As he opens the door his shadow casts
on the wall before me with his back toward me
He turns to the right, he glances to the left
with his old mind set to yellow alert his due
will arrive, I know
unlikely by knife to throat
but by the worry that drives such fear
and with the time it stole
every year for years till now
May you wonder

Were the lies worth it?
Were the thefts worth it?
--Because the affluence you spent on chance wins won you nothing
Were the spies in bed?
Were your blind eyes met
With the stare of vengeful eyes like you thought?
No, I know you wasted your time
--I know you and I know you've no time

What is the beast
that lurks in the shade just beyond the fire glow?
I heard mothers
and fathers both drained of their life's blood
felt its sting

Is it a beast?
Its maliciousness

There are no thoughts as rows of lights flash
One, one, one, one, one, one, one, one,
Each light counted is killed with the next one
Being erased my mind recedes
Far and away finding death while displaced
Maybe the sixth sense
Maybe

A thing that can be said absolutely of life and death, is that the universal truth lies between departure and arrival.

Often I sit cross legged
And move my ****** issues
As best I can into my brain
Where I can think about them
And then not think about them
By using some minor will
To hold them back
Right now in fact, I'm sitting
Cross legged in the backseat
Of a car with a busted tail light
Mary jane in the glove box
Backseat also full of groceries
So I adjust frequently, scowl
As I eat food
Licking my fingers after I
Eat octopus flavored snacks
I reach into the bag again
Noticing denim fibers stuck
Like cat hair on my hands from
When I wiped them on my pants
And that's kinda gross
So I stop
My back starts hurting

Knock well on wood as you enter but
Know knuckles lend their skin for flood
Of the risk of entrapment eternal?
Well, few find their bodies stuck and
What's worth its weight in blood
Splays on the lit altar face

It can be warm
Only if you touch
If you touch first
You speak your secret
Farewell

Read through the words you spent sinner our
Real lines lie under thinner lace
Your constant wore hiding the venom crawl
Held below bidding inlay here
Half craving finger's trace
Specters bid sweet interlace

It can be warm
Only if you touch
If you touch first
You speak your secret
Farewell

Empty ones warn walls
Before little embraces
Creating lethal snares
Come
Catching worlds unaware
Come
"Empty ones," All say
(Come speak your secrets)
"I'm fine."

Even when venturing outside
There's this feeling of a ceiling
Even claiming whole ownership
Never ensures it's wholly true
Lost whispers marred with mud
Burrow deeply finding the flesh
Lost in dimensions love devised
From her endless listing of the past

I can feel it happening
I can feel the winding key
I can feel gears turning
As the wind blows
My heart screams
Soul blown out through my lungs
I sing against the dead breeze

Something has brought me into this place
Washed over memories
Rush through reaching to attach
Do I look like a fool to you?

I do will this blasphemy
I do will this frail mind free
I do will your caress
As the rain falls
A slow freeze
Sets just inside my chest
Is this what salvation means?

Something has brought me into this place
Washed over memories
Rush through reaching to attach
Do I look like a fool to you?

Something has brought me to this place
Washed over me
Run right through and reaching
Do I look like a fool

As I submit?
As I submit,
Attaching

Ice cream from the box
close to 3 a.m.
means we're doing it again
we're burning the blades
crystallize your life like this

When flames die and we arrive
in this moment
what will we have?

Big screen on and bright
each night the same games
distract from how our lives played
each thought the other
resigned design and instead

Stitched
What was wanted that no one wanted

When flames die and we arrive
in this moment
what will we have?
When flames die can we deny
the dreams we dreamed
or will we turn
turn and sleep?

Once more return to the place of hate, hot with the warmth of the womb still after decades, receding like always into the presumed delirium held in that head of yours--but it's both the head and the heart that have ever boiled blood and pried tears and forced seclusion and withdrawal, and continue. Continue through the threshold keeping hidden decay at bay from the world of the waking, unnatural wooden floors keeping hidden the past inefficiency of care in your wrinkled hands, failing to the strength of the stench filling each passage and room in mist. I'm feeling now the way I felt for every instance within the walls. Towering over me when I close my eyes is the memory of the life I somehow saved and though living thoroughly broken beyond conventional means of disrepair, the despair now pales to the nightmare pressed angrily into the backsides of these eyelids. Days like print turned burning script against the black hole that might otherwise be home and sanctuary and ward to the intricate and frightful realities of the outer world, days that wind away and then back in dead drop and ascent that has not yet failed repetition, because of an inability to nurture nature that stemmed more from apathy and disinterest than any real shortcoming. Each time the world begins to end with the potential crashing sound of bone and flesh driving through the depths of the vacuum to pass through solid asphalt and concrete, I wake and the world flips. The trip to your bedroom sheds light on all the others, where once slept two souls aimless and needy, now sleeps decay that you began breeding from the spores formed in their lungs. Cats eyes like lightning slice through the mind as I wander your dark halls to the end where I myself fail at opening the door. I can't breathe. I can't look. I leave. There are things worse than the fragments of mind I clutch desperately as blankets under the Winter sky. What waits looks bad but I'll go if it's smiling or screaming. You. You can die in your numbered hole.

A sliver of light for all the times that trouble turned your world
A sliver of light through mist that left your whole story untold
A sliver of light means illumination, even frail, and pale, and otherwise weak
And any friends you've lost may come again
And if you let the loss break you, you'll find it much worse
You'll find it much, much worse
Hold strong and find solace in distraction
I know you're lost and pained -- we're both pained
If it's an advocate you need, I'll speak
If it's a guard you want -- or need -- I'll be your sentinel
A sliver of light for you in doom so as to see beyond the strife
The struggle is lost in faith of better company
We explorers, we regard the grace in open arms
Quite highly

Words
Brittle rings transcending silence in offer
(An offering)
To offer up trust
They break in the moment you speak
To offer your life:
Foolish. like all the rest broke me
I look forward to secretly building co-dependence
Just to disassemble what you thought you held
I'll drain your breath

Words explode and shred
They fly, genuine, from lips I'll lock with in pretend
Under bus stop signs you stoop to kiss with the impression I won't leave you gasping, gaspless

Burn
Folded paper if you feel they weren't heartfelt
(Emulating)
The offer of rust
Heard from a wet weak heart's keening
I offer it love
Hoping share of my warm blood brings
All pretense that lies in your depths spiraled to the surface
Hope then showing like pustules I'll crush each head
I'll drain it out

Slash rampant like the knife unleashes
In fingers soft, skin taut to the bone
There is night to find
Slash rampant like the knife unleashes
In fingers young, keys tuned to one note
And you can be the prey

But you don't have to be

Where green grass
grows
Smokes our
Village
In the crumble of ash that you assured
Could never be lit
In the first place

Where memories run never age
Where we remain in sage
I'll never learn I'm looping ruins
Even when I cross where you strayed
Even as I
Run right through me

Run until you can't breathe
Run until your lungs squeeze
The last gasp ever to spare
Aspirate on time
Breathing in deep
Despair

To Everyone,

I want to offer you thanks.
Thanks for sticking around.
Thanks for reading and following Old Ghosts and Ghosts Trains to the end.
In honesty, this is the first project I've finished in at least a few years time,
but it may as well be the first project I've ever finished.

Now that I'm sitting here feeling as closed about the lyrics as I may ever, it's time to step back for a little while--which may mean a couple days, a couple weeks, or anything further--and give some emotional distance before I start the first round of revisions.

It means a lot to me that anyone out there took the time to read through and get interested--at least enough to skim.
If I can save, inspire, or alleviate through writing, it makes it all the better. I love it.
Ultimately, I write because I just can't help it.

May the fire that leads and haunts the swamp you see and thieve in your dreams never burn down or be exorcised.

Thanks and Much Love,
~JaymiAK <3

Fall all you leaves of red:
(I can't believe you're still lying and lying right to my face)
RUST and disintegrate
(There's nothing left in your lungs to which I should listen)
Labor onward my slave,
(I won't let you stand there taunting me like I belong to you)
on and on and on. . .
(There's no line left for this desperate charade to ride)

For all that I've done for you
(It's true you helped me survive)
You repay me in change
(This has been on the distance)
Of which I can't be a part
(Since our original night)
I've been hollowed

(Don't tell me you didn't know when you've always lead this)

I concede if you can defeat me because I
Can't commit suicide

Trailing ground, claim this ghost, this ******
This cycle spinning out of control keeps haunting me, drawing me, on again
All I need, all I need is an opening out of this
Biting His smothering hands all the way to His bones, even if I have to crash

Burned trees
Dead wood
Black bone
In the forest of dreams a violet light shone
Violet
Lichen
Creeping
Around the repeating scene until the night died
Derailed
Into
Darkness
Until the smoke and the ash swallowed

The last lonely, laughing glance of His shadow

In hindsight the truth pounds strong in my chest, ******* for bed the chill on the nape of my neck reminds me
I
             Lie
I never really undress--I haven't really since last time we shared our space and it feels a little like death that it's so cold now
And you were never really close to as cold as Winter
In fact I can still smile when I think of the warmth
I
             Left
                          Behind
Alaunus, at long last found and left behind

In hindsight the failure on my part to keep living the life started by two, reminds me why it feels
intensely wrong
To
             Lie
Awake feeling no heat
Tangled twisted in sheets
Winter coming on fast
             Lie
Awake and lonely
Watching the shadows move
Toward the sunrise

And you were never really close to as cold as Winter
In fact I can still smile when I think of the warmth
I
             Left
                          Behind
Alaunus, at long last found
And
             Left
                          Behind

What I remember most is the ghost I left in the North that day
And how you agreed to drive--I almost didn't believe it
Not only not my body but not my soul, so what better an anchor?
Not my home and not my world--what better an anchor?

I-5 South to 405 driving like nothing, but leaving a smoke trail
S.O.S. outbound in denial with no signal return
Smiling beside the driver unknowingly burning, unknowingly smoking out

Could you respectfully decline an offer to wipe your feet clean at the door?
Outbound there's nothing that changes but the fear inset and instilled
It's just a portal
Could you respectfully decline an opening to escape with your devils moored?
Outbound it's better than ever if you'll accept it's not running away
Doorways are just portals

Happy Coming Out Day to everyone.

It's been only a big handful of months since my own coming out, but the months since have been the most gratifying months of my life. What I reflect on today is the turbulent course of crashing years on the lead up, and the extent to which I was lost, losing more and more by the day. The depression still wraps around me, every day, and it's a small difference that warps the world.

Rather than sinking with tunnel vision, that old, strange ill-will and self deprecation now strangles me with my eyes on the sky, knowing there's a way to the surface I've found--but I'm clawing out, even if slowly. Had I not resolved this particular internal issue of identity, I may have sank into the ocean floor, forehead first, and exploded in fearful doubt.

It's never easy, and if it is, it won't be forever--but it's never really about the forever. It's about the synchronicity that shows itself in between moments just to let you know you're riding right when you get so worried of crashing in the woods at night that you summon a self fulfilled prophecy. Crazy Talk is my nom de plume, but I hope you all know if you're falling again, still, or for the first time, I'll be there and probably falling, too--and I'd be so flattered if I could talk to you.

If your safety is threatened, then only you know the best thing to do--but once you're at the popping point, it's late to find the safety points, so be on guard, and when you've found a heart, arms, and ears then let it out.

Always your advocate,
Jaymi <3