Solid Sapphire mined on foreign soil
Is broken and scattered upon your dress
As you accompany your friends to a ball
Flaunting emeralds in your ears
The music spins and you shimmer
Growing brighter at times then dimmer
All the while you search for another person
So that you can form a pair
Like two perfect rhymes
Dancing within a madness,
Of uneven melody

How I’ve trekked with muddy boots
Through superficial swamps to arrive here
Where Apollo’s apprentices laze about
Though slicked with sweat the air here is sweet
Where muses pull on poets like reigns
And all dreams and delusions are bared
And all hope and hell shines without glares
And all our secrets slither from our stoic stares
And all are cradled in a community that cares
Oh how I’ve trekked with muddy boots

I’m a refugee from the greatest part of me
I’m free range cattle that’s never truly free
I’m a poor scholar banned from the library
I’m the guide without a compass leading a company
I’m deaf but I heard all the things they said I’d be
I’m the one that didn’t vote but protested in the street
Yet even I realize there’s stranger things in reality

Such a light and stealthy feeling
It enters you by peeling
Through layers of your hardened skin
Then pushes past all beliefs you hold within
Before finally arriving at the porcelain cage
Which all free flowing blood call center stage
And having journeyed it settles down to rest
Yet when that person comes back around, it awakes feeling fresh
And slowly crushes everything inside your chest

Her Royal Highness Passion, swirling and sipping molten fire
Then spills its drink into the chests of mankind to make a pyre
The burning of diverse ribs can be seen in streaks
In national and foreign streets
Resonating throughout the strong and meek
Yet all eventually meet
To bend the knee before Passion’s Royal seat
Unable to stand the staggering celestial heat

Hearts polished like porcelain
Shined so peers perceive no flaw
Then placed upon the shelf
Perfectly perched and priced
And in struts the buyer
Fresh from running with the humans
A mass of muscle, tail swaying slightly
Hooves as shiny as the horns
Brandishing upon its neck
A great ruby scarf
Won in a fierce and frantic fight

We attach ourselves to oblivious ones
Their carefree, we’re careful of acting dumb
They drum up excitement, we listen to their fun
And slowly or quickly we attach to their beings
Refine our perception to make them our dreams
Then reality hits and we never duck
Ruthlessly rattled we’re forced to wake up
Shredding our attachment, our well-being in flux
Then our ears disintegrate making deafness abrupt
Now careening and careless, our feelings corrupt
Learning a lesson that's too hard to instruct
The oblivious ones were us
For we attached to delusions that were destined to erupt

Dilapidation sunk its teeth into you
Shearing off your softer side
Exposing your skeletal essence
Which had cut off calcium from cows
Long ago
Leaving it on the brink of brittleness
As if the blow from a kiss
Would deconstruct to dust
The bones that once bore the strength
To love without fear

A lone tree languished
In the world’s oldest
Forest
It being the first
Tree whose branches
Had been butchered for a book
Creating clean, crisp, pages
And how the tree moaned
It’s voice infecting the wind
Howling throughout the night
And lingering on into the day
Causing the others trees to shun it
They were content to merely sway
In the breeze
Or basking in high noon
Concerned with nurturing
Their own nutrients,
Their sap preserving their old ways
Until the first library
First bookstore
First College
Came to claim them all

I’ve met desire again and turned her away.
Told her thanks but come back another day
Or another year cause it will be a while
I’m working on my structure, story, style
I’ve trying to create grandeur that’ll shine for a mile
I don’t have time for my heart to be on the prowl
I've got work, and dreams that have grown to a pile
But then you smile
And I put down my reason and then my pen
And let you in

Running within youth’s river
The water cold around my ankles
Laughter loitering in the air
My friends and I
Were fond of infinity
Our swimsuits were scented in it
Endless Days
Endless Nights
Endless Homework
Yet who could see
That youth’s river led to the senile sea

Great entity resembling a Trance
Trudges along the Earth
Stumbling in and out of different languages
And some call it truth
And others call it lore
And many call it illusion
Yet all must call it something
For it responds to:
The strike of a bell for recess
The strike of a wooden gavel
The strike of a revolutionary idea
The strike of a single strike of lightening
And all of these strikes bowl over
The petty pens which ink our thoughts

With lantern strung high on a pike
I searched for an Empress of poetic might

Whose symphonic verse
Both elongated and terse

Would meld all the muses into one
Beauty tipping from the tip of her tongue

Scented in roses she’d carefully grown
A flower no gardener could own

And seeing the vile and valiant in all people
Thus never seeking saviors, only equals

Awash in wisdom that attracts locusts of love
And shining nay shimmering like a lantern from above

And she left again, another muse
She’s amused to pick up her things and cruise
Like she’s on the sea, and tasting salt, I grab *****
And drink, noting I have nothing to lose
Recounting all of her old moods
Exclaiming to hell with her, I had hell with her
But then again I had heaven too
And remembering that, I pick up her call around two
Drunk and disorderly and probably rude
But she’s right there with me basking in blues
If only we were instruments, that’d be a tune
We’d be married in music a bride and a groom
Playing our vows all over the room

She danced but also instructed
The feet of small girls, some being reluctant
One two, One two
Rhythm resting within her joints
Her toes spinning upon perfect points
One two, one two
Sweat soaked in a speck-less studio
Where the sun went to and fro
One two, one two
Yet to the beat, the rest of her life couldn’t adhere
Outside of the studio she oscillated in fear
One dismal hiccup before a panel of judges
Two points off led her life to the drudges

A table shaped like an hour glass
Seats filled with sand moving slow and fast
A figure sits, veiled and masked
Motions me to join before I can ask
Picks up a kettle of solid brass
In cups they pour, attentive to the task
Watching, waiting, until they finish at last
I reach for my cup but it spills alarming me
For I have broken this hymn like harmony

The depthless darkness
Sighed as it seized
The hairs of greybeards
The cries of newborns
Seeing them as funds for a festival
In the district of destruction
Hosted by hollowness
And all of agony would attend
Enjoying endless examples of extinction
Melancholy would come bearing a broom
Sweeping up the sea of scattered skulls
That this crowd had dropped as mere debris

She picks my veins like chords
Tunes my tongue to record
A melody she’s been working on
And I sway along as she plays her song
Then she says the pitch is wrong
Starts to repent
Leave’s me to play another instrument
But once alone I sip whiskey and recline
Waiting for her to set up our next studio time

Locals said it wasn’t far from here
So I track its trek by a trail of tears
And spotting it, stealthily lift my spear
Towards monstrous, mutinous, FEAR
It’s skin morphing more than vanes of weather
Being draped in every conceivable displeasure
Dwelling in women and men without distinction
Here I hunt it to extinction
It sings like swans, I’ve finished my mission
Firing off celebratory pistons
Later discovering, it was vital to my ecosystem

I miscalculate my fortunes and searching in pain
Find my lovely and ask her for another change
She says “no”, to my requested exchange
Baffled, I make myself clearer but she still refrains
I pull out crisp bills and push them in range
She shakes her head but doesn’t explain
Yet we’ve done this before, it’s simple and plain
Traded currencies without concern or complain
Her thoughts are riding some otherworldly train
Finally her lips depart and she exclaims
That I must leave her station without a backward glance
So I walk from her in a dazed, dull, trance
Then a friend lets it slip by happenchance
That I confused the words change for chance

Falling past those that wish to press
Compress, and arrest their feelings
Along with mines because it’s appealing,
That life seems easier when others
Conform, like twin sisters and brothers
All crushed under cotton like cover
Dealing death to any trying to discover
Uncover
Recover
Through Boredom's layered blubber
A shining, soldiering, standout that streaks star-like then ruptures
I'ts shimmering strangeness slicing stale structure
And showering all souls in a serene we seldom explain
Only calling it a brilliant boisterous big BANG

I saw my country crowded and crumbling
The rich ruled with rules and rumblings
Of freedom of work
Or freedom to hurt,
Environments of nature and social order
All tipping toward disorder
But among the chaos I spot some coffee and order,
It black and then scream Order!
Like a judge amongst the courtliest courts
For everything is odd and out of sorts
In my crumbling and crowded country

I saw my country growing into its prime
For I’m educated and elegant and all is fine
As I recline in cushy shoes that others shine
The view from the top is so sublime
And the fashion in season is devilishly divine
But some fools shout from time to time
Wanting us to spy the crust and grime
They are losers, for winners never whine
And I change the channel and sip on wine
For it helps me to unwind
And refocus my precious mind
On all the money I can mine
From my country growing into its prime