At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin is awake in the way people become awake when something inside them has already stood up and gone to the window. The house is quiet but not asleep. It breathes the low, familiar breaths of waiting—floorboards holding memory, walls keeping secrets, the refrigerator humming like a promise it never finishes. Outside, the streetlight paints the living room in pale gold, and dust drifts through it like slow snowfall. Karina sits at the edge of the couch with her feet tucked under her, hands wrapped around a mug that went cold an hour ago, listening for a sound she has been rehearsing for six months.
Six months is long enough to learn the weight of absence. Long enough for mornings to stretch and evenings to fold in on themselves. Long enough to discover which corners of a room collect loneliness and which ones refuse to let it stay. When he left, she told herself she would be brave in practical ways—pay the bills on time, water the plants, answer questions with calm certainty. She did all of that. What she did not plan for was how love behaves when it is asked to wait. How it paces. How it sharpens. How it grows more articulate with every quiet night.
She checks the time again. 2:35 AM. The numbers glow like they know something she doesn’t. The hours since midnight have been a soft procession of memories: the way his jacket always smelled like outside, the way he reached for her hand without looking, the way he said goodbye at the airport like it was a comma instead of a period. Six months ago, she stood in a crowd of departures and told herself that love could survive distance if it had somewhere to land when it came home.
Karina learned to mark time by small rituals. Coffee brewed for one. Two plates taken down, then one put back. The way the bed insisted on the shape of him long after it should have let go. She learned the sound of her own footsteps at night, the creak near the hallway that always startled her even though she expected it. She learned that courage sometimes looks like staying soft when it would be easier to harden. She learned that longing can be gentle, that it can sit beside you like a cat, purring, insistent, refusing to be ignored.
At 2:35 AM, a car passes too slowly. She lifts her head. The sound fades. Her heart settles back into its practiced rhythm. She exhales and laughs quietly at herself, a sound she has made many nights now. Hope, she has discovered, is a muscle. Use it too much and it aches. Don’t use it enough and it forgets what it’s for.
She remembers the first week he was gone, how she kept the lights on too late, how she filled the silence with television she didn’t watch. She remembers the second month, when the ache dulled into something manageable, something she could carry without announcing. She remembers the fourth month, when she found herself smiling at his name on her phone without checking the time, when absence had stopped being an emergency and started being a condition. Through it all, she kept a careful ledger of moments she would tell him about when he returned—how the neighbor’s dog learned to open the gate, how the old oak dropped a limb in a storm, how she fixed the sink herself and felt impossibly proud.
She checks the time again. Still 2:35 AM. The clock does that sometimes, holds a minute like it wants to feel important.
Karina rises and walks to the window. The street is empty, expectant. The moon hangs low, unembarrassed by its own brightness. She presses her forehead lightly against the glass and lets herself imagine him driving through the last miles, hands familiar on the wheel, thoughts finally allowed to arrive where his body is going. She imagines his smile, the one that starts on one side first, the one that always made her feel chosen even before he said anything. She imagines the weight of him crossing the threshold, how the house will recognize him before she does.
Six months ago, they made promises that were practical and unromantic. Call when you land. Text when you can. Don’t forget to eat. They didn’t say anything about rings or kneeling or forever because those words felt too fragile to ship across oceans and job sites. They trusted the quieter vows—the ones that survive weather and time zones, the ones that show up even when no one is watching.
A sound interrupts her imagining. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a car door closing with the unmistakable certainty of arrival. Karina’s heart leaps, stumbles, rights itself. She does not run. She walks, because this moment deserves steadiness. The front door opens, and there he is, framed by the night he has finally finished traveling through. He looks thinner, older in the eyes, more himself in the way people become when they have been tested and returned intact.
They do not speak right away. They step into each other as if gravity has been rehearsing this reunion since the day he left. His arms feel exactly right, exactly remembered. Her face fits against his chest like it was designed with this purpose in mind. She breathes him in—road, work, the faint echo of places she has never been but knows intimately through his voice. The house exhales with them.
“It’s late,” she says, because someone has to say something, and because time has taught her to respect itself.
“I know,” he says, smiling into her hair. “I tried to hurry.”
They pull back just enough to look at each other, to confirm what touch already knows. His hands are warm. His eyes are wet in the way that suggests gratitude rather than sadness. He sets his bag down like it no longer matters, like the life he carried away has been successfully delivered and signed for.
They sit on the couch, the same one she has kept her company for half a year. He notices the mug, cold and abandoned. He notices the way she has changed her hair, the way she carries herself now. She notices the new lines at the corners of his mouth, the confidence that comes from surviving something difficult without becoming bitter. They talk in short bursts at first—safe details, familiar ground. How was the flight. How was the drive. Did you eat. Each question is a bridge, each answer a step closer to something larger.
At 2:35 AM, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pauses. Karina feels the air shift before she understands why. He looks at her with a seriousness that has been earning its place for months. He takes her hand, the left one, the one that has reached for him across continents without knowing it was practicing.
“I didn’t plan to do this tonight,” he says, and she knows immediately that this is not true in the way people say things to give themselves courage. “I wanted to wait until morning. I wanted it to be perfect.”
She smiles, because perfection has never been their language. She squeezes his hand, because some truths need encouragement.
“I spent six months thinking,” he continues. “About work, about distance, about what it means to come back to someone and feel like you’re coming home. I thought about the nights you stayed up, the mornings you handled alone, the way you made space for me even when I wasn’t here to fill it.”
He reaches into his pocket again and this time does not hesitate. The box is small, almost shy. He opens it with care, like he is handling something alive. The ring catches the light from the streetlamp and throws it back in a way that feels intentional, as if even metal understands ceremony.
Karina’s breath leaves her all at once. The room tilts, steadies. She feels the weight of six months compress into a single moment that asks to be answered. She thinks of the nights she went to bed early because hope was exhausting. She thinks of the mornings she woke up proud of herself for making it through another day. She thinks of the love that waited with her, patient and uncomplaining.
He lowers himself to one knee, not because tradition demands it, but because gravity does. Because some questions carry enough meaning to pull the body toward the ground.
“Karina Larkin,” he says, and the sound of her name in his mouth feels like a blessing. “Will you marry me?”
Time does something strange at 2:35 AM. It widens. It softens. It gives her room to feel everything without rushing her through any of it. She laughs first, because joy needs a release. Then she cries, because relief has been waiting a long time to speak. She nods before she answers, because her body has already decided.
“Yes,” she says, finally, clearly. “Yes. Of course.”
He slides the ring onto her finger, and the fit is exact in the way things are when they have been imagined enough times. He stands and pulls her into him, and they hold each other like people who have crossed something wide and lived to tell about it. The house watches. The streetlight approves. The clock blinks and moves on, satisfied.
Later, much later, they lie in bed and talk in the low voices of people who do not want to wake the future too soon. They plan nothing and everything. They laugh about how tired they are. They marvel at how simple it feels now that the hardest part is over. Karina traces the ring with her thumb, learning its presence, its promise. She thinks of all the nights that led here, all the waiting that turned out to be a kind of preparation.
At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin learned that love does not waste time. It uses it. It stretches it. It asks it to carry meaning until meaning is ready to arrive. She closes her eyes with his arm around her and feels the quiet certainty settle in. The long night is over. Morning can take its time.
The poet never planned on becoming a collector of incidents. He thought poetry would be a clean profession, like arranging stones in a river until they spelled a feeling, or holding a mirror up to the moon and asking it politely to explain itself. He did not know, at first, that poems arrive the way bruises do—unannounced, blooming overnight, tender when touched, impossible to trace back to one clean moment. The poet learned this slowly, through accidents: spilled drinks, missed exits, wrong names spoken at the wrong time, the peculiar violence of memory arriving exactly when it is least invited.
His earliest incident was language itself. Words fell on him like weather, unpredictable and invasive. Some days they were gentle rain, others hail. He remembers the first sentence that ever wounded him: a teacher saying, You have potential, the way someone says this glass might shatter. From then on, he listened carefully to tone, to the way vowels could smile while consonants sharpened their teeth. He understood that words were never neutral. They were always leaning toward consequence.
The poet grew up in rooms full of noise—televisions arguing with each other, adults rehearsing disappointments, clocks that sounded like insects trapped in boxes. Silence was rare, so he learned to carve it. He would slip away to stairwells, to backyards at dusk, to the hollow between his ribs where nobody else could fit. There, incidents gathered quietly: the smell of cut grass mixing with gasoline, the hum of streetlights warming up, the way loneliness could feel almost holy if you stayed still long enough.
Accidents followed him like stray dogs. He tripped over them. He fed them without meaning to. Once, he fell in love by mistake—thought it was admiration, or curiosity, or the simple gravity between two bodies sharing a bus stop. That accident left a scar shaped like a question mark. Another time, he stayed too long in a job that bored him, mistaking endurance for virtue. That accident left him with a vocabulary of fluorescent lights, break-room coffee, and the particular despair of watching minutes behave like hours.
The poet noticed that incidents were loud when they happened but quiet afterward, while accidents were silent at first and then grew mouths. An incident might be a door slammed, a phone call received at midnight, a sudden laughter that felt inappropriate and therefore necessary. An accident might be the way he started flinching at compliments, or how Sundays began to feel heavier than Mondays. Poetry, he realized, was not about choosing one over the other. It was about admitting both had happened to him.
He wrote wherever the accidents caught him. On receipts, on napkins, on the backs of envelopes addressed to people he no longer spoke to. Ink bled through paper like truth through denial. Sometimes his handwriting shook, not from fear, but from recognition. The body knows when it is being honest, and it rarely cooperates. He learned to forgive himself for messiness. Clean lines, he discovered, often lied.
Color came to him late. For a long time, the poet believed the world was mostly gray, with occasional bursts of red reserved for emergencies. Then one afternoon, while waiting at a crosswalk, he noticed how yellow could feel aggressive, how blue could feel apologetic, how green could ache with patience. From that day on, color became a language he trusted more than grammar. He wrote about bruised purples, jealous oranges, the exhausted beige of office walls, the obscene pink of sunsets that seemed to mock human suffering by being beautiful anyway.
Some incidents were inherited. He carried other people’s accidents in his pockets without knowing it: a grandfather’s silence, a mother’s worry folded into neat squares, a father’s temper that arrived like weather fronts. These were not his faults, but they were his materials. The poet understood that blood is a kind of ink, and family stories stain whatever page they touch. He did not try to wash them out. He wrote around them, through them, sometimes directly into them, letting the page absorb what it could.
Love, when it arrived again, did so clumsily. It knocked over lamps. It misunderstood metaphors. It wanted certainty in a house built of drafts. The poet tried to explain himself, but explanation is a poor substitute for presence. This love became both incident and accident: the meeting intentional, the aftermath chaotic. There were mornings filled with light and coffee and shared silence, and nights where words collapsed under the weight of what they were asked to carry. When it ended, it did not explode. It evaporated, leaving behind a residue the poet kept mistaking for hope.
He wrote that too. He wrote about the way endings rarely announce themselves, how they prefer to slip out the back door while you’re still setting the table. He wrote about the sound of a phone that doesn’t ring, the particular cruelty of “take care,” the way memory edits people into kinder versions of themselves. These poems were quieter, but they lasted longer. They sat in the reader like a held breath.
The poet’s body became another archive of accidents. Knees that predicted rain. A shoulder that remembered a fall from years ago. A heart that skipped not from romance but from anxiety. Doctors offered names. He preferred metaphors. It wasn’t denial; it was translation. Saying my chest is a crowded room felt more accurate than saying stress. Saying my bones are tired of holding me up felt truer than saying fatigue. Poetry did not cure him, but it made him legible to himself.
There were incidents of joy, too, though he trusted them less. A song played at exactly the right moment. A stranger’s kindness delivered without ceremony. A line he wrote that surprised him by being good. These moments felt like gifts left on his doorstep by someone who refused to sign their name. He accepted them cautiously, knowing how quickly joy can turn into expectation, and expectation into resentment. Still, he wrote them down, because gratitude deserves a record.
The poet argued often with purpose. People asked him what his work was for, as if poems were tools meant to tighten bolts or fix leaks. He tried to answer politely. Sometimes he said poems were for survival. Sometimes he said they were for beauty. Sometimes he said they were accidents themselves—collisions between experience and language that left debris worth examining. Most of the time, he smiled and changed the subject. Purpose, he learned, is another word that carries a lot of hidden pressure.
Time behaved strangely around him. Years sped up, days stalled, moments stretched thin as plastic wrap. Incidents aged poorly or beautifully depending on how often he revisited them. Accidents matured like wine or soured like milk left out too long. Memory was not a reliable narrator, but it was persistent. The poet stopped trying to correct it. Instead, he let it speak, knowing that even lies reveal something about desire.
There were periods of silence when he wrote nothing. These were not failures, though they felt like it. They were accidents of depletion. The well does not always refill on schedule. During those times, he lived more. He watched people. He listened. He made mistakes without documenting them. He let incidents pass unharvested. When language returned, it did so ravenous, hungry for everything he had refused to name.
He noticed, eventually, that readers recognized themselves in his accidents more than his incidents. Anyone can relate to a car crash, a breakup, a shouted argument. Fewer people admit to the slow erosion, the unnamed habits, the subtle compromises that shape a life. When someone told him a poem felt too real, he understood it as a compliment and a warning. He had touched something tender. He had described an accident people prefer to call fate.
The poet aged into himself. The urgency softened but did not disappear. He became less interested in being impressive and more interested in being precise. Big words gave way to exact ones. He learned that honesty is not loud. It hums. It vibrates. It waits. Color remained, but it deepened—less neon, more dusk. His poems began to feel like rooms rather than performances, places where a reader could sit without being asked to clap.
In the end—though there is no true end—the poet accepted that his life would never organize itself neatly. Incidents would continue to interrupt. Accidents would keep revealing themselves years after the fact. Poetry would remain an imperfect map of a shifting terrain. This did not depress him. It relieved him. Perfection, he realized, leaves no room for witnesses.
So he kept writing. Not to prevent accidents, not to glorify incidents, but to mark where he had been. Each poem became a small flag planted in the chaos, saying: I was here. This happened. This almost happened. This happened differently than I remember, but I remember it anyway. Color spilled. Language bled. Meaning flickered and held.
And somewhere between the stumble and the stride, between what broke and what survived, the poet found a strange, durable grace—not in control, not in certainty, but in the ongoing willingness to pay attention.
I forgot what it’s like to be wanted, and I don’t mean needed in the utilitarian sense, like a spare key or a reliable paycheck, but wanted in the way thunderstorms want open fields and mouths want names whispered into them. There was a time when desire arrived without asking for permission, when it leaned into me with its elbows on the table and said, you, as if no other option had ever existed. Back then, I didn’t have to audition for attention; it found me mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-flaw, and decided to stay. Now everything is scheduled, measured, softened. Affection comes with disclaimers. Attraction clears its throat before speaking. People circle each other like polite planets, careful not to disrupt the furniture. I have become very good at being agreeable, very good at being digestible, very good at being the kind of person you admire quietly and forget loudly. I fold myself neatly into conversations, make room, ask questions, laugh on cue. I am impressive in a way that doesn’t interrupt anyone’s life. I am safe. I am considerate. I am never the thing that ruins sleep. Wanting used to be loud with me. It used to spill drinks and forget plans and text twice in a row without apology. It used to look at me like a problem it was excited to solve. Somewhere along the way, I became a suggestion instead of a craving. A “maybe” instead of a pull. I watch desire now the way you watch weather through a window—aware it exists, unsure how it feels on skin. Sometimes it almost remembers me: a glance that lingers too long, a hand that hesitates before pulling away, a joke that lands closer than expected. But it always corrects itself. Responsibility clears its throat. Long-term thinking wins. I forgot what it’s like to be wanted without a risk assessment, without a pros-and-cons list, without the need to explain myself in advance. I tell myself I am whole, and I believe it, mostly. I am not broken. I am just untouched in the places that used to feel electric. Still, there are nights when I miss being the hunger, when I miss being chosen with urgency, when I miss someone looking at me like restraint is a temporary inconvenience. I forgot what it’s like to be wanted, but I remember what it’s like to ache, and that feels like proof. Wanting is still alive in me, pacing, impatient, waiting for someone brave or foolish enough to knock without manners and mean it.
Tomorrow’s leaves, fluttering in the October wind serenading my Sunday doubt chasing my valiant harmony Yesterday’s shadows, spoke to my brittle heartache growled at my brainwashed reflection crawled inside my grey river my pride is louder than my endless storms Tomorrow’s leaves, floating in my sweetest passions drifting within my crooning veins dancing in sugarcoated air Yesterday’s shadows, whispered and kissed me goodbye disappeared within my iron dignity disintegrated within my thunder my pride is louder than my endless storms
I have come to love the sincere curves of you the gentle tremble of your hands, like leaves drifting on a breath of wind, the way your laughter spills softly, tiptoeing over itself into warmth, how your eyes cradle shadows that shimmer like morning dew catching the first light.
Your imperfections are soft constellations only I have learned to trace each scar, each pause, each sigh is a small lantern glowing quietly in the night, illuminating a world that belongs only to you.I would follow those lights endlessly, for they are the tender poetry of your being,the secret melody I hear when the world goes still.
I love the gentle angles of your thoughts, the corners of your heart that curl quietly inward, the way it folds like a paper boat floating on a river both calm and restless. There is a fragile beauty there, a whisper of magic in the way you simply exist.
I do not wish to smooth your edges; I want to lean into them, like a stream caressing stones, like a hand resting in the warmth of yours. Every imperfection is a brushstroke, painting the luminous masterpiece that is you, and I am endlessly, endlessly in awe.
So remain tender, remain luminous, remain human.I will stay here, in the quiet glow of your light, celebrating every soft, jagged, radiant piece of you for in your imperfection, I have found my home.
There are nights when language collapses under the weight of you. When every word I try to write turns into a trembling pulse, and the ink itself seems to breathe your name. I sit beneath the faint hum of the lamp, thinking of your mouth, your scent, the curve of your breath when it brushes against the idea of me. You are not merely a person anymore—you are an atmosphere I enter, willingly lost, deliriously drowning.
I desire you in ways that silence cannot disguise. You move through me like a fever I’ve stopped trying to cure. Every thought becomes your echo, every moment your shadow. I dream of you in pieces—the way your neck bends when you laugh, the way your lips seem to hold secrets that would burn if spoken aloud. I imagine tracing those secrets with my tongue, word by word, until truth and pleasure are indistinguishable.
Sometimes I think of you in the quietest parts of the day, where restraint pretends to live. But even then, I am undone. The thought of your fingers—how they might travel across my skin, searching, knowing—turns the air into fire. I would let you burn me down to ash if it meant being reborn inside your breath. I would trade a thousand calm lifetimes for one storm with you.
You haunt my imagination like a beautiful sin. Every fantasy begins with you walking through the threshold of my mind, uninvited yet expected, your presence an electric omen. I want the collision, the chaos, the unholy tenderness of our undoing. I want to forget where I end and you begin—to dissolve into the rhythm of your wanting until the world itself forgets to spin.
You are the poem I cannot stop writing, the one that ruins all other verses. I crave the weight of your gaze, the gravity of your silence when it settles on me. I love you in the way a starving thing loves its first taste of rain—wild, unmeasured, desperate to consume. There is something sacred in this madness, something pure in how unholy it feels.
When I close my eyes, I see us—not in perfection, but in ache. Your body against mine, not as conquest but as confession. Every sigh a psalm, every movement a prayer against loneliness. I want to memorize you in touch, to know your skin the way the night knows secrets: intimately, endlessly, without light.
Do you feel it too, that invisible tether pulling, tightening? It’s as though the universe stitched our hunger together and dared us to survive it. My love, I don’t want to survive it. I want to live inside it, to build a home in the wild pulse between your heart and mine.
If I could, I’d press this letter to your chest and let it melt there, word by word, until it became heat. Until all that remained was the truth beneath all language: that I desire you beyond thought, beyond restraint, beyond the limits of the human tongue.
Greetings taxpayers, screen wanderers, and head nodding citizens, let’s dive into the ramifications of ignoring the siren of western civilization, where the infrastructure has had a crack for generations, the colors of the flag have become evanescent, where celebrities are glorified more than soldiers, where the all mighty dollar has more value than life,
Let me introduce myself, I am the Headstone Prophet, the accountant of distractions and destruction, I don’t see black and white, gender, classes, or status, I see authority and figureheads with meaningless titles serve themselves rather than society, I see inflation and corruption welded together to spark the genocide, I am the soothsayer that is gawking at the cemeteries, counting the caskets, I wear a tattoo on my middle finger that reads “The new world order doesn’t deserve a quarter,”
Behind closed doors, the henchmen are sipping on wealth mumbling “if you aren’t rich, you will become my bitch” and the others are ranting “if you aren’t in the grave, you will be my slave,” the catchphrases are lightning and the thunder to their ears, the powers that be want division among the dwellers, they crave disunity and friction, for every label there is a asterisk and a war,
It’s time to pay close attention to these staggering numbers, human trafficking is up twenty percent, the dishonesty among politicians is up a thousand percent, the media will twist the truth fifty percent, the longer you are glued to a screen the quicker you will forget the american dream, in the end the government cares about you is zero percent,
I am the headstone prophet, I stand before you to be the alarm, I stand here to wake up for those who are asleep, I stand here to deliver the most important message of your life, I stand here to hopefully avoid counting your coffin,
(1st Verse) I was born with symptoms of a transparent disease midday convulsions, cynical eyes, buckling at the knees I am stuck with satirical and catatonic eyes, I carry a tapestry of black and scarlet goodbyes, I hear my ghosts playing in a symphony singing my riddles I reside in the flames of the sunset with my anguish crying in the middle
CHORUS: I am the color gray gripping on to my rage I have a sister that screams that seems to never age I have a brother that reads my eulogy from a blank page I am infatuated with the rattle in a cage
(2nd Verse) I was born with my lungs full of wide eyed devastation morning sickness, sarcastic limbs, with my eyesight feeling irritation I am a bottle of endless and crude pills I can feel saliva dripping down my disorder seeking a thrill I can hear my villains playing the violins as I lay out my confessions I reside in the orchestra of my darkness clenching on to my obsessions
CHORUS: I am the color gray gripping on to my rage I have a sister that screams that seems to never age I have a brother that reads my eulogy from a blank page I am infatuated with the rattle in a cage
Bridge: Recklessness is my illness and medicine God laughs at my horrific skeleton I hold hands with Satan’s storytellers I sleep under a rose sky beside the bottom dwellers
CHORUS: I am the color gray gripping on to my rage I have a sister that screams that seems to never age I have a brother that reads my eulogy from a blank page I am infatuated with the rattle in a cage
CHORUS: I am the color gray gripping on to my rage I have a sister that screams that seems to never age I have a brother that reads my eulogy from a blank page I am infatuated with the rattle in a cage
Thy soul shall find itself alone ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone — Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy: Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness — for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee — and their will Shall then overshadow thee: be still.
For the night — tho’ clear — shall frown — And the stars shall look not down, From their high thrones in the Heaven, With light like Hope to mortals given — But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever :
Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish — Now are visions ne’er to vanish — From thy spirit shall they pass No more — like dew-drop from the grass:
The breeze — the breath of God — is still — And the mist upon the hill Shadowy — shadowy — yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token — How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries! —
I’m not craving attention but your lightening connection. I’m not craving lust but the magic in our distance. I desire the conversation that is entwined and pure. I’m not craving anything hollow but the hunger within your desire. I’m not craving a fixation but the beauty of your gust.
I love how you make me feel, the ecstasy burning is real. I love how the flames surrounding never seem to get low, your brilliance always has an extraordinary glow.
I’m not craving the physicality but your alluring intelligence. I’m not craving your nails but your provocative touch. I desire the thirst and the hurricane between our fire. I’m not craving your luscious skin but the magnetic pull between us.
I love how you make me feel, the magnificent sensation is real. I love how the blaze within continues to rise, your affection was always smoldering in your burgundy eyes.
Growth is powerful. Often times you can’t see how much you have grown until you look back at who you were or what you have decided to let go. I have been writing for decades and have kept it a secret. Why? The reasons why I write are endless. It’s therapeutic, mentally stimulating, challenging, a place where I can voice my opinions, and today I believe others can find others or themselves in my poetry. It can be a place of self discovery and reflection.
Generally speaking, the perspective of a poet by society is someone who is broken, emotionally sensitive, and their voice is better articulated through words on paper than being spoken. To clarify this, written words are better used to express themselves emotionally. I can relate to this part. I am an emotional person and often times I cry because I have no words at times. Today I write with more of bigger purpose. I want to show the world that you people are not broken, they are just misunderstood. They are not surrounded by the right people.
At the end of my first marriage, I took it upon myself to attend therapy. I knew there were some things about me I needed to fix. I am a work in progress, in fact we all are a work in progress and under construction. Two of the things in my marriage that I needed to work on was speaking up for myself and taking control of certain aspects of my life. I was married to a woman who was overbearing, domineering and controlling. She was also an alcoholic. On my end, I wasn’t mature enough to walk away and sought out attention in the wrong way ways. I hid my writing at this time. Therapy gave me guidance and direction.
One of the things that I learned in therapy is that my growth was limited due to my surroundings. My father is quite judgmental and critical. Once I remarried and moved away, my confidence in myself flourished. I saw that I needed to move away. I will never tell my father that because I know that would hurt his feelings. I appreciate all that he is given me and the love that he knows how to give. He doesn’t just seem to care how to present sensitive topics, and how you present them often times is more important than what you say. As I get older, I’m trying to be aware of how I present subjects as well. There is a time to be straight forward, direct and there is a time to communicate with compassion.
In the end, I have grown to try to see the world and life through others eyes. I am not dead set on being right and if I am wrong, I will own up to it. I write poetry from the clouds with eagle eyes and try to embrace humanity. I see humanity without labels. There is a long list of individuals who want the world to change and I stand in a small line where I want to change the world. Everything is perspective and perspective is everything.
I pause to deliver my twenty two bold face lies with a smirk. I pause to hand over my ten percent truth. I pause to reveal my entire identity. I pause with doubt and confidence dancing hand in hand. I pause with disgust and trepidation swelling. I pause with deceit and manipulation twitching in my indistinct eyes.
I am a certified playboy with a bronze grin. I am a storyteller with an agenda as long as a manuscript. I am the best seller with sparkled charm. I have a gift of being selfish without you knowing. I am smooth as silk and hide behind my misery.
I pause with friction and distortion entwined within the gospel. I pause with morals placed in my back pockets. I pause with principles and precision hidden in the crevices. I pause with certainty and authenticity running parallel with my darkness. I pause with the picture torn and shredded.
I have a lethal license in zigzagging and swiveling. I shelter my obscure secrets. I have stashed away my troubles, difficulties and mistakes. I suppress my clouds and fog. I tucked away my accidents and splotchy incidents. I locked up my realness and credibility due to the storm of fears. The pleasure maker in me is drenched from loneliness is too afraid to remove the mask.
I’ve kissed your mysteries with amplified eyes I’ve kissed your dead secrets with bloodshot lipstick “And now the love story takes a curve, seeing I won’t be the last and was never the first” I’ve kissed your metaphors with agony in my throat I’ve kissed your afternoons with scalding black coffee brewing “And the now the love story cuts me deep, I’m not myself and see you in my sleep” I’ve kissed your tragedies with a sea of glitter covering up your sins I’ve kissed your lying mouth with my ignorance sealed “And now the love story is coming to an end, now my life can truly begin” I’ve kissed your piano concerto with whispers fluttering in my ears I’ve kissed your villain with accusations stripped and shredded “And now the love story fades into my past, no longer do my tears have your autograph”
Between shadows and memory, one woman’s diary elucidates relationships come and gone, those who helped shape who she is from the inside out. Turning the rain into something beautiful, the opening petals of a rose now blooming.
Veteran poet Braeden Michaels crafts his seventh collection of poetry into a mold of vision. Like pages from a twisted fairy tale, he narrates using his unique poetic style and perspective, first dissecting emotion before reconstructing and reimagining each one.
With bureaucracy, cities are filled with coal black odor and oily propaganda With a nation split, curbsides are weeping ignored tears With silent voices, the suburbs are submerged in delinquent credit cards With unlocked screens, cybersecurity is ringing in their ears With devastation, vacant buildings are filled with cynical vagabonds
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel the thunderous chill I can feel the drops of poverty hit the ground
With phobias, the empyrean is brimming with frozen echoes and hallucinations With trampling chaos, wallets are vacant and figureheads spit out quarters With melancholy, anklebiters and adolescences lose a pinch of oxygen With blatant defamation, freedom is pulled and slapped With misinformation, points of view are written with a vindictive tongue With fraudulence, whispers and blackmail are sleeping in a king size bed
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel the winter’s nights subside I can feel the battle’s fire descend
With deceit, finger pointing and raised eyebrows come with nail biting With money laundering, hands of indulgence are shaking With bombshells, ammunition comes in diabolical forms With sleep deprivation, insomnia is staring at the eyes of the moon With coercion, manipulation is a bouquet of addictive flowers With anger, the dust is swept away under a hand knotted rug
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel the pride sparkle like a star I can feel the graveyard’s breeze glisten
With commentary, opinions shuffle and parade in the opaque air With disregard, wings disintegrate and laughter is tossed in the dumpster With hopelessness, arbitrary symptoms turn into a derogatory spell With disinterest, the jargon is masked with ill conceived agendas With double talk, the carelessness tone is at full volume
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel liberty silently falling from her cheek I can feel the compassion scream as the ink dries
I applaud you for the tenacity you carry on your shoulders I applaud you for the worth you see in your sensitive skin I applaud you for the struggles you slowly shed I applaud you for the fight you possess
Deep into the traces of your veins lies the sterling wings of a divine messenger
I could fall for your grace on stage
I applaud you for the courage that’s woven on your heart I applaud you for the compassion in your finger tips I applaud you for your articulate and sharp tongue I applaud you for the irresistible flame that burns within
Deep into the traces of your veins lies the sterling wings of a divine messenger
I could fall for your backbone in the limelight
I applaud you for the drops of heartache you turned into strength I applaud you for the affliction you endured and overcome I applaud your for not staring into your past with sinister eyes I applaud you for the intuition you carry like a candle
Deep into the traces of your veins lies the sterling wings of a divine messenger
I could fall for your aurora without touching your skin
I use to wear a serenading taxi cab colored sweatshirt with a patch of of birds heading south for the winter to Morgan’s house She’d always laugh at the caption below “Are we there yet?” and pour me a drink She paraded her fathers den that reeked of nicotine and late night affairs Flipping through the eclectic taste of albums Spinning the quarter in the afternoon air Indecisiveness roaming like a soldier Morgan was the advocate of passive aggressiveness Mumbling curse words and playing with a rubber band in tangled dialogues Morgan would often lean in and tap her fingers on my thigh as if she was playing the piano Slightly obtrusive and deliberately coy Consistently playing word games with my emotions Shouting “Love is fickle, but you could dance with me for a nickel” Often devilish wearing a copper halo Tossing idioms between stirred pauses Blatantly ignoring the officer in the pictures on the olive walls She referred to him as the man that dragged her from state to state Leaving her in decorated homes with meaningless jewelry Constantly toying with closeness and distance with my lips in the sanctuary Shaking my head from the autumn perfume From month to month my title changed from tool box to aberration On that fateful hour I made the doorbell sing and no one replied Glancing down at the welcome mat I picked up the ivory envelope Ramblings were engraved and cemented Paragraphs leaving a starry eyed melody Entranced by the last line that catapulted reality “The officer who claims to be my father hasn’t taught me how to say goodbye”
Storm of Ink 