It is there
Inside my mind
A place of solitude
Beneath a monochrome sky
Where hopes and dreams
And all desires
Once flourished
In brilliant colors
Upon the dawn

If only I had courage
To allow you in
To show you
What I see now
The shadowed fears
The insecurities
Like dried leaves on the wind
The tears that stain
In blackened hues
The once soulful sky
Cast now in gloamings gray

Here I sit
In this fading light
Silently watching
The colors fade
Breaths of hope
Turning to translucent mists
Hands gripping
Holding on to hope
Eyes searching
In the darkening sky
The splinters of distrust
Embedded deep within
Bleed the color
Of what once was

You are not gone
Not in the physical realms
But here upon this bench
Under this monochrome sky
Deep within my mind
I sit alone
And wait for
The return of color

© LAO Poetry 2016

Two roads diverge
Simplicity of ill intent
Destruction held
In the need
Of materialistic things
Choices building
Each step solidifying
Bars descending
Trapping reality

Tears cried
Freeing the souls
Despondent pleas
Mistakes ripping away
The fabric of self
Life becomes
The road chosen
Abilities lost
Hidden forever by
The chosen mistake
Leaving only the
Iron cages and
Padded rooms
Filled with laughter
Of the deranged

Heart and mind
Knowing the future is lost
With that initial step on
The chosen path
Realities dull patina
Camouflages the pain
As one lives a life
In the cage built
By each step
By each choice made
Bringing forth
The justice of fate

LAO Poetry 2016

Words in slumber
Listening to the silence
Mundane noise fades
Internalized chaos
Broken metronome
Holding an unbalanced cadence
Held breaths released
Longing and pain slashing
Dream's landscape
Awake now
To a different silence
Not defined
By the absence of sound
But more the
Absence of the soul's respite

LAO Poetry 2016

The body bound
Restrained yet open
A masterpiece of living parchment
Da Vinci's virtu of carnal sin

A Maestro playing
Each hill and valley
Tracing want in cross marked pain
Symphonies of tormenting fire
Mapped upon willing skin

Lines etched
Lustful treasures exposed
Flowering petals become the focus
A crack of whip
Drawing outside
Societal maps of propriety
Margins of mind filled
With consuming need

Each strike laid
With a Falls precision
Drawing forth jaggedness
Bordering outcrops of greed
Unrelenting strikes rained down
Igniting pain
Replaced with fire
Driving the body
Until there is no thought, no voice
No place to hide, just
Incoherent whispers
Begging for release

Crescendos pop
As the epicenter is struck
Singled out and singed
Again and again
The body quakes as
Floods roll forth
Pleasure engulfing
The pain mapped body
Muscles pulled taught
Rigid in need

The Maestro
Etches his last mark
Allowing his masterpiece
Of pleasure to be unleashed

Tangled in what we are
Dichotomous beings entwined
Inside and out
Front and back
Verisimilitudes patterns obscured
Presenting outward faces
Images woven in creams
Illusionary practices
Lauding the pomp and circumstance of life
Creating the iconic pictures of average
Yet underneath
Supported by our darkest  threads
Is the true image
Worlds layered upon the one
Hidden, Blended, Shadowed
Vines of life bleeding out our
Slashes of vibrant color
Driven by ritual, pain and sacrifice
Interlaced, bound, knotted
Capturing the ghosting beauty
That is our reality

LAO Poetry 2016