There is a river
That runs
From here
To the end of time

I am just
A current-fighting fish
Looking for a way
Around the rapids
Of any given day

Waterfalls of love and pain
Frighten the small
When I find them
I hope I'll find
The strength to be tall

You have left me raw
My skin is gone
Flesh and bone exposed
I bet you're thinking
You didn’t mean to
I bet you didn't know
But even now as it is
As I lay with the sting
Of nerves made free
I know I saw your eyes
And they were clear as day
When you chipped away
At the last bits of me
I tried to be everything
I couldn't be, I tried to be
Everything to everyone
And I'm so sore
From all those things
You asked of me
I'm so sore of all
Those things you never
Thought to give to me

Convincing myself
I’m not about to drown
When I feel the waves in my lungs

I’m fighting to fly and I know I’m not falling
But still I cling to paths unnamed

I haven’t found the strength
To admit to the ghosts that memories must fade

Swimming and soaring
And all I want is to let the current
Tear and scare me away

Is there a net at the end of the gentle stream?
Or just whirlwinds of lingering green?

It’s not alright,
It’s not the path I wished I’d chosen
But I bet I’ll find my way
Back someday

Every fracture I gave
Was for the floundering fish
I leave behind
I won’t see them all again

Tides cut and tides bind
Waters tumble and some fish fly
If you don’t make it
A piece of me just might die

Where I’m going I can’t see the sea
Where I’m going
You can’t come with me

For you I jumped my lifeboat
I found happiness
In helping you to safe shores

It’s my turn now
I can’t be your buoy anymore
You wouldn’t reach for me anyway

And all the while
I wish you’d fly
I wish you’d smile
I wish you’d understand
If you fall
So will I

**~

-
And when I'm old and lazy
I'll look at the young and flighty
And say there ain't nothing profound
To be found
In a passing rain
-

Falsehoods and fantasies                                                  

~

                                                            ­                 Flirtations with romance and psychology

~

Never-ending battles with self-inclinations                                                ­                                

~

                                                        Here­’s hoping you’ll make it

~

Here’s hoping I’ll survive                                                  

~

                                                            ­      All your not-so world-weary sighs

~

Every little thing                                  

~

                                                      You never thought to bring

~

And all the little pieces                                                

~

      ­                                           You’d never leave behind

~

Will find you, one day lost in your mind                                                             ­           

~

                                                 ­         Sometimes madness ravages

~

Carrying and clawing ****** ties                                                             ­   

~

                                                         ­               But ours is more substance, less wave

~

Poets and martyrs and murderers and mystics                                                          ­                            

~

                                                            ­            Dig softly at the veins of your eyes

~

Following the fortune and favoring the plain                                                            ­                          

~

                                                            ­           If you ever wanted real catastrophe

~

You’d never find it without me                                                               ­ 

~

                                                           ­  I never wanted to free my mind

~

Those things never change                                                    

~

  ­                                                                 ­                             After all its only bodies that feel the rust of chains

~

And so my madness wavers and falls to its knees                                                            ­                                    

~

                        ­                                                          No man ever married Christened chastity

~

Without the fleeting hearts of broken wings                                                            ­                        

~

                                                    Let me cling or let me go

~

Madness in red is nothing if not me

~

Alone
Together
Need
Losing grip
Dire
Compassion
I care
Live
Alone

Have I shared kindness with the world?
Has any compassion seeped through?
What I gave it took from me.
This you have stolen from everything.
In a hundred years what will it mean?
With time would I get the same as I gave?
Don't forget the things I sent before.
Do not keep only things taken as they seem.
Can't the world find me some other way?
Find me taking more from it one day.

Silken pigment catching the wind
pulling like feathers plucked
from grey butterfly wings

I've seen the worst of you

like a hemorrhage
brought to just below the skin
your wings have holes
from all the small places
you've pushed your way into

looking for flowers
where the sun couldn't reach

with the slightest icy change
in the breeze you did your best
to color yourself

darker than you ever had to be

and I held back your hair
delicate and falling
while you did your worst

you bleed any way you can

I see you wishing it would all
circle the drain and bring you
to the blossoms you can't find
but you won't listen when I say

they're not there and they'll never be

you can't hear me while your wings
are scraping away
and I did my best to say
the only flowers worth your time
are the sun soaked ones
you knowingly leave behind

I was there before I knew
so much of your life
you'd make ****** and grey

and I stayed

but I've more than found my way
without you or either of them

now I think I'll let you crawl
when you could have flown
after so long trying to keep you
from that narrow hole
maybe you will finally fall
and be free of this

other woman

you should have called friend

Castles* in the sky                                                                    
Never made much sense to me
                  People are crazy                                                                    
                    To take from the birds and give to the bees
                   I can't really be                                                                      
                            The only one wrestling with that view of eternity

Haven't you seen when the world stops moving?
No sooner had you left than when I closed my eyes and leapt.                                                  
I have no pity for you but my own ghostly, living, empathy.                                                    
    ­                                                                 ­   Felt the air as it took its vacume exit from the room?
You know little of what makes me my own, I can forgive.                                                        
My tongue has touched bitter haste and thanked words gone to waste.                                  
                        ­                                                     Didn't you hear the tedium evaporate into sick silence?
There are no words for what you have yet to smell.                                                           ­         
I cannot drive home my own dystrophy to you who has never known it.

Something about the way you said it to me
Made me forget all the little in-betweens
And every moment that you missed
You haven't seen the things I hear
I don't want to touch
When I can feel
I've got skin-like scales
I'll cut you with burnished claws
If you'd said something else I'd regret
But I've yet to taste the melody of scorn
I'm deaf and out of touch but you can't see

My head says I should be
heart-broken
My heart says I'm fine and
I don't know why
But to be honest
Even that
Is
A
Lie

The things I can do
And those I cannot
Don't seem so far away
Perhaps I am
Only
That
     Which I can
              And cannot
                    Cease to do

The longer I stay ...
The more I find ...
The roots
That ground me ...
Strangle me ...
... From time to time

It is possible
I think
To mistake
Emotion
For
Devotion
When love
Is so free

It all came crashing in like
hitting
road ****
in the middle of my favorite
song and it hurt like
hell
but I swear I've
let you
go
just like
that
because stars are everywhere even
when leaves like mine are
yellowing from too
much
of what I thought was a good thing and I'm
doing my
damnedest just to be
sure I can keep
singing after I've driven through the last
bleeding
memory of what I thought we
were,
I'm
doing my
damnedest to sing now that
the branches
I knew
are starting to look like
something
I don't.

I'm feeling stuck
How about you?
I'm considering
Maybe coming

Unglued

Just for fun
How about you?