Music cannot help itself,
nor be silenced by dark,
Long after nightfall,
Still those light tones,
Will float away into some forgotten corner,
Of some familiar room.

Writing is more than a hobby,
Just as breathing is not a pastime,
Nor the pulse of my heart a game.

Were my words to leave by my mouth,
Not through my pen,
No more than a hint of me would remain.

Perhaps it is hard to understand,
If your fingers do not feel the same urge,
The same need to form pictures,
In whatever way they can.

Dreaming,
In sun-kissed haze
of calmer days,
Back when grey skies meant
no more than a brighter time ahead.

Sleeping,
At the first burning sky
of the third sunset of spring,
Waiting for seasons to change
and making them whisper by more quickly.

Thinking,
On the things that never
Mattered to anyone else,
While all else hurry past
hoping for another normal day,
I stay still,
Waiting for summer.

For the first time in so long
The notes spelled a smile as they flew
Through my fingers to the keys
And the chords I hardly knew.

For the last time in as long as I can
The blade's glint is locked away
And left untouched as the empty nights
Skulk and slip away.

And another time for longer
I will see and feel like spring
And the warmth and life and subtle breeze
Will lift my heart within.

Half-hearing the story
of a face I didn't know,
But the eyes I've never seen before
still remind me of my own.

The nightmare that she's living -
I don't focus but still see -
Reminds me of the shadows that pass
beneath my doorway.

The faces in her window match
The faces glimpsed in mine
But I know not who she is
Nor who I am

There is more truth around my neck
than there is in my whole body.

And scratched into the clasp
are the marks of honesty.

And clinging to the velvet
is a whisper of who I could be.

But the lump in my throat,
the way my shoulders stretch out
a little too far away from my flat chest
and my hips don't quite fit
the way I want to walk.

Your eyes see body first,
Truth second.

Numbers flying,
Filling my head,
When digits aren't the answer,
But words instead,
When randomness is ordered,
And certainty is dead,
When structure is creative,
And poems left unsaid,
Because numbers are not lifeless,
They're just waiting to be read.

Those nights,
they replay on the cassette tape
that runs through my plastic heart.

And as I listen I am pulling
until the memories
are ripped and torn apart.

And what is left gets put together
in the wrong order
and gets tangled around my veins.

Until not a single second means anything,
but sadness, tears
and confusion still remain.

And now just a single sound
is looped again
and again in darker shades.

So I'll listen to my old screams
and wait for the new ones (on a compact disc) to form.

Head tight, closing in,
And losing focus,
Hearing muffled,
Underwater,
And struggling to breathe,
And sinking in air,
Losing balance,
Red and green flashes,
Cough,
Retch,
Almost gone but,
Not quite.

Those gloves I wear aren't to keep me warm,
They're so I don't have to look at these hands,
And I don't take them off lightly.

This necklace I wear isn't for show,
It's a part of who I am,
On or off has a meaning.

That scarf I wear isn't to keep off the chill,
It's to hide the unchangeable from view,
So until I talk you wouldn't know.

I wear things for a reason, not for style.

You'll be fine when...
Eternal lie...
Waiting never...
Made anyone feel...
Better...
Once you've...you'll feel different
Cruel promise...
Aiming the wrong way...
Won't get any closer...
To truth...
Just a phase*
Dismissal...
Will not help...
Denial is...
Pointless