Designated Doodler

I haven't written in this blog in a long time. So long, in fact, that I'm not quite sure where to start. This post, for whatever reason, feels pivotal. Maybe that's because my life has drastically changed, maybe this is the start of a new beginning or the end of a very long chapter. Whatever it is, I find myself here, in this familiar space, staring at the same screen I stared at in 2008 when I was just starting college. The same screen I came to in order to escape, in order to muse about life, wax on about hardships, and try my hand at poetry & art. Here is some of my recent artwork...

Do you hear that? The whimpering breath of a dying dream It's more of a wheeze than a scream It's cracked open despair Pomegranate red drops of fresh squeezed blood Mixed with scalding hot tears The culmination of broken loss Life's timing forever tilted off My designs drawn in the sand Washed away with the rising tide Riding the knuckles of fate's fickle hand Plunged under the surface with aspirating aspirations The choked out gasps of fallen expectations Hope soaked and molding Resolve cracked and folding Slipping through my fingers like the finest grains of sand The shape and weight of those dreams like faded memories in starving hands

This is an ode to the valiant pretzel forever lost in the quicksands of Nutella a sticky brown delicious demise a sugary serenade of sweet suffocation as each cube of salt disintegrated slowly in the sinewy slime of the liquid solid darkness enveloped the crunchy carb as air bubbled out of the collapsing cavern and the struggling pretzel gave one final wave with it's disappearing arch.

The weight of the world is on my lips Pressing, burning, aching to open and say That you are a watch And that I'm measured in you Stop or go Fast or slow Just a glance makes eternity wait As my mind traces the curves of your face Reality drifts away Lost in the waves of denim jeans Wandering the desert of porcelain skin Hidden in a jungle of black locks There is no trail left behind for my return I've accepted that you will swallow me whole Either leaving me as wreckage Or meshing me into your soul

You are a poem that breathes Words living in lungs that heave Hot breath across your lips The bows of which comprise a sonnet Your tongue a crimson harp With never-ending verse upon it Your skin is alight with a fever Burning bright from the meter That dances along Every word and phrase  Composing the song that sings in your brown eyes You are a poem and I a paradox You a ballad and I blank verse It is only through you that I keep time In the rhythm of your heart There is hope I'll find my rhyme

The concrete snakes that twist in the dark Don't know the stakes or the city's heart The winding turns through light and black Down the road so far there's no going back A community of no names  A herd of strangers Moving in silence in the night A trance of stop and go Lost in the hum and vibration The elation of each green light And the yellow's anticipation Sights, sounds, sensations all blurred together I think the road goes on forever And even driving in a loop I still move forward Ending up in the same place Just another person on the road Just another car without a face

Fiercely I miss you And feel myself falling Slipping Backwards and down Tripping upside-down Until I've come right round A full circle Where desire smacks into reality And the totality of the truth Is enough to unravel me I'm falling up  in spite of gravity The depravity of my humanity Jumps out at me Weakness fraught with want I have the words but I can't let them go I have the cards but I can't let them show So I stay Above dreams but below truth The gray murky waters grow And I dwell here In the swell here Ready to burst apart with want Held together with distractions and glue But nothing, none of it will do I need you I want you And I need you to want me too

It's not much to look at on the outside Infact, most people pass them up Lying on the hard ground Black and brown and gray speckled But I know what it is I pick it up I take it back And slice it open Hardly like a sharp knife through butter It groans and fractures And along a squiggly line it splits in half The inside gleams It sparkles Shining at the thought that this is the first time it has ever been seen Rolling emerald hills cascade down its walls The crystals take the shape of the forest And manifest their own tiny solid mineral biosphere  Resembling green tree tops from above A world exists within this rock And something about it makes me want to climb inside The tiny confines of this unsuspecting object Would be cozy, I'm sure Inside it would be quiet And smell of Earth Cool as glass I could get lost on its reflective slopes And traverse a landscape Never before seen, Never touched All my own

Your skin is a series of scars A storybook of abuse, written in fractures and breaks Everyday you wake up and wonder what it would take To gather your soul and move from this place It's a long walk And you can't breathe With the dust caked in your lungs And dried tears crusted in your eyes Floundering beneath the weight of fermented lies And the bag of broken hopes strapped to your spine Somewhere along the line You forgot what it was to be fine It's easy to step into the abyss Beneath the burning Iowa sun What makes it simple is that You're no one's son It gets old Visiting your father's grave on your birthday Coming up with good enough lies to say To an angry drunk stepfather Or a way to beg along a dirt road For a brother who's running away But the day that Danny was killed Was the moment you knew you couldn't stay With every single step Comes a flash of an indelible, unbearable past... Daddy's cherry red car slipping...

The waves of the sea crest in your eyes It's sea foam white Changes in the light From azure topaz in the day To royal navy in the night How many have fallen in And remain adrift In the current that circles The black hole? I wonder as I float, If I'll ever know My mind is a beacon That beckons rescue Only to have my heart Flip the switch off And at this rate, I will be forever lost In the tepid tide that rolls with the moon In the vast expanse Of the tiny ocean Rushing in your eyes Pulling me to you

I used to look up at the sky As I lay on my skateboard At the end of the driveway And think to myself That you weren’t that far +++++++++++++++++++++ Highlighter green Apples poured off the trees That lined the drive littering the concrete But I would push them aside Rolling back and forth As I stared at the sky +++++++++++++++++++++ Thinking that this was the same sun That wrapped you in light And even though it was hard Maybe you weren’t that far …Just a sky away ….Not that far apart …Just a plane ride from today And we were connected still Because the clouds that rolled over me in the light of day Would hover over you at night, in the sweet Pennsylvania dark +++++++++++++++++++++ Just nine years old I went where I was told My back on the black sandy surface Of a well-worn skateboard That peeled at the corners Nudging apples out of my way As I rocked back and forth In the burning heat of midday With nothing in me that...

I feel like it's been a really long time since I've written a blog post. I guess that's what happens when you start another blog (or two). I don't even know what to write right now. Not every piece of writing can be a stroke of genius, and I feel tapped out. Between the art I churn out non-stop and the writing I do for myself...I'm tired. It's a good distraction though...writing, blogging, art, SAT tutoring, art tutoring. It keeps my mind off the fact that everything's going to change. But hey, who doesn't love drastic life changes? Oh right...everybody. Haha. All I can think right now is that I'd love to go home. That and I ate way too many toffee-flavored, chocolate covered almonds. So instead of putting into words the past (however many) weeks, I thought I'd just slap up some photos. The probability that anyone is reading this is likely slim, but I don't really care. This post is for me - so I don't forget the good things tha...

Why you here? Goodbye. Why write, why try? You don't have the time Just go to bed Didn't you know That poetry is dead? That nobody wants that shit if it don't rhyme If it's not for a grade What's the point, who has the time? Didn't no one tell you - Poetry is gone The death breath of English Only alive in song Well not really Not anymore Not for long Don't you know That cool kids don't care if it's a way to crawl into someone else's skin if it's a way to look at humanity And for once in your life see kin To feel something you've never felt To deal with things you've never dealt Searing pain and burning joy Wicked loss and undying love That stands the test of time - survives the years And gives you the chance To cry humanity's immortal tears Nah, it's silly, it's dumb Let's get lost in lazy It's easy, it's numb English is gone Didn't they tell you? It died. Some people s...

What happens when you hold in a sneeze? Where does it go? When you don't let it out After feeling it brew behind your face In rumbling, tickling, shakes Not letting it escape But breathing in sharp Squishing nostrils together Until the sneeze suffocates Where did it go? Did it evaporate? Disintegrate? Crawl back into the brain? They say it's not good to hold it in But what do they know? About pushing sneezes down Or about letting sneezes go Neither of which, is what I really want to know.

I wanted to write this for them Whoever it was That died on the sun-kissed highway Right outside my office In the morning, last Monday When coworkers stood at grand glass windows to see The crash, the reason why frustrated drivers wondered what was taking so long, what was going on Sitting in a glittering line of rumbling motionless cars that was hundreds of headaches long You could hear the roar of the air  being sliced by metal blades The familiar whine of multiple sirens Yelling above the rush hour parade And in the building Workers asked workers in hushed words as they arrived up the stairs "Did you see it? Have you heard?"

*My first attempt at a Sestina in two years so don't judge too harshly :P* Blue carpet tongues unfold Down the corridor I see in dreams Walls cool beneath my finger tips I search for you at the end of the hall Seven years late, I take my time Just a student late for Algebra Two I look, but never see you I should have turned when told But I love to love, I love to pine Love is never what it seems,  not in life, not in dreams, not at all Much like falling asleep, I slipped Your door is locked tight like lips Cold air breathes out the bottom, cuts through Beneath the wood that stands tall And even a hand so bold Can't tear at it's seams Open the door or move time No act of hand or heart could make you mine Get the lock to turn, the metal to click But such stories are fodder for dream screens So let the movie play, and get me back to the life in which I'm enrolled I should thank the orange and blue cinder block wall ...

I sit and wait For my future to break For them to tell me that I've made a mistake And I wonder How much longer it will take For them to realize that I'm a creator Just a poser here Not an analyst, but An innovator and a catalyst And from analysis I've deduced that I don't belong Behind a desk So lonely and monotonous It drains my spark My youthfulness I'm the furthest thing from an analyst I'm a creative And if I don't create I might explode If I don't draw I might implode If I lack human interaction It's shut down mode Because there's too many words Built up in me It's too hard to store them up along With all of the ideas inside of me Trapped behind a mouth tight shut I don't know what to do Or where I belong So I wrote this for you Or because of you Or because at some point I was you And you are me Training to be where I am Working towards the point Of knowing that what you've worked for Isn't where you want to be How long do y...

Four years of my life are scattered across two thumb drives and a laptop or two. Downloads of papers that other's have written sit stale, saved, long past review. Half my wardrobe is purple, and too casual to ever wear My bike sits in the garage, resting on deflating tires A tired relic of a time when I biked everywhere Sometimes my fingers ache to turn the lock In a series of fluid motion that my heart never forgot My first semester I had no friends, but made a 3.9 Welcome to college, welcome to the dean's list Second semester I joined a Christian sorority I thank God for it, because they were, they are, my family And on a whim cut off most of my hair The hairdresser hesitated to do it, and in the end, he was right I thought moving out that first year and going home Was one of the best days of my life

*I wrote this poem based on the song that is below. I  recommend listening to the song while reading the poem ;) I found a song call Quesadilla    It makes me hungry It makes me hum It makes me happy I'll give you some Let your long hair down Turn your head inside out And take a listen Have a bite of mine And make it yours Turn your ears into Your eyes On an adventure In a tree house balloon Past the bright blue skies To walk the moon

You shake when you yawn And run a slippery tongue along the inside of your top lip where little freckles bump out You never knew it wasn't normal to feel every heartbeat shake in your chest to ring off your ribs and know your pulse just by counting You feel life through and through It freaks you out, but so does death It makes you nervous just to exist Wondrously fallible, You house a host of contradictions Intelligently distracted A beautiful mess Terrifyingly brave Each new day is nothing but a new test And all you want today is to do better than yesterday's best You're lost in lofty aspirations, Bound by your own human-ness Perfectly whole yet forever incomplete You wish to feel less, To be entirely fearless, But then no one would see you as I do And in the greatest of tragedies You'd cease to be you