I want to bring color to a world so set in black and white
That it beats a a spalttered tattoo of unforgivness
Flow to the stagnation of hate and freedom to the prison of prejudice
Like a revelation I want to speak into existence a toleration for all things
For all those that dare to listen

Dancing shadows played chase around the wooded pier
Flickering flamed tongues captured the cold
Swallowing in big burning gulps
Until they drew swords and called draw
Leaving a line of chilling wind at my back

Where early dew clung to the back of my faded denim shorts in the late summer night
Crowded as close as I could get to you
Without being seen as some child
Lost in the company of your friends

I had not told you
That had never done this before
Met my lovers closet
The bits of weirdness that every one has
What we call our closest friends

I had never meant much to anyone for them to share me
Really see who I was
And find that pleasing

You laughed paying me no mind
Pointing fingers into the crimson light watching the copper wire
Spout blue and purple hues

In some low income trailer park were the sounds of dogs and crickets met the ear
Watching some shady deal happen behind the next house over

I found it there for the first time
In such a long time
That I couldn't remember the feel of the emotion anymore.
Acceptance

That night when we parted I was no longer alone

You say Im crazy
But Ive known what you've done
Thrown out your arms into the blaze
Eatting up desire
Like the forbidden eden I feel the lash of betrayal
That falls from your lips
And like an addict I cannot reject you
For the burn is to good
Without it I'm nothing
Your sickness is my awakening
I fly high on your love
Eyes rolling in the sharp bliss
Fluttering like humming wings
Washing that stinging warmth
Flooding like the whisping smoke
Rising
     Rising
        Swelling
To.      B UR ST
SLAMMING BACK
           D
           O
           W
           N
    That ache
That both kills me and takesme beyond words
Shaking thoughts from my head like a nest full of angry bees
S c a t t e r i n g
Leaving it bare that secret flesh

You've made me jaded
Like stone I'm hard to move
More set in my way, less aproachable
Readily wanting a reason to leave
It takes more to hold my interest and less to make me walk
Like a zombie I can't help but pick at the brain
Munching on the fat but seeing only bones
Its as if when I buried you
I buried myself.
I hunger more but forcefully starve

You caught me singing in the waning light of day
So you decided to cut my tongue
You caught me dancing in dim twilight night
So you bound my feet in sick delight
You heard my thoughts as they ran free with pen and grace
So you took my hands and bound them in lace
You took my voice, my delight and encumbered my speech
But what you can not take is my mind
For that my love is and always will be solely mine.

It was never just silence
Tinged with anticipation
Grating like the hollow feeling of a dislocated joint
Grinding and petulant
Either yours or mine
The silence was not silent
But rather loaded

Could there still be love when you know not what I am
I who is changing
In the processes of being
Could the mind understand the non static of the self Believe in the morphing transcendence of the heart where
           I
          am
        NOT
     who I was
Will never be who I am and am forever in a flux of continuity
When you feel my heart it is not the same heart from yesterday
Nor... will it be tomorrow

      An event
            I        
          am

Is it something you could miss
Unfolding in the wavering hands of time
Shimmering with the vibrancy of movement
Being made and remade each second a molecule does stretch
Could you love me with the changing of every breath?

The old maroon fabric feels like the uncomfortable glide of fingers over a velvet poster
That annoying fuzzy feeling that leaves a bad touch after taste
Similar to the feeling of nails against a chalk board wall or the feeling of tiny insect feet crawling in the darkness of a room
The skin raising feeling that lingers
Creating that sudden down turn to the mouth in a way most unattractive but more real than anything portrayed by the movies.

That kind of disgust that can only come from the feeling of true honest to god antique furniture that refuses to modernize.
Putting to shame in that moment any other feeling of discomfort you have had in the last month.
But ****** if it isn't the most comfortable fall into never want to leave piece of furniture you own.
Forcing you both to love and loathe.

Sometimes when I think
I feel like I can touch the world
Understand the flux of energy
The musing of the smallest flies
And stand in the quiet agelessness
Of forest green
Like some passenger song hopefully forlorn
Swinging the beetle rhyme back  and forth to understand truly what they meant to express

But other days
My idealism and enduring belief
Falters
Like equations in the sky I can no longer read
Symbols popping into existence
Meant only to discombobulate
Towards the doubt
Of my own self
Retching the violent swaying
Of the ground beneath my feet

Sometimes I feel lost
Wandering out to sea

You never quite feel it
Till just before the show
Right at the grand creshedo
The "thats all folks"
But when it does come
It waves and ebbs
Rolling and rising
How the memories consume
Abeit and roll again
Shifting while I stand
Falling back in time
Till I'm that little girl again
Waiting by the garden for you
Not 22 and placing the last rose you will ever see in bloom

The more I walk from who I used to be
I see her like a shadow in the back of mind
Still gripping his hand waving, happy
I feel his deceptive smile crawling upon his face like the many legs of a creeping insect
Deceit on his lip stick touched mouth
Her oblivious countenance innocent like a child

Hearing laughter I look forward
Some half drunk bumbling idiot, watery eyes locked radar pleading escapism
Too focused behind
I know her too
I'd know those curls anywhere
I feel where she's going, what she's trying to avoid
That wrong side of lonely
Curled around her memories trying not to feel.

In the length between this breath and the next
My mind is pleading for rest, the exhaustion of the day to day
Has me spinning in a bleary haze
Flitting like an angry fly
I walk the ever thinning line, of work the home and the school time rhyme
My enemy has become the daily grind
The ever beating poet heart is not meant for this selfish lot
A world of selfies, tongue painted lies, and the plastic smell of whats inside
More money, more things, of things that are me me me
Anything to stifle the yawning calamity
The holes of neglect betwixt the heart
That panicked feeling of being lost.
An offer of empathy becomes a cry for attention
For the love of God check your pretension
There is whole planet of suffering people
But not for them do you become the steeple
The narcissism that infects the youth makes me wonder what little world is left for the few.

I wake from a dreamless sleep, or what I
think to be dreamless
Leaves a lingering feeling of terror, doubt, or anxiety
Like my mind doesn't want to deal with the left overs
So it cuts it off midway
Amputates the whole stream of thought
Till only whisps of what could have been remains
Behind forgotten like so many things in life
So many small moments that are not recorded or erased to save space
For what we think is important
Like numbers and codes to social media that if we are honest with ourselve
Doesn't make us feel anyless alone in our
Completely individual lives
That are copied and pasted from a mold of individuality.

"Love don't live here anymore", she said twisting one silver ring. The echo of its body presented on the left ring finger the white line indented in flesh. "He left the lights on though. Smiling his tight lipped grin and tilted his hat. Like a man just visiting for the weekend. Some old time gentleman having done his work, the gratuitous clicking of fine shoes on tiled floors." Flicking her curled hair away from the base of her neck smiling a little herself a small sarcastic smile. "Something my grandmother would have witnessed. Pictured in muted color reeling like the screen of some washed out film. Black dots appearing on the back of his white suit pants as he pulled open the door the sway of his shouldered jacket swishing rhythmic in walk." " You should have seen it" she said "suave and dashing the clean dramatic expression and cool collected response." Chuckling to herself she looked at me her blue eyes angered and raw. "Its a pity that love doesn't leave that way. Clicking blue sway shoes grinning Cheshire smiles." Huffing she wrapped her arms around gathered knees, "Yeah, love don't live here anymore and he didn't leave in style."

12:22 sets the mood for another midnight ramble
When the lulling rumbling suffocation under a twenty pound cat
Can't and won't bring sleep
Choking on the flighty flickering of memories
Better left buried
Not walking my mind like listless zombies
Munching on the gray matter of my emotions
No sleep would be prefered than reliving my heart break again

I move across the canvas
Like waves move across the face of the sea
Smooth languid strokes of vibrant color fill in the hollow spaces
Where my creative mind buzzes
On the blissful blossoming beauty of self expression

How can you ask me to love you?
When you can't even love yourself?
For what you know of love is incomplete compared to everything else.
I could ask you to name the stars and you could tell me heavens mysteries
But when its comes to simple affection all is lost
When not engaged in the bodies sway and rhymes you wouldn't know how to have an intimate time
For sometimes intimacy comes from somewhere deeper
Somewhere closer to the soul
Its not always in a girls pantyhose
You can look lovely bearded and swave
But to love you would mean to starve.

Water falls the cascading rythm shadowing the back of my thought
As I watch the school tide flow
The lonely fountain bench becomes my muse
Where I exist outside of time
Staring into the listless movement of tree leaves
Stuck once more to the own cadence of thought
Echoing in the silent recess that has become my mood

While I cannot turn my eyes away
I am not really seeing
Not  feeling
Abstracting from reality
Pulling back away from the conscious buzzing back and forth between necessity
and possibility.
In my delirium I focus unexpectedly  
On one thing
The only thing sticking its green leaved beauty against the harsh brick facing
Tickling the crevices with its agelessness

A solid magnolia tree
Reaching for blooming glory
As if plucked out of some Georgian Southern tale
Ripe with the splendor of health
It seemed so out of place next to the young tree bushes that surrounded it
A solid reminder of lasting strength
I wondered

That should my roots become so in love with the ground they could not falter
Could I mimic this sleepy giant, whose solid trunk is gnarled with the abuse of centuries.
If I could let the wind of time and horror of burning pain pass me by?
Could I so love the sun that I reach with wide open arms to celebrate the dawning of a new day?
More over could I laugh at children as they attempt to climb my limbs, or read over the shoulder of some student who finds shade beneath my leaves.

Metaphor after metaphor meet my poets mind
I wonder about love and I wonder about time
I worry about school and take a deep breath
Deciding at once that there was nothing left
Nothing to worry nothing to cry
My emotions had run its course all in due time

And as I set waiting and thinking away I realized it was past noon
I had thought away the day
But all this time spent in my own head
I came to realize what the tree had truly said

Stop worrying
Stop thinking
And making yourself sick
Come what may
The only important thing is to persist.
Make living your goal, no fretting over something old.

Fumbling the black out night
Were little light comes through the curtained window
Tripping over the discard of shoes
Pillows fallen off the bed and memories
Of when you laughed as I stumbled into the night bathroom clumsy hands looking for a switch
Waking for a three am bath for no reason
Other than to feel hot water on my skin
Sitting sideways to accomodate a second person in the too small bath
Maybe its not love I miss maybe its the happiness
The child like play I splashed bubbles against your chest
Leaning in for eskimo kisses and a teasing tickle to your side.
Its the little things the innocent wonder that I miss most

Her voice crackled like wood in a fire smoke
Hot lashing  the flame of crimson tongue
Booming a thundering rage slick wet lightening bright
Only to dim
Grumble hiss and disengage
Dwindling in the presence of beauty
Within the glade.

Your words screech like chalk board
Where criticism falls from your mouth
Loosing my feet ,buckled ankles, crawling like a wounded animal
After you
Trying to be strong when I am weak
Your hands are supposed to catch me
Comfort, it was all I ever ask of you
But  you turn your cheek to nothing but your own centered pain

As I lay holding the tremors of my insides
Bleeding ears bearing the tulmut in waves
Choking on my own misery
Self loathing and feeling worse for haven sought

Even in this I think
Of nothing
But the comfort of your arms
While you hurt me
Abuse my heart
I dream of being held
Turn towards your apathy
Like a moth to the beauty of a flame
Hoping to find something warm
Other than
Your blatant need to neglect my love

A *******
I become
Loving like a child
Eros
With blotted wings loosing everything for love

Melting out the spinal stem
Turning liquid brain soup dripping down my back
The frayed skeleton electric nerve
Wubbs the distortion of moving things
Blending the sight of sound and tasted of color
Bleeding the mixed mingling syrups of thought and emotion
Where beating thumping noislessness of my bone jarred movment becomes second nature
Vocalizing the skidding murrmers of half finished words
Swirling back and forward towards and against reality
The numbness of my tongue the static on my brain fills, and music is the very air I breathe

When i close my eyes i see it
With each breath i feel
Tasting the bitter and the sweet
Loving the music i hear
It is boundless without shape
Yet distinct in every mutation
The in all forms it is beautiful
In every eye unique

Sometimes I feel like a night blooming flower
Wilting in the daylight sun
Drying up
Flaking from scorching expectation
Hot stares making me close up in side
Burrow into myself till there is no distinction between myself
and others
A placid mirror regurgitating the mockery
Like a parrot dancing to its reflection
Only to bloom beautiful in the light of night
Where eyes can no longer be so cruel and the sunlight of society can not reach me.
The cool completeness of myself greets me like a lover that come daylight I don't want to let go.

Some nights I hate you
Some nights I wish we never met
Others I lament the feelings I once had for another person
The warmth of a genuine smile
The fire of a touch
When you sparked my muse
My mind and took my breath
In the day I am resourceful I remember the good and the bad
What it means to have loved
What it means to have been tossed aside
But then that **** song comes on the radio
Inside my mind it brings nostalgia an ache from deep in my being
Staring at the screen aching over "Hello"

On a pensive lake in a lonesome v a lley sat a little girl
Her tiny fingers buried in strands of silken gold
Lashed eyes sat weeping flicker the faint tint of blue
Feeling forgotten as only little girls can do
Knees bend high and laced feet at rest
How she weaped from her skirted nest
But up from hillside came a lonesome cat mewling his sorrow
Searching for his friends but found no brother no mother all is lost in the wind
But furried nose did wrinkle a little blond duck scared and wrinkled
It thought like most animals do what an ugly thing covered in so little hair
It must be lonely and in need of care
It cried amd mewled and sang its welcome song
Little duck grew startled but soon to relax
It was only kitten at last she could laugh

Its dusty ill used and dark
And no amount of spring cleaning could rid it of the filth of last september
Where you left it to rot
Mold and ruin
But summers almost over and the flowers of life have bloomed
Where long festival night were spent trying to forget
Dancing that haze minded stupor and sweating out the poision of words and betrayal
Till the grime comes free
The air clears and the echo of your voice fades

The hollow tinkling tipping tumble of glass on tile
Follows the path of patient feet
Ever slowly out into the open
The cracking hollow creaking of grating joints
Meets the draw tight face
Where smile lines cut like a knife into the cheeks
Rose tinted black lashed blue eyes stare blank ahead
Collapsing china made brittle by claims
To what it is,
What it should be
Say, think and feel

Like a toy shoved between two children
Stretched, banged and reused
The marionette played its silken strings for others
Danced to the same dreaded tune
Around and around that merry chortled phonic dirge  
Eating away at its own strings
Snapping like rotten wire
A puppet no longer
Ill and abused

I wish I could live in a bar of a song
Lost in that blissful movement of notes
Until i vibrate out of existence, drunk on the euphoria of sound.

Sometimes I stay out of reach
Just beyond the confines of the real world
Lost in a dreamscape
I spectate from my gilded tower
All the troubles of the 'real world'
The cold world
The less bold world
Where deception lies its bitter taste across the tounqe
And everything is usually what it seems

Wheres the adventure!
That spice of life tempered with genuine honesty!
In books
In my head
In my heart
No the 'real world' is more two dimensional than i thought

The older I get the less real it feels.
Wanting to stay inside the realm of fiction
Where the world is harsh but hope is always on the horison
Where the hero always wins and adversity is mole hill
Not the mountain it is in life
But I wake back into the humble world of retail fog
Mucking through the day on pennies and dimes
Wishing that for a moment life was more of an adventure

I see you in the little things
The straight lines of the fence you built
The shape of the swing you used to sit
The way the wind blows the leaves of that old oak
That you planted
With your dad when you were young
It was you favorite
Still is
Imprinted on you stone
Others will think it pretty
But I will know
You loved it and with great sad joy smile

Freedom comes with its own disappointments
Trapped in the truth of exhibition
Drugged on the sublimity of an ideal
Shadowed by the lines of a cage
The bird sings gaily
Intoxicated on the ****** of the self.

Like a flower in dew folded up from  suns warming view
The inner self lies dormant
Waiting for love to warm it
To feed the fragile flame
With all its magnificence it does grow
To feed the lonely soul
It is a ray of blinding light soft and harsh in its might
But gently not to forceful it brings
The stuborn flower preen

Sticks and stone may break the bones but words are the only thing that hurt worse after
At least a black eye will heal, a shattered bone will mend
Flung like careless knives words can ruin lives
Words leave scars thick like canyon grooves
They bury themselves in the subconcious like a plague of burrowing maggots
Rotting the mind with its filth
Till they are the only thing we believe anymore
Despite their truth value words are the weapons of abusers and the careless cruelty of emotion
Words wound worse than sticks and stones ever could.

They call me crazy and call me blind
For letting you wash back over me
When you have been one person for so long
Its hard to realize what life is like without them
And without you I was more miserable than I had ever been

Dumped like heaping garbage
Stinking up the beauty of the everyday
My love rotted
and with it so did my mind.

Instead of floating I sank
Degraded so far into myself that I discovered the depth of your infection
And how unhealthy it was
How much of the self I valued was fed into maintaining everything

And just when I begun to **** out the invasion
There you stood
On shaking knees on the rim of my secret garden
This ravaged heart in bloom
I dropped my trowel
Skirted the chasm of wilted wonder
And looked at you for all that you were
Those brown eyes screamed and strong arms shook
With that one look I knew you understood

There is a point after the emotion has run its course
When hope sadness regret loss and joy have all left and your stuck with the mess
When you've read the words over and under and still arent sure what to say
Should you say
Could you say anything at all
The point in the road where all options are a risk
Like the heart has been left out of the sun so long it flinches at the thought of light
Where it only took one straw a single grain of rice to tip the balance of what feels right.

I have questions
About so many things
Little things,
Big ones,
The ones no one else seems to see
But mostly I have questions about me
Why I say
Why I do
What I think
How did I get to point p to z..

Sometimes I can barely follow my own thoughts
They stray like squirrels on fire
Screaming down the back of my brain
Till I lose concentration on one or the other
The fire rages...
Perhaps I should put the squirrels in cages?

Sort them by size or by color...
Give them hats or a vest
Festive and cute
How they preen..
Wait why is that one green

Smoke rises from between cracked lips
Folding around the nose and tickles the fine hair of the cheek
Thick and creeping
Slowly up and out of the lungs
Pulling with it frustration, resistance, and stress
All of lifes worries gone with a breath
Red fingers tap tap away
Dropping the burnt ash of the day
Freedom in the form of decay

Could you love me now
With my inked skin, bad attitude and jaded smile
Would you finally hear my words no longer gentle, no longer weak
Do my words my words echo in your mind?
Did their sweetness finally sour?
Why else would you be looking back?
The ghost your looking for isnt here.
She died waiting
And whats left is well beyond forgiveness.

Words have failed me in the end
Flailing about like some broken thing
Listless and blind
Unable to articulate the sheer terror
I feel creeping from behind the mask
I shove onto my being
Like a child in ill fitting clothes
Smiling as the world burns...

I only call you when its late at night
Its the only time I want you by side
The only time I've ever called you mine
When I'm doubled down
Between two and one
This feeling is beyond describe
I know that you'll be the death of me
But at least we will both die young
That floating fuzzy blurred vibe
This lingering feeling of being drunk
On your words
Your mouth
Your expedition
Escaping from remission
Towards the lingering taste of your love

If there is only ever good things spoken in love
Then it would surely be an artifice
For they say a rose by any other name is just as sweet
But is it truly
Can one have admitted to owning love when not been bitten
Poisoned and soiled by the choking sweetness
Like the sharp edge reflex dripping down the back of throat
Stilling the beat of the heart
With its parasitic rhythm

No love isn't always sweet
But bitter, hot, and sour
Love is beyond the intention of desire and the painted smiles on chocolate faces
The glass eyed terror textured with the limitation of another cheap year
Disgraced by the swelling tenor of requested feeling
It is ***** and it disgraces all the noble intentions from the romantic heart
Boiling the fever and yearning the selfish sin
But that passion and fury is only the start

We are glittering dust on the face of time
Swept up and scattered
Like jewels glinting in the ether
An exhale of decades past
Burning up quicker with age
Shining brightly for a moment
A brilliance tempered in rage

I feel like a flightless bird
But not a bird who has never known the gift of flight
But a fledgling watching others find wind
Sail off into their lives on the breeze of self discovery and settle into the waiting branches with comfortable niches
Like a wind of change swept free the debris of doubt
But here I sit on the same rock ledge trying to unfurl wings that creak with uncertainty
The mites of doubt creeping between each feather
Leaving holes to big to face the weather.

Early morning light bleeds red into closed eyes
Waking abruptly reaching tired hands across cold sheets
Finding nothing
But the stuffed sides of teddied fur
No warmth
Or early laughter
No I love yous between kisses
The creaking of stiff limbs locked tight around shoulders
Hips and chest
The urgency of sweat and sweetness of passion
Echoing lonely thoughts
I welcome sleep again
Hoping to find you

Back straight reaching into the sky rooted like the tree
Arms bent,  palms open on twisted knee
Stillness and quiet
Not a sound
Listening to wind sing its lonely song
How birds add sweet music to dry air
The brushing feel of blond hair
Itis here where peace is found among the acheing soul
Counting each breath untill the numbers fade
In this moment a timeless grace

I can feel it tremble
Thrumming on fragile wings
A gossamer of fickle flicking fledgling thoughts
Struggling to gather into words and articulate the notion
That fleeting flagrant fondness of emotion
That touches the inside in such a way that there are moments of bare bonding breaths between two complete strangers
Tapering into a singular human experience
For a nano second of time where you and I and the world connect

I like to watch the curl of smoke from between my lips
That dancing wave like movement floating listly up and away
Back and forth undulating to a song all its own
Majestic in its travel pulling with it the trouble
The doubt the pain
All the worry
Floats away.

The numbing struggle of the day to day doesn't reach me inside this gilded cage
Reason beyond the rhyme kills me with the ever expanding process of time
From here to now I speak not why
The only motive is not to lie
To the ones that I hold dear all that you get is what appears
Should you find it at fault recognize that aren't we all
We bleed the same blood from the inside
So throw away your wounded pride
Come with me instead I'll show you a new world inside your head.