What is permanent remains
If it is meant for you
It shall find its way
Like tomorrow always finds today
Bones will meet the grave, but
The soul forgoes decay, and the wind
Will sing your name
You are permanent

So supple the muscle
My heart tender as your skin
Fingertip’s sketch across my chest
The map that led me back here again
I sent a whisper on the wind
You sent a kiss, but
The space between
Assured it would never reach my lips

I lack emotion (a motion), pushed, and pulled
At the behest of this endless ocean
How could I ever sail the world
When my mast has broken
Moods swing with each passing wave
No lifejacket
No hope of being saved
The boat is taking water
Each hole a mistake
All the tears I never cried
Now make up this watery grave

I would like to take a trip, but the only bags I own
Are the ones weighing down my eyes

My feet long to set out, but
They are often outpaced by my mind

My body doesn’t move an inch because the nerve
Has crawled up from out my spine

The eyes blink to signal I’m alive, but behind those oval blinds
An echo

You’ll be fine

What is art, but the haggard man
Plucking his strings
On a weathered bench in Central Park

The wine drunk widow
Who dances slow
Behind her stained-glass window

An anxious teen
Who paints the canvas
The same color as her dreams

Could it be Ali
Who taught us the beauty of dancing like the butterfly
And stinging like the bee

Is it art if you write your pain
And sell it free
So that another may capture peace and escape the rain

The Colossus of Rhodes
The single mother working two jobs
So you may have a hot meal waiting for you at home

That is art
This; well this is words
Written somewhere between the crown of my head
And the depth of my heart

Change
A curious word
For a people doomed to mistakes
That have more than once occurred

We peddle in power
Masquerading as purpose
A castle built upon the sand
Will inevitably
Succumb to the very land on which it stands

Equality
Just another slogan
Your best efforts
Just amount
To another drop in the ocean

A species
Who fancies itself free
Forever cursed
To miss the forest for the trees
Our own shortcomings
Transplanted as another’s needs

Life’s eternal enigma
Our greatest triumphs
Have only served
To **** us quicker

I cared
Far more than I ever hated
I kept it real
Through all adversities in my life
I reached out my hand
For those who could not bear their own weight
I laughed
I cried
I made love
I created far more memories
Than regrets
I kissed the oceans
And embraced the sky
I lived
And so too shall I die
Just know
My depth of love for this world
Far exceeded my capacity to change it

May you be laid down to sleep
Wrapped in linen
Dreaming of the sweetest peace
As your soul rises up from the empty body
Lying cold on concrete

Death

Life’s last sweet release
May you be swept up by the breeze
As you frolic through the jungles and the trees
An eternity of songbirds and technicolor autumn leaves
The light of your heart
Engraved in each and every star we see

Embers burn the fields of love to ashes
As the crackle of the flame traps and trances
The malignant nature of second chances
Who can say what True Romance is
Just glance at how the fire dances
Our hearts the urns
Remnants of all the moments that have come to pass us
Silhouettes sketched of pain
Ashen sculptures of what remains
Burnt and blazed
Empty charred picture frames
Sit upon this mantle of blame

Snow patters at my windowsill
As if it knows I'm restless still
It speaks soft
As if not to bother
Sings it's tune
So far from sorrow
I wonder if the snow
Fears it's own tomorrow
Whisped away by the northern winds
To end up places it had never been
Yet lay so still
And fall with grace
The snow finds home
In any old place
Each nook and cranny
Every branch and landing
And though it's cold
It's never bitter
It warms my heart
To see the snow this winter

Do you know what he has to fight
To make sure he makes it through each and every night
Now don’t get it all in a twist
He would never take his own life
Or contemplate a suicide
But the voices in his head
Keep opening his mind
To maybe see what is on the other side
The universe lies just past the horizon of his eyes
Just a Ne’er do well
Trying to pierce the veil
This shells too small
And he is tired of being the snail
Just racing with time
So before he punches the clock
He says
I’m going to get mine
Too scared to death to ever die
Now he just gets loaded up and lets the words fly
So don’t get discouraged
Wouldn’t want his parents to worry
Cause he hasn’t slept in weeks
Too many poems to write
Too many lines swimming in his mind
He’s a word bully
Who verbally
Abuses verbs
Puts his heart and soul into every word
Every verse
Until the day the hearse delivers his casket beneath the Earth

How it feels to realize
When you are dead and gone
The Earth just never ceases to spin on
To play the role of a pawn
Never to be king
Rally a feeling to find the highest peak
And jump
In the hopes of finding your wings

What is life?

To live and to die
Years lost in search of why
The truth lies in those weary eyes
Our broken hearts tattooed with the fading ink of foolish pride
Divided by battle lines
Of our shared scars
What is yours is mine
We are all just parting souls
Endlessly floating down this river of time
So, ferry me away
Just past this life’s horizon
Lies better days

Had a vision of this year we lived in
Tougher than leather
We all seem a little weathered
Misery and company
Birds of a feather
Acting like midnight will come
Make it all better
Like pain asks for the check
And leaves with December
Like Corona is a broker
Who gives back life
To every evicted homeowner
Like this six-hundred-dollar check
Will reverse your debt
And breath life back into every soul who left
Praying for a new year
Does not protect
The nurse crying on her steps
Alone
Thinking about every patient that never made it home
New Year
New Me
Nah
Same song
Same beat
Lost in this heart of darkness
Still hungry humans begging in the street
Young kids clutching tight on the heat
Because it’s cold
And mommas got to eat
Parents devoid of sleep
Not knowing if they can pay rent next week
Approaching depths so deep
New Year
New Me
Nah
Same You
Same Sheep
Playing the same old record
On repeat

Why does it always feel
Like I am drifting away
Silent
Slow decay
Seems like a steep price to pay
For seeing the crowd
And choosing another way
My soul fades
Like letters in the sand
With each crashing wave
Struggling
To meet my own demands
How can I use this gift of gab
To string words together like strands
And stop hearts
From always feeling sad
A pen
A pad
Mixed with the best memories I have ever had
Maybe I find a rhyme
That properly pieces together your peace of mind
And helps recall times when you didn’t feel like cryin’
When you weren’t dyin’ inside
See there’s nothing wrong with driftn’
But listen
Give yourself permission
To find all the things you feel are missin’

Oh, does a man wonder
If he can ever taste love again
For if he did
Would the ink run dry from his pen
Would his metaphors fall overboard
And sink to the abyss
Oh, how he fears the kiss of warm lips
May deaden his words
And if his manic musings would even be missed
For the only time his wandering mind feels alive
Is when the flowers that bloom
Lay dead inside
Through pain is how he explains
The beauty of a dessert
Longing for rain
He’s played many a game of chess
With the author of his own death
It’s how he learns
The difference between
A cold December nightmare
And living out his dreams
His reality is seen
Through the lines we read between
Labeled aloof
You would be too
If you sat with the truth
And understood
He would rather be him
Then pretend to be you
Imagine a man at peace with every dimly lit street
For even the shadows speak
Subtle, discreet
Lend an ear
Give them a listen
Oh, darkness
Forever painted as the villain
He finds hope in those lonely cold winters
Depressed or obsessed?
For maybe he lives life
As if life were all he had left
Often out of step?
Or unwilling to die on a bed of his own regrets
If only you could feel the fire of passion
That burns in his every breath
We all fade
So, he would rather slow dance with life
On the tip of her blade
For your only ever you
When you forget to be afraid

I must be drunk off all this pain
Judging by the way
These aches attack my brain

This bottle full of love
Is souring its taste
With each and every cold embrace

My reality is spinning
Spiraling towards my fate
In a world devoid of singing

Endless black becomes my vision
Lost at sea
Swimming with all my indecision

I can be free of this place
With one step over the edge
I take my leap of faith

I see passing smiles
And can only reflect them back
I see happiness through memory files
Playing emotional copycat
Circling the Earth for miles
In search of the key
To free me from this prison of denial
That lay rest in the deepest parts of me
When it is said and done
I am everyone to no one
I am no one to some
Here I stand
Just a mirror for the sun.

Appreciate the shadows
As you do the sun
Conquer bright days
To prepare for grey ones
Feel acceptance when the rain comes
The darkness is a friend
It was there before
So,
It shall be when it ends
Allow it to borrow your sorrow
Long nights always precede better tomorrows
See,
Everything taken is given again
Life took my love
Now tears I couldn’t cry fill this pen
In the end,
Death allows the flower to bloom again
So,
When it’s my time
Just let me grab my coat and straighten my hat
For we all walk hand in hand with the man in black

I must be wearing blinders
Can’t understand why we put the past behind us
You say you have my memories filled in binders
Letters, menus, pictures, poems
Do you read the words as I once wrote them?
Every time we speak it’s like a small explosion
If I could cry,
I swear these tears would fill the ocean
You show these little cracks
I try and fill my hope in
Your happy, I’m happy
Inside I am burnt and broken
Man,
It must be this **** I’m smoking
My words betray me
I’m self-exposing
Do you ever ask yourself why you were chosen?
I just wonder how you can up and leave
But I guess that’s just the motion
See,
I keep our memories in a little folder
Every night I crack it open
I don’t read the words
I just sit and listen
It’s like my heart ran off in one of your ink descriptions
Maybe there’s something in these syllables that I been missing
Some clarity to such a rash decision
Was our love that much of a car collision?
It keeps me up at night
This is why,
In life your supposed to fight
For what you love
Sweat, tears and dripping blood
But,
I guess I’m just a memory in a binder
A little boy dreamed of a girl
Never thought he would really find her

Feeling the moment slip away
Losing direction out here in space
Trying to find myself
Tracing a path from the sun’s rays
Across the stars to that one place
Beyond the moon that bares your face
Out past the field where asteroids play
Carried out of the Milky Way

Into the void my journey takes
Through the holes carved out of endless space
Spiraling around for what feels like days
Suddenly, light illuminates my face

Flashes of life create this wave
That carries me back from whence I came
Back on Earth
Don’t feel the same
The stars out there call my name

I can hear them say
A journey through life is built on pain
Even the brightest of us lose our flame
When we are weak, we do not pretend
We burn out
So to shine again

The universe is but one singer
Each of us a song
With lyrics all to our own
The universe is but one painter
Each of us a canvas
Made up of flesh and bone
The universe is but one moment
Each of us a second
Where we make our homes
The universe is but one river
Each of us a current
Carrying the love we deliver
The universe is but one flame
Each of us an ember
Giving light to this domain

In my search for closure, I have noticed the days are growing colder while my soul keeps getting older. An empty bed when I roll over, the weight of the world lay rest upon my shoulders.

I have turned the page, erased the story, and started over. Been on the brink of losing my composure and letting the demons start taking over.

In my search for closure, I have emptied my heart, filled the cup, and spilt it over. I have locked the door and hit the lights, with thoughts like “maybe darkness can bring me closer”.

So, in the end I came to learn that closure is not a term, nor a word, it holds no magic to heal the hurt; it cannot take your scent off my shirts. It cannot bring me peace that I do not deserve.

So, I close my eyes and muster courage to accept that each moment was perfect, because every second was worth it, and every heart holds a purpose. To break then to mend, to be stronger now then you ever were then.

In this broken clock
I find solace for the pain
Though time flows onward still
Like a river catches rain

In this broken clock
I can hear the music play
As the haggard singer smiles
And strums his soul away

In this broken clock
I fear I cannot stay
Eternally trapped inside
Trading tomorrows for today

The wind pushes west
On through the trees
As the stars rest beyond the clouds
I can’t see a way out
As the night sings aloud
The forest tells her story
As the leaves kiss the ground
Nature gathers to scream
As no one hears a sound
The fire crackles at my feet
As the creature’s circle round
The vines begin to wither
As the redwoods come crashing down
I can’t see a way out