Harboring heretics horizontally, hidden behind hinged windows
Like a wry grin swearing a sinister scowl doesn’t wait within
Lovebirds and lust bugs, twisted and mixed like distorted pixels
Cruise missiles carefully catalogue the sights
Before anchoring you in the port of your designated afterlife
Fickle fragments of frayed remembrance
Languished and lost to the ages
Like pages of parchment that anoint your claims baseless
Cynicism seems to have become contagious
Live from the basement,
                                 Full of sunken ships and rusty cages.

The red sun rises, over this hopeful land of second chances.
Deposited from the darkness, out onto the desert sands,
I soak in the silence like a thirsty dish rag.

My calculations had been compromised
By a malfunction deep inside my sickened mind.
The wicked ways of the self-depraved,
Mutated my world to Papier-mâché.
A mirage of vanity and technicolor blooms.

Folded and twisted, while my motionless eyes were mused by the mist.

Oh,
How much I have missed, of life and of love.
Even these sands blossom with their own granular beauty.
And I am here to bear witness, to myself,
And to the many footsteps that wait before me.

Alone on the threshold of liminal space;
I come across all my broken parts.
Floating and thought misplaced;
They gravitate as I pass, and circle back to me.
All these years lost in a sorrowed haze;
I had forgotten the creases that create my happy face.
The careful weathered etchings,
Of the years where pleasure always bested pain.
My eyes see clearer now, but how much of me remains?
If enough to scrawl, these reflective letters
Then enough to walk, out through the hallowed halls
That entomb all the past attempts to rid the dangling darkness
From above my waking world.
Enough to run; towards somewhere, and not away from

Oh Baby,
These still pictures seem to be running free
Tell me why your eyes have begun to move through mine
Just you, in a field of flowing flowers
The red and blue tulip hues
Wish and wave before your legs
And there you are, in full bloom

I am not so mad, that I believe I can touch the past
But I can feel, still today, the warming rose color upon my face
See, nothing ever truly gets washed away
We linger still
In a longing look just beyond our windowsills
My tortured rain has gone away
For these rolling fields and riverbanks, you have my thanks.

Down I go
Dying slow; no carpet rides
Beneath the blue below
Precious diamonds; pressure only grinds my bones
         That which dwells in these depths,
         Must be overthrown
         Like the stone, dragging me deeper
         Into this black cold
All my sunken attempts
Dress the sand in swords
For all the fallen warriors slain
By the dueling voices inside my brain
        Chained to pillars in this endless ocean
        Composure erodes like weathered boulders
        Yet, I stand staunch against the breaking waves
        For what is outside myself, I have no mind to claim

My only hope today, is that rain can wash
The rusted colored stains of blood away
Dirt; like Earth, caked upon my face
Hides the smile
          Buried down beneath
I sit stranded in the sand
My hell a carousel shore; forever trapped along a beach
The waves here, don’t swell and crash the same
They linger static like a message never read
                 Tell me then; wherein lies the difference
Between a broken heart and being dead
Every touch is cold, the only warmth I’ll ever know
Has been swept away, down the cloudy gray gutter drains
Like little villages lost to hurricanes
          No trace or tracks to lead me back
To the boy I was before
This lonely island lacks a dock
No passing ferries and only planks to walk
A salted sea of crooning souls beneath, call for me to join the deep
This symphony of sirens
Draws me ever close to silence

I slip shrouded through a summer’s mist
Away from sterile streetlights
That cast a distorting haze, hiding
Endless solar waves, that rest above
This earthly place where I pass my days

With stars tied tight to an infant night
I run and cup one lightning bug for my lantern light
Like being guided by my adolescence, to an open shore
Where the sky meets the vastness of my sleepless mind
This place is free of weight that holds me down;
No thunderclouds hover above me now

Constellations; like scars upon the sky, share stories
Through the passing tides of time. Cassiopeia undone by her pride,
Reminds me when to swallow mine. So often, I feel chained like the maiden;
Andromeda, imprisoned by a pious Poseidon.
On this lonely beach,
I trace my own tale, like a signature on the night. Not a hero but,
I was here. The simple story of a wandering man,
Always willing to lend an ear.