have you always been there -
yes, you have, I know

and now you are leaving
for better things to come for you -

I should have said good luck,
goodbye -
I was too ashamed

because

I never said hello to you
in the first place

you don't own the things you know

not immune, but blind and used to
what your habits do to you.

two bodies
parallel
one is lost
the other dwells

one sees the other
and watches, invisibly
but there's no sense
in plea
because neither of them
can break free

from the roots
of this old tree.

One has loved, though,
endlessly,
has watched the other,
helplessly.

the word for when
you're so afraid
that when days end
they're gone forever -

always before bed
i feel this dread
as if tomorrow
will not have this again.

i hate that feeling
it is like standing at the edge of a cliff, wavering
between how beautiful and how long the drop

you are so pathetic;

you cannot see your entrapment unless it is your predator's very teeth bared onto your skin

that is what she said to me as I kissed the flower's of my prisoned paradise.

there are times when my voice gives into the devouring worm
that is the silence,
that is the pull between your thoughts,
the tug of hate and love.

who do you let win,
because it is up to you.
but when you must choose who does lose,
there is no trophy for selfish choices,
there is no winner in this wordless crime.

i have loved and ached
and sought after those things you two once shared -
compared to now, we are impaired
of this balance between
too little and too much -

a lack of patience and of touch

he stole her away,
that's what the stories say -
because women with voice
hardly ever got a choice
and even now
they doubt.

sing, goddess,
of your immortal divinity,
and tell me how
it feels to watch the world burn
while you can never become of its ashes.

you stab incessantly at each other's tires -
deflating heart, body, mind, and soul.

love

is more pain than pleasure


yet we treat it like treasure

she is on a plane now.
the void you've left is now filled with memory:

I think about when we met, out there in the cold,
walking in circles beside each other.
I was trying to be brave but you spoke first.
"Hello."
And then you looked at me and smiled
and my heart imploded.

i am tired
of this old routine
what does it mean?
ask the mayor
or the minister -
im sure their answers might be sinister
but why should I care now
when i never have before
because i see a little piece
which is a little less plain
than the traffic and the cranes
building more for my complaints
i am strained
i am trying to retain
but the knowledge i have gained,
it is vain and retiring
i am fine
just fine
just tired and trying

stop 3 seconds
wait your turn
signal left
hit the petal

spin the wheel
look both ways
yield to on comers
delicate metal

follow the limit
slow and speed
this gasoline
is human greed

her house was burning all day long
and when she came to it after school,
one wall was left amidst the snow and ash.

her life had been in there;
her belongings and the finites that made her.
and now they were singed in smoke and dust
and they were nothing -
and she felt like nothing.

the fire burned obliviously,
orange and black and victorious in destruction.
it ate her being in one fellow, steady burn,
until her memories were held in a winter urn.

and she left that morning, from home.
and when she returned, her home was on fire.

listen -
to your voice;
many run through your head
but don't you know how impenetrable you are?

our house is old
our house is new
the counters were green,
the walls, blue

our house has plastered walls
and a brick fireplace
and an old, yellow room
coloured with distaste.

our house falls apart
and you fall down too
painting your heartbreak
into the blue.

you think I can't hear
what you feel and fear,
but it's all too clear
that you're falling apart.

armor, stiff
a sword and skiff
black eyes
beard bathed in blood
and it's never enough

the thrill to ****
like ink and quill
both bleed and brim
and slice and trim

the knight
huzzah!
the pages yell
below the stages
with wooden weapons
and hungry eyes

he'll fight for queen
or country
or fun
he'll drag you down
throughout the town

his mother prays
his father's gone
his brother's train

the knight
he has no guilt left to cry
a quilt in the night
will muffle his fears
drowning in beers
until the kingdom falls,
a knight's knighthood calls!

and though, I know, the winter comes,
I see the paint upon your thumbs,
the blues and hues of dappled thyme
that scar a world from a nursery rhyme;

and there, written, lightly, in pencil,
a paragraph for a time stenciled,
adjectives and flavoured truth
a place made up for our innocent youth.

i liked he
he liked she
she liked he
who liked me

l'appel du vide

I remember the wind,
howling, messing up my hair like invisible fingers,
hollow with ghosts;

I can see this memory in fragments.
you are there,
but it is your absence that I recognize -
it is the lack of you I see.

you are a star, surely past your name;

and that is me: I am born of dust, you of light.

there are two sides of this moon -
one has always been cast in darkness,

and the other,
a mirror for the sun.

but she is ethereal, though she takes all light and dark

and she is steady, though the tides she turns are monstrous

and she is encompassing, for without her we would have been cast in our own shadows.

she is battered with asteroid collision, entrapped in this gravity,
protecting the mother that kills itself.

I am a product of collision
an incidental incision
A dead flower rotting in its own soil;

and so, I shall be dust returning to dust -
a product of myself, collapsing like the stars that made me.

yes, I am unlimited;
like a record
doomed to replay
its brokenness
forever.

I will not break,
I am the friction of fire
and ropes tethered to cement
and anchors shattering coral.

I am unlimited
unlimited
with limited time
and limited self.

but yes, i am unlimited -

there is no purgatory in regret
only to drink from the Lethe and forget

even with these masks,
there's always someone who sees your face.

today is always today
but tomorrow it will become yesterday
and we will be given a new present
do not forget these moments