hellion, hedonist, this wilderness is my rome
pleasure and beauty, tools of duty, the great beasts' death-roll moan
self-righteous, epicureans, the unrighteous, we march, hard as stones

grease stick make-up, relationships made up, growing up on our own
fake hair sprayed up, ******* laid up, hemorrhaging it all out alone

nothing is free and we spend every dollar
hollow and wasted we chain our own collars

hardened, abused, neglected, rejecting all things inspired
we burn up dancing closer and closer to the heat of the beasts white fire

in our youth
we are the romans
and this is our empire

it's quiet now without the sound of you breathing
life into this dusty aging house
but in the end I figured out I had invented all the reasons
we would still be together now

dusk always seems to hang in the sky
now that your light isn't mine
all the healing left with your final goodbye
and the solitude shows me the confinement of time

around and around and around we went
trying to make a home of the time we had spent
so somehow tell me now where the love all went
tell me now what the promises all meant

I'm not sure how I really feel without you
here in my Neverland that's lost it's childhood
I'm having doubts, disbeleiveing what I was sure we made true
wanting to know that our years together left what closeness should

now it's not a whole life I'm left with living
there was something in the the ways you believed
that my faults never needed forgiving
and how you never doubted what you thought we achieved

I think the reason why when I think of you I still hold on
is that I can't feel I'm part of the world where you've gone
and now my bold hopes have withered and withdrawn
and somehow my whole heart still hasn't moved on

I'm not sure now what I feel without you here
to save me
but I'm sure I'll never live a whole life after watching love disappear
and take away all that you gave me

you might have flaws but you're my best friend
you're my one cause until all your pain ends
I want to give you love, I will give you true love
all I ask in return is that you keep the belief that together we rise above
every demon feeds on different parts of a beaten heart
every uncaring love that's come close stumbles your new start
what you don't remember yet is that I've always been here
and until you know you can depend on me I'll be the one that keeps you near

this music is just for you
can you hear it?
this love is a fact proven true
and you never have to fear it

you always have a hand to hold yours because I'll never make a fist
you can let go and take comfort in this fall because there's no risk
I'll be what you've been taught to give up hoping for
I'll give you closeness craved until you feel satisfied then I'll give you more

smash the statues and tear the paintings off the walls in your life's museum
you never have to walk those halls, there's no call anymore to have to see them

we began a new story with the first kiss in each other's arms
our pages never write down the imperfections of the world that would cause us harm
we own the moments, these are ours to keep just for us
these are the times that remind us what it means to trust

I know you need the pain to stop, someone to fight for you, a true best friend
so I'm your guiding light until life's bright for you and it's dawn in your heart again

my Love She’s got bottomless holes inside, dividing us that I didn’t dig
so I’ve been choking down her past days from amber bottles in burning swigs
most people see only a darkness and call the task of healing Her too big
i see an angel trapped on earth so i pick up my shovel and climb in

She never says She’s sorry without breaking a promise in compromise
but a real man knows his Goddess should never have to apologize
so i never let it traumatize my heart as long can lay next to Her at night
I’ll make the shortcomings all alright because our love can never be ostracized

Her broken parts are jagged to the touch, cut hands and tear fingertips
but to me they look like puzzle pieces so I give my skin to mend Her rips
one shovel full at a time I fill the craters wiping tears from Her lips
because deep, burning, hungry love finds where each ragged piece neatly fits

She only wants a relationship with honesty if it’s a war to be fought
so i become the soldier and the thief never caught ignoring lessons I was taught
for Goddess I bleed and heal then give more so each of Her cuts can clot
because true belief must truly believe these hands were wrought just to undo her knots

i worship in prayer by her waters and ask only for absent minded affections rife
baptized in her kiss i dive in to feel more and need no shores’ safety to survive
and when the floods come and Her swells cut me away from my own being like a knife
i give myself to Her riptide, sweet Lover I am only our bond, i give her my life

and when the pain makes my teeth crack from brandishing false smiles
i patch the wear in my boots, rise from those fires and walk the next miles
and where others blaspheme the word love and fall, i climb over the discarded piles
because a real man loses blood, loses fear, survives the fights, passes the trials

and when loving under the storming skies of her sick, sullen past
means exhaustion claims my flesh and the next strained gasp may be my last
i rupture, i spill open with praises and crawl to her feet to prove i was chaste
for Goddess i give my days, my treasures, my home, my every emotion grown vast

for Goddess I will steal starlight and empty seas and I don’t care what anyone else can’t see
they whisper behind their doors that I stink of obsession like a fatal disease
but i know that a real man stands tallest when he pledges in prayer on two bent knees
to his Lover, to Her, his every lock opened because without her there is no good nights sleep

i give her
only what Her love demands
because a real man
is tall even if he doesn’t stand

A B c D E F G h i J K L M n O P Q R S t U V W X y Z


everything I need to change the world around me.

It flows through me passing into me taking part of me as it leaves
streaming by like a heavy wind draining my fresh hopes it thieves
time
is taking more from me than even the breaking of me took to survive
now nothing mends as days past by lend only distance contrived
this fall into passing years has found no bottom yet
and it makes every instance I hear the words "I love you" another debt

and I have paid, I have paid and bled and learned to bend
only to bleed again and lose friends and find withdrawals with no end
time
is the riptide I struggle in, being swept farther from any safe shore
it is the hungry predator that never quite kills but thirsts always for more
more of my life eaten
more of my flesh beaten
more so I'm made the ******
never, never, never does it rest while I'm still breathing

none of the new years are kind and the months are more of their cruel kind
the days and the minutes become the haunting ties that bind

I am so far from any good memory that I miss them like childhood loves
time has become a terrible keeper keeping me from rising above

all I want is to look forward into my days and see hope for happiness
as my youth slips, I see time is not a clock on a wall it's an illness
it's not a hand on a dial
it's the cost of every step of every mile
it's not a chime on the hour
it's the pain that makes aging sour
it's not a schedule for sleep
it's the loss of every yesterday it keeps

and I've had my fill of the chills and it's hurtful tricks
time is the illness we all share as it ticks
time is my best days gone, my illness with quickly burning wick
and with it, I am so sick

with my feet on the ground
and my head in the clouds
I try to survive this trip stepping around
every stranger in the strange crowds

dreamers have no place in this world
so my heart fights my day job habits
my creativity shot from cannons is hurled
while I run down holes chasing white rabbits


have I lost my mind?
where was it before I asked?
did all the drugs politely turn down all the questions of my kind?
did every line of coke spell answers to my lifelong pain masked?


with my tie on to make a dollar
I can shake your hand with the fakest of faces
but the relief I need to loosen the collar
always leaves little strung out traces

but isn't life made to never count one person?
isn't that why we marry and breed?
so we have misery's company as the days worsen
and an excuse for the green bill greed


you think I fear the conference room meeting?
I'm more afraid of Captain Hook
because as I grow down I realize the stories
were precious distractions from all the beatings I took


******* wear my life for a day and try to endure the hurt
I've learned the pain killers that go down like spoonfuls of sugar
I've learned to suture when the blood spurts
and the bars and friends with compliments will always be my pushers

so with feet on the ground where the killers carry all the keys
I keep my head above all that's you spell out as real
and I'll never take another **** on my knees
because the pushers and the wonderlands make sure I never have to feel

so
so you think that you know what comfort can lend?
when the days languish but the anguish won't end
why the blade cuts deeper when the knife belongs to a friend?
how it seems we can never make amends
for our cruel words rubbed into breaks that never really mend?

did you think you had the answers
to why a healthy heart so often kneels to a lonely cancer?
why love never means that you were given candor
and each of us eventually takes the stage as a lone dancer?

were you convinced that you knew
when the river would stop pushing me away from you?
whether the storm would pass on through
and which side I'd stand on after the line you drew?

did you believe the seeds we'd sewn would finally rise?
that honesty in words meant they would remove our guise ?
and that years past meant we had grown wise
or if hindsight is all that our risk ever buys?

god how I wish you were still here
to look through these eyes that see the past so clear
without the blinders of rules and fear
now that the lights are dim and there's no one to cheer
so I can hear the words that you'll love me year after year
god how I wish my wanting could make you reappear

so
so you thought two lives were something we could weave?  
and you could tell joy's tears from the ones the regrets thieve?
but I didn't know what I could say I really believed
and I never could have been sure until I felt you leave
and now I can say that I know what it is to grieve

I don’t know if I have enough heart left to give to anyone else in sharing I’m always
back at the start just trying to be myself and pretend I’m caring and it’s glaring me in
the face this stalled pace                       at which I’m                      crawling through my
own life trying not to                                    cringe                                 from the deep cuts of
the knife that you all                                                                                       call love it all feels
to me like a clifftop                                                                                            kiss goodbye with
a hard shove and                                                                                                 from where I
stand it makes me                                                                                                 wonder if I
misunderstand it                                                                                                  what I thought
was the right way                                                                                               that I should but
apparently I really                                                                                             misunderstood
and it all makes me                                                                                         beg and cry out to
everyone in this part                                  please save my heart        there’s so little  left of
the me that could ever                                                                           believe couldn’t this
god ****** world just                                                                      once let me keep a little
piece all I ask of this terrible                                                           wretched ******* lifetime
is a life that’s actually all mine                                                   let me build something and
protect it and keep it safe as my                                          own beautiful charm safe from
the chaos and the harm am I worth                              so little do I count for so much less
that I should endure my heart being                      belittled and beaten under this much
stress I don’t even know anymore how to       trust and the machine that has become
my day to day survival is so filthy with rust I just want to feel like I am a human being
with some worth and knowing deep down that I never will be, is the very worst.

so i reach this after all    teach myself after all    that after every fall from each torturous height and frightening ache that’s made me crawl    in the wake of what it’s taken to survive each tooth spitting brawl  
i am proof that nothing can diminish a survivors soul to nothing at all    and no matter what you call it or     what its commanding    i am still standing   maybe a little less tall    but on my own two feet for what its worth even with this curse   the weight of my absent self worth   i have given birth to some kind of hope and   i know now i can send it forth to return to cut loose this noose rope    with what i’ve learned about always   feeling deeply that i can’t keep all the pieces of me together neatly and i yearn   sadly so badly wanting to  
       watch the world burn  

my reckless life has tried to beat and eat alive all i've strived for but i have arrived at 33 i have survived      not completely living but somehow alive

it's from the dreams that wake me up in cringes
nauseous from the sickening memory’s twinges
that poison the hours of the day with painful fire that singes
that set me off like explosions into my drinking binges

because of winning the debate that sobriety in this miserable place
would be insane trying to heal the strain with grace
my heart's been sewn back into my chest so many times trying to keep pace
with the thick black stitches of self taught renewed hope I hope to replace

just for it to burst or be removed and slit deep at it's throat again
as I slip down another ***** into the ways I try to cope as I’m drained
back into the times I can't escape because they really are the past I can’t feign
and knowing I was cast in a mold and I will never escape my shape or it’s strain

there will be no peace after the things I was told, not with age, no matter how old
not when I accomplish, not when I survive, and not now that my blood has turned cold
because my molested heart is too weak to beat, too scarred to keep a hold
after all the times it trusted, only to be opened from ribbon wrapped packages just to be sold

I keep having to buy myself back from the thrift store of my own life
***** back together all my feeling parts, always trying to justify leaving a wife
so now I kneel, praying on my knees in slobbering tears for the aches to be less rife
begging to forget the loss of a son, willing to cut my flashbacks out with a knife

my new life has somehow begun and their ghosts haunt me unforgivingly
carving slivers off of the inside of my skull, never letting the pressure free
educating me with the lessons of emptiness and cold pains deep as the sea
and always with creeping thoughts of what I'll never regain or again grow to be

and even now with all my new days and change
the life I knew is still estranged
and I live with the truth that the shape of my mould so strange,
my destiny in the shape of my loss, will always remain

dressed for my own funeral again
black suit and tie, I've died so many times without amends
I can't count the ways I've started over and then
the shadows of wasted loves show teeth and rend

cracking my spine in convulsing shakes chewing on faith that breaks
and it takes all of my fleeting strength to out swim the wakes
the drowning, dingy echoes of fake affection and birthday cakes
when there was no connection between us but the quakes

and you don't know who I am now in my disparity
any more than I remember who I set out to be

stressed and smoking too often, new nails in the coffin
black tar and coughing because the fists never soften
beaten so bad my heart won't beat if I can hear you talking
on the other end of a phone when the tears aren't stopping

the eulogy for a wasted man sounds like loved one's bitter tones
that don't understand that a dead man is free from what caring owns
and the soil not drinking one tear won't notice one more set of bones
but in the darkness, the silence, the solitude, I'll bury what my demons condone

to the praises of others you raised us but you were no mother
handing out soul snuffing black eyes that still won't let me recover
why did it have to be you; wicked you, split in two and not another?
schizophrenic, stick it in and twist it, breaking me and a lonely brother

it's you I'm burying in this soil
because I'm half you so I too and spoiled
like you, I am halved by my bipolar turmoil
giving up on surviving anymore with this blood that boils

ashes to ashes
dust to dust
the last of my crashes
because burying you is my final lust

dressed for my own funeral again
black suit and tie, I've died so many times without amends
I can't count the ways I've started over and then
the shadows of wasted loves show teeth and rend

cracking my spine in convulsing shakes chewing on faith that breaks
and it takes all of my fleeting strength to out swim the wakes
the drowning, dingy echoes of fake affection and birthday cakes
when there was no connection between us but the quakes

and you don't know who I am now in my disparity
any more than I remember who I set out to be

stressed and smoking too often, new nails in the coffin
black tar and coughing because the fists never soften
beaten so bad my heart won't beat if I can hear you talking
on the other end of a phone when the tears aren't stopping

the eulogy for a wasted man sounds like loved one's bitter tones
that don't understand that a dead man is free from what caring owns
and the soil not drinking one tear won't notice one more set of bones
but in the darkness, the silence, the solitude, I'll bury what my demons condone

to the praises of others you raised us but you were no mother
handing out soul snuffing black eyes that still won't let me recover
why did it have to be you; wicked you, split in two, and not another?
schizophrenic, stick it in and twist it, breaking me and a lonely brother

it's you I'm burying in this soil
because I'm half you so I too and spoiled
like you, I am halved by my bipolar turmoil
giving up on surviving anymore with this blood that boils

ashes to ashes
dust to dust
the last of my crashes
because burying you is my final lust

little dark ring of scars
my reminder
where a wedding band use to be
dusty gray ring of ash
my reminder
of where that fire use to warm me

lord can it be?
that regret is calling me
down into those times?
I should have seen the coming loss
before I ever paid the cost
now I'm lost between two timelines

and everybody feels and sees
that shattered hearts don't heal or ease
we just learn new ways to breathe
and on knees you can beg and plead
but the regret just chews and feeds
and you have to learn again how to breathe

now the treasure maps all lead to empty chests
and reminders
calling me back to my home burned down
and pleasures trap me and tempts with rest
feigning life a little kinder
only stalling the attack of wedding roses turned brown

lord can it be?
the voices calling me
all lead back to time long gone?
I should have known the cost contrived
that all love has loss to be survived
now I'm torn between two lives

and now every rainbow ends
at missing gold I had to spend
to learn love isn't yours to keep at the end
love is never yours to befriend
it's just a waking dream that someone lends
and everybody knows shattered dreams never mend

the little dark ring of scars and their intent
my reminder
love isn't yours it's only lent
and love is never any kinder

you wont stop haunting me in my dreams so listen now as I talk
you said I ran away from home but I’m more ashamed that I walked
I understand I failed you in drastic, uncountable ways
but I pay for it in carrying sadness through lengthening days
I pace this dingy house offering apologies to your ghost
now I see that all you ever asked, was for me to want you most
and I am humbled and regretful and tortured with sorrow
now I lose my sleep to the nightmares and I fear my tomorrows
I know I borrowed from you more than I can ever repay
so now I lie sleepless under the weight of the ways you think I betrayed

your heart, our son, the wedding vows spoken
the closeness, the trust, the every promise broken

please let go of me in my dreams, please leave me
please let me sleep without the terrors that beat me
believe me I never meant to color this hate in your white heart
and I never meant for the widow to ever be your part
I wasn’t sure what I was doing, I didn’t know where I was headed
I couldn’t see the road before me, I couldn’t predict the loss to be regretted
I am sorry, deeply, I am all apologies please believe me
never again would I ask you to have to love or need me
I concede, I give in, give me needed rest within
and I will give you forever in apologetic rhetoric just let me begin
we were corrupted, love interrupted, and it was abrupt but release me
please, I am ground into pieces, this never ceases, stop cheating me

I am so sorry for what I took when I walked out that door
I will give you back all that you can carry, all you ask for and more
I offer you solace in every regret I drag and I will drag them until I have sores
I am so sorry I was the one you married but please, let me sleep once more

if you don't believe in demons
look deep into me, past all the spoken reasons
past the medication, into a man with only two seasons
see a shattered, loving heart that always commits treason

I don't want your sympathies when my twin takes the stage
I don't want your compassion when I appear as rage
I don't even want the answers when I turn the next page
I am a beast that the truth will only prove cannot be saved

hateful words in my mouth like mother's milk
so contrast the love when my touch is skin on silk
my flattering phrases only build a debt I will always bilk
lover, monster, sweetheart, killer, gentle, evil; my ilk

do you think I don't see what I am, do you think I don't know?
do you ever see me shred at the seams trying not to let it show?
consider that I never can avoid threshing anything I grow
you know the me that lives with knowing he is my strongest foe

taken apart and put back together
sewn with love, every stitch that I sever
mend then break, fix and adore, then become a storm to weather
a soul like an anchor that somehow, is sometimes light like feathers

Maddening
It's ******* maddening to be two people
one good
the other so dismal, truly evil

I can say I will change
but that commitment comes only from half
I will always be defeated by days deranged
because my self, the other, always has his final laugh

purge me out of your life
even seeing me weeping puddles and cringing for the loss
purge me from your heart
because my love, however genuine comes at too high a cost

my heart, that's always had to make a fist
had finally learned how to hold someone's hand instead
and to use it's grasp to keep you in our embrace
and how to touch softly with fingertips unclenched

but now it has to try and learn to let go

the bathroom doesn't smell like your perfume by the sink anymore
and a meal by myself becomes the first of an uphill march
every time I laugh I notice you aren't here laughing with me
hangers sit bare in a half filled closet and one lonely pillow lays waiting
and the cold edges of the comforter touch me where you're not
even the greeting cards become just paper and ink
and the medication doesn't stop the tears
and I feel half filled too

I need more words than my only language has to lend
to explain the ways I hurt over having to give you up
I had no use for a heart when I found you and mine always made a fist
now I can remember so clearly all the reasons

why I never take the risks

unbelievable the breadth
of what I have to regret with every breath
you could fill a lifetime with it
I have, and now I have nothing left
monsters in the dark
what I have puppeteering my heart
I’m a phantom of a man and deserve to be apart
from the one I love, the lover I chose
the one who saw my soul exposed
and was driven away

I’m horrified and confused
at how easily I can abuse
how can I be so infused with bipolar?
and why would anyone choose to stay on that coaster?
but what does that matter when I drive them away?
What do I matter? so tattered, who am I at the end of the day?

failed father, alcoholic, no apologies to erase what I say
I’ve already said this but now I’m screaming it night and day,
I am a monster
puppeteering her heart
eating her whole with every memory of my part

but this isn’t how it was meant to be, I love her when I’m me
how can that be taken from me so easily by chemistry?
and with all of my sickness what else could I have been or every be?
when my self, isn’t meant to be healthy

I would take my own life, not to end my misery
but to extend an honest apology
all I ask is that she know that I didn’t intend any insanity
I didn’t know it could get this bad, that I could sling such brevity
and now with the loss of this all I want to say is I am sorry, Ashley baby
......
seven days now I’ve cried until I choked
lost my step walking because I sobbed so hard
now I cry in doctor’s offices and they say I should’ve come sooner
I’ve lost her
I lost my best friend, dear god I miss her
but I love her so much I am honoring her memory by getting help

I’m so ******* sad

I held on through your jealousy and fear
your deep insecurities and I held you near
I survived the conversations about the terrible what if’s
silly girls in beach jeans and all the fights and tiffs

all I wanted was a piece of the movie star dream
beauty and money like you only see on the screen
I thought I could cheat the universe if I truly believed
thought if I built us an island you’d never leave

I sat with you and listened to the stories you’ve never told
held your hand and said to go out and be bold
I tried with all of the strength in this body to inspire you
bragged about your glow and hoped you know I desire only you

I can’t hand you happiness or I’d send it to your shore in bottles
I can’t stop your pains or slow the hurt when you push the throttle
there are no more ways for me to prove what I already have
no ways for me to glue back together the two of us you’ve halved

I can’t undrink the bottles or unyell the words or light the dim rooms
there’s no way for me to bake the cake with a wax bride and groom
now I’m slipping into the darkness where you tucked us away
and I’ve run out of words to say because you’re about to throw us away

I’m about to lose my love to the same person that said it would always stay
I crumple and I tarnish because you’re about to throw us away

it's quiet now without the sound of you breathing
life into this dusty aging house
but in the end I figured out I had invented all the reasons
we would still be together now

dusk always seems to hang in the sky
now that your light isn't mine
all the healing left with your final goodbye
and the solitude shows me the confinement of time

around and around and around we went
trying to make a home of the time we had spent
so somehow tell me now where the love all went
tell me now what the promises all meant

I'm not sure how I really feel without you
here in my Neverland that's lost it's childhood
I'm having doubts, disbelieving what I was sure we made true
wanting to know that our years together left what closeness should

now it's not a whole life I'm left with living
there was something in the the ways you believed
that my faults never needed forgiving
and how you never doubted what you thought we achieved

I think the reason why when I think of you I still hold on
is that I can't feel I'm part of the world where you've gone
and now my bold hopes have withered and withdrawn
and somehow my heart still hasn't moved on

I'm not sure now what I feel without you here
to save me
but I'm sure I'll never live a whole life after watching love disappear
and take away all that you gave me

do you feel the same?
that without faith, grace had no name
that before salvation the war looked like a game
that addictions weren’t monsters, just pets to be tamed?

the excuses never made sense no matter how many times I explained
I had no acquaintance with restraint or refrain
Indulgence was my starlight; bright but only in the dark, everywhere and impossible to contain
and I always found someone else, knew someone else, found another way to blame

**** it all, I jumped in grinning into the brawl, I ran the gamut of lust in my fall
and it all started with red hot frustration and sweet, soft temptation
and chances to cheat and win and do it again without facing weakness and I gave in to it all
opportunities to fake it through the hatred and I lied through black smiles at them all

pain
makes the feeling heart bleed, and the gritted teeth crack, and the demons feed, and the memories all come back
maligned
and the hatred plants the seeds then the anger waters the vine
and the brokenness strengthens the thorns then the blackness starts to climb

up my solid ground, up my aching spine, up my choking throat, upside down into my mind
and I reached for bottles, and I reached for pills, and I knelt for coke lines
but I never knelt for the divine
what would a God do with a vommiting waste of my kind?
judgement sounded so unkind
we men are wretched things sang to me in every song, in it’s every every line, in each instrument’s chime
and anyway… anyway… who could overcome spent time
no, this slow burning suicide was my forever, my chosen lover, mine all mine

because look what I had done with what I was given, look at the killer I had been
look at the people I had run through and scars I had gouged caressing my sins
how would I ever begin again?
What does it even look like to begin again?

I found rock bottom will a shovel and a map
I was digging and it was my intention and I was never coming back
I laid in my own grave
how many people can say that?

I had burned every love letter family ever written me without thinking twice
and I had spit in the face of everyone who cared enough to run to my rescue with advice
and I had bullied the playground and never played nice
I had cut the wrists of my own life in unstitchable ways with self destruction as my knife to be sure I died

but just when it was truly just a few words from over, just where my poems always ended
hanging in the margin of the page just past that last line something was amended
I wanted to live
and I wanted to be happy
and I was scared
that I never could be

in those last twilight words on the paper, written by the me everyone had met, peddling pretty failure
as I sank in my waste, choking on my entire personality’s behavior
under the ominous weight of all my precious loss and terrible regret for everything I had wagered
I met my savior

He didn’t ask for blood or gold or indignity or shiny things I owned
and He didn’t punish under foot or berate with words for my every action He didn’t condone
He didn’t hate me and He wasn’t concerned with what was past now and He didn’t offer a loan
He just spoke to me, in that hushed moment, to tell me I didn’t have to be
alone
quietly, He said simply, “set down that house key, and come home”

Lord
thank you
Lord God thank you
for letting me finally rest
for saving me
for letting me come home