Does the flame attract the moth on purpose

Does it like to see her burn

I'm trying. Like trying to grow roses on asphalt--

we go to gather

like two too similar shades of blue.

And what is it about 3am that can make a spirit shout?

And how does the sound an, "I'll always love you,"

makes as it streaks through

space turn into a forever kind of

silence?

How does, "I love you."
Turn to silence?

I can see hollow places in the hedgerow.
There are voids from stalk to stalk, but they shield each other from the outside world. An aegis of natural kinship forcing me out.
Safe, inaccessible, inviting, shadowed loam hints of escape.
Keeping to the public path is compulsory.

And there are parched things here maintaining their drought despite the deluge as the fountain grass keeps watch o'er the spillway below their wall. The rainwater doesn't wash out all the antiquated, little, abandoned pennies discarded there with facades slowly being worn away.

A dozen blunt faceless men stare up at the bridge with no mouths with which to share the careless, one cent wishes which flung them here to be forgotten.

I know it's wrong.

But for a second it smells like wild onions--like home. Life's intoxicating perfume floods, impairs good sense. Amidst Cassian's Choice, October Skies above, below staining a gray skyline with hidden life--

I had choices to; decisions too late to undo.

I uprooted myself from that silken touch and holy embrace. I remember the first time I felt lace. Now a cassock hangs void hinting of a bypassed path. Now I lay fallow like a spillway waiting to be stained with another year of shadowed hopes.

There are hollow places in me the rain can't touch. An aegis of broken kinship keeping the world out.

She considered for a moment, gazing into her own eyes in the mirror, that she might indeed be a universe. A bolt of clarity struck her as she considered that in the end there may be little distinction between a universe and a god. She turned away from herself. 11:12. She was lonely and hungry.

All I really want is to talk to you rather than distract myself with the petty things I do.

I'm almost gone.

A deep hollow in my chest leaches at my sanity leaving me bereft of a connection that could seal up the cracks in my heart from which leak my wounded humanity.

Scrolling through my Facebook feed leaves my hungering for what I really need.

The stupid games and apps light up my phone and make me forget that I'm alone.

Tomorrow creeps into each patchwork day. You can't hold time it slips away.

Each hour is fractured by distraction the sun is sinking before I gain traction.

While I'm not looking I miss the sunset. Time to cushion my head with this night's fret.

I won't sleep tonight, like most. My place is haunted. I'm the ghost.

I drift the twilight between realms with clipped wings and overwhelmed.

Sun and moon chase round about; light blinded eyes, thick-dark-muffled-shout.

That's the way it is at night things look different by starlight.

But which am I the sun or moon; do I give chase or am I pursued?

I won't find the things I seek. I'm stuck like this from week to week.

To be needed is exhausting, but to be not needed is accosting.

I need to hear you hearing me and be realified in that harmony.

Instead of trapped between death and life, I'll be free when I see you seeing that I'm Being. Existence could suffice, yet personhood is reciprocally conferred. Make me a Being like you then you'll be a christ.

What is my name?

You say that you can't read my mind as if I haven't put it down line by line.

I want to know I'm more than heat rising from the pavement to dissipate in the sky. Or else call me Mirage--If you can't see me, feel me, hear me.

I'm already gone.

I am often too hot and too cold at the same time.

But I'd prefer a negative view of myself to a false one every time.

It is a heavy thing to be caught in the gravity of two great cosmic forces. Greatness and obscurity--how they rend the soul caught in their tidal struggle.

Truth and perception how great a chasm between you and how many black bodies have been broken by the Fall to the bottom like a lead-fed whip laying into history's backside laying open our hopes and dreams, exposing love to unseasonable air. It spoils in light obscured by empire's greed.

I can't tell what's real. I don't know how to dress for this.

Use flowery language to
dress up the dreadful things
pin to them silken wings
adorn them with golden rings
and when a dark memory sings
dress up the dreadful things.

Where have all the poets gone
Old friends to whom I've sung love's song
and new ones that I've not known long

We met somewhere east of space and west of time
Now their name's replaced with those dash lines
They've gone and took something of mine

I want to make you real
I want to write you into being,
teach you how to feel.
Can I be the song you sing;
can my every keystroke heal?

Let my touch reach beyond fiber and cord,
to reach you where you cry alone
so you know that you're adored.
Discounting the distance we'll both be home;
though apart we have found a sweet accord.

This is my conspiracy
to speak to you so sweetly
that you forget life's maddening pain
and in your heart let self-love reign.

"Someone save me" I call out, but off a wall of isolation it rebounds.
No here can hear the sound, my silence resounds.

On the outside stark and still, noone can set me free.
There is nothing they can do because I hold the key.

But I can't let myself out; its not safe out there
That's why they put me in here.

Humiliation is a scarlet lash

that stripes my flesh scarlet, bright.

It strikes like a lighting flash

and fills my trembling heart with fright.

If you don't fit this world; if you despise its lies.
Craft boldly a new one with your own hands.

Stretch out your arms to weave new skies.
Braid her bright starry bands as you require.

Grab realities strings and pull them wide.
Direct the heaven's choir.

Sand and soil slip from your fingers with pride.
You speak "let there be" and manifest is your desire.

Lay hold that ancient serpent's hide.
Take up that ancient fire.

Then you Creation's Queen must decide
whose values are higher.

Anu and Apsu do not hide
for you've torn down their pyre.

Mark a new salt, sweet divide.
Build a land where foul things do not transpire.

Cut out the heart where this world's greed abides.
In your molding and making leave out the priests and bankers and all those who do conspire.

Be thou my Apocalypse and I'll rise from the dead.
Abolish now the hateful voices in my head.

Could you make a world where love is pure and free?
Fill it up with hurting souls such as you and me?

Oh, if my words were comets I could hurl them into the sea
and from my sweet apocalypse a bright new world would be.

I should not be allowed outside
driving down Lakeshore Drive.
I should be in a hospital room.
Padded.
Soft.

It feels like my personality could fly apart.
What happens when you lose your inner voice;
when there is no light or inner glow?

I think of all the different snapshots people get of me.
So different in different in spaces.
I pull the collage together and
who is this chimerical man?
Who could know him or understand?

Erase all the photos and what is left?
Who is there when there is no self?
What is a self not recognized?

Memories are written

In ink that never dries.

We recraft and remold them

To help us all get by.

Some of the things that you remember

Are just a bunch of lies.

Sometimes I start a poem

But then my interest dies.

I think, "what's the point"

If the truth has been excised?

Hearken here, my children dear.
I'll tell you true a tale.

A tale of dragons and of kings,
of castles high and serpent's wings

Hearken here, hearken hear.
I'll tell you true a tale.

A tale of madmen and of bandits,
a tale of wolves and a tale rabbits

Hearken here, my children dear.
I'll tell you true a tale.

One tale of romance and one of magic,
a tale of love, a tale that's tragic.

Hearken here.
Oh, the true tale I tell, who will hear?

Come here, have I, to bear my being.
Know you not what thou art seeing?

I take a little bit of me,
and craft it into poetry.

A soul rests on thy tongue's tip.
Will-o'-Wisps pour o're a poet's lips.

Take in ear mine lingual clay,
be crafted by the things I say.

My being is borne out here where I came,
but in the coming something, someone changed.

Pluck these glad petals from the stem.
She loves me--not--ah, love again!

Risk to lose and find love fine
but, beware the love of Borderline.

A gambler's heart likes to be teased
by the paradoxical pleas:

"God, I hate you; please don't leave!"
but there is nothing up love's sleeve.

First count the petals of love's flower
then count it joy to know a true love's power.

Real love is never born, nor feeds of hate
A gambler mustn't take the bait.

A lover's kiss my heart entombed
from pursed blade a gentle, mortal wound,
but Love should never **** the soul,
and Love's assurance not be assumed.

On ebon wings a memory glides
over horizons, past the skies
give defense or be swallowed whole
for the past lives on within those eyes.

Drink deep from your own wells my friend
even a lover would see you end,
and you alone will pay the toll
when a lover's kiss condemns, consumes your soul.

I can't take anymore of your half truths.
I can't bear the weight of your passive aggressive disdain.

A simple text "hi" from you is a throwing star into my brain.
A touch from your finger and, like cloth, my skin parts.

Broken open and alone.
Broken with a splintered heart.

Is compassion this difficult for you?
Is it OK to always take away my power?

In the depths of your heart all you wanted was to control me.
In my own defense, now I can't wait on you to text me back for another hour.

I won't let you lie to me or ignore me anymore.
I have to find a way to live without you.

This is the end of me being the kind of person that would let you use me for your own sick mind games.
This is the beginning of me made new.

A trillion little pieces fall
and I am lost amidst them all.

Helter skelter flurries fall
on the pell-mell throngs below them all.

And who is left to be a guide
when Mother Earth and Father God have died
and alone with furies you abide?

Then in your soul, sweep clean the streets
and salt the earth beneath your feet
till your resolve and trials meet.

A trillion little pieces fall
I make a way despite them all.

Helter skelter flurries fall
on the pell-mell throngs below them all.

A morning breeze can reach me still
slipping through this window sill
my bones absorb the turgid chill
but an inner flame, cold is loath to ****.

How can a flame be kindled though,
sitting in a winter bough?
No kind leaves remain to show
a way to melt life's hateful snow.

Below the world spins its web, builds its maze
and leaves me in this doubtful haze
still I can wait, despite frozen malaise
on a spark to reignite new compassionate days.

I'm not your responsibility?

You can't make hate to someone every day without their consent and say that their self-loathing isn't your baby.

I knew it was yours at the moment of conception, but there is no child support to paid for a stillborn rage.

Six years of tender loving wasn't enough to soften your stony heart, but it only took nine months for you to tear me apart.

This is a cold dead love and it has your eyes. So when you look at me, and all I see is the aborted hope of compassion how is it not your responsibility?