Birthday Feature for YouInventedMe!!!

As an aspiring editor, I think that literature and words are some of the most powerful tools out there. That is why it makes me very happy to wish member YouInventedMe a very happy birthday. Their freeform poetry is fluid and tells such amazing conceptual stories.
radiant childwho painted your
blank face
and clean
slate
with labels
(pasted) primitive
shades which haunt
while they still live
who set your place
with empty plate
father's bread
broken (heart)
then gone
last supper/suffer
at the Odeon
perched on Mulholland
to prophesy to
cry your death
over fading California
lights
to shift
your island
among many
to inject those tropic
nights
and (never) wake
as the meridian
the lost can sing
loss
can sing
tragic repeats
the history we bleed
messages scrawled
on city streets
the same old
same - oh
some say
insane
so sweet
and plaster your name
gray
while angels weep
and color shrieks Case ClosedI remember the night I took your life...
I shook even more than usual,
as I contemplated
the implications of my intent.
Sometimes, there is no turning back.
I braced myself for the impact of your body,
and took as much of you as I could handle.
I wrapped my hands around your heart,
only to find
that I was the one who couldn't breathe.
I took as much as I could,
only to find
that your life continues on without me.
Some say nothing lasts forever -
These people have never had to say goodbye.
(You call this feeling love;
I call this feeling murder.) Let's Take TurnsWhen I was young, my brain promised itself
that it would never, willingly, go to sleep.
It would not "go quietly into that dark night".
You see, when eyes close the rest of the world
has a tendency to fall apart or run away.
I quickly grew tired of playing hide & seek
with everything I hoped would remain static.
These days, my eyelids have a mind of their own.
I slip away and wake up, every morning,
expecting  this to be gone. (The nicest things
also have the capability to be the fastest.)
So, now I wait - caught in the grip of
memories and exhaustion.
It's hard to be nostalgic about a game I never
liked playing in the first place.
Don't shoot...We were all lined up that day, like ducks in a row.
I was never entirely sure that ducks in a perfectly straight line
could be a natural phenomena, but history teaches me that this is
so.
We don't just learn from the past, but also from our past mistakes.
And it's not just a matter of learning - we revel in them.
We cover ourselves entirely and learn not to be scared;
unless we're scared straight, lined up like ducks in a row.
Everything I am taught, I forget.
Everything I dream escapes me,
the moment I open my eyes.
No one ever taught me not to panic. If these walls would just shut up.We are the figments
of a small town
with a small imagination.
You thought it was bad
being imaginary,
but you never even worried about
being poorly conceived.
The bright lights
of the big city are filled
with colorful characters,
while the dark nights are spaces
this tiny mind can never fill.
I fell in love with your words
and made myself believe they were you. This figment is fragmented...I've decided to call this progress.
Every second that passes,
every moment spent waiting.
Eventually,
my memory will fade
or yours will return
and, in either case,
no one will ever be able
to tell the difference.
I once heard you sum up my entire life
in a sentence.
I once saw you move your hands
and make a million reasons
to fall in love.
Eventually,
time fills itself up
and overflows.
(We do not run out of time;
time runs out of us.)
You close your eyes
and I'll shut my mouth -
these dreams can take care of themselves.
You're itThere's a reason why connect the dots is a children's game -
it prepares you for the bigger games everyone has to play
when their insides finally outgrow the outside.
I call this game 'connect the hearts'.
There are no instructions
and a million possible choices.
Chances are,
no matter what you do
a connection is made or broken
...it just isn't always the one you want.
Sometimes I know I'm not headed in the right direction,
but that doesn't make the selection any less valid;
just a bit more painful.
There is no such thing as "child's play" -
there is only practice for future failures.
Hide and seek was eventually replaced by my need to find the right words.
(Looks like I lose again.) Is it hot in here...There are things that I see on an everyday basis.
There are eyes that aren't mine,
locked in passionate embrace.
I watch the same mistakes over & over.
The silly little games we play with each other.
The dirty little tricks we play on one another.
We create a chemical reaction
our bodies do not know how to handle,
and tie ourselves to the next big thing -
human anchors.
This is weighing me down.
I sink and smile
at the irony of being dragged under
by something that doesn't even exist;
the heavy burden of an unfulfilled promise.
I will forever be defined
by that which I do not possess,
but at least I will never indulge
those tiny, fatal games.
I am the textbook definition no one's reading.
Today is the day we mark this down.
Tomorrow is the dream I never have. Thoughts from an afterthoughtI realize now that it was inevitable
I'd be so easy to forget.
Someone (somewhere) checked a box
marked "permanently absent"
and people, these days,
pay strict attention to detail.
Every piece in its proper place,
every memory specifically erased -
this is the way we solve the puzzle.
Correction: this is the way you solve it,
but, when you're not part of the solution,
then you are the problem.
See, that's where I come in.
I am a magnet.
I am a pane of glass.
I am a diversion.
I come in an easy to unwrap package -
it cleans up nice; no mess, no bother.
All for the low, low cost
of an empty word
or an endearing glance.
Someone out there once claimed
there's one of me born every minute..
In that case, pretty soon
the whole world will forget
it even exists.
Medication in the key of...I felt something move, just a moment ago...
In fits and starts and baby steps,
it made its way into the open.
I sat alone, in the dark,
and stared at the sky.
Body, quiet & still; mind, spinning.
(perhaps, in time with the earth's rotation.)
Believe me when I say
I never know what I'm doing,
but I always know how I'm feeling.
Tonight, I appreciate the cold.
Tomorrow, I'll miss the shoulder I could cry on.
Every passing second
takes a part of me with it.
Every word I write
makes me a little harder
to understand.
So, drink yourself to sleep -
I can watch stars
burn out as good
as anyone. We say we've never...I awake shuddering,
windows thrown wide open.
Cold and alone,
I spend the first five minutes
of every day
feeling old.
Sometimes things go according to plan,
but sometimes we adapt our plans accordingly.
We fix emotions like a crooked horse race.
We tinker with the past 'til it blinks out
like a fading star, and we are
free to scribble any future we want
in the spot where our integrity used to be.
We assure ourselves it's all for the best -
meanwhile, the clock just won't stop laughing. Forever...Let the night time dissolve into fiction. A slow fade.
The camera pans left & loneliness becomes nothing
but the soundtrack to a film that's hardly even
begun. Wrapped in the sound of your
voice, forgetting that it's just a noise on the
machine. I guess this is the message I decided
to leave.
It's safe to say we've never met. Safer still
to describe it as a feeling. Hope spelled
with two other letters. Regret. Return.
Redress. The monotony of the
day to day.
I promise that there's no such thing as
an empty word. Say something without
meaning and the rest of the world just
fills in the blanks. It's emotion on demand.
Freedom of choice at it's most literal.
This is how we forget not to fall in love.
we wait for the fallthe thing about the world is
our failure is mutual
unlikely like
me
most unusual
punch drunk
like some up-
jumped pugilist
flat untunable
parts unusable
same scrap
new heap
new bleat
same sheep
(still)
heart beats
as if
unbruisable
but
our truth is simply this
no bitter fruit unpicked human time capsule
evidence suggests I
spend my energies on
friends who end up enemies and
more or less the rest of me worn
thin from splitting them from me torn
limb from lingering memories born
blessed unless the less you see seems
better than the best of me and
I forget how to forget myself so
sometimes I'm someone else or
else the effort's unaffected
(I'm in pieces/you're collected)
calmly confessing
conflicted questions
every breath an
unlearned lesson
(dispersed
in all directions)
each truth unearned
despite intentions open opinionthe empty mouth of poetry
all blackened throat
and stunted teeth
an echo
explaining
standard shapes
to me
all these walls
want (you
to want)
all these walls

Happy Birthday YouInventedMe!