i spend my free time smoking cigarettes, another bad habit that i promised to quit. for the moment, the sky wasn't any shade of gray, it wasn't any shade at all. projected my mental catastrophe onto the wreckage we've built, and baby you're bleeding. is it time for us to sleep? i've lost track of rationality and common sense of normality. i just want to be free. these chains weigh so heavy and every day i am becoming more weak, these words that you sing rest inside my brain - rattle with the snakes i've caged - i am the lost episode. we are the untold story. i raise your hand, you raise my voice, every day that passes, it passes so slow. my veins still ache and i blow my brains out with the same verse after verse, i'm falling hard. you're rising fast. same page with different context, mismatch regrets and soulless ***. my home rests inside your eyes, your pupils push me to the edge. i'd run, if i was given the chance and never look back, behind me lies a thousand actions i don't understand. holding on to your hand, hold on with everything i am and everything i have become is a shadow. a cloud of smoke i wish would just choke me, regurgitate the poison that has left me so empty. judge me, abandon me, leave me more broken than i have left myself. i hit the bottom and still couldn't get enough. clinging to defective walls and my chipped fingernails rip piece by piece, inch by inch, this was supposed to be the ending of the bitter *****, but i am afraid i haven't changed. i am afraid of everything. change is a slow process and it thickens with my callouses, breathing deep, counting sheep, i've tried to ride this like a pantomime and in this cell it gets too cold when i'm doing nothing but growing old. I watch your face and i watch the clock, your boredom leaves me overstocked with anxiousness. i kiss your fist, i kiss the sky. heavy is the crown that i wear now.

do you think you have it?
cause I want to hide from you
living in defense
don't try to steal from me

the panic in your voice says
you think you lost it
never mind that
It was never yours to begin with

come into my space
show me what you've done
maybe it's too far gone
I think I feel undone

with the breeze, it crosses by
touched my skin
and touched my thigh
pierced my soul
you caught my eye

sharper grip against the grain
don't live in this vein
never mind the fear
you'll find it all in here

The many voices of the evening

                   gramophone the sky voice the cell phone
                   the tablet  the notebook, that monotone
                   observer of mutations purveyor of maladies
                   the persistence of memories, pale pink light sink

burning in the fires lighting up the skies

                   an old pang, smitten clang, the pain balm
                   mug-life, pen-knife, kettle-strife, all the sheaves
                   them echo-songs that haunt the drill-wells
                   that are cut wounded and wear fetching

chants, to an yearning oblation

                  bay leaf, curry leaf, yes, them colander coriander
                  there's a rhyme of charlies, looping from
                  our holy wars to now our holy hours with
                  the ombudsman, the omniman, the only God

who used to thunder for the ****

                 old Zeus, the Lord of Betelgeuse, him who we
                 called dead, exhumation, exculpation, exaltation
                 an ancient loneliness that calls from the nether
                 depths, now science, now freedom, now pagan.