Tyler Kent White

This morning I woke with my ear pressed between shoulder blades. Every inhale, every drum, every pump, thump of your heartbeat said one thing – home, home, home.

Not everything I write will be a masterpiece; I know that. It is a process selecting words to convey feelings never meant to be spoken. So maybe I’ve been searching for what’s already been said and this is the finest way I can say it. I love you, in everything I am, I love you.

You are the fever that never broke, the name stuck in my throat. You are every letter of every word in every poem I ever wrote.

Anytime I want to feel closer to the ocean, I just lay by your side and listen to the waves ebb and swell in every breath you give and take, and feel each one crash inside of me. I knew from the first time I saw you that whoever said empty shells carried the ocean’s songs had never met you before.

Come to me, wild and untamed. Bring the oceans on your lips, the mountains on your spine; I want to explore all the places you have ever called home. Let me pluck each petal from the gardens you’ve grown, overcrowded seedlings pushing up through your bones. Come to me dipped in the stars, come to me wearing all your scars. I want to show you just how beautiful you are.

But I do know there are not enough syllables to spell out how much I love you. I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love… You are my every moment, my every hour, my every day, my every season, and I know this isn’t poetry and it’s certainly not a haiku, it’s just all the things I needed to say to you.

Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!

A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.

One side of unhealthy relating is if you are always pursuing or always retreating.

It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate.

You deserve to give yourself the same love that you give to everyone else.

I would rather be healthy alone, then sick with someone else.

Always pack your uniform on top.

A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.

Failure is no accident.

Never ask anyone over 70 how they feel. They’ll tell you.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta give yourself what you wish you were getting from someone else.

I have some wonderful friends from the Mideast that are as red, white and blue as anybody you know, that have been harassed, and I think it’s a terrible, terrible thing.

The most dangerous notion a young man can acquire is that there is no more room for originality. There is no large room for anything else.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.