Can you use a paintbrush to send thoughts dripping
Can you look at a canvas to see what is missing
Do you pluck strings like it's your hand's only need
Do the keys that you tap convey emotions that bleed
Have you made a connection between the role and yourself
Do you put your mind's miracles up on a shelf

Is the canvas, the stage, the music inside
Something that you could no longer hide

If you urge to make something out of feelings within
Grab a brush, instrument, audition, and simply begin

do you seriously think
you can determine your life

plan all your moves
avoid poisonous strife

reach all your goals
without devious grooves

by the time you have reached
those goals you have preached

you may be quite old
remembering how  bold
you were

and how coldly determined
on what you‘ve been sold

Do your hands move like the flame of a fire
Twitching and itching to possibly inquire
About the state that your mind has fled
About a fascination with being dead

Does your chest open up like a cave
Dripping cold, like a still-living grave
Can you shout inside and hear the echo
Is it your own voice telling you to let go

Do your legs hold you hostage from sleep
Do they move so your thoughts don't get deep
Or are they moving to make noise with the sheets
So your ears and midnight silence will never meet

Is your face more of a house but not a home
Something seeming foreign to what you've known
A room in which you sleep but isn't yours
Impossible to tell the ceiling from the floor

Does your heartbeat jump to conclusions just like mine
Or is it calm and slow and steady all the time
Does it leap into your head and cause a scene
Or is it glued to the cavern's walls without a dream

I don't write poetry anymore
I was lying on my bed lost in my thoughts and I realized I don't write poetry anymore
I used to write so much that my fingers would be sore
and that my words would almost become a bore
but now I don't write poetry anymore.

At some point in the last two years I stopped writing
blame life, blame time
blame the fact that maybe I forgot how to rhyme
Okay, I didn't forget how to rhyme but maybe I forgot to be passionate.
I don't write poetry anymore

Words and thoughts and ideas used to pop into my head
and I could not keep my fingers on the keyboard as they fled
fled from my head
fled to the page
whether fueled by passion or by rage
I had things to say and words I wanted heard
and now it seems so absurd
I have no ideas, no thoughts come to mind
I know poetry takes time
but
I don't have much time
things to do and people to see
the world seems to expect so much out of me
two years have passed and I almost forgot this task
task of passion and of heart
task I had fallen in love with from the start
words mean so much and I love to write
I guess that is why I am here tonight

I had this thought and it shook me to my core
this hobby I used to adore
time I used to feel I had a purpose for
but now my fingers have forgotten how to soar
my thoughts and ideas are poor
I guess that's why
I don't write poetry anymore

they leave
and act like it never happened
they come back
and act like they never left




ghosts