Written on the tombstone head
the letters drip with red -
light and dark
have fallen stark,
the blinds made out of lead.
Squares of ink,
blood in the sink,
all prayers have been said -
laying on
a field of song,
her wishes have been fed.

Broken pieces scattered,
a restless heart in tatters -
the fire raging in my soul
only left my body shattered.

Where have you gone?
Don’t you miss
my whispers of hope,
my desperate attempts
to empty my contents
into your vacant heart?
Let your pleas fall unheard
into my hollow body,
let your tears fill
what’s left of me.
Don’t you miss
the salvation I offer you?

Eat my heart, I say.
Tear my soul in half
and burn my flesh to the earth;
light my mind on fire
and rip my thoughts from the hearth.
Make my dreams unrecognizable
under the weight of your palm;
throw my hope out to the sea
and urge chaos from the calm.

As the minutes go on,
her body grows cooler above me.
The imprint of the gun in my soft frame
draws a pool of blood,
again losing warmth with time
but growing in size
as her body drains of life.
Her weight above me doubled
when the death of a soul
froze love to stone inside her flesh.
The tears littered on my sheets
have dried up
by the time she’s uncovered,
no trace of the pleas
spoken in the seconds before
her heart stopped beating.

My tears hit the floor
and my lungs stop breathing,
but these letters to no one
keep my life from leaving.
My pleas scrape the walls
and my chest starts heaving,
but these letters to no one
can be quite deceiving.

I’m all out of color -
the dim light fills my room,
casting shadows of a waning heart
across my cloud gray walls.
I can’t remember what it feels like
to eat from my heart
and drink from my soul -
what it feels like
to hold the weight of the world
in my palms.
My memories are painted
in colors I can’t quite recall,
my words sung in a melody
I can’t quite capture.
What’s left of me lies
inside these four walls,
complacent in my capture.

The ashes are here to replace  
the raged fire,
once ignited by a thousand wishes
upon a thousand stars.
A heart in flames
at the drop of a dream,
a soul woken up
by hope’s scorching heat -
the waning daylight to burn holes
through the blanket
wrapped around my skin.
Upon its final declaration
comes the dark side of the moon,
now complete in its desolation
in the absence of a single flame.

All words cease
without a fire to rage upon,
colors to dance upon
or a choir to sing upon.
They don’t play well
with the stifled monotony
of the silver and gray -
the sullen song of the defeated,
the burnt ashes of an ember.
The written words
of a forgotten language
rot on the page,
stolen from a source
that no longer dreams.

My soul was robbed from my flesh,
taken home on a star;
with no dream to call my own,
I can wander near and far.
Hope torn from my heart
to land at someone else’s door,
but with no road to lead home,
I no longer wish to explore.

My words turn me inside out
and rip my heart across the seams -
they dance along my tattered soul
and tear a hole in all my dreams.
They shred my healed wounds open
and leave me rotting in the cold -
my soul is raging with the same light
that’ll keep me from growing old.

My words have turned rotten
under the weight of a dream,
every wish being forgotten,
every hope split down the seam.
They feed me honey on a spoon
so I can shoulder the stars,
but it’s too late for salvation -
they’ve already littered me with scars.

The beating heart of my song
is silenced by the static
inside my four lonely walls.
The words rot and wilt
in the absence of a dream,
and the whisper of the rain outside
is the closest thing I have to a choir.
I need the wind to be my pen,
and the sun to be my muse -
the grass to be my paper,
and the moon to be my audience.
How long must I go on
without words to line my soul?

When her ceiling melts to constellations
and her walls fall to the wind;
when her blanket turns to grass,
that’s when the earth sees her grin.
A smile lit by a thousand stars,
flecked upon her nightly scars -
a body torn by the placement of
her heart in Jupiter and her soul in Mars.

The soul comes alive
when the mind goes to sleep,
it burns and it thrives
when no longer mind’s keep.
In our absence they sing,
the tolling bells ring,
and if earth ends its course,
they’ll still bloom in the spring.

Quite ugly, aren’t they?
The words that aren’t yours,
but still spill from your pen -
that roll off your tongue,
yet feel stolen again.
A symphony turned to pandemonium,
a melody that doesn’t impress -
This poem isn’t mine,
but I’m writing it nonetheless.

At the foot of a world
that doesn’t know my name,
that doesn’t know my love,
and doesn’t know my shame.
You’ll be deafened by its roar
and the stomping on the floor,
and when there’s nothing left to give
that’s when it takes a little more.
It’s bent me broken once again,
the world I thought was a friend -
if it turns its back on me,
would it finally be the end?

A woven blanket,
stripes down the length.
It’s here I see
nature’s final strength.
The sun christens my eyes,
it blinds every blade -
but whatever’s the point
in finding shade?
For shade is a myth,
just as heat from the sun,
it represents nothing,
it’s everything and one.
Your soul exists
in the fabric of the stars,
the stars exist
in the fractures of your scars.
The leaves a thread,
evil woven out of time,
but the rest locked in step -
it’s nature’s finest rhyme.
The symmetry we know,
the symmetry we see,
is nothing to the fabric -
it’s everything and free.

It’s brief and it’s beautiful,
a celestial osculation
that showers the sky a thousand brilliant colors.
The light remains,
and the distance begins.
Hence the beauty.

I find myself at the edge of the world,
feet aching and heart sore from the night,
having danced on the wind
like it blew just for me.
It’s hard to tell from inside,
but out here it’s clear:
there’s nothing beyond this point.

She uses up every last drop of rain
like there’s nothing to spare,
drying up her heart
until it wilts and rots in the sun.

Sometimes my words come out as static
and my legs don’t work quite right,
so I wind up the spring in my lower back
to act myself for the night.
A puppet existing in someone else’s world,
or a marionette doll mastered by myself.
Sometimes I wish I could let go,
so they would leave me on the shelf.

I’m moving arms that don’t feel like mine
and speaking words that don’t sound like me.
It’s a new season,
the changing colors whispering memories
of a new sky above the trees.

You believe every word you hear,
that every second is a representation of the next.
Inherent beliefs of permanence
and perseverance
permeate your existence
like nothing else matters but next year.
But what about tomorrow?
What about today?
You weep for a memory
yet you say that next year will come
so rest your eyes once more.
And you will weep and you will weep
and no matter the years that pass
you will still find tears in your eyes
because it will be a day
just like all the others are days too.

Golden fires ember
and in this place I surrender.
I surrender to it all,
to nature’s promise
which melts on my skin,
to the silence
filled with symphonies
in every half-beat,
to the silver river
lined with glass memories
streaming behind me.
My land,
my sanctuary,
my garden
watered until the fruits of its existence
have bared,
until I’m nothing more than a
than a pair of eyes,
poised only to taste the breeze.

I lock my door,
and I light the match,
I sip my tea
as books turn to ash.
I hear the shouts,
claws reap my mind,
but I sip my tea
as the embers shine.
Light fills the room,
it’s reflected in my eyes,
agony knocks at the door
with the spread of lies.
Thoughts of silence,
my minds only keep,
the flames drown the pain -
can I finally go to sleep?

My skin turns soft
and my heart finds its cage,
but my fingers grow numb
as my heart starts to rage.
It burns
and it yells,
it’s found it own hell,
and when time starts to settle
it drowns in its cell.

In my nightmares
you gleam,
and I bleed at the seams.
I don’t hear my screaming
with your voice in my dreams.
A melody
I fear,
yet ache to hear -
I drop to my knees
as your song hits my ears.