While our sun is setting during
The evening commute,
On the other side it's
Rising.
Alarm clocks and whistling
Coffee pots in morning light
Breakfast cigarettes on the
Front porch watching dawn break
And I'm watching dusk so
For a second in time we're
Inexplicably intertwined.

We were mutual projections,
a story that existed only
In ourselves, caught in a
Series of circumstances that
So perfect, it had to be love.
But romances are best kept to novels
And the silver screen.
Fantasy is never the same in reality.

Speak no more
Utter no more sentences
Vague, and context devoid through
Glass electric fixtures.
Stopped communication via
Frozen gears and halted processes
Dead progress, mutated metals.  
Sing no more, no more notes raised
Upward bound towards fleeting skies
Reigning over all we were.
Love no more, see no more
Begone like the invisible microwaves that
First created and ultimately possess you;
That zapped you full of life and color and now defy you.

Brevity in time
Reaching through membranes
Outward like pulled cotton candy,
Pink and orange sunset whose
Eye witnesses the dusk and dawn
While all things break between.

There's a steady beat
Drumming in the background static and
I can't tell if it's water dripping,
A clock ticking time by or
My heart pumping while
It's alive.

A horsepill
when swallowed
chokes you.

Years fly
And I have yet to grow wings.
Mid-step,
and half-hovering.
You can't have the sky
with a foot on the ground.

Liberation
Is speeding down
Back roads
In the dark, windows down
In the pouring rain and
Sticking your hand out  so that
Water droplets sting like pins and
Needles when they slam
Against your palm at 80 miles an hour.
Liberation
Is loving someone when it's wrong
And doing it anyway
Because 'god ****** I'm free'
And I'll love who I want even when
I have no right
Even when they're bound, gagged, tied
And held for ransom by a ring on
Their finger.
Liberation
Is getting on a plane to fly
Across the country on a whim
Because there may just be a chance
That that man I met once
Halfway across the world could
Fall in love with me when my feet get off
That plane.
Liberation is cracking open your head
And looking at your skull
And blood is life that sludges
Out of you and you wake up
A few days later realizing that
If you had died it wouldn't
Have made a difference, anyway.
And knowing that next time
You're dying you will
Make **** sure it
Matters.

You can accelerate to
Try to
Compensate but
I saw your brake-lights beam
Red, and I know
Your natural inclination was
To stop
Before guilt brought your
Foot to the pedal.

Justice    is forgiveness
Vengeance,   benign.
Retribution feels best,
But what is right,    divine.

Childhood toys now antiquities
Smile from the nightstand with
Shining eyes that glitter like hope
Before it has gone stale.
There was honesty in innocence, when
The mundane kept me content and
Restlessness sought no solace in
Tailored lies.
Fantastic epics were lived, not perceived and
Imagination was solid, not the
Amorphous, ambiguous pile of mud
It has become.

Pendulums
Swing in skulls
Crashing against bone,
            Ticking
             Like
            Bombs
Counting down to self-destruct.
Three
           Two
                   One
Time's up, time's gone.

All my life--
Memories in seconds,
Beats per minute
Have led to this exact moment
In which, now, I'm living.
Weight of hours
Accumulating
Concentrating, and compressing
Self and being.

Spirits riding winds
Spurred by past days spent living
Without being present
Shrieking   in the night  
Beating branches against window Shutters       begging    slumberers
Please wake,  please wake.

Phasing out
Conversations stretched like
Sparse cobwebs, where
Spiders tread with cautious
Care along exhausted fibers,
Stressed more with every step.
Weathered from passing years,
Paint, once bright peels in flakes
Like dead skin from steel
That bound it
Strong.

Silence,     screaming lies
The lion in the sun
Bathing     in the bubbling      s p r i n g s
The grass towards the sky kissing
Lips, dead or try
Harder, faster,      cry
Now,   again   , on high--
The pastor, to the choir
Sing PRAISE                        Hallelujah...
Lord!     Oh my and my fingers
Round' your ears, caressing skin
Me alive, as long as I'm here
                                           By your side.

I used to wonder
Where the road would
Take me but
That was before I knew
I would pave it
On my own.
Draw the map in lead
With your fingertips

We are
Cartographers.

Your eyes are dark.
A stone, tossed,
would make
no resounding splash
in those depths.
Hand pressed to lips
Will hide the smirk on your face,
but those eyes will always
betray you.

This cliff is not so jagged as the rocks below,
The heavy tide swallows and spits them
Over, and over, consuming
But not keeping.
The embrace of these waters could not be any colder
In this plunge to new depths, alone and reborn.
Could this mystery be my new muse?
Could this siren sing me home?
Home--
The darkness and the slumber, to
The other shore; surely the sun shines kindly, there.

Do not hate your age
Or the fine lines that plague
Your face.
They are marks of wisdom,
Worn by years of sun and stress.
You dreamed of the future when
You were younger,
The world you would create.
Now, you fear the future
The final punctuation at the end
Of your story.
Do not fear death
Though it comes more soon each day.
Progress is a thing borne from
The passing of time
And would never have come if
Years had not gone.
When the light leaves your eyes
And the breathe is gone from your chest
Know that Death has not won.
You are written into books of history;
Trails of papers, poems, memoirs and
Memories you leave behind.
And these things will keep you
Forever alive.

Days blur to years blur to
Memory becoming phantoms
Even this day, vivid
Grows to ghost.

Don't worry
He won't leave you.
He loves you.
Your children.
The home you share.
Men have needs.
Vicious needs.
They take their teenagers
on the side.
Like cream in coffee.
Tasty, but could do without.

In another life you were a philosopher king,
and I, your eager subject.
I loved you then, too.
I still love you, I will love you,
in this life, the last, and more to come.
I am your fatal flaw, blemish,
one weakness and curse.
It's why you still love me, did love me,
and why you will love me,then, too,
in this life, the last, and more to come.

I'll take you as you are, whether the
Tides have turned towards warm,
Tropic waters or ****** this ship upon
Jutting rocks too close to shore.
As you are, coming or going--
Opening the door or slamming it so
It breaks off the hinge and falls in splinters to the floor,
Piercing fragile fingers that try to mold
The fragments to the former whole.
As you are--when the dark makes you quiet and
Your eyes burn like fire or the
Love wells up inside you,
Breaching dams,
Gushing violently to swallow all in beautiful fury.

Loneliness freezing fractures
In old bones, rotted leftovers
Tossed aside among dead leaves,
Candy wrappers and cigarette butts.
Cracking, dragged by streams of
Gutter water in heavy rain to
Turbulent streams
Journeying on to
Distant seas.

I see you in narrow spaces
Between tree branches where
Light hits dust at the right angle and
Builds temporary fairy-worlds of
Sun in the dark of the wood.

I hear your voice in the hum-drum
Of strange conversations,
Carried on wind, refracted noise
Bounced from edges of buildings,
Settling behind my eardrums,
Whispering
Words in a language I no longer speak.

I walk beside you
On lonely midnight strolls through
Places dark, ancient and deep.
Footsteps echoing while we
Stumble in blindness through
Depths of caverns new and routine.

Moon shining     dead     light,
Lonely beams
                echoing               empty
Through still night and distant lands where
Fires grow flowers
Exploding
Through pavement doused in blood
From wars     waged    by men
Not as wise as you.

A name carved in stone, weathered
All that remains is an
Anonymous ode to a has-been.

Listen to the silence
It screams louder than the
Noise.
Clarity is in the static
Electric is the
Voice.

No, rise like dawn
And blood or
Plants reaching for sun.
Flow, words slipping from
Loose lips sliding secrets
Better kept discrete and dry.

The Man told me there's a way to be
But I don't give a **** or care about the Man
Because the Man doesn't care about me.

A handful of sand in your palm
Slipping between your fingers
Carried by
Breeze.
If only these hands
could build a castle.

I am alone,
my mind wanders.
I wonder if you'd smile
if you knew
that my thoughts spiral
and race,
always coming home
to you.

The air, stiff as a starched collar
Falls dead on breath, heaving tides
Pushing driftwood ashore
Land, the sigh of sirens ringing
Raising alarm for the fire, the hose
Too weak to engulf the flames
The whole thing burns down.