It's a different
day and age now.
I used to write my
poetry on scraps of
paper or napkins,
paper sacks, whatever
was handy.
One time, I wrote
a poem
on a paper plate--around in
a circle.
I get dizzy thinking about it.
They always got lost, or beer
spilled on them.
My girlfriend blew her
nose on a sonnet.

Now, I keep all my
poetry and short stories on
the computer.
A file for this.
A folder for that.
I have to use a password, and
PIN.
It has to be something important to
me or I will forget it.
Lower case.
Upper case.
Symbols.
Numbers.
It's enough to drive me
batty.
Actually, it's a short putt.
Summer is coming soon, so I
thought some golf humor would
be appropriate.

The things that used to be
important to me aren't anymore.
*****.
Drugs.
Having a woman around
constantly.
I like to think I've gained some
wisdom with age.

Passwords, ugh!
I can't tell you what's important
to me now.
You might hack into my
computer and steal all my
pretty posey.

To all my never-finished poems,
don't think you are of less worth,
because I gave up on you,
I couldn’t keep writing,
not because I didn’t care,
but because,
there wasn't more to say.

To all my never-finished poems,
you carry so many thoughts of mine,
so many ideas that once seemed great.
So much pain, because I didn't know,
what I was supposed to write,
so the best thing to do,
was to let go.

Maybe that's how you are meant to be,
just a concept, never completed.
Perhaps that's just the way it is,
I can't force you,
can't force a poem.

In the garden of love ,
she chose a flower with sharpest thorns.
It hurt her but why did she still hold on?

She said," it's just like my incomplete poem, my heart's darkest verse."
"Pain makes it beautiful , forever stuck in
this traverse."

There are things important to me,
That many people today will find silly,

This is one of those,
To be a writer,
To write great poetry,

To have that poetry read in classrooms,
To have it read in lecture halls,
That it will be read in fire lit living rooms,
That it will reach the ears of the youth,

----- ----- ----- -----

I find this important.

i am in a dark room
standing.

i look around
papers are flying everywhere
in the dark.

the dark room is my mind,
and the papers
are my thoughts.

i couldn’t take it.
i had to write them down.

We were artists
But you had the brush
And I had the pen
You drew the worlds, the people
I wrote down the feelings, explanations

You captured the images perfectly
While I can only guess at the words
The way you moved your brush
While I can only stick to lines
Beauty versus perfection

You express your worlds radiantly 
But I can only write in black and white
I wished I traded my pen for a brush
To feel the colors you weaved 
To see the world beyond my script

Maybe if I knew how to color
If my pen drew more than rigid letters
You would have understood me 
In a world of black and white 
You were the color in my life

I was supposed to be somewhere holy by now.
Twenty-eight, maybe.
Soft-eyed, loose-shouldered,
eating cherries on a porch that faces west,
“I trust the sky not to drop me.”
“I haven’t wished on a coin in months.”
Instead, I’m awake at 3:47 a.m.
Googling “What does it mean to feel inside-out?”

I keep finding pieces of myself
in weird places—
a sandal from eighth grade
in my mom’s basement—
a song I skipped for years
until it wrecked me—
now it’s the only sound I can breathe to.
A fourth grade diary entry
that ends with:
“I think something’s wrong with the air.”

I think something’s wrong with the air.

I was so sure by now I’d
quit making altars out of absence,
retire from bleeding for the line break,
know how to hold still when people love me.

I thought I’d hear God more clearly
and panic less when I don’t.
I thought I’d be done
being undone
by
a read receipt.

/ Then the break. /

And yet.

I flinch at compliments
like they’re coming from behind me.

Sometimes I still check
if my name’s spelled right on things.
I still rehearse
what I’ll say in case I’m asked,
“So, what do you do?”

(I become.
I break and unbreak.
I drink soda in bed and call that healing.
I make it to morning and call that enough.)
I keep living like the soft things won’t leave.

There’s a version of me
who doesn’t bend into a wishbone
for every boy with a god complex—
and a version
who flosses because she thinks she’ll live
long enough
for it to matter.

There’s a version who never had to explain
the scars on her thigh.
A version who didn’t stay
just to see how bad it could get.

I keep dreaming of her.
Not to compete—
just to confess.
Not to ask forgiveness—
to give it.

She sleeps through the night and means it.
She makes plans and keeps them.
She doesn’t exist.

So I just keep writing toward something
I’m not sure I’ll survive.
There’s a version of me
who didn’t touch the red button.
Didn’t ask.
Didn’t hope.
Didn’t write any of this down.