A river flows beside a tree
Which grows upon an earthy hill
Both strength and beauty can be seen
No need to hide
No want for veil
And the word of God flows underneath
As the river runs
To foster all which growth entails
So enter in lovers embrace
And share in the water
Drink it deep
Both when it flows and when it speaks
But especially when it stands still

As an old oak tree
Empties its arms in the fall of Autumn
So I must also empty my heart
In the springtime of this youthful you

My hopes were lower than the floor of city puddles
Until, until
The sunlight came which was your name
And evaporated me into the clouds
And now all that's left is the little sounds
Of the new me falling all around

With a ripple I change
Becoming rain

You’re right about that
There's no turning back
Once you’ve taken your eyes off this good track

Yet in light of that
How I love to drive
And to think aloud until my quiet thoughts talk back

About the process of understand things
Like how my mind survives
And my soul will ultimately outlast

Which is why in life, my fleeting friend
You should always keep your eyes on track
So that one day you’ll smile when you look back

The sound of thunder
Long since heard
Off the grain of a Louisville slugger
Shakes the sleep from the eyes
The dawn from the air
And puts dangerous respect
Back into these young lives

When I look into the sea
The dead of night midst new September
Staring back at me, I find
That I'm not scared
No, I'm terrified

Since I discovered this place
Since I took up that old mask again
To hide my boyish face

At least for an hour or two each week
I feel at home
Almost not alone
In a place where I may not belong

I thought about me, long before I became me. And though I am here, I believe, this is where I was meant to be.

Tonight I get to do what I was meant to do
To be who I was meant to be
And although every eyeball in every line of sight may be fixated on me
For an hour or so
That doesn’t change the fact that I
Was meant to step out this stage and to bend like a bow
As I did in the days of old
Such talent is still stretched within me
That I should perform, and that I should play, most doggedly
Until the finely threaded twine within my mind begins to unwind
And I am straight as an arrow hence
Laying on the table before, how I once had said
That I hope I can return once more for that again
But not for this I said
Not for this

I am thunder
Silver fire
Felt like a hot tin roof beneath young feet
And scolding
Smoking like the copper wire
Paper on a guillotine
Slicing through an echo chamber
I am the terror of a plastic souls desire

That is
Until only bane of self remains
And all once again are made the same

Address a letter to noone ever
And send it on it's way
Into the gloom of another well packed bag
To be carried out and then whisked away

Let your focus not fall on the other
Let the falsehood, the penmanship
And all of the subtle friendlessness
Be mailed into the distant future
Far far away

Just address a letter to no one ever
And alone forever you'll ever stay

Listen to the sky
To her daughter as they run
And play mold the earth
With waters and stirring clay
Do her rivers run alive

Indicators of the night sky, bursting bright.
The kind of bugs which glow so brightly it must surely hurt their buggy eyes.
In the summertime they come alive, to illuminate the dark of night.
And slowly wake by no mistake, to congregate and enjoy their lives.
Because they are the fireflies and it's with the summer they coincide.
Like a lightning storm or an electric hive, they soar as more than just common flies.
Perhaps the owl of old was right when he said that you wouldn't believe your eyes,
At the ten of millions of indicators, burning across the open sky.

Wherever they are
Would you let these thoughts and dreams profound
Settle to the base of your stomach

Like that stray grains of coffee grounds
Not filtered through the thinness of society
But strained through the fibers of the heart

Ever flowing from the the mind
Until the truth is boiled down
And at the bottom of the cup found

Everyone is signing up,
Everyone is lining up,
Everyone is pairing up,
Everyone except this one.

Everyone is finding a way,
Everyone is signing away,
Everyone just runs away,
Everyone without my name.

Everyone is moving on,
Everyone has come and gone,
Everyone has better plans,
Everyone except this man.

Everyone speaks well of me,
Yet everyone still fails to see,
That everyone has gone crazy.
Everyone that is but me.

-SS

Whatever your heart wants most in life...

The kind of things that you do not get
Which might just depress or even make sad

Whatever your heart can desire like this
It couldn’t possibly have

Which is why in the first place
Your blasted, bloomin, beggin heart
Most definitely wants but cannot have
Whatever it is it’s desires so bad

And you don’t have to quote me when I say that
Just go ahead and trace one of your heart-strings back
To the unwinding thing which you couldn’t have

Some days are the sun
Some days are the moon
And some days are the stars which burn out in-between

With hair falling before quiet ears
And mind bent steadily on pages of ink
Resting softly above the earth
Her chest rises and falls
In steady unison
Her pulse patters faintly like little feet
And with quiet eyes, she looks up suddenly at me
And winks

Be like the wind

You are the wind

You don't bend or break

No procedures are in place for you

Run up against it, flow around

Not out of strength

But out of the hush

Out of the whistle

Out of sound

The wind is nothing

The wind is everything

More than anything that could ever be built

Because the wind will always be

Around

In every lung and every city

Whipping through the whistlers town

For months a struggle in vain I've been. Deliver me now my Lord.

Allow me to see for a moment beyond what this human heart thinks it adores.

Because I do not wish to continue like this, give me strength now to close this old creaking door.

Would you allow me to be, in my present need, at peace with this anxiousness, and within me no more?

Still your head
Steady it
Give yourself some time to react

Clear your eyes
And take a breath
Before you plunge back underneath
And immerse yourself
Within the mess

Envision how it has to be
And plan it out
Picture the objectivity

Would you see the future you’ll create
Just in front of you
A moment before it has to be

And then be fast
Like a lightning bolt
Let your hands and eyes simply react

And meet the ball most suddenly
To elicit the lightning
And make it crack

Picture this an you will be
All at once
Lightning fast

Soft is the wind ere the trees
And rough is my voice running through each
As are flowers in the month of June, so beautiful
And yet cursed by the coming fall
As after which, above the earth, all else will fall
Until the clouds and morning dew have meld in, above the heath
Ungrown as I am in the mind of you
But it would not be so, if you would see me through

Nothing makes my heart sink
Faster to the bottom of this chest called ocean
Than a clueless defiance
A disregard for the most basic
The most respectful quiet

Forget not
That at the lowest part of the humble path
Resides the divot
Which concurs and divides
Not passing feet
But yearns to keep the honest truth
Which is bestowed upon the earth
By means of rain
Teeming with life and oxygen
How it tries to keep itself within
Both without fail, and with inevitability
Because the water will certainly soak or sway
But the divot itself will forever stay
Embedded in the earthly clay
Beneath our walking feet
So forget not to tread lightly, ever so
On this, the placid soil underneath

Hold my hands, look into me and see the truth.

Meet me in the deepest part of the glowing forest.

If your heart is there, next of Gondolin, the same as mine.

How beautiful the stars to shine atop our heads.

Like the crowns of old. As the glowing trees ignite your eyes.

As mine have glistened at this very thought.

Perhaps to meet you there at all,

Would make my heart glow as a Silmaril.

For not even I know when this glow was crafted.

Formed out of the unknown and the song.

I wait for you.

Though to Varda your eyes,

And Yavanna your heart may forever belong.

I am the last hand on the earth
To compound and push down
To press the headache as it sounds
And fade it out

Away into the nothingness which awaits its new master
I am standing upside-down
Twisted inside until out
Living in the unlivable town

For I am the last hand on the earth
And as it stands I'm falling down

I used to be thunderous
In all ears and a roar
But now I'm like lighting instead
And when I strike
There is only a sudden flash of light
As a stroke of fire appears before
Instantly born
Where the static clouds meet the metal earth
I am timing incumbet, electric incarnate
And as my will touches down
My foes are torn

Expect not yourself
To see the world
For the way it truly is
At least at first

Because the world is full of so many things
And people who are ever changing

And the truth behind it all is this

*That one day all of these and we
Will be returned to the earth
Returned to the dirt
Or ashes depending upon the preference

Have you ever had a song repeat?
And turn you a certin way?
For in passing I see
Now that Mayer maybe
When he said
"Would you say what you need to say?"

Such is a necessity

Dear world, dark world
Colder and older than the start of time
More lost than the downward eyes
Which seek the feet of man

How your crusted epicenter stands
As the foothills choose what is before
To walk the path of least resistance

And so

No more will I let stand beside
This burrowed unrest in my chest
And so now I say without hesitance
Dear world, goodnight
Be at Peace
I am at home in your rest

Watching this old movie again,
And hearing her song now like this,
Reminds me having known is enough,
Because I know that she exists.

Rain
Lofi

Careless
Timeless

Hopeful
Remembrance

Midst
Splashing Sounds

I
love
The way
You shuffle me

The way
You fall

On me
And all around

I'm Convinced
That after the last fence post ends
Just over the edge

That around the corner beyond the meadow
Is the end

And beyond that
Is rain

Endless and resting
Forever to be parted from the sky

Until the new life comes
And I am refreshed

It is then
And within

Would you explore with me?
Until our own end?

This sound is like volins more gentle than snow
Like starlight twinkling, streaking and cold
Like hair strung strings on the breezy frame of a chello
Like the earth axe tapping at copper and coal
Like the most beautiful rain on the blind boys face
Like the artist envisioning the most timeless of place
Like the linger puddle with a glimmering sheen
I find this song goes beyond all that once was serene

When all my battles are won and done
I will not fear the fight that was
So why worry about the swing of the sword
Before the sun of that day is even in my eyes
Why worry indeed

Inanimate
How much easier it would be, to be
Or so at least I like to think
When my mind runs away from the building of me
Like a brick I fall
Like a block I sink
Hopefully back into place
But if it's not for me
Would you tear me apart God brick by brick?
And build me as I was meant to be?

I want to want her like a glass of wine
With an endless taste, and a deep draft
Waiting for me at the end of each day

Bitter and sweet like the summer tea  
With a hint of dandelions, and her hair brushed gently away   

Although this is me...you need not see, or want her in a similar way
But it's best if you could acquire the taste.

Because when you hold an endless glass
You can sit and sip your life away
Without care or concern for those moments past

Slowly like a semisweet
A Merlot or Chardonnay

How I want to want her like a glass of win
So that I can drink her in
And be drunk on her at the end of each day

It's a cocktail in which memory mixes with sensation and sound. To become even moreso drunk on you. In the remind of those moments once shared, in that certain, southern, American town.

I pick you up,
Ever so gently.
And lift you onto a chair in front of me.

Taller than me now you are,
And on my toes I have to reach,
To greet your face.

Most quietly,
With enchanted eyes,
And steady passion,
I kiss your cheek.

Not once but twice,
So that you might know,
The boy I’ve been,
And the man I’ll always be.

The present standing in front of you,
The past surrounding most of me.

No one to witness,
Or tell the tale.

Or even explain,
Why I love your cheeks.

Thin like the willow
Grey as the dove

Quiet as the wind beneath which pesters the cat floats the wings and sweeps the city streets clean of debris

Dark as the asphalt
Soft as the paws

Lean like meat
Old like soil
And slick like oil as it drips from beneath

Shaking like the bedrock
The running water whips

Damp as the corners
And dry as your eyes
It slips

And where asphalt meets the mossgrown bricks
Corners are placed and worlds collide

And the man within is locked away
Within the metaphorical city street

Would the Central Park I know and love, return to me?
In all such glory

The Willow trees

When did I let this vocation of mine?
Which I've worked so hard for
Become the main reason and meaning of me?

When exactly did it happen
That my passion slipped and fell to the ground
Like the seasons passing on an endless tree?

I said I wouldn't forget once I had
I said many things of myself back then
Be it most confident or most arrogantly

A vow is a vow to those who uphold
But what are the words to the man within?
Who forgets himself in his own externalties

A beautiful notion isn't it?
Ironic even
The thought of waiting here like this
As if the act is somehow blessed with ease
When all around you is in motion
And you are as unstirring as the trees
Rooted deep within the mind
Looking at the other side
And seeing the blissful, beautiful ignorance
How often I wish it could be mine
That I had no such standards as this
And that I could swallow such a feeble line
Just like a fish
Nibbling on a willow wisp
In an ocean seemingly full of fish

Believe me…

I respect such idealism as this
Because I live with it
But to “just wait” and stay like this
At present holds little hope for me
Both to and from this someone else
There is no transfer, or passage of peace

Because these few years feel like an eternity

And so the term…
“The right one?”
Makes want to say...
“Oh please.”

Think of what you want the most
To share with another human being
And if you can’t envision your lover there
Simply being
It will never be so

She tasted like the atmosphere
Deep, dark, and blue as the moon
Distant as the fading star in the northern most hemisphere
And yet each time I tasted her
I was reminded that there was no oxygen to be had in her

Your heart
Inspires my heart
To beat

To breathe steam clouds onto cold windows
To feel the distant sunlight rise into Peachtree skies

The sound, the hum
Of you a lone
Tunes my ears to hear
My thoughts to song

With its quiet corridors and cushioned chest
Rising like the waves of a coastal long

Soughing whispers in the subtle trees
Midst the waiving of the Auburn leaves

Our hopes a final parting leaf
On this, the last day of October joy

Know this

Your heart
Inspires my heart
To beat

From now until at last
Our distance is no more
We meet

I have been focused and growing
I have been strong
But now I see it's not the time
Nor the place
To build you a house
Or a home in which I belong

When the newness wears off
And the distraction is no longer distracting enough
Where will you go?
In order to be reminded
That you are not alone?

Please
Don’t ever think that you’re alone
That no one has seen with similar eyes
Or could understand the initial confusion
That is, Inside

After writing like this for many years
As a poet-try
You cannot help but grow a good bit
Like a poet-tree