Blue ocean, sleepless tides
Under the surface
An endless well
Ringing out wedding bells

Holy matrimony, red rose ribbon
Beware the trap
Low-class living
Madman skips the system

Broken road, remote
Is not alone
Endless river, always some place to go
When I is all I own

If our love was a flower
Would it be wilted and dead?

If our love was a flower
Could morning rains breath life again?

If our love was a flower
I am the bee
Giving you what you want
Taking what I need

If our love was a flower
What color would you see?
I would see you
As beautiful as could be

If our love was flower
Would we be picked for a vase?
Or would we grow wild like the meadows on the plains?

If our love was a flower
I would water you right

If our love was a flower
You would be by my windowsill at night
So that at mornings birth you could be kissed by my sunlight

Dirt dried and cracked upon my weathered face
          The black hole in my soul
Covered only by the carefully stitched fabrics
          Of my two-day old clothes

          A man out of time
Handprint impressions
Depressed in my mind
          Sing to me darkness
Shed the weight from these eyes

Quiet is the lullaby
That cradles and rocks me to sleep
Somewhere down deep, I call out to you
In silence you speak
          Peace

Are we just sitting around counting down the clock to doomsday?
Casual watchers of the apocalypse
Like another piece of news to gossip with
“On the tube today, all the free worlds have up and gone the way
   Of every other empire too resigned to say….”
Maybe today,
Is the day we change

Beggar, sir, please, come and play
Your empty tin can tunes
                    Politician, sir, please, preach me your wants
                    And masquerade them as my needs
Hurt me, so you can wipe my dying tears away
Enslave me, so you can break the chains and whisper I’m free
Be all you have ever been. Seemingly, all that you can be.

Asleep at four
Up at half past ten
Creativity ignites the wick
Self-doubt burns it at both ends
Scrawling darkness on parchment
In hopes the tip of this pen
Will breach the cover of night

Do I struggle for shekels
Adoration and a handful of precious metals
Or to steal a smile
From the sturdy heart of my inner child

It is a quarter past June, and
          already it seems like a record setting summer.
Sprinklers and the scent of chlorine filled pools,
          as I walk in my street-worn shoes to my sanctuary.

The lifeless blacktop park where
          my will and the heat-embracing pavement meet.
A well-manicured backyard tree hangs its verdant leaves
          just over its owner’s fence.
Like a lifeline for life reaching out to me.

I stick and I move,
          as the sweat cleans the dirt and despair from my face.
Like a sunshine superman, I drink UV rays into my bones.
          Alone I feel whole.
The disinfecting flames of summer
          have begun to melt the cold rot encasing my soul.

Isn’t it strange
From getting to know each other
To watching the sun
Turn to rain
Balancing on a razors edge
On the verge of going insane
Maddening thoughts leave eternal stains
Like footprints on the brain
Digging for pleasure
Through the tombs of pain
Relics of what was lost
Someone’s treasure to be gained

Who will cherish me
When withering autumn leaves
Are stripped of their golden gallantry
By the biting winter winds

Writer and reader alike
Chasing currents of contradictions
Like our will to death, fighting for life
Am I here at all if I am not here to stay

Points of purpose, in shallow moments
Ripped by tides and dragged away
We mind the depths, so to never dig up our dead
A fading remember when

Time and tide, forever outpacing the lives of men
Unearthed and submerged
In the instant between
The angel opening his eyes, and the tired who resign to dream

Blood tinged with the taste of iron
As it follows the ridges that
Move the fluid like aqueducts, and
Deposit it into my mouth.
I let it pool and sit like stagnant water
Until I spit and paint the canvas
A mosaic of Crimson Red that represents
All the hours that you spent
Drenched in sweat from all the rounds commenced
Never overwhelmed by what you underwent
This red’s respect, across from me
A nodding head with arms and legs, and
He bleeds like me.
Inside these ropes we are all silent poets
Unspoken codes and a violent
Calm devotion to only speak with
Measured fists and feints.
Inner pain hidden behind punch combinations
Like a writer hides his heart behind a metaphor.
You never see the crowd all circled round
Like a pack of laser focused vultures
Looking for scraps of skin to feed
Some inner need to watch a warrior bleed.
They root for me, as long as I stand tall upon my feet, but
A buckled knee creates a switch of scenes,
Now they scream and plea for him to finish me.
I list as if this ring sits
Atop a ship hit broadside by rogue waves, but
A fighter hides his pain within a flame
Kept deep inside a hanging lantern
That adorns his heart and keeps him standing.
Now he moves with clenched fists
To man the sails and turn the ship, and
Aim it right at his, because if your drowning
You know **** well he is coming with
Body shots placed straight under his ribs
Now he sinks quick, gasping for air
Afloat on hope alone, searching for a beacon
To lead him from the deep end, but
He heads for the cliffs at the end of your fist, and
Your shoreline is his jawline
He washes up stiff, rinsed out and spit
Like the blood on your lips.

Remember, life is but a dream
Our hearts grant it beauty
And our eyes make it so
So row
Row
Row
Your boat
Until you find a shore that whispers
Home

“Your writing is pitiful”
Endlessly told
Hmm not original
Maybe I should go back to being criminal
So I could write a verse worth a ****
And say some **** you’d want to listen to
Or I could get political and start breaking down words like indivisible
Funny word in a country where half of us walk around invisible
90% of what I write is ****
So when I call it toilet paper
Just know I’m being literal

You see what happens to my mind
When I just sit back and unwind
My attention span becomes thin as twine
As this stream of consciousness accelerates the passage of time
And punches into hyperdrive
Before I know it
Half past 5
Blood shot eyes and not one clever rhyme

Where hides my creator? All these open doors only lead me to nowhere.
Outlines of memories, like furniture that once sat at the center of this empty, dusty room.
Sun-soaked curtains project shadows, of all I once knew.
With each gust of wind, the projection rewinds back
to places I had forgotten I had ever been.
A twinkle through the glass presents her ring, but before an answer,
I become the shadow of a kid again.
Sitting alone with my only friend, a pen, playing pretend.
Lucid dreams of my past being viewed from the future.
I place a quiet hand on the shoulder of this passing shadow.
A silent gesture,
for all the wrong turns and cloudy climates awaiting ahead.
My frigid touch only feels a crumbling wall, and the one building up
inside the child of this past life. Never blind to hindsight,
I trace the wounds life has left me.
Self-inflicted regrets trapped inside this dingy room.
I burn it down and leave no semblance of remembrance.
Memory lane is just a pastel retell of an empty shell.
Be yourself.

I’m slipping slowly down the drain. The night is dark
And the face in my reflection, doesn’t look at me the same.
Cold disdain; no recollection of the last time I heard my name,
Spoken with grace. My faith is misplaced.
Not even a narrow escape through these castle gates would find me saved.
Only open plains await; with pain pouring down like acid rain.
These fields,
Will never flower. Just rest my head on a feathered bed,
As the world drowns around and drags me down beneath its depths.
Sand and shells in this silent hell. Darkness rings her dinner bell,
As sunken souls grab their hold, stripping my youth.
Used, abused, weathered, and confused; they never taught me the rules
Of how to save you
From you.

Lines on the page are like my personal prison bars;
Where all my arresting thoughts are locked away.
Ink and me, worn and fading
As each calendar day is torn,
Crumpled and forgotten.

Like a black hole, my journal entraps the light;
The turning of a page only paints,
An image of one perpetually falling.
Spiraling endlessly towards a center
I will fall short of reaching.

The wick is fading, and I have no matches left
In this dark abyss where I sit depressed
My valiant heart has become a perch for crows
Smile shaped in stone
Each embrace stiff and cold from my marbled soul
My arms depict a grasping hand
Reaching for a world these etched eyes will never know
Trapped in the heart of a withered artist
His mad dealings mold and make me
A victim of his musings
Crafted in a candlelit madness
Delicate delusions and vague allusions
To courage in the many veiled faces of death
Carved and set at the base of the steps
Statuesque

As I step slowly off the edge
My thoughts descend
To an endless field colored many shades of red
There’s a woman
Standing still
The sun-bathing her ocean-colored dress
She speaks with her eyes, but
I am deaf to her thoughts
Though I feel she hears mine
Her face, I cannot recognize
Yet her scent radiates
Of sunflowers and the freeing smell of pine
She motions forward
As our fingers interlace like vines
The sun sits stoic, its throne upon the sky
I am led on
Through places I remember as a child
This world seems manifested
Forgotten moments
Excavated from some locked door in the dungeons of my mind
As if the beating of my heart was painted
On a canvas frozen forever in this time
She glances over her exposed shoulder
Something stirs
As we approach a river that screams De-Nile
Anxiously I approach the banks
Her emerald eyes illuminate
The perfect crooked symmetry
Of her calming smile
Her lips hover just one step away from mine
But I move no closer
For I know hers is not a love
That I am ever meant to find
Just a passing dream
Written for the thousandth time

I got Jack Kevorkian in the trunk of,
My 911 Porsche Sport
With a leaky transmission and
Lighter fluid in the oil pan to,
Set myself ablaze
          because
I'm the hottest killer in the game
Just a poet
Who pulls his threads of passion
From the sickness in his pain
The ink is blood that
          leaks out from my veins and,
Scribbles musings so desperate on the page
My mouth is like a leaky faucet
           but
My hearts a busted watermain
           Flooding and empty room
Drowning out the poor excuse of
           The boy I was
In my wasted youth
A denizen of ***** diner booths
            With napkin rhymes that in my mind
Create the grand design of wasted time
That draws pencil lines
            Sketching out
This life of mine

What is our society if not a copycat catastrophe
          A cold-hearted calamity of blind hindsight
Severed chains reforged in the flames of minimum wage
          How we herald the heretic

Free is the slave who detaches their arms and legs
          To gift kings their reign
Jeweled towers of bone reach to the sky
          And devour the progress of our connective open roads

What is prosperity absent a shared purpose
          Like a brain held apart from its own heart
Human history imprisoned on a page
          Ink-stained chronicle of our original sin

Thinking we can get where were going
          By forgetting all we have been
Each obstacle a handcrafted impediment
          Dinosaur dynasty doomed to irrelevance

Magenta and Reds, Cerulean and Blues
Piano paint splashes the mind of the fool
And makes him create, mostly mistakes
When trying to illustrate his own point of view

Hopeless and Danceless, Broken Old Romantic
Wooden chair rocks him like a cradle for his ashes
And time doesn’t wait, for him only it fades
Stuck on the wake of waves perpetually crashing

Black Holes and Stars, Landmarks for Gods
He just sits and he orbits like a moon for his heart
Passing the days, a face for a frame
Symphony of flowers contrasting his rain

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

Hope here is dead. Man in a box, Cobain in my head.
Court me some love and spin on my throne,
Of brittle remorse.

Sick in the womb, the silver spoon pollutes.
Tiny tadpole in the pool, grows to patrol the Black Lagoon.
Devouring the newt it once knew.

Fearful men, conceal their worries, in tall tales of courage.
Ironclad, Iconoclast. Kings and heroes alike,
Plant their flags in fields of ash.

The ******* is bashful only when he lacks control
Vulture poaching ***** as his victim
Hands like constrictors, slither up your clothes
Hidden smile, scaled, behind a venom veil
He talks in toxins, and when the will has rotted;
Ties in knots; consuming whole a struggled “no”

I don’t know who I would be, without the darker side of my personality.

The painted desert of night allows me to explore the eternal moonlit forest of my life.

The beating compass of my heart, points in no particular direction.

I pace my steps on its rhythm, though the deeper I venture, the less I can rely on its repetition.

Neatly trimmed hedges devolve into bogs, witches to the west, sirens sing to me through the midnight fog.

The road less traveled stained with blood, a path beaten with hurried footsteps and battered love.

I take to the tress; beneath the wind-strained leaves, the monsters are now stalked by me.

Demons by day evade my pleas. Now, stuck in a dream, they can’t leave.

Everybody passes the buck. We pass it to politicians
They pass it to private owners
Who pass it right on down back to us.
We’re too lazy, nobody wants to work.
Flippin’ burgers at McDonald’s isn’t worth
More than a couple bucks. Give us your life
Give us your labor
We’ll give you death; once we finish
Using you up.
Condemned in the womb of your windowless room.
Attached at the brain, phone chargers like chains
Keeping you lame.
Double click for your fame, lay to sleep all the sane
As they point fingers of blame away from their face.

What is this malaise,
          that awakens with each yawning day.
Quite the tortured mystery,
          to have a mind that seems intent on being rid of me.
Staring at shapes of shadows,
          creating fables with a brain that’s addled
With a nameless affliction.
Kingdoms have lived and died,
          with only I baring witness to their fall and rise.
Scattered noon sunlight sneaks,
        between dusty blinds and sets aflame the world on my walls.
It is here that I feel,
          screams of terror and the joys of triumph.
The delicacy of a daydream.
A place for me.

Down by the river I lie alone. Folks wade on the banks,
Sifting for gold. Washing the aches from their brittle bones.
This land of the forgotten, has never felt so close to home.
Detached from the blood-oiled machine,
Not much to part with, but
Every footstep carries with it
An imprint of meaning. The current here
Flows away from greed. Deposits into a reservoir,
Of pure intentions and peace. Tucked away from the cracked city streets
That mirror the crying streaks of those bewitched by the banal belief
Of progress by any means. Power here,
Is a drink for the weak. The outstretched arms of willow trees,
Cradle this quaint town. The last bastion of human passion. Bereft of malevolence.
Indeed, the realms of Hell seem to have a slice of heaven left.

Youthful exuberance never grows old; I suppose, until the creeping ivy cradles your gravestone.

This life; to me, is a passing train that always makes its way back around. Just not for you.

Every stop lets off the lost and picks up a child; weary, on their first day of school.

The hero in my mind rides, toward the destiny where he dies.

The wink inside his smile; resigned, for one more longing look up at the deep blue ocean canvas, where he penned the story of his life.

In his fading grin, he whispers one last nothing to wind. A cool breeze carrying his freedom. The silence, his last season.

If there is one thing I have learned on my travels,
it is that
the currency of eternity is the fingerprints you leave on the fabric.

The slow imprint of a million miles walked. Set free your timid heart and
leave behind an outline of an essence.

An amorphous mold that denies the shape of the world around it.
Be a surprise.
Let them label you a miracle or a sickness.

In time they will come to realize
the edge of the world is a place to dance.
Reach forward, and gift sound to silence.

We are all immortal in our own time. Today I feel the warm caressing touch of life across my beleaguered face. Death does not escape me, but in this moment I am alive. One is immortal, if one has yet to understand what it means to die.

I sit on the seat of a silent hill, watching hope stripped bare
Like tender flesh ripped from the bone. Where do I go from here?
The words in this world, are poisoned with pain.
Even the ink on this wrinkled page decays, like
Receding waterways that turn rivers
Into mass graves. Every frontier turns to a last bastion.
No decadence can dress the dead. Sunken souls
Weighed down by boots of lead. Work and worship.
Open plains become a purgatory for the horseless.

As a man, I contemplate my thoughts just beyond the boundary of breaking waves on the shore. An endless symmetry stands before me. The ocean with its crash and calm takes any and all forms. Yet though it morphs its shape, its nature always remains. To be life and to contemplate life. A mere thought that has enchained the minds of greater men. In the grand symphony of time, we find ourselves in the 21st Century. Where there are those who postulate the Theory of Illusion. Each of our own odysseys reduced to the hallucinatory will of my brain. Tell me then, how does one illusion contemplate its own existence from within? My gaze refocuses out to the endless blue horizon, and I imagine the shape of it all. Though we take many forms, our nature prevails. Social animals some would say. I prefer a different metaphor, shepherds of knowledge. Though our collective knowledge flaunts many costumes, our true nature perseveres unfettered. Through the ages we carry all human ingenuity, meanings, and purpose inside some unspoken tome. It does not erode against the battering winds of time. It can not be sunken to the depths. It endures in this very contemplation. My wandering inquisitive mind cannot help but wonder what abstract thought will be captured in this very spot a thousand years from now. For some this conjures a mysterious existential dread, but I can only stand and smile. My mind lets me step outside the binding flow of time and watch the world unfold. Campfires under the crescent moon to villages etched out on verdant ground, and here now to the grand gusto of modern cities. Endless forms and shapes pushing towards our ultimate nature. To understand that purpose in the universe if left by our boot impressions on the mud. The cosmos is our endless ocean. Out there; waiting, for our contemplative minds to shape it.

We are all immortal in our own time. Today I feel the warm caressing touch of life across my beleaguered face. Death does not escape me, but in this moment I am alive. One is immortal if one has yet to understand what it means to die.

So come sit with me and listen as life plucks on her string. Purchase a moment and together we wither. Time, good friends, the great veiled indominable figure. Our last breath denotes the bigger picture.

A one-eyed sun peaks at me
Through the silver lining of thunder clouds
The coming storm is predicted
By the tightening of my weathered bones
My odyssey for eternity has led me to the precipice of our world
Where gluttons feast on famine, and
The rabble have hourglasses for eyes

Each grain of sand slips through their idle hands
And falls lifeless at my feet
Poor souls charged interest for borrowed time
My research only serves to carry me on a current
Closer to an unwanted conclusion
That death is the escape hatch from life’s grand illusion
How many submit to suffering to hold on to something
They are destined to lose
No, this will not do.

Dark cloud gown covered moon
                    Searching for your surface

Led by the scattered streaks of light
                    I see when the wind lets your skirt drift

The majesty
                    Beauty with a purpose

The silent stoic sun king
                    Even bows his head in your service
                    Cracked, barren and imperfect

Yet you bear your face
                    Reflected on every surface

The ever-watchful unveiled bride
Our clear open eyes in the darkness of an eternal sky

With the wind beneath my wings and the river at my pack, I journey for something gone.
Something I am trying to get back.
Along the way I see there is a fine line between being lost and staying on track.

How can you focus on the task when you’re counting each hour that has passed?
How do we keep love grasped when even the sun’s light does not last?
Do we hope the moon illuminates our path?

Or do we march through the dark
Guided by only the light from our hearts
And hope that spark is enough to lead us through the marsh

Back to the shore
Back to the only place we have ever felt peace before.

I knew a girl once
She had this radiant smile

I have seen many things in my life
Whales and crocodiles
Foreign sunsets and stretches of mountains for miles

I knew this girl once
She had this radiant smile

I have felt many things in life
Darkest depression and constant denial
Had my tribulations and plenty of trials

I knew a girl once
She had this radiant smile
So warm that I just sat and stayed for a while
The light from her lips whispered to me like a child
“No more hurt and no more sorrow”
Just a feeling in my heart of a better tomorrow.

I walk aimless, but alert, down moon washed streets
In the twilight, I strain to tell patron from vagrant
A coalescing of something at once ageless, but fading
Like the stone of this courthouse; pillars of justice
Cracked quietly by the steady chiseling of time
On forgotten foundations

In the air rests a stench of contempt, or neglect
Like an oil stain, thickening turquoise waves
To a sickening ooze, of endless, crashing degradation
A nation of people, betrothed to suitors unknown
The power of a dollar hedged against the weight of your soul
Where pockets are plump, and virtue is sold

The sunset awakens the lonely dreamer,
Who gives no deference to the day.
Early mornings meet late nights on a one-way street and,
A late June crescent moon
Becomes a suitable seat,
To watch the world spin below my feet.  
I cast a kiss from way on high and,
Watch the wind carry my intentions
To the window of her bedroom.
It doesn’t stop and stare, it changes its shape.
The bluest of birds; perched, sings for her to wake
From the silence of her sleep, where somewhere down deep
I imagine that,
She was thinking of me. The lake through the trees
Where we waded waist deep, skipping our stones, together alone.
River of souls, to wither we go.

No man is free that speaks from a cage.
Choke chains spiked to the dirt,
Sweat feeds the fields like rain.
With calloused hands,
The nameless toil away. Fed a morsel,
From a fistful of grain.
Praying for clouds to shelter the sun;
If only for a day.
A famine of hope. Straw cities of the voiceless,
Screaming silence.