Done

I'm done crossing finishing lines to find you had left,

Done building bridges over rivers that have dried up,

My tears that have dried up,

and they left nothing but dust.

There is something I must say to you, 

Because if there is one lesson you've taught me,

It's to never trust a text message.

It's like a busted tire on the freeway heading towards the edge of a cliff,

You can't deny the inevitability of falling.

The few seconds we have during free fall will leave me dangling on the idea that maybe, we could have turned a little earlier. 

Made a few different choices,

Gotten a tire change,

This idea can change.

Along with the beats our hearts sing to,

And I've always been a little sharp,

But I'm sure you'll find a way to tune me,

When you leave my strings to settle in the reverberations of a door slam. 

Joshua Ballard "SFB"

I had the pleasure of getting to see Joshua Ballard perform live. He is a really cool person, and a great performer. Here is one of my favorite poems by him! 

My Last Moments

In my last moments I want to not be afraid.

I want fear to fade from the foreground,

I want to hear the sound of my heart beating,

and young lungs breathing.

We'll keep breathing,

Filter all of the sweetness from candy apple smiles into our bloodstreams,

and we'll scream from rooftops,

We'll scream from our pens.

I won't be afraid,

With your apple cider lips singing softly next to me,

I'll slip slowly,

Trust me.

There is nothing to be afraid of when death is digging your grave,

and he has been digging all our lives,

Death is tired now.

In my last moments I want to play sax,

Let every note drip off of my breath,

Crystallize in midair and just....

Sit there, 

and be beautiful.

I'll play with all of the soul left in me,

There has to be something left,

Some small corner containing the last bit of soul undeparted.

The part that hasn't given up yet,

I haven't given up yet.

In my last moments I want to have hope.

Reality can slip from my mind,

So I can dream of an afterlife,

And whatever's out there,

I'm ready for it,

I don't know what to expect,

But I expect the world to keep spinning at the same speed,

I expect a moment to reflect,

That second,

Where your life flashes before your eyes and you'll have all the time you never had

In that second,

Time will fold like the note you passed in the 5th grade,

I want to relive every day.

A lifetime is a longtime,

But I'd spend an eternity pressing replay just to hear your laugh.

To see you smile. 

To see you. 

In my last moment,

I want to fall in love with you again.

Come on Get Higher- Matt Nathanson

Matt Nathanson- Come on Get Higher

                                                           "I miss the sound of your voice"

I am a pair of keys and a sock.

I’ve been focused on writing about myself so often,

 I’ve seem to forgotten the poetry written on your face,

The way it just rolls down your cheek bones in streams of liquid nitrogen that just seem to freeze me,

Dropping to the grass in the nonexistent moonlight,

The stars were our friends that night.

That night,

I forgot to bring a pen to paper,

To pull together whatever strength I had left to search for a way to tell you how much it meant to me.

How the poetry written on your face was beautiful,

How I wanted to stare into space with you more often,

Because the stars never felt as hot as they did with you.

Now,

This might be more of a rant,

Some kind of soliloquy skipping to the sounds of the pebbles under your feet,

But I will shout it from your rooftop,

Because I want the sky to hear me.

I want it to know that under every night sky I lay with cracked eyes,

Trying to find where we fucked up.

Where the fine print became important,

And turned this into a contract of convictions and lose.

I have never misplaced anything as special as you,

But I’ve realized through the dots in your i’s that you misplaced me,

That I was a pair of keys waiting to be dropped behind the couch,

Or a sock destined to disappear in the black hole of the dryer.

You bought me a one way ticket out of your heart,

And I knew that from the start.

That I was bound to board a bus on a highway home,

Passing cars always look like you.

Always somewhere to go,

Moving forward with the thought that someone was looking at our dust settle.

The dust always settles.

Looking for my story

My writing has been taking a turn recently.

Besides the fact I hardly ever take the time to sit down with a pen and my notebook, the times I do I come to the same conclusion. I lack a story. Now, I have plenty of tales to tell, and situations to explain, and ideas to expand on, but I lack a purpose. I've been searching for my purpose in the world, and now I've been searching for a purpose in writing. That is the beauty of expression. There doesn't have to be any purpose, if it makes you feel like you get your idea out into the world, then it is worth it. Still, I would like to know what my story is now, it would save me from a lot of shit later on.

I don't feel like a poet... So I don't know why I consider myself to be one. I have invested myself into the local atmosphere of writing, and still? I feel like the odd one of the group, the penny in the field of nickles. They breathe every word constantly, and I feel like my writing is just a cigarette break.

Sometimes I wish that I was like them. Those people you admire so much but are afraid to tell.
The people with a story to yell, who actually know who they are. Who have something to share with the world.


I don't know who I am yet.

wall·flow·er

  [wawl-flou-er] 

noun

1.

a person who, because of shyness, unpopularity, or lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance.

Sandcastles

My hand isn't proficient at writing,

And despite my mind molding this language

My hand cannot find what tongue it is spoken in.  

 A  Rosetta stone lost from my fingernails,

There is something lost in these translations.

There is no common denomination of what can be said,

And what isn't.

We never said a lot, did we?

Still my hand never skips a beat when it is writing about you.

It was the twenty love notes and seven goodbye letters that led my hand into this deep pit of shitty penmanship.

My hand has forgotten how to write,

Forgotten how to transform myself into ink and explore the rugged mountains of a blank page.

And It stayed empty for a long time,

Until scribbles became letters, and letters became words that I used to reach out to you.

Sentences becoming the only hook that could onto you,

Because I was never skilled at holding your hand,

From the way my heart tightened your grasp,

To the time your fingers slipped away, 

I miss them.

Those moments at night when the only sound you can hear is two different pitched whispers.

To all those nights I spent trying to focus your telescopic vision that has always seen right through me.

Back when the fog on the horizon made the sky look like it was on fire,

And it blazed along with the warmth of your smile.

When the salty air spread over our breath in the early hours of the morning,

We were left walking these beaches,

Jumping over every sidewalk crack,

Skipping that soundtrack to that one song we knew all the lyrics to

And dancing in the break of the waves that were constantly crashing over my sandcastles.

I built those for you.

I've been practicing making sandcastles,

Under every summer sun I spent without you,

Not knowing who you were.

I miss the sound of your name for the first time,

The way it tiptoed across my tongue,

Kind of like the first time I said “I love you”

When we were sitting underneath the stars.

Do you ever take the time to look up at those same stars?

 I have, and yes,

Maybe I have been building sandcastles too often.
And haven’t spent enough nights walking these beaches,
Where we could lay there,
and greet the abyss of space with  open hearts,

And hear how humbled we could be if we listened to the world.
At night, we would return to that coastline,

Allowing the earth to move beneath our feet,

And leave the memory of our presence muddled in a water filled puddle,

Watching our feet leap over the reflection of the last rays of sunshine scratched into the earth,

Feeling time glide across the surface of the water…

And land in our hands.

I remember the way the salt felt on your finger when you ran it over my forehead…

How I looked in your eyes and questioned the depths of their perception,

Allowing my sonar ridden pupils

To see if they could echo in your mind.