Thoughts From Places: East Coast Road Trip

Drive.

That’s the only thought that comes to mind

when your destination

is anywhere but here

and your car

is fueled with the mere longing

for something more

because life has something in store

but you have to look for it

if it doesn’t come to you

and that’s what I came here to do

Now

the price of freedom

is the same price of gas

in your car

or of a hotel bed for one night

but at either rate

it’ll take you pretty far

even when the roads aren’t clear

you’ll just have to steer a little carefully

Each city along the way

has something to offer you

like you are only going to last

if you put the past behind

and move on to find

whatever you have left about yourself to define

Like New York

you feel important

just  by breathing it’s air

because artistry rolls off

the people working diligently

and that city never sleeps

because you keep thinking that if you blink

you’ll miss something worth living through

And Baltimore

in it’s harbor

you’ll find

that things become more beautiful

if you shed a different light on them

In it’s aquarium

you realize how strange it is

to see

how lonely we can be

even when surrounded by others

You will also realize

that bubbles

are one of the world’s greatest amusements

to mankind

In Fredricksburg

every street

is a machine

to take you

back to a time that’s seen

the hardships

of our history

And you feel

like every corner you turn

has a new story

and you wanna learn them all

because each crack

came one by one

and where one tale ends

a new one has begun

And as it gets darker

the horizon is still something we chase

so we race down a highway where

every bridge

gets you from old to new

and a few of them

are bound to be longer that others

but stop worrying

that you’re not strong enough

or patient enough

to withstand it

or that you don’t have

enough breath

to last that tunnel

because you can handle it

cross it when you get there

enjoy the view

you’ll look back and realize

how much you grew

how you could always see

that it’s not the destination that matters

it’s the journey

The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9puG7HNKa_Y&lc=R24VB9jPoIKU46Swcrvc9dKovolwclexsl-aUFaO1Qk&feature=inbox

Hey Batman

Hey Batman

Haven't seen you in a while.

I've been acting like a child

trying to hold on to you.

Onto the things I have left.

but maybe it's only best

if I let loose.

Let go.

Because it hasn't started to snow

and we're halfway through December.

And I'm begging you to remember

how you used to save the city

and me right along with it.

You should know I always pity

anyone who doesn't take the chance to know you.

But then you advance

in this epic romance

and I have to decide how to

position my heartstrings around you

because in this equation we divide two

until they are fractions too complicated for anyone to deal with.

You have this thought in your head

that pain is not something to regret

but something we only gain from.

And you would light yourself on fire

just to feel how it burns

and every time you turn,

bridges fall down all around you.

The climax of our story is your realization

of your self-deprecation 

through a creation of bad news

and lone walks in the dead of night

without a soul to save, you choose to lose

your sight in the bat cave

that seems so empty lately,

like the spot just below your heart

that starts in between your lungs

and connects directly to your tongue

and curves around every word you've ever made.

And I would have paid

just to see you walk away

from something that you started.

And I would have parted

as soon as I heard you say

that we were too loosely bound 

in this uptight world.

But you would never say that.

Even if we are just

bits of sand falling through the hourglass

and it's only a matter of time before we run out. 
But for now, we just have to be.

You see,
I used to let the sun kiss my skin 

but now I miss the rain 

because we used to hurricane

as if we had a reason to.

But now it's "tis the season" to

making aching hearts

that tell a story in parts

that will never fit together.

But worlds grow and fade

and yet, I wouldn't trade

any late, lonely night

for any sort of fight

that one of us might end up in.
Even when every one of those nights has been
a new hole in my middle.
And that's hurts, just a little.

Just like bullets that run in between eyes

and moments that I catch during your sighs

because I can tie

every memory to a string

that weighs me down like a chain of guilt

and built from one time when your eyes lingered

on mine and every breath that followed

was drawn with caution

as to not disrupt the moments

that we set up around each other

in a fragile manner.

Yet, there was no plan for

falling into this pattern

of touch and go

and living so low
that we want to slow
time, for it threatens to rip us apart.

But I've never felt like that before
Never have I wanted to pull out my hair
or stare so long at something that it combusts
or trust someone so instantaneously
that I'm dangerously close to breaking.
You try to gut out your insides until you feel nothing
in hopes that maybe something
will start to re-build itself inside of you
so that we won't have to starve
the one thing that carves us most.

We are sitting at a traffic light

stuck on go when stop is our main priority.

Even when there isn't a haven in sight

as you and I make up a minority

of stalled out cars and broken dishes,

fallen stars and making wishes

on the smallest of them.

Because they are us

and we are them.

For Betty

I wish I could remember the last thing I said to her. 


Nobody told me she had been sick. 
So maybe it wouldn't have been a surprise 
to learn that sometimes 
we are more than just vines that intertwine 
while growing up the side of somebody else's storyline.
But now, I have a story to tell.
And I've probably put someone through hell
at some point in the past
but I hope it never lasted long.
And I'm humming a song
as the words are compiling
I remember the smiling
that always found a way forward in her voice.


I wish we had a choice
so that maybe I could give
another chance to live.
I wish there was a way
that I could've made her stay with my words
and when she heard
she could grab on like I was throwing a life-vest
into the waters of death.


This may cut us in two.
But that's what death will always do.
Make eyes that stare into nothing.
Trying to lose control until something
else can pull us away.
And as we lay her down, we say
You'll be greatly missed
and then we list the reason why.
But you're born, you live, and die.


And it happens all too quickly.




R.I.P.

X: Hit Me Here

Today is the kind of day when I like to keep the shades pulled. When I lay under crumpled sheets of hazy thought that are too lazy to give me rhymes, so I write this instead. When I wait for hello and dread the goodbye. It's a day where I wrap my arms around myself so that I don't fall apart, as if it could stop the deterioration inside. When I limit my conversing to less than five words a sentence so that I won't concern others of today. When I lower myself into a hole where I am only known as a target. If you lifted the covers you may see an X slashed across my skin.

Arrows are aimed here. Each one is a reminder of something I'd shed a tear over. Or pull my hair out over. And screams are only a cure for the pain. Something that is welcome here. More welcome than I am. 

Memories are also welcome. They are vivid and sharp today. They can etch the horrors into the back of your skull.

Greetings are nice in the morning. Somebody wants you. But goodbyes are a tragedy of a different sort. They are heart wrenching, but even more so if there isn't one at all. Words just fade into oblivion with nothing to cap both ends of a string of conversations. It's a sting you weren't expecting. That's when the X begins to brand. 

It gets really dark here at night. And quiet. But there are no street lamps to flood the sky, so the stars are a clear map for any destination I'd like to get to. Even if I have no one to make the journey with. 

I might stay here for a while.

It's lonely and full of mirrors that reflect my flaws but it's better than having to walk toward the sun and pretend that I like the burn. 

When I'm done, I will walk to nowhere and when I grow tired I'll turn around and head back. Simple as that. Don't worry, I'll tell you what it's like there.

Smiling is something they can't force us to do.

Smiling is something they can't force us to do.

It is something we must bring upon ourselves. For people like you and me, our walls took so long to build up that we only let in the people that we inexplicably trust. And because the walls are so high, there aren't many people around right now.

I'm tired of seeing plastic smiles stamped on faces by society. One day, their cheeks will fall and they will be lost in a world that turned away from them. And they will beg to be let back into a ring of socialites because it's all they've ever known. And curls will deflate and nail beds will cake with dirt as the silence turns them savage. They will finally revolt, as they refuse to let themselves break, and they claw, until their fingers bleed, at the walls society trapped itself in. But here's the difference between society and us; They built their walls high to shelter the people within. We use ours to keep people out.

But maybe the walls are built all the same, we only use them however we choose. Maybe we all share the same walls, but they are interpreted into or own boundaries until we think they belong to us. And the rest of society lives inside the walls, interrupted only by the rare outburst, which is disposed of like any personal thought to grace their minds. You and I, we live outside these walls. The difference between us and the savages is that we accept it. We are free to find beauty in our flaws. And it only strengthens us as we gladly sit in the rain and count the lines on our hands, our screw-ups, the people we love, and the crimes we've committed. And in situations like these, I find myself pressing my palms into the earth so that maybe I can leave an imprint of my journeys and someone can know that they're not alone.

There has to be something that separates us from them. From the people who drink to erase who they are, until they become indistinguishable from the next. From the people who look down on us because we are free to love the wind and admire it because it is ever changing. Our chains will not be from them. We are allowed to hold our thoughts out in front of us and analyze them as they rest in gentle fingers that pick apart. And they shut us out in the first place because we were smart enough to realize that something was offbeat. Maybe it was us. We just knew it wouldn't work out from the start. But in a way it makes me grateful. While they're confined to one familiar area, it's allowed the space that gives us room to wander.

But when walls start to cave in they try to turn around and take back words that are not easily forgotten. It is thought that this is acceptable because they think they are above us. But you and I know that there is no competition that connects us to them. They'll try to pretend that nothing ever happened, and this is all a big misunderstanding that they are going to pass off as a joke. And they'll expect us to laugh. But smiling is something they can't force us to do.

500 Words of Night

    A few thousand words exchanged, a few more just because:

     It was one of those nights when I didn’t want to sleep. I was brimming with poetic ideas like steam rising from a cauldron, fire smoke drifting into the sky. I had words forming in my head, gliding on the walls of my skull, sinking down into my brain. Words that tasted right in my mouth, words that sucked on my heart.

     They came in the moments I was unavailable. But I blocked out the world and stepped out of my feet. I knew it in the very core of my being that nothing was going to be unavoidable. Sitting in silence with broken eyes, I shut off my senses, and tried not to forget the good. Close the shades, lock the door, open my mind. I spoke them because you asked me to.

           The wind wrapped around my skin, pulsating in my veins, accompanying the low sound of a piano. Leaves swirled around my feet and crunched beneath them. The wind caught in my throat, washed my face clean. The rain came down impossibly hard, kissing the foliage, soaking my hair to my temples, palms open toward the sky. The drops ran down the crevices of my face, between my eyes, around my cheekbones, under my jaw, spilling unto my collarbone.

      It was one of those nights when I wanted to be awake. My life foreshadowed itself. I shared something I never shared before, secrets I wanted to hold inside myself. My heart jumped in my chest, a painful reminder of what threatened to control my thoughts, and I would not see anything else. I let myself fall apart just to see who could put the pieces back. Tighten the screws. Breathe the air back in.    

     I wanted to confirm something in the middle of the night but couldn’t put my tongue around it. It was a time of putting things in words you would understand. That I would understand. I was sitting up, couldn’t lie down. Couldn’t put a blink in my eye for wondering if when I woke up, would I still be in a world in which your words never disappeared?

     I sit here in a vast moment of unrequited love stories and undeniable truths whilst feeding an infatuation that had been starved for months. I stapled the seconds together until the time was no longer distinguishable. I was burned by a chill. Scarred into existence by waiting up for something unknown. It was hope. Wanting it to come to me. Wanting it to come alive and walk through door. Wanting it to rebuild the soul that had slipped away from this world.

     But I figured we’d just stay up past the hourglass and create new elements with our minds, create new oceans with our tongues, new mountains with our hearts. This was more important than sleep, at the top of my list, in the bottom of my heart. Sleep could wait. The words could not.

This is My World