Everybody looks beautiful in the light of a bar,
It softens features;
smears lips,
blurs noses,
clouds eyes.

I wasn't afraid of heights anymore.
In fact, they called to me
dared me to fly

and that's where I found myself
crouching beside the ledge of the bridge
crying, wailing, screaming
for no reason at all
scared, so scared but the
height beckoned for me,
opening it's warm arms
like an understanding mother
and enfolding me into them as I flew

The tears collected in the corners of his stormy eyes,
pooling, leaking down the worn crevices of his face
and resting on the bottom of his withered chin
where they slowly dripped onto the moth-
eaten brown suit he wore.
Clutched in his bony fingers was a note, faded and worn
from years of folding and holding and reading.
The spidery scripture was barely legible
and ended in a heart and a simple signature.
It was an apology, for not being able
to be there in the end of it all.

He placed the note under a rock in front of the slab of granite,
and kneeled, muffling his sobs with one hand and clutching
the slab with the other.

How pointless life seems when the one you love is nothing but
bones under 7 feet of earth.

His eyes were blood-shot and dull
his hair unwashed
two days worth of ****** hair
framed his jaw,
in his hand was a half empty bottle
of whiskey

the wind howled through the pine
trees outside his dusty window,
barely blocking out the noise
of the highway

he looked at the overflowing trash can
wrinkling his nose distastefully at the smell
and then at the empty bed

closing his eyes, he raised the bottle of whiskey to his lips
and savoured the fire that blossomed in his stomach.
He rose on shaky knees and walked over to the bed,
falling back
and stared vacant-eyed at the patterns in
the cracks of the white plaster ceiling.

"doll face and a dance"
that was his way of describing her.
All the other inmates have heard his tale,
the ******,
the doomed love story.
They murmured about the "poor chap",
finding his beloved like that.
They stayed clear of him.

The man and the goat
were both slaughtered the same,
cut from throat to gut,
guts hanging,
blood pooling.
It was a cry to the gods.
A last resort.

The drunk man held his head in agony,
crouched next to his truck
the screaming filled every inch of his body,
the sobs, the moans of the mother
cradling her dead child, her only child.
Oh God, he just wanted it to stop.

a hopeless romantic's tears,
worthless in the world of stern faces
and college degrees.

His eyes were blood-shot and dull
his hair unwashed
two days worth of ****** hair
framed his jaw,
in his hand was a half empty bottle
of whiskey

the wind howled through the pine
trees outside his dusty window,
barely blocking out the noise
of the highway

he looked at the overflowing trash can
wrinkling his nose distastefully at the smell
and then at the empty bed

closing his eyes, he raised the bottle of whiskey to his lips
and savoured the fire that blossomed in his stomach.
He rose on shaky knees and walked over to the bed,
falling back
and stared vacant-eyed at the patterns in
the cracks of the white plaster ceiling.

Your blue lips are tempting, inviting.
Your eyes, pecked clean, hold mine.
Bruised wrists attached to grey hands, groping
for my pink ones.

Running, I've woken now
in the middle of some forest void.

Surf lulling me to sleep,
taunting, teasing threats
of European myth sprinkling
magic into the sleeping eyes of children.

Forgotten dreams
dreamless sleep

I can feel him
shake the bed
turn on the closet light
go outside
he is not there.

Fidgeting fingers,
goosebumps,
rapid heartbeat,

Classical denouement.