My mind, spinning red like the spokes of your bicycle,
Dazed by halted slumber, lying flat and still.
The weight of Doubt pressed his callused hands
Upon my chest and at my laudable resistance,
He laughs.

I sink.

Dreams laced too vividly with haze-dusted fears,
Lasting in wake as only nightmares can.
Gaining strength with each repression,
Defiant, cold, and sharp,
Burns into thought to tease this somber heart.

Soaring downhill,
Wheels spin in unison without control.
The friction of conflicting realities
Ignite the fire in my core.
Cooling tears of salt and guilt fail to douse the flames.

Snapshots from the dreaming reel,
Float,
Snide toward my gated heart.
Falling.
Slow.
Elegant as sonnets torn in cruel haste
From the gold-gilded diary of a closet poet.

The tide washes away the traces of your footprints beside me. It erases your physical presence in my life with gentle lapping waves but the emotional ties cannot be severed so easily...but soon the ocean will smooth the rocky hardness of my heart and make it pliable. Soon I will be able to look back and see you only as a speck from the shore.


Not really poem form but I like it like this!

Feeling of being lifted running through my legs,
Train on bridge looks the only way it can:
Like suspended seconds holding for unison
Above a hundred feet of air ending in water.

Lights with on stuck switches twitch,
People watch as I look out the window nervously,
Sleights of hand go noticed
And hiding is never as easy as not being seen.

Lifting feeling rises to my sides while still struck
To think that this is all somewhere,
To someone,
Right?

Is nowhere ever just that cut clean?

Even with train on ground I feel left there.
Shoulders tensed, eyes cautiously cast down;
I am waiting, waiting, waiting.

The corporate megastar with his million
Dollar Rolex on his wrist grips the bottle
That he sells for infinite profit
Because the elixir shares his name

The marathon runner, with only six miles
To go showers himself with liquid diamonds
They ping against the tarmac and roll
Into the gutters unnoticed by the greedy crowds

The craftsman briefly coats
His calloused hands in silver to rinse them of the brick dust
As they dry they lose all value
But it’s a loss he doesn’t have time to account for

The clouds ***** out riches
But the public complain

The daughter of the busy housewife
Gratefully crams her mouth with elephant ****
Her filthy hands beckon her friends from the huts
She poisons herself with the bucket between her knees

What Man sees when the sun is too bright
What Man sees in the middle of the night
What Man sees in his darkest dreams
What Man never sees, it seems

My heart is curled in my chest, sitting low; it can't be bothered.
You and I are both deaf. You cannot hear me screaming for you and I cannot hear myself wailing "STOP."
Even the tips of my fingers cry out and good lord does it burn;
All of this is deliciously hateful and ******* it - it should be illegal to make another human being feel this way.
We are no longer a mixture dear, we are a solution. I am saturated with you. There is no going back.

Why do I want you to write psalms on my body in ink blacker than night?
Mark me up, please.
Cut, cut, cut.
I am whining and desperate for you.
We are inextricable.
Oh, you must abhor me!

Doors slam like Satan himself is
in a fit of rage below us, even if he is
in the deepest level of Hell, I feel the floor
shaking like a 6.0 has just swept us but it
is only a consequence of wood slamming
against wood and fists fighting doorknobs.

Voices rise like the temperature in Arizona
in the summer, abruptly, hot and heavy, so
quickly stifling any chance of relief—
anger is an emotion I am far too familiar with.

Some people live quiet family lives, are never
interrupted in their sleep by screams from a
father who dreams of death and a mother who
carries a scythe of shame as if she is the Reaper,
some people wake up in the morning knowing
there is breakfast waiting on the table, fresh eggs
hot off the stove and orange juice with pulp, but
others wake up and make coffee for themselves,
knowing parents sleep past noon and
we are the ones who are doomed to repeat the
history of abuse and psychological suffering but:
we are the ones who will help to stifle the shouts,
to put a stop to slamming doors and shrill screams,
dysfunctional daily routines and waiting for hope
that never arrives, we have had lives consisting
of always having to act stronger than we feel
when the floorboards seem to be breaking just
beneath the force of our feet, because our
bodies are not just our bodies, we are carrying
burdens that weigh more than our bones and
blood cells combined, so when we step on the
scale the number we're reading is really how
much hurt we have been holding, not how
much food we've been hoarding inside of us.

We are the children of complex family situations,
we are spend-more-time-in-psychologist-offices-than
we-do-in-our-own-roo­ms, we are no-parent-to-tuck
us-in-at-night-read-yourself-a-story-it-builds-­ability.
We are daydreams of escaping like Rapunzel,
we are how do I save myself from a nightmare when
I am already awake? We are years of reading self-help
books in Barnes and Noble until we finally understood
that the only thing to do is to help the world help us:
we are strong. And we understand that family exists,
but for us it is different. We are the children who find
comfort in books and coffee and anything outside
of a house so filled with tension and hatred, and we
have been waiting to fix ourselves for too long.

Isn’t it strange
How amidst the dying leaves and growing grass and snarling ivy
Keeping their vigil without choice, perhaps

Isn’t it strange
How in the land of the doubted god, omnipresent, yet never seen
Who killed himself for the lives of the faithless, perhaps

Isn’t it strange
How in the shadow of His building of stubborn stone and vicious spire and painted glass
Waiting for a fable to knock, perhaps

Isn’t it strange
How with the shadows and ghosts and worms and butterflies
Symbols for what they guard, perhaps

Isn’t it strange
How in line with the crosses and grails and angels and virgins
Left in loving memory of the forgotten, perhaps

How curious it is
That the obelisk stands tallest: ancient symbol of those heretics
Who kneel before the filthy sun

Defile it as they will
Atop it may they place a crucifix
That they may execute the knowledge

But still it will stand
Still Proudest
Still Sneering
Still

Amidst the still and silence and spirits and guns, perhaps

When Nevermore the world becomes, we're left behind, the Wild Ones.

Innocence out in the water
Take me back to that day
To see the world as I did
Mysterious, pure, safe
Before it was lost in time
Now confined to memory
Fading fast

Innocence lost in the water
The tide of time pulls you out
Struggle to go back to youth
But the years weigh you down
You can’t go back, time presses on
Death waits in the open
You can’t swim forever

Innocence died in the water
Drowned by time and responsibility
Age is a sinking stone we’re all forced to hold
Everyone goes under eventually.