reminiscing on old love

When I see you, you don't smile anymore.
The corners of your mouth may turn up some,
But I can tell by your eyes.
Your mouth goes through the motions but
Your heart doesn't back it up.

I wonder if it's because he doesn't hold you
Like I can, cradle the small of your back
In the palm of my hand as we waltzed along the sand.
Waves lick at our toes impatiently,
Wanting a taste but nervous for the response.

Does he know your freckles are markers on a treasure map?
The touch of color in your cheeks, the flush across your
Chest the result of a pleasure tapped from a well
Much deeper than he'll ever know,
Deeper only through years of my hard work.
And does he know that as he attempts to dig a new one,
The dirt he tosses so casually aside only falls back in
Behind him? Every shovel full another
Addition to covering what we had.

He digs for something
Settles for anything
Finds nothing...
Nothing but pottery shards of me
And you and us.

Do you tell him that the far away
Look in your eye ends at my face?
That searching his soul is really
You seeking for some semblance of
What we had...some resemblance of me?

When I see you, you never truly smile anymore.
If you ever will again...
Well, that is something that
Only you know...
What I know all too well is that
Too slowly does your love grow and
Too quickly does your heart close.

But I...I smile...
Smile at the freedom I now know,
The freedom you once stole.
And I laugh at the
Proposition of your admission
That you miss me.
Because I know...

And I smile.

clean/dirty

I cannot decide which I prefer the most
Dove, Ivory, Dial, or Coast
But regardless, I am not one to boast
About being Zestfully clean.

And it's not just my body that is of dirt bereft
Because thanks to Tide, Woolite, and Dreft
My clothing will surely, undoubtedly be left
Spotless and wonderfully pristine.

But no matter how pure everything may be,
Life is really just one big martini
And it only takes one thing to make it all dirty:

Olive Juice

relief map

Each spot a bit different
Yet each telling the same message.
Unique, individual
Angel kisses
Moving my hands over, feeling each subtle lift
Reminding me where to go

Hand resting here makes you close your eyes
Lips brushing this one elicits a sigh
From your beautiful mouth.
Each one proof that you were hand-made
By God Himself.

Forgive me for thinking it was just for me
But perfection this absolute
Could be nothing but divine, in my mind

So if you please,
Let me be my own guide along the
Map of you...because getting lost is
The best way to find my final
Destination...

my seventh grade mind

Hit me, mother fucker.
Hit me.
Shove me into the locker.
Knock my books out of my hands.
Throw things at me when the teacher isn’t looking.
Hit me.

Call me names like you always do.
Whisper them; yell them; repeat them,
Till you feel like you’ve gotten your point through
To the very core of me…but you’ll be wasting your breath.

Because I’ve been called these names every day for so long now that
They no longer carry the same meaning for me as they do for you.
Pussy, faggot, homo, queer…they all go in one ear, then in the other ear,
Then out through my brain stem,
Down my spinal cord to my central nervous system,
Numbing my nerves, dulling my heart
So that your words no longer have the impact that you want them to,
That you assume they do.

It’s fine; it’s normal to me now.
Because I’ve grown up in a house with
Parents who love me and have given me everything I ever needed
Except a patient, listening ear.
And I go to a church with a cool youth pastor and
A snack bar and arcade games,
Where I blend into the back of the room
With the rest of the expendable teenage dirt bags.
And all of my friends are my little brother’s friends,
Still in elementary school;
And playing with them makes me feel like
I’m more alone than I really am,
But it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

And seeing my friend, whose body will not age any further
Than the 12 years, 3 months, and some-odd days he was
When the noose cut off his final breath;
Seeing his young body in his casket after He had hanged
Himself from his own bunk-bed…with a dog leash;
Seeing his mother beating her own chest as she weeps into his;
Hearing the cries of friends and family at the funeral and being
Unable to add my own sobs or even silent tears to the chorus of mourning;
Through all this, only one thought crosses my mind –
Isn’t he lucky that he doesn’t have to deal with this shit anymore?

Every day I go to my room
And wonder in my seventh-grade mind: will people notice me tomorrow,
Or will be another day of imposed invisibility?
Every day I go home to my room
Where I do whatever it is I do,
Things I will end up not even being able to remember;
Things involuntarily blocked out of memory
Along with the names of classmates, teachers,
And peers at church;
Field trips, church retreats, and girls I had
Crushes on who didn’t know I existed;
Where my mind is a blur of the past four
Years of loneliness and middle school torment;
Where my friends are my friends
Only when no one else is looking and
My repose from the emotional blitzkrieg
On my young, tender heart is non-existent;

So hit me, mother fucker.
Hit me.
See if I care.
You’ll be doing me a favor.
Help me to feel something again.

echoes of forgotten youth

Wax eloquent on preteen sycophants;
Pseudo-psychotic, semi-neurotic faux infants with
Perpetually lower sagging pants yelling
Substantially unintelligible rants full of “I can’ts”
With no explanation other than a shrug of skinny shoulders.

Leader of the pack with an
Idiosyncratic monkey on his back,
Toadies executing diversionary attacks
So he can rough up the pariah. No real sack,
Though; cries at night wondering who will be his messiah.
Parents on crack so he has to raise himself up by his own bootstraps,
Straps on boots with worn soles, too soon an old soul.
No soul? No, no sol –
No sun, no light, no fun, just fight, see gun, feels right, just one…last…breath.

Knows too much too soon.
Unwilling Lolita, got to please him, keep him happy.
Pay bills with her body, somebody, anybody,
Embody sex, disembody mind to forget,
Swallow that cum and regret in tandem,
Quickly quenching, sickly wenching,
Thickly stenching breath,
Fucked to a living death.

Echoes of moans sounding, fists and hearts pounding,
Voices raising, pipes blazing,
Cloudy-eyed glazing gazing towards future.
What future? Snitches get stitches but no stitches
To suture open wounds, use her, abuse her, bind her, remind her.

Wound up, bound up by a youth too soon taken.
Echoes of forgotten youth bouncing on hollow walls;
Heart beats, bass beats, running feet, silent streets;
Misery and hope meet, mistreat, overcoming an unlikely feat
For that woman of the street because of blind conceit.
Brush the dirt into the back seat…

Are you fucking kidding me?

i am a man

As I sit in my classroom, I can hear students lining up outside to get the H1N1 shot at the makeshift clinic they’ve set up in the empty classroom across the hall.

And I hear things like:

“Shoot, I’m not scared of no shot.” And
“If you cry, I’mma laugh at you.” Or
Don’t be a pussy, be a man.”

And it saddens me, because I’m a man and
I haven’t cried since I don’t know when, and
sometimes it’s all I want to do.

I held her hand as my grandmother died
And all in the room, but I,
Cried.

I see the news on the TV, read it in the paper, hear it on the radio –
Rape, murder, kidnapping, racism,
hatred, disease, plane crashes, car crashes,
natural disasters…
Story after story of death, loss, and heartache.

I want my eyes to water; I will the tears to come.
And they don’t.

But if this is supposed to show that I am a man,
then why do I feel like something is missing!?

I always though that I could be a man by watching football with my boys, grilling steaks, and drinking beer JUST the same as playing dolls with my daughter or singing her to sleep.

That is to say, my future daughter…because I have also always thought that being a man meant being sure I can handle the responsibilities of life before risking taking them upon myself.

See, right now I am more concerned that I won’t cry
When my children are born or my parents die.

Suffering from what I have to call emotional constipation is becoming a burden that I no longer wish to carry. I want to try, tears that show I am a man because I feel and hurt and care; tears that show I am a man because God has called me to help others before myself.

But they just won’t come.

So as far as I’m concerned, when being a man means I’m no longer allowed to cry, or feel pain or emotion…I guess I’m just going to have to find a new way to define myself.

porn is bad, mmmk

For a while there, I was one of those guys
where big breasts, curvy booty, and open thighs
were what it took to catch my eyes.
And it took my return to Church and God to realize that
society was taking me on a ride to perversion that
I was raised to have an aversion to.
So I decided to rewrite my story…
a new version with a submersion into the
real and good and right instead of the fake and bad and trite.

Society, what gives you the right to dictate what it takes to make my dick straight!?

A perverted pandemic is sweeping the planet in the form of fake girl-on-girl action and midgets wearing spandex and yeah, we laugh. But the reality is fifty percent of American marriages are ending in divorce, the source for some lying in the fact that men fantasize about women who aren’t their wives. And some of these wives struggle all their lives to actualize what he fantasizes about, without realizing that those fantasies are computerized. And these wives end up doubting themselves, names on the dotted lines evidence of a feeling that they are inadequate.


“Dude, that girl is hot!” You idiot, haven’t you ever heard of photoshop? Some dude can sit in his parents’ basement and make Dog the Bounty Hunter look like Giselle Bundchen, just clicking away on his mouse, munchin’ on potato chips and thinking about what’s going to happen on World of Warcraft later that day. People look at pornography as demeaning to women, which is absolutely is, whether women head the company or not, while being blind to the men who have to deal with an addiction proven to be stonger than heroin. So fellas, next time you’re with a female friend (with whom you are comfortable and who has seen porn), ask her if the average woman truly needs to make THAT MUCH NOISE when she’s having an orgasm. No wonder so many happily married couples are dissatisfied with their sex lives. They strive to achieve and pornographically unachievable level of ecstasy while failing to recognize what their partner truly wants.

Like I said, I used to be one of those guys where big breasts, curvy booty, and open things were what it took to catch my eyes. But I realized that this wasn’t me. Because the real me, the one that wanted to be the doctor, the teacher, or the mentor couldn’t stand talking to girls who conversed about as well as a front door. I need an intellectual woman. And I knew I was beginning to change when seeing scantily clad women, which used to give me a “tizzle in my pizzle,” now just made me feel sick a little, because a girl who doesn’t respect herself will eventually wreck herself (thank you 1995).

I grew up singing and writing, using words to express myself instead of sports. And lo and behold, what should unfold but an ugly duckling story of sorts. See, God gave me a gift with which to exhibit my thoughts. My poetry is not just poetry, I call it flow-etry because it flows from me so fluidly, allowing me the opportunity to stimulate you…not sexually, but intellectually, ceaselessly, until you…come…hard…to the realization that you’re finally more to me than just a fantasy of breasts, booty, and thighs. You’re an individual mind. And I’m more than the nerdy, goofy kid who still laughs at fart jokes and gets excited about grammar. I’m an artist, and I want to decorate your mind’s eye with pictures painted by words and ideas etched with metaphor.

these are the remedies

These are the remedies
The ineffective medications
For our everyday affectations

These are the Desirees
Those things craved by the masses
To assist when their glasses are “half-empty,”
Though when seen as “half-full,” the desirees
Lose their Desire-ers.
The power of positive thinking, or the realization that
Life is as exciting as you make it out to be.

It’s just a placebo
Making me believe that I have let go
When in fact the demon inside me
Just goes into hiding, waiting for a
Doubt in my mind on which it can
Pounce and pronounce and exaggerate.
To the point I can’t take anymore.
Then the placebo is what I abhor.

Ab…hor
Wanna play a word game?
A…b…hor
Take out the b, add an ellipsis for dramatic flair
A dot dot dot whore

A whore…something that loses its
Significance and value and meaning.
No longer about love but about filling that
Primal need for release and satisfaction,
Though said satisfaction
Leaves you only more empty than
When you started.
And yet you still lie there, broken-hearted.
The point?
The point is you no longer have one

These are the remedies.
The ineffective medications
For our everyday affectations.


John Doe comes home from work to his wife,
Jane, whom he said he’d love for life.
But see, John didn’t know that life truly meant.
Working a dead-end job to barely pay rent,
His last $15 spent on a fucking bottle.
Jane screamed, “That was all the money we’ve got. I’ll
Never figure out how to feed the kids
For the rest of the month. This is not what I signed up for
When I took your ring.”
John just closes the door, sits on the floor, and takes
His first sip. A quick fix to a long-term problem. And
Still, no mention of the children.

Children…a blessing from above counted as less.
How dare the receive anything but the best
From society. But a burden many are counted
Because to their parents, they have amounted to nothing
But another expense. Talk about glass half-empty.

And don’t think for a second that SES has anything to do with it,
Because you can find a
Mess in the tire tracks of a POS ’86 Honda Civic
Just as easily as in those of a brand new Dodge Stratus.
And by the way, in case you didn’t know, SES means Socio-economic status
So that Mercedes-Benz or that Beemer you see rolling down the street…
Remember that life with seven figures isn’t always so sweet.

But when the babysitter is now a television
Where children learn more from The Wiggles and Dora than
Their own mothers, and teachers are expected to raise children
Birthed by others and not themselves: This is why parents complain
That Johnny and Jane don’t love or respect them
And yet still expect them to sate their every whim.

These are the remedies.
The ineffective medications
Of our everyday affectations.

It’s a shame, but the question is “Who’s to blame?”
It’s a crime that instead of spending time with their kids
Wealthy men and women are placing bids on
Newer, bigger houses…
For people who aren’t their spouses.



It’s a shame, but the question is “Who’s to blame?”
Well, as long as that man is being enabled
To pick up that pipe and smoke that rock;
As long as that girl is being forced to
Pay her bills by sucking cock.
As long as I sit by and quietly place a lock
On My mouth, it’s my fault.

These are the remedies,
The ineffective medications
For our everyday affectations.

But these simple things can be the cure.
A smile that’s genuine and a heart that’s pure,
A mouth that’s open and a mind that’s free,
A hand that can write or a body that can be
On the front lines of this silent war
Against that placebo and against that whore.
These simple things can be the cure
And that’s why I plan on doing more
With my life.

Now, how about you?
Take a chance
Make a change
And know that inside
You’ll never be the same
When others come first.
Because a feeling of inadequacy
Is certainly far worse than a knowledge
That someone out there at least cares.

Remember, be the individual who makes someone more concerned with feeling as though you care, and you’ll never have to worry about whether or not they care about how you feel. Respect is reciprocal.

These are the remedies,
The ineffective medications
For our everyday affectations.

a not-so-standard fairy tale

I am thinking of a fairy tale
That's a little out of sorts,
Where the maiden saves the dragon from the knight
and the princess is the one with the warts.

Where the troll lives in a big brick house
And the giant asks to borrow sugar, just a smidge;
Where the wolf climbs up a big bean stalk
And the pigs live under the bridge.

The prince is awakened by a simple kiss
From a horse that used to be a king;
And a frog curses the witch to forever be trapped
As a bird that's unable to sing.

The sun shines at night and the moon glows by day,
But stability is what these characters crave;
As Aesop, Mother Goose, and the two Brothers Grimm
All turn over in their graves.

nothing matters to the dead

Nothing matters to the dead.
There are no books left to be read.
No more lessons to be learned,
No more monies to be earned,
And no more apologies to be said.

Nothing matters once you die.
No more me, myself, and I.
No more dinners to be cooked,
No more promises overlooked,
And no more sorrows left to cry.

"All old things will pass away,"
A man once told me that the Bible does say.
But as he offered me the book,
I shyly grinned; my head I shook.
I thanked him kindly, but plainly said,
"Nothing matters to the dead."

when she stopped on the sidewalk

When she stopped on the sidewalk
The cold November wind blew through her hair.
She gazed up at the gnarled branches of the tree
Her father planted years ago. The hardwood fingers
Scratched at the sky, as if to beckon out
The stars from their daytime sequesterings.

Her hair danced around her face like the
Feathery, tired clichés dancing around as the
Metaphor of her life.
"What have you seen?" she wondered
Aloud to the tree. Getting no response,
She shrugged and placed her
Headphones back on her ears; her words
And music echoed in her mind in an unlikely duet
Of uncertainty and contentment.