Cautious creators,
Captivating with care,
Surviving safety,
But going nowhere.

Not sure which left us more broken,
The first kiss, or the last words spoken,
Both stung our hearts, a phantom pain,
The stench of ghosts in morning rain,
Trapped in a game we didn’t choose,
That neither of us knew how to lose,
So we loaded dice to tip the scales,
Fought with fumes and fingernails,
As strain built up in small degrees,
And finally brought us to our knees.

They say time can heal, but rarely does,
Lost sight of who I thought I was,
A sea of hope left me marooned,
And sunrise only salts the wound,
Now counting walls as vision narrows,
Fighting sleep with slings and arrows,
Held hostage by a fraying thread,
That exists only inside my head,
I left it all to smoke and smolder,
Woke up alone and so much older.

It took a village to raze the child,
Maybe it takes a wolf to tame the wild,
Or a shark to truly know the sea,
So where then does that all leave me?
There is no peace in cheap perfumes,
And no full hearts in empty rooms,
Only dust and unforgiving shade,
Sweet blue lights to dull the blade,
Held hostage in this house of glass,
I tell myself, this too must pass.

Eyes wide open, seared with wonder,
Hold me close to pull me under,
And walk it off with head held high,
A clenched fist cannot wave goodbye,
Sic transit sunlight, pirouette,
Embrace all that you can’t forget,
That fading ember, tarnished gold,
The remnants of the soul you sold,
Shall rise from under ash and boot,
Unclean, less pure, but resolute.

On the road to forgiveness,
With rocks in my shoes,
That same song in my head,
Those battered old blues.

And it’s true what you said,
We become what we choose,
I knew how this ended,
I knew that I’d lose.

Still I tuned out the chorus,
That choir of boos,
Such well-practiced anger,
Real blood from fake news.

But I was never your martyr,
Merely paying my dues,
Embracing each failure,
And earning each bruise.

There will always be hardships,
Some ghost to accuse,
But it’s your road to wander,
Carry on or refuse.

We raise hell where mighty buildings fell,
Steal their bricks to build new walls,
As the silence that we heard so well,
Hangs with pride in empty halls,

Like photographs of those now lost,
We faded with the touch of time,
Arms outstretched with fingers crossed,
The only victims of this crime,

In the cool shade of complacency,
Where only distance grew,
Disaster came and went so patiently,
I’m just glad that it was you,

Now twilight toasts to yet another year,
That we’ll regret before it’s gone,
As the glory with which we disappear,
Become the price of moving on.

Flies in the ashtray, karmic demands,
Hope in your eyes and blood on your hands,
Lips taught as bowstrings, fingers sharpened to hooks,
So far from the heroes you read in your books,
Daydream dereliction, sweet spinning wheel sting,
A straw dog sunrise and stained-glass wedding ring,
That heretic’s halo, your sandcastle throne,
A superficial wound that cuts to the bone,
Such pretty perdition, a fresh-paved descent,
Perfectly cast for the role of satisfied malcontent,
Inhale those excuses, wear victimhood like a crown,
Place blame on the ocean for letting you drown,
Adrift on a tightrope, breathe twilight’s dull hue,
Expecting those same roads to lead someplace new,
Await the whispers of morning, awake and a wreck,
The first breath of spring on the back of your neck,
Search for sincerity’s semblance, some echo of truth,
A fragment of hope in the splinters of youth,
But you found only fractures, sins never confessed,
As some tiny voice claws deep inside of your chest,
Heard but unanswered, it calls out just to say,
That this place is your home. You built it this way.

The temptation that the Siren sings,
A slow wave back from shore,
The sorrow that tomorrow brings,
A hundred days, a thousand more,

Casting lines of smoke and steam,
In search of great white whale,
The tragedy with which we dream,
The grace with which we fail,

A map carved upon a liar’s tongue,
Teach us to speak, but never say,
White knuckled on bottom rung,
From which we swing and sway,

As laughter consumes the setting sun,
Those echoes keep us company,
The first regret tells us we’ve just begun,
The last reminds us we’re still free,

But we awake to find familiar coasts,
Ships still bottled on their shelves,
And we realize we’re all just ghosts,
That don’t believe in themselves.

As you faded out of focus in my eye, twisted and caught,
We watched our lives become an end to a means we both forgot,
It was a refracted reflection of a memory suppressed,
An imperfect imperfection, half-thought and second-guessed,
And so I focused on commotion, let the years pass me by,
I said that love was all I needed right before I said goodbye,
Now I know the dark side of desire like the back of my hand,
And you know the terror of a life that went exactly as planned,
Complacently counting down the hours till the days do us in,
We tiptoe through the flowers as the flames flicker and spin,
It slipped right through my fingers, ****** knuckles black and blue,
My life flashed past my eyes and all I thought about was you,
And the way we fit together in the shards of shattered dreams,
With souls lighter than feathers, yet still gnawing at our seams,
Desperately clinging to beliefs so we have something left to lose,
But I know we can’t call it fate if this is something that we choose,
So I stand here with no answers, only more unoffered prayers,
And a wound forever burning that no amount of time repairs.