Human Scales

If I were fish,

then I would would swim and swim all through the night.

If I were a fish,

I would make love to an octopus, and hope he wouldn't eat me, or ink me, just to see what we could create.

If I were a fish,

I would breathe like a superhero and zig and zag between the teeth of whale because I would be invincibly vulnerable and I would be cute like the goldfish my best friend won at the fair and I would be fierce like a piranha, fiercer than Tyra Banks, and I would take so many goddamn chances I would be right next to Nemo swimming up to that boat and then eventually I would swim into the open mouth of a shark because what are the chances of a fish like me surviving anyway and only the good die young.

Window and a Tall Mirror

Shout like the lightning on your skin

for the millions of readers that just thought of Harry Potter and

for the millions of bedroom poets trying to find something.

something

deeper

something

more

something

real.

Shout like the daisy on your tongue

growing faster than you can keep up with.

stumbling on words

experimenting with words

experimenting

with the boy in your basement and the girl in the nighttime car still hanging secret on your lips like the crescent moon still hanging in the indigo sky.

Shout like the paint exploding onto the canvas onto the walls

the walls in your brain

the walls in your heart

paint them down like the Berlin wall

paint them down

until it rains.

Catch a raindrop in your eye

and then maybe you can see

the colors running together because they were never meant to be apart

because the clock and the music note cannot coexist

because this world is our childhood coloring book-

paint over the lines.

Shout like the man that gets taken to the zoo

and taken to the playground

because they do not realize he is an adult

because they do not know about

respect

like he does and

shout for the person that wakes up in a cloud and

shout for the person that can't sing out loud,

and shout for the person staring back at the crowd

because he is not a she and she is not a he,

and they are just people,

or dragonflies,

tired of the staring.

Shout like the boy that walks in on his sister kneeling over the toilet, finger down her throat

and shout like salty tears he still remembers how to cry.

Shout like the girl

for the day she realized her veins were the chains holding back the bird,

she finds the school bathroom on her 16th birthday to cut the chains so the bird can fly.

Shout like the Titanic hitting the iceberg

hitting his heart

when he realized he would never see another sunrise and the sparkle in his wife's eyes.

Shout like death

Shout louder like life

Shout like the millions of bedroom poets

writing their world on their closet doors

the words come too fast

too strong,

all I get down is a single line:

I dive under the water and I stay there until the screaming of my lungs reminds my brain that I am human.