The Poetry Marathon

All that I know is this morning

It has since come and is almost gone

All I know is my past

how I’m supposed to be this same certain thing

How growing isn’t supposed to change your sweetness

How life isn’t a medium of transformation

How the bad things you’ve done, you wish you hadn’t

How you never seemed to learn how to make peace

within yourself and even as an adult

you are still very much certain that you are still searching

for that arrival…

for that certainty

for that destination of being your true self

and not quite knowing what that is exactly

It takes more effort to clean

than it does to be messy

Cleanliness is a science

Being Messy is an art

I’ve never quite mastered

either one

There is no true line of division in time

Past or Future

Present is an instant

a second

and its all over

like sand particles and ocean shores

it washes away like dust

no line of division

like pain

like love

like life

at some point

it all washes away

and will stop mattering

even to you

Decisions are journeys

Road signs, turns, empty tanks

Always keep moving

Sometimes I treated love like a spare tire

Instead of like the only tire

Patching it up, using fix a flat, removing nails

And anything else

Always trying to repair it in some kind of way

Love is like a cancer attacking my breastbone

Sore to the touch

Reoccurring, suffocating, treating

I have learned to enjoy my days without

Love….My late nites

Consist of watching the moon form

Light crystals over sidewalk pavements

Which I imagine are crystal blue lakes

I no longer drive to the nearest gas station

with a dollar in hand

To inflate my tire in preparation for the next day.

Home is where the heart is

But most days I feel heartless

My home lies only within my body

Its the only place I feel truly accepted

Warm, confident, loved

Every journey always leads me back

To this place.

I am the road most traveled

And I am the only road

I feel safe to take

The people that give the most

are often the ones searching for meaning

searching for some type of recognition

Fulfillment in their lives

I admire those people

Who love without limits

Whole-heartedly, givingly, sweetly

But really there is no easy way

to receive love back

But their willingness to try

For the matters of their own heart

Helps me see the humanness in us all.

if I jumped off of this balcony

I wonder if I would land on my feet

I can hear my knees give out now

broken like cracked wooden panels

If I don’t land at all

I wonder if I beat my arms fast enough

If I would glide

and the tips of my toes would scrap across the wooden panels instead

Until I’m lifted high enough

To brush strokes among the clouds amd leave my footprints in the sky.

You said you didn’t want me to keep it

and that pushed me to the edge

because initially you said that you did

now you say it is because I am so far away

so you don’t want me to keep it

like you didn’t want me to take birth control

and you would put it in your hands and god’s

but now you say its because I am so far away

so I decided that I didn’t care if you didn’t want me to keep it

because you pushed me to the edge

you didn’t want me to take birth control

and said for me to place trust in your hands

and god’s

so I did

You aren’t a bad guy

I just learned to be my own friend

and now that you see my strength

and that I’ve flown out of your hand

Now you are on board with me keeping it

and said you would definitely stand up and be a good dad

Abrupt, full of doubt, steady movement

swollen ankles, motion sickness

broken charger, new journal 5 pages full,

heavy clouds, cool breezes, police lights,

hotel rooms, bus rides, unfinished apartment, cancelled debit card, missing my kids,

sleeping on floor, broken friendship, airports

dead cousin, funeral, pregnancy, hail storm,

totaled car, new job, new daycare, new strangers,

and I would do it all again

minus the cousin and funeral part

something about being alone.