When I fade away
By the cold grip of death
Clenching my conflicted flesh
Left only in memories and words

Take my body, the scars and all
Read them well, and sing my song
Life is a gifted lyric, a bittersweet muse
She wrote a world of wonder in my bones

She was dying
I was sent away
She died
I returned

Admire the mire
Mind the matter

But dont wallow in worry.
For perception is pain.

Duplication is devious.
Smiles are sinister.

Bring on the beginning.
Endure unto the end.

Darkest are the days.
Nightmarish as the nights.

Ghouls of old gestalt.
Rise to revenge.

Time is taken.
Lord of lies.

I've not known the feeling

Nor can I even concieve

The notion of being whole.

Selling my brand months at a time

Interested parties holding auctions

Unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge

The stock in future  endeavours

So now I exist in 2nd hand memories

In the back of the mind, or the attic

Covered in dust, overexposed

A monument to my regrets

Alliteral allure.
Boundaries bottomless.
Controlled cantor.
Deities demonize,
Ethereal epiphanies.
Future forfeits,
Gravity's grandiose.
Humility heckles,
Indignant ideologies.
Jealousy's jungle,
Karated killers.
Lunacy's lovers,
Maddened martyrs.
Noise, never,
Only omens.
Purgatory persuasion,
Quintessential qualms.
Revenge, revenge.
Sultans suffer.
Tyrants terror.
Unilateral understanding.
Violent venom,
Worn wonderfully.
Xenogogue's xenial,
Youthful yearlings.
Zombie zealots.

I woke up in the Mirror World,
Came down with flu, overslept,
Was late to work, I picked myself up,
And managed, as I often do.
But it was all a dream.

This one's a tad too close to home,
Though slightly askew.
Not the first time, won't be the last.
I skate just outside this reality,
Bending to its happenings.

The consequences, the consequences.
I wake up, slightly before my alarm,
I don't oversleep, but I'm sick, I feel it.
And I'll go to work and interact the same.
Carryout a reflected conversation,
Of a world that was just a dream.

All of this, while holding on to sanity.

To be tethered to a lover is a dangerous game.
A cord of boundless strength winds deep,
Between the flesh and blood of the heart.

When stress rises in you, so too in I.
When depression grows within one, it becomes two.

And yet happiness too, does bloom.
Though not today, nor anytime soon.

We live on the fringe of happiness, my skinny love.

We live on the promise of maybes or never.

I’d sever the cord, if you could be free.
Though we both know that could never be.

This story has been written.
Now we play the parts.
We suffer in the moment.
We live for tomorrow’s maybe.
Time will liberate us.
So it shall be, so it shall be.

I wash my demons down with the local brews

Looking out the window panes of dreary nights and days of rain.

A guy and his guitar sing soft beats and sets the evening mood.

His fingers strum the delicate strings, as the music calls to me.

The second round comes and I'm in despair,

As the words that flow leave me gasping for air

The truth in a strangers tune, run down into each stroke of my pen

Here I go again, setting the nightmares free.

We shared stories as the hours passed by.
Each secret detail, leading to more intimate detail.
Hearing each others mistakes, failures, blunders..
It is an open invitation to share in the humility of the human condition.
We live within the tales of another, carefully refitting the pieces of each other.
So far from the picture we once held, but ever better, imperfect even.
The refined inadequacy is all the truth we ever needed.
For who would we be without them.

I understand that hatred of my enemies
I have felt the creeping parasite in my veins
The boiling blood which erupts in chest
Due to the ill of men, and their ignorance

I know why they hate me so, evil as they are
Poisoned words overflowing into my tranquility
Heartbeats choking agianst the toxic aroma
Conflicted struggle between vengence and justice

I hold fast vindictive appetites, for patient truths
An enemy with many faces, carved from lies
Can only be slayed with a revolution of knowledge
This wealth of mind, is the preservation of peace

The wakeful crimson spiderwebs,
Creep slowly to the golden rim of irises.
Red gloom explodes into the rot of exhaustion.
Sights scream in twilight, baying for dark curtains,
To envelop them in a cocoon of nurturing rest.

Keep pushing on, the cracks began to cackle.
Thunderous youth begins to flicker with new age.
White hot spring of passion, curdles in purple toxicity.
To be a walking corpse, dancing the days ensemble,
But deep within the bones, finality screams 'enough.'

Sweet slumber, always on the edge of tomorrow.
Won't you whisper this dreadful soul a lullaby.
Soothe the aches of day & age, slay this disease,
Burn away time, and exist in ecstasy.

She says, "Go on, tell me."

So I do, I talk about these devils.
That sudden swarm inside,
I speak of the paralyzing misbeat
Of a stressed out chest.

"That's your anxiety?"

It takes me over, controls me,
Helpless behind a steering wheel
Of a maniac's mania driven horror
But I'm stuck for the ride.

"And who is this other?"

Nameless. Just a foul thing.
There were others, masks
A sea of voices, drowning me out
High tide and its sink or swim

"Go on."

When I'm calm, its quiet.
But I know they slither on,
The engrainimg entrenching thoughts
Of cruelty thats not my own.

"You're afraid?"

I'm wandering about the darkness
With fiendish things in mind
A pitiful puppet of anxiety
Waiting for the end of times

Dawn breaks,
Wind rages,
The crow caws thrice.

Marvel at the poet's sin,
Bardic Rule of Law,
Inspiration at Death's Maw.

Deep pockets of space-time,
Treasured energies and auras.
Always looking outward, never within.

Universe, overture of divine sadness.
Humanity, limerick of contained madness.
Bound infinitely in harmonic chaos.

Rivers run rampant.
Time tinkers tides.
Vengeful voids vie.
Worlds wither woefully.

And yet, endless and forever,
The iridescence of written word,
Bends all things against discord.

I decided to make council,
With the restless thoughts
Who so loudly impose their
Selfish will, stealing all sanity.

Mind goes dark, rekindled.
A chorus of ill, surrounds the hold.
Farther, at the castles court,
The loudest voices quarrel

Those of past, present, and future.
Essence of good, bad and indifferent.
Hands drawn with wild cards.
But no full house or flush to play.

They've taken notice, grins gone wide.
For the anarchist win, this game of pride.
An outcast falls, over and out the wall.
To scream the song of wanting.

Eyes open, light returns, palavar done.
None the wiser, but the time has come.
It works slowly, in effort's guise.
Rework the master, or meet demise.

I travel from room to room
Searching through the Saturday rush,
the Downtown Bars.

A beautiful brunette, with a twinkle
In her eyes, held me, just a gaze,
Gentle, understanding, knowing.

It was all swell, we rejoiced,
In sugar words, with silver tongues
Though, now she's lost in the crowd.

My journey through sweat, lust and *****,
Takes me here and there
Places of eerie recollections, an ominous familiarity.

Some far different from the rest,
All the while feeling like home, but rotten
This is a dream, or a nightmare.

These are not doors, I walk within the past.
Searching for a girl, not wanting to be found.
So I lay her to rest, closing the door behind me.

There are no what ifs,
In the sea of the could haves.

For what should,
Certainly would.

Leaving only,
What is, to be.

I'm living on borrowed time
Sleeping on tomorrow's time
Most days I'm very particular about sleep.
About six and a half hours does the trick.

This evening we decided to share wine, two bottles.
Spur of the moment decision, it was only Monday.

(Is this what it feels like, a real relationship)

We laugh, we talk, she holds me, I return the favor.
Later, we make love for the first time.

She's been waiting, but so have I, for the first time.
I'm mesmerized, I take it slow, I want it to last.

We are open, we are honest.
I feel safe, so very unlike me.

There is no anxiety about this,
There is no self destruction.

She stays awhile, we exist in each others comfort.
She leaves, I walk her out, we say our goodbyes.

And I'm left thinking, I'm happy.
I'm thinking, its been such a long time.

So I've forfeited some sleep, in the hour of the lover.
To bring forth and borrow more tomorrows.

I wrote a symphony once
in the dying light of my mind.
It was beautiful,
brought tears to my eyes.

The profoundness led me through corridors,
there I was lost in madness.
Enveloped in my experience
onward I traveled.

Tearing at my flesh, talons pierce me.
Darkness, my friend, always there
destroying mind and body.
Tainting my soul, its poison,
Slithers through my veins.

Halted at the edge of my journey
This evil holds my heart hostage
grasping harder and harder
light is clear, yet I am stone.

Pride destroyed, beaten
by fiendish devotions.
Door closes, pain paralyzes.
My humanity shatters like glass
Leaving reflections behind permanently.

The Clock strikes three days until Madness.
An itch of a Tick and every Toc.

The Question of old simmers in the Mind.
A Deviant is only half the Answer.

The Cursed Weapon is drawn at the Ready.
Words offer no Reason or Resolve.

The Golden Feather succumbs to the Crimson.
Yielding all Truth to die as Fiction.

Golden Gates of freedom
The apple of my eye
So delicious and fruitful
But this dream has gone rotten
With worms festering
In chained up wounds
Looking to the horizon
Answers inch slowly away
Yet, ash and bones, remain
Monuments to the forgotten

There existed a haunted cathedral
The eerie tune of the Grand piano
Resonated with deaths call for harvest
Bells echoed into the endless night

Running to escape into the darkness
The courtyard labyrinth is cruel
For no one can leave, when the bells toll
Creatures writher at the night mares moan

The keepers creep through desolate halls
Lanterns lit with soulless smiles
Eager to feast on the lost and hopeless
Ah, this monolith is hell, the end is here

I've not lived a day, the same man
As the day before.

Nor do I live now, intending to be
Anything less than more.

I found a voice, for silent screams

They sang of yesterdays, prayed for todays
And died for tomorrows.

I found a voice, for silent screams

They sang of yesterdays, prayed for todays
And died for tomorrows.

Hush now, lay down to rest.
Haunt the Earth no more.
Your children, are my children
Your dreams, are my dreams

Sun rising, we March to Freedom

The liquidity of rage, swoons like a red ocean.

It is a tidal fury that rises, rises, rises.

Within its climatic ascension, exist an anxious torture.

Thoughts rush in, pacing on what conclusions will come.

These waves have come before, the carnage is extreme.

And while the destruction strikes the shore, the bastions will stand.

Ruin though, shall come, and each storm stands testament to that reality.

The walls will fall, and all will breathe a final sigh of relief, at the end.

I wish to own a magic quill
With magic ink and vibrating trill

Colorful calligraphy to map my mind
A revolving world to leave my sign

Short stories, thoughts and imagination
Floating allures of determination

Compose a sea of words to illustrate
Then pass the pen to facilitate

Artisitic culture and tangled rhymes
A healthy recipe to ease the times

Severed strings. I dangle free.
Master only to psychopathy.

Take it all. Every crutch.
Can’t manipulate,
What you cannot touch.

It seems forever and a time ago.
Since I felt, this sinister darkness
Haunt my bones, insidiously ethereal.
Outgrown, and overshadowed but,
Only temporary was the night.

In a search for self, after voiceless screams
Bled their emptiness into any word muttered.
Perhaps, I was fooled into the harmony
That this evil muse had whispered.
Her hast soul shattering tune.

Forewarned in foreshadows, nightmare's gleam.
The stability of my present, was the demise
Of my former. And I fade into the black.
A pale silhouette in the story of character
Marionette to this mutineer.

Let's talk time.
My time, it cannot be bought.
My time cannot be leveraged.
You cannot assert yourself,
Imposing your time, money or effort,
With the expectation I owe you a thing.

I'll respect your time,
But you best respect mine.

Though that's never been the case,
Power has been your tool, to buy the time,
Of those you could not even give a second.

So all these years later, when I've mastered time.
When I've learned to control, bide and enjoy, time.
You cannot, waste time, my precious time,
Nor can you come back and expect my time.

Before, I wrote of Masks.
Mutilated stories of written flesh.
A carnal retelling of misfortune,
In the pages I wore upon my face.

Now, I am just another Mask.
A solo sonnet amongst scoreless faces
Beyond them, a broken boy
Hostage to disharmony.

Mania is like a wave,
High tide, and I'm drowning.
I take on water, feel it fill my lungs.
As the pressure builds, I fade into white.

I'm riding the wave, a ******* tsunami.
But no, that's not quite right,
I'm a part of the wave, this rage,
This powerful force of insanity.

And there lies the shore, closing in.
If I was of right mind, surely,
I would at least hope to cry pardon.
But I'm not, I see the imminent crash,
Only laughing, maniacally.

With thunderous approval the shoreline
Falls, within the vast ocean beneath me.

When the waves pick up,
When they come crashing down,
They ring with power, but mostly pain.

So I'm left in this basin of contamination.
The sewage of mind eats away the euphoria,
Leaving cancerous tumors of depression.
Now growing rampant, and lingering.

The tide in time recedes, the world grieves.
Sometimes there is healing, though often
There is only suffering and the waiting.
Knowing for any better or for worse,
The tug of war between the shores
Of mania and depression, goes on.

Three steps
One! Two! Three!
I pushed off
Into the air
Shocked to find
A building or two
Falling beneath me
Momentum gaining
The world began to shrink
Clouds began to kiss my cheeks
I was gone,
                      and I never came back!

Is it such a terrible dilema
To be torn between two
Roads in which opposing
Realities compete for existence

Should I be so common
Or with a key to the unknown
Do I open the lock of life
And achieve the unexcpected

Nostalgia has a deathgrip
A noose of fonder times
Chokes out the potential
In dreams which have yet to come

I dare to be unpredictable
To, with hesitation now passed,
Conquer the life unlived
Willingly, regretting nothing.

How much pressure before it breaks
Tempered glass, reflects the gaze
Of disgust, and anger, and love.
Empty eyes consume
Falling deeper into darkness
The muddled, tired soul.

I beg for attrition
The hate of each blow
Mirrored with regret.
Slowly giving way to
False freedoms.
Bound by the sins of father's.

A lineage of failed expectations
Cycle new objects of disappointment
Rising against patriarchal masters
Falling inevitably to new fruits
Of the poisoned family tree.

A label is the weapon of Hate
Written swiftly to defend those worthy
And quicker still to condemn the unworthy

A label is to confine within a spectrum
To be anything but it to be exceptional
To be anything but it to be forgotten

When two men of evil intent strike
But one is white, he is called by his trades
But one is black, he is called by his crime

When two men of good save the day
But one is white, he is a hero
But one is black, he is gone with the wind

This narrative of Hate's design
Sets in place a story void of fact
But a story which becomes fruition

This sinister tale becomes a holy book
For which people stake and claim lives
A fairy tale with real and cruel consequences

These labels, while beautiful in diversity
Simultaneously enforce the war of US vs. THEM
Compliance in such a story, is Ignorance's Finest Hour

There is no equal to me.
I crave to be flesh
in your weakness, chains
break, as I leak into
deep chasms of your mind.

Suppressed, cynical isolation
True fears pervert
painful truths.
Embrace my existence
as it floods into your body

Every breathe you take in
I chill from the shadows.
Where we know this
sickness, taking over,
has no end.

Offer no escape
as Death makes way
only to accept this
fiendish and violent form.

Little Fire Dancer,
twirling about the night
These eyes mesmerized,
by the fiery performance

Exotic acrobatics
And a luminous soul
The danger in the motiob
Is transparent

Illusory beauty fades
Into flames of destruction
Footprints singe the ground
With elegant and tainted grace

This tango is a one way ride
Immersed in the fever
Step by step we burn
So brightly

Until this malevolent enchantress
Becomes one with a whisper
And I am left the only casualty,
Burned.

I'm dreaming
I wake up
I'm a phantom
I feel it all
I'm lucid
I breath existence

I'm dreaming
I see white
I'm flowing
I grow skywards
I'm humbled
I begin to wake

I'm dreaming
I see the sun
I'm trying
I can't hold on
I'm failing
I sleep no more

I am walking, with my father.
To what he assumes will be a reconciliation.
I entertain the idea with insincerity.
I'll not walk down that fool's road again.

I see a group of women, a bachelorette party.
One approaches, she asks who will I be for the night.
She says she'll be someone or another.
I think about this, whats the harm in being lost in otherness.
But for the moment I must go, I'm off to a party.

I'm in a stadium, alone at first, then the rows fill.
Friends, loved ones, circled around the stage.
My friend, my brother is next to me, then is front and center.
He announces the celebration, gathering here for a friend.
Its happy, we reminiscence, I embrace it for the moment.
Sadness, I know is on the horizon.

I see it clearly, I know how a story goes.
Another friend, belly full of liquor stumbles home.
He draws a hot bath, as death prepares to takes its grips.
I feel this, I feel him slip, I feel him begin to drown.
I'm coming, but not fast enough, I'll arrive and he'll be dead.

But, there's a chance, through will, I become him.
With every ounce of drunken strength I pull us out of death.
We catch our breath, crawling for the bed, until I arrive in flesh.
There are dogs all over his place, and a hell hound, chained.
He wore a devil's mask and knew me to be a false man.
Just in time, I barge through the door and catch my friend in rest.
Spared for the time being, for doom is coming.

I leave him in his slumber, returning to the darkening skies.
I see a group of fallen youth, a loyal band of thieves.
They run and taunt the night, the disillusion of innocence.
I feel I must warn them, but time and words have escaped me.
Reality sets in, in the form a a car screeching, peeling away.
I know too well whats to come, instinctively, I run.
White light, red-orange fire, kaboom.

I come to, choking on the blackened ash filling the air.
I see charred bodies of those far less lucky than me.
I wonder how I am alive, but I know better, its rotten.
I crawl through the destruction, and try to regain myself.

Months go by, and again and again the bombers come.
At first, I feel they're hunting me, but they must know I live.
That such methods to thwart me are ineffective.
But that mustn't be the case, no it must not be at all.

And in truth I know this, the chase in this direction is obvious.
I realize it the reverse is true,  I am drawn to the chaos.
I go where death is sure to come, even in my undying.
I wake up, with that mystery in mind.
I hate the realism in such dreams.
I hate I will never know why.
I hate that this is the end.

Do not be baited
Into the notion
That because
Things could be worse
That they are somehow better

Do not give into the idea
That we are somehow past
The mistakes of nations before us
We are always a moment away
From Ancient Rome, fickle and meek

Do not listen to such beliefs
That things will just get better
Hanging onto hope is a stagnant dream
True change is revolution
But they want monotony to be the game

I'm falling apart,
I'm living a lie
I'm dancing with a crooked smile
Feel the beat, taste the high
Drink your poison, embrace the night

Soft are your lips, buried in my chest
Fingers in your hair, tears break silence

We laugh, we cry, I tell you I'm dying
To confess my madness, or was it sadness

A typhoon, a thunderstorm, all hell breaks loose
I let go, I fall into a rude little slumber

Tired eyes flutter, night creeps into day
Ready to serve my desires once more

The words slide through me.
Disconnected lacking comprehension
Old times rush forward, focused
Shattering into mirrors of memories

Disbelief overwhelms me.
Questioning my every action
Tears stream down my face.
Every moment holding more weight.

We are fragile,
The world dies around us.
We fade into a foolish fantasy
Until the crippling pain of lose
Comes crashing home.

R.I.P. PJ Cleary

Where is everyone off to in a hurry..?
Why am I still waiting..?

The solemn sea swells
Consuming the sorrow
Black petals drift into
The vast ocean of souls
Bad news and crushing blows
Drowning out in the undertow

I reach out and pound on the glass.
I scream to the world, fist bleeding,
Voice scratching into hoarse whispers.

Everyone. They all move...on.

The roads diverged. And I’m on every path.
But more importantly I’m on none.

I pour a cold one down my throat
To subdue the rage, or perhaps anxiety
Underlying and insidious.
Though more likely to swallow, with it
Regret. The small things, and the large.

I suppose it does not really matter,
Regarding to relevancy. But I drink,
I write and then I reminisce.
The past, her lips, and the discussions.
Yet, never quite feeling able enough
To be. Vulnerability, it escapes me.

And as one memory passes onto another,
Never does it become anything less
Than meaningful. Each moment
Shining as a star to define the
Indefiniteness which both calls to me,
And more accurately eludes all
That I wish to be.

Too often, we wish for things,
which fill us full of regret.

Too often, we become the things,
which fill us full of dread.

Too often, too often,
this nightmare persist,
Too often.

Too often, I am at the mercy
of this madness.

Too often, it swells within my heart,
incapacitating me.

Too often, I lay in feverish pain,
a prisoner of anxiety.

Too often, too often,
I wander into darkness,
Too often.

Too often, I become this awful wretch,
this terror

Too often, I beg,
to be set free.

Too often, and its always,
Too often enough.

“A nail in the coffin, such a significant mark.”
Said the dead man walking,
with a hole in his heart.

But the nail was his weapon,
his sword, his pen.
Sheathed within his own body,
his life, his friend.

So day after day, as stress grew,
as life came.
He welled up all the words,
which sang.

All of this, blood, sweat and tears.
Until the fool realized all his lost years.

He yearned to draw the blade once more,
and so did it pour,
all the words and shame
he had to his name.

So the ink flowed, his life blood,
his prose.
Always to write again, his blooming
red rose.

Just outside the sea stained window,
An ocean swells into divine ascension.

Blue heaven.
Blue hell.

The impending crash will never come.

The crescendo of my muse
Strikes swiftly on heavy eyelids
Vibrating the hypnotic frequency
I transmute into reality

Humming machines scream out
Calling me from an aquatic slumber
Preserved from a dying world
To become prisoner in a land of dreams

Delusions immobilize my captive body
Force feeding lies, an unwilling glutton
Heretics of day become prophets of night-
Mares, praying to awake the awoken