The leeching color from my eyes
My parched mouth puckered
My joints are stiff, stubborn and brittle
Creaking like exhausted floorboards
Wringing my fists, white ands shriveled
Twisting my hands, skinned and raw
I'm ill with desperate thriving
Too weak to carry on, don't have the choice
Veins laden with liqueur, thinning hopes and regret
Pulsing pulsing pulsing
Bones fluttering with birds of bad omen
Scalp rid of hair to make place for the thorny crown of vanquishment
Blood diluted with bitter disappointment,
Sloshing, smearing through my mucked-up system
Aching from the deadly drone of existence
From small victories, large defeats
I'm the mortar, they're the pestle
Clobbering into my hollowed life.

The hammer of that thing
Routine so dull and tedious
Pounding and pounding and pounding
When you can't even scream or weep
Thud thud thud
My temples scream with dank submission
My brain is reeling, hurling from the vertigo of it all.

Morning, noon & night
The dead avenues, the empty buzzing
Beats hammers in my brain
Throb throb throb
I'm quivering with numbness.

I'm mature now, I'm ripe
So ripened and rotten
Adult things, adult preoccupations pulsing around me
It seems like person really only has two choices
Get in on the aimless hustle or be forsaken
I've taken it all up
Rent, coffee, wine, cigarettes and newspaper
Forgotten pills
Unpaid bills
Thump thump thump
Anguish, pain, woe and misery
Turbulence and stress, the banging hammer.

I'm a drunkard, a wanderer
With a beaten, battered suitcase
Days like these, weeks like these, when all the weapons are pointed at me
I'm a ***, an outcast
A pigeon in the pummeling rain
Dribble dribble splash
The ache is a relentless thing.

My job, my rent, my house
My walls limp with memories stuck with rotting glue
Wallpaper torn, curling at the edges
The cold hard floor radiates and screams
The couch, cold & hollow
Incrusted with bits of filthy grime
The dead radiator hisses like an angry snake
The shades down, no sunlight
No life seeping through the venetian blinds
And my clothing sits in the chairs
Like the dead emptied out
The blankets are thin, frayed and tattered
As hope is
The moths, on the other hand, are alive and well
They weave webs of moribund rot
Interlacing me into their strands of decay.

Surrounded by the coldhearted, they snarl
And their laughs abash, dishearten the pure
Bruising me relentlessly
They are so tired, mutilated
either by love or no love
All their bleak and sunken eyes
All their weak and drunken souls
All their meek and shrunken hearts
Vultures with neckties
Weasels in frocks
Collared beasts, that's all they are.

The mournful poet with the shrapnel wound
Was so wrong
I guess he wanted to be lyrical, but his words led astray
Time is not water
It does not flow easy, smooth and transparent
It drags you into dark alleys and batters the hell out of you
Punches you in the ribs, rips your skin,
Jerks you by your hair, stabs you, disfigures you
Leaves you crippled and broken, gasping for air.

Sweating in a rocker
Lanky skeleton hands clasped, praying- for what?
I'm not living, or dying
I'm simply crawling backward
Or no, I'm not crawling, I'm being dragged,
Through nights of lonely perfidy, breathing the beaten dusty air
The dark wind wailing, ebbing through the frail curtains
Laying in bed, too wretched to move
When memories, of heaven and hell,
Droop like broken shades
Across the window of my mind
And ****, I can feel my soul slowly dropping down through the mattress
My stomach is heaving, my teeth clenched and gritted
But not with fear, no, it's too late for dread
And it *****, because we realize we were all so caught up in a life in which we can find no meaning...we end up wrong and graceless and sick
We're born shriveled and alone, we die shriveled and alone
No matter what.

Sugar and spice
And everything nice
A delicate blush, a secret crush
Rings, white wings and other fine things
Ribbons and laces, tender embraces
Elegant grace and a sweet pretty face
Cheeks of pink, colorful drinks
Holding hands and fluttering fans
Smiles sweet, small and petite
Soft, luscious hair and a whispered prayer
Ballroom dancing, timid glancing

Liqueur and ****
Jealousy, greed
In dark rooms, kneeling and wasted
Under the sheets, squealing, getting tasted
Smeared lipstick, hair mussed, no longer slick
Bleary red lips, curvy hips
Tattoos and lingerie see-through
Heavy petting, getting drunk and forgetting
Ripped tights, endless nights
Coke and hazy smoke
Expensive drugs and sweaty hugs
Twisted lies, glazed eyes,
Strong musky perfumes, dark rooms
Sketchy guys, spread thighs
Broken trust, humid lust
Mindless fornication, empty stimulation,
With bated respiration, nothing but degradation
*****-cherry shots and hazy thoughts
Dancing, grinding, lights all blinding
Backstabbing, hands jabbing
Dark magic, endings tragic
Secrets revealed, wounds opened or healed

Smoking cigarettes
Is like slipping a noose from a small, new-born tree around your neck
And then diligently watering it every day.

There's a pounding in my head
Too sick to be alive, too astir to be dead
Everything is hazy, shifting into distant lands
A nervous shaking in my hands
Am I hot or cold?
I feel so vulnerable and young, yet so sickly and old
There's a ringing in my ears
And I can't stop my tears
As fuzzy thoughts, bated breath
Feel like impending death
My brain is melting, I'm losing my wits
The spinning never quits
Everything is muddled, whispered despair
I'm done, finished, this is too much to bear
Maybe I should just...drift away...
Maybe I should let my head gently sway....
The shaking stops
The darkness drops
I don't fight it, I don't try to flee
The liquid waves of malaise carry me
To somewhere deep within the abyss of my brain
And everything disappears, the confusion and pain
But it's transient, it doesn't last
Consciousness comes back with a blast
The waves wash me back ashore,
But I still feel wobbly to the core
My ebbing spirit  did revive,
Though I'm too weak to feel alive

Why people feel the need or desire to
Listen to the radio
Or surround themselves with machines that whir and beep
Or white noise to fall asleep
Or go to concerts
Is beyond me
I don't understand why
People want noise all the time
They're committing a terrible crime!
They mutilate silence
Tarnish delicate laconism
And mangle quiet
Machines everywhere!
Machines and devices, noise and distraction from the essence of life
Tooting, blaring, screeching, whistling, crashing
Honking, booming cracking, grinding, and trilling!
We happily bask in this cacophony

So much noise that we tend to forget that
How truly precious real silence is-
A gold nugget in a long, tumultuous river.
Yet we don't want any of it, not even a sliver
Silence is that which comes nearest to expressing the ineffable
It's so pure and so true, so delectable
Silence is a true friend who never betrays
Whatever has happened to saying it all with a simple gaze?
Words are by no means proof of wisdom
Silence isn't ignorance or dullness of mind
Silence is refined
Silence is
A pause between birdsongs
The mournful song of lonely hearts
The sigh of a tree
The shift of the clouds
The obscure and perishing rhythm of forgotten thoughts
The throb of the summer sun
The timid streaming of tears down a child's cheek
The fall of a snowflake
The pulse of the veins on a frail white wrist
And a kiss between whispered promises

Babble is empty
And words, like wire
May seem solid
Yet they can be twisted to resemble anything-
Weak promises, false prayers, delusive prophecies
And can easily be broken, if one distorts them enough.

Silence is more eloquent than phrases
It is not nothing
It has a form, dimension, substance
A texture and quality of its own
So many people associate it with mystery, privacy and isolation
When really it reveals it all
Silence can be jealous; rough and small
It can be peaceful; blue and hazy
It can be tumultuous; confused and crazy
Silence can be loving; soft and surrounding
Or it can be spiteful; violent and pounding
Silence can chaste; reserved and shy
Or it can sensual, with a voluptuous sigh
Silence can be puzzled; blurry and nauseous
It can be disgusted; halting and cautious
Silence can be grieving; a falling apart
It can be horribly heavy; the weighing of unspoken secrets on a fragile heart
Silence can be anything
Agitated, insecure, submissive or authoritative
Giddy or gloomy, vicious or respectful
Silence contains it all
Every word, every language,
All the knowledge, all the memories, all the emotions
If you've ever watched a sunrise, or been in love, or spent a night home alone, or sat in grieving silence as someone held your hand
Then you know this

The silly young, the brash and impatient ones, always break the silence
With gossip and music and profanity and small talk
They always giggle, interrupt, argue and squawk
Constant conversations, words, motions, defense, offense, back and forth
Yet those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking
Because to love and be quiet is enough
To hold hands and not say a word is enough
Silence is the gift of the world that we've pushed aside
A precious gift wrapped in white that we've rudely denied
Silence is the highest form of thought
And it is by slowly developing this mute contemplation in us that we will,
Step by step,
With reflections, speculations, and musing
Be able to reach what is true about ourselves.
When we are quiet and timid
We sit silently and watch the world around us
We see things, we read things, we hear things that others don't, we keep quiet about them, and we understand.

I don't understand why people fear the hush
Perhaps people are afraid to surrender to the clear ****** of it
Maybe all these fools think that to keep quiet is to erase yourself
Maybe they associate silence with loss of life
Perhaps some of them know that listening to the silence can be painful
That it can reveal the pain of the world
So they cower and shy away from it

Yet look at what I've done
I'm just like the rest of them, aren't I?
I wrote and wrote, yet what do all these words mean?
How pretentious of me to think I could be one to put silence into words

Hope is a sharpened feather
It's wispy and frail
Yet can be twisted to jab
Like a salient nail
Shoved in to wound, to pierce and to stab
With shrewd falsehood, deceit, distorted belief
Hope can lead to faith, but it can misguide
It can bring joy, but it can cause grief
When taken from the faulty side