Sonnet

I know that soon, my love, we must depart,

And leave the perfect life we've made behind.

It seems that all might end before the start,

And thus inane has aptly been defined.

I try, my love, to say without cliche,

The way I feel when you and I caress.

Or how my glass heart cracks when you're away,

You are my life, to you I do confess.

So when I'm gone, my love, please do not weep,

I'm sure I'll cry enough for you and I.

And while you're gone, I'll do my best to sleep,

I'll fail, my love, yet surely I will try.

But soon, my love, one day we'll meet again.

I'll wait for you, we'll be together then.

-Brian Rex

mending may

this is how we mend;
our mantra is pulled from an incomplete to-do list,
when the ghosts come (this time), i’ll be strong enough to defend.

we stayed in separate rooms, so helplessly afraid to extend
into walls where we knew you should be;
this is how we mend.

i sit in school (they sit at home) while you descend
deeper into a pale, blue hospital bed;
when the ghosts come (this time), i’ll be strong enough to defend.

i’ll sit from 5 to 7 desperately avoiding what your eyes portend
(i see 25 pills wanting to come back in. the storm is brewing again.);
this is how we mend.

you’ll tell me about the boy who knows egyptian, while (down the hall) they pretend
to know you more than flesh and bone. they will watch as i say goodbye (again).
when the ghosts come (this time), i’ll be strong enough to defend.

i hear you, just a room away now. you will contend
with the two talking men inside your head while i write stories searching for tomorrow.
this is how we mend;
when the ghosts come (this time), i’ll be strong enough to defend.

Happiness

Cold winds, high altitude, heavy snowfall,

To most, components of a cold, slow death.

To me, they make nothing matter at all;

I stop in the cold to breathe a deep breath. 

Life is pointless without any relief, 

Sometimes, you need to shortly step away, 

When you need to sleep or to process grief;

For you cannot have all work and no play.

Happiness can come in a form of place,

It can also be found in your mind.

Like when I’m on a steep mountain face, 

Both are achieved, to the world I am blind.

That’s why I choose the mountains as mine;

They cleanse my soul and allow me to shine.

Sonnet 37934915839

Hair like fire-wood, solid oak that flows,
The lass who hath permeated my dreams.
Lips thick with words of truth, color of rose,
The lad who hath tortured my heart with schemes.

Her hair like the tangled roots of my love
And his eyes that most sincerely entreat.
These are all diff’rent souls which I write of,
Each as enchanting, Every one as sweet.

Though if to me came a divinity -
If the essence of You loved me one day -
Form of grace, a promised affinity,
My tongue would still be required to say:

“Alas, my dear love, thou canst not be mine,
I’ve loved too many to be only thine.”

Camouflage and Flowers: A Villanelle

You are mine and I am yours
A mix of camouflage and flowers,
Our love will outlast all wars.

Your hand on my back adores,
Your devoted gaze empowers,
You are mine and I am yours. 
  
Even through the yells and slammed doors,
even though this time was meant to be ours,
Our love will outlast all wars.

The way your voice implores
The way it sounds in the late hours,
You are mine and I am yours.   

From where you stand on the far-off shores,
Think of me 'til the thought overpowers,
Our love will outlast all wars

Hand in hand we will stay outdoors
Laying under a tree's caressing bowers
You are mine and I am yours 
Our love will outlast all wars. 

Girl, But Not With The Moon on a String

To the little darlin’ with the broken old radio

You live blind to your dystopian world

Crumbling, rotting away while you sustain in your world of flowers and light

You know he’s not around the corner with a brown paper bag

Full of celery and cigarettes

Even though you don’t remember that he’s twenty years late

Give it another twenty and maybe you’ll realize 

That the world has stopped turning while you were asleep.

Right

If I were to tell you
that I am happy
I would be lying

The sky is blue
I know that much
but my heart is too

My facade can only
work for so long
and not on my friends

Sleeping around doesn’t
make you loved
it makes you lonely

Right?

Your friends will always
be there for you
they care about you

Right?

They only want what
is best for you
not themselves

Right?

A boy wants to sleep with you
that means he loves you
that he wants you

Right?

Having lot’s of boys
is much better than
only having one boy

Right?

It's hard to get along
with the girls who
make fun of you

Right?

Well, the diamonds are fake
along with the plastic barbies
that wear them.

Right.

Instead of Gripping My Back You Held My Hand, Thank You.

I never want anyone to touch me,
and she knew this, but she took my hand anyway.

- the crippling obligatory and crushing I must
of hugging a distant relative or shaking a stranger’s hand

sleazy squirmy slimy slithering vile back rubs in choir
their un-asking hands on my neck make me buckle -

Uncomfortable with contact, that’s it, that’s it.
And she knew this, but she took my hand anyway.

Her cool, plasmic skin is okay - better than okay -
her fingers spin songs on mine.

I look up to to form gratitude from my mouth,
but no words find me because I am lost

Her un-smoked, un-smudged, un-smogged eyes
crinkle at the the edges when they meet mine.

Her eyes are green like the trees in backwoods Minnesota
where my grandparent’s cabin doesn’t have electricity on purpose.

These trees have never tasted indulgence in the form of CO2 from a
Twenty-six horsepower engine, 1998, four door, four wheel

Four of her fingers squeeze my indexes
middle finger, thumb, middle finger, thumb performing spot treatment on my tiny hand muscles.

Her eyes have never tasted indulgence in the form of toxic gases from
hate or prejudice or prolonged unhappiness.

She tells me that she thinks I’m funny and I want to tell her
I think she’s beautiful but the song starts and we’re sitting apart and

I’ll tell her later.
I guess.

orange moon song

our town is quiet tonight,
he says while
outlining the orange moon then
pinching it between his thumb and finger.
it’s easy to turn god while holding something
so mighty and cratered.
you can feel undamaged and holy
if you aren’t careful.
but it must be loud,
i thought.
(we must not have been listening all the way through,
just in the wishy-washy type of way)

in the dark navy night of august,
our town whimpers reminiscences
between the corners of trees and
empty, plastic lawn chairs.
at this hour the roadkill choir sings
and the little boy who drowned
in the pond dances,
while his mom asks the murky, green water
if he jumped off the trestle or fell.
she asks this question every night,
but he only dances on the
full orange moon song day.

as i sit beside the boy who
can hold the moon,
i wonder what it’s like to watch
a town burn.
it’d be freeing to sing
as we watch each building
fall into itself.
everyone would run outside, just like
how we used to (except with more urgency),
and finally we could become
one with our ghosts.
we’d pet the deer we hit with our cars,
dance with our grandparents we should
have visited more often,
and the little boy who drowned would
ask his mother to think of swinging
and picking poppies when
she thought of him.
she’ll feel weightless then.

he let go of the moon then,
and we turned back into delinquents
sitting on tall hill past curfew.
our town was doused in orange
from light of the moon
and it was quiet,
as it should be.

Farewell Sonnet

Soon moving from my current surroundings, 

Leaving the old behind, looking for new.

Without purpose of being harsh sounding, 

Change will better you, it’s tried and true.

A broad spectrum of life lays before me,

limitless, boundaries thin as a membrane, 

To spread my wings wide, that’s my decree

An ability to do, I maintain. 

A long, hard road lays ahead of my eyes

Many obstacles will keep me suppressed,

Help from others will make us allies

Perseverance shall overcome the rest.

I bid farewell to those I leave behind, 

with change I hope you find your peace at mind.

Painted Words

If poetry is art,

Then I’m a champion finger-painter.

My words amount to globs

Of pink, red, and blue

With seemingly no form or identity.

A dab here,

A drop there. 

But behind these infantile streaks

Lies my soul hidden in color. 

The rosy pink of blushing cheeks,

Two red hearts beating as one,

And the bitter blue of a love torn apart.

You can’t see this,

Can you?

I’m clumsy with my brush,

Spilling drops and forgetting others,

Leaving you with a beautiful mess.

A tad here,

A touch there.

See, I’m new to this world

Of pouring my soul onto a blank canvas.

My brushstrokes may be messy

And the colors may not blend,

But they are mine, and they are me.

So like a proud toddler

Clutching my masterpiece,

I stand before you

With a paint-smattered face

And a so-called work of art.

My creation may never hang in a museum, but please:

At least let it hang on the fridge.

Summer Memories

The cream colored flowers of the lovely Magnolia float through the air
Falling gently to the ground like the beauty of the first snow fall.
The new leaves blossom from their cozy winter cocoons
Opening their arms wide to the morning sunlight.

The remembrance of laughter and beaming smiles
The sights, scents, and sounds of childhood innocence
Camp fires, sand castles, and sizzling barbecues,
Fill the heart and mind as a new summer approaches.

Memories drift into the mind as fragments long forgotten.
They crash through the barriers that prevented the longing for simpler times
Like a waterfall, rushing over the edge to the abyss of uncertainty.
Just like the roots of the Magnolia tree,
The memories reach back into the depth of the past.

Weighted (This is meant to be a Slam)

Your comments slip off silver

Like slivers of ice-nine

Onto frozen ears.

Your eyes betray you.

Tears are crystals

Meant to be broken.

When you hold my shoulders

It no longer feels

Like the arms of a chair,

But of the cold metal of a cell.

Your hand on my waist

Is not soft; 

It is a chain,

You are the weight at the end.

In the mirror,

You are the ghost at my shoulder,

The hand clutched around my heart,

And the anchor of the voices

In my head.

You are the crazy,

The hazy, 

The wild,

The doubt that brings me back

Into the safety of the shell

I painted gold.

But the paint chips.

And underneath is a softness

That has no name.

Your words still cut,

You are still the blade

Wedging itself farther

Into my back

And deepening the scar

That was already there,

Blood dripping down my spine

Until I have no spine left

Because you severed it. 

And now my words

Are pouring onto the page

Because they have nowhere else to go,

I am bleeding words

That have built up for years

Inside my paper skin

Onto the paper in front of me, 

And there you are,

The paperweight on the corner of the page. 

Hidden Pain

Every day she walks through the falling ashes of her life.
And no one even knows.

No one pays attention to

The way her heart is in too many pieces.
Broken too many times for her to believe
she can piece it back together again.

She keeps a smile on her face.
Keeps on laughing through the pain.
So no one asks.

But if someone looked a little closer,
they'd see the dark circles under her eyes,
the bruises, the tears she's trying to contain.
The scars on her wrists  and the pills in her backpack.

She thinks she's the only girl who lives like this.

Her house is divided by those who see her as a burden and
those who see her as a blessing.
A walking shadow of who she used to be,
and the bright future she could lead.

She dreads the night that every girl dreams of, because
Every guy wants to sleep with her but not one of them
wants to take her to prom.

She lowers her shirt so that maybe one guy will call her beautiful,
not knowing that the boy in math class has been staring at her blue eyes all year.

She looks at herself in the mirror every morning.
To see if today, she can truly see beauty.
But all she sees is the bulge around her waist
that no one else would notice with a magnifying glass.
She doesn't eat, just looks.  Every morning.

Who said lightning doesn't strike the same place twice?
She thought that the first time
would be the only time. 
But then it happened, again and again
until she was stripped of her identity,
and was replaced with shame.

She has scars from battles nobody won
and a hole in her heart the size of the world
because that's what hurt her.

Ode To Pen

Ode To Pen:

Oh pen, oh pen,

My kingdom for a pen!

When I was ten I loved a dear pen.

Should I, could I remember? I can.

Men often dream of obscene things, amen,

But I only long for my pen in a glen,

Or a den where I scrawl to enthrall this man Glenn,

Who once had a hen with a head chopped off dead.

It was said that this fowl tasted foul to the owl

That swooped down for his meal, the sad clown did not feel

That the bird would taste bad, its absurd that he’s mad

But Owl swooped down again, and pooped on my dear pen.

This poem does not have a title, because I am bad at titles.

If God formed Adam and Eve from clay,
he formed my generation from high fructose corn syrup.
He sculpted us from Velveeta cheese and the white cream in Oreos.
He modeled us on the girls in Teen Vogue and the mothers in Cooking Light
His image had grown too gray and haggard to print on those glossy pages
Too outdated to relate to those smiling faces and tanned limbs

If fruit filled the garden of Eden,
if apples weighed down the branches of that forbidden tree,
so their shiny bottoms brushed the ground in the breeze,
our garden would be full of fruit flavors.
Sour apple, sticky and gooey and electric.
Shocking taste buds with neon green radioactive chemicals

Red forty and yellow three course through our veins,
Our blood is brown and sweet from all the color fruits mixed together.
Sugar water flows like nectar in the channels of our bodies.
Food for the Gods,
slowing us down as it oozes down the path our arteries provide.
If we bleed, butterflies and hummingbirds flock to feast

Lord, have mercy on my artificially flavored soul.

Sleepyhead

Wake up!

Sleepyhead, why do you dread arising?

Get out of bed now, little girl,

Your weariness is surprising.

Is this a joke? Please don't provoke

My patience and my virtue

Wake up now,

Sleepyhead,

Don't make me think to hurt you.

Wake up!

Little girl, we're running out of morning.

I hope that this will swirl around your head,

This is my warning.

You make me scared, how do you dare

To lie without a motion?

No matter how i raise my voice,

My words seem lost at ocean.

Wake up!

Jesus please!

No matter how i shake or toss you.

God, don't tease me,

Get up please!

I fear that I've just lost you.

You feel so numb,

No, I'm not dumb!

My love, why do you trick me?

In vain I plead,

The blood I'd bleed!

Yet life forgets so quickly.

All flowers remind me of you

The way he barely holds up his cigarette
As if it weighs more than the memory of you,
When the wind drowns out the sun,
The smell of a quilt after a picnic,
How the guy in town fits into that tree,
And brown sugar.

When yellow birds come to hand painted bird houses,
A kid down the street finds the tire swing you made,
That story about canning pickles,
And purple buttons.

How his house has become a waiting room,
September fourteenth,
Ashes in ziplock baggys,
Rolling down hills into cucumber sandwiches,
And flowers.

Quiet

Quiet
I believe mostly in sunflowers
and billowing clouds.
My soul moveable,
always edging towards the sun.
My mouth isn't broken
and I never learned to talk with my hands
so I stopped shouting nonsense
and learned how to live quiet.
My whispers died down
to a pleasant nothingness.
I kept moving towards the sun,

it turned my transparent skin warm.
I am a ghost
because screaming doesn't become me.
It's safe inside the ground.
It's warm in the silence of my throat.

A Cry For Boston

Onomatopoeia:

Boom, crack, blast,

Pow, crack boom.

Sight:

A sea of blood

uniting the victims.

Limbs thrown around

like confetti–but nothing

to celebrate; agony.

The bomb does not discriminate,

nor does it know how to hate.

The race of person responsible

is something bred without a soul.

Wreaking havoc on anyone there

without the slightest shred of despair.

Tell me now why lives have ended

for a nation who’s so long pretended

that everything was justifiable;

a claim we now call “unreliable.”

Parents need to tell their young

that only sounds of happiness

should be sung.

It’s never okay to

create pain just

for the sake

of a deadly game.

The price is too high,

the risk too fatal

for you not to care.

Why don’t we all care?

Hold the torch in your own town.

Hold it up to the sky; burn for peace

in a way that Heaven will see.