after buddy wakefield's "hurling crowbirds at mockingbars"

if i was created in god's image
than when god was a little girl
she sat in corners and daydreamed
looking at spiderwebs and her own world.
you left me on the tire swing
sitting with gravel in my shoe
sticking into my toe
a constant reminder
of loneliness.
i tried to tell you to look at the clouds
moving like freight trains through my childhood
and you said no, i'm going with them.
so i stayed, and i stared and i saw that
the clouds weren't moving
but i was and the yellow spread out fingers of honey sun
drizzled across the blue blue blue
weren't containing me

they set me free.
so i shook the pebble from my shoe
and i ran away from adolescence,
ran away from you.
i ran into my mind and into the spiderweb world
i created where you don't leave and i don't have to run
because when i say stop, look,
it's you up there,
you don't leave for the others and the tire swing spinning like wild blue tidal waves sweeping you in to save the open spots from drowning while my lungs are filled up up up with all those moments you left.
you don't leave,
you stay and fill the empty spots between my fingers instead,
leave the empty spots inside, we'll get to those later,
but here, right now, there are stones in both our shoes.
so we compare sizes and color
until we run out of things to say and just listen
to the hum of the honey color spreading out
bleeding into the blue and turning it twilight.
until we run home
and realize home is right here, this night.

someone once said that writing is easy
all you do is sit down and open a vein
but what if you're running out of veins?
it seems i'm getting close, and why only veins
are arteries not good enough?
suffering is hard to come up with sometimes and without it writing seems
false, lame, less than it could be.

suffering is the writer's paint. ink. it is the material with which
we express all other things
but it is a sad sad way.