If poetry is all about being human,
tell me: what is life worth?
For every Shakespearean verse
appears another, less rehearsed.
If our race has no end,
tell me: where are we running to?
Life is in the journey,
or so say
those less traversed.
Perhaps the truth lies
within ourselves.
Our own deceiving silver tongues
and two-faced cries for help.
If we just keep on writing
will the words mean something
else?
Or maybe if we stop thinking
we'll free ourselves from hell.
The stroke of pen on paper.
The slicing of a throat.
Maybe being human
involves a bit of both.
As for I,
I'll keep on running:
barefoot towards the coast.
Yet the castle in the sky will be my final
au revoir.

[ARH]

I can sense the distance thinning.
New horizons.
Old beginnings.
Flooded feelings from sinking
glaciers within me.
Distress in the workings of my mind.
Signs of the day.
Signs of decline.
An inside joke
between my heart
and my brain.
Have you ever felt the same way?
Maybe all this tearing apart
will lead to something better.
Or maybe,
maybe I'll just forget her
eyes.
Her hair.
The way she laughs.
The way she cared.

The way the ice even got there.

[ARH]

i'm stuck in traffic
during a rain storm
in the middle of the night 
and i'm subtly reminded 
of when you stopped 
holding my hand 
as much as you used to
the cracks in the windshield
remind me of us
i cross another county line
and i think it's just like you
same place
new name
my veins are power lines
running through this ghost town
i'm so full of electricity 
but no one taps into it
i guess i'm useless
it's been a long time
since i've seen anything special
in the shapes of the clouds 
i don't think hurricanes
know that they destroy so much
maybe that's why you don't know
that i'm in this kind of pain
the cracks in my windshield 
are getting bigger
i think it's going to shatter soon 
could you imagine
the window shattering
and the glass coming at me
as i'm speeding
down this dark and rainy road
i don't have to imagine
i've already met you

[holyoak]

I shall be telling this with a sigh.
That moment she put our heads together,
in the icy air of night,
seemed almost peaceful.

The sidewalks shone like alleys
of dropped maple leaves,
as we walked with a walk
that was measured and slow.

It was the darkest evening of the year
but between her and I,
all the heavens seemed to twinkle.
She was my North, my South, my East and West
in the heat and the cold
when no one else ever cared.

I thought that love would last forever:
I was wrong.
Her heart was learning to lie down forever.

To watch the woods filled up
with snow could be profound,
but only so an hour.
Then all is lost.
Stop all the clocks.
Cut off the stars.
Their greatness is a kind of grief.

I let her leave this place.
A final goodnight
as she drifted.
A black hole in space.
A final goodbye
as the stars started to fade.

I alone stay.
Last year is dead, they seem to say.
We cannot look back far
but not because of age.
Life is a stream
that sweeps us away.
The bitterness of the night matched the day.

As dawn goes down,
I have promises to keep.
Funny it seems, but by keeping
her end lost in dream,
I learned to walk without having feet.
Yet sometimes, in the distance,
I hear someone weep.
I taught myself to live without the constellations,
as I have miles to go before I sleep.

Miles to go before I sleep.

[ARH]