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Brett Jul 2021
In my folly, of following fathers that have come before me;
I find myself lost, strewn about, and blown off course.
Teachers taught me time, in only the most linear of directions.
Yet the sins of those long past, seem to rest a weight,
Heavy upon my back.
Each of us an Atlas, on our knees before our masters.

It seems quite the contradiction, to have freedom inside a system.
Where rules are loose, in their applied use.
A game of pick and choose;
Played with loaded dice, that always seem to favor the few.
We the beast of burden, weakest first, penthouses the new-age church
Where the powers preach the verse.

Lost in our lack of direction, like southern-bound birds,
Plucked of their feathers.
Grounded in work boots, dumbfounded and resolute,
In poisoning our connective roots.
Fields of flowers and acres of pine, burning with the flame,
Stolen from us, somewhere along the line
A sinking ship, with only ***** rags to plug the holes.
Streets once paved with gold,
Forever cracked like our collective souls.
Poem should be three 6 line verses, but alas HePo loves to mangle my structure. ARGHH!
Brett Jul 2021
Forever falling
Through the open hearts of outstretched arms
Tunnel vision of the past
Paves the roads ahead
The off-ramps of destiny are untamed, forgotten, and overgrown
No safety awaits me, and
There is no shelter under the roof of a broken home
Storms chase me, but
In thunderclouds I drown out the world
Wanderer
Weary of only the weather
Inside his own reflection
Brett Jan 2022
Death never quells
The tin ringing of its wedding bells.
Our own flesh, betrothed
To dirt, and consummated
As a glossy wooden box penetrates
Beneath the surface of the Earth.

How we tailor time to match,
A fitted formula that suits our thoughts.
Trails of missed connections,
Lead like breadcrumbs to
The fraction of a second, when you spoke too soon.
Your moment is lost. Words spoken
Forever emblazoned on the stone slab
Carried around as personality.
What you always meant to say,
Only ever reads as regret. We never count the steps
Between triumph and catastrophe.
Life is a burnt-out church house. A one-man quire
Singing sorrow, match in hand.
Brett Feb 2022
Hey, would you like to be friends, or
At least play pretend and
Have discussions that pass lifeless
Like a leaf being pushed by the winds.

You could even keep my shirt at your crib,
So years later you can forget
Whose even it is. Like remembering
Which kid drew this scribble
Hung up on the fridge.

Man, all these frayed connections are
Dimming the lights in this decrepit
Building. One huff and puff
Could turn this structure to rubble dust.

I have no mind to wink or blink
An eye, at one word half *** replies, unless
It reads goodbye. Tired of tap dancing
On the precipice of caring, or
Not caring less.
Brett Apr 2021
Life is rough baby
            So go on
Cry us a river
Drip the liquid venom from your fangs
            Under my skin
Be the dark mass spotted on my liver

Go on now love
            Nourish my pain
Feed me my ego
Shoot your pride
             Up into my veins

Give to me life darling
             Or come and take it away
Hold my bleeding heart in your hands
Let me watch
             While you throw it away
Brett Jul 2021
The red sun rises, over this hopeful land of second chances.
Deposited from the darkness, out onto the desert sands,
I soak in the silence like a thirsty dish rag.

My calculations had been compromised
By a malfunction deep inside my sickened mind.
The wicked ways of the self-depraved,
Mutated my world to Papier-mâché.
A mirage of vanity and technicolor blooms.

Folded and twisted, while my motionless eyes were mused by the mist.

Oh,
How much I have missed, of life and of love.
Even these sands blossom with their own granular beauty.
And I am here to bear witness, to myself,
And to the many footsteps that wait before me.
Brett Jul 2021
Supersonic thoughts seem to speed up the passing of my life.
Just yesterday; it seems,
love and luck laid bare next to me,
like loaded dice on a Vegas summer night.

Now I cradle the ghost of unforeseen catastrophe.
Blood from bullet wounds
prove false my bravado.

Beneath the blackened circles of my weary eyes,
sleep calls to me
like a string quartet of warped wooden violins.

My wordbook’s scribblings are just a pale excuse for my silent sins. Like neglect and
blatant disrespect for the stacking of the deck against me.

There it is again. Quiet qualifiers to mask my true intent.
Heaven sent its hounds,
to drag me down; hell bound, for ignoring the silent sounds

Of tears that grace the ground before me.
An honest mistake for rain. Pain,
is like ****** for the insane, shooting through my veins.

Feeding the flowers you think you see, blooming
in the graveyards of my brain.
Brett May 2021
I sometimes think of growing up
Waking early and brewing cheap coffee
Pouring it in the same old half washed cup
Exchange a cold shower for a couple bucks
Trade happiness for a crooked smile
I could walk to work, but I think I will drive instead
Traffic is soothing
Job security
Misery becomes my amusement
Local radio 8am
Woman won a thousand medallions
Two burnt down houses
Stop short, *******
Now the coffee is on my trousers
Half past nine
Parking lot is packed
Six block walk and twenty minutes of life I will never get back
Hey look its Tim
Tim is divorced with two kids
Grown up stuff I guess
I’ll just follow him in
Brett Jun 2021
I remember cooking for two. Last Sunday afternoon,
the stove light hit the fritz. Same bulb I ******* in the night before you called it quits.
By Tuesday, the burner I simmered onions on
had begun to rust away.
Wet metal tears,
as I sacrificed the dish we loved to the microwave.
Round and round it went. Watching, as the plastic peeled and bent;
remember treating you with the same contempt.
Left with soggy slop and goo; starved for love,
I eat my heart out with a spoon.
Love is food we blindly consume.
Brett Oct 2020
Here I am
Just spinning in the wind
A wandering soul
Excavating the hope
That lies buried within

Here I am
Slow dancing with pain
A battered warrior
Searching for glory
Breaking free from these chains

Here I am
On the edge of the void
A healing heart
Hope in hand
Drifting away from all the noise

Here I stand
Walking this empty road
Devoid of regret
Tears run dry
I’m coming home
Him
Brett Nov 2020
Him
Oh, does a man wonder
If he can ever taste love again
For if he did
Would the ink run dry from his pen
Would his metaphors fall overboard
And sink to the abyss
Oh, how he fears the kiss of warm lips
May deaden his words
And if his manic musings would even be missed
For the only time his wandering mind feels alive
Is when the flowers that bloom
Lay dead inside
Through pain is how he explains
The beauty of a dessert
Longing for rain
He’s played many a game of chess
With the author of his own death
It’s how he learns
The difference between
A cold December nightmare
And living out his dreams
His reality is seen
Through the lines we read between
Labeled aloof
You would be too
If you sat with the truth
And understood
He would rather be him
Then pretend to be you
Imagine a man at peace with every dimly lit street
For even the shadows speak
Subtle, discreet
Lend an ear
Give them a listen
Oh, darkness
Forever painted as the villain
He finds hope in those lonely cold winters
Depressed or obsessed?
For maybe he lives life
As if life were all he had left
Often out of step?
Or unwilling to die on a bed of his own regrets
If only you could feel the fire of passion
That burns in his every breath
We all fade
So, he would rather slow dance with life
On the tip of her blade
For your only ever you
When you forget to be afraid
Long, but I just could not stop writing.
Brett Jul 2021
Summer ice box, bolted to the block like a hustler’s ambition.
King of the corner. Hand to hand to every family man or,
A fiends fever dream. Metal mattress for the meek.
Chill spot on the streets,
For a late-night congregation of labeled freaks;
To people passing by at least.
Neighborhood staple. A practicing painters graffiti canvas.
Crowned with empty coffee cups turned bank accounts for the beggar.
Bent from stray bullets, but never broken.
Stalwart, abandoned bodegas
But the ice box remains.
The signature of a city that speeds away, but
Will never change.
ICU
Brett Oct 2020
ICU
Sometimes there is nothing that needs to be written
You are the poetry
You are what we wish to see when we doze off to sleep, close our eyes and start to dream.
The flash of lightning that ignites the rain
The light in darkness
The remedy to all the pain

Sometimes there is nothing that needs to be written
You are the words
You are what occurs when an angel falls to Earth
The spark in the dark of a lonely heart
The ice that flows through your veins
The fire that burns deep within all the same

Sometimes there is nothing that needs to be written
You are a beauty which defies description
You are the heart of a lion
The shelter from the storm
A burning sunset in its finest form
The Autumn sunflower blooming all alone

Sometimes there seems to be something different
You are all the words I have sat down and written
In other words………. everything this world is missin’
Brett Nov 2020
If I die tonight
Please don’t pray for me
Hell is full
And Heaven’s gates don’t open free

If I die tonight
Look up to the stars
Peel back the façade
Past the hate in our hearts

If I die tonight
Find peace in my courage
Never backed down
Went out in a flourish
Brett May 2021
I can not help when I wake up with you on my mind
As if my eyes, had wandered off into the past

I know it’s over, but the more I see
The less I can claim to know

Inside my heart there are footprints
Artifacts of my wandering gypsy soul (sole)

My thoughts conjure up an image of your lips, but
I taste only that in which I miss

Only loneliness lingers on a phantom kiss
Calloused hands made of stone

Carved to reach out, but
No innate strength to hold them closed
Brett Jul 2021
Even when the days, are the darkest shade of ash and gray
I’ll find my way
                          Even when black holes, swallow up my summer sun
                          I’ll never run
Even when winding roads, leave me lost and all alone
I’ll always find my way back home
                          Even when my veins, are coursing with numbing pain
                          I’ll never forget my name
Even when love, is emptied dry from my cup
I’ll raise it to the rain, and watch the world fill it up again
Brett Jun 2021
Insects have invaded the safe haven
Of my home
Wood warped from an endless squall
They slink through the cracks
Crawling on the walls
Product of neglect
and,
A refusal to suture open wounds
I spray and Raid them away,
like
The Nuclear Option ever solved a problem
I train my gaze to look the other way
See, sunken minds can forget for days
but,
When I sit and stare
I see them polka dotted everywhere
Skeeving, dry heaving and pulling out my hair
Cold sweats as I am combing through my bed
The critters have crept and nested
Deep inside my head
All my worrisome thoughts
Have kept the insects fed
Nature provides endless insights into life
Brett Sep 2021
Hallways ever lonely in my mind
The duality
Of whispering voices
Screaming inside

Walls of empty picture frames,
Move like mirrors chasing a lost reflection.
Fading memories melt away like oil paintings in the desert.
Fickle, or free. I remember when,
Remembering was the furthest feeling found flowering inside of me.

Sword-crossed lovers,
And now a dagger in my heart.
Empty castle now stands full,
With all the rubble from its broken parts.
Brett Jul 2021
Swimming through my blood again
The same soulless feeling
A boy found at ten

Empty silhouettes haunt my bed
Strands of blonde
Like a noose tied around my neck

Choking me slow
But what is pain to a portrait
Caught in the fire of a burning home
Rest in peace to all the fallen musicians who left far too soon. I could never count the inspirations. Thank You.
Brett Jul 2021
I want to build a rocket ship, but this full moon blanket,
keeps me tangled up in bed.
Maybe a sun shower ,will birth a rainbow,
and I could build a bridge with that instead.
A walk with the weather, may be what I need,
to clear the clouds above my head.

The soggy sounds of rain, strum the chords,
that sing a song inside my brain.
A violin or guitar riff, to untwist the tornadoes,
my heart’s stuck with.
Who needs the stars, when I’ve got the sun,
to shine for me when bad times come.

My sandy feet always have the waves, to wash away,
the darker shades of cloudy gray.
These lonely lips even have a kiss, and the warm caress,
from her outstretched fingertips.
I want to build a rocket ship, but today,
I’ll just exist.
Brett Jul 2021
In this wasteland of avarice, I struggle to pull silver threads
From this gray cover of smog. The sound of brittle bones aching,
Drowned out by the quaking footsteps of titans.
Men, who would be gods, push for you to play your hand.
Knowing from their fingers, have you been dealt the cards.
A deck of diamonds, devoid of Kings with hearts.
Honor has been dead, since Pride married Malice and,
Greed shacked up with strife. 21st century freedom.
A modest monetary price,
For ownership stake of your life.
There is no honor in a wasted life.
Brett Mar 2022
What a silence
Gagged by all my swallowed pride
A man with two minds
Sitting at an empty breakfast table
Crumbs caked in dust
Sleep hangs from my eyes
Like four fingers gripping a ledge
Hoping to be pulled in through an open window, but
Content with dangling forever
Those that I love are my strangers
Overcast in August
Sedated on the bank of a lake
Sifting through rocks
Hair hiding her face, from my memory
Silently, I can write down her name
Yet moments most important
Are just the pages where I fill in the blanks
How many tears have I replaced
With forced smiles and sundresses
Swaying with grace
As you run through the wind and into my arms
How far have I waded
Into deep waters of fiction
What lies sunken and drowned
Beneath the calm surface I have created
What will be found
When the depths are dragged
Will this lake give up my dead?
Brett Apr 2021
I often ponder the thought of living forever
Immortal
The weary heart chronicler
                    Of one last cold December

Death does nary escape my mind
Yet who is the keeper
What specter
                     keeps its watchful eye on time

Stuck in a daydream
Yet I see life written
So clearly across the sky
             What fate awaits eternal eyes

Whose lips
             Shall be my last kiss goodbye

Would I be stricken lonely
To witness life’s flourishes
As they slowly
             Recede below me
Brett Nov 2020
I must be drunk off all this pain
Judging by the way
These aches attack my brain

This bottle full of love
Is souring its taste
With each and every cold embrace

My reality is spinning
Spiraling towards my fate
In a world devoid of singing

Endless black becomes my vision
Lost at sea
Swimming with all my indecision

I can be free of this place
With one step over the edge
I take my leap of faith
Brett Jul 2021
Only here till’ morning, so the night’s an open road and,
the beaten path only leads to mourning. An off-road traveler,
who escapes the chase of a pursuant sun.

Slow walking through river reeds.
A cupped handful of running water reinforces his state of being;
all but free.

Marathon of miles between, the first date on his gravestone and
the last number his mother reads at the bottom of his eulogy.
The hyphen shorthand for life and,

Missing the meaning through the seams, that connect his first day
to the day he leaves. An often-bereaved purveyor of shattered dreams,

Who stops to smile at every waving tree because,
even in despair he found belief beneath
the bared teeth of the machine trying to syphon from his peace.

A flower born from concrete.
Escaping through the cracked city streets;
out past the horizon line.
The dash between dates, holds all our memories. Tip-toeing on the edge of a tightrope.
Brett Feb 2022
Oval emeralds peer through a man made of glass.
Casement windows carry the crash of turquoise waves,
From the coast of Costa Rica, through the verdant green
Jungle trees that surround us.
Two shoulders slung with Capuchin monkeys.
Crystal waterfalls trace UV rays
Around the blonde, attached to every neuron in my mind.
Precious moments render me blind.
Lost in the liminal space between
Two doors in a hallway.
Before and after; the passing chapters
That flip away like calendar pages.
Ticking seconds of the present, present us
With all we can own.
The nods and winks miles from the beach.
Bereft of worries about what’s left.
Unbound
From the doors we choose to walk out.
Brett Jul 2021
The litmus test for loneliness, is the approaching dark
and the clawing hand
that pulls you closer to your resignation to become engulfed in it.
An empty café
bustling only with,

The screaming thoughts that stack up in your mind like poker chips. The same expression frozen stiff makes you fake a smile
when least appropriate.
A jester at the funeral,

Human touch just strikes you as unusual because an open hand is like
subtle subterfuge, syphoning your soul for personal use.
Emotional exposure erodes a stone demeanor.
Loneliness is like an open road with no street signs pointing home.
Hold onto loneliness
Brett Aug 2021
Tonight, she taught me the nature of healing summer rains
Whimsical descriptions of dancing in puddles, but
Metaphors only serve to drown her pain
Dry on the surface, swearing inside the drought sustains
But dew droplets in her eyes betray her restraint
The morning after, the storm remains

Little flower, bent at the stem
Oversaturated by the self-absorbed
Her waterlogged roots weighing her down, but
In fields of bloom they still look to you
See, the weak reach for the easily used green and blue tulip hues
But her yellow petals require strength to be pulled from the meadow
For A Dear Friend: Stronger then she knows.
Brett Jul 2021
Harboring heretics horizontally, hidden behind hinged windows
Like a wry grin swearing a sinister scowl doesn’t wait within
Lovebirds and lust bugs, twisted and mixed like distorted pixels
Cruise missiles carefully catalogue the sights
Before anchoring you in the port of your designated afterlife
Fickle fragments of frayed remembrance
Languished and lost to the ages
Like pages of parchment that anoint your claims baseless
Cynicism seems to have become contagious
Live from the basement,
                                 Full of sunken ships and rusty cages.
Brett Oct 2020
Do we ever notice
How clouds of light
Vale the stars
From human sight

Do we ever notice
How the light from the moon
Illuminates our path
As the oceans turn black from blue

Do we ever notice
The warmth of a touch
Until hands become ashes
From dust to dust

So, let’s notice the world
Come and sit for a while
It’s ok to grow old
With the heart of a child
Brett Jun 2021
What is it that makes me miss
The lighter fluid on your lips. Toothaches from a temptress,
And her candy kiss. Arm’s elastics wrap me up. So foreign,
Is this human touch. Like a siren she swims and sings,
To lure me close enough to clutch. An ephemeral embrace,
That chews me out and spits me up.
Love eats hearts for lunch.
Love is a luxury I can seldom afford.
Brett Jan 2022
My lucid sleeping has drawn the gaze
Of these dream demons that scheme against me.
This time of night, even the monsters have slinked away
Back inside their closet.

You have not known fear, rational or otherwise,
Until you lie powerless to the paralysis
That the dream demon wields so elegantly against me.
Like gripped by a vice, my body is held stiff.

My eyes wide open, or so my mind is led to believe
By the amorphous foe playing tricks with my deepest grief.
Contorting memories into the present moment,
A bedroom near identical to my own.

Hospital white walls, and the same clothes strewn about.
A faceless lady lay next to me, curved in shadows. My hand
Reaches out, but hovers just shy, as if set in stone.
Why cant I move? One more attempt proves of little use.

Just then, I am stabbed by six figures seven times and burned
Alive, but yet I do not die. Oh how I struggle to move
An inch or two, but this formless force denies. I demand
The demon speak to me, but before the thought can make its move
The loop repeats. I never die, but I always bleed.
Brett Feb 2022
My lucid sleeping has drawn the gaze
Of these dream demons that scheme against me.
This time of night, even the monsters have slinked away
Back inside their closet.

You have not known fear, rational or otherwise,
Until you lie powerless to the paralysis
That the dream demon wields so elegantly against me.
Like gripped by a vice, my body is held stiff.

My eyes wide open, or so my mind is led to believe
By the amorphous foe playing tricks with my deepest grief.
Contorting memories into the present moment,
A bedroom near identical to my own.

Hospital white walls, and the same clothes strewn about.
A faceless lady lay next to me, curved in shadows. My hand
Reaches out, but hovers just shy, as if set in stone.
Why can’t I move? One more attempt proves of little use.

The faint rustling of hands through silverware drawers echoes
Off a cold kitchen floor, bouncing off hallway walls, and
Slipping through my ajar bedroom door. Little hairs
Render salute, as the sound crawls like ivy up my spine.

Just then, I am stabbed by six figures seven times and burned
Alive, but yet I do not die. Oh how I struggle to move
An inch or two, but this formless force denies. I demand
The demon speak to me, but before the thought can make its move
The loop repeats. I never die, but I always bleed.
Brett Jun 2021
I have never had much luck with love. Explanations only skim the surface of the sea. Always caught up on the hooks at the end of your line.

You tug on the spool and play with your food. Just reel me in. A wish on a dandelion, I get blown to the wind.

Piglet and Pooh, sweet is the honey we are destined to lose. I send kisses through the door you scream at me through.

Flourish and wither like the wrinkled crease down the heart of our family picture. Dice with the devil, cee-lo with evil. Paranoia through the peephole. High on her ego.
Brett Nov 2020
I must be wearing blinders
Can’t understand why we put the past behind us
You say you have my memories filled in binders
Letters, menus, pictures, poems
Do you read the words as I once wrote them?
Every time we speak it’s like a small explosion
If I could cry,
I swear these tears would fill the ocean
You show these little cracks
I try and fill my hope in
Your happy, I’m happy
Inside I am burnt and broken
Man,
It must be this **** I’m smoking
My words betray me
I’m self-exposing
Do you ever ask yourself why you were chosen?
I just wonder how you can up and leave
But I guess that’s just the motion
See,
I keep our memories in a little folder
Every night I crack it open
I don’t read the words
I just sit and listen
It’s like my heart ran off in one of your ink descriptions
Maybe there’s something in these syllables that I been missing
Some clarity to such a rash decision
Was our love that much of a car collision?
It keeps me up at night
This is why,
In life your supposed to fight
For what you love
Sweat, tears and dripping blood
But,
I guess I’m just a memory in a binder
A little boy dreamed of a girl
Never thought he would really find her
Hold what you love close. As if it was the very oxygen you needed to breath.
Brett Jun 2021
Time spent on the faceless. Smooth skin turned abrasive
By the scaled scars, my broken heart has created.
Serrated blades of blame pierce our veins and,
Trickle down pain through broken water mains.

A gluttons dinner bell hangs above the poor’s poisoned well.
Dead men don’t feast. Lead a horse to water and,
Wait for it to drink. Watch the self-defeat. Hand-made desolation by men with no faces.
Puppet string desperation keeps us in our places.
Who is in control.
Brett Nov 2020
I see passing smiles
And can only reflect them back
I see happiness through memory files
Playing emotional copycat
Circling the Earth for miles
In search of the key
To free me from this prison of denial
That lay rest in the deepest parts of me
When it is said and done
I am everyone to no one
I am no one to some
Here I stand
Just a mirror for the sun.
Brett Jun 2021
Each day is a face with two sides
      Do or die
Failure is an ointment
      Swarmed by flies
Lies birthed from larva
      Contempt bred from pride
The caterpillar cocooned is consumed
      Blind to the future
Either monarch or moth
      Led astray by the flame
The world we don't see, is often the world most worth our attention.
Brett Mar 2021
Change
A curious word
For a people doomed to mistakes
That have more than once occurred

We peddle in power
Masquerading as purpose
A castle built upon the sand
Will inevitably
Succumb to the very land on which it stands

Equality
Just another slogan
Your best efforts
Just amount
To another drop in the ocean

A species
Who fancies itself free
Forever cursed
To miss the forest for the trees
Our own shortcomings
Transplanted as another’s needs

Life’s eternal enigma
Our greatest triumphs
Have only served
To **** us quicker
Brett Nov 2020
When the clock strikes noon
I begin to wish for the dark
To see your face
Bring light to the moon

My Dear
You are the echo from the rhythm of my heart
How can breathing so close
Carry us so far apart
If love is loss and pain
Then what is left is what remains
Emptiness and sorrow
How can one-man dance
When no songs will play tomorrow
Brett Jul 2021
I slip shrouded through a summer’s mist
Away from sterile streetlights
That cast a distorting haze, hiding
Endless solar waves, that rest above
This earthly place where I pass my days

With stars tied tight to an infant night
I run and cup one lightning bug for my lantern light
Like being guided by my adolescence, to an open shore
Where the sky meets the vastness of my sleepless mind
This place is free of weight that holds me down;
No thunderclouds hover above me now

Constellations; like scars upon the sky, share stories
Through the passing tides of time. Cassiopeia undone by her pride,
Reminds me when to swallow mine. So often, I feel chained like the maiden;
Andromeda, imprisoned by a pious Poseidon.
On this lonely beach,
I trace my own tale, like a signature on the night. Not a hero but,
I was here. The simple story of a wandering man,
Always willing to lend an ear.
Brett Jul 2021
Oh Baby,
These still pictures seem to be running free
Tell me why your eyes have begun to move through mine
Just you, in a field of flowing flowers
The red and blue tulip hues
Wish and wave before your legs
And there you are, in full bloom

I am not so mad, that I believe I can touch the past
But I can feel, still today, the warming rose color upon my face
See, nothing ever truly gets washed away
We linger still
In a longing look just beyond our windowsills
My tortured rain has gone away
For these rolling fields and riverbanks, you have my thanks.
Brett Nov 2020
I hope he can express himself
Without breaking her boundaries
It is easy to forget
It hurts to remember
That he became a better man
On the day that he met her
A heart once cold
Ignited by her ember
How she turned his heart of leather
Into something tender
He sits on this lonely cold November
Pondering how a stranger
Could make his soul feel like he met her
In another life
In the depths of his dreams
Alone in the crowd
How the stars in her eyes
Made him feel seen
The monkey on his mind
She made him believe
That love was the gravity
That pulled on the seams
Of his stoic façade
If there is a god
She is the essence of a pretty blonde
Sundresses and scars
She taught him that perfection
Is the product of our flaws
She is the songbird
Singing melodies through the jungle trees
The butterflies in his gut
The weakness in his knees
That is her
The universe could never do her justice with these words
Let him be frank
He owes you his life
A message of my thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone. Hold Your Loved Ones Close
Brett Apr 2021
Love is quiet
Love happens off-screen
Love is beneath the sheets,
Underneath
The ink-stained leaf that bears our grief
Love is the songbirds singing sorrow
So serene
Love is a message
Trapped up in a bottle
Floating
Alone
Preserving today’s thoughts
For another tomorrow
Love isn’t owned
Love is this poem
Just in this moment I don’t feel so alone
Love is an ember
That follows the wind
The spark of an essence
We entomb deep within
Love is some technicolor dream
Love is the streets,
And Radio Rahim
Love is a tether
Between our trust,
And the inevitability
Of falling short of forever
Brett Jul 2021
I am addicted to peace, but it always seems to fall away from me.

Down in the depths that ring hollow, the material never seems real.

Something about a feeling, resonates on the only currency I care to perceive.

Like falling upwards, and watching the ground recede beneath.

These gridded blocks like bars, that keep me from being free.

Discarding dog tags, and gnawing through the leash,

That keep me tethered, to the hands controlling my belief.

All these passing smiles wreak of resignation.

Fabricated happiness, sows the seeds, of roots that clasp your feet;

Ensuring, you never leave the places,

That you never chose to be.
Brett Mar 2021
Love is just a word
That I sometimes hear whispered

Echoing through the soul
I left buried somewhere off in the distance

The only smile I know is trapped in these fading pictures
Pills, potions, and mysterious mixtures

A feeble attempt to **** the feeling quicker
Of loss and loneliness

The heart is home is it?
To me a cage where I lock away

Each and every drop of pain
Yet my lips are stained when I speak your name

The tears you cry
Fill my cup with rain

Just one more sip before I drift………
Brett Oct 2020
Whether sunrise or sunset
Autumn leaves or sundress
The party always seems like one less

Whether rain falls or snow rests
Your beauty escapes no breath
The party always seems like one less

Whether dark days bring deep stress
Your loves what keeps this pen wet
The party always seems like one less

Whether hearts break or re-mesh
Your soul is my weakness
This party just isn’t the same without your sweetness
Brett Jun 2021
Walking on a windy, late night crooked street. I call to my city,
To play that soft bassline beat. The one that captures,
The red shade from cheeks. Tonight, I step with ease.
Fresh oiled springs,
Bring a bounce, back into my knees.
Full moons are a flourish for the freaks.
Yet in this dark veil, only loneliness presents a hand,
To dance with me.

I bow at the honor. Emptiness is just the face I need, to imagine,
A smile that never takes its leave. In this heartbeat of a dream,
Moments mirage, and recreate my most cherished scene, from
Our midnight movie marriage, when the space between,
Was only the frills of your dress and,
The stitching on my jeans.
Dance with your memories , like the past
Brett Nov 2020
Some people think their always right
Others play the silent type
Some people can’t help but be uptight
Others can come off as truly nice

Inside they feel deformed
With a heart which scars adorn
A million ways to pick a fight
Will the love protect us through the night?
Or would the hurt just take my life

Some people think their always right
Others just use words as the knife
Take your hand and grasp it tight
Some people are the shadows
Others provide the light
Brett Jul 2021
Down I go
Dying slow; no carpet rides
Beneath the blue below
Precious diamonds; pressure only grinds my bones
         That which dwells in these depths,
         Must be overthrown
         Like the stone, dragging me deeper
         Into this black cold
All my sunken attempts
Dress the sand in swords
For all the fallen warriors slain
By the dueling voices inside my brain
        Chained to pillars in this endless ocean
        Composure erodes like weathered boulders
        Yet, I stand staunch against the breaking waves
        For what is outside myself, I have no mind to claim
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