Clouds

My eyes are practically closing themselves
as I stare at the blurring bright screen of the computer in front of me.
Drifting in and out of sleep,
I begin to dream in short bursts,
like the breaths a swimmer takes as they approach the wall.

I saw her face, so real I could practically taste the air
checkered with her perfume on my lips.
The oasis quickly disappeared and revealed the dessert sand
in the form of a constantly refreshing facebook news feed,
Christian just made 18 months with his girlfriend, great.

A Poet Is

A poet is just someone
who writes some shit about
something creative they had on their mind.

A poet is just someone who looks at someone
or something and turns the every day
into beautiful words that paint a better picture
than the thing the poet is actually looking at.

A poet is just someone with a pen,
or a keyboard, spewing their emotions on the page
and hoping to get some sort of support from a reader,
the poet is really someone with low self esteem.

A poet is just someone who isn't afraid of looking at themselves,
and writing exactly what they feel about themselves.
To the rest of the world they may be a genius with a bright future,
but to themselves they're just hopeless writers searching for a finishing line.

Voices

Trying to find my voice
is like trying to silence
all the voices in my head
crowding around the small child
who represents my individuality
in a world where the individuals
are quickly assimilated into
the media gauntlet
and mirrored until they
can't handle recognize themselves.

Looking for my voice
involves using my voice
which is like trying to define a word
by using the word itself.
Perhaps I should just write every poem
without any editing.

And become the most prolific writer
in the history of writers,
to have never found his voice.

House of Mirrors

You can spend hours trying to draw someone,
the brilliant evergreen around their pupils

Kissed by hues of brown breaking in through the retina
with particular detail to every eye lash, each distinct hair

Like a moment in life, all coming together to form the
sundress dancing around their eyelids

And the shadows, changing instantly with every
uncontrollable twitch, contoured to cream skin

Force your hand into a stutter,
and change the very mirror of perfection you had set out to create.

Undoubtedly your lips know more than your hands, having
skipped through the landscape your hands have only skimmed,

Every nerve tip a paintbrush, and every whisper
a maestro to his masterpiece, a quartet played through

The soft breaths exchanged by two canvasses,
details your fingers could never appropriate into color.

Art imitating life, down the road where two paths
converge, framing the sunset crimson.

Cancer

I wouldn't mind a chatty Kathy,
or a negative Nancy,
I just can't stand a volatile Victoria.

Love seems to creep up on you when you least expect it,
like when you're trying to find the flowery words to a new poem.
"Googling" birds native to New York City,
just to get your mind off the fact,
that the girl you want doesn't want you.

It's funny how life gives you what you want,
only to show you the fine print after you've invested yourself.
I paid my money, coins in emotions I don't usually carry around with me,
and now I learn things will never be the way I want them.

Young love is like that.
My brain isn't fully developed yet at nineteen,
so I can't blame myself for falling for a girl who doesn't want to be more
than "close friends with benefits".

I'm pondering whether this is even a poem,
my heart telling me  to write what I know,
my mind telling me not to be so fucking blunt.
What is it about the things I can't have, having me?

I could write about the bronze Hawk I saw flying over
the young people infecting my campus,
or the way the snow in the spring makes me wonder about death,
but I find myself penning her name.

The gift and the curse.
I couldn't stop if I tried,
and try as I may,
I wouldn't stop caring for the girl,
who half halfheartedly cares for me.

Seeds

March is the cruelest month, carrying
valentine love into the wind.
We held our heads up high
through the warm birth of Spring,
remembering the cold nothingness
turned violets in the viridian colored grass underneath the moon.

For Catherine

Spring flowers always bloom underneath the sun,
but they too have to sit in the twilight of the moon.

The first time we locked lips
in a dream,
the garden holding the fruit with the knowledge of good and evil
had opened it gates and invited us in,
 past the waterfall dripping honeydew
through the vineyards of grapes glistening fuchsia,
I held your hand.

Harps resonated through rays from the sky,
as the blades of grass underneath our naked feet
bounced lightly to the pulses becoming nature.

Softly I brushed your auburn hair
while peering into the eyes that opened those gates
to the world of conception.
It was then I understood the nuances of time,
and the puzzles of reality,
as nothing more than trivial distractions
from the ultimate truth of a man and his lover.

That was my first dream,
delicate, distant, and sincere.
I often deprive myself of sleep,
hoping for that rare moment
when consciousness slips from my grip,
and the cardinal red roses of paradise
grow before my eyes.