The Self Improvement Manual

When I close my eyes I can see clouds against a sapphire sky. My eyelids could be transparent, but I'd rather believe that He took a paintbrush and swirled the images there Himself. I'm not typically an outspoken person, at least not when it counts, so I hope to someday have a tongue that can do more than swallow and lick, and a mind that stays out of the gutter when I write a poem. Hundreds of thick green vines couldn't hold me back when I'm driven, but they also couldn't pull me along when I'm lazy, which is completely unnatural so why am I the exception? Sometimes I feel like a blemish on this place like a blemish on my face in my 6th grade yearbook photo and I cried and cried. How could I have been so shallow?... I'll tell you why because I'm still only a kid though I hate to admit I have no experience and can not yet form original opinions, selfless thoughts, or beliefs...Ha!I'm not sure if that's an acceptable excuse anymore seeing as 3/20ths are already gone if I go by Five For Fighting.I have driven hundreds of miles and seen just as many faces but I'd like to tell myself that I have left a permanent smile on at least one of them and I wish I could remember every mile and each face because somehow I neglected to make a scrapbook. As the yellow and white dotted lines of this road blur together I can only hope that they don't form into chains, but instead into handrails aiding me across rough terrains or at least so I can slide down them. I'll tumble and scrape my knees, lose a few brain cells through means both legal and illegal, have my ambitions accordion folded in 6 different directions... Just like I will accordion fold some other poor kids heart BUT that's life dust yourself off. We can't be perfect all the time so for now I'm content watching the clouds float by on the backs of my eyelids, because when all the grime is wiped off the mirror that's the only productive thing to be doing anyway. 
You should try it too.

For You The Moon

Sometimes when I hold my hands up to the sky, I wonder if could fit the moon in the spaces between my fingers.
But there is no wondering needed, because I know that as long as I
Eat my vegetables
Kneel by my bed every night
And never let a bad thought fight its way into my mind
I will have lunar dust on my hands.

Even as the moon came hurdling towards me I didn't anticipate what would happen as it fell into my hands, my wrists snapping under the weight
Exposed now were my milky white bones
Matching my milky white teeth because I brushed them so hard
Just so I could have the moon like you said I would.

Now as I sit on the ground in a pool of disappointment, all I have between my fingers is air.
Often I have thought of words that can encompass my true core
Naive was never on that list before now.

Will Be Titled Later

This day is lazy, and boring, and the same as it was last week.

And the week before.

And last decade.

And the decade before.

This is what has been known since the moment I could correctly pronounce "dog,"

and for a few of the "overachievers" it was the word "cat."

And every year since I've learned that the words become more complex,

and tongue tripping until your spilling them, spitting them out of your mouth and onto the paper or onto the keyboard or onto the field,

And after a while you can't seem to remember how you could have ever possibly struggled with "dog" or "cat" or "over achiever".

But I hear that's a natural way to feel,

Because after all these years everything has grown from nothing to something and it's easier to sum up the most important things with vague references,

Because if you put a name on something it may be written down, and if it's written down then someone could come along and erase it.

So no, I'm not trying to belittle the real reasons for why I am existing at this exact moment.

I just want to give credit to the soft droning of familiar voices, and the few scattered puns that have transformed into full stand up routines.

And the stumbling upon common ground.

That links people who thought they only shared the single quality of being a being.

The slow realization that the breeze that is giving you goose bumps is coming from an open window, as a short summer ends a long winter.

And most significant, the far off sense of loss that enshrouds our core as we stand on the very spot that memories once were made, or so I've been told.

Even though I know that someday I could offer the world more, or I could offer a little less so someone else could offer a little more, maybe I want to be wasteful for once.

And sometimes as I stare out the panes of glass that surround me,

I'll be wondering if I'll ever get out,

Then two milliseconds later I'm praying that they are thick enough.

Thick enough to keep the rest of the world from getting in.

It all started when I cut my English muffin perfectly down the center

There's something to be said for birds and blue and mood music because

Suddenly I'm shouting and weeping and smiling and shrieking after I realize

I have blood running through my veins.

Blood that isn't thinningclottingspillingonthefloor

And if it was seeping out into a puddle I would have people to mop it up and pump it back into my skin.

I'm so insanely fucking thrilled and I don't know or care why.

I Drink Milk But My Bones Still Break.

I can talk but I talk too much.

Just as I can spell but not deffinetly.

I drink milk but my bones still break.

I can sing but my voice will waver.

But it's not about the song.

That plays time and time again but not because it's a truly good song...no.

It's playing perchance there is a small piece of shrapnel in the lyrics that could give you some inspiration to pull your head out of...the clouds.

And while I'm leg crossing and eye widening, I'm trying to appear like I couldn't care less that each passing second is a fraction of my life ticking by, because what's the use of having fast reflexes if nothing is ever thrown your way?

I can talk but I talk too much.

And I can write for miles and in my mind there's no negative reciprocal for that.

Hello You.

My hands are on home row but my heart is on my sleeve.

Along with every cotton fiber of my unusually whimsy being.

I'm on a first name basis with misinterpretation so please

Let's

make

history.

Not If, When.

Purple paints and ticking clocks.

Are not enough to satisfy even the most practical of minds because

I'm young and dumb but eye have Is and

I've sensed the roots of recklessness.

Outstretching oceans with high tides,

and handsome men with low slung guns.

Stories that make movies look anticlimactic,

bundles of lazy days with plot twisted endings,

moments that make you reconsider that self pity that stays locked away.

 I blur my eyes and cross them a bit but then all I see is purple paint so I

Sigh

For now.

Glass Wall

I possess patience and compassion and integrity and sometimes hope and fingers.

Fingers that could entwine.

And maybe this isn't the time or the place, but I'm moving the hands on this clock.

And maybe I like to say maybe because it's better than no.

I'm standing, swimming, singing, sleeping, sighing, sitting...

And I'm living.

And You're living.

Obviously we already have more than enough in common.

But there's a truth that needs telling,

a fact that needs facing.

All we should have done is written in tear stains on your bedroom floor.

Adolescent Crisises

Take

Your

Pick

But what if this isn't your path?

And what if that's not it either?

Where's the go back ten years option?

soyoutapyourpencilagainstthedeskandmakeadesperatefacetoyourfriendbutshe'sdonealreadysoyousuckitupandscribbleitin

Ready, set, go.

Pettiness is a thing of the past.