Circles spin in
Circles spin in
Circles.
Introspection like a drill
And my mind sinks beneath
Forever where
Depths speak of
Years gone by
Like rising smoke
And you made
The fire.
Thoughts perch on clouds,
Fall among the rain
Into speech with
Thunder and lightning.
Flames doused,
You exit stage right
For a moment.
Fluttering chaos
Holding floods at bay
Walls built as
Walls break and
Water wins.
You come with floods.
You are the
Brain filling flood
And my mind
Drinks it all until
There's nothing else.
Water.
You.
Is this madness?

Upon my face, a mask
Carved with confidence
And riddled with resolve.
Upon my face, a sneer
That says I can see
Past the cynicism.
Upon my face, the sort of
"I can handle it"
That picks people's noses
Up from their smartphones.
Upon my face, a mask
Smoothed to the demands
Of a society that can't tell
Success from suffering
Or defeat from resignation
Because it's too busy
Swooning over the dream
At the end
And won't wake up long enough
To admire the journey.
A society that I conform to
Because what other voices
Are telling me anything different?
Upon my face, a lie.

Sing sweetly to sleep
Those scars that still
Slither softly inside
Your skull.
Soon they’ll see
The strength that resides
In your slumbered soul.

Oh heart of mine
Beat on, beat on
There is agony yet
To be faced.
This tear may seem
Insufferable now
But you will be
Further defaced.

Oh body of mine
Push forth, push forth
The days will be
Longer than this.
Right now, we work.
The fun is passed.
All that's left is
To reminisce.  

Oh soul of mine
You persevere.
For once be as strong
As my boasts.  
If you falter now
And flicker out
We'll become as
Lifeless as ghosts.

Dance you fool.
Dance your mummer's dance
To the beat of hypocrisy.
Stamp your feet and
Sway your arms
Like they aren't being pulled
By strings of
False conviction.
Sing your jester's tune
And be fooled by
Our zealous swooning.
Take your bow
While we clap our fake clap
And cheer our fake cheer
And relish in it.
Bow like we can't see
The puppet-master
Grinning his raucous grin.
And when the curtain falls
And the cheering fades
And the lights dim
And it's only you
Standing in the dark on your
Stage of lies,
Dance your mummer's dance
Like we're all still watching.

Humans are filthy.
Well some are at least.
The monsters are.
The ones who thrive in
Others' suffering.
In my own suffering.
And monsters and man
Live hand in hand
Because we're identical.
They saunter among us
In the guise of human skin,
Blending their words
To sound like ours,
Keeping their thoughts shielded
From escape
Until the right moment.
Monsters and men
Live hand in hand because
Humans are monsters.
And if we could just read minds,
We could tell them apart.
But then I think
What if I'm
One
Of
The
Monsters?

Thought, like
A gunshot.
Like the noise the
Lightning wrought.
Like a crashing wave
That drags me back
Into the tide I fought.
I sought my peace
Inside a void
Where the pressing fears
Might cease.
Where my demons
Would release
Me
But it was all
For naught.
In my darkness,
I was found.
The sporadic,
Enigmatic sound
Of my neural network
Run aground
On the void I used
As a shield around
The fears I loathe to feel,
Saw my defenses
Swiftly drowned,

And I thought.

The thoughts are
A rainbow of smoke
And if I could only
Hold them for a while,
Maybe study them a bit,
I think I would see them
Swirl about on the air
And collide and combine
And weave together
In a mosaic brilliant enough
To make Mother Nature
Catch her breath.
But the problem with smoke
Is that it would remain for
Only a heartbeat,
Leaving you rubbing your eyes,
Trying to decide if what you saw
Was really ever there.
Leaving you grasping at smoke
For that picture you saw
That held all the answers in it
For only a heartbeat.
Such is the nature of my thoughts.

Silence ebbs
Down the street
By my side.

By my pride.

Shattered not
By the patter on
My umbrella,

Down Avenue Isabella.

And silence flows.

The crooked sidewalk
Grabs at my feet
And my pride snickers.

Silence breaks not
For your ambient
Bickers.

A door of wickers'
Make
On Avenue Isabella
Swings to regression

And silence flickers.

For whom
The bell tolls
My pride reprimands.

The dead need no
Gentle hands.

And on
Avenue Isabella
Porous souls are steeped
So deeply in
Their own pretension
To fill the lonely holes
That the bell tolls
To a harmonious roar
Of crowded silence.



Dead



Silence.

Whatever hope or courage,
Whatever (madness) keeps us going,
We latch onto it
(like parasites)
And don't let go,
For that keeps us
Forever anchored
In this (nightmare) reality.
Though if we lose our grip
(we)
We could drift away
(aren't)
To a place so dangerously our own
(coming)
That reality slips to dreams
(back)
And we dance across the world
Like ripples.

I can actually feel
The old, worn thread
Tugging on my heart
From the past,
The one that connected
Me to them
And when I pull on it
To reach
The other side,
It snaps.

A tale was told to me
Of an angry king of old
Whose kingdom fell to a bitter force,
To an anger he could not hold.
He was said to be an honest man,
Courteous and contrite
But widely known for fits of rage
Causing many to fear his might.
One such fit lingered long,
And the kingdom felt its looming
Like a shadow cast by the king's emotions
With seeds of unrest blooming.
On a stormy night, in the castle chambers
Where the king lied fast asleep,
A visitor came and in the king's chest
He plunged his naked steel deep.
"Why?" The king asked,
His dying voice soft and low.
The visitor answered the king,
His eyes with a somber glow,
"A man who crowns his anger king
Cedes the right to rule his life
And this is how your anger rules,
With the cold edge of a knife."

Come with me
Outside where the
Rain falls
And let's sing and dance
Like we used to
Back when our
Biggest fear was that
The rain would stop.

Foamy fingers
Credulously claw their way
Up the sand
Under a twinkling canvas.
Each surge of strength is
Met by an almost
Equal decline.
But by the aid of the moon,
The maiden's embrace
Stalks, grain by grain
Over the sand towards
The arms of her lover.
Whispers grow into
Hoarse cries of determination
And the world stops
To watch her
In all of her courage.
She stretches...
Reaches...
With the last ounce
Of her strength,
She lurches forward
To hold the land
In her arms.
Nature freezes in captivation
To behold an instant
Wholesomely vain and beautiful
And temporary
In their union
And an instant later,
Those same foamy fingers
Let slip the land
They fought so hard
To embrace,
Retreating back to their
Domain of chaos
And the cries of the ocean
Fade back to whispers
Before the sun can
Expose the lovers' encounter,
But not before I let
Her lullaby sing me
To peace.

Grains of sand
Suspended in their
Journey beyond
The crevice,
A raindrop
Halted before
Imprinting on
The pavement,
Musty air caged
In my lungs,
Dust in a cloud
Frozen in the room,
Time has not
The decency to
Even crawl
But instead hangs
In perfect entropy,
Dangling the future
In front of me
On the broken hand
Of a clock.
Seconds acquiesce
To each their
Own eternity
And I scream
Into the stillness
But the sound
Never escapes
My own head,
Encased in
A personal, torturous
Epithelium.

Fear is that rock
In your throat
When you can't breath
And your eyes
Decide they're dry.
It's that numbness
That starts in your face
And paralyzes you whole,
Everything from
Your toes
To your brain
Until you're thinking
A million things at once
And nothing.
Fear is
Watching your best friend
Lose control of his body
On his kitchen floor
Because he was born with
A dysfunctional kidney
And not knowing how to
Make it stop
And realizing you might
Never laugh with him again.
I lie awake at night
With that image
Scarred into the
Back of my eyes
Because I'm afraid
There will be a next time
And that the next time
Will be the
End.

Am I alive?
I feel the words reverberate
In my head
Like a pulsing stereo.
Everyday my mechanical
Monotony ticks away
Each output I'm prompted with
Just like I program
My brain to.
Every bit man in flesh
But how much so in practice?
Resistance is only
A grinding of the gears,
A squeaky belt
In the cogs
That industrialize me.
Free thought but
Guarded speech hails
Guarded thoughts.
Standardized thoughts.
Every bit man in flesh
But I could swear I'm
A machine
Rigged to ignore
My own humanity.
Let's see what happens
When we're allowed to be
Strictly
Our own.

Where the air flows fresh and crisp
And life radiates shades of green
And orange and red and colors
That run deeper than the scars
Of the Earth;
Where the grasp of man halts,
Giving way to nature,
Where the footprints of history
Still belong to the mother,
Where the sky weeps
In sheets of life
For the fate of the idyllic land
Because it knows what is inescapable,
That is where I send my sorrow.

In time, the green
Will turn to grey.
In time it won’t matter
How tall the trees grew
Or how fit the animals were.
In time the Earth will choke on concrete
And all we will know is grey and greyer.
In time the Earth will pass away
But in less time than we realize.
For this world is not doomed
To ice or fire
This world is doomed to humans.

I can't speak
To the power of a god
But certainly there was
Something powerful among us,
As certainly as
The water threw the sun
Back into the sky
And as certainly as
The birds rode the air around us,
Certainly I know this.
Perhaps it was
Our collective human spirit
Rising like the trunk
Of a great tree
Whose leaves were the fruits
Of our serenity
And whose branches
Were an oasis
To the birds,
As if to make clear
That even those creatures
With the freedom to be
Anywhere in the world
Would choose to be
Among us
In this moment.

Light on the water's surface shone
A shape that seemed a head,
A head and a face that seemed my own
With a mouth agape that said:
You drape your skin over wretched bone
To hide your secret dread
That the things you think when you're alone
Into your life will spread.
I see the parts you think unknown
I know the lies you've fed
Yourself to sink the seeds you've sewn,
To clean the rot you've bled.
A sin
You've grown,
A heart
Of stone,
These things I'll leave
Unsaid.

Your darkness lurks
In the corners,
In your quirks.
Think in any pattern or slur,
I'll always see the truth stir.

Words are
The space between us
And I'll stumble over them
To get to
You

Her protesting moans
Rumble over the land
And her throes of resistance
Shoot lightning through the sky
And we cover our ears.
Her tantrums throw hurricanes
At our cities
And rattle the ground
Beneath our feet
In an effort to shake herself free
And we persist.
We can put a hand to her forehead
And feel her growing hot,
Hotter than ever,
Feel that our innovation is an ailment
And we can see her dying
And yet we cough in her face.
We tell her that we will
Leave her someday,
That there are others like her
Out there
And she is not precious.
We tell her how we yearn to escape
Her paradise.
We tell her that we've grown jaded
To her embrace.
And she weeps.
She knows we will not cure her
Because we do not care.
And harder
She weeps.

Peel away the anger
Like musty wallpaper,
Strip off the bitterness
And the hurt
And the heavy hearts
And the good things too
Like the joy,
Clear away happiness
And unhear laughter,
Tear off everything
Right and wrong,
Cleanse the emotion,
Pull apart every last shred
Of humanity
And you're left with
A soul, picking its way
Across the universe,
Star by star,
Dust from dust,
At once stripped of humanity
And personifying it.

There are secrets
In her stares.
Or am I just seeing things?
Her smiles stream
Like sunlight
And she speaks
In songs
That spin circles
In my head.
I can't stop thinking
That when anyone
Sees those eyes,
We're all reduced to
Single streams of light
Streaking through
Steep shadows
Cast in her mystery,
Suitors left swooning
Over stolen second glances.
We're stargazers.
Sublunary spectators.
Secret seekers.

Speak in absolutes
Lest doubt should sway the mind
Speak soft and low
But with trembling resolve
Lest the world should hear you
Speak to me
Only to me
In a haunting melody
Of how you churn
Like the ocean
For it's freedom
And I'll speak in turn
Soft and low
In absolutes
Lest the moment should escape us

A thousand thoughts a second
My mind burns incandescent
Not everything here is pleasant

I try to think
The thoughts I want
But in the back,
The vehement things haunt.

And who I am battles
Who I long to be
And I can't pull them apart
Long enough
To know
Why they're fighting.

A thousand thoughts a second
And not a single sane one
Is present.

I'm just a force of will
That is out of my control.
An enigma.
An abomination.

And for that moment
I could paint music
Into the mountainside
And watch it all
Swirl into the sky
And I could sing in colors
So rich that birds
Were envious
And wonder showered
From the amber oceans above
And we swam
Through the sky below
Like pure white clouds
And the stars
Wove pictures around us
While we laughed endlessly.
It was like vibrant joy
Had come to life
Around us
And it was our purpose
To explore it forever.
In that moment
Our hearts kept time
Together.

Then I woke up.

I watch the parts
Daily rearrange
I spend years with a person
And in hours, we estrange
My motions follow habit
Only to one day mindlessly change
I pour knowledge into my brain
Until I feel it derange
My morality fights my desires
And I can't prevent their interchange
Everyday I'm consumed with the thought
That life, indeed is strange.

You journey onward
And I ****** at
The breeze in your wake
Like a rope
That can drag me with you.
But it doesn't
And instead I'm left
With the wind
Sliding through my fingers
Like film from a spool titled
"Memories of you"
Except the spool
Stops unwinding
And I realize the film
Left at my feet
Is all I will ever have left
Of you.

The room is scarcely lit
For you need your rest.
But I suspect soon
You will rest forever.
And all of us
Crowded in the room,
We can all see it
But we don't say anything.
We only watch as you lie there,
Still.
We are still too.
It isn't a calm stillness though.
It's the sort of stillness
Where you feel like
You're suspended in water
Or time
Waiting for the next wave
To wash over you.
We are still and breathless,
As breathless as you are
And we wait for your chest
To rise again
Before we let ours follow suit
And when it falls,
The line on that monitor
Levels out
For... Seconds?
Hours?
How long have we been watching it?
Perhaps it was forever.
And then it rises again
As we all inhale.
Repeat. Repeat.
Repeat.
I keep clenching my eyes shut
Because I know one of these times
When they reopen
This terrible scene
Will be just a dream.
Or rather a nightmare.
And I know it's a nightmare.
Please tell me
It's only a nightmare.

But two days later
When I open my eyes
To see you lying
In a casket
Like you could be asleep,
The cancer grabs me
By my shoulders
And thrashes me awake
And spits in my face
And laughs
Because my nightmare
Was real.

Still we turn and turn
With the Earth.
As life after life
Fades into the ambience
Of time,
Still we turn.
Profound wisdom reverberates
Into static,
Beauty is lost to
A whitewashed history,
Gallantry evaporates like
Wisps of smoke,
And still we turn.
Even amidst all manner
Of strife and turmoil
And evil
The Earth persists.
It was turning
Before us.
It turns
With us.
And when we're gone,
It will continue to turn.

It just so happens


You and I



Are not so important



*After all.

Can you hear it here?
That's right. Nothing.
No noise but the wind
Caressing the trees while they sleep
And birds singing their lullabies
To the lulling land
All the way up here
In perfect serenity.  
There's something spectacular
About these enchanting woods
That man can't create,
Will never be able to create
And I am the outsider among them.
Can something this beautiful
Really exist?
It's like stepping into
Nature's own dream world
And I can't stay here long
Or I might wake her up.
May she sleep on forever.

I've said goodbye
A thousand times
And I fear
A thousand more.
The count is not
The tragedy
It's that my heart
Does not feel sore.
I'm conditioned now
To quickly shut the door.

But hear me out
My dear, for you
That door
Remains ajar.
To seek me out,
My dear, be sure
You needn't
Search afar.
I see you
Shining like a star.

When that star goes dark
And ash remains
And we've
Departed already,
Our shadows will dance
The mourner's dance,
Sad and slow
And steady.
For that goodbye,
I'll never be ready.

Be bold.
Embrace the cold.
Try for a moment
To break the mold
The world has set for you.
There's more out there
For you to explore.
Behind you,
Shut the door.
There will be no looking back.

Hail hail
To the people's voice.
How long in death you'll lay
Will tell the world
Of mistakes we've made
Of how our moral beginnings frayed.

Whisper about
Our vaporous hope.
Don't let them smell your fear.
We'll wait until
The fire breaks
And forget this reprobate year.

And when the lions
Return as sheep,
Their den echoing a remnant rage,
We'll stand before
This broken ground.
There will be hate to assuage.

The word eludes me
Because I let it.
I don't think I'm attuned to be
So in tune with these feelings.

I was grey before you
And great at hiding it
But you're a sunburst
And my greys are fighting it.

You don't just color in my lines,
You're cutting through them
Without even trying.
You silence my repining.
You're electrifying.
These feelings are a curse
And it's terrifying.

Suddenly the world is vibrant
And when the wind
Slides up my face,
It drags the corners of my lips
With it.
I see nomads wander the sky
Where clouds should be and
Trees whisper to me
The secrets of the Earth
Through their rustling leaves.

I'm afraid to know what
I feel for you
Because I think I know
What it is.
But I'll let the word elude me
A while longer.

Time floats with the dust
And hangs in our silence,
Mulls in our laughter,
Hides our reliance
On trust.
Oh say it if you must;
We can watch the
Metal rust
On our support beams,
Grow old and
Talk of dreams
Unattained nostalgically
But it seems
Like we'll always be
Stardust
Blown together
On a gust of chance.
And if it's true,
Let's entrance
Ourselves in
Harmonic wanderlust.

We held on for a time,
Frozen together
Before the sun would climb.

An iceberg adrift
On cold bliss,
We could hardly feel
The melting
Or the consequence
We'd dismiss.
We were creatures of
Our seasonal night,
But the darkness blocked
Foresight.
And our dancing on
The winter sea
Cast no shadow
In the moon light.

But the sun would rise
And it's rays would welt
The ice with brilliant heat,
It would creak and split
And crack and shriek
But we wouldn't notice it melt.

The sun rose in the sky
But set on our season.
Our glacier couldn't defy
The time or our treason,
Our negligence.

So we melted
Into the ocean
And the currents
Carried us apart.

My arms too short to reach the door,
Motor skills unaccounted for,
And he had yet to build rapport.
But he wore robes and masks
And skulked beneath
The floor.

My heart abounds without a care,
Laughter floats on blissful air,
He's only in places of disrepair.
But when I stare at the cracks
I see him
Waiting there.

A time for change of flesh and mind,
A sense of reality rendered blind,
To my imagination, he resigned.
But he bided his time
As his methods
Were refined.

The rise and fall of her chest is slow.
We hold our breath and don't let go.
Time limps toward a fate we know.
And just like that
He's real with
Fear bestowed.

And now he's every face I see,
In thoughts and words and inquiry,
A tidal wave I cannot flee.
His reach, I feel,
Is greater than
The sea.

And those eyes, those
Sinister eyes
Are always watching me.

I can almost feel them.

I built my walls miles high
And you sauntered over them
Like they were blades of grass.
My face was stone
But you mold it
However you see fit.
I slept to escape
A grey world
Because I dreamt in color
But now I wake to everything
I could ever dream of
And I hesitate to sleep
Because you aren't always
In my dreams.
I cracked jokes as a front
But now I do it
Just to see you smile.
I was empty
And I didn't even know it.
I wandered through life
With my eyes shut
And my ears plugged
Until you hit me
Like a myriad of colored paints
Colliding with a blank wall.
You're everything
I never even knew
I wanted.
You're an apparition.
I saw the world in
Black and white
And you're my color vision.

For these twenty eight
I'll search for you
In every cadence and ripple.
I'll listen for your
Whispers on the wind
And your laughter in
The pattering rain.

For these twenty eight
I'll disappear in my mind
Where I can find you
Even an ocean away.
I'll be distinctly alone,
Distinctly separate, and
Distinctly myself.
A slave to my own devices.

For these twenty eight
Every stray thought
Will infect my vulnerable brain.
Every rhythmic beat
I stumble over will
Reverberate.

And every day,
Every hour,
Everywhere I go,
Every word I say,
On every unsatisfying sigh,
Through every crash of thunder,
In each lingering moment,
Across every ambient sunset,
Every glowing moon,
Every idyllic twilight,
No matter how I resist,
I'll think of you.

Be still, be still
And hear my voice;
*In you, my heart refills.

I thought maybe she was like
The Sun.
I wrote about her warmth
And the way she lit up
The world around her.

But that wasn't quite right.
So I started over.

Perhaps she was autumn.
Her cool gaze evanescent but
Always a wonder to admire
And enigmatic in the way
Her smiles sauntered up her cheeks.

Something was still missing though.
So I started over.

For a while I felt she was the ocean.
Alluring, polarizing, hiding secrets
She pretends even she doesn't know about.
A riptide pulling me closer
Until there was nothing but her.

Frustrated, I scrapped everything.
I knew what she was like,
The way she felt when I held her,
How beautiful she was when she laughed,
The peace I felt when I would lie next to her.
And even when I poured over my brain
For the right words,
They wouldn't come.

And that's when it hit me,
When a realized
I know what she is.

She's poetry.

I wanted to
Say those things that mattered.
Those soft words
That ****** minds,
Rolling lightly over
An oscillating chorus of strings
That build between
Those thoughtful pauses
In my monologue
And people would hear my words
And catch their breath
Because for a moment
They would be thinking
Bigger than simply themselves,
Because for a moment
They would be insignificant
And then the music abruptly stops
And I say those few words
That instill permanent awe
Into someone's understanding of life.

Instead I am here
With silence
But the music still plays
In my head
While I think those thoughts
That are beyond words
That no manner of poignant delivery
Can make concrete
And I realize that silence too
Is befitting of awe.
Because a single abstract grain of change
In my own personal universe
Has power enough
To scale into every last piece
Of existence that I make contact with,
And the pieces that connect with those pieces
And on and on
Until every perceptible unit of existence
Is touched by my one revelation
Discovered in the absence of words.
Such is the weight of silence.

Sinuous swirls float
On the wind,
Into the blue,
Into nothing,
Along with the words I wrote.

The mountain top clings
To the mist
That slips through
Jagged fingers
As the wind that carries it sings.

Fate dictates the scene at hand.
Though it claws
And fights to
Grapple the mist,
The mountain was fated to the land.

And the mist returns
From whence it came.

It's the melancholy death
Of a union
Of beauty,
But it is a death all the same.

Sirens.
Blaring. Glaring.
Why is everyone staring
At the sky?
They open their mouths
With sounds of sirens
Like bombs fly,
You'd think the inky blue
A graveyard but
Only clouds die
There.
Staring. Blaring.
Like the whole world
Is swearing to hear
Nothing else but
The siren's prayer.
Is it for calamity
Or welfare?
I think even the
Staring, screaming statues
Don't know
And I'm worried
They don't care.
But still they sing,
Their voices ring,
Howling the siren's fanfare.

The final verse
The silent curse
In harmony, rehearsed.
All voices rise
A hymn reprised
Their words heard in reverse.

The rites of time henceforth proclaim,
A soul and skin decreed by name,
A toll within the heart aflame,
Step forward and asperse.

To heaven and hell, it's all the same
So be deliberate and terse.

The ritual will only get worse

And your time already came.

I wonder why
The windows weep.
I wonder will
The thunder keep
Me awake
To reap
The thoughts
Where my
Doubts steep.

Counting sheep.
I want to sleep
But I think
The windows weep
For the way
My brain will leap
At any cheap comment
That can heap
More coals
Onto my insecurities.

The water's deep
And I know
I shouldn't keep
Swimming down
But a few
Stray words seep
Into my head,
Urging me to creep
Farther and
Down here
I can't see
The windows weeping
Anyway.

Blades of grass
Slice like swords
Up the mountain towards
Divinity and
Portage Pass.

Ripples make
The water's mirror
Obscured but clearer
Is my mind at
Gold Cord Lake.

Sailing towards
The deepest blue
Where nature's hue
Harmonizes in
Kenai Fjords.

The mountains wield
Their crown with pride,
And skies abide
The reign of the
Harding Ice Field.

The sky is dark
But a giant looms
And light assumes
It's silhouette in
Denali Park.

Glass bent dreams,
Refracted moonbeams,
An indigo patchwork
Of stars
And fraying seams;

In streams and bends,
The scene amends
What reality pretends.

By my force of will,
Even the Amazon unbends.

I dream the world anew
Where light turns askew,
My kingdom in the blue,
Built for two,
Built around you.

Hopeless, hopeless.
Try to focus,
Mind's atrocious.
What's my diagnosis?

Sealed in my steel head
With a piecemeal
Brain of sand
And every thought is
Helium in my hands.

Darkness mutters,
Heartbeat flutters,
Shadows clutter the light
And morality stutters.

Sinking, sinking,
Tired of thinking,
Mired and shrinking,
I can see the devil winking.

Doubt instilled in me
By the truths I fought.
Every forward step is oblique.
Isolation is vulnerability
When every idle thought
Plays hide and seek
With the devil.