I am stripped bare
Of clothes
Of flesh
Of bones
Of blood
Of mind
Of heart
I am less than nothing
No more than mist
Whimpering in the wind
A child afraid of the unknown
Of the things that say goodbye
In this life
In the dark
And in the light of day
And what is time
To the dead
To the living
To the loved
To the lonely
Where did yesterday go
While I was looking so forward
  to tomorrow
   and tomorrow
     and tomorrow
Did I forget something today
What is it I am looking for
Staring off into the emptiness
Into the cold indigo face of midnight
Into the fleeting moments of eternity
Trapped in the burning stars
That play hopscotch
On the cosmic blueprints
Drawn out by the children
Of the time before
Before the gods came
And robbed them of their innocence
And stripped them bare
Of their clothes
Of their flesh
Of their bones
Of their blood
Of their minds
Of their hearts
And what did these gods do
With all that they stole
Did they find what they
  were looking for
Did they find dreams
Swirling and encased in marbles
Clouds made of cotton candy
Dinosaurs that roared and danced
Was it worth the death of innocence
Did they pause to regret
Did they pour it all back
Into the universe
And beg themselves
For forgiveness
Did they cry
Until they became nothing more
Than mist whimpering in the wind
A dream of death
Cold and tired
Of her endless reaping of souls
Begging an empty sky
To release herself
From her soft black velvet robes
That stretched and swayed
Beyond the infinite horizon
To feel her own cold lips
Pressed warmly to her brow
And blaze in a grand final flash
Into nothingness
And in this dream
Did these gods
Find themselves
Stripped bare
Of clothes
Of flesh
Of bones
Of blood
Of mind
Of heart
Where they became
Less than nothing
And there in the nothing
Will I find what time is
To the lonely
To the loved
To the living
To the dead
Will I learn from the dead
Will I dance with the living
Will I find beauty in the loved
Will I give comfort to the lonely
Will I strip myself bare
Of my clothes
My flesh
My bones
My blood
My mind
My heart
And find that nothing
Is everything
That is beautiful
About being
A child whimpering
And afraid
Of all the things
That one day
Have to say
Goodbye

In the hazelnut swirls of her eye's
the secrets of the cosmos danced
and in the shadows
and curves of her lips
was the infinte truths of love
and in the song of her heart
I was to be forever lost
to wander with madness
as I fall
for the beauty
within her tattooed soul

Here we are stark naked and mad
men and women and children of lunatics
screaming in the face
of the politics of war
and the war of politics
and its all the same to us
as you're the same old hateful man
feeding his blind dog
the bones of our innocence
and we can hear the fear
in your wheezing breath
as you try to feed us the same
*******
as your fathers father before you
and your blood is thinning
and running cold
and your hate machine
is rusted and old
and your busy spinning
and inventing new ways to lie
but all we hear is the same old
hollow alibi
and we have no currency to invest
in your insistence that the cost
of freedom
must be our children's deaths
but the only truth to your ideology
is that our dead bodies are needed
to profit your tombstone makers
and your bomb droppers
and your missile launchers
and the rat-a-tat-tat song
of the made to order machine guns
and like a true showman of illusion and deceit
you hide behind the curtain
and pretend the problem
is more or less control
while in the dark back alleys
that lead to children sweating away
you manufacture bullets of hate and rage
and flood the market with minnows
with bellies full of lies
and it doesn't matter how many times
we change the face of the puppet
when the puppeteers stay the same
shiny new strings don't mean a thing
when its the big hands of big business
and big banks
attached to small minds
that only give a ******
about their own oily hides
that make the marionette dance
and it's all smoke and mirrors
when it comes to the open mic
and the delusion
of the freedom of choice
and we're tired and we're starving
and we're sick and we're feed up
and we're desperate and we're volatile
and we're ready to stand our ground
and we're ready to push back
it's far past the time for a change
and we don't want another needless war
but we can't let you claim to have
another bloodless war
for if there is blood to spill
it's gonna be mixed with yours
and your history of hate
is headed for its long past due fate
and you have failed to divide us
with your repetitive rhetoric
of blaming the poor for being poor
and the sick for being sick
and the old for being old
and you've thrown out all the dignity
of the words
"that all men are created equal"
by slowly trying to strip us one by one of equality
trying to sell fiction as truth
to pass laws to fatten the cats
that scratch your back
you can discriminate
but united will stand against your antipathy
to the color of our brothers skin
and the strength of our sisters minds
and the age of our fathers and mothers hearts
And here we stand together
stark naked and mad
men and women and children
of lunatics

There was a kindness
so soft and quite
in the acorn nut brown
color of her eyes
that the magic there
though silent and still
burst into fireworks
of magic and awe
beauty and splendor
and he felt that
he was under a spell
where he could tell no lies
and though he did not want
to spill the truth
he had no choice
and colors of love
were forged andlayed out
and hammered and sharpened
over the stones and water
of the wellspring of eternity
and shaped into poems
of furnace and fire
and laying helplessly
under her milky way skin
his voice cracked
and his lips trembled
and in a hushed whisperd
he confessed thathe had fallen
stars over moons
and suns sleeping in oceans
and into the beautiful madness
of finding the meaning
of life and love
as he sewed her name
within the walls of his heart

The stars danced and twirled and streaked and fell and the moon floated low in the sky just an arms reach above the silent horizon.  The mermaid laid halfway out of the cool water in the middle of her favorite lagoon on her favorite rock as she sighed deeply and gazed longingly into the secrets of the night.  She had swam and explored and discovered and unlocked every mystery and treasure the ocean could hold.  Her stomach grumbled and soul yearned to know the untold stories of the infinite sea of stars and moons and celestial orbs beyond the vision of the eyes trapped in her skull.  She lazily rolled onto her back and let her head sway and roll turning the world upside down so that the sky became the sea and the sea became the sky.  Her arm stretched out and she traced an imagineray circle around the moon in the sky and then let her fingers dangle and sink into the water just below the reflection of the smiling crescent moon.  She quickly closed her hand around the water the moon laid in and brought her hand to her lips and whispered,  "Trade places with me or I will swallow you whole...", her voice trailing off into a giggle.  And as the moon gave no reply she sipped the water down and continued to laugh and giggle and she may not want you to know this, but she snorted once or twice as well, and then let out a deep sigh full of dreams and wishes.  She slide back into the lagoon and circled her favorite rock and swam to the bottom and grabbed a handful of starfish and shoot back up and out of the surface of the water and tossed the starfish flying through the air to do their nightly ballet.  She splashed back into the water and swam back to her rock and searched the sky for the moon.  She looked left, she looked right... up... down... she swam on her back in circles and zigzags looking and looking, but the moon had vanished.  

The mermaid pulled herself out of the water and sat curled tightly on her rock wondering and worrying about where the moon had gone.  She quietly whispered to herself, "...no... no... no... I didn't swallow the moon, it was only pretend...".  Her eyes began to swell and her heart trembled and a tear began to swim toward the corner of her eye and as it slowly crawled down her cheek a small white sliver cut open  the dark indigo sky and a star came crashing through and whooooooosshhed over the silent horizon and splashed into the lagoon.  Without thinking she slipped back into water and swam sure and fast to where the star was sinking and glowing brightly.  With her two arms reaching far in front of her she swished her tail and body back and forth faster and faster until she held the star in her two hands.  It was warm and cool and hummed and sang without making a sound and the mermaids lips spread into a wide smile.  The star had been sent by the keepers of the secret of secret keepers to grant her her dreams and her wish and the mermaid instantly knew what to do.  She swam three circles round and round and round her favorite rock and gathered one and two and three of her favorite star shaped fish and glided across the bottom of her favorite lagoon and then darted straight up and out of the water and into the night and arched her back and touched her tail to her nose and made a circle silhouette in the sky and then splashed back down.  Then swam to the bottom and back up into the night higher and higher until she went so high into the sky that she hung there like a dream suspended and glowing and beaming and she became the new moon.  And only the keepers of the secret of secret keepers and you and me know the story of The Mermaid Moon.

Pretty girls in summer dresses
  blowing in the wind
Careful of the devil making
  promises of sin
Pretty girls with soft pink lips
  framed on perfect porcelain skin
Careful of the devil painting
  colors of lust
Pretty girls dancing in dreams
  of autumn
Careful of the devil waltzing
  pretending to know loves song
Pretty girls wandering
  through strawberry fields
Careful of the devil planting
  seeds of lies woven through
   the fruits hanging from his vine
Pretty girls sleeping under
  the snowing stars Of winter
Careful of the devil trying
  to burn fires from the
    wood of your home
Pretty girls writing poetry
  on frost covered windows
Careful of the devil spying
  on your hearts desire
Pretty girls with spring flowers
  blooming in your hair
Careful of the devil pushing
  carts of lilies watered
    by the poison in his blood
Pretty girls laid down on blankets
  under sun and gently breeze
Careful of the devil roaming  
  waiting in your every season

No crowns
  No kings
    No anchors
Just the
  FREEDOM
      of the
       SEA

Back to where it all began
  before our first breaths
    before we knew fire
     before we knew blood
Before time had movement
  or meaning
Before our ribs
  our bones
   our skulls
Back to the empty sky
  of our souls
Yet to birth stars of sin
  and shame
   and fear
Back to the moment before
Dream became dream
  Dreaming
of dreams
  of dreams
   of dreams
Of rivers dreaming
Of fish dreaming
Of flight dreaming
Of birds dreaming
Of butterfly wings dreaming
Of feathers tied to the lost branches
Of the first dream of a tree
Dreaming of leaves
  Thirsty for the dream of a sun
     Which was desperate to dream
    Of the moon of all moons
Dreaming of the pale blue skin
Of dream becoming the dream
  Of the birth of blood
    and bones
      and life
Weaving the blanket of dreams
  That would become the flesh
    And truth of love
Back to the
  Heart of all things