Broken goes
I tip and toe the undertow
Scratched dirt beneath scratched heels
Trailing paper and what I’d feel
If only I had something around my brain
To make me feel whole again

But nothing lasts longer than a cigarette
A can of beer, it’s all wasted breath
Expel the moment
What comes back
Atonement

For sins you think you might remember
But just a kid, a kink, when you were younger
Made your knees buckle, and you went under
Afraid to let go, afraid to surrender

Is it my fault
What has happened here
Time went out and I grew cold
Feeling older than the sum of my years

And it feels as if it’s all stitched together
Moments that collect themselves
In a tin bucket cheaply rendered

And it all feels wrong
Like violins in a marching band
No one knowing what they’re marching for
And everyone’s just waiting for it to end

Late shift of a later day
Emotional balance like a mirror broken
Coping mechanisms, a million to none
All strewn out in arbitrary direction

I think I did it all wrong
Took a wrong turn somewhere
Ending up at a crossroads
Where all signs say: to Hell

And so I went there
Feeling not so free after all
Doubt cast as my shadow
Faithfully trailing me along the way

On the road meeting with strangers
Whose faces are coated in bitterness
Smiling sad, broken smiles
With sad, broken eyes

Trailing their ghosts and skeletons behind them
A procession of lost souls
Pulling shadows from their lives

We're all of us going in circles
The past clinging to us like a child
Fearful of being left behind



I dream of being and forgetting
Leaving only blankness in my wake

This skin is on too tight
And these bones they feel too much
Life seems to spin
Violently, out of control and out of my hands
Leaving them grasping at air
Not knowing what to hold on to and what to let go

Emotions flare that I reject
Too painful to understand, undesired and unwished for
Yet they remain and I remain
Though I can't accept
And I'm looking for a way out
Trapped in a maze leading only to closed doors

Growing older didn't take it away
There's no rest
Only when I sleep does the noise fade away
But my waking life is plagued
By screaming voices attached to demons
Running circles around my head

They talk of opposites while laying out wires for me to trip over
Whisper words that drive me right out of myself
Causing rifts no bridge seems able to span
And with each passing of unnumbered time
The chasms they create grow wider

Skin a little thinner
Bones a little more hollow
I am waiting for a break I know will never come
I fear they are winning
Playing the long game stacking odds against me

I fear them mostly because they come from me
They are me even if I don't want them to be
And half the time I don't understand them
And they feel very much like separate entities
A multitude of persons
All in conflict
Living inside of me

The one who was there from the beginning
I don't see him all that much anymore
Crowded over by the others
Living in their shadows while I am losing my own

I am tired of being human
This body is tired of my occupation
Fortunately
It will be only for today
Tomorrow
I will be something else
Somewhere else

Where are you in the creation of your own puzzle
How many pieces have you found
And do you like the picture that is appearing
Or are you constantly rearranging
Thinking it could never fit like this

I've been at it for a while
Picking up pieces while losing others
And I don't think the holes that appear
Could ever be filled

So what meaning do I subscribe to that
How do I add it all up to see the sum of my parts
How do I make sense of a story
When the only things constant
Are change
And that from start to finish
The name it carries is one I call my own

A life made up of memories
Collections of recollections
Inhaled and expelled like breaths
Passing to the ticking of clocks
Through tunneled passages of time

Sometimes I wonder
If they become ingrained as lines
Forming adornments on the halls of history
Curving and bending
And if someone walks along them
Recounting the tale of a universe
My story a story among billions of others
Just a chapter in the grand book of life

What would it be like
To read it all in one go
To see it all unfold
Neatly in order, row by row
And have the meaning laid out for you
What then would you know

The dark still there
Plastic cup cover runs it course out into the day
Before tumbling onto its sides

Wheels rumble onto the road
Cars ahead of the still slumbering workforce
Defeated, no one notices the cup's cover
Nor wonders what it is doing there on the road
Passed by like so many things on a Tuesday morning

But I saw its little cartwheeled dance
Its fleeting greeting of midnight's newborn day
I saw the stillness of the wind that ever so slightly moved it
A bus stop souvenir instilled on my frames

Before everything comes alive
I watch the still-life plays that come out from the night
The cartwheeling covers
The sleeping trees
The strangers in the early hours
Waiting to catch their bus into the day

Falling down
Grains of sand drip from my eyes
Skies dark and grey
Beyond the window
The unveiling of time

Remnants of trees
Withered from green
Ashen leaves
Fading beneath the eaves

A touch of frost
Slow snow casting cold
Caught in blankets
Turning to vapour
In quiet dawning
Morning light

An everyday newness
Small and fleeting
Disperses silently

The sky turns over
And when the world awakes
The eyes go to sleep