I smile when I hear the words "I give up."

Suffering misunderstood and underrated;
A primary reactant for change.

But people fear it, abandoning friends,
Nestled comfortably within delusions.

To bolster and promote charity without sacrifice.

To applaud goals without acknowledging the journey.

To treat symptoms without seeking the disease.

I smile when I hear the words "I give up."

You're awake, my friend.

Good morning.

I bet you cross
Today a thousand thoughts.
Tracking the hours, then minutes
Impatient to get off.

Imagine you instead
Wasted this time pacing
Inside your head,
Turning your feet hard.
Wearing the pavement beneath soft.

Until you can drown each whisper
After all, noise falls faster
Under water.
And in the depths you find a
Way to make the idea factory
Mesh it's gears and stop.

So you may spend your days
Amidst a monitor's faint glow.
No more comforting than the thought
Of plummeting from
the 15th story window.

Your slim-fit dress shirt escapes
From the back of knee worn slacks.
Your shoes wearing faster
Than you can now afford.

The details of the least importance
Burns a flawed self image
Within your skull.
From your unkempt hair
That for now  wildly grows,
To the wearing of your outter soles
As you fail to stand properly
Upon your twisted ankles.

You can smile when they look.
You eat well!
Yet struggle to maintain a car
And still maintain your health.

Your benefits have long since suffered
To brace and sustain society.
And you can't help but
Show your true colors
Trying to afford to keep your rotting teeth.

You fill your stomach with convenience,
Racing for success before decay.
Filling your walls with screens at home;
Slamming doors and windows,
To help pass the time away.

As you feel yourself slipping
Into the screen - screaming behind
The tinted plastic, until you have released
The latch on the window,
(And of your soul)
And dropped the weighted burdens
From above your feet.

They tell me these ideas -
Tales that only in
My dreams can surface,
Are signs of madness
Best left at rest
Within more charismatic hands.
And only then, would the print suggest is
Submerged within an artist.

Savage lands bare all life, depraved -Progress reaped from primal battles waged
Be vandal, than gentle dweller,
Counted by more viscious  prey;
Hardpressed to walk      
                           Eternally amongst the grave.

To have grown to know my ailments
                 and  remain unnervingly Divine
One would surmise:
     This Woman must have
                                      always courted pain.

I sense within my core
The fiercest of hearts in shackles -
Felled by a love's entrancing beauty
As would burn bright a spreading flame.

She walks, though implicit of my crimes!
With pressed lips,
Cheating mine of innocence.
The culprit, cradled by the night, remains;
With choice of stolen hearts and minds.
The cost to free a  fire-tempered soul
And find her love an altruist un-chained.

To have valued devotion
          and thus I write Divine
She embraced the beast
          Within this ruthless man.

A Moonlit piano sings of life's great works.
A starlit night framed for adoration.
Like your ever vindicating love,
Not the least of Guilty men dare question.

Between starved lines of manifested fears,
Might I find a new Lenoire in waiting.

You were always
three steps ahead
I trace my steps back
To where it all began
And I'd have given anything to call you
Friend.

It's 70 in November
Why won't the sun give way?
I'm seeking a reason
To be locked away again
Though tunnel vision held my gaze
Winter must arrive
An end to wondering if
I'll still grow old, and still.

Intoxicated in disappointment
I call a beggar for what he isn't
I've caught him at his darkest hour
Measuring his life against my best intent

You were always four steps ahead
I trace my steps
Back to where it all began
I'd stole a moment if time stood still
And give my last breath to call you friend.

I count another day gone
Another notch, another aim
I down another shot
Lest my throat go dry
And sight grow straight

I have to thank you for the closure
That smile that told me
I never really left.
Finding time to watch you sleep;
Holding tightly the to the magic
I must say goodbye as you sleep.

Dare I say I could not trade
The image of my true love then
Fore the new woman before me isn't.

Though I once was strong enough
To walk toe to toe with warriors
Masked only by our sins
I can only think of you and smile
To find that smirk once more
And remember we were more once

I'll dream a day that I can call you friend
From once upon a time;
Where this all began.

Quiet your chest
You hear that beat?
Risen higher not for myself
Me, I'm still tapping
A sound of voices to be heard--
Not silenced
Deafened ears to deliver a proposal

Success should stand alone, suggests
Men like me were given the world

Dreams are grown to fill empty spaces
Not koffers stuffed with expectations
Swapping lanes with no pedigree
Standing face to face
Both sets of shoes strapped to the streets

I plead only to be named
Before I drown in false decree
For what society sells
That I should stomach, or
Gain a swollen head and
Shrinking stomach

Shaking hands force I'll upon me
The world held steadfast with labels
They cry out for fixing
Core still, nor crust budging
I fix my mouth
With furled brow

Or I shall suffer for sins
Of fathers before me, no.
Shame success and dash
Madly for a swifter ending
To set finale, a silent resolution

Will it my memory stain;
Have my words mean something, then
I must stifle sounds and symptoms
Suggestions of suffering
Lest they betray, and

Allow the pages to burn
Away at this facade
Toe to toe my lines
To their words will claim me

Accosted by the inflicted
Afforded no frustration
Check the box, X
A default male Caucasian
Filling the need for false standard
--Lost still among a victim generation.

Hey
Wrong number
                                        >   Maybe not.
Is there an in-between?

It's safer that we're strangers..
But can I tell you of my dream?

I glimpsed her amongst the stars
A light piercing through the seams.

Threw myself into the sky and missed..

My world goes silent.


Bleak as I'm floating..


Shrinking.
                           
                                            >   I'm busy

I stay awake awaiting sleep
or a reply.
the door keeps on knocking,
Friends to let the world in
And within my best interest.

I hide as the music plays on
only to answer as they walk away.
I deadbolt the door
only the want of a chime
And car alarms to keep me awake.

I want her to say it's all right
that I go for awhile
I want her to comfort and assure me
that it was a mistake
to leave him and that she doesn't need me.

And I want the guilt to stop rising
Throbbing
As the car doors keep slamming
as the front door keeps knocking.

I started out a friend
from the other side I came calling
And fed my own ends
only to beg for forgiveness
And hide behind my door
that remains unshattered

before I can rest
the porch creeps three times,
then once, sounds of wooden footsteps.
I shut out the light
And see a glow from a message
bury it in the couch
fore there is no happy ending
Only guilt and fear of truth
as the car doors keep slamming.