Oh, Darling.
You can’t fix yourself by breaking someone else.
No, perhaps I can’t Love,
But when the heat rises up in me.
Making my skin glow,
Lining the holes in me with molten gold,
Perhaps I can burn them down.
Raze their structured beliefs
Until there’s nothing but choking thick ash.
If something survives it is beautiful.
If something new grows in that new fertile ground
Then it is precious.

Freedom is a heady feeling.
I didn’t know how much I needed to feel.
Until all those emotions had been wrung out,
Except for this bright little jewel.

Perhaps there is no wonder.
As it all feels so gray.
The color slowly leeched.
Just as the sun
Makes our vision white.
The little paper bird
Sits all dusty and bleached upon the shelf.

You’re a primary color,
The brightest of the bunch.
Even if your shape is
Slightly off from circular,
Your wedges make,
the best bitter smile.

It’s a word on the tip of the precipice
Teetering and tottering
While I slide backwards away
Muttering sullenly and with bravado
“You can’t make me fall.”

There’s a marred reflection staring back at me.
I wish I could tell you what was wrong with it.
Its blank gaze and happy expression say everything’s alright.
The pressure builds and sweat beings to seep
The mask begins to slip, but I dare not show the underneath.
I need this face to present to others
For I need their acceptance to feel some worth.
But it’s only what they considered worthy in their eyes
So I’m beholden to their stares as I shift to conform.

The Poem I’d never write
Has perhaps already been written
Drained out of me
By poetry classes
And poetry forms
In which to force my words
An emotions to fit
Into squares

Disappearing into the milk
Silver goes for a swim
And a thunderous whirlpool

I had never really liked you
Until that day,
When I noticed
You didn’t look at me
With shame.

And would I sing a song for you
Quiet soft
Spoken against your heart
That you might know me forever

Would you laugh then
Eyes lighting up
Unspeakable joy sticky sweet on your lips?
That you might know my heart

Would you dream of me
In springtime meadows
Whose tall blades of grass whisper up to the sky
That you might feel me

And would I look into your soul
Look into your heart
And wrap myself in your peace and warmth
That you might feel my love

That day the goose feathers went ****,
The Sun blamed the Wind.
The Stars blamed the Clouds,
And Cause blamed the Effect in the confusion.
But truly Cause was to blame,
And shame that he was able to fool all,
By meddling with the details
And suggesting cures to mask the symptoms,
Or the feathers would have been returned
And not a goose would go cold.

To see the changes wrought by time
Plays sweet havoc upon my mind.
The twisting, folding, space of memories,
My only sanctuary,
from shattered dreams
and haunting hopes, that unleash from me a scream.
I sit and replay,
The reasons why I hoped you would stay.

Breaking rhymes and little lies,
All I have left to toy with.
Spinning them into secret bottled messages
Leaving me replete with bitter silence.
The play is complete, the mask in place;
I’ll wait for my turn to break
A smile posed on my face.

Entrancing power,
Dazzling…
Tremulous and treacherous
It left you vision-less
And so very hungry for more.

I bite…
The tender fleshy part…
My tongue.
All at the risk,
of being bleed to death,
just for your
Quiet satisfaction!

Perhaps I shouldn't mock your previous sentiments,
But Lord Bitterness has requested it be so,
And I am but a jester on strings for my Lords & Ladies.

If I cut them with vorpal shears I might be free.
More likely I'll just collapsed, a pile of cut parts.
Better I sing and dance while tugging here and there.

I'll eventually pull them all deep inside me.

It's six am and the haze has settled in.
The teakettle dreams of fire,
and I wander the realms of unreality.
My clock dreams of going forward,
and I wish to turn it's gears back.
Alas,
Both their dreams are fulfilled.

Perhaps, sometimes,
I wonder at your indecision.
A little bright leaf.
Refusing to touch the ground.
But there’s very little wrong with the ground.
And in touching it,
Something astounding might begin to flower.

Frayed to the touch
Your little electric shocks,
Wind me up
And spin me round.
Dizzy on nothing
I stumble to the floor
Falling deeper down.
This emotional twister
Sweeps me off
And dumps me right-side up.
Without a brain, and
My fancies out of control,
Well, my darling,
I’m afraid I’ve lost and
I’m fraying right before your eyes

I’ve chosen fight today,
I’ve been choosing fight every single night and day.
I bear the scars now of victories
And the still dripping wounds of defeats.
I’m a fighter now
I fought for me and you.
If I could I’d lay down this spear.
Just to rest for a day or year,
But battles need to be fought.
So I’ll just keep choosing fight instead of flight
Until it’s no longer needed.

I’ve toyed with fight or flight,
Had it freeze me in a nitrogen bath.
At the very innocuous sight of a face.
But the face just denoted
The crushing fear, that swallows me whole.
So I’m a runner and
I’ll hide in anything, including a frozen mind.
If I could I’d fight
One of these days I will fight.
But, battles of the self, need to be chosen carefully.
So I’ll just keep toying with flight
Until I’m sure that fight won’t end me

Sink into the mists weary soul
For such pain does not belong,
To one dark, like midnight coal.
Sing, dear, such a lovely song.
One to call the lost and small
To bring a little light their way.
Hushed lullabies for all.

My anger was righteous,
Deserved and harsh.
It poured your ichor
Onto paper.
Mingled words on
A hundred pages.
Only to set it ablaze
With blue flames
That took years
To do their job.
Now the coals smolder
In destruction
And wait,
Patiently

In.......out…….in…….out
My lungs scream at me,
While my mind races thoughts in ever faster laps.
The winner undecided as flames begin to lick the outside of the car.
The waterworks fall.
In.......out…….in…….out
Is now a wailing siren
Wailing sirens,
With lights exploding behind my eyes.
I try to pull the car over, but that steering wheel is stuck in the drive position
In.......out…….in…….out
The noise is too loud and this hallways too crowded,
But I can’t go back to that peaceful pond.
Because, Lord help me, I’m afraid I’ll drown.

Synapses roll off the tongue,
Stutter and glitch
Stut-t-t-ter and glitch
Repeat....Re...p-p-peat
Misfired.
You a broken doll
With your bright brilliance.

The whispers of “Sorry”, haunt your brow
Shall I bear the burden of your guilt?
I don’t want to.
Call me selfish and afraid.
But I’ll laugh at that thought,
As I cry my pain away.

If I breathe
In and out
If I trust
Completely
If I’m strong
In mind
In heart
Can I hold you?
Forever?

I got swept away.
This past Tuesday night.
By the sights and smells;
dried leaves dancing about
And that woman,
so in love, that she sighed
Her poetry to the wind

You seemed lonely that day,
Or perhaps it was wishful.
Swept free in a crowd.
Surrounded by everything,
And nothing in peculiar,
Reaching out, laughing.

I had a heart then,
but then the Queen drowned in a tea cup,
overflowing with complacency.
It’s delicate porcelain shape
a study in the emotionless.
A Jack of hearts slipped in,
To steal it all away.

Gripping tight
This failure to scream and let go.
Condensed nightmares,
HA! Just add the water
Drop by drop.
Stab the knife in to cut
The top right off.
Velvet gloves prickle and tear.
While pearls of ice
Fill my heated self.
Tears? To salty for the soup,
And anger too ripe.
Love just enough to hold on
To my insane sanity.
Though it might crack
Being trapped behind
This broken glass.

Five is the witching hour.
Filled with thick fog, or
Perhaps vivid hallucinations.
Desperate with the need to dream,
Or desperate to wake and stand in the light,
Just creeping up into the inky blue of the sky.

“Oh dear, oh dear”, exclaimed the rabbit
“I’ve appeared to have lost it in this havoc!”
He searched high and low
Near and far, above and below.
It wasn’t until the very last place he looked,
That he found his poetry book.

Shall I fade into the quiet nothingness?
To be lost?
To wander?
To exist in the dark places of your heart?

Shall I have no meaning?
No hope?
No love?
No light to guide my way?

I refuse.

My feet are cold and boredom has struck
Along with the big hand on the clock
It screams out “FOUR”
I think it’s in the A.M.

They’re jumbling
And tumbling.
Tripping over themselves to get out
As soon as that clock hits 3 am.
If they don’t they paint vivid mindscapes
That vanish with the sun.
If they make it,
Well they can assault the senses of those,
Now too few, that read.

Perhaps 2 am is more a siren’s song.
It softly calls to bed
Or maybe urges
For one more look,
Chapter, song, show.

In which 1 am is just a prelude,
That slight bend in the road,
Or the loosening of inhibitions.
And, ooooooooohhh,
All the delicious possibilities.

To drown in yellows is to stare too long
At those fiercely awkward moments of yours,
But it’s all I can do.
Even as alarm bells ring incessantly, over and over.

The first footsteps were quiet, love
Like the whispered touch of snow upon the ground.
The day was gray, but the colors true.
It’s a shame that the violets never bloomed.

Stained ink to bring wanting. With concave, lights twisting

notes. Fingertips in unreal closet. Lights with mildew out

nothing. Pure broken tapping closets to ink fingertips.

Reality?
Perish the thought!  
In fact, let’s drown it in a cup of tea.

The cracks have appeared.
Wiggly lines stretched across
Such a flat mirrored surface.
They trace the hollows of my eyes,
The curve of my twisty cheeks,
Lines of thick black that fail to mar
My dreamless humanity.

A tightrope dance,
Along the spiders web
A gasp
A moan
To set the ethics quivering.
Perhaps the Fall
Into that raging morass
Shouldn’t depend on that last little swing.

I gave up somewhere along this road—
When it was I don’t know.
So I’ll sit here, underneath the shade
And wait for the Tin man,
Now rusted in time, far behind me.
I discovered, sitting there, that day—
That losing a heart
Was actually an easy thing to do.

A soul, a skip, a time, a page.
Twill and twine, butter me up.
Bowler hat, dapper gray.
Tea and twist, slap it away.
Hatpins stab and teamice snore.
A soul, a skip, a time no more.

“Happiness is a sweet, sticky, toffee–  
Flavored mess.” His words ghosted in my ears.

“And I’m discontent, here in this abbey,
To sit and wait for your unhappy fears.
I’d much rather have peppermint kisses,
Sharp and pricking sweet on your supple tongue.”
My voice: bold, unfazed by his many faces.

His laughter filled the still space and rung,
Alarm bells of impending disaster.
Unsure of the steps, we, unfaltering,
Continued on; trusting in our anger
So we might wake.  

How long were we sleeping?
Forget rose-colored glasses! I wanted
To see us in all our colors faded.

The slow churning of the tides,
And my little boat
Afloat,
On a glass sea.
A ripple.
A shudder.
A shake.
And my little boat,
Roars with flames.

The Circles are calling!
As they circle round my head
Weaving me dizzy and divine
As we fall into the Circles of Hell.
I try to block them by feeling square
Only to form a triangle
The pressure builds
And lines are being bowed
Everything collapses into roundness
And my sanity goes.

You’re silent and still.
Chocolate bunny eyes
The only thing in motion.
Will they start with the ears?
Or go straight for the heart?