Ah, to write with glorious sight
All life's joy and all its pain
To color in the shadows and highlight their beauty
To fill emptiness with gradients of emotion
Oh yes, a pencil can pierce a lung if stabbed with enough force
A sketch can elicit unexpected responses
And the words of a stranger can feel like home
In the subtleties of one's own emotion
In the thoughts that build our fear,
There is only loneliness when the pictures don't hit the page
For in our isolation, there is unity
In our pain... passion
In our hate... love
And in all things... beauty
2815

It rolls in slow like the fog
Helpless to stop it from stealing
Stealing every emotion you're feeling
'Til you're a bump on a log

Colorful, vivid trails of motion
Consuming visual acuity
Leaching verbal perspucuity
Making reality a useless notion

Wringing  beauty from stagnation
Colorizing gray cement
Brick by brick it paints lament
Into farcical animation

Taking over fantasy
Cartoon smiles and laughing fits
All the fruit without the pits
Beautifying all you see

In the dark of night
When you're out of sight
But never out of mind
There is a silence
The kind of quiet that
Causes the fissures
In my mind
To swell and widen
Just enough for sanity
To disappear into the abyss
Into the labyrinth
Of a cracked and shattered psyche
In the silence of nothing
Where the world could have ended
As I lay here oblivious
To the truth, the reality
Of the outside world
This place, in the deepest recesses
Of my twisted mind
This is where the waiting
Breeds nightmares
Steeped in the real possibilities
That cause my heart to break
In real time
In the midst of unknowing
Somehow I know
I know something is amiss
The world, my world is off kilter
Just enough to barely notice
To wonder if it is my reality or my shadows
Traversing the cracks in my facade of sanity
Trying to find a way back to peace
Leaves me drained of the desire to breathe
As every breath breaks my ribs
The panting, painful, dry, and useless
As there is no living in this place
That ***** the life out of my eyes
And the stagnant air of what-if out of my lungs
Gasping in vain to **** it in
Because what-if is all there is
In the dark of night
When you're out of sight
But never out of mind

autumn came around like a drifter to an onramp
there were wet leaves floating in gutters full of rain.
took to walking barefoot around town
melodies from grade school, kicking in my brain.
saw you on the crosstown bus today.
you were reading a magazine.
I turned my face away and I shut my eyes tight.
and dreamed about the flowers that hide from the light on dark hillsides
in the hidden places.

the brakes howled and the bus pulled up near my house
and I got off at the corner.
pulled my sleeves down over my hands, over my hands.
and I wished I was someone else.
and I wished it was warmer.
and when I got home, I thought about you.
like a desperate policeman, searching for clues
and I almost passed out, just then
and I shut my eyes again
headed for the dark hillsides
in the hidden places.