Cheek to cheek
Ear to ear
Fake this smile
Hide my fear

Behind a mask
Of non-revealing
Lies a tomb
Of buried feeling

Deep within
A rotten core
The good has died
There is no more

All that's left
Is pain remaining
Hidden by
The joy I'm feigning

Empty, hopeless
Gaping hole
Wretched, worthless
Blackened soul

Longing for
Illumination
Falling for
The Dark's temptation

Mitigate
My need to die
Perpetuate
Contention's lie

Forget my face
End this charade
Remove this guise
I have portrayed

My heart is a watering can
with patched up holes.
There is rust around its edges
but it's full to the brim.
I've poured it out
over dry dirt;
nothing ever sprouted
save a few shoots that soon shriveled.
I refilled it each time, trying a new.
Finally, I've tipped it,
sprinkling over my love for you,
and to my deepest delight
a garden grew.

If you can't whistle it
it isn't a song.*
Wise words once emanating
from false teeth
and a liquorice addiction.
He took tooth picks to flick
the grit from beneath nails,
inhaled just before a snore.
One war, two dogs, three sons,
and a wife that shaved his face
when he was in a coma.
He was a little late on the draw,
always saying things out of context,
then he'd wink at me, crack a grin,
fall asleep before the conversation ended.
I like to think that he is just
snoozing away, drifted off in the middle of a talk,
and someday he'll start up with a grunt
as if nothing ever happened.

She has big dreams
filled with London and New York,
acting, musicals, on stage, spot light,
and she's chasing them down,
a huntress in a red dress,
they don't have a chance.
She gets what she wants,
no one can resist her,
all the guys and girls are dying to kiss her.
She could have anyone by simply
beckoning with her finger.
When she steps in a room
it's all eyes on her, but her eyes on me.
Oh God can't she see
that the whole world's in love with all that she does?
Her touch is electricity
shocking me back from a life of complacency,
the voltage between us charging
both our batteries.
All the others who want her,
who might try and ****** her,
they don't really matter.
She can leave for three months,
be set on by handsome men and gorgeous women,
but they can't do what I can if she gives me the chance.
I can dance to her beat,
I keep up in the sheets,
I love her in the bedroom,
on stage, in the streets,
I love her, I love her,
and it's so hard to believe,
but she,
she,
she loves
me?

I keep seeing myself running towards his arms
And crashing into his chest
Like a wave spilling onto a beach,
A mess of salt, seafoam and sand.

To feel the warmth of his chest on my cheek
Would calm all these storms
And soothe all these waves.
Oh, to just feel his flesh.

When I reach for him, I find only empty spaces,
A wave spilling back into the ocean.
No sand, no flesh; only space.
I expected you to stay.

Expecations spell out heartache
In the strangest way.

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another’s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be—
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands

to my darling who feels she's not:
our separation is mere illusion.
truly, your pain strikes me as i write this;
your sensations of abandonment,
and the decisiveness they have caused,
bleed from my skin into the fibers of my clothes.
i am no longer clean.
i do not feel pure.

to my severed arm and shortened tendons:
destruction is merely another side of life.
out of disappearance comes all things-
without space, there would be nothing to contain us,
nothing to allow and enfold our beings' spirits,
and they would sputter and cease like my love's flame.
i am no longer yours.
i do not feel full.

to the farthest star that my eyes can see:
your light reaches me- i glimpse you!
in the perceived emptiness between us
there is no distance to be found;
around us exists the infinite potential for
further connection and deeper growth in closeness.
i am no longer alone.
i do not feel sorrow.

And I want to tell her that I understand
what it feels like to be fake, insignificant,
and a shadow on the sidewalk of society.

And I want to tell her that I also borrow
the experiences of others --
that I, too, learn feelings
by stopping and staring at personal wreckage,
like a tourist of emotions,
like an inevitable wish of a human being.