Conscience, consuming.
My stomach has turned inside
and in on itself.

My eyes have rotted
and reduced to such lifeless,
stationary orbs.

Today is the day,
I ***** my weaknesses
to teach myself strength.

She came at night,
with her ghostly charm.
She explained to me
that she meant no harm.
She sat next to me,
said she wanted to talk.
So I held her hand,
her skin like chalk.
She said she was sorry
for what she'd done,
that all she wanted
was to have some fun.
And when I asked
what I meant to her,
she refused to answer
since she knew it would hurt.
She told me to stop,
that she'll never come back.
I told her I wouldn't
and to cut me some slack.
I asked her who she was
and if it was really that bad.
She said, "I am the lover
you thought you had."

It's a chilly evening.
Our breath, billowing.

Every offset light,
framing her face.

Our frantic ears,
scrambling to keep pace.

The simple warmth
of a flushed cheek
sends my mind reeling.

And the exquisite contours
of a trembling hand,
well...

Peel away my face.
Navigate. Search. Delve.
I want you to tear me to shreds.
Leave my parts on the floor.
Examine them.
And most importantly,
tell me what you see.

I can still recall, as bright as dawn,
those cryptic lines and your cobalt eyes.

Just so natural, you seemed.
He was just as caged as free.
Just like the shoreline, you are.
He is lying there in scattered parts.

I'll be the one to stir your bones,
the one to build our broken home.

Just so natural, you seemed.
This fate is purely for me.
Just like the shoreline, you are.
I'm forever living in your heart.

I'll be the one to stir your bones,
the one to build our broken home.

Built against the sky,
lets watch them crumble
at our feet.

Emerge, with me,
from the wreckage.

And I'll carry the weight of your world.

There are days when I can feel you,
I can feel your mind working around me.

There are days when I read
your writings, so elegant and seducing.

There are days when I can't help but wonder,
'Are all these words meant for me?'

Then there are those days when I am certain
that to you, I am just a memory.

I am unaware of my surroundings.
My head is, well, reeling.
I hear many things,
but my fragile mind can process
only the sound of the rushing air.

To the end of the earth, we tread.
A million miles pressed into our feet.
It ends here, where you rest your head,
weary and worn with defeat.

This landscape challenges all sanity.
Against the rocks, an intrinsic glare.
This is the end of all humanity
where your weight is mine to bear.

Grant me the clarity
I so desperately need
to hold my tongue
and to turn my cheek.

For this is a challenge,
such an arduous deed.
You've led me astray,
you've rendered me weak.

How I would love to crack open your skull,
to pull back the layers of impenetrable stone.
To strip and peel away each level of calcium,
until I reach that intoxicating, tangled mass.
To trace along every crevice and every groove
and memorize the landscape that devises you.
Once you are sewn up and put back together,
I would rest my weary head against your chest,
and be reaffirmed by the resonating silence.

I am a canvas,
painted over so much that
I seem to be blank.

But if you peel back
the improper strokes, you might
delight in your finds.

Columns of soft white envelop her,
the pale, straight grass leaning with the wind.
It seems as if they are the only things
that are truly, and fully in color.

She feels as if she is suspended,
floating not only in air, but in time.
His arms completely surround her,
cradling her comfortably against him.

They are not who you assume they are,
but none of that matters for now.
What matters is that he is not alone.
She has come to free him of his self-made prison.

His eyes are lost in the vastness overhead.
He is relieved as he meets her gaze.
She has been searching for a life time,
consumed and immobile from the past.

He hears the music of the grass blades,
brushing tenderly against each other.
But most prominent in her ear,
is the steady beat of his bleeding heart.

I don't know what this is,
where we are,
or how it came to be.

All I know is I believe in it,
believe in you,
and what you give to me.

There are instances when
it seems virtually impossible
for the time to just pass by.
I want it to move, the clock hand
to sweep faster and faster until
the next time I can see you,
I can touch you, I can feel you.

I have been reaching out
to the most desolate places,
searching for a catalyst,
for something to fill this
ever-growing void that has
been carved into my chest.
But no matter where I go,
time seems to pass so slowly.

While I deteriorated,
and the edges unfurled,
I found your name.
Somewhere in me,
along the fault line,
you were etched in dust.

I am but a vessel now.
I will die with a clean head
while your lips are forever stained.

Watch us grow...
Watch us grow...
Watch us grow...
Watch us fall apart.

Oh, you poor, fetal thing.
Deep-seeded is the need.
Ancient and everlasting
is the crave to believe.

It is time to evolve,
you are no longer the thrall.
For living like this
isn't living at all.

Inhale, release.
How unfamiliar?

A brief moment of clarity.

From this mold,
I've made a home.

I'm slipping through the cracks,
so keep up with me.

J'ai été témoin de toute une forme nouvelle de la beauté.
Gardez-moi ici, dans cet endroit.

And as I shed my scales,
she picked them up,
and one by one,
she laced them together
and draped me, again, in armor.

She reached out,
her hand mangled and twisted,
bones protruding,
fingers broken and bent.

Her voice rang,
throughout the heavens,
radiant sound,
disrupting the gods in their thrones.

She pointed at me, with a torn finger, and spoke,
"They are all just the same, so reel them in."

Honey eyes are spent,
such beauty in their unrest.
Close them now, and sleep.

I have seen you in
your most vulnerable state
and it might **** me.

I will stay awake
for eternity to watch
you drift in your dreams.

A momentary
release, freedom from this cruel,
unrelenting world.

I find happiness
in your unmoving eyes, the
stillness of your hands.

God himself could not
shut these lover's eyes, for this
is my own release.

I found a photo.
I was young and you were whole.
Grant me remembrance.

By your words, I am slain.
And I feel the blood,
as it pours out of me,
boiling as you paint the walls.
I feel this,
and I am satisfied.
Maybe not a crime of passion,
but it is a crime nonetheless.
And it assures me
that you are just as capable
of dying as I am.

I fed a newly-lit flame once.
The heat dispersed and the flames
all seemed to multiply.
They grew and grew until
they became a part of me.

I fed an ever-burning fire once.
I always felt it. Burning, shining
for the world to see.
That fire was real, it was strong,
but it began to dwindle.

And now I feed these smoldering ashes.
They no longer glow, but if you were
to touch them, they would singe you.

I came upon a woman,
knelt in the clearing of a forest.
Her features were worn
and the way she moved
made her limbs seem heavy.

"Rest your mind, child," she said,
"One day, all will be vibrant for you,
and all will be bright."
She gazed at me with sunken eyes
that radiated beauty unseen before.

I asked her gently,
"How can you say such things,
when you yourself seem to be distraught?"
She replied, "In one's misery
is where they will find true contentment."

I am no vessel of boundless knowledge,
nor have I ever claimed to be.
But what I see is beauty, measureless,
wasting away in the chase.
It never ceases, she spends her days
shackled to her disease.
I am guilty, just as we all are, of my vices.
But this, it truly saddens me.

I feel...
dismembered.

What have we become?

The thought leaves me
completely dismantled.

I've seen nothing but suffering.
I've tasted nothing but sin.

I am the bearer of burdens,
the keeper of your secrets.

These things you've kept inside,
those things that creep up,
perched upon the edge of your mind,
they haunt me.

You spend your whole life pushing them back,
repressed to the confines of your 'conscience'.
You reveal them to me,
these secrets within you,
never dormant,
with one touch.

These secrets become mine,
the actions,
the colors,
the sounds,
the thoughts.

Your sins are mine.

A man, burdened with
a stalled existence,
finds himself reeling
in both comfort and agony.

By day, he wears a mask,
evenings are spent
slamming his head
against the wall.

What is there left
for him to do?
All out of options,
he encases himself.

All knowledge I possess is under siege
and there is something dwelling in my chest.
An effect just like the summer breeze,
I have witnessed creation at its best.

I watched, oblivious,
as his organs turned to ash,
and his bones turned to dust.

And I can't help but think,
as he withers away,
that I am meant to rot too.

You take your time in crafting these things,
these men you have fashioned from your suffering.
You mold them and set them up on a pedestal.
As time goes on, the pedestal turns into a throne,
and the throne turns into a tower, reigning from the sky.
The tower continues to grow and grow until it
becomes a mountain, and from the view of this mountain,
the world down below is abysmal and desolate.
The men you had placed up there can barely see the world now.
It was from this great height that all of humanity was lost.
And just as quickly as you centered your being around their existence,
those men had forgotten yours.

I close my eyes, and succumb
to the numbness of induced sleep.
They welcome me with open arms
and in these arms I will weep.

I am growing fond of this feeling,
in the strangest way, it calms me down.
Anything to keep my wandering mind
from wandering around.

We spend our days
laughing,
crying,
screaming,
hurting,
smiling,
working,
fighting,
loving,
and one day,
maybe in a matter of moments,
we will simply cease to be.

We are all going to die.

So ask yourself,
*'what have I done?'

He turns his cheek against the sun,
washing his palms of the birth he stole.
Not a care for the womb undone,
entombing her in her homely hole.

He smooths his hair and rubs his eyes,
shoveling the house to his new debris.
For today alone he is satisfied,
tomorrow shall feed his heart's disease.

She was born in the spring,
and spring she became.

Full of life and color,
never will you see light
like that shining
in her amber eyes.

She possesses this light,
and with it comes
storms and dangers
that only add to her beauty.

Though I cannot reach
her light, nor her storms,
I feel them, always,
residing within me.

She is more than part
of me, Spring, she is
my core, my center.
Though I am not hers.

Tonight I will sleep,
I will sleep for Spring.
I will drift and dream her,
for all else pales in comparison.

The past, it has shackled me to the floor.
And now, here, in this desolate place,
we claw at each other like tethered beasts.
You are held down, just as I am, but I see no shackles.
Tell me, how did we really get here?

I once held the world in my palms,
but it fell right through my fingertips.
And as it slipped, so did my sanity.
I sought refuge somewhere distant,
somewhere that, to this day, I don't know.
I had to leave but there was something there,
something holding me back.
Something beautiful, something real.
Something that I am not.
My God, what have I found?

You came to me in shambles,
and I came to you on time.
I loved you in your very worst
and adored you at your prime.
I lost myself along the way
and now I pay the price.
I was never one for feeling things,
so numbness will suffice.

I can still taste you,
though the taste has grown bitter
as the days have passed.

Your voice still hangs here,
in the stillness of the night,
but just by a thread.

All of your letters,
the edges torn and frayed, turn
to ash in my hands.

And as the pieces
hit the floor, I realize
that you are dying.

Your breath does not cease,
but your presence slowly fades
with each passing day.

Your lungs are alive,
but your heart, that I used to
hear beat, pumps no more.

I can taste the dreams,
that you had once cast across
our silken bed sheets.

From them I have built a crude,
but fitting shelter.

They surround me in the night
and keep me steady.

There is no warmth like that of
all your broken hopes.

Your dreams have shifted surely,
and untimely become mine.

This feeling is fresh,
and my heart is in the air.
It is up for grabs.

I must warn you though,
I am broken and beaten,
and I'm not all there.

But I will hold you,
and if your arms find me, then
I will not let go.

They couldn't believe their eyes as the world
they once knew crumbled to the ground.
The sound of a million hearts dropping
became deafening and filled the air around.

The life they had become so well accustomed to
disintegrated into rubble before their very feet.
They all stood screaming to themselves
as the ash and dust rained down in sheets.

They looked up to the sky and held out their arms
while buildings turned in like collapsing shelves.
And suddenly they all began to turn and wander
when they realized they had created this themselves.

I will keep a light for you,
ablaze on the windowsill.
It is there to guide you,
when you feel the need
to venture back home.

But I will not hover.
No, I will not watch it.
I will maintain it always,
but I will no longer be
the one to nurture it.

Her arms are locked in an honest embrace.
In this moment, she is vulnerable and she is weak.
She is unaware of the things that I can see,
and she is unaware that I could tear her to pieces.

I ache to hide from you,
to reel you in, and to draw you
further in than ever before.

I am creating another
dimension of myself,
just to keep you intrigued.

There is me, the dweller,
who hangs on your every breath,
and thirsts for the beat of your heart.

And now there is me, the withdrawn,
who forces you to reach in, unknowingly,
and pull from my depths what you wish.