why I rejected your friend request

This one is for my friends

Who wonder where i’ve been

Hiding – just out of their sight

Or deep in the funkhouse

I measure my worth like I

Measure my days – sometimes

I don’t fully inhabit the person in

the images I show to the world

On such days when it takes a little more,

I turn to tea or toast or poetry

But sometimes I must sit down and

Confront some dizzying questions

I think my face rather ugly then

I look lost and slow and chubby

So my focus shifts to better expression

As soon as I am reminded of this

It is not for me, not, certainly,

In this lifetime, to live up to your ideals

But maybe once I start controlling

My facial expressions -  I’ll say hello

Carpe...damn.

Wake up calls work for

those who are asleep, and not

for us who keep our eyes closed

wilfully explaining away

every lost opportunity

as one that never was found

what does it mean to

stand up for myself

and discount the doubt for a minute

to take a clean confident plunge

into the unknown depths

it could be beautiful

it could mean wishing i’d

done it sooner and better

it could mean learning a lesson

but what i will never know by crawling

back under my own oppression

i will never know at all.

Too many times

Too many times

It has happened that you overreach

And bring to ruins a carefully

Calibrated reality

It is no longer allowed 

to look the other way

As the constant friction remoulds

your differences into opacity

Surely there's more to understand

Perhaps the hour is not now

Perhaps this is all you will have

And other things may begin to matter.

shed your sticky angst

But before you walk away lighter

put down these words in a cool, dry place

a poem is a safekeeper