I hope you gaze  
Over, over breakfast
Tired mind in overcast, morning haze
It's raining in June
When your eyes attain their loving glaze

They could catch your smile
With a cardboard box, and a stick
Dopey, painted on your face a while
You're looking over what I wrote last night
For that smile,  I would limp every mile

This morning you begin to read my musing
English Muffin and Orange Juice
Is poetic perusing the least bit amusing?
Graft script, sweet nothings onto yourself
In conviction I made you my choosing

I asked for a city, you gave me its parts.
I wanted a machine, an unrelenting automaton.
You gave me its people.
You gave me their emotions, their creations, their charity, their sin.
I never asked for all this.
I never asked for the thought-provoking ramblings of a beggar.
I never asked for the rhapsody of a lone saxophone player.
I never asked for the smell of rain on asphalt.
All this,
the thoughts of a young philosopher on a train,
the gaze of a hopeless romantic at a café,
the glimmer in a woman's eyes as a car passes by in the rain,
I asked for an emotionless machine, an unwavering citadel of apathy.
I never asked for this.
I asked for a city, you gave me its parts, Thank You.

After looking back on the last few years with depth and hind sight. I've realized that I never really took a look at myself and what I was doing to the people around me. The selfish glut is over and the stark reality of the bed I've made is terrifying. I'm slashed deep and wide and my emotions are flowing out and my most guarded feelings are being shared with complete strangers. I've begin to cry infront of far too many people. I met a man today who's wife just left him also and in one look we shared the shame of what we've done to those we adored the most. We fought back tears in control of our composer tripping slightly at the raw we couldn't hide. The insight I refused to use could of saved me the love of my life. Instead I hid in our time of need the emotions I felt because I lost a child and couldn't deal with the consequences that my actions brought me. I realize now that I hid my real self from that moment on. The fears and sarrow that I had felt before were paled by light pulled to the depths of this black hole in my heart. I tore myself apart and threw the vulnerable parts to the bottom of my soul. Inadvertently cutting off myself emotionally from everyone around me. I weep at the relationships I missed out on. I just swallowed my aderals and drowned myself in work. Telling myself that success at my job is what my wife needed. More pay, more things, more happiness. The whole time I was snubbing those around me in brash strokes. I look back on a version of myself as a scout tilling and planting a yard for an old lady and compare that to a man who wouldn't open the door for his wife. What did I think I was doing? On the way home each day after long nights at work, I'd drown my stress in a couple cigarettes, deep breaths of sweet death, just to get home and hide my life in a bowl of pot. Letting the white clouds engulf me in the sparkling mess I didn't want to face. Stripping myself from the crutches was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I remember following a co-worker all the way to his car for a cigarette, after I vowed to never buy another. After that my resolve was strengthened and I stopped getting high. Little did I know the darkness just layers beneath the skin that clawed itself to Alcohol. In gulps I drowned out my sanity and made way for demons within. I write as if this was the first time, and I wish so badly this was the last. The demon downed a bottled of aderal, trying to finally wipe this disgust from the face of the earth. At the same moment failing completely and letting another demon in. The birth of "Paranoid K.C." My drunken rampage was the beginning of the end. I accused her of cheating losely based on texts I can't remember, forever ending the trust we shared, and losing the security that I would be there for her by trying to kill myself. Those were the moments my acts smeared the hallow ground that was our first home. The place my wife so beautifully asked me to marry her. The hearts still hang in my room. The socks I wore wrapped in the elastic that she wore in her hair still lays hidden. Secret relics to the religion of our past. Three days straight I was awake after swallowing that bottle. The first I lied awake jumping at every sound within our house thinking that someone was breaking in. The second was bad, the cars that drove by were people attacking. The whole world a nightmare. I had a class at work that day, regrettably I attended. I knew full well my eyes were dialated like two endless holes gaping into my black soul. In one long gaze with eyes dramatically pronounced the teacher acknowledged he noticed without alerting the rest of the class. Or was that just, "Paranoid K.C."? I felt such shame. The third night, we drove all night while the imaginary people followed ready to attack us. From that moment on, they stopped giving me the aderal. Thats when I realized the addiction it had become. Picking up the pieces of our life we made best of the waste I had left. We moved again not able to stand the terrible memories I, K.C., had created. We moved and bought a third of my parents house desperate for a third chance. This was our new hope. Our fresh start and it was looking good. We'd well mended from our wounds and the foundations of trust were in the horizon. In flippant disregard to who and what I am, we celebrated our new found haven. The Alcohol poured forth and we partied at our new found luck unaware of what was comming. Two nights in a row I let the demons back again in three bottles of bitter bases. I remember nothing, so Alyssa filled me in. Not only that I hurt Alyssa but was verbally abusive. Yelling and telling her that I never trusted her. Making fresh wounds of old scars. Finalizing her grabbing enough confidence to let me go. She left because I was selfish, and I have to live with that everyday. She says its her fault to, but that's something I can't believe from a faithful wife who stuck with me through all that. I feel like I have brain washed her without either of us knowing. LOOK AT WHAT I'VE DONE!!!!

I gaze in the mirror
My temple reflecting
How eyes look like
How smiles feel like

Resting in desolate sanctuary
Have time to break down all the layers
As I look into the depths
I feel, I think, I listen
I never judge

They brought me into a dark room with but only one window and layed me against the cold, concrete wall. The room had nothing but solitary confinement for me and it poured rain for days, the pattering of the droplets hitting the window was the only thing that kept me sane. I would look up at the window as it sat there on the ceiling and gaze into the night sky for hours at a time, trying to convince myself that God could see me and hear my suffering and that all this was happening as a test of my faith for the greater good. I did not pray for my hands were bound and my soul was weighted by my captor.
   After some odd days, 3 men came into my confinement and breached my reflection. They released me from the cold concrete wall and brought me over a bucket of ice water. Without warning, one violently grasped my hair and flung my head into the water for many minutes it seemed, only pulling me out when I released my breath and then immediately putting me under once again. This would continue for hours over a period of several days.
  For those of you with faint hearts and an optimistic conscience, this is not a story with a glorious ending in which justice is served and the faith prevails. This is the story of how I became a martyr. After a multitude of days of this torture proceeding, one of the men had asked me, "Why do you still have faith in this God of yours if he does not save you? He has either shown himself to be false or does not care for your life."
  Solemnly, I responded as simply as it came to me. "Because God has power, God is the essence of all of our beings and what we are bound to. I do not love God because he is kind, because he is forgiving, because he is gentle and there for me always. I love God because he is something I do not know, and I can not change. God is omniscient because humans can not overpower God, whatever we learn, God knows, and that is the way it has always been. God is not a being at all, God is an idea, God is a motion, God is a thought with the power to conquer everything, God is a feeling that creates all emotion, God is the blueprint for everything that exists, God is everywhere. How do you not acknowledge what is so present and alive within you? God gives me determination which fuels willpower, and where there is a will there is a cause to which I am guaranteed to succeed. All so through the power of the universal spirit present within me and all of us."
   The man was absolutely bewildered and obviously confused, and continued to comply in my test of faith. "But if he has the power to set you free, as you are somewhat saying, why has he not?" And without letting me respond he once again interrupted. "Is it because your God is not present? He can not be with you in your confinement. Where is your God?"
   This was a question I was on the verge of discovering the answer to myself. If God could set me free, why had he not? But the answer was simple as it swept through me. With the grace of an angel, a raindrop fell from between the seams of the window and landed on my cheek. I looked up into the night sky once again and understood. God is in the rain.

You said once that if I were to kill myself,
The bullet would shatter two skulls;
Mine, and yours
And I willed this to be true
Because I had never felt so alone
I have tried to cling to you like a child to its mother
But you were just a beautiful daydream
A mirage made of light
Pixelated in my visions, so clear when I'm awake
So bright when I'm asleep
You are what comes after the rain, a rainbow as long as your gaze
And if I were lucky enough to follow you to your finish
I would be stunned by the immense wealth
Wealth like no other, a bright new penny, shiny, promising all that is sweet
I will put you in my pocket and run, capturing the fleeting moments as they fly
They'll  last longer that way, won't they?  
I have seen your demons rip you apart, down to
The very core
They grabbed hold of your ribs and shook to give you tremors,
Tapped to make you hiccup and stirred to make you cough
Wild eyed and scared, the beauty you held was hard to reach
So I pondered what drew me to you
Was it the pounding heart I, myself, could feel?
Or was it rather the sunken eyes, dead, unfathomably soft,
Clinging onto life
You left, to be better than you were with me
I offered you the world in a lilac flowered teacup, filled to the brim
With a mix of chai spices and cardamon
The sips you took were halfhearted, and I didn't see that,
At first
For I wore the night over my eyes and held you captive in chains and
rubber bands, belts and bows,
Secrets and lies, until you learned to despise
Me
You promised that we would one day be as close as two can be,
Under a plethora of pink frills and soft blankets
And we would both scream to the night that we were free
Free of all that we were, that which we hated, but if the roles were inverted,
We would know how much our hearts were flung to our throats
Every time we felt the presence of each other
I had no one else but you, and so my love was split in three parts;
Who you were
Who you are
and who you could be
And my hate was split as one and the same, but for myself
As much as one could hate, I hated, and I loved just as much
Until one day, I hated more
And your lonely heart was jealous of the passion, and departed
Leaving me in the grave I had dug
With the same rusty shovel you used to dig yours
No longer do I need you, nor will I need you again
For though you've been there in the past,
I know you will never be present in the future
I say goodbye with a simple wave
What once was mine is no longer
I have opened the cage and let you fly
So you flew, full of mirth, into the dust
Leaving behind a note
A note that said
It's now time that you fix
You

Left here in these eon days,
Welcome to wonderland is what I say.
An ethereal eternity in a moments gaze,
To be pondered beyond the barriers of time and space.

But for a split-second, reality flickers;
Beautiful in it's deliverance,
Sublime/oblivious:
Nocturnal firelight on shamanic sands,
Mescaline transcendent communion with the land.
Some daze inspiration takes me.

Suspended here in this celestial haze,
A clairvoyant glance into the eye of the maze.
The cleansing radiance of our empyral ways;
Left here in this aeon daze.

Colonial mansion, in an ocean of grass,
windows aglow as I walk past.
funeral service now used of verandah,
but I hear music, not mournful stanza.
french doors open to a reminisce,
with boyhood heart, of vitreous.

Footfalls on parquet floors,
tux and gown past crown moulded doors.
captured ambiance of a setting sun,
shown from chandeliers highly hung,
day I was born, born day of the prom,
I smiled cordially, and my date fawned.

girls betrothed by corsage on wrist,
rare french curls--a lunar eclipse.
bedraggle boys now dapper and genteel,
vest and bowtie, a knightly feel.
chapperesses smiling at maidenly gait,
happy drowse in  mansion estate.

cufflinks, silk gloves, nail polish of gloss,
beheld tonics and sweets, carefully aloft.
opening cord, an arrow from cupid's bow,
striking coquettes to their tippy toes.
they sprang to dance,I stepped back,
invisible in shadow with tux of black.

shoulders, lake ripples easing to shore,
hips, gentle waves, right before pour.
boys stiff, as if waists beheld sabres,
legs, sweeping brooms of on shore waiters.
"your too handsome to stay here unseen,"
said rivaling chaperess, semblance of queen.

"you should dance ,"said glittered lips of pink,
bent like sparrow wings, during teacup drink.
privy to why in shadow I hid my blush,
her class my crush, that crushed me so much.
she strained me, even the shadows she gave,
black silk, stretching,--convex and concave.

crude metal and wood classroom seat,
clasped her waist of slender physique.
she was guarded by a window in curtain mail,
and tended to by servants of light and gale.
light loved her skin of mediterranean sand,
and wind enraptured with brown strand.

light penetrated strands, blondly hot,
wind would blow, cooling pony tail off.
her shadow curtsied under my desk,
long legs danced in irritableness.
mourning class is abuzz with scent of prom,
flower not frost, rules the school's dawn.

I gave my consent,to an earlier invite,
then on, suitor blinded me with light.
and Great Gatsy, and looming prom night,
subjects of sparrow wings pressed tight.
" show of hands, who do not have a date?"
slender wrist arises, from an arm curvate.

alone, she shown that no one asked her,
this stone of Rome amongst boys of plaster.
hand fell with boy of teachers match,
wind shrouded her,from the window sash
rays gave discomfort,to gaze her way,
but I looked through burning ray.

to see a trace of a tear,in eyes ovate,
a godess unsought, with sadful face.
I, poor, fatherless, could not possible go,
to prom, with princess of arched portico?
I could not interweave my hands to dance,
or know, where I could place my glance.

wind blew a scrap from her desk, indiscreet,
it was pierced by light at my feet.
"will" and "with" were dotted with a heart,
"prom" and "me" before most painful part.
my name in her beautfiul free hand,
the colour red, from hearts inkstand.

class bell rings, I travel to mansion dream,
blue grass meet oriel in cul de sac seam.
eyes turn to cotton, in shadow as I ponder,
as pain was forgotten, I came upon her.
invisible hands, lifted my chin to a red shape,
our eyes met, her's smiling, mine agape.

only a glassmaker could imagine my sight,
seeing hot curves form in dance floor light.
only a wax-wing could have rivaled her eyes,
waves gently broke to gown down her thighs.
"will you dance with me,"she softly entreated,
" I don't know how,"a coward repeated.

a princess which tournaments were held,
for which every timber of mansion were felled.
not for Greece, mansion corinthian column,
for her, from quarry prom did befall them.
I could not tarnish this feminine form,
with my lineage in crown she adorned.

I turned from beauty, to dark acres tread,
under willow, I play the last thing she said.
my name, as I shunned from last chance,
back under willow, cane marks my stance.
I have preserved her forever, shying fate,
even if it was with my own heart-break.
*
I still see her--in the most beautiful prom poses,
still, I see her, as lights flicker out, and a coffin closes.