Were you always a killer,
commendable, expendable
secret agent girl?
Were you always a dancer, entrancer,
Irene Adler, romancer,
secret agent girl?
Were you smart or kind of heart,
lover of art, playing your part.
secret agent girl?
Were you feared or revered,
a pioneer of weird,
secret agent girl?
Were you a dream, beauty supreme,
eyes all agleam, more than you seemed,
secret agent girl?
Who lost you, tossed you
and at what cost due,
secret agent girl?

When did they rob you of your glory,
rewrite author, title, story,
secret agent girl?
Where did they take you, break you,
make you into something new,
secret agent girl?
Are you Cold War fossil lost in time,
too young to be old, past no prime,
secret agent girl?
Beneath the earth, above the sky,
not allowed to cry, to die, are you,
secret agent girl?
Who were you before your halo cracked,
before the fact, your devil's pact,
secret agent girl?
I'll kiss you, miss you,
this bliss is amiss,
secret agent girl.
It's time to go, leave me alone,
you broken hero,
secret agent girl.

Crack the veil of tired souls
cloaked in lonely sorrows,
broken by faithless wanderings,
and feel the strings course through your veins,
the horns echo your heart.
Hold music close in mind and heart;
it makes hearing more bliss than sense,
makes truth as gorgeous as fiction
and fuel for love and dance.
Grip the hands of the etheral,
hold immortality close,
keep it all within and simply
close your eyes and listen.
Everything in song takes a life of its own,
be it lyrics or the simple voice
untested by use, yet strong.
Choirs echo through the heavens,
forcing clouds to yield,
yet holding them in wavering winds
that carry lovely song.

Crack the veil of tired souls
cloaked in lonely sorrows,
broken by faithless wanderings,
and feel the strings course through your veins,
the horns echo your heart.
Hold music close in mind and heart;
it makes hearing more bliss than sense,
makes truth as gorgeous as fiction
and fuel for love and dance.
Grip the hands of the etheral,
hold immortality close,
keep it all within and simply
close your eyes and listen.
Everything in song takes a life of its own,
be it lyrics or the simple voice
untested by use, yet strong.
Choirs echo through the heavens,
forcing clouds to yield,
yet holding them in wavering winds
that carry lovely song.

How temporary be the hours,
our residue of memories left to wither.
Her empty whispers, his empty promises,
Misses and Mister This and That, dear lovers,
Earthly things all the same—shadows.
Owed debt, be it green sheets or gold bars,
bars us from seeing beyond skirts and ties,
ties us to all these things we hold.
Hold me close, memories of forgotten time,
timeless thoughts that barely cross mind’s plains.
Plain to see here—a painful wound we ignore.
Nor shall we admit it, for it bares the scars within.
In our ignorance of purpose, I ask now—
Now that you see, ask yourself, “How?”

It hurts to touch betrayal,
to know how cold she appears
to eyes too lonely even to see.
It burns to hold her, embrace her,
to smell the naked emptiness on her skin.

Can you ever understand
the raging, nameless abomination
that fills the bones upon betrayal,
rides the flipping of the heart
and the slow melting of the soul
like a carnival ride so perverse?

She is omnipotent in the mind,
holding thoughts as a python does its food.
She slips her invisible fingers over arms,
makes them tingle with the empty sensations.
I despise her, constant companion
to the lonely man
that I must always be.

You're a beautiful mystery clad in gorgeous enigma.
You're poetry that looks good in a skirt.

There's an orchestra on your tongue, playing the sound of your voice like a melody I can't forget,
matching the tempo of the drums in my heart
and the broken strings of my violin compliments.

You are a notebook, a yearbook, a sketchbook, a burn book,
every facet of you written in swirling cursive,
rhymes and famous signatures snaking between cinnamon hair and cleverness.

You are a pen running out of ink,
bleeding dry in Barnes and  Noble Moleskin journals,
but that's okay because I have more ink,
and you can borrow whatever you want from me--
store it in the heart you stole if you're bored enough to hunt my words for the pieces.
You have the key already.

You're the first dream of the boy too scared of nightmares to sleep again.

You are the taste of honey and cigarettes on the lips of the first girl that boy ever kissed,
because she was a rebel and he needed a hero
who wore boots instead of Mary-Janes
and band t-shirts instead of blouses.

You are the rose he drew when he was bored,
an outline with potential,
mysterious, entrancing, incomplete,
not yet ablaze with the red of desire
because he was never good at finishing things.
You are a dictionary. Your picture isn't just under "beautiful."
It's under "dangerous" and "witty" and "myth"
because Medusa bowed at your feet next to James Bond and Edgar Allan Poe,
and you're too good to be true anyways.

You are a poem, a telltale heart beating inside a lesson in vengeance,
temporary only because nothing gold can stay.
You've walked past where the sidewalk ends (certainly the road less traveled by)
and come back far more darling than any buds of May.

(You are the paperback novel he read under the covers,
the flashlight only bright enough to show paragraphs,
and every new page unique in shape and form
while the text remains the same.

You are the raw words read aloud by the daring poet,
standing beneath midnight moon,
the power of the throne,
the breath of a whispered promise falling upon the ear,
the warmth of kisses on the cheek,
the passion of all hope there ever was in trust and truth.

You are the fire in lightning,
the sparkle in the snow and the glitter in the rain,
the fierceness of the wind and the gentle, soothing peace,
the blazing chill of winter and the roar of summer's heat.)

But you're still a mystery.
A beautiful,
beautiful
mystery.

Veins of azure snake between the clouds,
flesh of sky laid bare, her breath hushed breeze.
As the shaking hands of lovers tremble,
from her depths doth truest passion seethe.
Across her lithe form do worlds travel,
shadows weaving across her chest.
Beneath, seas of matching hues doth rage.
Thundering waves scarce leave time for rest.
Perhaps, in doubt, I am truly certain
of the love that fuels mine soul.
It is that which never dies—
a newborn story of old.

In ancient anarchy yet untold,
treasures reek of jewels and gold.
They set men ablaze with greed—
living nightmares from Hades freed.
And yet hope laces poisoned world,
doves among flags of war unfurled.
Hands clasped above the shadow’s hold,
voices speaking words too bold.
It is this that grips you, makes you host—
And never ends, but remains a ghost.