Since I haven't done a feature in a while

Some literary gems to check out:

  <da:thumb id="622348460"/>  <da:thumb id="623179531"/>
What I AmWhat I Am
Sometimes I wonder what I am
I think I need to know
To understand the face I show
And why it must be kept behind a dam.
I'm the only son of a poor man broken
Like the house where I learned life and love
‘Good night’ were the last words spoken
As I watched the cancer take him to a land above
I was the outsider looking in
Never a boy of means or worth
My punishment without a sin
Was to be the source of others’ mirth.
I had many friends in spite
Heroes and villains all
Gathered in wood pulp and the screen’s light
Where I was small they stood tall
Never could I be more than a wraith
The shame of my beliefs betrayed
Finally I found my freedom and faith
True to myself have I since stayed.
Risks I took in expanding my learning
To the world success was not for me
I paid the price for my mind's yearning
The world be damned I'll make my reality.
Merry meet and merry part lie close to my heart
Thrice my religion cost my loves
The pain I wish I could impart
The de   1/5the cold was something else today
it crept around the edges of my being like shadows crawling down mountaintops at sunset
memories of you stuck like hot glue beneath my fingernails
you remain unyielding, your presence in my mind stale
and hot coffee slides down my throat as if i were trying to lubricate the things i want to say
but i have no one to say them to, they are like concrete in my chest
and i try to lift this weight unsuccessfully; i am unsuccessful
and all the fears of my failures drain, down and out, i am comfortable
i am content in nothingness
i am young and numb
i view everything with trepidation now
echoes of your plaintive sighs, staining the skyline
i am bereft
you are somewhere, while i am nowhere
and i am everywhere
i never thought i would be   to thine own selfyou look
so good in this light
that you could never risk the right to walk away
it's like you've never even had to face the day
the natural law of that organismic glow
it makes you a wretched thing, i know
you say, who needs it, in hell there are no shadows
since fire is just as bright as heaven's gate
as dying jaws, as their white shining, beckoning or reckoning
that you have open arms cut on those teeth
have hands all full of things worth giving
and giving is so good, so good, when you're gunning for the end
oh yes, in this light you look
in all directions with your shaded eyes
i see you, an amazing thing
the artificial artifact, forged man-made man
nothing so sickly as what you become under the sun
and you know that your beauty is illusory
that the most of you is hidden from your all
while the dregs that filter through
are just what you seem in fluorescence, blinds drawn
two hues or pitches removed from the real
like ultraviolet, the lobby or the drugstore or the garage
holds these
alivei felt her first breath underneath my pores, a fresh wound with tiny hands, stitching all of my dark crevices shut.
“she’s beautiful,” the doctor said,
the branches of the veins in his eyes red from the length of my labor.
he wrapped her in a pink blanket, and before the first dewey tear drops of sadness unfolded for the first time on her skin, her eyes glided to mine.
i’d never felt love like hers before.
when our skin touched, a wisp of smoke was released from the fire that raged inside of her body. her eyelashes curled when she blinked, and her fingers grasped for my face like i was oxygen in her lungs.
i couldn’t bear the thought of putting her in a crib, i wanted our hearts to beat chest to chest.
she fell asleep instantly; and while her eyes shut, mine had just begun to feel the weight of being open.   For Athe clouds telegraph
their flashes of purple light
back and forth
and I watch you gazing at the storm,
turned away and radiant,
a sliver of moon.
in the dark you are
just a slim profile,
a narrow fish slipping
deft and marvelous
through the flashing light
and the thunderless rain
and I am just an aching cheekbone,
a ripple of longing,
a wakefulness for whom
the phenomenon
is not the near constant
lightning
but what the light does
when it touches your face.   at midnight.I lost you
in darkness, in stumbling alcoholism
the words tumbling over each other
end on end
the breaths tumbling inside my lungs
tripping over each other
in darkness
cascading
wide-eyed, bloodshot words
spilling from my lips, spat from my heart
leaking out of cracks, crevices, corners
wreckage
and the way home was unclear,
debris-strewn
star-struck
alone.