38

in

You could count your breaths before your dreams, or count the dreams from one to infinity. Each one has a question or second or pause, multiplied by uncertainty. We've added all our hesitances and subtracted our own skills. We're divided between do or don't, at least only in half. Nothing is that easy, and we're fractured by more than that.

Before we knew to tally our lives, we took the air to give ourselves fire. We cried as we breathed to give ourselves life, before we made our tears messes and insecurities relentless. Forget what we've taught ourselves and use what we've known. 

Breathe.

Inhale possibilities and exhale all doubts.

 

No one's got it all figured out.

37

in

Isn't it strange that we mourn like muscles?

Each movement we make brings back painful experiences etched into our tendons. Each inch we stretch is temporary relief before we fall into old habits and the tension pulls into our strings. Each breath is a simple release of a hand held too tightly or a misstep corrected by shifted footing. 

We try to correct the pain that strikes us quicker than lightning. We walk through our days as if we were lightning rods for triggered pain. Each movement a practice of gritted teeth and each tendon pushing and pulling us so hard so we do not break.

How much more do we breathe or stretch or shake until we snap? Or do we snap? 

Perhaps one day, you will wake, and you'll no longer feel the tightness that gripped you. Maybe then you'll have exercised the resilience within you and the memories will sleep in your muscles until needed again. Until then, we look for fixes in quickness or elixir filled kisses. 

Or we practice until the pain is no more. 

35

in

It's strange how we let ourselves be victimized by time. When we let it run us down and run us out, and it takes quarters before our hours and after our hours, taking our seconds from the spare change we just made.

We short ourselves and nickel and dime ourselves till the minutes can no longer can be divided; and we spend time playing catch up, paying back the sleep and the moments and the chances we let time take from us. 

We spread ourselves thin and time stretches us out, milking every bit of what we are worth. We revel in the moments that we survived time's tyranny, its bullying us into schedules and under tables and crunching into lockers; a battle with never ending wounds. 

 

 

 

34

in

They say that good writing sounds like a conversation, but everything I think goes through some filtration. I try to choose my words wisely, but right now it's a strange amorphous blob that has no shape or reason. Just some words that fall from my head to the keyboard. 

It's funny how I sat in my bed thinking about what to type, but I've got nothing now that I've made time to write.

So I say to you to practice your sentences and find your own rhymes. Stop reading and retweeting all those  "clever" quotes all the time. There's far too many words to say the same thing twice, so don't waste your time on repeated lines.

Keep practicing whatever it is you want to say, so when the time is right, it'll be your own words anyway.

33

in

Let's make magic in the mayhem.

As the crowd surges around us, our linked hands will be a spark. The crowd will see us and join hands as sparks scatter. We'll breathe in and exhale flame, and the heat from our voices and the burns from their choices will ignite the tension-charged air.

Those people will try to break us, and stun us and take us to our knees so that our steps become puddles. We cry; in fear, in anger, in anguish. We will not shrink, we will roar.  

We will roar so loudly that even as we fall to our knees and tears tear into the heat from our mouths, we will hiss. We will fight. We will not surrender.

Let's find magic in the mayhem and beauty in the blitz. We'll start a revolution and light the sparks within.

32

in

Hooked by your lines and sunken by your words. You bring me up and I pull you down as the tides turn. Across the uneven sea, it simply became you and me.

I took the bait, not knowing whether it was your heart or your head. You gave chase, so when lines crossed, we got tangled up instead.

Cut the cord, and let me go. To what depths we ventured, no one has to know. Catch me then, in knotted, netted hands, and hold me close, saying the unsaid.

Keep what you need and relinquish all else. At least that's what we're told to do. Furling and unfurling, I will lead you across the sea, and with jumbled, mumbled lines, you'll follow me into uncertainty. At least until you decide if you catch, or release.

31

in

It's funny how we fumble through words trying to tackle the way you, or I, may play. I know your game, so I saw you got on the defensive, or is it offensive? I charged forwards with my words gaining round and your mind racing as your eyes darted from my mouth to my eyes as you tried to anticipate what lies I could call, and what plays you could make. Intercept my words? Yeah right, get out. This isn't a game, no matter how much you try to shout. There are no fans here, no cheerleaders, or refs. We're both coach and team, and call all the plays, losing control over concealed rage . 

I couldn't tell with you, keeping close your play(books). We want to win, there's no losing or ties. A tie, is a loss, and I don't compromise. I'm all in or all out, and I know you are too. Or that's what you say, when I call your bullshit too.

30

in

Baby, don't make your wishes on dying stars. The last whispers on the trailing tears as it flies hopeless and dangerously, between heaven and earth. These are wishes that burn in glory or fade quietly against the other stars that hold steadily their places in the sky.

Let's make our wishes on different lights, like the sparks that illuminate your eyes. Let me plant hope in your heart(h) and kisses on your face. 

Then, when the stars sleep and begin to fade, let's grant our own wishes as our sun illuminates our sky.

28

in

Break my heart to pieces, or take a piece of it. It'll hurt, no doubt, but how you do it won't matter much.

I don't want to keep it whole. If I keep it whole, what parts of me am I sharing with you? Am I even sharing with you? When you leave you'll take a piece of me too. How big or small the piece you take matters partially, mostly on you.  

Take a large piece, a trophy, maybe, if you will. You could take a small piece too, but that's more like a souvenir of me for you. You'll be taking something of me, and I might be something of you. Maybe we can trade which would be just as good.

I hope the part you leave me isn't small, or there will be some gaps I can't close. If it's too big, maybe I'll be scared it wasn't enough. Hopefully the piece you take from me is equal to the one I took of you.

I never thought hearts were meant to be kept whole. If we don't break them, we have less to share. I guess what I'm trying to say is that people always take a part of your heart, how much of it just depends.

Musings 3

in

Darling, I'm fine.

A bold-faced lie through a bared teeth smile. A deflection of the questions from your prying mind. A fifty pound weight held between you and I.

Fine is a damnable word. Everything is fine as we fly through the city night watching as the streets transform into tarmacs before our eyes. Everything is fine as we conceal our worries in the front seats and look out with preoccupied vacancy. Everything is fine as we see both in here and out there, slowly realizing that the streets here go nowhere. 

But darling, did you ever think that the streets where we drive and spend our times are just long, long, letters to the sky? That maybe the turns are the letter Us and the lights are where we dot the Is? Maybe the forks are where I ask you why as we choose between left and right. There's no winding back after the hows or the whys but we can't be bothered with wasting time. We've ridden over these roads before and said the same words, I'm sure, what does it matter if we can do it some more?

Quick, don't pause, don't wait. Right, choose right, I'm always right. If I had chosen left, you would have left, right?

I'm fine.

Those times that we spent bridging the gaps between you and me loomed over our happiness ominously. Those moments had been watching us, policing us, more than we had been policing them. They chased us through the choices we made, and when we hesitated, they halted us. In the showdown between the ground and sky, they seized us.

We were fined.

We paid the fine for speeding through the nights, the blue lights reflected in our love drunk eyes. Those moments finally cornered us, full-forced and strong. We surrendered and they beat us, wanting to win more than we wanted to lose. They broke the bridges that our hands built between us and broke the hope etched into our faces as the moon turned away her own. We were forced to look these moments in the eyes, and acknowledge that there was nowhere to hide.

But darling, even after all this? I'm fine.

Fine pays itself in the seconds that its said. Fine is the fee of admission for our active omission to being anything other than ok. Fine is the price we pay to be wondrously wounded and reckless resilient. We paid the fine, and no matter how much it taxed us or took from us, and no matter how many times we were told...

We were fine, but those moments had come and gone.

As we make the defeated drive home, sitting in a sobering silence, I've realized these streets may just be scribbles after all. As we round the bends, one or two or three times more, the clearest thought is the quickest way home.

The moments may have caught us, but we can still be strong. Defeat will try to find us as darkness approaches dawn. The lights may just be lights, and the Us will still be Us. But darling, I'll be fine.

And in the end, you will be too.


My first time competing in Slam Poetry... lol. yay me?

If I didn't do it, Kayte would have guilt tripped me into it. 

27

in

Present tense. We love. Future tense. We will love. Past tense. They're strung with the force of expectation or the weight of disappointment; each ready to snap forward with progress or to fall heavily with our hopes.

The past is layered heavily. Perfect. We loved. Pluperfect. We had loved. Future perfect. We will have loved. Perfect was never meant for now, only in faraway dreams and long gone realities. 

There's a little if, if we had done this or that. If we met a condition or were finished and it's something past. We had loved, and now it's lost. We will have loved, if we had done it right.

Imperfect. We were loving. Incomplete, interrupted, infinite. Possibilities still exist for the unfinished and the unsure. Potential exists for better or for worse.

I'll laugh at those who want perfect love, because it's been completed, gone. I'll take the imperfect, the continuous quest towards perfect, which anyone wise knows is never done.

 

 

26

in

I've been away for a bit and I may be for a few days more. I've got a lot to think about and more words and worlds to explore. 

You'd be proud of me I think, but that doesn't matter. I'm not doing any of this for you. If the days turn into weeks, and you don't speak to me, I'll understand. I was never one for plans. 

I'm just running on the winds and riding on the waves. I've got places to love and people to see before I do anything. I'd take your hand and maybe your heart, if you wanted to come with me.

If not, that's fine, you'll stay grounded here. Rooted strongly, deeply, so I could maybe find you. If I don't, that's fine too. There wouldn't be much to say to you. This world would still be yours, and the world of dreams would still be mine; so long as the winds never die.

24

in

I'm sorry I've been too busy to write, or mostly to just write well. 

I've been out finding new reasons to love the world. The more reasons I find, the more I want to show you. That's all it is isn't it? I wouldn't call it falling in love, I'd prefer to call it discovering. The more wonder I find, the more I'd like to show you. Then again, I suppose it's like when I've watched you fall in love, the more you want to show everyone why.

The trick it to rediscover the reasons you love every time.