Start from scratch,

Making something from nothing,

It is only paper,

It is only a pen.

I choose the precious words of the heart,

I fondle with memories that I thought gone,

I step into your shoes.

Now I can see how the process has worked,

How I got to this place where I can sit here and type.

Fist I wrote about death,

How angry I was,

How alone I used to be,

How I would spend nights crying alone in my bed,

Thinking that the world had given up on me.

And soon I found myself locked away,

Crying in a hospital bed,

Spending my days staring out at the rains through the bars on the windows.

Spring arrived and I was out on my own again,

Floundering in love and falling all over myself.

Trying to bring myself to my sense ,

After the shock of the years begun to settle,

I listened to the heartbeat of the city.

I found the voices of other people captivating and sunk myself into their worlds,

Writing their stories healed me and my world a little.

Soon it was all about fining my own feet,

Finding my own piece of ground,

I sold every part of myself,

I sold everything that I had of value.

Drove nice cars,

Ran with the rich and the famous,

All the while killing small pieces of myself everyday,

O then it was all about running away,

It was all about escape,

There had to be a way out,

There had to be a release,

There were the dreams of the open road,

Or traveling to places unknown,

Then my friends all said good bye,

And then it became about the end of the era of my teen years at 25.

I grew up over night,

Sobered up,

Shaved my beard,

Threw out my bong.

And it is about laments for yesterday now,

It is about Danielle’s tears,

It is about death again,

The finality of life.

It is about worshipping each day as something new,

Something to be treasured and something to be cared for.

It is about letting Danielle know how much I love her every second,

And never letting her down again.

It is about my mother,

And respecting the years and the things she had to see to get me here.

It is about her strength,

Her star that shines in the night,

It is about Manuel who smiles on me every now and again,

And frowns on me more often then enough,

Armed with his ghost,

My brothers firm embrace,

And the voices in my head that continue to type,

It is about starting something anew,

It is about moving on,

It is about traveling into the realm of my dreams,

Making this come true and making life start it’s cycle over.

I am back where I started,

At a desk,

With a pen,

With a paper

Just like a back in Mr. Shoemakers class in 7^th grade,

When I had to write that story,

That started all of this chaos