The Common Conscience

Foreword to the common conscience: this poem is for all those who aren't choosing the better part. Only you can know what that means. I used to be you. Feel me speak to you.

Everyone in this world has things In common

We are all collectors. 

We are collectors of bad decisions,

But these shouldn't define us. 

We all try to sell the belief "I don't have problems"

for discount prices at yard sales nobody shops at. 

Humanity is here because of love. 

We are all God's children. 

We are stories. 

Everyone of us is a story.

We are musicians that toot our own horn and play the music of our heart. 

There's a little man inside of us that can lift us or level us.  

He lives somewhere between heaven and hell at the intersection of desires, in the house of the rising sun. 

His room number's unknown, but it's equal to the number of times you've let him down.  

His photo ID has no face but pictures both regret and righteousness. 

So fold it up and place in your back pocket, but forget that it reads first name: "your," last name: "conscience."

(that's a dis)

He's just hopeless, not homeless. 

Realize you won't miss noise, just people, 

And crayons mashed into the sidewalk are art. 

Know that scars are just scars, they heal with time

And the stars are magnificent. 

Broken bells, raw nerves, and broken dreams are one in the same because when you hit them they scream.

It's hardest to believe in yourself

It's hard to believe our life is to be enjoyed

In between dreams we sleep throughwatch them go. 

Our duty to God awaits

Should I write in free verse or blank verse?

Take a step back, don't worry the static. 

We hate to see them leave but, love to 

Because a poem is just emotion in a story

Don't think about how it sounds

To those around. 

I promise you this 

If what you write is real then Someone will feel. 

It is then that your poem has found fulfillment, Opened eyes to feel, hearts to see 

I know this is true because it's done so for me. 

My Childhood Was A Dream

This one is for nostalgia,
I'm standing here to give my childhood memories a voice.
But first off, know I was a child who had night terrors.

I remember waking up to the fear of my basement.
I remember waking up to being stuck in a dream,
terrified because I was still condemned
to an Oregon coastline saltwater taffy store,
fleeing on a moving circular conveyor belt
from a cheetah hot on my heels.

I remember struggling at the bottom of my stairs
to find the courage to face the shrieking masked figure to my left.
And I could move about as fast as a fly in honey.

I remember when the kid next door became a werewolf.
My pet rabbits' fur was ravished across the front gate.
The moon was full, and I'd never seen it sicker.
Polluted and sagging, it emitted a dying street lamp hue
that bruised the light vacuumed night sky.
Atmosphere sucked away my shallow breaths,
and compressed my smothered lungs.
I couldn't tell if the noise my bare feet made on the cool,
dew strewn grass was muffling the silent sulker's steps.
But I was outside,
and I knew he was coming for me.

I was also a dolphin,
swimming through an untouched mountain lake.
Water slithered and streamlined across my leathered back.
It flexed with my kicks into an arch
and crested into the chilled mountain air.
My feet had evolved into a tail that began
to kick to the rhythm of my soaring spirit.

My mind would then drift into flight
and carry me through my neighborhood.
Sometimes mental effort could lift my body like the lost boys
into a sky that was too blue to be true.
Eventually my mind would seep into the realization
that none of this was real.
So I admired it that much more.
Walking would never
fill the need to feel a thrill,
and only flying would prove to me
in the pale 5 O' clock light,
that Timp was the most beautiful thing out there.

I remember a hill behind my house
that was covered in
some footprints of kids two grades older than us
that we thought were gangsters,
dirt that got in our shoes,
waist-high weeds,
holes we dug,
forts we made,
shovels we lost,
dinner shouts from mother dearest,
and views of Utah lake smeared in oily sunsets.

You see, this last dream was my favorite,
because I actually lived it.

And don't we all float through this dream called
childhood?

I Think I've Found It...

We occasionally catch a glimpse of it.
This thing called life.
I've found it in a song, in a sunset, and a sonnet.
If there is one thing I know it's this:

Life is beauty.

It's when life gets hard, we see the beauty.
It never tires of reminding you.
I was drowning in calculus,
derivatives swam in my head,
my heart pumped pressure through my veins,
my body walked to his car,
my eyes lifted to the sky,

then I saw it.

I saw the sunset.
Glowing, dying orange, splotched the fading,
night approaching sky.
As the mountains shrank in reverent respect
I learned perfect beauty becomes visible,
when life becomes harder.

I write the purpose of life
because life has a purpose.
Life is a smile,
life is growth,
life is discovery,
life is rediscovery,
life is daydreaming,
life is vitality,
life is breathtakingly beautiful.
Life is beauty, and I'll write for her.

Life is the ideal
I life for.
I am Walter Mitty.