Angels are just corpses with borrowed eagle wings,
they bring us into life with the discord that they sing.

I walk along a star-scape with my heart out on my sleeve,
and all the little dreams I have are lies to be believed.

The dark is getting closer now, but I'm still wide awake
and being bent as far as this is causing me to break.

So many I have hidden from, but from you I can't hide;
you've seen me at my very worst so you know when I've lied.

So take me from this star-scape, take my heart from off my sleeve,
show me what the truth is. Give me something to believe.

Overtly,
the strays sit or stand alone.
Each in a corner,
on a different plane,
solitary and exempt.
Without a home
though a banner reads
"Your home away from home."
What a joke.

"Stupid boy" my spirit says,
"that girl was your salvation."
"Too proud to bow your head,
too proud to do what's right.
And now she's gone and we're alone.
You stupid stupid boy."

Impossible, invisible

                  but somehow still nearby.


A teapot in the orbit

                  of a planet
                                                                                                                                                faraway.


Omnipotent (supposedly),

                  but gallingly benign.

As silent as the sky at night

                  and nowhere to be seen.


A speck of dust is planet earth

                  caught in this beam of light

that shines despite the dark of space,
                                                                                                                              beckoning us home.

On my knees in the rain,
looking up,
blinking back drops of rain.

All around me people laugh,
they look down,
at me they point and they laugh.

The tower, like a scar against the sky,
stabbing into clouds,
with one eye looks from its place in the sky.

The tower's unblinking eye is just a lighted window.
There's a girl up there.
She knows I'm down here, but she doesn't come to the window.

I kneel at the foot of the tower. I scream, and I beg the girl to come to me.
The people point and laugh;
They know that I will never move, and that she won't ever come down for me.

I, a willing ******
sacrifice to this
deity dreamt up by cavemen
trading shells
for gobs of ******
meat.
In my pocket
I hold paper bearing
sacred holy writ,
and on the internet
somewhere
are hours of my existence
documented in binary
like good deeds
in a seraphic tome
ensuring my someday mansion
in the sky.
Rappers wear the dollar sign
like a gilded golden crucifix
because the wealthy are
the holy men when
Jehovah is money.
If I were to preach
against this theology, become
the antichrist, the anarchist,
throw my cash into a stack
and light that ***** up
I’d be burning myself
at the stake.

I see a sea
of ebony,
with aspen trees,
upon the shore.

The waves crash down,
and all around
are evening sounds,
upon the shore.

I'm on the sand,
and at my hand
a castle stands,
upon the shore.

And here I'll lie,
no more to cry,
alone to die,
upon the shore.

When god made you,
he made me too,
and all things true,
upon the shore.

To the friend I knew I'd never know that I had all along.
To my companion, my shadow,
though often it felt as if I were standing in yours.
Always there, wearing your mask of indifference and hate.
People tell me that they've seen your heart,
they've seen you cry, and defend the weak.
I know now that you're just like me,
more lonely, but that's because you like it.
Brother, I know that we may never embrace,
I know that I may never tell you how much I admire you.
I'll probably never play with you,
as we once did when we were only five and six.
Little brother, there's so much that I'll never do.
But everything I'll never do is something that would say
I love you.

When I tell you that you are no longer my problem,
I really mean that you are no longer my saving grace.

You were, by far, the best part of being me,
but I wasn't being me when I was with you.

I was letting you save me,
be my saving grace.
And that just wasn't right.

I need to be my own grace.
Otherwise
I'm not worth the grace that it would take
to save my graceless ***.

Dear Houston,
does the waterbug
skittering
at the bottom of the pond,
searching
for a meal or a lay,
think that the waterlogged cardboard box
floating
saggy on the surface
is a small planet or a constellation?
Is the plastic grocery bag an Oort Cloud?
When the waterbug rolls
helpless
in underwater currents
that she can't understand, is the
swirling dust, and feathers, and leaves,
a whirling Milky Way
to her?
Is the audible rumbling of the highway the voice of the universe?

The rain is falling on our town
and you're out in the rain,
singing at the thunder
and dancing through your pain.
I stay inside to lick my wounds
and sober up in bed.
I play my guitar bitterly
and sing inside instead.
The patter of the rain drops,
the patter of your feet,
the discord at my fingertips,
your chirping in the street.
Larks with hearts like broken wings,
one is you and one is me.
All larks learn to love to sing,
but not all larks are free.

Mountains and valleys and planes of the mind,
the world in the raw, the home of mankind.

The sea looks so deep from a peak in the sky,
and so full of stars, reflected at night.

Horizons converge and the sky becomes land,
and I climbed the whole world in an effort to stand.

One with the valleys, the mountains, the sea,
and each one a part of the world that is me.

Vapor trails,
the only proof
that you were ever here.

Gone away,
you've gone away,
and now I have regrets.

Goodbye now,
my one true love,
we both knew you would leave.

Someday soon
I'd like to think
that I'll be leaving too.

But for now
I'm looking up
at vapor trails you left.

Incomplete,
thus bearing definition,
I love the things I lack.
My shortcomings,
my defects,
my missing parts,
what I lack separates
and helps me transcend
mere humanity.
What I lack makes me whole.
What I lack,
not what I have,
is who I am.