Every dark thing, a turbulent mass of nothing;
every forgotten hope, a sanctimonious silence;
every lost dream, a memory of ******;
meet me by the tree growing in the echoes of violence.

These old woes, heavy in your beaten head;
these philharmonic nightmares, blessed with ultraviolet light;
these sorry worries, pontificating to the ignorant;
meet me by the tree with leaves that shimmer out of sight.

Too many ugly voices, stretched thin in your clothing;
too many stranded friends, veiled in your weathered face;
too many judges, stealing notes from the executioners;
meet me by the tree that holds it all in place.

And you, lonely little girl,
far from the envy of a century,
sing the quiet war songs of your ancestry.

~~

o brokenhearted girl


why do you
cry yourself
to sleep
at night


you're already dead


let go

~~

There’s oil pooling on the streets,
and I’m on my way to some dive bar
surrounded by the glittering lights
only success and fame can afford.
Neon signs threatening epileptic seizures
hang like 21st-Century gargoyles
above the heads of my brothers in harm.

There’s girls in neon everything,
halter top, hot pants, fishnet tights.
They’re calling out for a good time,
but they haven’t been seen here in years,
the nights are too long to appreciate
the memories in the short days.
They never give up hope, though,
that’s why they’re so beautifully broken.

There’s a kid on the street covered up
with an old jacket left behind
by another societal failure who died
last winter in a doorway lined in snow.
Next to him, a musician plays a guitar
that plays no old blues notes,
no idea it’s playing by a grave.

I find a quiet little street, no life,
no blinking lights offering salvation
from a life of complete boredom.
I’ll take the boring and the quiet,
I’ll take screaming into the air,
lost syllables and juxtapositions
flung up into the dead air
of a dark and silent LA night.

We don’t deserve to be lonely,
but being alone all the time is fine,
it’s perfectly healthy to keep
your own company but not healthy
to not enjoy the time to yourself.
Extrapolating meanings from last night’s dreams,
finding comfort in fractured scenes,
looking for answers to our selves
in the morning smog of repression.

But I still beat these same paths,
still see the same sorry faces
illuminated by those awful neon signs,
garish intrusions into the neighbourhood,
fake happiness and promised sorrow.
The homeless kid is gone, stabbed for dimes,
but traffic keeps moving, drinkers keep
gambling away their little pay checks,
and the cold dark of these LA nights
keeps holding on to my echoes.

We met up for coffee
as the snow started falling,
warmth in our hearts
and a morning just talking.
I reached for your hand
and you opened it up to mine.
The shivers of outside
found their way to our spines.

We left them behind,
anonymous strangers in shelter,
we found our way home
with our names in red letters.
We kissed so so softly,
kicked off our shoes by the door,
and we found our ecstasy
lying entwined on the floor.

I woke up the next day,
you weren’t there beside me,
and I looked everywhere
but just your shadow I could see.
The snow started falling,
piling up outside my window,
and the coldness came in
when I wondered where did you go?

And I’m still searching for this lost part of me,
this art of me, this masterpiece that was and will always be you.
Come back to me and prove you were not just a vision,
not just a dream one night, a lonely little night I shrunk instead of grew.
My hand’s wide open ready for yours to hold,
come back from the cold, appearing and vanishing in the still of the blue.