Liquid courage, fleeting hope —
There's no message in a bottle.
Drowning in a pool of spirits,
All you'll find are
Dried tears at the bottom.

Regrets, tiny windows,
Past unseen —
Rearview mirrors
Not our own.
Images of who we were,
And ghosts of
Who we could have been.

Fair weather suitor,
It's easy when life smiles —
Love me on my bad days.

Self-serving praise,
Thinly coated in friendliness —
They'll tell you
What you want to hear
To get what they want.

Born to play,
Pay to win.
Life's a game —
Get over it.

Be mindful your feelings,
The heartache, the longing.
Find worth in yourself
Before seeking love —
You can't find in others
What's lacking within.

Of all things given freely,
Most worthless is
Advice unlived.

The despair we feel —
Hope, the scapegoat,
Fear, the enemy.

Steal hearts, moments, spotlight,
Existential kleptomania —
Taught to want,
To dream,
To covet
Other people's lives.

They can't
Erase the act,
Bury all the evidence,
Spin all witnessed truth
Into plausible fantasies —
Not so long we resist,
Refuse to validate their fiction.
Not so long
One of us remembers.

The church of me,
We patron saints,
All praised in colored light —
Capital I's and uncrosses T's,
Lives displayed with
Stained-glass abstraction.
Lead-lined disconnected stories,
Worshipped
For all that we are not.

Sometimes we're in
The driver's seat,
Other times
We're passengers.
Either is fine
With the right heading —
Just enjoy the ride.

Trust your logic,
Not your feelings —
The heart
Only knows the way
To where it's been.

What-ifs can bring
Regret or change,
Depending on
What is done next.

Sit, watch, play —
Stay put, docile, dormant
Sounds the siren song
In every heart,
Every homestead.

Open to well-meant questions,
Not to interrogation.

A measured self
Through other's eyes —
Objectify,
Mirror, mirror.

Hard truths blinding,
Jagged bolts of lightning,
Shattered conceptions
Reduced to ash —
Fertile ground for new beginnings.

When the bad
Outweighs the good,
Remember the positive
And know there's
Bound to be more
Someday.

Hear me, heed my words
O ye prisoners of comfort —
Contentment is
A negative emotion.