Darkness falls
On top of dusk
Never reaching
Daytime’s dust

Rough hands, smooth hands
Black hands, blue hands
Smeared with paints and dyes and hues
Following the paper’s cues

To see the sun, just one last time
Dawn forever breaking
To reach the stars and make them mine
The world forever shaken
To start a fire inside the heart
The reach the end, to reach the start
To find a home, a place to be
To lose your sight, to really see
To keep a lie and find the truth
To hold it tight, but let it loose
To find true love, to hear winds chime
To see the sun, just one last time

An evil green and yellow hand
Reaching from the closet
Drips and drops of drool
Are crashing the tense silence
Claws reach out from under the bed
Tortured faces loom
Wing ***** and screeches sound overhead
Echoing in the room
A scream tightens in your throat
And lunges through your mouth
Mom and Daddy come running
Lights click on, you can finally see
An ugly knitted sweater
The hanger topsy-turvy
The drips and drops aren’t drool
Unless the faucet is hungry
Every bear has its claws
But Teddy’s are first rate
Illumination from the nightlight
Casts shadows on the wall
And the ceiling fan is fast
Like the bouncing of a ball
The lights go out
Your parents leave
But another scream is building –
They each had three feet!

The ice cold glass, all torn right through
So close to shattering and crashing in
Reflecting a broken and beautiful you
Shaping and showing all sorts of sin
A heated glance, all feverish at first
Tears you down and berates your heart
Seems so tame, so far from your worst
But it rips right in and rends you apart
Your eyes, they glimmer and rove the glass
Scornful and doubtful and shameful, as well
Praying this hell will verily pass
And the terror, the tears remain in their shell
The very worst judge, and jury, too
Is no more than a mirror, none other than you

words are just words, spewed from a mouth
base and predictable, they try to resound
words come in cycles, like geese flying south
falling like rain, from the clouds to the ground,
all around when you look, all around when you don’t
words can be pretty, like presents in bows
words can be vile, a bad taste that won’t
disappear from your tongue, the disgust will compose
a residual feeling that slithers and slides
but sometimes the words are lovely and kind
as safe and unchanging as the changing of tides
more often than not, though, the speaker is blind
to the cleansing effect words have on a mood
to the death of a war, or the dawn of a feud