You can't hide those lies behind your eyelids
Shutting them tight so you won't see the world where we live
Trusting yourself to let it loose
Between the work, the love, the life, and the self-abusiveness
Throw up those waking nightmares
As I'm the taste of bile that will always reside there
Just go ahead and face it
Those lies behind your eyes give me no form of entertainment

Sometimes it seems like you aren't even trying
Pain pills down you throat leaves you no room to fly in
Desperation makes you angry
You don't know when your dreams will set you free
This time you're going to go a little too far
From the devils your run from to the drunken dents in your car
But shut those lying eyes
So you'll never see the story end with the way that you die

She came into the class
Scared and confused
Perhaps tired and sick
Of wearing her mask…
Disgusted, she said,
“A boy stuck his tongue out at me!”

I looked her over
Up &
Down
And very care
-fully did I see

That her very tiny skirt
Rested way above her knee

Did this girl,
really, not know?
That her body will beckon? And she ain’t 12 no mo’!!

That she is—
In fact,
No longer a girl
But woman of curves: a woman of nerve
Who must take on the world
And everything that it serves?

So for the rest of her life,
Wherever she goes
She will see the tongues of men
Both young
& old.

No matter what
She does
Or doesn’t
Know

She’ll be pinned up against
The urges they possess.

Through no fault of her own,
She’ll become an object
to discuss
And she’ll cringe daily
At the ideas that
They thoughtfully
conjure up.

The stone prophet calls, "you've got some work to do, son"
Moon's sleepy coruscation wake before me runs
I instead reflect the light of the pulsing hot sun
To blind all the answers until the question's given up

A light warm and safe and easy to unfold
For another to wrap 'round your tongue and your nose
But my dance you catch in your searching eye rolls
So I refuse to bow and to pick up my rose

Because light is simple and reflected and not mine
Far easier to slice into thrices and dine
On the fine wafer fillers and loose-legged wine
Because though light is heartless- it's far from unkind

So why must I face, then, the undulating moon?
The immensity, instensity, the blue lover's swoon?
The well of reflection white clarity in tune
To the spotted man crouching, denying his rheum

My starry knight buckles and falls down depleted
In a panic, I frantically get my men seated
I wring out the cosmos for what I've become
As I turn and say
"You've got some work to do, son"