Baptized by the sun
Oak and pine
Out of time. Words do come.
Color through the line
Who put it there after all?

Meet new yous
All along the way
Figure out how to lose
And what to say
To the lions in your head.

These are all the things I've never said.

You are the light
The blood
The reason I fight
You are gold
In the center of the sun

You are water
Through my fingers
In my fingers
Something that doesn't quite linger

You are the reason I live
And the reason I die.

Try to be strong
Stare down the road
Think about how long
It takes to take a step,
To hear your song.

How long I've slept
Under this invisibility
Tranquility
Sadder
Shudder
Close then open
This is life is just coping

Unearthing boxes
Within boxes
Constant discovery
Of a darker darkness

Constant recovery
From traps
I never meant to set out
What did you expect
From this profound pit?
Is it still treasure
If you don't have to dig for it?

Words' palm to push you
Out of reach

Sew my lips
To keep the words
From escaping
From covering
The space between your fingers
And mine.

But

Pain has spit
One final revenge
Choose to shroud
Choose to hide
Choose the needle
And the thread
Sew everything shut
Go ahead

"Be more likable
Easier to work with"
Clay
Sink your claws in
The gray
Hold on
Hold up
You always said
The gold never does stay

I wanted to say
To scream
To love
And never leave

A little bourbon
Velvet curtain
Fall

Devastation
Crawl along
Say things you don't mean
A voice unseen

Wolves hunt in packs
Relax
I wanted to say
I wanted to stay
I wanted to stand
To go
Headed toward the sand
Course correct
Now I'm crashing on land

"Things haven't been the same."
Years of dead flowers,
Of looking away,
Of tear stained pillows
Yearning living may
Just be the death of me
I could see if she let me
You could be if you let you
Let me down easy
Let me down slowly
I'd watch you go
Just to imagine you
Coming

Back

Run away with you
To you
Through you
I'm invisible

Down a tunnel
Light as a feather
But, oh, you stick to me so
Think about whether
You could love me as
I do
You.
You
The gold of every sunrise
You
The reason I live
And the reason I die

Sit here a second
Just in time
put him to bed
With a rhyme.
Silence is all thats ever said
So
I think about asking
But think about pain instead.

Beat the drum
Steady.
Fall into place
Whenever you're ready.
Trip on a pen
Land through a spear
I wasted my youth
Chasing the near
In this bathtub

Stand again.

Wanting to live
For paint that never stays
For not knowing the path
But going anyways

Fear radiates lackluster
And holds my hand
Instead of you
You - damage,
A heatwave.
Ravage
Your bones. A feather.
Kind and savage
A severed tether.

Stop sign
Blink red and gone
Speed past. All in
The heat of a song
Balanced. Calling,
am I blind
Or is this good?
Stop sign
Is the mood.

White wisp fabric
Float
Like steam
Weaves patterns
In and out
A reminder of you
Fleeting
Like starlight
But sadder

When you can't see clearly,
look harder
Through the pebbles and stones
Of sentences
Do you find nails and glass?

Are days all clones
Some simple
Sublime

Color

I wait
In the lilies for you.
Counting every breath
And every petal
That falls.
Finding something that solves
These wolves you face.

Whiskey and lace
Placed careful in my life.
Stray hair. A knife.
A long night saying no
And.
If you know what's best,
You'll just run. You'll just go.

Distracted by the heat
And
Electricity
From my eye
Lashes:
That's the only way
To touch you;
Because you are a candle flame
And
Scars don't mean the same
when they are made by you
And
past the fence
I thought it was greener
But
It reminds me of him,
Only meaner.

Cut down the words
I'm never shocked.
I just pretend.
As I long to be
As stoic as a cherry tree

Listen
If I stop
Will my heart keep going?

Dead rat
Wire rim
Push the lace
At your best pace
A smile
Grim

Stay calm.
Calculate.
Mold yourself,
Shape the edges,
So maybe you'll fit with this one.
Take the safety of this gun
So I graze your shoulder
Like your bullet
Grazed my heart.

There will be more beauty
There's always moonlight

So far from a shore I can see.
So far from a you and a me.

The water in the sea
In my eyes
Stinging but clear
Maybe you were the first and last
To see me
As I am
To race me down the beach
The first and last
I would have run to
I would have wrapped
My life around.
Stinging but clear,
It was always you, my dear

Life a shell
Of what it wants to be
It's too late now
It's gone, I can't see.

Sand is slippery like that
Through a tremor
Of an hourglass
Through a trigger
Of a memory, passed

Repeat on cue:
One more day
Then after two
I can't stay

Walk the edge
A tightrope.
Steady.
Building to building
Moment to moment
Pen to paper

Commit me to forgetting
Forcing is the the same as letting
Last time I checked
You were some gold flecked
Feather
And together
We staggered down the tightrope

This all was a way to hope
Melted candle now.
Steady.

Hope to be the dancer
Bag of meat
Actuality
Reality
What's the difference?

Keep up this charade
Tell your secrets
Say you're naked
When you're nothing
Without whatever
Belongs below the waist
The waste
The taste of nothing
Is so loud.

Blood and blade.
Rise above.
Could you quit,
If it felt like love?
Forever will I sit-
empty glass,
Fingers old.

Bold passions never sit
Could you quit,
If it felt like love?

Black mud
Slip
Fall.

It was the scars
That gave it away

Call out into the storm
Hear the wind scream
Over and over ask
Is this real or is this a dream
Throw metal around
(It's comforting for a second)
Turn up the sound

So you can't hear
Death coming

The flavor of this place
Is choking rancid
Back of the throat
It crashes

Stitch your lips together,
Remain here,
Forgotten by the feather
Of a flock
Now sitting on kitchen tables,
no longer together
Were they ever?

And never
Has there been a moon
I didn't wish to share

With you

Splinters in the stone
Passed a tree
Now gone and gray
Some may say
It's not personal

Sublime days:
Colored red,
Smelling of nothing,
And feeling like even less.

My days are now
One more thing to bear
My skin is now
Just a dare
And I feel your lungs
Press into a simple math problem
With twos and ones
And zeros

Go to write.
Blank
Fan
Blades
Turn slowly. Then quick.
As the switch turns itself
Pause. Click
Send
Tying a noose to the other end

Does she know
about me

Whispers
And invisible pleas
Slither into the universe
Across the sea

Telling her
To hold you for me.

Things echo
But never stick
Too loud,
A trick.  

Teflon pan
Scraped the surface
Metal
Fork
Mixes

A sickness
I can hardly stand

There is a shadow
Watch it on the wall,
wonder how it lives
and if it dies.
How it stutters
And how it lies

There is a light
Dancing on the surface
Watch it like I watch you
Enchanting and far away
Memorize the reflection
The refraction

As it creates a shadow

You don't need a brief.
Briefly let me like it
as our,
Or
Your
Words slip around
Or sound
Just briefly
As our's instead of your's

Wheels turn over
Sand spinning
Spitting out the waves
Try to do it as yourself
But must have forgot
Alien
Because

it's typical

There was half of me
That forgot
The part that remember
Long had been severed
Listening for a knock

You. That face.
A wonderful clock
My eyes leap forward
Longing for the details

Longing to remember
How you once laughed.

You were three seconds
Too short. Come by
And spread the blanket
Across a sea and bay
Lay
with me here.
And how I long to know
Your fingertips
And how I search glances
With glances.
Chances
The last after the last
Clear the splinters from the blast

I haven't been alone
If I stop running
I'll never start again
The little piece of metal
I can never quite shake
Wrap around my finger
Oh how you linger
Like a life never the same again
Dreams shouting in the distance
Seem so silly now

Raked across the coals
burning never gets old
Bold brains once fresh
Now rot in wires
Tied knot
Sets fire
Fried the ends of this friendship
As a tragic paintbrush
Hits the road

This place carves you out
Become hallow
Things have gone
Now
To another way
In another plane
Fly high over all this
Go back to a time
Just breath if you understand

Cure me
Just Meat
meets a lover
Seen bright stars like them
Fall to the ground like them
Dissolve into the earth like them
Hold to skin
It makes a mark
Hold to eyes
See it stark
Hold to heart
It all goes dark

Even nothing is something

Cut things in half
Or at least I try
Do all math
Things add up
But you just get by

Can you tell I'm nervous
Put a glaze over it in an oven
Hot like Saturday nights I never had
With a girl I never met
Friend is such a tragic word
Would you bet
That I run away every time
Here and there
I make this rhyme
So maybe you'll listen

You're alone sailing
Sea shimmers
Limbs flailing
Some things never change.
You climb the walls
Of a gun range
Bullets like words
Fly at you

Like birds

A single slight curl,
A memory seed-
Like sand in a pearl

the needle goes through
The thought of you
Now gathering a luster
Then and now I wonder
If I have the muster
If I have the sand
If I have a hand

Gray dust
And I
Have left you behind.

You:
The only thing I've ever wanted to know
You: the blood and the blade.
You: the only gold to have stayed.

I sail into the moon
Was it ever too soon
To take your hand

Signed on for the strong game
But under some different name
And with a mask on:
Looking like
The person you are in your dreams.

Oh such long nights
And fits and fights
Spitting sour lights
Into my eyes
So I can see more clearly.
I push away those whims
To hold you dearly
But I can still feel the heat of your hand
That I almost reached out for.

Send a smile
A nod in an envelop
The stitches of a hand
To needle you together

And ears can see clearly
What others do not
So give me that
Lever
to pull
Give me your hand
To push
Through the everything

Drown with silence
Evaporate with salt
I'll repeat. I'll repeat:
It's not your fault.

Leaning into black
I'll watch you dance
You'll repeat. You'll repeat:
You missed this chance.

Reach for reasons
Branches too high
Sift with memories
He'll repeat. He'll repeat:
Your life is a lie.

Whiskey glass perched

Bird in a cage

A puppet,
dying on stage.
Rage around town
Like him or her
Or them
Men scrape the side
And hide
behind cold eyes
And a whiskey glass
Perched.