there's melancholy softness in feeling detached, cobblestone streets and fake flowers, i don't want them anymore.
when i woke this morning i couldn't feel like myself, i don't know who you are when we fight against them, who am i.
i'm ashamed of the dark, you're a friend to it, too, but that doesn't make any of this stone-scraped melancholy sweeter.
where are we going, where will we go,
who are we fighting, down in this hole.
i shrugged it off like a metallic tilted fly, you left, i cried, died a little inside.
it's all my fault, dark twisted dreams led me down a path of savage thorns, and now they're yours to carry, too.
i never would have gone, if i knew they would be yours, i wouldn't have, i wouldn't have, i.

wander under a spotless night
take a drag
through a window pane, a light
cuts through shadowed streets
scenes from a hollowed life
a disinterested glance
at my privileged existence

hope for an explosion of feeling
but even humble sentiment
would lift my delicate body
from the building flood of apathy

switch to commercial break
with three payments of 29.99
plus shipping and handling
supplement the superabundance
and drown

Heart-broken,
Down-trodden.
He's a thief,
She's a liar,
I'm a heretic,
But it still hurts.

I'm torn between love and disappointment.
Wanting solitude
And finally granted it.

damnation* is loving the sun while you
are the moon,
refusing to touch Sleep because you'd
rather kiss her cousin,
knowing your words will eventually become
a tourniquet,
and filling your heart up
to the brim with
formaldehyde..

but believe me when i say;
i'd be ****** for you.

My Daughter has a fitbit that records her every move.
She wears it daily on her wrist in her efforts to improve.
Her every step, lap and jump thus are duly noted.
To self-improvement and fitness, she surely is devoted.

Me? I can get tired watching football on T.V.
The treadmill in my basement is piled high with clean laundry.
I can’t resist a chocolate bar, my diet isn’t great.
Does rising from my easy chair still count as lifting weights?

Still, there should be a wearable for the chubby hubby set.
To monitor the quality of the sitting time we get.
To count each doughnut we consume, to list each chocolate bar.
To note the steps avoided when we choose to take the car.

The ink inside this pen can hold so many words, it's strange
I can describe so many things, or can sadly rearrange
With love or tears of sorrow, which will leave this paper stained
But in the end if no one reads, is love what I have gained?

For all I have inside my mind, flows out of me in ink
All the things I've wished for you and I, or what I think
Happiness or lonesome skies, ecstasy or pain
Lies within the winter snow I write, or summer rain

They say that if a tree falls, and no one's there to hear
Does it really make a sound, this thought fills me with fear
For if so true, then words that come from me, with pen in hand
Will disappear to be unseen, like castles in the sand

I've written many thousands, my words I set free here
I've emptied many pens to love's sweet feelings, and to fear
But my real fear is that my words, maybe just will lie
Until the pages filled with hope to you, will someday die

Words that come from deep inside, in hope of reaching you
But if my thoughts are never read, they're meaning gone but true
So why do I keep these poems coming from my mind?
Because if I should stop, the words would all be lost in time

Time that would see my words just lie upon these pages
No one here to see, or read them, fading with the ages
Someday gone with wind and rain the edges torn and tattered
Like autumn leaves, time will find the thoughts broken and scattered

But write I will, and for no reason but to help myself
Even if the words not read, grow dusty on my shelf
Someday perhaps, someone will browse far, in years to be
The old and yellowed papers, long ago written by me

To wonder maybe who had thoughts of love and loss combined
Who the old and weathered books came from, and from what mind
Some hopeless, helpless lost old soul, A woman or a man?
That sat for days and months on end, paper pen in hand

So now here lies another unread piece of my existence
Something compels me to write, I offer no resistance
I suppose it comforts me in ways, just to see these words
Perhaps just as the sun and sky,
comforts the singing birds

Dean Evans
9-24-07

The three of us had been travelling
For weeks, and were getting tired,
We’d taken pictures of everything
And our visas had expired,
We got a room in a gloomy house
And we settled down to wait,
For Julie wanted to sleep a lot
While Francis stood at the gate.

For he was the moody, restless one,
And wanted to travel back,
I was just glad to settle down
And dump my heavy pack,
I took a seat at the window ledge
And I read a magazine,
While Julie said that the light was bad,
‘You’ll ruin your vision, Dean!’

It certainly was a gloomy room
And the walls were painted brown,
We’d had to look for the cheapest in
An ancient part of town,
The concierge was a Capuchin
With a tonsure and a cross,
I felt like I had to bow to him
As he passed the keys across.

The room had merely a single bulb
That would only work at night,
And then, it had such a feeble beam
You could hardly call it bright,
But when it lit we could see at last
On the further, darkest wall,
There hung a dusty old painting that
We hadn’t seen before.

It blended in with the wall behind
For the tones were shades of brown,
The face of an old Franciscan who
Was looking sadly down,
But in his eyes was a faint surprise
As of one with mystic deeps,
And Francis said that it turned his head,
‘Those eyes give me the creeps!’

We ate a couple of sandwiches
And we turned in for the night,
We didn’t think it was worth it but
We still turned out the light,
Then I awoke in the early hours
To the sound of cries and shrieks,
The volume gradually rising
As my skin began to creep.

A sudden flare lit the room in there
From the painting on the wall,
The crackling sound of flames devouring
The monk, I was appalled,
And through the flames I could see those eyes
As they bored into the room,
And then, the crackling disappeared
And the room was plunged in gloom.

There wasn’t a sign of damage to
The painting, or the wall,
But a whisp of sulphur and brimstone
Hung in the air, and overall,
While Francis huddled in terror with
His face as pale as sleet,
And Julie couldn’t stop sobbing then
From underneath her sheet.

We snatched our stuff in the morning
And I handed back the keys,
I said, ‘Just who is that picture of?’
The concierge looked pleased.
‘That’s just one of the Franciscans
Who rebelled against the Pope,
He went to the Inquisition then
And they gave him little hope.’

‘Four of the monks were burned out there
As a lesson to the rest,
St. Francis would have approved, they were
Schismatic, at the best,
This is the town the Inquisition
Righted many a wrong,
They burned the recusant catholics
In the square at Avignon.’

Francis had left before us, he
Refused to wait in there,
He wandered out with his backpack and
Stood waiting in the square,
Just as the petrol tanker rolled,
From a worn and faulty tyre,
And the last I saw, he was standing there
Engulfed in a lake of fire!

David Lewis Paget