i've searched for love in all the wrong places.
i've looked for it under your sheets and over your kitchen counter.
i've crawled down your bed and felt the inside of your closets.
i've tried searching for it in flower petals falling to the
ground one by one -- "he loves me, he loves me not".
i've tried digging through the dirt looking for every feeling we ever buried.
i've tried quietly drinking  to see if love was at the bottom of a bottle.
i drank a lot more, just to make sure.
i looked for it in broken mirrors and smashed plates and overused wineglasses
on the dining table where you used to sit.
i've tried looking for it in your eyes that were almost always empty.

i could look in a lot more places and tell you about a lot more.

i haven't found it yet, but one thing's for sure:
i don't know where it is, but I know where it isn't.

love can't be found in you.

I recently got reminded... Oh how I am caught
In a delicate web of disillusions
Make me see what is actually not
Make invisible my heart's secret questions

Been successful in putting aside all grief
But truth has it's way to make you pay
You can bury all grievances; you can mask all disbelief
But it'll all catch up; these things you've kept at bay

Make your silly compromises
To have the the best you just make allowances
Keep up your futile pretences
Accommodate your selfish preferences

Day had dawned where each question need their answer
Questions I've shrugged and left unaddressed
Indistinguishable when fact and fiction begin to blur
When dreams and reality have coalesced

Tonight I lay with the load I bring
Body asleep with my heart fully awake
Blessing or curse, this rude awakening
Decisions and choices left for the following suns to make

i see him there every day
he always watches me
the town people call him stray
he calls himself free

"there's big fish under this bridge"
he points to a submerged stone
"that's where the whale lives"
I cast my line toward it's home

the old man smiled and watched me cast
idle hands and vicarious eyes
"don't try to set the hook too fast"
"this whale is really wise"

my line went tight, i felt the pull
i yanked with all my might
too hard headed to follow the rule
'let him take a big ole bite"

i threw my pole, and fell in the water
the old man only laughed
he said "look on the bright side"
"at least you got a bath"

(his smile made the water shimmer brighter
his laughter sang with the birds...)

"i'll be back soon to claim my prize
with a heavier pole and line
for me to catch a whale that size
it's going to take a lot of time"

now when i see the old man
we talk of the ones that got away
his wife, his kids, his life
and the fish i lost that day

will you still write for me
stories that spin whole new worlds
each character a dew drop
on an intricate web of lies

tell me a story of friendship and love
of bravery and courage
of chivalry that hasn't died
and of loyalty that shines bright

do you still care enough
to write a story for me?
something with starry-eyed princesses
and handsome knights
galloping horses and fearsome dragons

i wonder whether
those dragons get lonely
when they're misunderstood to be the evil
that the gallant knight subdues
what if
the knight was really the one
with a soul black as ash
brandishing a sword that would earn him glory
and a future in which the princess would be enslaved
by his treachery?

unsung stories of rowdy soldiers
creeping nights
and boisterous days
i want to hear them all

will you still write for me
even when i have stopped listening?
will you continue
to strive for a better world
with your words and ink-stained fingers?

do you
still care enough to write?

Leave us in a bedroom
a locked room
both bound by a fleeting veneration
but no tangible definition
and windows will fog up
with excess anxious laughter
and phlegmmed throats
til the glass transforms
transparent to translucent
so the outside world becomes
an informed guess about
which coloured shape is going
                   where.
The door handle will twist into the room’s
home grown central nervous system
backed by rising voices
rising pulses
assuring ourselves it is
everybody outside
who is trapped and not us
because ‘cosy’ has scribbled over
‘cramped’ between the sheets of peeling
wallpaper and bodies upon bodies upon
bodies only excites.
We will stay in bed
cocooned around this single duvet
and distracted into its folds because this
is how we choose to spend
free will. Don't
murmur about the locked door
and even when it opens for
lack of air or food
so we tentatively tread through into the
open, or perhaps closed,
I beg you to
grab my wrist and pull me back and whisper
tear yourself up
decrease with me
because this will always be the one place we’ll happily suffocate.

If I were to talk to god,
I imagine that he would look like an aging French artist living in Germany,
With a slightly severe case of depression
And also an unsettling smoking addiction.

I imagine he would be living in an apartment room barely big enough for his ego.
With nothing but a bed and a nightstand
with an ash tray and a bottle of whiskey, half full.
And between puffs of smoke he would sip from a lowball glass, and sit.

He’d keep his door unlocked, for no one ever visits,
And when they do, they assume they’ve opened the wrong door
And they would quickly go search for the man they thought he was.
He’d let out a chuckle between sips.

However, if I were to meet this artist,
I would just ask him what he’s done.
And he will reply, with smoke trailing from his nostrils and the tone of a drunk,
"Hell if I know."