Heart open open open
Ribs are tearing apart
Chest filled with helium
Balloon growing filling
Saturn’s rings around me
Grow expand sending out
Encompass one and all with love
The one thing you can do

False starts
Why didn’t I plan ahead?
I love eating breakfast
At home
At the table
I love paying bills
On time
Knowing my balance
So why do I fail?
What circumstances
Need me to suffer?
Will it all turn out better
If my mind stays relaxed?
Or will my punishment be incomplete
Without stress?

Missiles and homocides
Birds of a feather
Compromise and die
Truth or a lie?
Forgive and forget
Pay your debt
Run and get caught
Live or get shot
Hope falls to deeds
Too many would kill
For love’s warm embrace
Forgetting her charity

I’m a thief
I’m a prison guard
She’s fat
I’m not like her
Love plants seeds of change
Not hate or separateness
Which yields decay and rot
Know that a perfect person
Lives inside
And will bloom in due time
With the right care

If you bump into enough people
It changes you
The colors blend
The connections grow
If you looked into a thousand mirrors a day
Imagine what you might notice
If you really looked
Peace is in your reflection
If peace is what you embody

And don’t we all play our parts so well?
Smile for the camera
Who is more easily influenced than a man?
Entirely predictable
So what makes you think your opinion
Will be an adequate impetus for change?
Given the summation of forces
In a man’s life
What compels the heart to act in futility
And what drives the heart to certain victory?
Let me catch that wave
Breathe that air
Move in that tide
Let me be a force for change

I entertain you
You give me freedom
I am a mystery to you
You reveal little to me
We’re both heading upward
Side by side
A kiss and a smile
But you burn steady
And I flitter
I light candles
And you watch them from your throne
We are comfortable together
And alone

The more I know about love
The farther my journey seems
I feel desperate, I feel angry, unloved and tired
God is making me rely on him
For my rent, my sustenance, my happiness
And it feels like I might die
I won’t go down without a fight
So misery haunts me
And joy mocks me
I’m tired of learning
It’s too painful
Ignorance must be bliss
I want so badly to be the person
Who writes my poems
Of faith, hope, and love
And not the pitiful failure
Who curses and sulks and grinds her teeth
When will she just die?

Instead of aspiring for greatness
Aspire to do great things
One day at a time
One task at a time
Come down from the clouds
To the work that builds a man

A meth-head rides the bus, skinny arms
In a shiny purple shirt
Her face splotchy and raw
Three hundred years of abuse
Caffeine and nicotine
Breakfast of losers
Bellies of acid, lungs of smoke
Leather skin
I inhale thick fumes
From the truck up ahead
Our foul addictions
To drugs and speed