"I await a guardian."
Shrouded forms who wrench and weave the hidden things I can't percieve,
into twisted thoughts of rage and woe
which drag me through the flames below.
"I await a guardian."
Bony fingers who clench.
Macabre lips who **** to kiss.
Weapons of hunger, instruments of fear...
"I await a guardian."
Joy becomes a distant memory,
replaced with bells that clang and roar.
The light has passed the spectrum,
fading to a shade of emptiness.
Kneeling in the dirt with
hands across my face; demons mistlike in their flight embrace my sorrow,
their sweet delight.
"I await a guardian."
All I need, is hopelessly gone.
All I need is hope... gone.
All I need is hope.
All I need... hope.
I need hope.
...hope.
HOPE.
What brightness in brilliance through such confines of the black. Shadows cannot hide when you shine like the sun.
The brazen bells have silenced and the mist is all but clear, scattered in the lucent are abandoned tools of fear.
"I await a guardian?"**
I have become the guardian.

A mere bite won’t satiate the shadow.
The smallest morsel can’t fill its appetite.
The hunger never ends and we’re precisely what it craves.
We shed a tear, the shadow sets the table.
We clench our fists; the shadow grips a fork.
We cower in fear; the shadow licks its lips …
Our dreams go great with wine,
and our hope is picked by toothpicks.
A portion of you is never enough.
It wants to pick you apart
piece by piece,
and leave your bones for the
dogs at his feet.

I feel as if somehow I skipped the years between young and old
to arrive with my mind wearied
and my joints creaking like ancient rocking chairs,
carrying the weight of such existential contemplation.

But lo and behold, here I am,
with flowing bodies and sultry glances; dancing along with the pounding bass
which guides itself through me like a ship on treacherous seas.

...but I don't mean to be treacherous...

I don't mean for the waters of my soul to be difficult to navigate.

My spirit,
made strong and chaotic by circumstance and understanding,
must travel backwards to find youth and wild intentions;
the birth of a creature I long for inside myself.
A being to strengthen my blood and steady my eyes.
One forged of peace and humility.
One born of will and tranquility.
The human soul at beautiful potential,
This is my undying wish.

Give me another song to lay me to sleep. Turn me once more
the last page of a beautiful novel.

Give me more sunrises as sunsets
and a torrent of raindrops to cleanse me of the dirt I carry around on my soul.

Break open the coffin I keep building around myself,
pull me into the universe.
Let me swim in clear water and watch the hairs on my skin ripple,
like tiny nerves longing to feel.

Open my eyes to things I've never seen,
all I wish to understand
and close them to all I must let go,
the chains that keep me fastened.

Help me to become a fire in a lonely forest and guide me to breathtaking sights and heavenly sounds.

...so one day I could guide others there as well...

If you are descending,
unsure of whether you can rise again,
then be sure to descend beautifully.

Along the cracking pavement, there hopped;
with slight and steady ravenous hunger,
a darkened crow,
not normal in size.
Picking at the seeds, between the cracks, while catching my eye and not knowing why.

He made not a sound, beside his beak.
Striking at the rock with hopeful sight,
pecking and hopping from here to there
as I stared with contempt,
a hatred
for birds such as these who darken doors
like clouds over graves and lonely moors.
I followed this bird with watchful eyes
thoughts of the macabre behind my lids
a hateful disdain for what I judged.

I couldn't be sure what caused this hate
This heat in my blood for such a beast.
Perhaps the black in ruffled feather,
or ominous signs they tend to bring?
Perhaps I'd seen in forgotten dreams
Shadows such as these, feasting away
with eyes full of hell and gleaming flame
on corpses of children, scattering the steeets.

Or battles of old, with dying men,
these morbid creatures flying above,
gasping in fright with last weary breaths.
I searched for reason but merely found questions, still watching the bird with aging beak.

I tell you this tale, because just then,
While pondering on this ghastly fiend,
he stopped at his task and gazed at me.
I assumed he'd simply turn his head
a curious glance to say the least,
but his eyes, they gazed, straight into mine
a curious staring in their darkness,
puzzling my thoughts with so strange a bird...

Suddenly, without breaking the stare,
he closed the distance between us both
and hopped on my leg, landing so soft.
while never ending his silent gaze.
I couldn't move a single muscle,
shock in behavior I'd never seen.
It seemed as though time had ran its  course,
in perhaps the lifetime while we stared.
What seemed a dark demeanor from afar
appeared calm and peaceful on my knee, as if he'd heard my chiding thoughts.

The hatred in my mind started to fade
a useless ticket for which I'd paid.
If birds could smile, I'd swear he would
and nod his head in understanding.
Instead he merely opened his beak and dropped in my hand a tiny seed
then opened his wings and flew away.
vanishing silently through the trees.

I could not move and I could not speak
The fleeting shadow had made me weak.
I lifted my palm, this lasting gift.
A single seed, from a darkened crow
that taught me a lesson I needed to know.

I was standing on a beach, behind my eyes. The water moved silently and in the distant horizon a setting sun forever loomed. An eternal dusk that glowed with violet and red, never ending. Behind me were stars and open blackness. Planets in the distance sparkled and beamed while in front of me, sand and an endless ocean. I sat and gazed around. Not a soul in sight and not a breath to be found by living creature. I breathed slowly and deeply. Counting the waves as they breached the shore.
I began to float. As if some invisible hand had gently picked me up from the sand and began to carry me away. Up and out from the waters and the violet into the arms of stars and light in the distance. My head began to swim and the mind began to speak. Soon the beach was out of sight and all to be seen were the endless eyes of stars, watching me drift through the eternal. Through their midst and into a world that seemed a dream. I looked in front of me to see an eye. Not the ones of stars, but an actual eye, gazing not into mine, but through them. Into the parts of me I couldn’t see.
The lights around me began to spin. Slowly at first, but faster and faster. Soon I found myself in a maelstrom of colors, a twister of sounds and images too fast to make sense of. While it turned left I turned right and I caught glimpses of people laughing through windows in my world, somehow in the swirling haze. They were smiling and greeting one another. Buying homes. Celebrating birthdays. Watching the trees through open windows. I felt my heart grip in sadness. A girl was dancing in a lit room. She turned her eyes towards me and smiled. She extended her hand. I reached out mine and try to grab her fingers. Her smiling face singing to me. Our fingers touched before I was lost in the swirl and I span faster and faster…. I closed my eyes and screamed in anger. Raising my fists in the fury and the horror while the twister held its sway and the eye was ever watching me.
I looked at it in rage and asked it why. Why must my world always touch the tip of theirs but never grasp. Never embrace. Never fit…  
Who am I? Why must I be this way? The eyes merely stared and slowly vanished.
I sunk through the haze and fell once more into darkness.
I felt my feet find solid surface and slowly light began to appear around me. I was standing in a desert. Surrounded by sand and a red sky above me. In the distance, I saw movement. Anxious for life. A soul to speak to, I ran towards it and found an interesting sight. A girl was dancing. She was facing away from me but from the back she seemed beautiful. Slowly moving to and fro in the sand. Beside her sat a serpent and a fire. The serpent was smoking a cigar and holding a drink, watching the girl dance and nodding his head. He looked at me and invited me over. I came and sat next to him. When I looked at the girl once more, I gasped.
From the back this woman seemed older and beautiful. From the front stood a ragged child, hungry and weary with her eyes closed, swaying to music I couldn’t hear. I looked at the snake and he grinned, raising his glass. I shook my head and backed away from him; disgust and the macabre across my face. He shrugged and turned back to the girl. I began to slowly sink into the sand until it swallowed me whole. I was now sitting in front of a tree. A white tree standing alone with nothing else in sight beyond the horizon. It was beautiful and lonely, aged and strong like the earth itself.
I watched as a girl ran up and stared in wonder at it. She picked a piece of fruit off and licked her lips in hunger. She went to take a bite; I tried to move and scream out no, but her teeth sank in and the tree turned to ash and fell away while the girl had her fill and disappeared. I hung my head and the white emanated from the tree blew out like a candle in a dark room and once more it was black. I walked about, through chaos. Through this world I do not understand.
I began to cry and I looked towards the heavens and found nothing but blackness. Through my tears, in the distance, a figure shimmered into existence and began to step towards me. I was in awe.
A woman was standing there before me. The universe in the form of a woman. Her skin was made of galaxies and I saw countless things being born and dying in her eyes. She walked up to me and stared. I, being just a boy and frail. Weakened by my own lack of understanding and brief seconds where I exist.
She reached out her hand and I look it, feeling every moment of time in her grasp. All of the pain we bear. All of the love we share. Every mothers touch and every lovers kiss. Every broken heart and every lonely sigh… I felt her light flow through my skin and her eyes kept gazing at me. She smiled softly and her lips made words I couldn’t hear but somehow I could understand. She pulled me closer and we embraced. The wonder in every second of existence flew through my nerves and out of my eyes like electricity and sunlight…
She pressed her cheek against mine and I closed my eyes and smiled against her skin.
She looked at me once more and kissed my cheek. A wind gust against my soul and a heartbeat within the darkness.
Then she was gone. And I was once again alone, but never alone. I closed my eyes and once more felt the cool air of the beach and the velvet waves against my feet.
I sat down and stared into the eternal dusk once more.


My eyes open and I am shaking and shivering.
The wonder of the universe speaking to me.

Art is soul on canvas,
marked in word or brush or pen,
with the hidden exploding outward from what normally lies within;
but there are other tools of passion reaching deep into the soul,
where a paintbrush cannot stroke and words will never find a scroll...

This art, it shimmers lightly in a tiny velvet flame
where I cannot find an answer
and I cannot find a name...
but a tool...
a tool I've found,
and it barely makes a sound
until my fingers brush on skin
and there are whispers made of grins.

Oh this art it has a nameless tool...
that brings a lustful bite,
with my lips forgetting words
and my fingers forgetting colors...
but I paint throughout the night...

I am the kind of guy who goes to bars alone with my headphones in, munching on a cigar with half my brain on iambic pentameter and the other half on the feeling of a girls thigh under my lips.
I love the moon and I love the sun but both can be too bright and too dim at the same time. Red lights don't exist and my soul wants to be wild.
The colors of the world scream at me in silence and I smile with closed eyes, just living in the few seconds given to me by whoever is holding the knife next to the string.
This world, these people, living their lives like caricatures of trendy Hollywood films and fashion magazines leave me weary and disoriented. The laughing man next to me in ragged clothes and missing teeth calls to my curiosity more than the man in a pressed tux trying to sell me expensive cologne on expensive advertisements.
I don't understand, but I want to.
There is a pain I feel every morning and every evening.
It flows through my bones and courses through my veins like a patient army, building their palisades around my heart.
It makes my mind swirl in anger and beauty. The pain on being here. The pain of floating through the universe on a spinning fishtank.
The pain in every breath. The hell in the foundations of eden. The pain of my existence.

There is beauty in the
fury.
I see colors in the
flame.

Should the chill of winter
and the grey of snowy skies
billow above me,
I will strike a match
and snarl against the shiver.

I would rather drown in
fire
than become consumed in
ice.

I will not succomb to the cold.

I will glow with all the colors of the universe.

You may lose the weight
and
your shape may thin out.
Your muscles may flex
and you might be turning heads...

But inside you are still just the
fat kid being laughed at by beautiful people;
eating lunch
alone in the cafeteria.

**...and you constantly fight the loneliness, in attempt to keep closed an open wound...

You want to break the rules,
but you're not brave enough.
You want to tell a story,
but you can't say enough.
You want to run away,
but you're not fast enough.
You want to break the chains,
but you're not strong enough.
You want to be a better person,
but you simply
do
not
try
enough.
You want to feel alive,
but it seems you just
aren't brave enough.

...yet

America
is a vintage ad
with a miniature sticker
on the back
that reads...

"Made in China."

Wrap the thorns around my wrists like serpents slithering for a feast;
the ones who breed to bleed me dry unknowingly making me feel alive.

I'll bathe myself in light from a masochistic moon and listen to shadows on the walls moan in pleasure,
a deadly pleasure
that echos through my haunted veins;
wrapping their legs around my waist
and running their fangs across my lips.

They dig their claws and I pull them closer
hiding a smirk that even they cannot see, for I'm the boy you can't destroy
as I make love to
demons in the dark.

If the human body is composed of billions of atoms coexisting for a purpose, then what does that say about our souls within the universe?

If not for those tiny atoms, I would waste away, a vibrating mass of electrical pulses and confusion.

But together, connected,  something wondrous is made. Albeit no less confusing, but able to comprehend morality and beauty.

In that truth, I feel so.. miniscule,
and it leaves me speechless.

The farther I travel, and the wider my vision becomes, the smaller I become.
But there is no weakness found there, I find strength beyond measure.

I find within me, within all of us,
a complex being floating within the cosmos that in all possibility could be another being searching for meaning in the stars floating behind their eyes.

I wear my heart on my sleeve,
but that shirt is hanging in my closet gathering dust with
all the other things I have left behind.
The love notes,
kisses for autographs and picturesque photographs
are packed in a box. forgotten, but always in reach.

I am looking through one way glass at the world,
screaming at the top of my lungs,
but no one can hear me
and I try so hard to get their attention...
The attention of those who are never worth it.

One foot stands in the cool breeze of loneliness like the maudlin moonlight of a midnight freedom
while the other stands in hopeful cecity to feel the warmth of lips on my cheek
or a hand lightly clutching mine...

I am stuck between universes,
like the space between dreams and the waking world.
Here I live and here I watch.

...perhaps I'll run into someone, someday...

I was born in
chains
with the gavel hanging over my head;
you were born
free,
the ******* children of the dollar bill.

The seasons turn and you fasten the chains around yourself as I slip soundlessly through the bars.

We started on opposite sides of the board.
I look back as you sit in your cell.
Unaware,
while I run beyond the fence to a freedom you will never understand.

You're the rarest of pieces,
          a limited edition of some
        beautiful puzzle.

Forgive me, my dear,

                   but I'm from a different puzzle...
                   Our pieces can touch,
but never truly fit...

Your god is forged from wolves,  
dressed as men, with hungry eyes.
The day I watched them feast is when I turned my back on
god.

When a voice whispered in the emptiness, "Let there be light.",
an echo murmured back,
"Let there be darkness."
Eyes wide shut can't tell the difference.

I spray ashes from my lungs
left by cities which you've burned;
refuse your pious nature
and praise you never earned.

Somewhere deep in hiding,
the light will wait in patience,
while you drown the world in darkness
with the evil you created.

Why the winds of change surround, that in that split pivotal moment, I succumb to my only weakness; the hell in your eyes.
A hell I found swimming there like fire shimmering against the void seemed to be a candle leading me through places never I have found myself before; a new pathway dimly lit in the darkness.

Let me prove I'm alive.
Hear my voice and gather your mind. I'll sing like a sparrow anyway. Illuminating smile through the daylight into the depths of the jade night sky, can you tell that I'm alive?
My candle flame may be faint, with sharp winds.
Huddle the light left, to regain your effervescence once more.
For me.
That light calling against the shadows like winged musical notes dancing through luminescent fog slowly brightens an otherwise crestfallen and ill favored forest;
a pathway leading towards something better than where we may have previously been.
A reverse entropy catching the darkness and casting it where our skin may be rid of it.

I call out a name and an echo murmers back my longing.

Still straining with such force. An implicating smirk.
Ain't that funny...
I know what you're thinking. I can hear through the whispers your spewing.
When you're gone, I'm afraid someone will take my place.
But I won't stop breathing,
and as far as you know, I'm still dreaming.
These dark trees are trembling and every leaf swaying through the lifeless glances you break. Take my hand, walk with me. Let me reminisce these memories of us.
Though memories fade like photographs motionless in the light,
a spectral imprint is left behind like the lips of a ghost visiting in the night.
The mark you leave is a map in my dreams that leads me to treasures that can barely seem
a treasure at all in its mysterious madness because I fight for happiness in the blissful sadness.
A sadness I breathe in the vanishing of you.
Of me or for me, cause it's not like it seems.
A facade so well disguised.
You'd think the life would fall from her captivating eyes. A humble remark, I've pondered a few. But this lashing of thoughts is tattered and sorted. I feel as if I'm falling through the cracks of this foundation. if we crumble, tell me please that you'll feel better.
Those intertwined fingertips are slipping through the gaps.
Though if your sadness tears you up. I'll stand by, listening.
Because your silence is as deafening to me as the heart strings being torn from its base. Thumping in and out time with this meaningless state. And if I ramble in this space. Remind me the reasons. Don't leave me stranded in this range.

*To abandon you would be to abandon myself, alone and forgotten on the side of the road while cars fly like stars past the loneliest bars where I sit drinking whiskey to drown thoughts of you.
A bittersweet truth that none can avoid,
who float through the hallways like phantoms in empty homes...
is that no matter if you touch my skin and kiss my lips,
alone shall I forever be
past a wall you can't breach with a legion of screams.

My soul was crudely etched into a wall by unseen figures casually strolling through the universe on late night musings.
They forgot to add an element though, and so I have been searching east and west for whatever they might have missed.
They filled my lungs with self doubt and electric pulses of insecurity.
I have been trying to model a caricature of what they think I shouldn't be,
a lonely dust gathered blueprint of the actual me.
They filled my veins with flame and gave me causes without a name,
but I guess I don't mind.

All I know, all I dream...
is that my blood is made of chaotic words trying to make sense in the darkness.

And I want to show the world my open wounds.

I am a a toy in your hands.
A novelty to dance and sing.
The fool on stage to quote a line or two and smile away at you.
But the curtain draws and the toy grows old.
I walk the empty stage and the audience has left, leaving silence, the loudest of sounds.
When the costume is off and the truth of me is shown. I hang my head in shame and long to vanish into nowhere.
Perhaps it is just a paranoia but it leaks into my core and I don't know where to hide when I cannot hide from myself.
Perhaps I fear the toy will one day lose its shine and become another dusty figurine hanging on the wall with the rest of those who live in grey.
I hope not.

The devil works at Norman Rockwell and he wrote the blueprints to suburban paradise.


The angels by his side fill our homes with the same designs and their fingers stretch into rocking chairs,
draining our lifeforce.
I can smell the sulfur on him when invited so graciously into your home.
God ******.
He didn't even need to ask to be let in.

I am screaming silently into a wall while they are draining their glasses,
laughing at jokes told a thousand times before.

The comedy of man.
The tragedy of man.
Aren't they the same thing?

The cheers at clones in suits preaching promised lands
turn to static and I am sick of trying to block the noise.

"If you dance with the devil, the devil won't change, the devil changes you."

...but perhaps I can learn a few moves from and wait for his feet to stumble...

I hear the tick tick tick...
and I feel the tock tock tock,
coursing through my veins
while the hours are becoming decades,
decades becoming centuries...

We are fed through lapse of time by figurines dangling on the wall.
Ticking and clicking.
A beat.
An ever incessant beat that our ever stumbling feet never seem to balance with.
We are always a second ahead, or seemingly so,
a second behind;
grasping and searching,
desperate to find,
an answer in how we capture the seconds creeping so casually between our fingers.

In that struggle with the tick,
and with our folly of the tock,
we stare in anguish at the clock,
missing moments that matter the most.


All the time we throw aside...

Behind my eyes, I trace my fingers along your skin
like the longing touch of an artist with pen,
craving for the taste of perfection.

To see the stroke of passion on paper,
like the faintest moan within my ear...
The time to forget a troubled past.
A fleeting ecstasy to hopefully last,
enough to turn these dreams into sweat and drown the thoughts of remorse and regret.

Oh let me silence the demon's scream and hear only burning in our eyes.
We'll run away at close of day and rage like thunder in the skies.

The fragrance lingering in my thoughts after you have transfigured
to a phantom
is like a book laying open with
light too dim to read the words.
I have seen you standing in a dream with moonlight dancing on your skin, but your face, it always changes form like lightning flashes in a storm.

I chase the wind and weep when I falter.
That is the penance for a crime long past...

One day I will see your eyes like a mirror reflecting the beauty I have seen in my dreams.
Perhaps you will see,
in the wandering me,
the same sights that play through the loneliness coursing in the night...