I feel the warmth coming on, Such a sweet escape for a lost kid like me. It’s keeping me alive, But slowly killing me inside. And I don’t know what I've become But I like it better than what I used to be. I’ll travel the country some day, I’ll reflect on the things you used to say Like somehow you had it all figured out. Her voice was beauty presented through eloquence and nonchalance; Oh there is such beauty in an old soul that doesn't care. She playing the melodies of my childhood with her vocal chords and she doesn't even know it and I’m lost in her voice and the way she breathes, but I’ll never show it. So let’s spends our days Like they might be our last Forget these broken promises They’re all in the past And like a ship out at sea The waves will lead you straight to me And we will live out our lives Peacefully I’m finding pieces of glass in the carpet from when her perfect frequencies got the best of my shitty apartment’s windows and mirrors. But even without those the world had never felt so clear cause from the time she stepped through the door, everything changed for me. And nothing was ever the same. Our ship withered away, plies splitting apart like our lies split us apart, and left us stranded. But In the end I think fate had it right along. Maybe our driftwood will make its way back for the coming generations, splintered oak barely recognizable by even the most familiar of faces to fill the spaces between the things we wrote down and the things we forced ourselves to forget. And they'll know that despite nature's cruelest attempt to put out the fires we built, we made it. And we made it work.

You’re really not as bad as you seem But I don’t care because I’ll believe anything you tell me So tell me. Who are you and what you done with you Or is it me? Or are we both my own worst enemy. Tell me you feel good about me so I can feel worse about myself And try and hide that with passive emotion and an out-of-control-locomotion of the mind that stops at nothing to run circles around me and everything I love. But at least I’ll have you in arms then, in the circle around my heart. But I hope you find a way out. I hope you tear my walls apart, let in the breeze and show me what it really means to feel cold and alone. And leave the light on, I don’t wanna miss a thing. Maybe I’ll follow you out the back door, or where the door used to be anyway, I hope by the time I get there, there will be no remnants of this place left so when I leave I won’t be able to look back because I won’t know what to look for. And then I’ll be forced to look forward for once. It makes me jealous of retrograde amnesiacs, as if they ever had a choice, and I know it sounds crazy but I sometimes wish someone could come along and erase everything before, so I can really think about starting new. Meet me halfway, between the past and where are today, and tell me with honest eyes that I’m okay. That nothing I could ever do would make you think any less of me, especially not anything that happened before these moments we have before us today. But don’t say it if you don’t mean it. Let me redefine the space between the lines for you and translate the empty space into something you can comprehend because we both know you can’t comprehend me or anything I’m saying and that’s probably a good thing in some kind of sick twisted way. My lines are getting weaker and weaker, does it make me a better artist if I at least realize that? Does it make my value as poet step into a separate dimension like hey I understand that I’m not what I used to be, good for me right? And man this isn’t poetry you’re just screaming into the mic But what’s the difference anyway, it’s not any less ‘artistic’. So take your shitty judgments to another show and leave me alone.

I've divided myself into a hundred different pieces, 100 cities and a hundred different beds with dreams connected by dots on a withered map. I'm here with you now, I promise. But I can't promise how long it will be for. I know this doesn't help but I want you to know that I still think about you on the nights when the drives are long and I get lost between the miles. Time is an hour glass, ticking away. And I guess you'll never know how badly I wish I could stay. Here with you. But trust my words because they're all I've got left. And I promise you that I'll the not to suffocate this like I always do, maybe I'll even pretend not to care. Because after all we've been through, you'd be crazy to think that I won't be there. Remember how we were crazy about each other? That energy seeped out of our eyes and our bodies, a kind of vibrant innocence that we learned to love and grew to lack. I started to fade when those colors started to fade. It's funny to think about how much of a contradiction I've become. Like is give all I have to forget about you but without you I'd have nothing to give. It's a vicious circle that's had it's tides around my neck for as long as I can remember. Now just to kick the chair out from under us and end something that should've never started. I'm coming home to a new world, with the same towns with our fingerprints laced all over them, places we called our own. I'm such a sucker for my early youth, and I know you are too. I remember writing things like this wen I was younger and had nothing else to write about and now I rarely find the time to trace the lines and when it gets colder, my soul grows older and older and older till I think I'm wise beyond my years but really I'm a product of all the fears you've instilled in me. Let's take a walk together. Don't worry, you won't remember this when you wake up. This could only exist in my dreams. Man I moved I mountains for you, carried your baggage as if it were my own but the valleys grew deeper and the rivers ran dry, an emotional drought not countered by any sudden rainfall. These desolate lands built their own walls, nothing I had any control over. Instinct kicked in when I laid my boundaries. Because all it ever was was survival of the fittest and I am so out of shape. I was out of shape before contortion meant anything to me.

I’ve been walking through life blind, desaturating my entire perspective for the sake of feeling something, an unhealthy approach to searching for meaning. the colors have been there all along, i’ve just shut it all out to give me something to destroy myself about. and now i’m thinking out loud, because the world deserves this more than I do. a lack of hue is no reason to stop living, to stop pressing on. because it’s always been there, the light refracting with no sense of exhaustion or tire because unlike us it lets nothing get in its way of being all it can be. I wish I could say the same for me. I wish I assumed my own position with ease rather than forcing myself to get out of bed and letting myself fall victim to the voices in my head. our irises have absorbed so much more beauty than we give them credit for, I think we’ve taken advantage of everything to the point where there’s nothing left to take and we don’t know how to give. and that’s no way to live. but when you don’t know anything different than what you’re accustomed to you’ll find yourself at dead ends, over and over again. 30 years from now I wanna look back and see this chapter of my life as a turning point, as a pivotal part of my evolution into something bigger, something greater than I could’ve ever imagined. and I hope you’re there to see it happen. 30 years from now, I wonder what my life will look like. I can’t settle for anything short of remarkable. the world will hear this and coin it for conceit, but I guess I’ve just never understood how anyone can sell themselves short on such a large scale. we’ve all got the luxury of witnessing the colors of our lives, changing and rearranging, every single day. we’re all canvases of missed potential, and for what its worth I think that’s okay, because no matter what you have or haven’t done, you’ve always been beautiful, and you always will be. let me break through the glass house that you’ve locked yourself inside of. let me set you free. My whole life has been a canvas of missed potential. A technicolor vision is all I’ve ever known. I’m a mess of useless overtones. I am a canvas of missed potential. A canvas of missed potential. Hey, it’s me. I know things have been hard. Trust me, I’ve been there myself, And I've been here for you. I just wish you’d pick up the phone Cause i know you’re all alone And you could use the company. You could use someone to sit with you When your nights are sleepless. I never wanting anything bad for you, Never wished that upon you or anyone else But somehow i still feel like it’s my fault; So as the calls decrease, and the messages fade away, Just know that I tried, always tried to make this work. So goodbye. Goodbye forever.

I have lost sight of the stars, there are so many nights spent longing under the same dark expanse that threatens to swallow me whole. And sometimes I wish it would. I stumble through the dark, where the fog meets my ankles and dances playfully as if to prove something but I’m searching for an old, forgotten lighthouse, the one thing that reached out for me when the blackness thickened. I still see traces of its luminous existence, fading in and out with the sound of the wind in the leafless trees, rustling past my ear and down the coast where I believe I was born to live and die. I guess I always thought I’d live out my years, with my soul cast into the sea, where a different piece of me is cast into the ocean with every changing season. When those gusts find their way back home to your door step, I know you’ll be able to sense our legacy in the air, we were always so in tune with each other. And I hope you’ll find closure in knowing there was no other choice. I always knew you’d be the one to cast the first stone. Somewhere between the inevitable fault line and a pipedream exists a wrinkle in time, a place where I can reside, that only locks and opens from the inside. So no one can try to live my life for me. I will create a reality, a story in and of itself, where I can float weightlessly amongst my emotions personified through tangible representations of my life and my heart. My reality will be my best kept secret and my most prized possession because there is something so serene about having something that is truly yours, through and through. I have lost sight of your eyes; they were the stars in my skies, those familiar friends that became so important to me in the long run. They guided my way so many times, like some old ancient literature that sits on a shelf for generations until someone comes along in desperation. Except I wasn’t desperate, I was just helpless, and you never stayed in one place. You always told me to write, to write until my hands were no longer able, and I believed there was some kind of precious, underlying motive that slipped through the cracks between your radiated wavelengths. I always thought the letters you requested but never received were exemplary of your concept of “always keeping in touch” but I think I’ve grown to learn that it was never about me, but to further clear your conscience from the lasting damage you dealt to my seasick heart, it was a seasickness you caused. You knew writing was the one thing that would never leave me, so that when you did, you knew that something was taking care of me still. It’s such a bittersweet thing.

I keep falling back, back to old habits and I don’t know why I even have them to begin with, but I’ve have them from the beginning. So I’m telling you now I, I don’t want 'em You can have my soul, you can take my problems I don’t want 'em (no no no no) I don’t want them. Yeah I'm sayin' oh no no you cant have all of me You’ll be gone soon, I’ve been waitin’ for this day for years now Removing myself in the best way that I know how Cause how else will I find a way out You’ve got me locked in your walls I can’t move or speak at all So I fear this is becoming Everything I never wanted You to want me not to want. But you don’t know what I need And I’m hoping someday you’ll see That even though you got the best of me I still never gave you all of me. I said I’d never go back But here we are again Couldn’t keep my hands clean I wish I never went back But the blood’s on my hands this time So here. we. are. Saying no no no you can’t take what you need 'cause baby oh You don’t know what I see From me to you baby you’ll be gone soon So I guess we live and learn Life is not a game where we take turns So much for playing fair It’s like I could die right now and you wouldn’t care But I’d rather die than fall back to you Cause that’s the last thing that I’d ever want to do So say goodbye to the friend you thought you knew Cause I’ve had enough of your shit and I’ve had enough of you.

You find comfort these days in a drunken state, pull a layer of fog over your secrets buried beneath, guilt free for a short eternity till you fall asleep and then life repeats. It will all be over soon though, I promise. The fight is finally done. Don’t you know you’re capable of so much more How has no one ever told you that before? You gotta believe me, there’s nothing worse than falling short of your potential, and you have so much more of that than so many others that I know. I want you to realize that there is more opportunity in those moments of uncertainty than there ever was at any other time in your life, so be ready to dive head first for the things that might hurt the worst and risk losing what you love to something you don’t know. Where will you turn when there’s nothing left? You swear you’ve tried your best but your eyes tell me different, and I thought your best would be better. You took the road less traveled, traced back your footsteps with symbols embedded into the gravel, and watched in awe as the storm failed to disturb them despite their efforts. And here you are now. Here at the Great Becoming. Your first step from the road to the dusty trail. The rescue, like wind finally catching the sail. The next move when you’re backed into the corner. The escape from the top floor -- you're at the turning point to face the lions. The unexpected choice when you’re out of options. The zombie ambitions, kicking over their headstones and crawling up the sides of the grave to make headlines: You can’t bury a dream that refuses to get slept on. So hit the ground running, this is your Great Becoming, The arrival of yourself to who you want to be. Where you want to be. No maps, no instructions, no role-models. Just the instinct to unlock an identity from behind a rib-cage dungeon and set it free. To look into the mirror and be better than content, to be proud of the fight and the scars and time spent. You will not give up now. The answer isn’t easy but it is simple: You are the only you. And you will get up and go. You will get up and go.The struggle is fog, and like fog it will fade. And you will look back and say: I set my mind to do and I did, to sing and I sang, and I spill my heart to find it. You spilled your heart to find yourself, sang the same songs over and over till you believed they were true. Your motives are so deeply rooted that they surpass the laws of the universe and expand into something so much more ambiguous. I’m not sure whether or not I’m jealous or spiteful, either way I’m something and that’s better than being nothing I guess. We rose from the dark ages, Out of an era of self indulgence and ignorance. We're no different from the rest. I found you in the gutter, Found you lost without direction. And acted like my ambitions were a compass. I kind of bent the truth knowing that my true north was not the same as yours. The magnetic pull on my heart leads me away from the ordinary; coordinates ranging from east to west and stretching past any boundaries I thought existed. But we marked the spots on the maps and adjusted accordingly. We tried to keep an open mind about it all in hopes that everything would turn out alright. We laughed at the magnitude of our journey, as if it was the only way to keep our heads up when the rain pounded in torrents, with deafening vibrations leaving our eardrums begging for mercy. But we laughed, because I guess we thought you'd have to be some kind of crazy to brave the elements like we did. And we were, we were children at heart, wild at heart. The journey kept us feeling young. We lived our days as evolving pieces stuck in limbo between childhood and adulthood. We walk on the same soil that our fathers and brothers are buried beneath, where we will all be laid to rest someday. Our children will take our place, and our place in history closes where new dynasties and legacy are given root through inevitable changing of times and shifting plates. Take comfort in the fact that when we are gone, when we are dead, the seeds we planted live on through memories solidified in earshot, anecdotal translations of those we never knew were listening. Somewhere down the line someone will stumble across these words and know our stories. They will understand our lives, not by preconceived notion or tainted belief, but rather from face value honesty stored through ink on yellowed pages and creases on corners of selections we deemed more valuable than the rest. No one will know the secrets we kept buried beneath our beds or the lies we fed to save face but rather they will know what impact we had, what waves we made and the webs we wove to give light to something beyond what we knew.We made our way through overgrown grass and weeds to find something worth leaving behind. Taking fragments from the dust and bestowing them in memory boxes to be preserved for an illegitimate eternity.

My dear, The days are getting longer out here. I’ve still got my brothers but I’m so alone out here. Got your picture in my pocket, The swamps haven’t been kind to the image, But you’re still as beautiful to me now as you were the day we met. Even through a weathered image I can still remember your scent, The way your skin glistened in the sun. I remember it like it was like yesterday, So my image of you has stayed the same. I wait anxiously for a sign of relief, Sometimes hoping some saving shrapnel might find me unable to move forward and be forced to come home. To come home to you. Don’t care if I have to crawl, I will find myself in your arms again, I promise. I will cheat the grave, strike death over its head to push through and run, And hope beyond hoping there’s something left of me in you. I now know what they meant when they told me about army wives; How you never quite forget the look in your children’s eyes when you leave them for the last time. And it was only a matter of time. So with every letter I write, the fear and former-future-could-be-might-be-hope it won’t be-nightmare becomes more of a reality, as I wonder whether or not this will be my last offering to you. I’m always wondering whether or not I should add another paragraph. To tell you to tell our son he won’t be seeing his daddy ever again. To tell him daddy’s never coming home. I don’t wanna make you sad, but if I don’t say it now then you’ll never know. There was never anything that I wanted more than to come home and watch him grow. To see him become more of a man than I could have ever been. I wanted him to know his father as more than just a distant figure out there fighting for something he could never understand. I wanted the normal life, to hold his hand on his way to the bus stop and let him know his daddy was always there to protect him. And now I wonder how all of this will affect him. My dear, it’s getting colder out here. I lost feeling in my hands weeks ago, but I want you to know that I will keep writing until I have no hands left to write with. Here comes the conclusion. This is always the hardest part. Always afraid that “until next time” might ultimately mean “goodbye forever” in the long run. I’ve been writing you for months but this part never gets easier. If I die out here, promise you’ll do your best to stay strong. Try your hardest for me. Tell our son to always be the best he can be. After all, if I die, I live on through the memories and photographs of our happiness, so this isn’t really goodbye, even if it is. So until next time, With everything I am, Your warrior.

It was like a comatose overdose cause no matter what I did I’d never get close So I started asking questions, pounding my brain with theoretical bullshit that acted more like poison than a cure Like playing hangman with myself but all of the vowels are already deemed incorrect, An impossible game with no winner, no way out. I’ve got my trains of thought written out in braille Can’t really see, just trying to feel my way through life Everything catching me by surprise All my vices and demons in disguise Waiting for me to take one wrong step And then it’s all over. I’m not accustomed to your lifestyle I thought about it for a while Trying to force myself, MOLD myself into something I knew I was never meant to be But it all seemed worth it to me. And looking back this all seems like it was nothing but a story. And a story is not enough to convey what it means to be trapped inside your mind, and lately you’ve been trapped inside mine, a place where you run circles, where you run aimlessly out of lack of interest and boredom. I like to think of it as a quiet, curing remedy to my lack of self-purpose, like somehow my measure of worth is determined by thoughts that occupy this steady moving conveyer belt that has no switch and no way to be turned off. And it just keeps going and going and going just like I keep hoping and hoping and hoping that there is some form of justification to be had for the threads I’ve been hanging on since you let me know that you “weren’t feeling it anymore”. I build my walls like I’m building a home to die in, every motive personified through some depressing ambition that stems from an idea blown out of proportion. Everyone needs a home to die in. I’m creating a safe house that doubles as a graveyard for my buried ambitions and fleeting hope for a happy future. This is in memory of all the things I tried to let go of. All of the poems that I tried to write to put together these albums and fit all my thoughts inside. All the things I wished panned out differently and the stories I made myself believe. I’m not okay but I’m alive, and I’m hoping it works itself out in time because I’m tired of wearing the soles thin on my shoes just to chase after you. Won’t you chase after me for once? Like won’t you take your ambitions to greater heights this time, Show me that there’s something left after all. I’m tired of writing like an angst-driven teenage kid but that’s pretty what what I am, and that’s all I ever did. Let me carry you from the wreckage, swim with you from the depths till we reach safety. Don’t let your preconceived quandaries or your fears weigh us down, we can’t afford any extra weight. I’m searching for revelation, passing up opportunities just to say I could, hoping all along that better things were on the way. And there was never really anything left to say but I tried anyway to extinguish any risk of silence or blank space cause that’s all this ever was in the first place, blank space covering our discord. I’ve watched you succumb to every trend society threw at you, watched you be eaten alive but the world’s perception of wrong and right and what it means to obtain beauty. I watched the innocence be purged from your waters, every bit of dignity left behind, strained back between fictional lifestyles and clouded window panes, and unrealistic goals and ambitions to achieve perfection. You never realized that you were already perfect, just as you were. I loved you for the way you held yourself together when you held everyone else together, and when we were together you never showed any sign of weakness, despite the weather and the storms that never ceased. And you’d piece us all back together like you’d made us yourself, knowing what to say and what to do, always. I don’t know where I stand these days. I’m stuck in limbo between what I want to believe and what’s really there in front of me. Wondering if anyone out there is wondering what’s become of me, or if they ever think of me. Cause I know I left my mark so long ago but so many have walked those same lines since and I wonder if there’s any trace of me left despite the separating distance.

I dream of a place where no one sees me for who I really am. I think it's better that way: no more hiding away anything. Don't tell me, tell me I don't wanna take back the time that we've spent. Those were the best days that I've ever had. You were the best thing that I've ever had. I would never take back the time that we’ve spent never trade it for anything cause it was the best thing that I ever had even when things got bad And I swear I’ll run away someday And I’ll bring you with me We’ll find a place to stay where no one knows our names And we’ll never come back. We’ll build a new life away from all the judgment All the rain clouds that hovered over our heads, the things that kept us awake in our beds when the world told us we weren’t good enough and we’ll live completely, in a way that we never did before Because there’s no one holding us back anymore. It's moments like these that you capture and carry with you for the rest of your life. Where you come to find that it was all worth waiting for. And you look back on your past and play it through your mind like a film. The story of two young hearts radiating an energy that nothing could extinguish. No storm or amount of time could ever put out that flame, It burned on through everything, when the storms came and went, And glimmered through the thickest haze to reach through and pull us back. I always swore I'd be the one to reassemble what I pulled apart in the first place. But it's been so long that I can hardly remember your face. I always swore I'd be the one to reassemble what I pulled apart in the first place. Now I'm searching for another little something to change and fill the space.

So how can you expect me to believe? When the things we read in books are not the same as what we see. Cause I’ve learned an awful lot about an awful lot of nothing, I’ve learned nothing about myself so what else is there to prove, cause I can recite facts to you all day long but when the real problems come along I don’t know what to say. Like ABCs and 123s, flip on the TV, 15 more dead shit that could’ve been me. Wish that would’ve been me. Wish that would’ve been me cause I’m neck deep in debt and not just money, cause there’s a war going on inside me and I’m losing. I’m supposed to act my age but you sit there judging me by a letter on a page. I wish you could read all the letters, I write words about myself when I can’t sleep at night. Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines, I see dead lines of people waiting to have their stamp of approval, thinking a piece of paper is gonna draw out their future. But they’re wrong, and I am too. I say this as I write another check to you. We’re supposed to be in the world but not be of it well I’m in it and I’m of whatever it takes to succeed so bring your pride through the door and judge me some more, cause I left mine and home and you’re prisoner of war. A war that will never be won by curriculum standards, quarterly evaluations or words on a screen, so I took a step away from your bullshit and wiped myself clean. I’m lucky I made it this far, cause you know I’ve tried so hard not to try in an attempt to defy the odds, and be a living breathing example of what the world should look like. And it shouldn’t look like anything, but you’re trying to fit a square into a circular space, trying to force everyone to wear the same face. Because it’s all about money and making it. Isn’t it? Whatever helps you sleep at night. But I’ll stay up late at night because I’ve got the nerve to go against everything the world is trying to force me to believe. I want people to conform to nonconformity and turn this whole fucking world upside down, because everything is inside out now. Let’s break the chains, sleep our days away and explore the nights, cause this all we’ve got and we’re wasting time. Pick up your pieces and put them with mine, leave your worries behind and breathe. And live. So when you die you won’t have to wonder why you wasted your life on things that never mattered in the first place.

I wear my personality like a canvas wears paint, a combination of influences consciously and subconsciously embedded to the surface by outside forces. My parents wet their bristles to lay a watercolor base from a pallet of their better judgment, loose enough to grow and expand but secured enough to keep me safe. Born into the world as blank canvases we are all swayed by the artists of the world, some who claim they have ‘no creativity’ and no artistic aspects at all.