I've been afraid
Not of the truth
But of what it would do to you
I've wanted to slough the burden
Of which it weighs me down
Words have not been given
Me
That would shine a brighter light
Sufficient to reveal and yet
Dim enough so as not to blind
For it is not to you that I would send them
Neither do I expect you to listen to them
I would rather you didn't
But what comes around goes around
And I have lived vicariously through
You
For many, many years
Surely the truth will find it's way
It's own special way
I should embrace it, let it set me free
But I fear it
I fear death, too

There is something pushing against my back
Something heavy and forceful
The momentum of it's ******
Finds a center in my chest
Where I can only imagine a heart rests
My secret room, my prayer closet
Storehouse for everything I've ever known
Wasteland of every forgotten thought and memory
Embryo of my spirit
Womb of my soul
The weight of all that follows me
Threatens to raze it all
All I ever was, pushed into nothing
I feel it strong, it doesn't stop

A vacant numbness envelopes my mind
Some kind of mental Novocaine
I see the beauty of the world
I hear the music of your voice
They crawl into open holes
And pass straight through, down the spiral
Until the spiral implodes
In upon itself
Disappearing, vanishing, out of this world
Unregistered by the attention span of a zombie
Still, there are moments of cognizance
That I would cherish fondly
If only memory would cooperate

I do not want to die
I want to disappear
I want to close my eyes and never have to open them again
I want to dissolve into nothing
I want to ride that spiral myself and find out
To where the visions travel
I want to float in an ocean of light
Millions of miles from land in any direction
I want to be able to give up everything
That makes me want to stay here
A list, by the way, which gets shorter by the year
I want to walk into the light
That condemns me on this side

I would give up heaven
To go back to the womb
To call this life a draw
Before I could get the chance to ruin so many lives
Then slice open that womb
And let the placenta drenched shell drop into a bucket
You'll never see me
The scalpel will never press cool surgical steel
Against anything I could be, would be
Into anything I am
And let my mother shed no tears
And grieve me not
I am where I always hoped to be
I am where I am

The light shows this heart of mine
That's where I want to be, too
And this may sound like something
But it's not
I will hold on to hope
Even as it dies to an ember
Invisible to the naked eye
I am a strong man
My soul has been beaten down
Many times
But I always pick it back up
Stuff it back in
Move on
Move on
Move on

And I know what love is
I just can't feel it
Which doesn't make it any less love
But it lives in a hollow place
Where it stings like a hornet
When touched
Like the poison of a catfish gill
That once slipped into the skin
Makes you never want to go fishing again
Love that can't be felt, is it worth living for?
Precious Lord, is it worth dying for?

These pills won't cure you
Hopefully they will keep the illness at bay
Bravo, pharmaceutical science

Such small things
Weigh us down in resentment
Complicated, colliding, soon enough
Ensnared
Feeling gravity's pull
Suspended and trapped in a web
Spun with failed expectations
Stuffed to suffocation, the weight of nothing
Almost solid
You could smash it with a hammer
Insignificant things
Tossed away like trash to the side of the road
Littering, contaminating, spoiling
What once claimed a special place
Hearts
A place for spiders

I can almost feel the heat of poison
With each drop from steel through skin
With each moment begging more and more
For attention
Melting away unfulfilled
Each moment
Begging
I'm powerless but to close my eyes and deny their petitions
What's a moment worth anyway?
What's it good for in the end?
Something to search for, something to lose
Moments are meant to be forgotten
Pity the fool who doesn't understand this
Death comes as a hard lesson to that man

...and the sound filled the room
An intoxicating fog that pulled straight down
On my rusty heartstrings
Vibrations overflowing, attracting, resisting
Until chakra aura colors lit the space
Between the speakers
And me
...it was distilled joy, revelation
Hands raised to the sky kind

...and he rode atop those sonic waves like
Jesus, walking on the water, hand held out
Inviting
He sang and his voice was light
And it glowed, illminating the space
Revealing the swirling vapors
He sang and he must have known me
Sweet God, he must have known me
Better than anyone I'd ever known
In seven words he wrote the book
With a wordless wail he read it to the world
He'd conjured hypnotic melodies
Chants and prayers
Soon enough my jaws would be sore
Knees *****
Voice hoarse but I would sing along forever
To become one with the unfathomable
Spirit
The Ghost who bestows
The Gift



...relating to the words
Falling in love with the singer and the song
Allowed, for 5 minutes,
To worship gods made by the hands of men
I stayed up all night
Reliving those moments
Bookended by ignored reality
Cherishing the song
Until everything about it
Became a part of me
Special, important, essential as anything else

...and I was hanging with some friends of mine
Wordlessly enjoying the silence
A blessing for us to share
But one does get bored
I spotted a pile of old magazines
Not so much stacked but thrown in a corner
Most of them were sports related
Cuz those naggas of mine were obsessed with the game
Towards the bottom I spyed with my leering eye
A couple of soft core quarterlys with juvenile titles
Buried somewhere between the two I found a music rag
Pulled it from the trash heap
Bob Dylan on the cover
Sign of the times
I settled in for an amusing if not educational read
Flipping through the snot slick pages I came to the
"Letters to the Editor" section
Halfway down the page, in the center column
Proudly displayed in loud "all caps" someone had written
"COLDPLAY *****!"
The abruptness of his less-than-charitable opinion was
Jarring
So I conjured up a mental image of the guy who had written it
And directed my own, even less charitable exhortation
Delivered mentally with a force that would frighten demons
"*******!"

I went home and played track 4
In infinite repeat mode
I loved it even more for the fact
That some ******* hated it so much