I have not been well lately
But I have a secret to tell you
It’s a success story: my most secret success
You see, I’m very skilled in crafting holes
And I’ve punched a massive hole
Right through the middle of my life

Please, don’t mistake this accomplishment for the result of talent
This is a skill and it takes practice to master
I went to college and learned to turn theories and ideals from basin to sieve
I learned to critique everything hopeful
And punched a hole right through the heart of hope
I honed my ability to close out creativity
I built a track down which to guide concrete linear thoughts
And I learned to use said thoughts as a battering ram with which to
Knock a hole in the barricaded door to dissatisfaction

And, though this skill is often practical
As you know, one cannot walk around wearing an open hole
So, a corresponding skill has successfully emerged
In parallel with nurturing voids
I have learned to conceal each and every hole
Sometimes with a thick canvass and
Sometimes with a paper-thin veneer
I may have learned to wrap a package
And to tie a bow
With the express purpose of packaging
The broken gift of life
Full of ugly holes

And, now, all that is left to complete the perfect ending to this success story
Is to grow old in a neatly kept apartment
Filled with the unseen haunts of relationships neatly hole-punched and
Filed in a hidden mental cabinet
Next to a night stand where I keep my phone and glasses
And across from the bed
There will be a glass trophy case
Full of trophies denoting various acceptable successes
But, just between you and I
The largest trophy denoting the largest success
Will be a lifetime achievement award
Bestowed for hollowing out what could have been
A beautiful life.

Though my soft, floured heart were of beating bread
For each raven to peck crumbs in morning
Bleeding from wheaten wounds, I do, instead
Loose each door, pull back curtain adorning

First light, through open window, in you fly
A yellow songbird with speckled, pale breast
Though sweet your voice and innocent your eye
An empty plate now lies within my chest

For you thieve bread from hunger, like the rest

Search out no lie in words that follow
Though, lie and liar have come before
A child’s dose is smooth to swallow
Packaged, pretty endings from the store
Even homes lined with white picket fence
Are filled with macabre, bright-eyed babes
Soon, they’re taken without recompense
None forbearing of life’s costly wage

Don’t you see?
There is no happiness in ending
The promises of life that cheer me
Keep facades of continuity
That’s why the message that I’m sending
Is of pleasure that an old soul takes
Always looking into the same face
And of the heartfelt pain that severs
Spring lovers lost to winter’s weather
So, when seasons turn, shall we follow

The courtiers guide this frenzied waltz
Through strange and tightly spun ellipses
And, knowing this dance and all its faults
My account has strained into thesis

It seems some, stoic toward our fate
And fixated always on an end
Come to ever practice means of pain
To remind them that indeed they live
As the coupled who attack their mates
As a child draws blows he cannot fend
As a young girl pulls steel cross her veins
Sin against self, hardest to forgive
Yes, so they won’t have to look inward
So he won’t have to fight what’s inside
So her pain is seen, but never heard
Thus, old wounds live without parting wide

So, you see?
There is beauty in our suffering
It is filled with tales of honesty
And, though it’s a morbid offering
I hope some smile at its honesty
With each little piece of me that dies
Drowned inside this bottle that I hold
I try to douse the flames of old lies
‘Cause there’s still some story to be told
And where we go, no words can follow

Often, we masquerade behind words without weight
Words that coldly costume our minds, but rob our warmth
I know you’ve euphemized, for me, speech forged in hate
Just as my mouth belies each loving thought I form

When burdened, your mask slips to lay bare hidden eyes
Eyes flatly calm, though agleam with muted malice
While I’m a hypocrite to disclose webs and lies
Still, our beloved ones should not act at loving us

My rarest friend, please, know that to my heart you’re near
And the sword you have carried is a pointless one
For I fall on my own, year after wounded year
I chastise on behalf of all when day is done

So, if the veil grows too heavy, then let it fall
Your shrewdly made disguise does not relieve my pain
The truth can never cut like secrets, after all
There are furtive daggers in the smiles you have feigned

We are all alone, and I, in suit, am alone
And I’m still not sure where life’s path will lead, my friend
Maybe to a lover or child with to atone
Someone real whose hand I’ll hold in my story’s end

Spryly aim your pointed arrow
Draw forth vaulted courage
Call to the depths of your medal
Bend intent at its course and surge

And fire the truest
Most molten affect.

Promptly shape the tensing sinews
Of your malcontent
Harness your tirades
Beckon they be throat-stead rent

And spit a righteous
Incendiary word.

Nimbly wear the Fool’s hat
With a brackish pride
Wag a wanton finger
At the reign of compromise

And singe the cowards
For their hesitance.

Quickly give your last
Before the thought of lapse
Push the outer limits
Of every giving synapse

And save nothing
For the faintest spark of excess.

And if these processes
Seem weirdly foreign
Or misfit within
The best of commonplace

There is a name
For this noble haste

Good Speed.

what ghastly filters we carry
behind our eyes
and under our skin
how powerful the voices in our heads
to assign order and category

our world is spectacular
the spectacle of nature
tireless, overwhelming
glorious
and then I arrived
so important
as to shut out the glory

I works not
to see things as they are
I wants to analyze
to convince, dissuade
and deconstruct
I is busy
after all
there is so much happening now
not pertaining to I
needing to be filtered out
I needs room
to ruminate

I would surely be unemployed
unneeded, forgotten
if we get distracted
powerless stow-aways of life’s theater
and it must be
the old man inside my head
is afraid of the dark