My hands have always lingered close to tools,
Each yet another means to cheat an end,
To ward away a break, to build, to mend.
Discarded carelessly, absent all rules
Or sympathy, their care makes me seem cruel.
But as I reach my desk, again to bend,
Again to pour what thoughts may condescend
To slip from mind to pen, my hand their mule...
I wonder in the silence as my thoughts
Go still and stiff without your drifting gaze,
The blooms of inspiration withered down
To bristling hedges in a maze I've wrought.
To know abuse, know Muses: when they frown,
Their tools quickly become their castaways.

even as I lift it like a wounded bird off pavement,
out of its case and against my chest
as my heart cradles it close and my hand presses it away.
I don't let it in yet. I can't. Not yet. Maybe never.
The viola sits atop my knee and waits for me.

And they know - I know they know - how long it's been
From my own lips, lips that once would hum along
As younger fingers danced up and down that ebony stage...

It's nothing to me now, but it's a gift, so it's everything.

...they'd dance for hours, because I loved it.
I grew around it and it grew through me,
This need I could never share without seeming crazy
And maybe I was.
I loved the feel of it, the sound of it,
like a thunderstorm waiting just for me,
in the palm of my hand

like the one turning the viola atop my knee.
The strings face outward. When the time comes to play,
She will turn a graceful arc until the cool of her rib
rests against my shoulder like a lover's temple,
her eyes turned up to wait for me
to realize just how long it's been.

You are my pill
That I take each morning
When I wake up
And each night
Before I fall

Before I am on my back, ready for burial
Before I lay for hours, wishing I were home

“Push your sleeves up”, they say
“We don’t want you stealing your medication”
“We don’t want you to overdose, now do we?”

Too late.
I’ve already overdosed on you.

-Reckless

You know those movies where there is someone who can read minds?
They are able to know what everyone is thinking?
That person usually does the coolest things with his power
Except at the end, he kills himself

You see, I have a power kinda like that
Except I feel what others feel
There was this girl I met once
This is how it went

The second she walked through the door, here overwhelming presence of pain and lost dreams collide over me like a tsunami
And she spoke, knives of steel spit from her tongue slice into my lings letting in more of the water
As we go to shake hands, the poison from the blade she once held drips onto my skin burning like acid
Every faulty statement and untrue word is like a **** to my head
She tried to cover up her scars with a smile that fades when the lights are out, and a personality made up of broken promises
If you were to meet her, you'd fall in love
But to look inside her mind is like opening Pandora's box
I smiled and waved as the last of her words ripped my heart apart

With the last of her presence leaving the room
I wake stretching for breath
Opening my eyes to find I'm in my room
Realizing I've just met myself

the night bows
    to the darkening moon
        crickets sing
            in rhythmic prayer
                 the air seems to hum
                    and float thicker about us
                        in awe of luna’s pull
                          the brightness of night
                          succumbs eerily,
                        quietly
                      but with a deep
                    and resounding
                thumping  
            that beats from our own hearts
       as the moon is swallowed
in rusty shadows