Eyes closed,
The heavy drone of
What If
Heaves through my
Frozen ears,
Beating,
Beating.

Aphrodite rears
Her luminous head
And cries out
Beneath the slow
And steady
Thumping presence
Of How Come.

There's too much time here.
Space that needs
To be filled.
Reason
Is stretched thin,
Cracking at the center
Like the walls of
An old tool shed,
Canary yellow
And peeling.

There's a peculiar feeling about emptiness.
Like hundreds of misshapen rocks
Have all been carelessly dumped
Into the cavity which should hold
My red, pulsing heart.
It's not obnoxious
Or tangible,
But it lurks somewhere right beyond
I love you
And I miss you
And I don't care.
Like termites slowly devouring
An old pewter coffee table
Left on the corner in front of a tall
Decaying townhouse.
The legs slowly deteriorate,
Revealing their soft fleshy wooden insides.
There's no warning sign for this kind of
Isolation.
No tell tale symptoms
Or home made remedies
Of honey and camomile.
Flashing neon lights
Flicker and fade into the
Heavy night.
And symmetrical posters
Don't illuminate the pathway to loneliness like they should.
Instead,
It just creeps up on you when you're least expecting it,
Between casual conversations
And vulnerable moments of passion.
You can't stop it,
Or push it into a corner
The way you can with guilt
And premeditated promises.
It's too disfigured to be shut away in a symmetrical closet
Or empty dining room.
It's the absence of understanding,
The congested feeling in your lungs
And heart
And stomach,
That comes when you suddenly realize
No one understands.
It's unpredictable in that way,
The sudden realization,
There's no telling when it will spring upon an unexpecting moment,
And devour the innocence of longing.
But when it happens,
When your whole world feels frozen,
Stagnant and stuck between the cracks of reality,
And covered with a thin veil of dust
And failure,
When your throat is dry and chalky,
Full of almost there sentences
That dance in the chaos of your desperation,
You'll know.

Howl
The indifferent wind caresses his skin as reality fades into the distance,
Gradually, the frigid air becomes heavy and obvious in its presence.
His feet, firmly placed on the edge of the cliff, flirt with frostbite
And the idea of plummeting down into the soft unkown.
Howling into the impartial wilderness, his echo pauses
Before reeling back to slap him, as if to make sure he’s still alive-- still present.
The animals lay silent to his tortured wails,
To his lonely laments that carry an entire lifetime in a single, hollow ring.
The high octave of his echo loses its urgency in the redwood trees and jagged cliffs,
Frantically bouncing off canyon walls as if to wake up the slumbering forest.
His fragmented howls cut through the thick silence, only to fade out once again.
Lost to the obsolete language of the downy finch and blood red maple leaves.
He sounds his tortured cries to drown out the beating of his heart,
Unleashing his insecurities and regrets to the indifferent world.

Sanity and the cold wind brush against his skin
As gusts of common sense harshly dry out his eyes.
His feet, firmly placed on the edge of the cliff, flirt with frost bite.
Howling into the wilderness, his echo pauses
Before reeling back to taunt him and slap him across the face.
The animals are silent to his tortured wails,
To his lonely laments about being misunderstood.
They only hear the high octave of his echo,
And run for cover amidst the canopy of weary redwoods.
He pours his heart out on that ledge,
Unleashing his insecurities and regrets to the indifferent world.
As his echos come back and caress his red, restless face
His surroundings begin to dance and swirl together,
Creating a new kind of understanding,
A new form of exceptence,
Of peace.
His howl sounds out into nothingness,
Booming its vibrating echo between the trees and birds and streams.

Liquid silence flows between the cracks,
The awkward pauses and terse remarks ,
Of our cordial conversation.

My lips fumble as words  scratch at their soft corridor,
The taste of discomfort and failure is salty,
Yet reassuringly human- alive.

You didn't do anything wrong,
Your perfectly placed hesitations and irony
Fell stagnant in the bitter pool of my expectations.

You couldn't help the way things went,
Self sabatoge danced sweetly on my lips,
Fates sticky web couldn't hold back deliberation.

Being with you, in this room,
Is the epitome of wide open loniness-
The kind talked about in books and eulogies.

It's elusive presence envelops me
As sentences fumble out of my mouth like gravel:
Unclear and unintentional, too genuine to matter.

I'm not sure how much more I can handle,
How many perfectly sane stories I can to listen to
Without spilling off the brink of sanity.

It's not as bad as it seems out here,
There's something charming about being utterly alone,
Something unexplained and unattainable
In this wide open loneliness-

I heard a knocking in my mind
Against the cedar door,
Beating, beating as if to find
Something worth looking for.

And as the rhythm proceeded,
The sounds faded into the wind.
It was gone before I believed it,
Yet it stole something within.

I heard the footsteps tread away,
A soft and steady pace,
The shadows cast a murky grey
Upon the would-be face.

Dragging a prisoner's remains
Though no one left the room
For the bounty came from within the brain
And all it's splendid gloom.

Thick green trees surround the powerful river,
It's current pulls me forward as small, smooth pebbles lap at my toes.
Somewhere in the background, children are shrieking with summertime bliss,
Making loud splashes into the crisp, cool water
From the wavering branch belonging to an ancient tree.
As I wade forward, warm brown mud oozes between my toes,
Unleashing a murky film around my perimeter.
The sun relentlessly bears down on me,
Calling out to my budding freckles beneath my olive skin.
Sweat droplets begin to form around my brow,
Sweetly trickling down my jaw and mixing with my river-wet body.
I close my eyes as the warmth encompasses my being,
It's as if I'm given a single bucket and told to fill it with all the wonders of the river-
I can't.
Then splash- it all comes flooding back to me,
Drowning me, filling my lungs with your presence.
I wasn't expecting you here,
Amidst the laughing children and the current.
It hurts too much to think of you, but it's impossible to let you go,
Not now.