don't know how to keep myself entertained.
sometimes I go a little feral when I haven't had enough sleep,
A little wild.
It's so easy to see so clearly my wooded path home.
But sometimes I get a little bit lonely for something no person could ever be
Today's one of those tired empty days when nothing what could fill my cup
When nobody got an answer for me
Ain't no place that I can really call my own ever.
And I feel a little bit jealous of and I wonder if there's anyone who really does ever feel home.

I want out. So I'll find my way.
With or without you, I kinda don't care.
You don't have the answers and neither do I.
It's up to you whether you can be okay with the way I find home.

Both, I said.

Just please don't go.
You know, you take my heart with you.
Split and torn between its halves
I wondered, once, if I'd be judged for choosing my friends over family.
Now I wonder if I've chosen wrong.
If I'm choosing some family I might never know
Over those I know love all of me.
I drink, maybe I'm more truthful
With that damned frontal lobe turned off.
Maybe I find some depth of experience there
Maybe I discover something I wish I didn't know anyway.
I always wanted to come home.
You always told me,
You can't ever come home again.
It's never quite the same,
I know.
I can't ever really come home again.
But I can be here and now.
I can't ever put a price on or weigh a difference between smelling my little cousin's newborn head
And hearing my soul-sister's deepest belly laugh.
So I'll always regret not having more of both.
And I'll always rejoice in having some of both.

Ice.

I don't sleep, sometimes.
The teeter-totter all-nighters
Chip away at my facade,
Sweet Fates chip another inch or two off the end of my
Noose.
Glad someone is keeping score, I guess.
In the game of me vs. the night watch.
Cold creeps quiet in all the windows, curves its claws over my gutters and taps a hard heartbeat on my tin roof.
It's everywhere, barely kept just to the floor by all our flapping ministrations.
Ministers of heat, we are:
Cranking here and switching there to keep our envelope of comfort sacred.
A carpet of diamonds entertains me with their glitter,
They're not the real rare kind- the kind with fire and color and life inside- but the flat kind you buy for a girl you didn't really want to spend the rest of your days with anyway.
She knows it too, but nobody looks close enough to see the faux-gem's plain heart.
Not for now, anyway.
For now, I can't wait for dreams to happen.
I recite lines of poetry and draw impossible shapes to lull the spinning in my head.

Love.

So good to be me.
So nice to
Just be and not think about
What I'm worth to everyone
How I've disappointed you all
And how I'll
Fix it if only I could just remember
Oh yeah- gotta take care of number one
Sorry about it but if the buck's gonna stop here?
If I'm gonna be the one to call all these shots if
None of it matters then I might as well
Be the one who says hell no.
It's how it is.
That love trumps all and that
Creation and connection are the
Currency we'll ransom our souls with its
Fine. I'm fine.
I'm satisfied with my mortality my piece is just fine.
I'm fine.
I'm satisfied with climbing on top of others I'm fine.
I'm standing on the shoulders of giants I'm fine.
We'll all survive because we have eachother we're fucking fine.
We'll teach our daughters not to be afraid and our sons to not be violent we're fucking fine.
We're not afraid
I'm not afraid.
I give of my everything, I hold back nothing and scream my truth in rhyme and rhythm because art
Is all we have.
Art is our connection to eachother and in the end.
Everything you have will be taken away.
All your things.
All your dreams.
All your plans.
All your God. Damned. Dignity
And all you will have left is
Love.
Who and how and when and what
You loved.
Measure your life in love,
It's all you'll ever truly own.
All you ever have.
Everything that has the nature to arise, also has the nature to fade away.
Nothing lives on but love.

Whirligig.

Burned my mouth, tonight.
I lick my salty wounds and so I smile
Got another climbing curve to conquer
here.
Another breath of poison vapor clinging
Here.
Ignites my spiral black hole clinging
There.
Extinguishes my fears and though I
Wait.
It isn't ever finished
So I
Pray.
Don't believe in God and so I
Pray.
So glad it isn't me and so I
Pray.
So thankful that this burden isn't mine.
And so I pray.
My God I couldn't be so graceful
Drown.
In angel vapors
Burn my mouth.
Blister there.
And remind me I'm so painfully alive.
And I'm alright.
Said, I'm alright.