I can call upon myself
but it's just a shell

bones break surface
offering quilltips
for forging poems
with
graduated cylinder-strained
diluted-air grade
not from concentrate
ink

the mechanism's safe
as sealed secret tombs
are safe
an echo of disdain
for which I apologize

aquiver with paste-
like listenings
replicating histories
foreign and estranged
to taciturn gaze;
functional, but
glazed

shells function as people
but not as well
words wish but don't tell
what awaits ingrained
in bones broken
for blessing

pop! but distressing
echoing, echoing
pain empathetically parsed
but cannot relate
it's too late

I'm walking
but not talking
I'm listening
but not communicating
I'm dead
but not yet down

entombed in my head;
all that might have been
still can, but
a refusal to bend
is found
in my own pen

I've built a prison for myself

gently beckon
the sweet words with
slivertongue fingers
slowly, steady
'til all is ready

placate them with lemonade
and roses for the sweetly grave
snipped especial so to save
their souls' decay
as it were
in olden day

gaily affair we
singing high and merr'ly
and twirl as tiny fairies
do in mid-summer eves

sprinkled loves
and lists
of hopes and kisses
and corpse-like tenderness
it sickens

so do the sweet words sour
and I alone this hour
do turn the tables paleweak
and weep them
so they sink
into my nothing
I keep
oh so dearly

how sincerely
I do try
to **** them softly
and dry the eyes
of mourners
far and wide
but alas
they always die

the end is my domain

fuzzy
glowed frozen
plop in the mind
like time
doesn't matter

picture on the wall
halls hollowed in grey matter
echo surreal
can't feel
but know

secret calling
soul's longing
wishing to away
to tomorrow
where nymphs
and the mythic play

malformed music
made not for ears
be fear that grows
deep in mind
and dredged in remembrance

spacetime slip
through wrinkle
dripping with dreams
and lustered lies
as we know
you don't

get out of your head, kid

know this
that dark matter makes up most of this
that the here and now runs on dark energy
and dark forces stalk our collective conscience

my child
you come from a legacy of darkness
born of men with dark hearts who, thoughtless
thought to make a legacy in darkness

night falls
down into the depths of the soul
where, shrouded there, lies the shadow
your dark twin you'll never truly know

stop this
end the sad story penned in inky blackness
it leaves a darkness in the subconscious
better to bleed out the ink with water

drown out
the thoughts inside your head, better off dead
better to not exist than to be blackened
marked with that dark stain of the abyss

unconscious, look into the light

grasp what hands cannot
the ***** of oughts and ought-nots
moral compass passed off
as correct heading with ship cast off
towards all and nothing

navigation without stars
only with the beating of the heart
and the interpretation of the head
makes for black nights
holed up in bed

thinking and dreaming and believing
that capacity is in my grasp
and I've capacity to carry
my oxygen down, diving deep
into subconscious abyss

subcontinental, underground thoughts
dredge up awful oughts more than not
and like demons from the depths of hell
they tell me what's wrong is well
and I'm stuck in this well I dug myself

so claw my way out, with hands that grasp
the dirt and world that exists outside my head
and dig up truth and upwards towards
something lost in youth
and the daydreams that died with it

climb and climb until I see the stars
until I am a star and so shine for the world
holding onto heaven with a mind of gold
mined from the earth I know
to exist at least to my hands

these instruments of will will see me home

upheld

facing heaven
facing the music

angel choirs are nothing like the devil
down in Georgia
far above the level of
love
into a stratospheric stratification of
hope
and seven levels of adrenaline beyond
dope

dopamine dreams drip
slow
soothing control
like a lighted window in the
snow
glimmering like gold
but so far gone
the meaning is
lost

and I wander
through my own house
wondering why this isn't home
wishing to the stars to go
away into the unknown

but I'm snatched back

and I switch back to passing
myself in the mirror
and screaming ****** Mary
because I'm home
but gentle hands
know

how to love while being played like a fiddle
how to sweetly play it off as
close enough to god to
know

yet I am home
and the stars align so I do find
refuge in the music
and make a home in
dreams made doped
coaxed by my own
two hands

too late to come down