Why do I lash out?
Whipping the rest of the world with my tongue and with my fist?
Wrecking those I hold close?
Willing to change but never quite making it.

Because I'm scared.

I'm afraid of myself and of others.
Of what I'm capable of and what I'm not.
Of what I see and what I'm blinded to.
Of living too much or not at all.

I'm scared of what's inside me.
Of what resides there, laying in wait to take me away.
Or maybe there's nothing inside of me.
No reason for my pain or anger.

What scares me most of all is exposing it to the world. The truth.
I'm a fraud. I'm not strong. I'm not clever. I'm not all that.
No matter how quickly my lips will move to tell you that I am.
No matter how quickly I'll try and silence those who say that I'm not.

That's what I'm afraid of.
That I'll look inside myself and find nothing.
And that you'll do the same.

The rain sings its melancholy sonata
Cold rhythms on the window
Wanting nothing
Living only to fall

Yet reflected in the eyes of dreamers
Caught up in a lovers wasteland
Excused as pathetic, as fallacious
Feared for its callousness

The wind humming, indifferent
The clouds forming, dark and fearful
Brooding over the greyed universe
Obscuring the sun, the light, the peaceful warmth

Leaving solitude and oppression
Leaving fears of fate and significance
Leaving drops in lovers’ eyes
And gleams in lovers’ tears

A lonely rowboat lies on a dock
Beaten by the stormy rain
Afraid to sail and tethered to the wooden quay
Held there only by a frayed knot

Maybe it will make it through the storm
Maybe it will see the shining sun
The gleaming water
The harmonious songs of fishermen

But maybe it will sink
Drowned by the noise and the ferocity and the fearful wrath of the storm
The tempest
Rage

Maybe it will succumb
Maybe its fears will sink it
Lost to a grey world
Drifting forevermore

Who are we to be brave?

Strutting against a rhyme scheme or a meter or form.
Fighting against a current that tides us all in. Endlessly.
Maybe patterns arise and patterns and patterns.
Adding and subtracting memories broken apart or together by the mind.

Maybe they don't.
Maybe we're left wondering what the **** happened to us, or thereabouts.
But whatever happened happened and that shouldn't matter.
Or maybe it should.
It doesn't matter.

Maybe it's ok to live in the future or the past or the present.
Maybe it's up to us to choose two.
Maybe it's not up to us at all.

So is life a wheel? Endlessly turning and spinning towards the next destination.
Or is it a block? Where sometimes we push and heave and can't budge it forwards.
It towers over us as we dent our hands and our shoulders and our foreheads trying to shift it, trying to ease it out of the dirt, trying and trying and trying.
All we can see is where we stand and where we've been.

Is fear ok then?
Fear is always ok.
It's the second strongest emotion.
Sometimes fear is the bravest thing we can do.

And so, standing against this block, heaving with everything I have, my feet digging down into the dirt beneath me I want to say with great fear and wavering that I love you and that I want to push forwards until it doesn't hurt to look back.

My watch whispers faithfully the turning of the universe
The trees breathe in static silence outside my window
The wind caressing their bodies, like a cold serpent
Their red leaves falling like tears

Humanity sleeps, waiting for the morning
Waiting for the fresh, the new, the different
Waiting for their prospects of rebirth to be realised
Waiting for the sun to bleed colours of crimson and coral over the silent sky

But nothing ever changes

The cycle repeats itself
Agony is poured down Earth’s open wound
Like acid
Melting away at what we once cherished

When will it end?
When the last creature cries for their fallen mother?
When the last tree falls from the vicious storm?
When the last scream echoes through the barren wasteland that we created?

The sun anxiously peers over the horizon
Humanity exploits the new day

Work
Play
Live
Die

The rhythm of the universe beats like the breath of trees
The evanescence of life pulses like the veins of the universe
Gone in a moment
Gone

But not forever

Broken chords
Torn heartstrings
Inspiring pain
Numbness

The wail of the electric guitar
The slow pulse of the drums
The monotony of the Bass
The slow bleeding of the singer

The music seeps out
Coalescing
Clashing
Conflicting

I see no end, only music
Music that slows time
Music that surrounds
Music that traps

A shared understanding
An outlook on the universe
A fear
Sadness

Poetic

Music is not played to make sounds
Art is not prepared to paint a picture
Books are not written to tell a story

It’s the silence

The silence after a song is performed
After a grand mural is finished
After a story is told

The silence that causes a pause –
A pause that makes people stop and listen
Listen to the silence, the knowledge, the heartbeat

And then sound
Cheering, adulation, praise
Shattering those tender seconds of utter peacefulness

And that’s why we do it all again

My desk is cluttered with a million half lived ideas
Stories, Art, Poetry, Books, Work
All forgotten
Burnt from my mind like a lobotomy

Thought strangling and poisoning my ideas
Fear
Fear of what people think, why they think, how they think
Fear of the world’s influence

And then there’s you
Reading, as if the book, the art, the poetry was made with no struggle
Reading as if it appeared like a match striking, the smoke leaving a heavy smell on the air
Reading as if it’s easy to bleed out the deepest of all emotions

Yet looking back I see images forming
Blue oceans lapping at the sandy floor
Tranquil breezes blowing the grass
Stars, shooting through the night sky

Act II
And then there’s the pain, the inevitable pain
Visceral images of torture and inhumanity
******* of the senses

And you realise that this is the story of earth
Earth before and after man
Creativity representing the freedom, the thought
Truth representing the repression, the pain

And that’s why you change
Forever