An acrostic poem is one when the first letter of each line spells a word or phrase. Mine spells the title of the poem:  "Magnanimous".  And the poem tells the story of its definition.​

"Magnanimous"

​Mankind traverses the earth.
And seeing a great many people,
Grows in a great many aspect.
Not completely, but essentially
Accounts for the grace of travellers
Not in bitter or shallow way, but
In fulfilling duty the good samaritan,
Magnanimous of word and action,
Offers up his seat, his drink, offering
Up some ease of suffering, to his
Sister or brother on the living road.

She seemed to drift away, every once and again. Nobody could have witnessed it without feeling a little awkward for being there. After all, she was inevitable. For her, every structure of her home melted into the mystifying backdrop of her cocaine frame of mind. And every unannounced gasp of an uninvited guest... breezes strolling unsteadily.


She floated through... in her vagrant lacking, full of memories no one had dreamed of her living. But she had the right kind of eyes for journeys through her fantastic nostalgia: glazed over in apathy. Every imperfection cleansed.


She floated through... everyone at the celebration marveled at her spectacular ingenuity. None knew if her troubled brow was ever real. But she understood too much about feeling. Of being born a little further past strange, in the eyes of others. Outside we were paying our respects, praising her instances of illustrated delirium.

She floated through... Family members, best friends, lost loves... noise control allows for their persistence. None remain forever. Traveling throughout the worn and torn house, she longed to love without fear, purpose, or grave form. She longed, remotely.

We have our worn houses, all of us. Most hold onto their household, but undeniably she knew better. For all leave battered, embattled home fronts behind, eventually. And she replied to the comforting removal of guests, one last whisper for the absence of occasion: "I remain, and I float".

I was too afraid to leave you, because everyone marveled at how you and I were the perfect match.  And you were such the perfect guy.  You know, the one who would fall apart and kill themselves if I left.

So I stayed, and hurt you as many ways as I could.  I pursued an old flame, cheated on you twice, ruined our minds with drugs...  but you were the perfect guy so you could never leave.

And then, you came back to my dorm room one night.  And you told me "I have to go", and in that moment we understood:  that was the end.   So we held each other, and cried, and then you left.

So...  going from the perfect guy to the evil one, I obviously didn't deserve to exist.  So...  I stopped existing.  Just kidding:  I tried to kill myself, but didn't do that right, either.

So...  I went back to my family, and gave up on everything.  But I wanted to be the perfect guy again, so I pretended to be you, all perfect and a suitable suitor for suicide.

What I learned ?  Part of me will always want to come home to you.  Yeah, that part may never die.  But I have a good life now.  My partner and I are celebrating our 15th anniversary this Halloween.  I'm writing daily, working on a book of poetry, a singer songwriter with 3 albums under my belt...  I'm even devoting myself to earning my BA in Creative Writing at the University that I quit.

But even with all of the success and failure, I have been, and probably never will be, perfect.  I'm human.  A little better at not being a disaster, particularly because I have this strange connection with everybody else who isn't perfect.  I think that it's called our common humanity.

​So I say, yet again, goodbye. Have a wonderful internationally traveling life with the perfect job and the perfect match...  and a big old fuck you for all of the guilt of never being good enough for you.

Because before all of the hurt I caused you, I knew that.  I knew that I needed to go, but undeniably you would have killed yourself, then I would have killed myself, and neither of us would ever stop being perfect.

And I just couldn't live like that.

There exists in life a challenge which we all pose to ourselves:  do we define a space for some eternal presence held ?  It exists maybe, but most are not consciously aware of it constantly, traveling within each of us, a peaceful piece of us.

Some call the presence God, one that created all creation for a source of divine inspiration.  And some consider it found in the scientific method, the logical connections intrinsic in reflections on those subjects we're perplexed on.  The well studied artist may persist in praising timeless works, raising them up as gifts in their discipline.

And I, forgone from long concluding, self-sealed under lock and key, may believe it to be the cathartic flow state, drawing from an explosion of fickle fate.  Often within a measured, tethered, and treasured solitude to carry through this life in fortitude.  All of these are silent means to achieve the impossible dream:  naming that which seems in most times unseen.

Or just another injection of an experimental predilection, to the ancient heavenly connection through timeless reinvention, by means of intervention.