if it were to be,
my last day on earth.

i would wish it to be like
this....
gray flannel clouds,
set against a blue,blue sky.

puddles, glassiene,
on the ground
and water dripping,
an unsteady rhythm,
from leaf to leaf,
to ground...

there is a...
soft edged feel
to the world,
newly cleaned,
full of promise and hope
and the scent of frangipani.

if it were my time,  
i would love to leave
on a promise,
of hope and frangipani...
wouldn't you?

Enter the chilly no-man’s land of doubt.
A world unknown to the conscious,
A place where you should feel nothing on your conscience,
A realm of the mystical,
Of sulfurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums,
A place where our thoughts turn to reality,
A place where our questions create their own answers.
Enter the dead, for no living people exist there.
A realm between heaven and hell,
A domain where there is neither good nor bad,
Constant neutrality created by us.
Powered by imagination,
By our thoughts of the day,
This world is made by us.
A world of silence,
Nothing bleeds through,
Save the voices of those trying to wake us.
There is a guide through this endless world,
Our very own brain,
Leading us into this maze of vision.
We all share this state,
We all view our dreams differently,
We live in our dreams.
When awoken,
Memories are present,
Memories so very vivid.
A lucid dream,
Controlling the grey,
Our dreams do matter.
A dream is recurring,
We have all had these,
Such simple repetition.
A blinding light,
And everything is interrupted,
We are yanked from our world.
****** into a harsh reality,
Where we control nothing,
We long to dream again.
Sitting in office chairs,
Slipping into our thoughts,
Eternal longing to dream.

Quite honestly, I never thought I'd make it this far.
And I finally know, it's not down to luck:
When you are thrown into the fire, either you are incinerated
Or you are forged.
When people ask me how I've gone on
I try to tell them something soft
Something gentle
But the truth is,
I wasn't nurtured
I wasn't coaxed from the ground like a sapling,
No
For good or ill,
Like a fine silver ring
Like an iron gate
Like a
Blade,
I have been forged
And I am dangerous.

I wish, I wish, with all my heart
That we never have to be apart

And even now I see your face
But someone else is in your place

There's a stranger in your skin
Why on earth did you let him in?

beneath my fingers: smooth, polished wood, a breath. and they long to make their way to the still beating of your heart.

                                                    there,

                                                              there,

almost as if unseeing you look past me to flip a page, to paint color over words you must remember,
yet unremembering---

i am here. sometimes i think you remember me. sometimes, like a shade of crayon appearing randomly in your hand, a soft hushed word. silence. no talk of fleeting butterflies today. no sound of your leavetaking.

there, the long silence of an empty hallway.

(for A)

(in collaboration with jacob dominguez)

Red snake of friendly waters
come wrap yourself around my heart
and whisper to me of such fond times
the future is no one's friend

I only know the past
the songs I sing were written yesterday
the sugar on my lips crystallized by the sun of days that have gone

The future is but a promise
of continued storms of change in the present