Read intentions like scattered tea leaves
Take a gulp of green, a rush to the limbs
Their opinions will fall silent against the wood
Fragments of chatter reduced to crackles
With each confident step through the brush
Maniacal laughter, sharp voices, incessant clicking
Cranked down to a dull roar—to nothing
A heuristic method of finding power
For the gentle soul and her adventurous spirit
Sits at a desk to dream professionally
Surrounded always by labels and price tags
She envisions a world where there is nothing
Except quiet and oak

Though the voice is tuned out, I still wonder about the acid that sleeps in your heart
What else could make you long to wear the skin of another as your own?
The burning you must feel with every inhale; a reminder that you are still the same
Wandering aimlessly, hoping to steal the purpose of another and scrawl your name upon it
Fueled by remarks meant to scathe and words meant to torment
How lonely it must be to be you, to drown in an ego too large for your being
With each desperate word that escapes, I feel a pang of sorrow emerge from the nothingness
No amount of foresight can fix a wrecked train, still barreling down the tracks
An increase in velocity, a loss of control
The pity I’ve mustered for you can never take away from the attacks you’ve tried
Like shooting arrows from the base of a tower, they shatter around you
Another day spent, another moment, and what have you to show?
That you’ve gained the attention of everyone in your feeble attempts to claw me down?
That you have been heard, your presence felt and we know you exist?
Outward show is a pathetic substitute for inner worth
Continue to claw, continue to fight
I will not be there when you are done

You fight until you don’t
In a gnarly struggle of swinging fists
Prophetic black and blue

You blame until you don’t
Endurance soothes a mind disturbed
Framing an unfolded masterpiece

They laugh until they don’t
Glares sweetly coated in candor
Small testaments to your power

You fall until you don’t
Standing shoots you straight to the moon
In the midst of stardust and composure

You cry until you don’t
Tears that decorate the galaxies around you
Scrapes simply fall into orbit

You suffocate until you don’t
Liberation seems like an old friend
A beauty you idolized in secret

You write it down until you don’t
The pen is taken from your hand
Leaving spiral-bound notebooks in the dust

You’re there until you’re not
An absence weighing heavy in your place
Legacies of the strength to overcome
You care until you don’t

Malnourished and battered, he shades himself beneath a tree of oak
Worn from the arduous weight of responsibility
Sunken eyes and filthy hair, baking in the sun
Among the rotting, sickly sweet perfume of tender fruit deferred past its peak
It sinks deeper through the dirt
Decomposing into soil around his tattered heels
A smell that nauseates him but amplifies his growling intestine
Foul corpses lay among him, tempting a moments satisfaction
To relieve the pain of being a beating heart wrapped tight in flesh
Fighting against the black staining his exposed legs
A newly ripe pomegranate glistening at him from above
The sweetest taste he can fathom an arm's reach from the pit
But too weak to stand he admires from a distance
As the festering pulp claims him as its own

Can we uncover the beauty once again?
Dark in its pain like a bloodstained journal
The tortured one, exposed to incandescent rays
Discarding the days in favor of those nights
Far above the distant lights; too close to the judging skies
Detached from kind we chose a new road
Record player spun an ode to those who worried for me
My fascination with misery collects deep in my room
Gaunt features designed to bloom, it was doomed from the start
But you held the line that led to poetic causation
The desolate train station that beats soft and slow
You could never get me to go back to that lonely chamber
He who is rooted in anger will die by its very hand
To become a line in the sand on a populated shore
You forgot what you died for and yet the fact stands true
A torture which remains in you, is only yours

You assume I don’t see you
Lavish with carbonated conviction
Facing the bitter end- that last gulp of cheap beer
First a reflective beat, and then a self-assured expulsion

The king of this grimy land comfortably sat upon a throne of dizzy *****
I pursue the liquid ring on a worn surface
But your dull eyes rest heavy upon my volatile figure
Translucent in the dimly lit dive  

An entire room intoxicated by clear implications
The echo of words inferred; with undertones of stale lager
That has seeped into the paint chipped walls where your vibrations are deflected
Do you think you’re hiding?  

Your glance suggests that these delicate palms haven’t crushed
One too many aluminum cans
And the cinnamon eyes you so dream of
Have not had the pleasure to bear witness
To each treacherous move you think you make in secret

It's not full circle when its a spiral to the top
No longer afraid to face the abyss I left behind
Let it face me and see what it can learn
Maybe a small fraction of my memory is devoted to shining a flattering light
Or maybe it's just a quaint thing from my story
That tears through pure distaste and offers something sweet
I've missed my car, I've missed the conversation
But now there's nothing left for me to say...
Our wavelengths will always be slightly off
I've learned to accept it. Keep it stored away
the stuff I thought was real

It's easy to sit on a throne
      and declare yourself humble
      without any sense of your own irony
To wear your causes like blood diamonds
      and live in secret hell
It's easy to construct a mask
      stolen pieces from the innocence you covet
A thin cloak, lace and rose gold
      fit for a tyrant