a crest of brittle, foaming sea,
a wave that crashes over me;
divided with uncertainty,
You fight yourself so mirthlessly.

no burden to my heart, you see,
Your smile causes it to bleed
and pulse and beat, in quickening,
a rhythmic lift so heavenly.

an ocean where the neurons breathe,
and sifting me so perfectly,
like sands across the jagged reefs,
bending back, and cleansing, me.

Baby birds sit still,
sleeping softly, in baby eggs not hatched,
while mother bird waits patiently
for little shells to crack.

Now little birds with open eyes
chirp sharply without rest,
and mother bird leaves speedily
to gather worms and crumbs of bread.

After their meals, the little birds
are filled with food and joy,
'till mother bird hops closer
to help them soon deploy.

With harried squeaks
and frenzied flapping,
they fall down from their nest,
and mother bird, from up above,
spies patiently, in hopes of their success.

Performance assurance,
it's not on my mind.
But a next-morning
pillow, complacent with time,
or the wedding to party to funeral line,
and the "Sorry's" and "Thank You's" and
half empty sighs.

Not a fan of commitment,
but just love is just fine,
not the money or muscles,
for which you will pine,
when I'm grumpy and bitter and old, and confined
to the frame of a man who was once so sublime.

Yin and Yang have nothing on my
bipolar, wishy-washy personality.
I'm self-diagnosed;
a pile of mashed potatoes
where the butter's just not melting in.

I am an indiviudal,
not quite unique,
but quite right hypocritical,
and not so naive,
but I'm sure plenty cynical;
that's why I survive.
I'm not so **** conventional,
call me the Impulse Individual.  

But to me,
that's not some sin,
I'm not compelled
to fall right into the wake
with the rest of us.

If consistency is home, my mind is the wandering vagabond.

a Wordsmith's ambition,
it is not something grand.
It is pleasant, and common,
though it's honestly bland.
For each world we desire,
all so beautifully planned,
there, no words can be written,
well, at least not by hand.

But our Pen is our Bible,
and We bleed it with sighs,
and I'm pleased to announce,
that by writing, We survive;
For the words that we've written,
every line we provide,
puts the world on our shoulders;
brings our image to life.

I laid on the cold hard floor,
feeling the chops of air
as they spun from the ceiling,
escaping the mass of my body;
finding refuge in my arch,
my natural resistance
to flatness.

And I was watching,
stalking myself from a distance,
but all that was seen
was my cardiovascular essence,
pulsing on the ash-ridden floor,

until I cascaded,
washing;
falling below to My Earth's
very core.

I was watching and laying,
and falling,
but when all had occurred, I remembered:
My Self is not merely a body,
a skeleton breathing out words,
but a soul and a spirit and presence,
and that is what ought be preserved.

It's hard to describe something close
to the smell of coffee and pollution,
but the taxi-cab infested café shows me what it's like.

The normal latte;
a crowded sidewalk;
a bright blue sky
littered with towering masculinity.

But that plane is flying awfully low.

Weary hobbling men,
of stature far from social statutory,
embody brief hypotheses of me.

Weary hobbling men,
managed by bronzed and tall
strong handsome men,
embody sick hypocrisy.

Blind old beggars,
who sit on broken concrete
and breathe through broken lungs,
speak clearly of what resides in not what eyes speak,
but of what love and trust sing.

They see more than we,
for they, both blind and whis’pring,
are contented just to breathe.

A gut-wrenching pull of vocalless expression.

Your windowed soul
speaks leagues of numbered
tears as your heart beats beats beats,
and the tint of your eyes
shows the truth of your lies,
every time your half-crooked smile
hides the words that you speak speak speak.

And though my face,
be it smiling,
presents an air of control,
I fear that I have lost it all.

And I brace myself,
for I predict that I will be buried
beneath the rubble,
beneath this teetering construct
that I have haphazardly built in my short,
short,
life.

And I have tried,
I have tried to forget that I built
this homeless house of mine.

And I have thrived,
I have thrived in my ignorance
once upon too many times,

and I shudder at the thought
that the "all" which I am destined to lose,
is really nothing.

Nothing at all.

Should I ever come to the end of my road,
when I  meet the doorman of death,
I shall hope that he care just enough to heed my last request.

I would not pray for hope, nor life, nor freedom.

I should ask him, "Dear Death,
might you listen to me now?

I beg to find my final breath
upon Earth's broken brow;

the crashing waves, day or night,
the pum'ling seaside cloud,

the falling rocks, their endless plight,
and distant ******* growls,

the fading sun, the rising moon;
I even feel their gaze.

Dear Death, I shall not wait the more,
please take me where I lay."

The life of a soul
is like a candle.
Birth ignites the solid
wick,
and a fire, consuming, is breathed
into the malleable consciousness;
the wax of knowledge
is melted
and molded.

The soul is born
quite opposite of animosity,
and thrives in the
rapture of curiosity.
It is whole,
with nothing foretold
but that existence unfolds,
till pain settles and
fringes the rim.

Fear and hurt and loathing,

the gusts of extinguishing,

take back the breath of ignition,
and leave the candle's wax to settle
as before.

However, to the surprise of the mind,
observers shall find, that much like
the levels of wax still to mold,
the conscious, depressed,
is weary
and much less bold,

but, yet, passion thrives,
and the fire survives,
anew to seek what is
more potent
and true.

The cycle continues,
repeating.
Melting and fading and
melting and
fading,
and

Knowledge is gained!
Ignorance is burned like
the wick of the soul's
candle!

Until the wax is quite low,
and the fire won't show,
and the wick of life's candle,
once burning and fading,
is now dying.

The enlightened light,
the fire and shine,
was snuffed into nothing
by time.

The wax's decreasing
was brought forth
with the increase of knowledge;
with the process of living;
with the suffereing of wisdom.

Perhaps, then,
ignorance is not bliss,
but bliss is death,
for in death there is time,
time to reflect, and to grind
out the details of life,
and to rest
without the crossing breaths
of passion and exhaustion.

I sit on the edge of my seat,
as I hear the soft whispers of lost souls
and the confident moans of relief,
as sturdy men and women pass on their longevity,
blessing their kin to enjoy their final piece of peace.

I **** in the sorrow,
the sadness that pierces the air
like a cold blade into the stomach of summertime,
and my soul weeps almost vocally,
depressed with the weight of ancestral burdens.

Consider for a moment,
a straggler of life;
his bag of misfit materials;
the empty train car he sleeps in, when he is lucky.

This, to the world,
is my soul to me.
A snowy field of minimalism,
tainted only by the brief, yet constant,
glimmer on the horizon.  

In this vision there is truth,
and hope,
There is truth,
and hope,
in loss and in lacking.
For as stragglers do wander,
their dreams provide homes to thoughts,
and warmth to sadness,
and medicine for wounds.

There was not always this brilliant field of white.
Before it, laid the maze of forestry,
the hovering shadow of fate.

Within the trees was confusion,
and within confusion was pain.
But, with the bright blizzard of chaos,
came the simplicity of love, and therein laid acceptance.

There are those who must chop trees to see the sunlight,
and there are those who simply find the fields of snow,
laying pleasantly within the reflection of the sunrise.  

This, to the world,
is my soul to me.
Wandering acceptance,
caught in the mess of falling trees.

There is a veil,
with no eyes and no ears.
It sets like a stone,
between love and its fears.

Totally unfleeting,
no laughs and no jeers.
To be ever-present,
for all of man's years.

Truly diseased;
synaptic in nature.
Stumble the footwork
and words of thy taker.

Creates blindness,
no sense.
Through silky folds,
made too dense.

There is a veil,
with no eyes and no ears,
but somehow it hears
and it sees all its fears.

It tears all but once,
before, never again,
will it restitch its wounds,
only gasping as wind.

*Collaboration, William Connelly.

I've spent the past hour fervently pondering selfishness, sacrifice, closeness of family,
economy, future, past, the importance of the present, knowledge, education, laziness, friendship,
culture or the lack thereof, loneliness, lines drawn that we might cross, the subjectivity of those lines,
right, wrong, hope, misery, pain, fear, happiness and the pursuit of happiness, contentment, and the most shockingly simple, yet overwhelmingly accurate statement describing the combined existence of them all: life is complex.

I feel like some poetic injustice rests in that statement.

The ice cubes
floating in the Mellow Yellow ocean,
inside my styrofoam cup,
feel like millions of frozen bees,
stinging my hands
with jolts of cold electricity.

Thousands of atoms shift
ever so violently to produce
an ever so slight smile,
exploding with the
power of ten thousand suns,

While puffs of air pass pleasantly
from the depths of thriving lungs
out of crooked lips
made of thousands of tiny atom's sons,

And little worlds of white and
ragmatical strings of red
house smaller worlds of
brown and green,
and black which they embed,

Which all in all,
though each so small
and grand in their own way,
partake in that that's necess'ry,
to make up someone's face.

From the right and left,
my phobia attacks me.
Smells of unfamiliarity
and rain in my boots
climb the peaks of my
grand smelling utensil.

I wonder if the woman
sitting next to me has
noticed the smell of my
feet I washed so hastily,
or the body that my soap
didn't meet, or the weak
cologne wrapped around
my neck.

Quite possibly, she can't
smell a thing; her nose
may be too stopped up;
perhaps it isn't listening.

In reality, my senses blind me.
Alone, I cannot smell the
wonderful and horrid odors
of my body.  She stands up
and leaves; I let my mind digress;
however, I am met with the fact
that whoever sits next will
make me face the same
sub-conscious test.

Sun shines brightly on
lightly coloured blue balloons
as they float gently to the sky.

Children run and slap
their feet on wet bricks
trailing to waving waters
in backyard pools.

Couples sit and picnic
on the soft green grass
of small fields filled with
dandelions.

Old men sit tall and stark
with open cans in hand
by tailgates, watching
games on blurry television screens.

I saw with my own eyes
the perfect portrayal
of beautiful indifference.

I saw it in the blue-green shades;
the swirling ocean waves;
bright stars in a dark, cool galaxy.

You held yourself,
back straight,
teeth white,
hair brushed,
and skin tan.

And I was bemused
with your wonderful perception.
Half your words whispered,
"Listen, I'm beautiful,"
but the other yelled softly
your impeccable intelligence.  

A true wonder;
a confusing marvel;
your blue-green eyes,
your sparkling smile,
and your wrathful blade,
sheathed behind a perfect portrayal
of beautiful indifference.

Birth:
the long,
clean,
feathered
pen,
dipping into the
just-filled cup of ink.
Life:
the deft,
curious strokes,
lying,
breathing
into the canvas
all the wonder
of emotion.
Death:
the splatter painted handle,
the feather-losing fray,
the crippled wrist of occasion,
with the upward stroke, instead of down.
the blot of black,
in the all white nothingness.

My friends:
the fire hearted nomads;
the hard headed lunatics;
the kids with lion eyes.

We used to be the roots of a tree;
veins of an ox's heart.  
We used to be free,
but now we've fallen apart.

I said, you said, we said,
"This fire in my heart
is forever," but

naivety got the best of me.
Our fire died - and so - the tree.

The thumps of our ox's heart stopped beating.
Forever lost its meaning.

My sides have been stuck,
struck with pointed thorns;
unborn tragedies seething for
release.

Each one, I picked and prodded,
and left in soiled animosity;
bitter knots wreathed in poisonous
posterity.

Each foreign touch seems to have
left my gall cascaded
but Yours, debated -

a rhythmic ring of probing
pessimisity.

I breathe.
You squeeze,
touch my outer fringe, the withering;
I freeze.
You bequeath a fresh'ing thorn.

I writhe,


Moments collide -
fourth dimensional paradigms -
commonly unseen,

birthing blooms by vestal wounds;
you cut the stem,
you redesigned the strife,
in obsequios streams.

The sun and the moon
blend together in my mind,
one for each of my eyes. 
Everything is dark and cold,
and Everything is hot and bright.
I presume, though, that I do not betray the standards
of hope and humanity, nor justice and morality,
but who else will have sympathy for the wicked?

My overwhelming solemnity;
brown fields of Spring-time withering.

Nostalgia, be riddled,
by life,
before none;
sweet candy sour,
as the taste on my gums.

Pale, empty vessels of our spirit,
said one,
A final embrace from the Mother -
to son-
the end of a turn,
of a wheel just begun.

Find - now - in a moment,
the peace,
and the sun;

- don't cry under moon crests,
don't weep for high tides -

for,

but laughter
and sorrow
and joy found in love

shall Wake us each morning,
blood found in our bodies,
our hearts and our lungs.

The present is written,
The past is still sung,
The future a distance,
a lion unroped.

My overwhelming Solemnity
is represented-
by brown fields
in Spring-time withering.

Nostalgia riddles me
with, and throughout,
my Life.

It is a Sweet candy;
Sour- like the taste of my gums,
as I reflect on my Experience
as a Living, Breathing,
flesh-Encumbered Soul.

"These are the pale, empty vessels of our spirit,"
says One, about our bodies.

"'Tis the final embrace from the Mother to Son,"
says One, in regards to Death.

"This is the end of a Turn,
of the Wheel just Begun,"
says one,
pondering the endless Circles
of Our existence.

But find,
in one Moment,
peace.
But see,
in one Moment,
the sun that revels on Our faces;
that dances like flames, upon Our eyes.

Don't weep because the moon crests;
because the tides rise;
because the the vivid flowers of Our mind have begun their soft decay.

Instead,
remember that Our dying bodies exist;
that peace can be found;
that the moon is merely a Shadow of the sun's brilliance;

that We,
as all Hope foretells,
as the Flowers of one age,
tread paths for the dying New;
for unborn eyes;

for the Shadows of Our acceptance.

It's the night of our dear Christmas,
and I alone am making noise,
for my brothers and sisters retired from joy,
and I'm shaken by the beauty of our first snow of this year.  
The ground, not powdered, but littered in pounds,
of the sticking white water that falls, so profound,
is entrancing and frozen and terribly cold,
but I am in love, and I am thankful.

The air is thick with peace,
and every breath holds the promise of fresh life.
Tomorrow begins a new day, as always,
and if I shall live to witness its glory,
I will try harder than before,
and so on, and so forth,
and so on, and so forth.

Lamps that light with lingering flames
quench dreary eyes of midnight pain;
hin'dring such precarious Names,
who've come to find they sinned in vain.

The Baker appeared, and took hold his stake
for the Name who tried to steal the Baker's bread.
Poor stum'bling Name was stopped in cold regret.
Staunch whiskey perspiring upon His head,
He ponders all the threats the Baker'd make;

turned and sprinted against the wall
of wheat and grass and trees and all,
but brazen hands, fire-scathed, wed
His life, ironically, to the art of baking bread.

The Siamese twin of anti-commitment.

You took the dinner knife
that we ate with,
and you spit-shined it
with obscenities.

You stabbed my "freeloading"
back.  

And I let it fester a wound,
before I pulled it out with my
bottom-feeder
claws;
the same claws that
shed splinters in the
woodwork of our
hardships.

My bleeding knuckles,
bare-*****, and filthy,
without the pennies
to wash them off,
couldn't heal fast enough
to stitch your
paper apologies to your
glass expressions.  

Then, the house that "you built",
the house in Hypocrite Pit,
burned slowly,
like the lamp light
that flickered after dinner.

My senses tense,
tingling with aspiration
of the energies within the air.

Renewed with prolonged
activation of perceptive portrayals
of vicious sunbeams attacking
the hems of my subconscious.

I awaken to the sun.

No matter the fondness
that distance does bring the heart,
it does not compare
to the wrath of these
not-so-frequent close encounters.

When I hear,
When I am listening,
if the sounds are sweet 
and strong,
like the great winter Huntress,

then my soul seeps into Hades,
and the Lost begin
to congregate. 

And I,

I become the
thick, 
wet 
void
of endless stars

in the deep,
dark,
water sky.

I wake in a dream,
in a haze of the sea;
cascaded by waves,
every time my heart beats.

Every crest is a vessel,
of love or truth or cries,
every crash its own message,
spilling life behind my eyes.  

A harp's melody weeps,
singing sweetly to my mind,
and I find myself asleep,
as its beauty intertwines.

I'm left with this vision,
as I visit the light,
and I pass into nothing,
or to something divine.

Our bones were sticks,
and we grabbed 'em all together;
threw 'em in a pile,
and lit 'em all on fire.

I thought we'd
keep 'em burning,
but your shadow kept blowing out the
blues and reds and yellows.

I was
wrong.  

I thought you'd stick around
I thought you might try to have some fun,
but you left the check for next month's rent
in the mailbox;
not even on the kitchen counter.  

I was
wrong,

And now I got a tongue,
real slick,
and whiskey to chase back daggers;

red stingers, stretched and fresh,
holding in between my copious veins.

My reflection is tattered with these strings of insecurities,
    and I'm bound to the walls of my constant inequities.
And my eyes, as if rotting, are stuck in their quivering,
    for the beauty I once knew and loved is now withering.

Cold, cold floors press
against the soles of my feet,
as I roll out of bed
still affined to my sleep.

While my eyes remain low
and quite dauntingly heavy,
my hands moving slow
part them ever so stiffly.

Then, before me a speech,
spoken only in vision,
brings tears to mine eyes
by its glorious image.

Alive yet again,
the sight gives me relief,
for the glorious sun
shan't deliver disbelief.

Wild Turkey 101
does not taste quite the same as,
does not go down quite the same as,
and certainly does not go out quite the same as
some good, cheap
*****.

I crave adventure,
like the birds crave the breeze.
I seek excitement,
like rampant waters streaming beneath my feet.

I wish to run,
where men do not run,
but wild animals do.
I wish to see from the sky,
or from deep in the rushing blue.

I ponder the rocks beneath my feet,
and the sails that cross the sea
and the trees that sway so free
and the birds that always sing.

I love the excitement,
and grandeur of its flow.
This world's own spirit tells me
to go. So, I'll go,

And I'll swim,
And I'll run,
And I'll fly,
For the sake of adventure,
For the sake of life.

There once was a tiny raindrop;
it fell right out of the sky.

It fell in a puddle of brothers and sisters,
and all without pause said "Hi!"

But before it could finish,
the puddle had dried,
and the poor little rain drop...
Well, sadly... he died.

There's a spiritual war for our minds,
and sometimes we define the line,
the drive that breaks the small divide and let's the demons in our lives,
but we decide to make the choice that makes or breaks it,
this time, this life. So, I fall on my knees and pray that, someday,
I can understand the gifts that You gave
and the lives you had to take; I pray, but am I swayed?
'You ask and you shall receive,'
but I plead and plead, and yet do I receive.
Is this because I'm unworthy,
or could it be,
that I do not see the things that could free me from these burdens and trials,
to help me walk the miles?
We'll see.
There's a spiritual war for your mind and mine and I can say that I'll be fine,
but only if and when I choose the proper side,
this time.