they love the symptom
hate the cause
open the windows
close all the doors
lock up your heart strings
drive yourself insane
what is the point in having a brain
when its easier to look away?
Wake up in the middle of the night
darkness is easy if you don't know the light
The intelligent are in their graves
where they themselves laid
sadness kills them before age

paint myself on your skin and then wash it away
how could I not love you?

Upon a crime
there was a thief who stole
everything
that touched his hands

He stole his name from the lips of his mother
and his great from the hole in his chest
and then he stole away to an unmade bed

He stole his words
then his religion
then he took what he could from oblivion

while watching the cars pass the only
intersection in town

Loudest are the silent mouths
that do not protest with Voices
but in their nothingness
their lack of agreement
their eyes like gates taking in your lies
but guarded so you may not reach their hearts

When thin people hug
there are sometimes bones and angles
but other times there are notches that fit together
perfectly
like we've been waiting for it
our whole lives

Don't think for one moment
that I don't hear you painting me your own colors
without one thought as to how I might
paint myself

Loud and Vain
Silence and Pain
burn it out or up
we're all here
pretending to be winning
imagining its for us the world is spinning
maybe it is today

We all fight to be heard
with our volume turned into brandished swords
silver blades made of words and vibration
our murdered time dragged around the court
of our conversations
before being stuffed into our personal coffers
as other people try to buy more time
it's easier to be reborn when you are dying
its easier to leave when you know it will all
be taken away

I want to stay up all night
we'll watch the radio
and hear the things that never see the light

Better pack well
another infection
called bitterness
is spreading into hearts

How many rose from the earth
clay monsters
clay men
to be empty
or a single thing rattling around a tin chest?


not one

They don't have to make sense
these words you say
just so long as you say them
send them off
and send them out
whisper
shout
scream as if you are dying
go beyond the definitions
so long as the feelings there

I stood there
in the haven of damp
while the rest of the world sat
soaking wet
dripping wet
and frozen
There is no sun
but its better than bleeding

How many never stand up
for fear of being laid low?
how many people count stars and
forget to ever ask
what did counting ever do?
How many star on the edges in ball gowns and masks
thinking "better to be uncomfortable
than to be let down"
so they stay where they've been
and become who they already were
for the sake of being
something they've always known

Out of touch
disconnected
a hundred applications
all rejected
what have we learned during out time made of stone?
other than how to not live alone?
You've only ever loved yourself reflected
Haven't you, Mr. Jones?

Given out in high school
for Nothing
peer selected nominees
for Nothing
for being Nothing
but a pair of cool shoes
and a fake smile that hides your bitten tongue
given to the best dressed
most arrests
opinionless
children
seeking to grow up to be
Nothing

Let's take one
like a thief would take jewels
or a tired mother would a nap
cheap sunglasses
and spare change
counting dimes for gas
and nickels to tip the waitress
barefoot
radio on
blasting ancient crooners
or classic rock
going fuzzy every hour or so
as we leave
every new home
we make

You'd think
that perhaps
people would look
older
or talk
older
eventually
but they don't
and it is very
disappointing
to think that after all of this
time
people still believe
they are just
people
to me

Take back the walls crumbled
and rebuild them
not with Bricks and Mortal
but with Dreams and Fire
for who then would dare tear the down?

Green is the color
of envy
I have been told

How many green eyed girls tire
of being
the temptress?
never are we the
Innocent
or the Sweet

We are too dark to be blue
and too light to be chocolate brown
and too decided in our pigments to be hazel
Is green the color of envy
because we envy what is green?

I didn't think so
I too like to talk to you

I love you in your silence
you wear so often
but never so completely that
I cannot hear your whispers
as air and sleep and dreams
intermingle
where is it that you go?

Ink and Skin
a permanent reminder
of lines and color
rudimentary lines and colors
a sacrifice to memory
all drawings in the end
turning back to dust

Walk in a circle to find yourself
pace to find the thoughts in your head
as long as you are moving
it's better than being dead

we play games with the word Death
and it loses its meaning
respawn
game over
try again?
soliders with out sacrifice
electric children
plugged into
imaginary building blocks
in unseen and unreal
worlds
a stranger imagined for them

write me if you would
and tell me if you could
you would write
your love in stars
and gardens
and write me that you've seen the future
and tell me that I was there among the wires
and screens
and that I was alive
even after they buried my friends in cement and asphalt
and tangled my voice in phone chargers
and security tape

the way an old woman cleans a grave
with respect
and silent love
with no expectation of love in return
but for the sake of memory
and for the sake of love itself
tinged with a bit of sadness

I read Poe while playing ELO
I'm different, I might grow
5'1 and 22
I don't know what I can do
Leave me here
And let me sigh
whisper love
and I might die
I've read books in less than a day
But what about I couldn't say
Some leave marks
Red and raw
while others fade into oblivion
without so much as a word on my lips
or a simple recollection

If you love the poets now
after they are dead
and put to sleep in their graves
wearing suits of soil
and gowns of earth
then why, pray tell
did they wear rags
and lie alone
with books in heads left unread
and ink stains on slender fingers

If you love the poets now
why do they fear living in an apartment
because someone might hear them screaming
or sobbing
it can be hard to tell
and harder still to save them
and ti is hardest of all to be screaming and have no one listen
or to call the cops on the one who is breaking nothing
but their own heart
and that ugly vase
that they never liked in the first place

If you love the poets now
why do so many reel back hurting
fearing wether or not they are deserving
of praise, or food, or sleep, or laugh lines
they are not sure they will ever get

If you love the poets now
why do they lie starving in foxholes they dug themselves
or in dead end jobs that **** them slowly
or ravaged by needles and color
in some endless hope that they might be heard
and understood
and that they might finally
see what they see with their eyes
and not just their hearts

Love them now
for they know they are dying
kiss their lips
for they know they can not speak the truth
Hold their hands
for their language is in their fingers
all that they do they do for you.

If you were to have been born in Yearn you would’ve been born hungry

Trash collects in crumbling corners
Sand will always blow
And all the books you’ll never read
contain things you’ll never know

The dead carry the buildings
the living carry the dead
and only one dead man carries himself
and the rest live in fear of him

You taught me to walk but gave me no where to go
You taught me to speak, but only words I don’t know
You told me to listen but gave me nothing to hear
You gave me a reality where nothing is real

You gave me a heart and told me to feel
As long as I don’t show it it’s mine to keep
You asked me a question and gave an answer to give
but they don’t match up and the paper is ripped

My pen is all empty, my heart is all broke
and now you have labeled me crazy, and spoke
with an evil tone that was far too kind
for the words that came out in too little time
and nothing was said
but boy did it hurt
that I am condemned and you are a ****
I try to get angry I try very hard
but all it ferments into is sadness and sorrow
and you say save the world
be kind be good
and I am trying like I know I should
and do you know that there are ten thousand kids
who sorta like me feel like they’re dying
and did you ask them what they want?
its not a car and husband to flaunt
you promised them the world
and they believed you
they all want to show you want they can do
but their hearts aren’t cheap and they aren’t for sale
you have to work for what they have to say
but you don’t think you need it,
its snake oil
so you give them options that they don’t really want
and they end up in ditches, in Chicago or Vermont,
any old place where the dying go to be dead
and they end up alone, in broken beds
and how can you blame them
they used to have places to go
now you turn them out into the snow
and the snow is all brown
with mud and with dirt
and you say life is hard
and yes life hurts
but how can you say that to bright eyed kids
who are trying to save the world that they’re living in
don’t you give out chances anymore
is there no trust? have we closed that door?
and why don’t you want me
what have I done?
was I wrong in my having a bit of fun?
or trying hard, or being too smart
do I ask to many questions,
I just can’t stop
is it my x-ray vision
is it cuz I see through you
because once I did it I couldn’t not see you
for all that you are
and all that you aren’t
and all you ever did was push me into the margins
Is that my fault? Is that my bad?
is this the only life I’ve ever had
because I’m calling for help
and nobody hears
and I know they are pretending because they all have ears
most of them two and some of them three
the third ones an their heart so its hard to see
And you give me directions, and people to watch
and they all changed the world and you want that to stop
this is it, we’re all comfortable now
but isn’t freedom a little bit more?
No? oh its not? my bad
So you bite me and kick me and then I get sad
so medicate me, and mentally **** me
turn me into an object
and when I object
You tell me I’m just the subject
of a biography of someone I don’t know
and I really hate to have to let the world go
But just for today
and maybe tomarrow
I will bury it all deep done in sorrow
you’ve ruined this world that could’ve been great
and now I believe it might be too late
there are too many people
who do not care
and they don’t want to wake up they would rather be scared
of going out at night
and of having a girl who doesn’t shave
they would all much rather be comfortable slaves
they take their drugs and they watch their tube
Things are okay, why should I move?
Some have it worse, so I have it better
If you want more you’re an ungrateful red letter
and you read to much
and you try to scare us
about things that aren’t really there, huh?
so when they tell you you think you’re too smart
theres only pain for the future in front
of you and of them
so prepare yourself
you are on your own,
they will never help
and you won’t back down.

He wrote with his eyes
on pages of hearts
and the stories he told
would never stop

She wanted to know
why she wanted to go
to a grand somewhere else with him

She played with universes
and they always smiled back
and I think she loved
with what was more than love
but she was seldom loved back

Become a Mass of Light and Shadow,
colors and grey
let me sleep there in it,
let me lose my form

Lie on the ground like you have a choice
like you might have stood otherwise
Like you are strong enough to carry
the weight of the sky
On your shoulders there, slender, imperfect
when in reality a breath of wind would fell you
easily
a slender beast before rainclouds

We must live with our mistakes sometimes
and we give them our own name
and let them become our definition
it is no use reminding us of them
we wear them around our necks

Scorch

You watch them stutter before glassy eyes
trying to tell you something
they themselves do not know
or if they know they can not tell
and they can’t tell if they can

Start a fire
burn all of your words
take a globe and watch the world burn
one is a metaphor the other a gift
and which one you should save is irrelevant

carry your hands
at the ends of your arms
take an oath to do no harm
then break it twice
then fix with tape
never try to be more than an intelligent ape

Little strange thing
born in the wrong world
has been trying her whole life to get home
it hurts to feel
but it makes it feel real
when you live without having to bleed

Sale on Stars
while we were fighting our wars
and we pretend
that it never ends
so we don’t get scared of what will happen when our
hearts echo

Sale on Stars
as we try to find who we are
and the last love song doesn’t exist
we just keep on writing them
thank God


Sale on Stars
that no body buys
who wants to own a super nova?
who wants to really know you
when you are light?



He wrote with his eyes
on pages of hearts
and the stories he told
would never stop

She wanted to know
why she wanted to go
to a grand somewhere else with him

She played with universes
and they always smiled back
and I think she loved
with what was more than love
but she was seldom loved back

If I cover my face in diamonds
will I be beautiful enough
So inhuman, so cold
so sharp and rough
If I cover my face in diamonds
will you finally stop to look
at my lips and what they are saying
and not think only am I beautiful

Do you know the fear of me?
Know my name
it is Tyranny
I live in fame
and infamy
You knew me at your birth
It is I who give you worth
how well can you serve?

I do not go to temples
I will not build one for you
But I will watch your temple at night and make sure it does not leave
I do not have your anger
In the same direction
But I will let you hold your ground, the ground is mine as well
And when they go about, they go about, they go about, I will not silence you, for to silence you is to silence myself, and I have much to say.
How can I condemn you
For your sorrow and your sound
when I myself with do the same if you give me enough time
I do not ask that you conform, Its a four letter word with 7,
but I ask you to not do the same,
Can we not be peaceful
and believe in different heavens?

I am past my definitions
I feel my sounds pass through my ears and from my hands
once they leave me do I still own them?
The places you've fallen asleep in
and the places you've dreamed in
after you've left them
do they lie still breathing?

Our hearts turn to leaky tin roofs
Our souls feel themselves becoming confined
smaller spaces
win races
but they don't get you many sweethearts
We burn our feet off
and our hearts we cough up
into cups of styrofoam

Every man a poet
every word a rhyme
every clock a sentry
every sentry can tell time
i get so sick of the way the clock ticks
we are so obsessed with out own deaths
but when we take our deaths in jest
we make less of ourselves and instead
we make a joke of our lives
Every mask a neighbor
Every street corner a mob
We used to believe in something
now we believe in nothing more
than what our eyes see,
we mask our feelings
go **** yourselves but don't let yourselves feel love.

Summer never came that year, the year it was all well, for perhaps the first time they went away
and left us in peace, the nights were not warm enough, the stars were too far away,
it was not summer that did not come but I who hid away.
My life has made confinements, I followed them you see, Now my heart is hidden and hidden too from me. This world is not made for forest folk, for poets, or the ones,
who cry at thoughts of dying soldiers, yet they have never met one. The world is not kind to artists who still do not fear to dream, our angers have gone cold, and instead they burn us well.

These place, these places that cut us with their ice and the sun
their wind and the rain
their silence and their sound
will fall one day like a thunderhead that has left its heart somewhere else
The diamonds we once mined for on the days when yesterdays were dying and todays were not yet born, you know what it is like to have lived a thousand lives and be embarrassed by nine hundred of them and fear they might resurface for how can one be and then not, how can one sleep and not wake, for death while living is so hard to understand.
These places, these places, how I have loved them for their pain, for if it hurts then I must have cared, and if I cared I must have loved.

It boils your blood with its crying sound
it wakes the long dead gypsy
we had to make her sleep you know
this life is not possible with her
but you see, you know, I am
a creature, and not human,
not wholly when I am whole
and you, you do not fear me
but instead see the trappings I have always known,
Your pity is not needed, but I will take it all the same,
The lovely captor tries his best to make my lovely jail
alive

I ran away at every age, every year a new destination, armed with a pack filled with not what I needed but what I wanted. I never really went.
I live now with much unanswered, a heart unquelled silver at my center, a song that will bleed me dry. I never really went.
I tied myself to hearts that attached themselves too much, and did not see the world with static that blinds the eyes and burnt my ears. My mother never knew me and I am not scared. I never really went.

Her heart burns at her center
Torn into two or eight or eleven
And in it lives a green world
That was not given the means to live
And instead kills her pleasantly

May you never be a lovely fool
may your knowledge of your lack of knowledge torture you
into mottled flesh, pock marked and stained with your awareness,
and dappled with your love of what is true, the nothingness blue of the universe,
the everything held within an eyes,
nothing matters, so everything does,
for why else,
never be a lovely fool,
may your knowledge of your lack of knowledge torture you into mottled flesh.

I know these eyes,
see how they reflect me differently,
I know these hands,
they have held the broken pieces together,
even when the pierced your own skin,
on accident always
and you never have regretted it,
because I know this heart.

There is only one difference between the first and the last
and it is is the amount of hope

Others gave me music
but you gave me my instrument
and I am forever in love.
Because of you I run my fingers across her pearly teeth
and tease from her the only truth I have ever found.
I have written stories on her keys
and I have died a thousand times on her steps
only to be find myself alive.
I can not help but pay homage,
in stripes, and hats, and glasses, and feathers,
all competing
to beat out what I take from Tom
and Bob
and Paul
and Billy
and Stevie
and David
and of course
my Boys

I torture sounds from the ivory, begging
pleading for truth in sound,
it is the only truth I have ever known,
My fingers have become fatigued
willow branches in a storm
of thought
and sound
The piano will always know something
I don't