Wake me, o' sun
Bring life to these hollow limbs
I have dreamt only in serenity
To fill vacancies left by nefarious thoughts

Dismiss my trials
Ye holy judge of my lungs
Stagnancy chokes at my breath
As I gasp for my heart's appeal

Make haste, calloused heels
Carry me o'er these fruitless hills
Thirst conquers these feeble bones
As this feral enchantment dissipates

Noon will be o'erhead soon
The heat has grated me into pieces
Fast are thou demons in pursuit
Faster is the hardihood of my will

Thou shadows mount, o' moon
Traipsing to and fro along my path
Free shall I be once the lanterns are lit
Macerated but finally triumphant

I am, in ways, a disappointment to my father
Who never once failed to disappoint me
But, my heart was revived once I realized
That I am greater than the sum of disappointing parts

There's but a fortnight now
Until the shadows run off with what's left of me
You should know that there are only scant remains
Of the man you once knew

They say to just be still
And wait as a bystander to my own life
But waiting has never come easily to a man with thorns in his hands
So I fly instead, like a fool with his eyes closed

There's a moonlit ocean in the distance
A place to sink, or learn to swim
For a moment, the shadows have diminished from my sight
And her radiance erases the vile inside my heart

Cumbersome, this game of cat and mouse
You are a kind of wonder I know nil about
My audition is odd and barely audible
Drowning in tears of all my previous tragedies

Careful, you could hear a pin drop
As loud as sandbags falling upon the stage
Somewhere in the orchestra, a lonesome bow
Drags itself across cello strings tethered to my heart

The cherub with the harp is silent
But her echoes scale the room with glory undefined
Shameless, I am down to my final act
For the heart of the heroine, is an encore away

From the broken words
That spill across the pages in my head
To the paintings that adorn
The very walls of my heart
We still have time to rectify this calamity

From the rivulets that run
Throughout my depleted sandy soul
To the shadows that fall
Upon eyes that settle on the horizon
There rests hope on the eve of hopelessness

From the quicksand of mistakes
That have mired my steps for too long
To the whistles of locomotives
Across salty oceans of destiny
There I stand, changing colors like the sky

Chasms and carnivals
I am better left for dead
The fears buried within me
Are burying me instead
Anxiously apathetic
I am a sign nailed upon your door
Have you found a better story to tell
Than crashing recklessly into my core?

From a narrow perspective
Empires collapse
Not because of breached walls, but far, far within

In the aftermath of a gavel's echo
The moon shifts
Leaving us in a constant effervescent imbalance

There are soldiers pacing
Left, right, left, right
Halting our progress in the arc we're set upon

This red sky is draining our blood
Like fleas upon our flesh
Drab and scattered visions, unyielding to good intentions

Brave soul slithers away
A python with no fangs
He flees and fades into swollen glands of fallen visionaries

Leashed curses wrench loose
Boulders fall on empty heads
We are more near to barbarism than we first guessed

Fire, spreading, unfurling
Left, right, left, right
Untie these bonds, and we will watch them all burn

Faded stars and bittersweet Thursday mornings
Where one end of this rope is tied to the dawn
And the other end has frayed and broken free

I find scattered amidst this sunrise all that I have hunted
Taunting me, delicately erasing hovering shadows
And exposing the darkness for the liar it has become

A fleeting slumber is the crux of my discontent
Where one eye opens to a world of majestic wonder
And the other opens to the aftermath of my dreams