Of all our modern sorrows
Few compare to the sadness of happening  
   upon a space
Once beautiful in its solitude
Now sullied by man and his ever-spreading  
   civilization

Meet me where the sidewalk ends and the highway begins
Somewhere between the endless showers of spring and the changing shades of autumn
A place I once knew like the back of my hand
resting under yours
Where we could have sat in silence for all of eternity
If time had slowed down or stood still
But seasons shifted

Tonight
Wrapped in the dying light of the setting sun, I close my eyes
And fall off the face of the earth and back
Into your arms

The cars crawl by, their headlights projecting shadows that slip across the ceiling. I lie motionless below, following them with tired eyes until they fade. A house filled now with sleeping souls, I savor the silence. I think of you in your empty house and your unmade bed and the space you left in mine. You'll never know how often you occupy my mind.

Cold-cracked skin and brittle bones
A long walk alone, followed only by shadow
Snow snakes across pavement, piles up
Weight is shifted, feet carefully lifted
The sky now violet with the dying of twilight

Failed attempts and familiar faces
I only ever come back as myself
I've been left out in the rain, left for dead
I've been wearing out my skin instead of in
I've been sleeping on concrete and an empty stomach
I mostly sleep alone now

The night sky is scarred with tattered strands of clouds
Eternal darkness interrupted only by muted moonlight
The wind whispers of winter, an inevitable return
To the beginning, the end

The way the late afternoon light bleeds into the room
through the window
spilling onto the furniture, the thread-bare floor

The shadows of passers by slip in
the space between the door and the ground
their movement swift, silent

The heaviness of limbs and emptiness of head
in sickness and in lack of sleep
the shifting of weight, season

All that's between us right now is a flight of stairs and
Some words we've been meaning to say, but have been
Putting off and saving for a day that might never come

I could run away or
Run into your arms or
I could just stay under the covers where I'm safe and warm and alone

You've stuck with me a couple years now,
but I've been stuck with myself much longer
I've tried my luck and I've tried to leave, but I've never tried hard enough

I haven't found a place for myself yet because they're all taken
And you haven't asked, but if you're wondering
I'm doing well out here, but I'd be better off somewhere else

Summer was spent chasing sunsets. We held on tightly to the last light of day as it slipped between the cracks in our fingers. We traveled anywhere the highways were willing to take us and passed through an infinity of small towns, each identical to the last, but growing smaller all the time. I learned to love you under endless blue skies seen from the passenger side window and in your shattered mirror, shards of glass barely hanging on. On cloudy days, we hid away in my freezing basement behind closed doors and under mountains of blankets. We shut the world out and made our own in which we felt we could belong. We would lie for hours, limbs intertwined, so close we became one. We were there, in that place, in that way, in that moment, frozen in time for all of eternity.

I'm peeling off the dead layers of skin that have been weighing me down and I'm sewing all my empty pockets shut. I've given up searching for whatever it is I lost. I don't know where I'm headed, but I'm finally moving forward. This isn't who I am or who I hope I'll become, but it's the best I can do for now. I still can't put my thoughts into words and I'm still hitting the notes off key, but I'm getting closer all the time. I won't let the loneliness get to me like it did before. I'm better off on my own. These days are coming to an end and I'm trying to make the most of them. I'm learning to carry on as if you were still breathing.

Outgrown human shells litter the earth, emptied and abandoned long ago. I've planted mine and watered it, but nothing has sprouted yet. We grow out of, but never into. I peel apart in layers and I'm starting to wonder when I'll reach the last one, or if I already have. The sandpaper skin underneath should be rough to the touch, but my hands are numb. I have to look down and make sure they're mine. I watch heat waves rise up from the cracks in the pavement and pass right through me. I offer no resistance, I have nothing left to give. I sold my soul for some peace of mind, but it hasn't been delivered yet. It's lost in transit somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow. The voice in my head tells me everything I need to know. I ask no questions because there are no answers. If there's no afterlife I don't want to die. If there's no end to this I don't want to live. I'll just keep on as I always have, drifting through gray tinted days and in and out of consciousness. I'm perfecting the art of invisibility. I see the ghosts of people all around me, but I have nothing to say to them. We're all just passing by, on our way to something else. Never something better, but at least never something worse. We won't know we're there until we're ready to move on.

The sky is three shades of blue tonight, fading into one another, creating layered horizons. I painted it myself with the hopes that someone would see and understand. Sometimes I think I'm the only one that can see the difference in the shades. Sometimes I forget that I have to share the moon. There are lights from cities in the distance filled with people that I'll never know the names of. Everyone lives a different reality.  I don't exist in any of theirs. This world around me is too big and open to take shelter in. I retreat to the safety of the forest, the only home I've ever known. There is a certain peace I cannot find anywhere else. I take comfort in the stillness and the silence. I climb to leave the world below and everything it holds behind. Only after my feet are no longer touching the ground do I feel truly free. I have longed to be held by the trees' branches, but never by you. You only take up space in my thoughts and leave me feeling a way I've never been able to put into words. I don't want to put it into words. I want back what is mine and all you've stolen from me. I'm not myself when I'm with you.

Shadows circle their captors without ever finding an exit. There isn't really a way out, but it's never stopped me from searching. I live under puddles of rainwater and in window reflections. Everything's backwards, so it makes more sense. Here time is slowed down and no one ever leaves. You never have to feel too much and not enough all at once. Your train of thought can be traced and you can always find your way back to the place you started. I don't know where I belong, if anywhere at all, but I have found a temporary home where I can rest my bones. I won't come up for air until I have to.

There is a certain heaviness to the air tonight. It fills my lungs with some indescribable feeling that I once had a name for. I know nothing save for the fact that I am completely alone in this concrete graveyard. Shadows of trees take on human form, their limbs bent at unnatural angles. Lights blur and my eyes lose focus.  Airplanes turn to stars, turn to dust, frozen in space, sending signals that cannot be read. Our frequencies travel at different speeds and in opposite directions. Intersection is unlikely, but I believe we will meet again, someday. There isn't a cloud in the sky that doesn't spell out your name. You have dove deep into the depths of my being. My thoughts are tainted, contaminated, and I can no longer separate them from yours. There is no peace of mind. You are the song stuck in my head, the stain on my shirt, the dirt under my fingernails. I head out onto the highway, into the oncoming stream of headlights. Nothing makes me feel more alive than being this close to death. This is me letting go, this is my release. I am here in this moment; you are lost in time.

Fields turn to concrete turns to buildings turn to cities turn to dust. Everything in this world is finite. **** or be killed. We are malignant cells multiplying and dividing, incurable, unstoppable. Where we go, death and destruction follow. They're right behind us, pushing to get ahead.

All we touch turns to stone, a grave marker for the earth. We are burying ourselves with it. Ashes and bones are the thrones of the new world. We don't learn from our mistakes, we build upon them.

There is a thirst that cannot be quenched, a hunger that cannot be satisfied. We devour everything in sight, but remain empty. If this is what it means to be human, I'd rather be the mud stuck on the bottom of a shoe, the trash blowing away with the wind, the roadkill abandoned on the side of a highway.

Spring has come around once again and the earth is awakening. Green has been painted over yellow ground and the trees stretch their barren branches to the sky praying for new life. The birds dance across the endless blue skies, announcing their return. The days are getting longer. The sun's rays pierce through the clouds. On certain days, I swear I can feel the wind pass right through me, as if I am nothing more than a shadow, a ghost. How I wish it would pick me up and take me with it. I think something inside of me went to sleep for the winter and never woke back up. Cut me open, tear me apart, and you'll find that I am merely a hollow shell, abandoned.

It's as if someone has painted the windows black, but it is only night, and has been for as long as I can remember. I cannot recall if I have gotten out of this bed today or not. These legs of mine are getting tired of carrying around all the extra weight from too many heavy thoughts. I try to smoke them away, but I just keep breathing them all back in. These cigarettes might **** me, but not if I beat them to it. The years keep adding up, but nothing else does. I'm done hoping for things to get any better. They never do.

The sinking of the mid-afternoon sun has yet to lose its magic, but our eyes are unable to recognize the beauty of this world in our old (enough) age. Our surroundings have not changed, but they have changed us.

We close our eyes, blinded by the sun's reflection in the shallow pools of water on the side of the road. With each car we pass, we are getting farther away from a place we once called home. Shadows stretch from barren tree branches and highway signs trying to hold onto the last light of day, but coming up short.  We all come up short in this life.

Our efforts are never enough to stop this dying planet from spinning around the sun once more, but we still try to at least slow it down so we can finally exhale and let go of the air we've been holding in our blackened lungs since the day we were born

It all moves too fast. One minute you've got your whole life ahead of you, and the next you've somehow ended up stuck in a failing relationship or working a job you hate. You never thought you'd make it past high school, and now you're on your own wishing you hadn't.

We're all just wanting someone to stay up with us on the nights when sleep is the last thing on our minds, but we always end up alone, watching the horizon fade to black. The night sky is starless and as empty as we are. Nothing has changed, but nothing's the same. We didn't grow up to be what we thought we would. The sun sets, but we cannot. We will still be awake to greet it in the morning of the next day of our never ending, meaningless lives.

As I am lying in my tree house alone on a Friday night, thoughts of death dance through my mind. I am shrouded in the dark of a starless sky, but unprotected from the sudden gusts of harsh winter wind that eat away at my exposed flesh. The cold of the outside world seems so irrelevant compared to the inside. Loneliness has found its home in this vacant heart of mine. The emptiness sinks in slowly, a little more with each blinding flash of headlights that pass by my driveway. The reality of the situation is that I come out here to be alone because I feel the most isolated when I am surrounded by people.

The harsh winter winds have returned, bringing with them memories of past times and places. Beauty has yet to be found in the frozen world around as the cold strangles anything left living. Night has overtaken day and we are surrounded in darkness, save for the hazy glow of the streetlamps. Snow falls silently, dressing the desolate city streets in white. Shelter is sought and found by the fortunate while others wither away on the pavement. This season is one of loneliness, for the emptiness swallows all whole. I have yet to know if I shall see the light of day again.

Back when I was a kid, the stretch of empty wasteland under a cloudless sky was my entire world. The sun was always out, beating down hot on my neck, and minus the occasional break, the cars kept on coming and the people kept on going. I hadn't yet a reason to believe that the highways had an end. I figured that if I kept walking, I'd somehow make it back to where I started. I never considered the possibility that I would run out of places to search for whatever it is I was looking for. If I would have known that nothing is infinite, I might have taken the time to remember the things I thought it wouldn't matter to forget.

Glowing orange tombstones litter a concrete graveyard. This highway is home to emptiness and breakdowns of both mind and machine. The blinding glare of the sunrise can be seen through rear view mirrors and squinted eyes. Shrines to lives lost long ago are scattered along the roadside at random. Living is merely being seconds away from death. You can drive forever, but never far enough to escape eternity.

Static sounds of home coming through the telephone
You are background noise to this empty room
I can hear your voice but it doesn't make you any closer
I don't think you could get much farther
All that's left connecting us is these phone lines
And I have a constant fear of cutting out
Someday the wires will fray, fall down
Maybe then you'll come home

Distant sounds drift in with the breeze
Faint recollections of opening a window surface
Voices float on streams of consciousness
In one ear and out the other
High frequency waves of vibrations shatter the silence
Body at rest, mind restless

Trampling green grasses under bare feet
Paths once crossed have since disappeared
Over barbed wire fences and across murky streams
The sun glares through cracks in the canopy
Time has yet to take hold in the wilderness
Humans have not brought destruction here

The low hum of the static surrounds me
I am drowning in sound
The waves penetrate my soul
Filling in every empty crack
And shutting down the outside world
Dimensions away, I fly on through the night
I am lost in time and I don't want you to find me

I wish you could see me now
A beautiful mess of red
Lying on the bathroom floor
The girl you wanted back is here
(Maybe even to stay)
So where are you
Come back and clean up this mess you made

Star gazing from the backseat of a car
Watching the sky melt onto the rolling hills
Darkness enveloping the world around
Save for the sudden flashes of light in the distance
Music lifting my soul to a higher realm
I am a peaceful person

You set fire to the skyline with smoldering eyes
I watched you watching me out of the corner of my eye
There's something burning in you that once burned in me
And I can almost feel the familiar warmth of the flames
Under the endless night sky of glowing embers

My florescent friend
All those years spent up in your room
Have only added to the rumors of your oddity
I've heard bits and pieces, none of them true
But your face didn't quite fit the picture I had painted of you

Pale complexion flecked with freckles
Wide eyes staring as I pounded on your door
I left my family behind to save yours
The world owed you more than it could pay back
I surrendered to the scene I couldn't stand to face
Sell your secrets to the sky, oh boy of lights
The stars are your only friend now

Tell me what keeps you up at night
and I might just tell you
What keeps me sleeping through the day

Autumn was red
and so was I
as the trees lost their leaves
I lost my hope for another sunrise
and so we shed our colors together
our blood pouring back into the earth
as it does on those dragging days

Winter was gray
and so was I
as the world slowly froze
I  did my best to keep warm
and so we huddled, shivering together
holding on in hope of a new year
sharing our loneliness

Spring was green
and so was I
as the grass began to grow
I promised myself things would be different
and so we were reborn
as we stood in the pouring rain
hearts beginning to beat again

And Summer, summer was yellow
and so was I
as the sun lit up every crack in the earth
I just stood there and smiled
and so we chose to live
letting go of everything that was holding us back
staying up all night to greet the sunrise

When she speaks, you can feel the poetry pouring out of her soul
And all you can do is stare hopelessly into her eyes and wonder
If you have ever crossed her mind

i'm falling back into
my old bad habits
i'm afraid that this time
they'll eat me alive
this pain isn't anyone's
problem but mine
and you'll never know
what i'm feeling inside
without my scars to
show it.

the tears are but drops of blood
falling
from every crack in my skin
spilling
onto the cold bathroom floor
creating
pools of crimson sorrow
washing
away the emptiness inside
remaining
only as stains
tonight i will run my feelings dry

my blood runs blue
the color of the ocean
the lonely, restless, endless ocean
we are one
ever-crashing
mass of sorrow
rising only to fall once more