I have become a man of habits.
Alarms wake me, coffee and toast.
Gym, morning texts,
messages to my monkey.

The crow knows no habits
Hunts and gathers, watches for prey
Does habit call for the roost of murders?
I know less than little.

I have become my habits.
Birds, birds, birds.
I'd do anything for her smile.
Whiskey breath and soft kisses are my
prayers offered to the night,
or day.
Feast solely on the moon and
you will not receive sustenance.  

The past is certain, and so it becomes my future.
So too, is it certain, that I will relive my past mistakes?

Questions without answers.
My habit.
The lord gave me the intellect to question,
but saw fit to withhold the courage needed to answer.
Providence only moves when you do.

I don't know that I believe in fate
Or angelic intervention
Or providence
Yet you are in my life
Which is a miracle that grows
With the passing of each day

I would build an altar with which to worship you,
    your beauty, your sensuality and your love.
You truly are an angel,
    my heart.
Such a remarkable woman.
You can never  know the depth of my love for you as words and actions alone cannot capture it,
    yet I will try.

I no longer understand the night.
How it thinly veils the corruption of our souls as our hearts bleed out all that was once innocent.

I am more at home in the light of early morning.
When the sun's warmth takes the bite off of Winter's parting kiss with all the promise of spring and summer's love brightly lit for all to see,
The shadows of yesterday forgotten at least for the moment.

I have loved,
I have loved,
And I have loved again
Yet every time I am astounded
At how much love there is within me
To give again.

I love you the most.

Merry Christmas for me
Today
Is you asleep
In someone else's bed
Yet beside me
As I sip wine
While the muscle relaxants kick in

What chance have we to know each other no matter how intimate we are when we do not take the time to know ourselves, intimately.

What cannot be found alone certainly cannot be discovered together.

The journey of two must begin with one thus though we travel together we remain in many ways be apart.

I cannot speak for you yet I can say that I do not yet know me.

I don't know how to love you
Yet love beats within my heart.

I cannot stay with you
Yet I cannot leave

Why do you not ask me to
Speaks volumes that you do not want to hear.

As E.E. Cummings said
'Yours are the poems I do not write'

Only because I have already spoken every word which begged to be said.

not lost but not found

Fools fall in love
May as well pray to a unicorn
Or look for heaven under a rainbow

Your heart is a fragile vessel
Do not fill it least it burst
And leave you curled upon the kitchen floor
Tears unchecked do nothing to assuage the pain

So sit alone at the beach
In love with yourself
Don't betray it.

Bathed in my own tears
Baptized in love's broken promise
I lay here and remember
Whispered words unsaid

Night's mystery does little to dampen the pain
Memories brought back in an instance in this digital world
Your Instagram smile looks up at me and I recall all that was good
Social media failed to capture the hurt

As I sort through boxes of yesterday
I hear you whisper
But I do not answer
For I do not speak with spectres of plans that went awry
Or the ghosts of love not fully realized.

As I dig deeper more spirits of past disasters join the chorus of the broken hearted
But I do not add my voice to your song.
Yet when I sob I ask:
Do I cry for you?
Do I cry for them that came before you?
Or am I just crying for myself?

Question: Do I place these memories we shared on a mantel to be polished and admired?
Or do I pack them deep into a box not to be discovered until the next train wreck?

Photos and mementos are just snapshots of what might have been,
Who needs that reminder?

Where are you?
Are you sitting on the floor like me? Tears dropping unchecked as you write poor poetry?

No. I picture you sipping tea with a friend. Your laugh, always loud, resounding off the walls and finding it's way into the hearts of everyone who hears it. That is your gift.

This poem is my goodbye. It will be packed away with our other things.
Not forgotten, yet no longer a part of my life.

Goodbye.

Few things touch a poet more than the pure beauty of a smile newly in love,

Or the tremendous pain seen in the tear filled eyes of a heart recently broken.

I can no longer see one without recalling the other,
And in that I find my poetic doom.

You look at me and you see an enemy.

I look at you and I see a man who needs enlightenment
But one too afraid of his god to look for it.

Your hate could be the death of me for my compassion cannot hope to compete with a god.

Yet I am here
If you need a friend.
Where is your god?

Your look as the door closed between us,

Haunts me.

Lift the veil to reveal the face beneath.

Goodbye hurts more if you fight it. Healing in acceptance.

When I think about it, it hurts, so I don't.

You warmth slips past my eager lips as I take you in,
Your fall spice tickles my senses as I sigh, falling into the joy of our annual ceremony.

I am not alone in my adoration of you, but I do not grow jealous as others call your name,
Rather I find a sort of community in our shared appreciation,
Like a perfect song you were meant for the world, not one,
Yet each of us singular in the definition of our experience with you.

And so I wet my lips, again tasting the hint of a memory of your last kiss,  I prepare to brave that soft beacon hill of whipped cream topped with a seasoning so familiar yet unknown.

I'm lonely but not alone.
Reminds me of a song lyric
Poetry to music
My sad poem repeats again
They say it's all in your perception
Yet I'm spending another evening by myself
Dinner for two? No. But I'll eat for two.
What pleasure there is to be found in food

Yours was once the voice I yearned to hear,
The face I looked for when I woke
And my favourite reason for smiling.

An addict to my phone only for checking to see if you messaged.

You don't message anymore.

How did to become reality that I no longer share every moment of my meaningless day with you?

Who speaks with you now?
Who fills your free time with mindless chatter coupled with the loving whispers of the devoted?

I don't.

I am left to wonder where we went wrong;
If love is not enough then what,
My dear,
Is the ******* point?

I can see my pain mirrored in the wet tears that fall from your shocked eyes.

Neither saw this coming,
But it was my 'strength' that ruptured the fissures of our personal issues.
Cracks allow the sun to shine through?
No; cracks are what love falls into,
Lost child in the well too deep for cries for help to be heard.

Leaving me a shell, empty of hope,
You, filled with regrets
And us just another tragic tale of love gone wrong,
But I am not Romeo and you are not Juliet
Thus we must live with our sweet parting.

I'm struggling with a heaviness,
Not easily weighed
Or accepted,
Yesterday crushes me beneath failed dreams,
Our tears,
An angry ocean with a woman's name,
Yours.
Forgive me as I forgive you.
One day I know we will breath easy
As the regrets that choke soften with time.
Until then my burden grows as I add your name to the list,
An epitaph of the loving.

We run from the rain,
Take shelter beneath buildings
And flimsy umbrellas
Afraid to get wet
As if the rain might wash that which is us
Down the street drains,
More sewage to be chemically treated
Before we pump it through the pipes
To shower over our heads
Safe this time as it is controlled by man
Nature's tears confined,
Man's nature defined.

I am torn by the sultry and evocative desire for peace in direct opposition of the raw steely taste of my emotions felt full for being left untamed.

Do I let slip the quiet sigh as as my mind transcends and leaves you all behind, a leaf floating on the breath of the divine?

Or do I let loose the dogs of war and feel life with crystal intensity and immediacy until I am consumed in the resulting conflagration.

I do not know.

Fishermen do not cast their nets hoping for anything;
Why do you?

It is in the night
That your sobs turn into
Moans,
Where pain gives way to
Pleasure,
As our bodies intertwine
To find the love
That our hearts
And minds
Lost.

See the beauty?
As the sun sets on our day?

Couple of things you should know about me,

One: I don’t like you.

I don’t know you and I don’t like you.
It’s not your fault,
I have been programmed this way,
An overbearing, overprotective monarch of a father
Combined with school yard bullies,
Teachers, priests, mother,
Evil grandmother,
And bad 1980’s movies all combined to ensure that
I don’t like you.
Stranger Danger,
Go away.

Two: You don’t know me.

How could you?
I don’t know myself.
The ‘me’ you find presented before you is nothing more than layers of ******* piled one on top of the other,
By family, friends, school yard bullies,
Morning cartoons, Atari, broken hearts and a mind that never sleeps,
(Certainly never shuts the **** up!)
A product of a society
No more advanced in this age of information
Then when we crawled out of the proverbial goo,
Cheaply constructed, covered with flashy pleasing knick-knacks,
Prettily packaged and presented for your purchase,
Swipe your credit card debt here please,
Yet not build to last.  
I am lost somewhere deep beneath the ‘me’ that was chosen by
‘You’.

I do not love you for your smile,
So welcoming, warm and mischievous,
Or even for your special glance, so demure, meant only for me.

My love is not a reflection of some ensorcellment found in the depths of your jewelled eyes.

I do not love you for your charm,
Your wit and lust for life,
Or for the way you embrace new friends, companions and experiences.

My heart is not a slave to your every touch, bound by a witch's brew of lust, tenderness and desire.

I do not love you for your beauty,
Enchanting as you are,
Not your flawless style and grace or the way you walk a room, every eye captivated by the boundless joy that emanates from within your breast.

I just love you,
Simple as that yet all encompassing.

Do not stress over the broken dreams of yesterday,
Cracks in the walls of your good intentions allow the glimmer of light,
Neither sought or understood,
To shine through.
You cannot know what awaits,
Not can you have more than the slightest effect on your life's outcome for 'you' as you know yourself to be is nothing more than a grouping of molecules more complex than the universe you reside in and your thoughts and designs no more authored by you than your eventual fate.
So please do not angst over broken hearts and what may have been,
You never really had a chance anyway,
Yet realize that something good and often better will come for within you resides the universe just as you reside within it.

Pain is separation from you.

Once again I sit and weep as you pretend sleep.

Misery is the wanting but inability to smile with you.

Two hearts were never closer when separated,
Nor more apart when near.

We do not stress the important stuff
Rather we raise the ****** flag of war over the inconsequential,
And trample our soft field of love beneath the heavy trod of harsh spoken words stomping over the ripe carcasses of anger.

Where do we go from here?
Do we turn back time and bite our tongues never uttering the words that have bound us one to another,
Or do we plod onwards trusting that joy, loyalty and our oft proclaimed love will win through our clouded emotions to arrive at those poppy fields where this war becomes just another memory?

The lone wolf mythology is a ego driven shield behind which hides the shy and the wounded;
I have resided in that den of pretend solitude only to rage at the overwhelming loneliness as the need for companionship screamed and beat fists from inside of my chest, the heart hammering at my ribs to be free of its proud prison.

The need for individualization and a removed identity is just another drug to poets and artists; where else to find motivation if not within our personal tragedy still wet from the drink and tears, and blood spilled from hearts never quite mended, soldiers of love who feel in a way the common man cannot, will not, for who better to put pen to paper the raw emotions of man if not those who are lost in their feelings like maggots writhing in forgotten butchered meat, wounds that will never heal yet can only be seen in the wary yet wide open eyes of the addict yearning for the next high, not for the warmth and caring that is love rather for to the hurt and the harm and the inspiration that can be found there.

Cannot find the words when
I have nothing to say...

Once upon a time
A bard told a tale so wonderful
So moving
That it was told and retold again and again
Across all nations
And in all tongues
This tale became the greatest myth
More believed in than any religion or god
It became a part of every culture
As important to our genetic make up
As any particles
As integral as breathing
Pumping through our very souls with each beat of our hearts
Yet this story's happy ending remains elusive
But such is the profound power of this yarn that men and women drive themselves to ruin yearning for its realization
And upon such an occasion are consumed by the fiery nature of the story never to be the same
This fable has a name
And it is Love.

I'm a bloke in a suit on a train to last year's realized dreams no more content to arrive at tomorrow than yesterday.

My mind chalk full of plans and strategies for a better me because Michael taught in an unforgettable hymn that the path to world change begins with a mirror.

Yet it is not peace or culture and religious tolerance that bubbles through the frothy brim of my troubling mind but you.

I love you woman.

What worth this life and it's lofty goals full of meaning and well being where only careful deliberation will carry us from misstep and disaster if we do not have each other to share in the glory and the gore.

The day will not arrive when the bird awakes and thinks "Not today, I don't feel like attending to the worm."

Nor will there ever be an ant who sits back and does not do its part for the industrious colony rather living off the labour of its fellows like so sort of parasite.

My dissatisfaction does not come from you,
It is not a reaction to your moods or your sometimes bleak outlook,
Nor your terrible self-imaging.

I remember laughing late into the night.
I recall with clarity falling in love with a woman who loved the world we found ourselves in and we laughed till we cried drunk on life and each other.

I sometimes wonder where that woman went.

At times I believe you when you say you whither within a relationship.
At times I believe that is part of my curse.

I do not choose a woman who is content to bake cookies and clean the house,
Though you do those things,
I chose you in your glory with all your lust and love and life.

Yours is a heart meant for freedom and no matter how loosely connected we are I am still the tether to which you are leashed,
And you are chaffing.

I do not want to let you go,
Nor have you asked to,
Yet what are we to do when the life you once celebrated is now oppressed from the summer heat?
I cannot offer shade cool enough to calm the fire smouldering inside of your breast.

Thus my dissatisfaction does not come from you,
Rather my bleak understanding of our future,
One I hope you know that I will do everything I can to discard.

I would have you happy and content.
I would have me the same.

I want to express my love for you,
But what can I say that hasn't been said throughout time eternal,
So I sit here in the shade on a beautiful summer day and picture your stunning smile and feel again the warmth and joy that your look infuses me with, and like a child in the front yard with a sprinkler I revel in the knowledge that your smile is meant for me, because of me, in response to the love I feel for you which emanates as heat from the very core of my being.

I guess that says it.

Public transportation reeks of human sweat; the unwashed bodies of common man pressed together like flaked tuna fish in a can, only less well preserved.

What folly bathing can be; as it hides the dark animal truth of who and what we are. The stench we turn our noses up from whilst we traverse throughout our day holds within it's sour notes our true identity.

We are not nicely scented soaps and perfectly groomed hair. We are not our finely pressed clothes or smoothly manicured hands.

We are creatures of this planet with a developed mind capable of great feats but our greatest achievement thus far may be the lies we have convinced ourselves to believe.

And so we pack into busses, trains and planes and do our best not to breath the same air as our fellow passengers on this trip called life.

The next station is love forlorn,
Broken hearted from empty promises from the one who made you believe, in Cupid's hunt and Romeo's fight however tragic it may seem.

The next station is love returned,
You celebrate life's purpose and meaning fulfilled, the sun shines on children playing, laughter and song fills the hills and you smile in the certain knowledge that all is as it was meant to be.

The next station is loss,
Dark days loom with shadows cast by the person no longer here, the newly formed ghost cries spirit tears which stain the depths of your haunted eyes; you will never see that face again.

The next station is faith and spirituality,
Jump on and off with the regularity of hobos and with all of their thought and deliberation, flip a coin and choose your path, your plans and intentions are mere butterflies facing the cosmic storm and no 'god' will save you from life's rotten breath.

The next station is you,
A culmination of thoughts, feelings and experiences, some of which you acknowledged, most were spun by your subconscious with the greasy excellence of a politician on campaign.

Some of you love yourself, most do not; you're locked in constant battle with an inner monologue which preaches self-hate and immolation, cast out that voice as you would a demon for its only validation comes from your accepting attention.

The next stop is your freedom,
Awaken; your mind, body and soul are yours to do with as you choose, feed all three with gluttonous abandon and find a path not yet traveled, for your life and it's purpose are not the reflection of anyone who came before or will arrive after, it is yours and yours alone to discover should you brave getting off at this station.

I am not the author of my thoughts nor am I the poet whose poems you read.
I am only a vessel through which life exists; a witless witness of what befalls this body and mind.
Please excuse my false pride,
Forgive me my claims of titles and names.
I am merely the ghost in the machine within which I experience taste, touch, sight, smell and the chaos of clarity of mind.  
I once knew with the certainty of the lost that I was the master of this universe,
Now I bow my head in pious recognition of defeated acceptance. Life is not to be lived,
Life is to be survived.
Free will is a conception of man's need and desire for order in a land where particles too small to be seen or felt rule with the supremacy of god.
We are nothing more than fish in the sea unaware of the ebbs and flows of the ocean around us in response to a moon we cannot even conceptualize.
There is peace in that thought;
If you can accept your insignificance you will realize how little that lost love matters for what is love but a micro atomic reaction to a cosmic event that happened light years from earth,
In which you were the victim of a joke you can't even understand.

Some poems are not meant for public eyes to read.

Your sad eyes awaken a need within me to heal the heart which cries tears poorly hidden by the night rain.

Who left you out in the cold?
Whose harsh hands left those marks upon your skin?

Something in me wants to save you from your chosen fate;
Lean into my protective embrace and I promise you no hurt shall ever visit you again.
We both recognize that lie;
The saviour is nothing more than the precursor to the persecutor,
I would lay you upon a cross we built from your past misfortunes and misdeeds, and the understanding which thinly covers my hate.

Better I offer you nothing now but a friendly smile,
And leave you, alone, cold in the rain, waiting for the man who bruised your face,

I would batter your soul.

Can I be considered a good leader if those that follow ultimately fail in my absence?

Is the artist only as good as the canvas upon which she brings her creations to life?

I suspect not.

Therefore I am a failure as my legacy is covered in the blemishes of the fallen. Viaducts down, Rome sacked as what once was great is now nothing more than tales told by those who choose to live in the past.

But I am young.

Thus I return to the scene of my crime, hastily departed, left reeling, a drunk short a drink and a sympathetic ear, and I begin anew.

Perhaps this time I will impart some wisdom to allow those that can to light their own path, so that this time when I depart they will stand resolute and face the coming dark with the certainty of knowledge, of awakened minds.

Wish me luck.

The human heart is very fragile indeed.
Yes it is capable of holding and exuding such fiery passions as to consume you whole,
Yet can it not be crushed underfoot with a wayward blow meant to push away rather than injure or the sweet kiss of fare thee well from the object of your eternal desire?

Love is not the monster that hides beneath your bed, rather under your sheets where you wistfully dream of your prince, your knight, the girl next door or the **** *******.

Love is the creature that hunts for your immortal soul not by night but rather captures and enraptures you in the brightness of day with a single smile and words that only you amongst the billions in this world were meant to hear.

Love is not the answer, it is the question in the truest sense which poets, songwriters and the daft have spent eternity trying to unravel, it is a puzzle without end for the missing pieces lie within us all and can only be found in another.

And the creator in all his glory housed such a curse as a gift within the most fragile of vessels yet we stand shocked witness each time our hearts break.

You don't look like I know you should; your clothes, your hair, your body and your accessories speak to a culture that I do not understand.
I'm not even sure I want to.

Before you cry hate realize that I am not speaking to the colour of your skin; pigment has zero relevance to the way you were raised, the friends you chose or who you are as you stand before me in this modern society.

The alien I find in you are the choices you've made, or rather the very few choices you've made as you've allowed the flavours of the masses to salt your very being, laying the foundation for the same row houses on each block, 'we' nothing more than automations that turn right, vote left and drive straight on into the witless death of 'our' meaningless life. Group hug.

I obviously am not talking about you; you read this poem and judge it unworthy or not and write your own birthing thoughts not yet authored, cutting yourself free from the tether of normality making the awakening of social consciousness possible.

Or perhaps I'm just another ******* on the train wearing awesome golf pants coming back from the game that takes more than it gives griping about life and those that don't live it or love it.