I haven't got money,
I haven't got time,
No I haven't a second,
I haven't a dime.

And I don't need to be rich,
Only wanted a poor man's love,
No prince to save me, I ain't need saving
Since the day I put on my first mask

Now I'm walking away again
And you can mourn the loss this is-
What you asked for, and I
Aim to please

But please me best,
I am not wild, for this is not a war
I'm just me. This is just living.
So here I am, living.

And oh, when I want to slip
To fall off the edge
I'm begging for a reason to collapse
The broken cannot fix the broken,
Doesn't mean that we don't try
Because while mine are dim and dying,
I still try to feed the light inside your eyes

And even when neither of us can stand,
Hand in hand we still lean in and rise
Until the day you can walk away from me
Will I be able to walk my own way, too,
Or will I fall without you?

The blind cannot lead the blind,
They say the world won't work that way
If I'm no better than a husk,
A mirror to bounce back your love,
Then shall I live within the water,
Which reflects the moon, which reflects the sun,

How long does this last
Is this as good as we'll ever have?
Because it's not sustainable
It feels too good to hope

You're welcome to prove me wrong..

"I was there somewhere"
I can't help but to cry
But the people in those photographs
Are dreams I held which had to die
They don't remember, and life moves on
But I can still hear them laugh,
Hear the fading notes of another song
In the smiles within those videos
I was there somewhere
And I can't find it in me to regret
Though I wish I'd stayed for one more set
I just wanted to be someone they wouldn't forget
When I walked out of SoCal the same way I came
In exhaust fumes and a cloud of shame.

Now all that's left are these photos and music videos
And I was there when they filmed them
So search them, you know I'm not in them
But I was there somewhere.

I bet it was really fun, being a friend
And you tell me how you're hurt
And my heart breaks in two
Now is it better to live lonely,
Or to have fake friends, like you?

And the pain sets in,
That ache in my abdomen,
Soon as the rains come back
I should never have asked whether the sun would stay
This time

Tock, tock, tock
Blocked, unblocked,
Hurt me? Tick
Stop,
Did I learn?
....
Tock, tock, tock


Sometimes my life seems like a blur.
I loved once? Did I love again?
Did I just pretend? Based on that first love, did I fake to love?
I married once

I'm naught but lost

Tock

I know you think I'm a devil in an angel's skin,
Wanna fight a holy war, that you'll never win.
Trynna fight hellfire, with the flames of your desire,
Tempt me with the promises of original sin.

Think you can tame me but the odds are out
Keep sayin' you'll save me that's not what I'm about
Oh but you're still by me and keeping score
Baby I'm just human and I'm nothing more

Play our song, you won't come back,
Be everything you wanted, it's too late to ask
If you still remember me
I'm trying to tough it out, be all you'd have me be
It doesn't even matter anymore
That I'll never see you standing at my door,
I just want to be the person you wanted me to be
Because that's all I ever wanted to be.

I keep checking to see if you've called
(you haven't of course)
I'm just tired of feeling stuck on hold-

So I take each step, heel to toe,
On this tightrope, swaying
Alone
I used to do cartwheels
On the balance beam
And fly through the air
Parallel bars.

I jumped off a bridge, climbed myself up rocky ledges,
Zipped over canyons
Dreamed of repelling down mountains

I'm afraid of falling like I never have before
Trembling here on a rope beneath the stars

There's just one thing I want you to know
Please don't catch me if I decide to let go

Nobody asks a mountain, who stands beside them.
Nobody asks a river why it's rushing to shore.
Nobody asks why a fire will roar, and
No avalanche is asked why it couldn't hold on,
No hurricane is asked why it couldn't stay at sea,
No twister comes out of hypocrisy.
Still... I'm not a force of nature, though I tell myself so
I'm just a woman, begging someone not to go.

Chime, crystal, chilling,
Your voice leads me through the darkness,
Freezing, willing.
The only light from moon on snow,
Promise of wolves hidden from the moonglow,
Where we howl and prance and shake our fur
Barking laughter over the tourists we lure
Free and free as nature herself, here
Where danger and death are always near
And we follow the call of having no confines
At all

Aside the eaves, parallel the skyline
The sunset, lightening, thunder,
Warmer, sat beside the fire,
Ignited through sparks created through strangers, new
New, love, when we were new.
When promise warred with past delusion, we sought
The safety of a hollow shell, a valley closed in by mountains,
Two hearts beating, perfidious farewells.
With no constructional thought of 7 months later,
It was Time Immaterial....
For I saw you then,
As I see you now.

I'll be on the ocean, floating away
& maybe we'll meet in Cancun someday

I have already succumbed to the burgeoning knowledge that my endeavors will come to naught,
Prose, song, story, photography, bouquet,
Beget not the notoriety I had, in truth, craved.
But let that disappointing greed be of bygone days-
Perhaps in future I will grow content to lay with what
My arts instill in me, solely
If I regain heart enough to craft, to sing, to wit-
For myself, only.

It is all well and good for nature to shun humanity,
For humanity has done nothing but destroy
And though there are those who exercise empathy,
There are far too few with its imploy

And even if we tried changing ways,
It would do as well as wishing on fey,
For it's too late to undo the damage done
And the great prize for this earth we gamble,
Will be tantamount to none.

Hold my drink as I take the stage,
I drink too much, more than I gauge-
Hold my lighter, cigarettes,
I'm dancing for the strangers' gaze
Watching me, watching them,
Throwing my head for a good time
Only a good time

Before we leave, slow dance to Bowie,
You don't know the words but I
I know every instrument
Could that be what you meant
When you said "I love you"
And I'm freaking out on your
"I love you"
Because

I get it if this night was enough to
Throw you over the edge into
but I'm still stuck on a preface,
Preface, intro, first chapter
Did we even open the ******* book, dude
I just want to
Fall into the music and I
Can't back out of your confession so I
Said I love you back. Before you could ask.
If I really meant it, I'll just pass out and

Then you can't ask me to say it again
Maybe I can just pretend it never
Will happen again.

I'm drowning.
Check back later.

My lipstick's all over my face
Don't want to do this
You told me to be brave
I'll leave pieces of me in all 50 states
....instead..

Tried being perfect, tried being worth it
Tried being an outlet for plugs and giving my energy
To light broken bulbs which shattered in front of me
Even if they weren't broken, I wasn't enough to keep them lit

Netflix and chill,
You really just meant Netflix. Didn't you.
But this time I'm on the pill?
I didn't offer you my heart, I think you're being too greedy
Paying attention to my hand and the TV
I went through the trouble to disconnect my body
Why won't you just take me

See I'm tired of sleeping on my own and gazing at others' souls
When they'll never be home maybe
Just looking for baggage that goes with mine and
A temporary halfway house to stop for the night would be fine.

But my chin's red and my eyes water, my headache's screaming for my voice to be softer, I'm trying to make it right
I only wanted someone for all my life.

Lazy afternoon,
Sitting passenger side
Driving out across statelines
Chasing the sun and the heat
emanating off the blacktop
Hand out the window
Wind blowing past,
Country on the radio
No love, no commitment,
No destination
Just a map and a full tank of gas

Love, when we break up, I'll be fine
I'll cry an ocean and go sailing-
I'll turn the page and write a song.
I'll miss you, when you cross the line.

Pray, don't try to charter my course,
I'm only missing things which never came to pass
You're the one I wanted for forever,
I tell the waves, the fish. Laying on my skiff,
Crying stardust, dry and stinging
Reminiscing

But don't worry about me, I'll be fine
I miss the way you said your dreams were mine
I miss the smell of snow and melting in the kitchen together,
I miss summer flowers, afternoon showers,
Empty highways, when your dreams were mine,
I wonder if they ask you about me..
But I'll be fine.
I'll be fine.

I used to be part of someone else's story.
So I know what it's like to come in, unannounced,
To read the sticky chapters before me.
To leave enough pages for when I'm not around.

He tries to soothe my heart with pretty words,
But many have come before with much prettier
And all balk at the sign of work-
You need effort and action to make love work,
Love cannot sustain on love alone.

But oh, how pretty are words as a salve,
A balm so easy given, as thought to mouth
I'll be sure to reread them once we're out-
You need more than empty promises to stay in love
Love cannot sustain on love alone

And yes, as a young poet,
I fell for gentle wordsmiths
Who felled me so swift with a note and a sonnet
If I'd had more care, I'd never have bought it
For love, truly love, cannot sustain on love alone.

Empty aching, missing, forgetting
Waiting on a face to appear
Through cloudy memory,
Do you remember me
Dancing through our minds
of smoke & mirror.

Aching, missing, forgetting
Waiting.

A feather drops, center stage.
I'm of a mind, to misbehave.
I put on that dress, and I start up a song...
It's no mystery, what we've known all along.
Because alone in my room, when we dance,
I'm not interested in arguing about the past
And it's one step, and then two,
And if there were many eyes in the room, they would all be on you...
But I'm here, and you there, and the steps feel like magic,
Gliding on air, glitter hair, when we move real slow,
I think you already know
That hearts will melt and doors will open,
With everything that, can't be spoken
And winding down, those last notes
With everything my hands have wrote,
Shining and smiling, glittering alone
Panting as I stand, holding a pose, arms open
Where you were in them, when we took up the dance
If you knew how to make use of an opening, to take that chance
Here I am when the stage lights fall, when the ballroom empties and the night runs wild
Laughing into a fantasy, and starting the song up again
So we can dance again, like we would then,
a feather drops and all is forgotten.

I let my laptop die over the pain and keening,
The leaving for sake of leaving,
"Maybe you'd be happier this way"
Let the lyrics sink to the bottom of the ocean,
I let my laptop die,
I let my laptop die and I walked away

Here in Canyon, I've got a crush on the girl next door.
She's athletic to my shut-in,
Don't even know if she likes women,
But I knew it as I walked into her office when,
I wanted her advice, some hike to hit my core
The butterflies when she poked her head in,
Said "can't you watch the movie?" and then,
When she invited me to hang with her in her store,
I wished it could be more.

But see, I'm just a bartender, and she's the straight-laced girl next door.

I'm a seasonal *****,
A bit of a witch,
An emotional sucker
I'm predictable as the weather
And I wish we were together

(Because every winter and spring I'm sad again,
And on a high all through summer.
Fall I like to cuddle up,
And admit I liked your place better.
Looking for someone to nest with
Anyone to last.
But when the weather falls I'll be depressed,
And by next June it all will pass)

I do not want to talk to him.
I do not want to talk to anyone who's abandoned me,
Ever again.

July. Evening sun beating down across my shoulders, clawing hot talons into my back. I listen to the waves, gently lolling against the beach as if asleep.
Rolling back and forth, breath. In. Out. I wonder what the ocean dreams about. Does it also wish to escape? Does it also dream of those who once swam within its waters?

Maybe water is the only thing to really know my secret.
What it's like to always be flowing, unable to hold onto one shape
(Or one person, without drowning them).

There isn't a cloud in the sky. It's almost... pale yellow, I think. Across the horizon. Pale like fresh-squeezed lemon juice, bleeding out into the sea.
There isn't a soul on this beach. Not unless you count the *****, bruised-peach shells skittering across the rocks,
And I have no place to be.

My light shines from within, weather or wither
Though it seems to shine lighter when I am watched by others
Than when I alone am watching my candlelight flicker
Aching for the bonfire I was
When we were together.

Wish I could tell you I remember more than that bouncy house, our last fourth of July. Wish I could tell you more than just goodbye.
Wish I could even tell you goodbye.... Wish I could call you,
Tell you... what my life is about, now.
Tell you what I wish, how....
Nine years. Nine years, now.
Funny what you remember year-to-year, funny what you miss.
Funny how I can still wish this,
That you'd come out to the park with me, and we'd put off fireworks,
See, then I'd feel more clarity, like my head isn't below water,
Like we will always be
father and daughter.

Who am I?
Behind this screen,
Am I the culmination
Of all I might have been?
And where were you-
When it all came crashing down?

hum, hum, heat, rain
Focus, contrast sight
Film roll, acidic soak
Low

Once upon, a foreign dream,
I used to know so familiar
A girl like me, but oh much older,
And the world was wider, kinder

When I knew the world was big enough
For both my hopes and bad luck
And life seemed to cradle me as yolk
Reaching for something to move me

That unsteady, high note, catching in my throat
And though I reach it loud and determined,
Sound's a little broken,
All I'm hoping,

Is I keep hoping
On a foreign dream

Tears splatter, fall, splash up from,
Contact on, concrete, a little pale square on a street,
Littered with them, squares of pink stars, petrichor
From all the tears, candle-lit, cameras stopped rolling-
About an hour ago. Before the roses, before the ipod left
To play the songs writ by the dead, mind stalled, music dead
As dead as the artist mirror-touching that star, as if
They can touch and sense the memories we left
As if the camera crews had any idea of the intent-
Of the connection with him, what we left there
On a cold street in Hollywood.

Where are you going?
You've packed your cold heart up,
Got up early to warm the truck,
Well that sunny smile don't shine
So well in October

I wasn't there, when you grabbed my hand and asked me to listen
I wasn't in the room with you
You saw a woman whose eyes spoke of unending
Then I began our ending, I wasn't there to watch you go
It started when I traveled to Italy, touching stones, forums, dust
Cool running water against my lips
The pictures I took look better without me
I remember saying, so shall you be
But I wasn't there, and you didn't try to catch the longing slipping through the bones in my hand as I faded again,
You couldn't really see me, could you

The world is in upheaval
If one more person leaves I'll-
Find myself in a trash fire
God I've been building my funeral pyre
For so many years / I don't know how to not /
Let everything I touch burn

And I yearn
For a day and a time and a place and a people and a community
Where I'll not be in such upheaval
But I don't see it happening any time soon
So I'll burn
And let it all consume
In fire I can't control
I know

's all I know
But the sticks and stones I built this fire pit-
with
They're falling apart just like everything-
with it
And I don't know where I'm going from here
Please believe me

Somebody listen
God hear my smoke signals above
I love, I love, I love
And it isn't ever enough
But I'll keep setting myself on fire,
On fire

And every stone thrown
Every spark
Every dark desire deep in my heart
They fuel the fire burning bright
Beneath me
Believe me

Tied to this godforsaken stake
Filled with hatred they've all made
Me into this
I don't want this
But I'll still strike the ******* match
And hope to god this time it lasts
Cause all I have is fire burning
down

Forsake this awful town!

That's all I have-
Is fear and hate
And all the memories that I've made
And now I'm seeking for something else

I'll drown myself in the deepest lake
I'll try and find some sand- **** - I don't know what else
Puts out fire, when it wants to burn
So let it burn

Exhausted in this ash-filled pit
Trying to dig myself out of it
But all the world is up and gone
And I don't know how to go on

So let it burn, let the fire spread
Let them know the way they've led their life
And all atrocity has fueled this fire in me
Let it burn

Let it burn, let it all be naught but coals
Let all that's left within my heart, burning
And even if I leave this place
I'm leaving it a burned disgrace
And nobody can tell me now
Where to leave the fire.
Or how

I am not in love with you anymore.
It took me four years to not be in love with you anymore.
But it's been five years since you left me,
A year and a half since you last messaged me,
Three years since I last saw you,
And I still love you.

These small towns remind me of you.
Of how I dreamed of living in one with you.
Of how I met your friends, like I now have met my current boy friend's.
Of how you wished I'd have stayed with you,
How did you not know you were the only one I would stay in one place for?
I miss you.
Team Eternity, Gerry.
I will love you forevermore.

It's the soft, aching, tender moments
With the cold Seattle sun low in its grey winter sky
It's the washing machine humming and churning
It's ******* at the dregs of tea leaves in my mug
It's a culmination of harmless, yet empty, moments,
creating a yawning gap-
What should be, what will be,

Well, anything could happen before that.

There's a room,
Within the little shop
Behind the girl with the sign
That says "dreams for sale"
It's usually kept locked
But some nights, they open up

Inside the room there's an orchard
It's endless, and sunny
There's names upon the apple trees
I stop and trace one with my finger
Then, there's a man with me.

"I'm sorry," I say, his eyes are bright
I don't remember them that bright,
I only remember when morphine took their light
He smiles and says, "For what?"
But I just tear up, and hug him, and then
We talk for hours, but when I leave,
It's still night.

So one night, when you're hurting,
Come find the shop, and visit my tree
And then I won't be lost anymore
Because you can always find me.
If the dead are gone, it's hard to move on
But we'll always be with each other, see?

Even when I split my skin,
When I feel lost now and again,
I know I'm not broken.
I'm just somewhere I've already been,
And if I pulled out of it then,
I will do it now, all over again.

Out of every pore I’m breathing
Out of every shattered pulse
I’m sorry that you’re cleansing
I can’t feel you here at all
There’s a hollow where I’m mending
All the rafters you’ve torn down
There’s an ache of which
I’m grieving
But my lips don’t make a sound

Off-color, dun, waste in the tepid air
Keepers and thieves, we are,
With shovels and keys
Grace my grave not, love, I am not there
I know, I know you’re scared
Bile may rise and boil your tears-
Children are better at hiding and seeking,
We, we wretched few-
Follow the notes once sung through our blood
Dusty music-box time capsules
Back to when we couldn’t lose
Unloaded hand in hand, building bridges over
Quicker sands than grains in glass
You took my fingertips, we carved our names into the bark
with the needle-points of ribs

You, you told me we’d go together

I’m sorry it isn’t true
“Here lies, my lullaby”- the skitter of the leaves’ whisper
What did they whisper in your ear?
Of stars and galaxies?

Of a rotten fantasy

Ah, ‘twas the one, of our flat. Off-color, dun,
Baited wasted breath in the tepid air-
Was it of keepers of keys?

No, shovels-

-And thieves?

And thinking I was too young
To love you.

They say only time can heal this wound,
But god I wish time would get on with it.

Keep me warm through the storm,
For it is calling to me
In my dreams, I'm aware, and I can't find the means
To be scared.
But the storm, you have seen,
Doesn't care, if I'm aware, when I'm awake
It will embrace me with nary a thought
To who I had been
When I was human.