My heart, the fool, clutches for the tide of that sweet sickness
fly to that wine you gaunted ghost in my beating breast!
Drink the dregs and drown out the bread
When you have had your fill, you fool
you will be sickened still.

My mind, the coward, hides a midst its multitude of arms
what a petty prisoner you have become to fear!
Take your leave when you have nothing left for the taking
and when you regain your pride and call it passion
you will be found out, weak and frail still.

How the late night wasteland has tempted me to waste, and
squander sleep with running from myself; and for good measure!
If any soul was not himself, than I
If any soul longed to be himself, than surely I
Ah but here there are only frivolities of speech which I present
For I cannot afford clarity obtuse; simple confessions of regret
Least walls be broken down and teeth to the grind be set
So let me quibble in the vaguery of verse and line
For such is the brief solace and respite, afforded to these nights of mine

I have tried to find a way to pull this world from the way it clings to you
to somehow cure it from all the color of your eyes.
But you are the deep blue of midnight
in which the stars swim and light the rippling dark.
You are the music fading in the halls
like every dryad footstep fall.
You live, for better or for worse
in the slivered silver glints of rain.

In all my attempts to rip you out
I simply find you there again.

My unwavering soul, how you have betrayed me thus
Now at the hour of my need, most ashamed.
Where is that unrelenting stubbornness
That has been thenceforth a fiery balm to my fears?
Where is that sediment of perpetual outcry
That has been the rock of my prayers and pleas?
Where did it fly, that crux, which bears my bane
But not my bones?
Oh my soul, have you no pity on this man?
Have you no pity on this moonlit, sunless land?
Yet I will walk, I know not where or for how long
And in the trudging footsteps of my jaunt
May I come to the hidden highways and byways
May I come to what I cannot help but truly want.

Images of a wanderer flood the the vision of my minds eye
heavy footsteps falling full of memories, dust kicked up and blown
by heavy, weighted, breaths with the rising and swelling of a chest
and in this chest there is no room for Him,
pain and parting have consumed the space,
the wreckage of decision, sealed shut the door for grace.

The face I recognize, and recoil at the eyes
it is I who hath no room for Him, but it is He who would not make a place.
Is not He the mighty one, of whom the ageless stories tell
who vanquished death and shut the gates of all the boiling throngs of hell?
And here am I a simple fool who hath no room a midst the throbbing of my pain.
If I not can make Him space, is that the end of all the God that ever was in me,
is this the end of all the light that ever aided men blind as I to clutch to see?

Oh Father, it all lays firmly on my head, I am the transgressor and the dead
but you were always more, more and more and more! Never lacking to overcome
all that my stubbornness ever had in store!
Now I am a wanderer again, and still, I rest my eyes upon the visage
of the one place where you are greater than, yet found sweetly in,
all that I have swallowed and defiled, broken and reviled
I rest my eyes to search once again for the clarity of place
a hill where truth still stands stretched from hollowness to home
a place where I can still be found and still be called your own.

I am sick with all this fumbling through the not yet darkened hours
let the anchor of the life that was be now ripped away complete
let mourning of its passing hasten and begin, and in the gritted eating of the dust
find me a solace and release of all the **** of ravaged trust
But this grey and bitter twilight, this death of death not yet
is an illness to the days that must be borne by bones my own
and every morning, in the mouring, I would find a silence still, sweet, and complete
but this unknown hesitation, this nagging fainting hope for all that was and should of been
is worse than any dying, such a thing sweet, final, and complete

So fly, vanish, disappear, depart! Leave to haunt another heart!
Go and keep your light glowing somewhere upon another set cindered coals
leave me here to mourn your parting, to let this story fade in the growing old.
Or for God sake, and for mine, become aquainted finally now with the valley of the floor
set your words to groaning and to praying and to begging in the night
and when your knees have grown sore and stiff from the bending of your will
all might be returned with joy and sweeter pain than weeping at the sight
of a prodigal returning and the end of long numb night
Until then, and if even there should ever come a when,
all is grey and dark and sick
as minute hands remind and memories sharply *****

Racing, pacing, screaming, bleeding
leaking through the cracks in the walls
Dams are breaking, I am taking
breaths that yield no air
I am drowning, in the sounding
of my horror and dispair

Babylonia, oh Babylonia
Como tus hijos lloran por pan.
Babylonia, oh Babylonia
Como te esperan los que ya no estan.

Lujos, plaseres, embrujos por doquier  
Pero ahora quien te va a ver?

Babylonia, oh babylonia
en mi alma siempre viviras
Babylonia, oh Babylonia
en tus pecados siempre to recuerdaran

Maldito, bendito, del mismo dios
Babylonia, te as perdido la voz

Por que no te diste la vuelta
tornate mi amor a otro lugar
Por que no te diste la vuelta
regresastes por donde te as venido

The muscles in my forearm ache, my fingers curl and grip the hilt
the weight of cold steel pulls at my grasp,
and I clutch, and hold my breath, to bare the weight of another world.
Here in the sharp edges of a glint and a silver shard of light
I lay hold of a small piece of myself that wains and faints but will never fade.
Who can see me now, when I can barely see me now?

Then there is the fire, the crackling dance of coals a midst the flicker and flight
of glowing cinders rising in the dark.
Smoke, the smell of it, the taste of it, fills the warmth around me;
my shelter from the ice of not yet, my guard against the cold of twilight.  
A wind blows and laced with the howling, I catch hints of spring.
I knew my self in the spring once, I was known in the spring once.

Where are you?
Can you be known here in the wood between the worlds?
Do you even exist in twilight?
Do I even exist in the twilight?
Where are you?

Faded things
and colors dulled, or so I had presumed
alas it is not so,
the vividness of your touch upon my memories
the weight of all the want
the cresting waves of burning thoughts
fiery breakers and seething streams of all the long lost
but forgotten not,
wash upon my wakeful hours.

I smell the baking bread, catch the shadows in the room
I watch you sitting there, eyes fixed upon your work
We feel the hours
I feel your skin
Eyes open, the pain begins

I've scattered letters across helpless white pages
in the hopes of finding some solace in verse and prose.
But words will not be the beacons that lead me home,
not this time.

The only way I will make it home this time around
will be by breath.

Maybe this unvoiced cry will be caught up by the wind
and carried off, far into the dark reaches of dusk
and maybe there, they will light upon an old hope of mine.
A secret place.

The only way I will make it home this time around
will be by His breath.

Like too little butter scraped across too much toast;
something in me, one called it darkness,
another, a monolithic flame,
but by whatever name,  is growing thin.
Cynicism trickles
in like little drops of noise,
and inner strings grow silent,
quivering music hardened to quiet in the hours.
Winter without Christmas, spring without the flower.

I dare not strip the armor, I dare not taste the time
for shame is a hunter in the minutes
a demon in the bind.
Soundly safe
I am hidden now
cloaked by all the pressing down of memories
by distractions in the speed of feet and fighting,
fighting with the day, warring with the wanting to return
And all the while I am growing thinner, scraped across the morning

and the end.

Change, a swift, rushing through me,
warm and deep and violent.
A sudden, sweet, and trying wind.

And carried in the tempest,
pain and parting have tampered with this fool,
and blown away the chaff, revealing what is new.

So here I, tender, worn, and trying to be brave
am basking in the gale
wafting with the scent of summer days.

Visions ran through the crags and crooked hollows of my hopes
I saw all sorts of delicious trouble, mingled in with deeper breaths of peace.
I saw a new man standing up from the place where the old had laid down
chains broken and shackles rusted to red flecked chaff in warm winds

If whispers could fan the flames again, and the night yield its dark
then drudging would turn to dancing,
and glances to long draughts of want.

There the old man comes again wanting all his way,
but the dead were never meant to rise this way
and I will not see another grace turn bitter in the bite
of all my selfish pull and plights.

So where from here, how to cross the great well known?
I do not know, but by God!
I am not staying here
and I wont go back

Peace and the burning flavor of smoke,
I ***** for the night and grip fast the dawn
and somewhere in the twilight cold
I grow young and I grow old
yet on them both I will choke

I see the silver blue of spring showers
I see the burning blue of ice in drops of fire
To them drips the wellspring of my desire
but I cannot drink of both,
I have neither the privileged nor the power

I knew something once, it was a small thing, a steady thing
I knew that I was home,
that in those binds and burdens, I was, alas, not alone.

There was ground beneath my drudging feet that would not move
There was music in the air to which my ears had grown deaf,
but it was there in the breathing non the less.

In the night, stirring sounds were but your turning to and fro
and in the morning, lover's quarrels staving off your absence from the bed.
I would not relent, and you had learned to love the giving in.

You and I, us; and then there was all the world and all the rest.
This was the great and true divide by which all things were split.
There was all else, apart, aside; and then you and I, my head upon your breast.

But that is what I knew once upon a time.
Now I know nothing.

Winter is coming without you, all the blushing in your face
Spring will be absent its color, all the silver of your eyes
Nights will be longer, mornings bitter, moments hollow
I will be broken with no reach for repair

Always my sunrise
Always there

Upon my breath, the misery of all the story told,
never spoken softly
but bellowed in the soul.
The deeper breaths I've breathed with you,
rich sweetness in the sum of sighs,
have splinted broken dreams
and lent your light to my darkened eyes.

What words have I to say to you,
you the author of all speech and sound?
What dare I to bare before your eyes
that you did not know before and look on still?
In the marrow of my dreams I still ache for dawn
but to confess this wish to you, is to speak it to myself
and the weight of such a visage I cannot bare
for all is gone, all is lost in the mess of minutes, miles, and hours!

Come for me if you ever loved me once and if you love me still
invade the place that is your own by right, come and break this will.
Tarry not, I taste sanity only for a time
but soon these rhythms will change, notes will leap upon a line
and darker eyes will open from these prayers
eyes which I wish I had never learned to call mine.

Have mercy on me
and if this unstable plea should whither in my mouth
Have mercy still
for I am most quietly ill

I am pulled to pieces by the gnawing hope for day
while the silent grip of twilight begs my flesh to stay
and while the brief moments of sweet sanity
afford me clarity and calm,
in the soundness of my mind
I still cannot see the dawn.

What is left of my desire, those portions I still own,
is fading fast, and waning first
is the hope I had for home.
But wretched man that I am
I am as stubborn still
so even here as I resign
I still await thy will

And so I will live, for some days now yet uncounted,
in a landscape bearing a bleak and cold horizon,
the dawn, stolen from the edges of my world
by some dark and bitter chill that neither faints nor fades

and yet the sun will rise,
if indeed the son has risen

When the pieces have been scattered and thrown in,
in with your bread cast upon the waters
When every compass has lost its firm fair north
and that once sharp sword has been blunted
what then?

"Trudge on!" I hear, "just wait, just wait" is whispered in my ear
but I have lost the once clear edges to my world
and I cannot pay the cost to hold my grip or to let go
I cannot bare the weight of where I stand
or to where these longings flow

Yet I will watch and I will wait, to see what comes over that hill
for there is aching and there are longings
as these dark waters seep into my will

Tomorrow's light may come too late
The night, too long,
before the dawn breaks

As warm tears, swollen with pain
Trickle silently down her cheeks
A fragile beauty sleeps

I let upon a darkened place watching starlight in the grip of night,
silver embers strewn about the solemn fingertips of dark.
The hand of midnight cold, adorned with pearls of silent far off fire
even colder yet.

I watched through the hours, or so it seemed to me
But the silent hand of midnight jeweled has robbed my sense of passing points
and laid it gently ere aside,
and I succumb to sweetest theft, seduced, I surrender
all and any knowledge of moving, ticking time.

Such are the nights spent in your company
Such are the shadows filled with all your flesh
Such are you and I

How do I do this?
How can I pull the shadows from my veins?
With every drop of red I find a little blue,
and the more of me I find, the more I find of you.

Take the knife in hand and cut it out,
but I rid myself of what?
Too deep, you have gone too deep
Now I will have to live with you there
within my keep.

If only worlds had never known
and feet had never tread.
If only two nights had never met
and those words had never been said.

Elusive and far are the comforts of knowing
now I must begin trust,
He who has deemed it so
that I should not know

So many sharp shards of things have been flung between you and I
Words like weapons of war, spat out and screamed,
yet even such words are nothing in the shadow of this great good bye.
What do I do now, now that the bleeding will not stop
and memories pour out from the ravages of all these broken things?
We are the broken things, and O how we bleed my dear,
silent drops of pain rushed to flowing crimson fear, festering with regret.
And there lays the quiet corpse of home, I hear the grave diggers now.

But perhaps there is still hope
perhaps the dead can live again
perhaps when we have gone farther up and further in
we will find home again

The ice flickers down with glints of rain and guilt
I do not dare to feel all that I could
Delight, too weak a word

She sees a world hidden behind a curtain of silence and snow
I watch her eyes pierce the veil
And I dare to ache

To see it with her

All my short and stubborn days,
I've looked to you
After every angry violent burst
I've looked to you

And when I wandered and I ran
far across the fragile edges of my pride
when I lost all glint of light
all taste and trust for hope

I have looked to you

And now I am here, once more
far from all I understand
And I beg for tears flow
to feel the violent grace
of your heavy hand

And I am looking to you

And you are quiet as you always are
silent as the grave....
But graves have spoken once before
long ago on that third morning bright

And I
I am still looking to you
and hoping, and afraid
of what it is that you will do

Two men sat in a room, staring eye to eye
One man clenched his hand,
and squeezed the shadows from his fist

It was he who would resist.

The other ate of his regret,
of what was
and what might happen yet

It was he, whom I cannot forget.

Somewhere between the west and the rising sun I'll sit
and I will wait;
I will wait for you to save whoever I am.

Somewhere in the twilight, somewhere between the dark and the dawn,
I will wait;
the shadows of who I was and who I am not yet.

Somewhere a midst the cold iron of night and the cries muffled by my delight,
I will wait;
though the music plays on strings of silence.

I will wait for you.

Somehow, somehow, you are still God
those words hang heavy in the air
steeped in withered expectation
bones of mine own regret laid bare

there is nothing left for me to do now, nothing more than to wait
the walls will crack and break and crumble, and I will feel the missing
of all the vanished touch, of all dreams lost and not yet mourned
of all love worn to bitterness, swallowed and then scorned.

All that is left is to sign a name.....and watch how all is changed
to never be the same

And yet somehow
somehow
you are still God

I am running from the quiet that threatens my every moment
fleeing from my very ability to feel, the very beating in my breast.
How could you ever let your soul ache for sunshine
or the red of your lips beg for a drink,
when all that is left is winter and all that you taste is dust?
And so I pull myself back, in and away from my own finger tips and face.
I make myself small and retreat deeper and deeper in,
in and away from myself, farther and farther into myself.
Thus I have become hallow thing
but a hollow thing is safe from all the quiet and the rain,
safe from just how real it all just might be,
safe from all the screaming and the wanting, and the weeping and the waves.
Thus I have become a hollow thing, running from my bones
for they are yet still burning
with the memories of home.

The tide drags in the dregs,
churns up the silt of my sentiments

I am wading in deep waters, trying to get home

The bitter current of my discontent
rushes, feeds these waves of my regret

I am wading in deep waters, trying to get home.

This raging sea and siren calls
beckon me, to break to fall

Oh I am wading in deep waters, trying to get home

Echos whisper past an empty place
where your body used to be
and my arms remind me of the absence
...I breathe in, and then I pray

But words, they steal away in the quiet
what have I to say?
Nothing, and yet
I hope He is listening anyway

There I see the ghost of sleeping
but there is no solace in that grave
for then there is still dreaming
and I still dream of you

Silvery wisps of painful hopes, die in icy air
And I welcome and at once despise,
the sweet break of my despair

For moments far too short to count
But far too long to not have loved
I thought I saw a different man;
I thought that I, he was

And those eyes that seemed to see him there
Standing in my place,
I would have drank of them like ice in drops of fire
in the beauty of her face.

Light, beautiful and frail;
I taste upon my lips the quiet hints of morning light,
and as fire breaks upon the bow of my world,
the deep blue of midnight finds refuge in my memories.
I will always remember you, with your eyes like ice in drops of fire.

The world as I know it
is covered in the gleaming shadow of a world as I have never known.
And in the shadows made bright by shadows,
the night reminds me of a darkness I find so sweet.
In that darkness I would drink of her eyes.

All around me there is a great and pressing nothing
Nothing I can do, nothing I can say, nothing that I may want
The waiting is for nothing, the hoping is for nothing,
My anger is for nothing, and it is for no one.
And yet I am angry at the nothing, in rage at all that is not.
Yet there is comfort in the nothing, for there, there is no pain or past
There is no sin a midst the nothing, neither is there light
There is only nothing,
and it will last and last

The morning light flickers through and I,
I hold the dawn in my arms.
And I hear the sweet soft breeze of breath,
and here we have no fear of harm.

But we have learned that once we rise,
there is much to fear.
For I have broken many promises,
and I have cut you deep my dear.

For five minutes I wept and shook in your arms
For five minutes you embraced a broken man
all the mess was gone, all the walls gave in
For one minute you held my face in your hand
For one minute I pressed my cheek to yours and breathed
finally a real breath, not a gasp or a fight for air
For seconds you looked at me again like you used to do
For seconds the world was gone and it was just us two

For a moment
I was home

You are still here aren't you, lingering in the lullabies
In the memories of that soft goodbye

Go away!....no, stay.
Wherever you are, good night.
The dark will always belong to your eyes.

It will all fade, it must, I must.
And when I have fought and screamed and hoped,
when I've finally drowned deep in daylight,
then my reluctant goodbyes will sound the depths
and I will count the days and all their quiet deaths.

I miss you, whoever you are
and whoever I thought you to be.
Perhaps all I ever heard were echoes of words
or all I ever saw was a ripple in the water,
but I will miss these even so.

Let go, just let go.

The world is no longer as I once thought I needed it to be,
I am no longer the man I once thought I had seen

But I remember when the light danced upon the waters
I remember the dawn rising with my breath

And I remember her eyes, like spring showers,
If only I could forget all the rest