Can you only visualize with your eyes?
How else does one view the prize?
What's the max number of tries?
What if both body and mind twist truth into lies?
Can I adopt a different disguise?
Will I have to provide my own alibis?
Or do those come packaged up with said lies?
Who attends to the styes?
Why are there so many goodbye's?
Lost in the questions as hope dies
Emptiness on the rise
Forced into the chamber where despair resides
This is what hope buys
Mama never said there'd be days like this
Days a pig flies

The grass isn't always bluer
On the other side
But tomorrow WILL bring with it
Greener skies
mmmmhmm

©2024

I've given real life
Forty plus years of my time
I'd rather just exist
In an altered state of mind

©2024

The tiny tears dry
But every
Miniscule memory
No bigger than a single,
Thoughtful penny
Resides in the residual
The old me?
A buried time capsule
It gets so heavy
As the new visual
Builds up quickly
Until you
Don't recognize who you
See looking back at you
In the rearview
You're not too
Be looking at anyway
All you see
Is all you've gone through
And it's not visual trickery
You know it to be true
You feel the change inside too
Within the replaced imagery
You can no longer find you

©2024

I'd rather be alone
Than to be this lonely
With someone beside me
I'd much rather be
Just me only
Till it's just me and my headstone

©2024

It's an external fuse that's lit
And ignites the internal hate and abuse
I put up a respectable fight
But at the end of the night
I always wonder, "what's the use?"
Now I have to come up with an excuse
For being me,
For being what you see
But I've run out of preprogrammed lines
Who I really am is already set in everyone's minds
I stand in fresh sand
The oceans tides has taken with it all of the lines
Rendering me lost
Is what I've paid anywhere near the actual cost?
When is it okay to say
Maybe this life is a loss...

©2025

I'm not going to lie
It felt good
I felt justified
Pouring the gas
Striking the match
And letting it fly
I even stood back
And watched the whole thing burn
Imagining the reflection of the engulfed bridge dead center of my eye
But I was young
I was hurt
I was beyond just a simple angry guy
And now so much time has passed
I find myself
Back at the charred remains
With a solitary tear forming in my eye
And you no longer on the other side
But one by one I still replace
Each piece of chard lumber
With iron and steel just in case
You too one day
Find yourself back at the same place

©2024

I put the pasta in the water
And watched the burner get hotter and hotter
But the water refused to boil
Sitting on the red hot coil
Then the instant I walked away it boiled over

©2025

You left me
With no future
Just the torture
Of our history

©2025

A civil war rages internally
My insecurities grab the wheel violently
In a constant state of calamity
Regardless of what side claims victory
I'm destin too lose a part of me
That is, of course,
If it doesn't consume me completely

©2024

You can only add to your pain
Nothing takes it away
I know, I know
What a thing to say
But I'm 40 years into this train wreck
And, to my dismay,
It's looking that way
I pray to be wrong,
I swear I do
Every single moment,
Of every single day

©2024

Why are hearts
That feel so much
So easily broken?
I haven't misspoken
When I beg to not care
Beg to have nothing to clutch
Beg to take my last breath
Or have taken from me
My ability
To love and care so much
I plead "how is this fare?"
"Why can no one show me they care?"
"What is wrong with me?"
"Is there something I'm the air?"
"Why am I kept
So far away
From loves touch?"
The nothing's becoming
Far too much

©2024

Of course I went and messed up again
That's how everything for me comes to an end
What did I think was truly going to happen?
Especially when
My shoulder demon is my only friend
I can not even comprehend how it all began
Was I destined to be a heathen?
If we have to go back to the beginin'
Just leave it there and not mess with poison
I've been here before again and again
It's a trend that might hypothetically completely break me
Regardless of how well I can bend
They can't break the broken

©2024

Seeds of doubt churn in streams of hurt
Blazing trails from brain to heart
It all collects and pools deep
Turning me prisoner
Before life spills over the razors edge
Ribbons of red spill over, off the ledge
Must I follow?
Must I alway question the reality of every tomorrow?
Who wants to trade me for this sorrow?
Who has a reset button I can barrow?
No one?
Thought so
I'll just go

©2024

How do you tell someone
That you've made it further in life
Than you thought you could,
Than you might,
At times,
Have even wanted to,
Much less thought you would?

©2024

Weighed down in the longest part of each darker day
Kicking rocks to find that missing spark and maybe see some gray
This is where time reaches maximum decay
Would I notice losing and entire day?
At what point will it become my choice not to stray?
I can't complain if I choose to stay

I'm drowning in the confusion of life's word play
If I can only hold my breath just a little longer than the mayday
"By tomorrow this will already be yesterday"

But I'm needed today

I can't remember to ask you to remind me not to put this on you so forgive me but refresh me,
What was you and what got through that I had to say?
I wonder that in the best way
I also mess up royally, here's a pocket dossier
I'm in no place to judge the price to pay

Try to keep the fears
And two lifetimes of multiple parallel timelines of tears at bay
But there on the floor I lay
Once again I find myself in my own way
I danced with the devil under the pale moon light
It was such an intricate ballet
Just for me to say
Nothing good comes that isn't then stripped away

©2025

Always trying to stop the next fight
Never in sight, a hopeless plight
I will forever try will power over might
Just to keep the darkness in the light
A familiar stint so I attempt to end it
A thought historically dependent
On a shrinking love remnant
Gone while I pretend it
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
I scream
You scream
No ice cream
Just fighting
A violent theme
A borderline crime scene
Upstream
From the dream

I settle down
But have found
My last breath comes
Right before I drown
Feeling bound
To shifting ground
My pleas make
Not a single sound
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Who are you and who am I?
How'd we find answers in a lie?
Truth or dare or live or die
Six feet under there's no blue sky
I ask why to no avail
Your bull shiit's what flips the veil
How is it that you still prevail?
With the decision to up and bail
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Go
Just fuucking go
How many red flags are you going to show?
I'd rather not know
Why push friend to foe?
I get it, love didn't conquer all
Love birds in flight can indeed fall
Never though did I expect a wall
Or for you to skip the voodoo doll
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

©2025

In order to be with you
I had to sacrifice the last part of me
That I really liked
So I find myself here with you
With nothing left of me
Too actually be liked

©2024

You don't deserve my cold shoulder
For sure not worth the effort of moving this bolder
From one corner of the shoulder to another
Not even as a place holder
For something far better
I don't want to start it when it's already over
Refusing to be the next heart donor
That should have stayed the solo owner

©2025

To be honest,
I don't miss you
To be honest,
I'm lying

©2024

...I am...

©2023

I don't know what can be done,
But I've never felt as lonely
As I do when I'm not alone
And though I know it's not me only
I feel like the only one

©2014

©2018

Don't ever let 'em see
Don't ever let it show
Men in this society
Must curb most anything emotional
Bury it all, never let it be known
That mental health is what it stole
Stick to the script
Know your roll
Even though living like that
Leaves one barely functional
But you don't want to upset
The status quo

©2024

What happened to my recall?
The damp grass that tickled my bare feet as a youngin
Now feel angry and sharp as actual blades slicing in
What happened to the wonderful?
The warm sand I loved to feel embrace each individual toe
Now grate my every individual nerve as I find there's nowhere it won't go
What happened to the whimsical?
I frolicked with grasshoppers
And blew dandelion wishes
Today I'm annoyed by those buggers
And stare resentment at the weeds through the window while washing dishes
What happened to the critical?
A breath of fresh air
Can hardly be had anywhere
And I wonder over and over again
"Is this supposed to happen?"
"What happened?"

©2024

living life at the end of my rope
feet desperately hunting for solid ground
afraid of the day I won't be able to cope
when death knocks it doesn't always make a sound
i struggle to convince myself of hope
while the good side of life barely comes around
day to day is generally a slippery *****
if not sliding down
it's just 'round and 'round you go
on this rickety merry-go-round

©2024

I know what I don't know
Too afraid of the weakness I know it will show
So I can not let the world know
I don't know how I let myself fall so low
I do know I hate it here,
Basking in this dumpsters fires glow
I knew I had time,
It was a flash fire but the build up was slow
I know what they say,
But it's never as easy as letting go
If I could, what then?
That I may never know

©2024

It's no surprise
A sorrowful reprise
Plays as the soul it hides
Gives in once again
To the echo of lies
And familiar lullabies
That ring as it cries
To the cracks that appear
Like lurking spies
Before it withers and dies
Leaving empty eyes

©2024