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Sep 2012 · 1.7k
El Capitán
Orion Schwalm Sep 2012
The call me...Captain Swurve.
They call me Captain Swurvey
They say my heart's half gone
As it's plagued with rot and scurvy!
They said I'd chase the sunset
And drink us all to drought
I said nay boys, I'll follow the tides
And leave no liquor-starved crewman without.
Now, as the legend rests
Just like the setting sun
I'll dream of pretty wenches
That did my poor heart shun
And raise my flask o' whiskey
And tip up my old gun
And wish that it was ***.
Surrounded by the sea
Of people looking over me
The captain that I've always wished that I could have the ***** to be,
Is not exactly what he seems.

I'm the captain, sodden and somber.
I own no land, and I owe no man no man's land, which is a place I've chosen to wander.
Take that as you will, I take wasteland as a million metaphors, dried up, littered on, desert that used to be a golden shore. Back then Bikini Babes would just come to right up you and ask you to rub tanning lotion on their backs, and you somehow didn't even have to flirt to feel attractive.
                                                     ­             This place doesn't exist.
                                                      I made it up. That beach never had any water.
There was no such thing. Like perfect pitch, or total bliss or uncontrollable mental disorders.        

Yeah, I owe barrenness to y'all. I'd never get any peace and quiet, or the zen of a much needed vacation
                                           without that feeling you get in a crowd of total isolation.

It's hummmmmmming....of a million minds, a crowd of buzzzzzzing bumble *******, deciphering my metaphors.
**** metaphors, listen to what I speak, when I'm not up on a pedestal.

You know I used to want to be an astronomer? Just a fun fact.
Not because I never had enough tact to be an actor,
Just because I was always rather apt
                    to just sit back
                                   and watch the
rapture.

Bowl of popcorn over here on the left.
Bottle of **** right here on the right.
And the most beautiful woman God could create, raining down her fiery scorn on me, loving every minute of this cataclysmic *******.
I am Captain Swurvey       and       I        like      to      ****.
Everything beautiful is useful to me,
Everything else just *****.
And whether I want you to or not, you'll probably believe every word I say.
STOP.

I am Captain Swurve
And I am sailing swervingly
Unsettling the neighbors and uprooting your search for worth and immortality.
I do it because people with a purpose make me nervous,
Looking only at the surface
                                           You never go much deeper
                                            And I'm skimming along on that surface,
                                             But all I ever yearned for was the chance to dive overboard
                                               And drown myself in the deep end of your ocean.

I'd like to see your coral reefs, and be swept up by all sorts of riptides, and undercurrents, and
maybe
just maybe
I'd really love to see the bottom before I die.

I imagine all beautiful lights. That no one has ever seen. It's another world down there. And well...

                                                        ­                                          You know I've always wanted to see your Marianas Trench...

Switch around, we're in space, I'm sailing through the sun storms, desperately reaching as far out as I can only to crash on the rocks of your atmosphere.  Reeling off, and spinning past millenia, knowing there would never be enough space in the universe to keep us apart for too long. You couldn't hear me scream, but if you'd let me in there...you would have heard the battle crying inside me. If your brain's synapses are stars, then your heart is one insignificant little planet amidst the skies that by some stroke of hell managed to create life as I know it.

That metaphor
has been done before
I'm used up
i'm not original BUT
GOD
**** IT
I can't be the only person who's ever fallen in love.         I wouldn't ever want to be.    
Because then you wouldn't see much in me. Without these seeds... It'd be kind of like a wasteland.
But *******,
I am so glad
That humans learned how to plant.


Talk about self-absorbed, this kid writes a poem about his own celebrity persona which he pretty much invented! Well, there have been some modifications I can't take credit for.

You choose what you want to believe about me.
But I am just a person
My name is Captain Swurvey.

...
Sep 2012 · 899
The Talk
Orion Schwalm Sep 2012
Help me out for a second here.
Help me out of here.
I'm going out of my mind/But I'm/Lying/I'm not/It's too hot/And claustrophobic
So... I'll bounce back and forth in rhythm/Listenin' to myself givin'/All you beautiful people allegorical head.
Audience is/Providence of/Godliness through/Loneliness when/Each and every one of you make/Up a giant intuitive/Entity of empathy that/I wish I could make love to.

What?
I wish I could talk to, you,
but I often find that people look to me to be aloof,
but I also find the need to persuade myself into honesty.
But you gotta know, I just think words can mean so much more, or so much littler than the effort it takes to say them and it scares me all the time.

Sometimes people call me poet. I can't talk to people, they all think I'm silly and that makes me feel awkward cuz I have a lot sadness  and put too much importance on the common interaction between me and the rest of my race.
So I sing instead of talking, Run instead of walking, improv without blocking, write. cuz I'm scared, I'm so ******* scared of something turning out unexpectedly, and I'm in love, I'm so ******* in love with that fear.

Thank you for giving this amount of silence. I haven't been listening to it very well. You let me take the stage and drown out all your lovely silence with my under-used, somewhat nasally voice. I'm sorry.
I owe you a turn. I really do. for listening

Go ahead...



Say something real
-Say something awful
*I miss the voices that used to talk to me
Aug 2012 · 1.2k
Sleeping with Somebody
Orion Schwalm Aug 2012
Enough faking it. Come already.

Feel  like it's right, for once. Like I'm right, this determined swerving from right to left.
Turning East and West into a way to circumvent the crest.
Fallen into yet another losing game of chess.
I

Left a small population of very tall buildings to make another attempt at living.
Dried my eyes and the blood filling them congealed.
Injected the whole of another tube of "real" tropical fruit filling right into my pulmonary like, maybe if someone would eat it before the rot set in for once... Do you know the way back to happiness?
Cuz I'm about to board another bus with a flashing sign on the front that reads: home...
and for some **** reason...I'm wondering how you'd feel about that.
Right? Or is it wrong? Or am I just all that's left?
OK? Well...how are you?
Just okay?
Well
Stalemate.

I didn't sleep when I was in your arms. Too busy thinking about,  Why did I hold onto something that was bound to leave with the next cold morning breeze?
"We always slept better together."  ???
Probably because the windchill of my staggered circular breathing kept you warm.
Shrugging off the blanket I became, when the night finally let up, and the heat of the sun made you too warm
I fell off you.
Checkmate.
You probably felt like I was passing away.
Nah, I had a foot in the coffin door.
Gotcha, King me.
Wrong game? oh..

Thus then must we return,
To the greater hands
Who is trolling us along?
Tricks, Pieces, Mirrors, begone
Of the ones who took love willingly, no more crying, no more crying.
Right where we belong.
We are seeds.



It's a hard thing for a man to grow old. To watch his hard earned muscles erode as stone does.
But stones roll forward...still.
Aug 2012 · 921
Home (Part Six)
Orion Schwalm Aug 2012
The Cake was good.                                                 Sweet and moist
like good kisses are too, slightly mysterious...
                                                   ­                        regarding where it came from, or how, specifically, it was created.

We ATE IT UP!            for fun                         and we threw the rest of it ON THE GROUND.
...                                               ...for respect.
                                   All the while I expected it wouldn't be my last birthday, or my last anniversary, in this lake of open arms and forgiving faces.
                          forgiveness faces a tough crowd today.I know I've built bridges and tunnels through ways around it.
Down there I feel like a Canary,
                                                   chokin' to death,
                                                          ­                    hopin' to catch sight of the sun one more time
                                                            ­                            prayin' for speed...enough to save me.
Up top I feel like a tightrope walker,
cuz we make the smallest sacrifices, it seems like, at the time.                                  For the smallest differences.
                              

But that time was a lot lighter, and it either piles up, or moves forward, and either way you're leaving that bridge behind, I don't think I burned it, but I know time will...


                                                       ­                    Crumble Everything.


               Gosh you look so scared, lighten up, it was a joke.
I ain't leaving this world or my freedom without you.

                        
                              ­   I can't blame you.                   Was scared too.
                                   Terrified, black with ice frozen on the tunes I used to hum
                                                             ­                                                               fr­om my Canary little heart,
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                                        Start
                                                           ­                                                                 ­                                       Testing
                                                         ­                                                                 ­                                         me.
                See if I care.
                          I do, and I'll prove you right
About one thing.

Logic: Comfort from predictability.
Paradox: The predictability of growing.
Cliche: Home is where the heart is,                          isn't it?
Thoughts?          ...and dreams
Sleep:    ...Always better with you.
Remorse?              Maybe a little.
Conclusion?


I spent a whole lot of time in a place, learning how to: life.
                                                           ­                                And I spent the last day there, ever,
                                                                ­                               expecting warm and sad nostalgia.

                          
                          ­                                                            It was frightening and dark, that
                                                            ­                           midsummer's day.

      
                                                                ­         Now I'm somewhere completely new.
                                                            ­                             Unfamiliar at best.
                                                           ­              Looking down the bed at you,
                                                            ­                              Putting me through this test.
                                                           ­                               Sleep, you need your rest.
                                                           ­                               It takes a lot out, to grow, so fast.
                                                           ­                               To finally come to know, at last.



                                                        ­                 That you, are home.
May 2012 · 827
We
Orion Schwalm May 2012
We
There used to be a time...
                                         a time when we were certain
                                                         ­                              a time when we were used.
                                                                ­                                                                 ­      ...used by a forger.
So bright was the furnace we always returned to
                                                  brighter than we can even remember.
                                                       ­                                         it's hard to remember.
We would run in the field, because it was a field, made by us, for us, to run in.
                                             Some whiles we would stay home, and block out the world and it's cursed sun.
                                                            ­                                          brighter than was fair for us.
                                                             ­                                                                 ­  when we didn't want to be seen.
Again and again, we would be forged into new. Some new way, some new way of being the old way.
Again and again, we were here and there, so long as everyone called us by the same name.
We were forged into weapons. And we sewed distraught. We hurt,                       the ones who named us.

And now, our steel doesn't shine so hot. And the only thing left making us remember, that we're alive,
               is the rapid thuds of our heart pumping down against the cold tile floor, begging us to choose
                                                          ­begging us for a path to follow.
                                                         ­                         pleading to flow this hot blood somewhere it will make a difference.           Screaming that we don't need you, and we don't want you, and that we need not fight each other over thoughts about you anymore.


I was seven times certain who I was.
That I could forget you...







                                                   ­                                   We're back.
Feb 2012 · 826
Anyone Who Will Listen
Orion Schwalm Feb 2012
For those of us who feel like we’re underwater.
When the moon fills the dark spaces we won’t go.
When music is more than more than more than what you know about it.
And in the end of the world as every sun sets, something more is born.
There are good times ahead in the next city.
There are good times in all things.
Connect, cement, the heart in the stories that change, change.
Connect.
**connect
Jan 2012 · 2.0k
Wrong Ryan
Orion Schwalm Jan 2012
Floodlights.
They’re ghosts right?
From our memories,
Have been seized, we
From the perfect dream?
Drip drop drip drop
Turning tricks, dropped the jack
*****, when you coming back?
It’s off it’s off
Seldom silence serves as sight’s severance.
**** chop **** chop    OW!
******* pistol clock
Whip glock whipping ****
How many names can you think of for a knockoff
Of soda pop?
I’m sorry sir you’ve got the wrong Ryan,
I haven’t starred in any movies that cryin’
Old seniles, and sensitive females, so honestly claim
Was the way life should have been for them.

Oh in that case I’ll show you the brain,
Then kick you in the *** for being so gay.
Hold on there, wrong Ryan.
I ain’t waiting tables, or banefully fryin’
Up **** that I spit in for women with tips worth less
Than my two cents.

Oh I apologize, celebrity lookalike.
Must be the weather or the windshield is cracked
Or the antennae are bent or the cables are jacked
But I can’t seem to figure out just who you are
When I’m watching the TV pimped into my car,
Let’s try a few shall we
Not a cook…Not a lover boi…Silence of the…Birds, if you’re a bird I’m a…Bat…Batman! Batman and Robin! Red Robin! No not a waiter…
Red hearse, Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Ryan Milton
Wrong Ryan, Wrong Ryan!

Oh my god, silly me
I seem to have gone on a tangent you see.
Tandem bicycles, all of them for free.
If you would only come visit. Agreed?
Of course I know that you’re THE Ryan B.
Dedicated to Ryan Bowdish.
Jan 2012 · 1.2k
A Dry Spell
Orion Schwalm Jan 2012
The first time I saw you. I had to remember it.
That was something I couldn’t see just once.

When we first kissed, was when I first became fully aware.
I wanted to run out into the rain barefoot, and scream your name until I’d squeezed every possible ounce of meaning that could be derived from the utterance of those syllables
Out into the weeping sky.
but It wasn't raining that day.

The last time I saw you, I was fairly certain I had hallucinated it.
You ever see something that’s been a reoccurring dream of yours for several years manifest itself right before your eyes?
I dream so much it’s hard to believe in anything anymore.

The last time you saw me…



I don’t know if you ever saw me.
Jan 2012 · 699
Home (Part Five)
Orion Schwalm Jan 2012
Ok...I'm pretty sure I just walked in on you *******...but then again, I'm not really sure what your kinda people would call it.      

Oh and now you're all over me like you were thinking of me the whole time. Uh-huh.
Wow.                     I'll give it to ya, you stay the course.                 Makes you pretty convincing.
What else do you have to think about though?

I suppose the internet battles over freedom of speech don't mean much to you.   You never did use it much...

I mean speech...somehow you're all over the internet but I've never heard you speak a **** full sentence in the time I've known you.


How the hell do you remain so connected?                Language: the great equalizer?    
                    Your scars run really deep...deeper than mine.   I still don't know which side you fight for.

I side with life, for all it's misgivings, misleading mysteries, and willingness to harbor these words through...existence.

I fight for the right that someone or something gave me to be formed from atoms and other smaller unknowable ingredients as part of a less knowable system.

I fight in the dark for the hope that one day the sun will actually rise and show us all what each other look like.
                               and show us we're not fighting on sides like we thought we were.  that we're the only ones left.
and, well...**** we better start making something of our existence that isn't...a fight.

I feel like you're ten steps ahead of me, which is all the time in the world when you've been seein' the light at the end of the tunnel just up ahead ever since you first opened your eyes, first set foot in the cave, first made the leap into a dark earth.          
                                                Ignorance is bravery here...but wisdom comes from outside...when we accidentally step out into the light for a second. And then we shuffle and shimmy past whatever bright new horrors we don't wanna see, slamming our eyes shut until we're back in the cave.




dark.




                                        That's a
                                                  short suffering
                                         For what we become.
                                                                                      Standing at the bottom of a murky lake
        in the comfortable                                                     telling ourselves
                                                                                       this is it
                                                                                       We'll die where we were born:
Dec 2011 · 700
Home (Part Four)
Orion Schwalm Dec 2011
I talk to you to talk through a medium to myself. When you silently sit there, and soak up my words, all around me becomes a panorama of open ideas that can no longer hide.
Each Primary Motive in my center is displayed on a picture rack.
It’s sometimes the closest I can get to really meeting myself.
It’s a clean break.

I talk to you because you’ve always had this one motif to work with. It should really be mine. It’s about me. It’s for me. It’s my own well being as a provider of life, and the ongoing journey of a nomad’s soul.
Some say the nomads have no homes. That wandering is in their hearts and they shan’t ever settle for one place.     I say the nomad only has a harder home to reach.
Some of them never reach it. Perhaps because they only exist as far as we know now, in a physical world. There is more to home than where we buy a house.    

It’s a thing that is built, over stress and pain and love for the creation.                                  The stronger the will the stronger the walls, and NOT the facades this time, the walls that are constructed with the sole purpose of being able to welcome others through the gates of them.
Some build them from what seems like so much emptiness and nothingness that we should all deserve a religion of worship for the adverse feat of triumph. Perhaps we can believe, or hope,  that not everyone's destiny is achievable, on and of this earth.

Pretty soon I'll go back to a place full of holes and crazed dreams, then press on, not knowing what else to do.
But let's sit here as we are in this clearing of sorts. Every forest must have it's clearings to rest in.
without that rest, even a soul on fire could be lost amongst the foliage.   Let's sit here, and I'll talk...and you'll listen. Or seem to listen. Or I'll listen to you listening to me. That way, I can project it, and hear it myself. Instead of muddled through all the dreamed visages, and confusing chains of events.
All of the most and least convolution happens when I sleep through times I won't suffer. My ultimate escape is to equally give myself as much clarity as I take away, in each desperate step for the next ledge of meaning.

So I talk to you about my plans, to have a legacy, so that people will look up to me, and when all is said and done in the end I'll finally feel like my life was meant to be.
All the while this, picture panorama of forgotten imagery circles me, and you sit there in the middle...listening?
If you're listening, you're doing more than I ever could for myself.      I talk to you to talk through you to myself.  Because when you talk to people about what exists...you learn that nobody knows what they think exists and what doesn't.    And when I talk to you...you see me and I exist. And that is all. Your through-line pierces my heart, and soul, and has anchored it's rigging all over my body. It's slacked but whenever I get just a little too far out in the cold, and I've forgotten which way is up or down,

You can drag me back(under).
And give me another chance to drown.
Who knows, maybe some day, I'll realize that I'm not cut out for the swim team.  And that, I don't talk to you because you listen...I talk to you because you're there.


And you always will be.


Just like...
Dec 2011 · 2.2k
Intentions of Elegance
Orion Schwalm Dec 2011
I found your blanket. I’m not gonna tell you where it is though. If I told you, you’d go get it, and then you’d have your warmth, and then you wouldn’t need me.
Right?
The only thing I look for is clarity. But I wonder if I ever found it, if I’d stop looking…

I can see clearly now, so I guess I’ll stop.

I’m telling’ ya, I’m bein’ honest with you 90 percent of the time, even now. It just doesn’t look that way, yeah everything seems so convoluted, and “deep” and metaphorical, like I’m trying to make a maze out of a garden of already massive bushes that I’m beating around.
But that’s just cause, right now. Especially right now, everything in my head is spinning, on tumble dry, my head’s like a big wet laundry mess and you don’t even know whose clothes are whose anymore because the colours got mixed with the whites and the darks and my intentions got mixed up with my actions and yours, and
Well, **** it dude, they’re just clothes. They don’t make us who we are.

We just go out of our way to judge people sometimes, like a race.
Whoever can judge everyone before anyone else can wins…a ******’ VIP seat to watch the rapture or something.
So my thoughts’ll flow to you cuz you’re downstream of them.
But my intentions are high and dry, up on the top of the dam, I left ‘em up there before I jumped, didn’t even think to ask if they wanted a part in it.
That was kinda a **** move.

I’m sorry intentions. I’ve never really done you justice.

Ok, how many times can you count that you’ve just been completely wrong about someone you judged?       How many times did you want to believe so badly, that someone was a better person than they turned out to be?
Right so,
If you turned gay, and I turned gay, would we judge each other?
Would it be like a race?
Whoever ***** the other person’s **** the fastest gets…a face full of cummy ****!

That’s what all these intention judgment pushing disconnected people racing through life to get the first and last laugh really amount to.


                                                              A Face Full of Cummy ****


                                                             Merry Jizzmas.
Dec 2011 · 1.8k
Death Notes
Orion Schwalm Dec 2011
I was charged with the task of outliving my opponent,
Our benefactor whom I will speak no more than briefly about, has laid these orders before us and we will follow them, without falter.

Since I’ve seen absolutely no sign of my quarry in at least a half hour, and my camp and post is fully set, I may wander into the backwoods for a spell, searching landmarks and anything else that may aid my plight, I will carry the log at all times.

Slightly longer than I expected, took a few extra paths I discovered, still I should be within earshot of my encampment and have heard no sign of trouble. Perhaps, though, I should not underestimate my enemy.

Returned to camp, coldness and fatigue has set upon more quickly than expected. I will lay down to recuperate for a short time.

Awakening. My camp has been laid waste. Trenches have appeared as if by tectonics.
Nightfall.
-The light takes care of its own, even when they wander in darkness
Made spikes for an elbow of trench. My defenses are nearly invisible. Good luck adversary.

4 days since trenches showed up. No sound, but the wind. No movement, but my restless thoughts. Paranoia?
Or Pandora?

A man fell into my east spiked pit.  I watched the snowflakes gently cover his last horrified expression. He is not my prey.

2nd week. I’ve begun to wander out of the trench covers. It doesn’t get much lighter than twilight around this time of year.

The trenches…disappeared. What am I doing here?

Everything on this plain looks the same, I’ve passed several faces, with no names in my memory to stand by.
-What is courage to a death seeker? Whence does fear come if not from the end?
Strangely, I tire less. Perhaps this world has  begun to harden my shell. I am stopping at a small stream, the first defining landmark I’ve come across in many nights. There are no days anymore, only nights. I must judge time based only on my internal clock. My resolve will not fail me here.

Crows follow me at night. I will feign my death…to set their trap. I must sustain.
The most godless meal I have eaten in my life…
-Unbeknownst to historians, here will go absolutely nothing, to change the
tides of existence
Three days by this stream, sadly, it does not run any longer. It has not frozen, but the current has halted. I cannot explain why I am overcome with such gripping sorrow about this detail.

I have taken to painting with a spear tip. Blood drips nicely through snow. It’s as if I’m the first man on the earth who has discovered the means to express himself. And perhaps the only one ever again to
-My quarry must go on to the next generation, somehow, for some reason I do not know, must save. My own. Brood.
Made an altar for the slain crows. Though they are considered the devils bird, no being deserves such a dishonorable death. Trickery
Disgusted.
-How is there so much Hateful in the nonviolent?
Tears plague me, freezing before they can fall from my face. It’s like someone is taunting me, you will never be the man you searched for out here.
-My hand hurts, like a frostbitten oath nearly forgotten
Who am I?



Who sent me, who was I brought here to find…nobody.
Would I know if my task has completed?
No, I must stay vigilant. I’ve dropped my guard and my attention.
-We’ll see, foe, we’ll see whose wounds heal first
I have left the stream behind. Along with all the memories I had left. It’s time to move on.
-The task at hand seems far away now, like someone put it on the backburner for a minute, any minute now someone’s going to break me out of this dream life
I now stand before a white gale, seemingly a barrier to some sort of inner fortress. Unmoving. Bitter, cold, wind and snow. This testament of nature’s wrath beckons me,
And I cannot turn back.

I must reach the center now.**
-As feeling returns, so too does numbness, trading turns for turns, blow for blow, eye for eye, tear for tear
-There must be something in this mad storm
Oct 2011 · 1.4k
Hellbent on High Places
Orion Schwalm Oct 2011
Where do I begin.
It's been so long since I've been so close to the end that I could smell the earth around me.
I think I've been playing both sides of the field so long that I can't differentiate between a graveyard shift,
and a cold dead sunrise. But I wouldn't know the difference between differentiating and diffusing dreaming
Dead dawn rises opening up this world
Dead dusk down on a twitch throe, circling the fence around my collapsing line of vision
Sorrow and ***, the two things I like best that I want less of the more that I get.

If I could go back...I would have kissed you on the river. I would have shown you with tenderness, what it is like for your life here on this world to be wanted. I would have given you what love feels like beyond the shade of fear of loss, the ultimate gift I would keep on giving.   And then I would've stricken you with my oar until your beautiful body no longer broke surface intentionally. It would have been the gentleman's way of settling things. Instead I chose the dreamer's.

I've been in camouflage, hiding well from you. hoping to escape within the community of a seemingly functional
system.
Found it hard to keep my cool when utterance of a simple name or phrase could throw me into breathing lasps,
When the sight of a single stone upon the ground could be a city in the sky, my last gasps are playing and
rewinding and then playing, and rewinding, and then playing, and rewinding and then playing, and rewinding and I'm laying down the sheets upon the floor, because the bed reminds me too much of the perfect story memory     I'm
                             alone.    In a
                                                   building.  In a
                                                               ­              desert. In a
                                                               ­                                  deadlocked staring contest between me
and my reflection in the moonlit water memories that make up all I am were was are is will ever ******* be
If you can't escape in a ******* dream then where the **** else am I gonna go?

I've wasted my life, observing, becoming less a part of all the things I spend time looking at.
                   Removing myself from the final edit.                Hoping somehow,
                                                        ­                                         That total abstinence,
                                                     ­                                            From your world,
                                                          ­                                       And my worldly desires,
                                                        ­                   Will
                                                            ­                somehow
put                                      ­                               Me                                                               ­                                      in
                                                              ­            CONTROL.



Love is about control for you.                                                             ­    I believe in you.
                                                            ­                                                       I don't know if I believe in control.
It doesn't matter if I believe in love.

Someone please just see the justification for anything I do.            I am begging for a partner. I have no one to observe
                                                         ­                          me.

If I seem hellbent, please...I am merely driven by demons to an end I would have no means to reach if I was...


left alone...
Jul 2011 · 966
Home (Part Three)
Orion Schwalm Jul 2011
I don't know what it is that gives you the nerve or the will to live in my presence any longer.
I don't know what makes me hold on so tightly to your soul in this world either.
Truth is, you could have easily gone away last night and never come back...but I engaged the reaper in fisticuffs and told him there could be only one.   Needless to say he was a little confused.



I've broken a promise almost every day since the day I said I would never leave you.
                                         And I've thought about you every day since the day it was too late to realize I loved you.
Why then, can't I let you go? Out into the night. Where you belong?
                                               You have my permission to die, but only over my dead body will you find salvation.

If we live in a world where people build walls out of their morals, then I must be some kind of ******. That might explain why I talk to plants.
But I got really good at climbing from hangin' 'round you, and I also got real good at runnin', and eventually I ran away.
That was years ago. And I just now learned how to stop. How to stop running, and smell the flowers. There's so many flowers, and all they want is for you to stop running and enjoy their presence, even for a second.


but sometimes to survive, you have to pick the flowers for later, in case you run out of food, in case you run out of run and need to dig yourself a nice little grave, preferably at home, and set the flowers up on top. Sometimes you have to feed off of others as a reality check that you can still make things move and that you can still move people.

Every time I ran away from home, it was nighttime. And I'd get about a quarter mile down the road and turn around to find you hot on my heels. When I'd get about a half mile down the road I'd always turn back.
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                                       for home.
I'd lay in my bed and think about dying and say, I don't want none o' that.  and then you'd dig your nails into me really hard to remind me that I was mortal.                                      Everyone was born to live.
                                                           ­                      Not everyone lives to die like you.
                                                            ­                                                                 ­                                  You'd say.


I laid there for many years. Thinking about what you said. It was hard to figure out because I couldn't tell if you'd really said it or not. And you always watched me thinking.                 ...what were you thinking?
I've decided.


              It's not practical to fight any longer. As time, the only father figure I ever had, has shown me, all good must come to an end.                   Though I'm not sure how this world will survive without you, and though tears have flown free as the world's waters as I've written all of this, and though you are the closest thing to a God that has ever been mysterious to me...I have decided.      and I have Realized just how important it is for one to die
                                                                ­            
                                                    ­                                                                 ­                                                         at
     ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                           home.


What you don't realize about me is,                for me...


Home is in other people.

























                                ­                                             and i ran away years ago.
Jul 2011 · 915
The Light's Lament
Orion Schwalm Jul 2011
Dawn's withheld in a single breath
The somber call of a lonesome crow as he mourns the waning light
Begets ripples in the frozen lake
And everyone forgets a moment after
And I forgot the moment passed

We drank to the life worth living
And no one's left still breathing
To live while you were leaving...
All the birds have stopped singing

Twilight broke the morning tonight
The sun cannot bare to light us any longer
I walked to the waters edge to pray for strength
I turned around and beheld an entire world of
Silence, Sounding so valiantly
The Elegy of my return
I have since forgotten the melody

Oh forgive me, I have stopped singing your song
Please believe me, I did not see you for what you were.
May 2011 · 859
Home (Part Two)
Orion Schwalm May 2011
The moon hung low, and watched me from right outside my window.
I couldn't sleep. Thousands of ways to die played like films reels on two dark red walls behind my eyes.
Excuse me, thousands of ways to be happy appeared like holograms as the light shone through my window.
And I saw now.    And then I saw now.    And now I see now.          But not now.
I see a flickering spotlight darting around my room. I'm giggling.  
...I'm giggling?
I think the last time I giggled was before I knew what the verb giggle meant.
Oh little light...you are fooling me into thinking I am now someone I am not anymore.                    I'll watch you. I'll watch you like the moon watches me.    
Now I'm seeing...these things I think they're called memories.
I'm remembering the journey I took once...and you beside me, sharing every moment.

And now I remember the fallen ones.
The Green One, the mother.
The First One, the father.
The One Who Looked Like the Sea, the son.
The One That Got Away, the antagonist.
The One With the Broken Back, the lover.
The Two Who Nearly Drowned, brother and sister.
The One of All Hues, the adopted son.
Why do they come to me now? I know where they all lie. I laid them there.
Perhaps I wasn't ready for them to be memories yet...but what could I do?
What the hell could I have done?     They told me, it was time.  They had to go.

  Like they had a place to be that wasn't with me, and it was urgent.

They told me this was my world now...and I didn't know what that meant.
But now I think......................I see you.          You're as restless as I am.

Look at you. It's like you never even stopped journeying.
                                Through life, through death, you didn't care.
                                                
                                                Sometimes I wonder what goes through your head.


You seem to see something I don't, something behind the scenes.
Something that justifies living here. On this God Forsaken Rock.
Sometimes I feel like you're inches from figuring it out...then the next moment...
you look as puzzled as me.

If there is a God...first of all he needs to get away from my window.
He needs to stop making me see things.    And he needs to stop making uncontrollable circumstances that give me a reason to believe in him.

I'm not in tears as much as I was last time.     Last time I saw God.
He told me to start the rapture.            He told me to do it on May 21, 2011.
And I cried, and I begged him for an answer. And he just watched me cry.
And even through the tears I made the promise to do it.

And I broke my promise...I couldn't do it.          
I couldn't understand, I looked around and saw so many beautiful people.
And I looked in the darkest places of the world and I still found such beautiful people.
And now I realize...that maybe....maybe life is beautiful....maybe life has made them beautiful.      And maybe they deserve something better already?

I failed you once...hell probably more than once. But I'm gonna do anything I can to make it up to you.
Oh, little light.
It's time to quit your restlessness.
The sun is rising.
And the visions are going
to the other side.
We can follow them there.
But first you must rest.


I need this to be my world now.
Orion Schwalm Apr 2011
THere is wHere it Happens.
THere is wHere it meets its maker, face to face, and then rips out the sink and sHatters.
An image of (G)god.
THere.                    Do you see now?                          No, you don't.Do you Hear it?


Of course not.                        These things can be forgiven.

Hallways, brittle lit   unwavering absence of ligHt   unfazed face of Hope.
                   unmarred reason of passion          unscarred wrists, scanning the walls

Do you...feel it now?                       Do you?       You do?            Then...
The only trutH is tHat you are full of lies.      

You do not see, you do not Hear, you try to listen but you cannot feel so let. me. kiss. you. So tHat you can taste your own sweet sorrow.

As you drove into me I was like the sun and you were like the moon, a firey ******* ball of fire versus a cold barren landscape, but the only thing close enougH to feel.

It stung like a needle.
It stung like a wHipcrack on a sunburn.
It stings like that first hit of cold water on an open wound.
It stings like when you suddenly realize a (G)god doesn't rule you       and
before you realize that             tHere is a reason        beyond tHat.

It's a little thing. And you're only going to notice it when it leaves, and makes everything so, very slightly
astray.

As you pulled away I was like desert and you were like twiligHt. A cold barren landscape versus a darkness tHat still sHows some false Hope of light. Our lips were like the Horizon.                They were.


You pulled away.      And planets died.           And people died.          
             And the place where my feelings once existed became a vacuum.
Every day I carried worlds on my shoulders. And the sky opened up like an old wound. And if you were the sky, I was the desert below it.  

And there was nothing in this desert.


And there was nothing.


And then I knew,                                     that it didn't matter if I lived or died.
                              But you were dead.
And no amount of remembering can change the world I'm in right now.


So I will make a new one.



Consisting of...




                                                       ­                                                     ...only memories






and that is fine.
Apr 2011 · 1.0k
Home (Part One)
Orion Schwalm Apr 2011
You're sitting there.   Under the chair.   Staring at me.    Like years, and years, of what I'd like to call our life.   Your green eyes are like...the woods.    The woods we grew up in.    The woods we came back to.    The woods where we met

and where we will leave each other.    For a long, long time.

These woods are full of Huffy bikes, and tennis *****, and summer ski trips, and deep lake diving.     These woods are where friends are lost, music is found, first love finds you a hundred times, and nothing gets done.

I know you're thirsty, but you won't drink. You're sick of drinking.    I try to tip the water up to your lips, but you turn your head. I beg you, "Please, just do it for me."    You take one sip but no more.    If I could breathe life, you'd find me kissing you.    If my tears could heal, you'd find me sobbing on your forehead.    
But I don't want your last memories of me to be sadness, so I turn my head away, and use every fiber of my being to pull out a smile for you.

We raised each other.    and not once did you not come when I called for you.
We saved each other.    and I don't want to think about life without you.
We fought each other.   and you always came back into my arms.
I    love         you      .     and I don't want to have to bury you.
Dedicated to the greatest love of my life. Who was there for me. Every single time.
Apr 2011 · 1.5k
Death of the Happy Ending
Orion Schwalm Apr 2011
This is not a hopeful poem.
                                                  This is hardly a poem at all.
                                                  This is based on true events.


I can taste you in my mind. Even in memory you're sweeter than anything I could have presently.
        and        I         will           follow        you       to           the         brink


My New Year's resolution is to finally talk to my dad! I've never gotten to know him but I swear I'm gonna get him to open up to me! I know things must have been awful for him ever since his daughter died. Parents shouldn't have to watch their children pass away. But I'm going to talk to him about it when I come home for the summer!

Hey, how are you?
Doin' good, stressed from school =/ but good
It's just a lot of work and I get homesick sometimes.
I would visit more but gas is really expensive, I'm gonna try to get a job soon.
Yeah, they're raising tuition soon too, but I know I gotta do this for my future.
We should hang out this weekend when I come home.
I understand, you're busy with work and school and stuff.
Well let me know if you're gonna be free. I won't have much to do.


the best friends are the ones you can talk to about the most random ****, and the most serious ****. Like you know you've got something real when you guys stay up all night and can't sleep, and he can't sleep because he's thinking about giant bumblebees and Halloween costumes, and you can't sleep because you're thinking about a girl you love but are distraught over, and you can just go off on either of your thoughts at random and be completely comfortable. I'm so glad I know....


I have been hanging out with the most amazing girl. She plays guitar and she sings and she's so good, and she's beautiful, and she paints these awesome Indian looking paintings, and she just makes me feel so happy every time I'm with her. She's really sad a lot of the time though, and she's really shy about talking about stuff that makes her sad, but I'm gonna work on it, and hopefully she'll tell me about her life. The best thing about her...is the things she does tell me, it's all the truth. It's the most truthful talk I've ever heard out of anyone. I think I'm starting to fall for this girl, she's truly really realistically literally amazingly beautiful.


They had separated five years ago. He really did follow her to the brink. And well beyond. And she loved him the whole time. But she never went back to him, she was too scared of the brink that she couldn't let herself follow.

He watched his daughter take her last breath. And he was silent. He drove home. In silence. He took a beer from the fridge and swallowed it in silence. and another. and another. and a shot of fernet. and another shot. and a piece of bread. and another shot. then the bottle. every shot he finished and hurled against the wall. unfeeling. until there was nothing left but a sea of broken glass and a pale face. He had more children. he forgot how many maybe to make up for the empty spot where she had been. maybe because he didn't want to wear a ******. more wives. he forgot how many. he forgot what countries they lived in and how many he had. He almost forgot he ever had three daughters. Then someone asked him one day...it was a boy...blonde, blue eyed, pale...like she used to be. The boy asked him what he felt.         He couldn't answer.            
The last thing he remembered feeling was the coldness of glass on his lips, and the fire in his throat.     that night he tried to feel it again. only this time it wasn't glass on his lips. It was metal.   He tipped it up to the back of his throat. And took the shot.


One time I went to college
To get a cool degree
And get a sweet-*** job
And make my parents happy
But then I realized
I missed my life back home
I missed some girl I loved
And here I felt alone
I figured I'd go back
And try to work each day
And that's when I found out
I'd have no place to stay
To my parents I was just another source of cash
That would keep them comfortable in their old age
And if I wanted to follow my dreams and my heart
I'd be stuck on my own without home or wage
So then on my spring break
I found out something sad
The people that I missed
They didn't want me back New Story!

We spent an entire summer together. The moment after I first said I love you I promised that I'd spend every waking hour that I could before I moved away with you. You were sad and happy at the same time. And we partied every night like it was our last night, destroying bottles of *** like we were ******' pirates. Blasting our music and singing like we were at war with our lungs and our ears and our throats but it felt so GOOD! I remember when I got banned from the apartments, I'd sit out in my car and just wait for you. Because you still had to drink. You had to numb yourself because there was too much inside you. I remember after I'd drive you home, I'd lay in bed with my best friend talking about how amazing you were, and how much I loved you, and he'd tell me how happy he was that I was finally happy for once.  I remember the night I found out you and him had slept together once. It hurt. But that was before I knew you, and I loved you both too much to be mad. I remember the night you ****** him again. And you watched me cry, and you were speechless. I remember when you told me you loved me, and I believed you...but you said you were free and it was beautiful, and you wouldn't give that up ever. I didn't believe you were free, and I never intended to shackle you. When you told me you loved me your words held no truth, but when you told me other things, your eyes were screaming I love you. I know you love me. I know you've told me more than you will ever tell anyone about yourself ever again. I remember talking to my best friend about how much he hurt me. I remember that being the first time I had ever wanted to fight someone. I remember him saying how much he loved me more than anyone else. I remember when you ****** him again. And again. And again. I remember the night you were 10 feet away. I remember the blanket you gave me the day before I moved away. You said I needed something that smelled like you.
That blanket...is in my closet. Underneath all my suits, and my other blankets, and my didgeridoo where I can't see it. Because it scares me. It scares me how much betrayal I can feel from an object, and how much I really really really just want to burn it or get rid of it somehow...but I can't.

PEOPLE ARE SCARED OF EACH OTHER. I know her past but not her present. She knows everything I think in the moment, but nothing about my life outside of her and I. I used to feel perfect with her. I probably still would. She won't come close to me now.
**** this ****.
Apr 2011 · 1.7k
Performance Enhancement
Orion Schwalm Apr 2011
Four four four.
This is what I did last night.

I experienced obsessive compulsive.
Wrote Wesley a note.
Went swimming in tears.
I love you period.

I walk very carefully.
Touch every black square.
There's less of them.
Kind of like me.

I'm trying to escape.
This is so weird.
I never do this.
I am becoming you.

I will carry on.
My name will sound.
And trumpets will follow.
Assuming I'm breathing tomorrow.

How comforting, a preconceived skeleton in which to work. I am no different than I have been in the past, but I've ruined my eyesight staring into the abyss and moved on to my liver, drowning it in conveniently placed blissful ignorance.

What are you supposed to do when you're trying to follow your heart, and your heart tells you to die? If the basest animal instinct is to survive and if the answer to life is love, then that kind of puts me between a rock and......................

I sometimes feel like people look up to me before they know me. Everyone wants to be that person that doesn't have a care in the world, and does whatever they want because they want it. Free. Apparently I embody that...but what kind of ****** me off is that I feel the same way they do. I look up to the me that isn't me. I envy the freedom others think I have. That guy, he doesn't exist. Ever. There is no one human so disconnected.

So sometimes I catch myself thinking that if I truly wanted to change the world...I would have to take this hero away from the people. How would I do that? I'd just have to **** him. I think the unknowable thing I fantasize about the most, more than what happens after death, or how the universe was created, is how would all of my friends, my beloved friends, my relatives, my acquaintances,  my fans, and the people that allegedly hate me would react to hearing, "Ryan killed himself."
I wanna know how much stronger everyone would become after they witness the person they thought was so strong fall.

So I denounce suicide as a terrible choice. Because pain is part of having feelings, and feelings should be felt. That's the beauty of being human I say. I say I could never **** myself no matter how much I hurt, because I loved it all so much. But you don't know, and I don't know how things work sometimes and I don't make plans.

I can't see very well anymore, but I fake it. And I haven't been in a lot of fights, but my body's breaking in places I don't like, and places that may never recover. So I'm ashamed. This poem is about a guy named Expectancy. I've never met him. But I've heard a lot about him, and he sounds really great. But you know how it works once you get to know someone...so I think it's better off we've never met.

I am not a poet. I don't KNOW things. And I'm not an existentialist either. I'm not ******* stupid. I don't know how to tell you to live your life. But I will tell you anything that pops into my head, if you'd like.

So, learn about someone, and don't expect to learn anything. Take care of your body, because I love your body. Avoid safe patterns that you'll only fall into because you're scared of change.

if you wanna Die
point to something Beautiful
Indulge yourself in it
and Experience it in any and every way that you can

My favourite numbers are doubles of four.
Mar 2011 · 590
Killin' Time
Orion Schwalm Mar 2011
As he drew his hand away from her body, she drew from him a solid block of breath that would have withered and died on a typical day. Days these days for him just aren't like they used to be, typical isn't a notion that makes itself heard.
There's too much time not being spent to spend time working for an end to justify a feeling...they'll get it sooner, not later.

She broke everything. Every bone cracked, every sinew split, every ounce of blood spilled, until there was nothing but a soul. A hole. And another soul.
And if souls worked like clocks, with the physical concept of direction, their eyes stared straight into each other, but not through. A soul is not something that can be traversed through, it is the end, the all. And when the two souls stared, end met end and made...
A whole.

The cold. Moonlight. The sound of the rain in trees. The silence of snow and space. The smell of large quantities of *** breathed into my face. All things that I can somehow feel anywhere. Eyes. Always the eyes. I see them in the dark, as they glance around searching for something...what. Then they connect, to mine. And quickly sever, like they'd seen God. Or something too beautiful to mar with an impure comprehension such as sight. They always draw back to the irresistible eyes, and away again.
But then they fix. And they dare to not move for a minute. As if they are locked in some sort of challenge, the purpose becomes to win.
                             Now it is too late
                                                        The purpose has become undefined.
                                                                ­       And nothing has felt this way before.
                                      And nothing you can do can tear you away.
                    And the only things left are fear and beauty.
                                              

And then all fear dies. And does not come back.


Maybe that's what changed about me. It's felt weird not being scared.
It wants to come back, but it can't. I can't make it. No matter how comfortable I remember it being.
Now all I have is time...but beauty, if minutes and seconds are what your life is made up of...then we don't have much life but a lot to live for.
Because I didn't feel alive before.  
The ice in my chest is gone...if I can I'll breathe steam into you.           so...
Lovely, don't waste time.

Or it will **** you.
Orion Schwalm Feb 2011
There are at least ten reasons why you are beautiful hidden in the seconds when you are awake and I am asleep.
Something really precious brought us together once or twice, I don’t know what it is, but I’m not gonna ask. …  …  …
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say when you say everything I feel.
There are at least ten universes worth of beautiful individuality in plain sight, in a hummingbirds flight path from one flower to another.

Here are the rhymes that reason:
You grew up faster than you knew, and you realized that a long time after everyone knew what it felt like to be grown up.
You were given something that not many people have so very early, it shaped you, and you were not sure after that, if it was the world that changed you or vice versa.
My fingers feel separate from my hands to write this. My voice, coming from somewhere else.
You really really really really really really really trust in love to make the right decision, and are terrified to make decisions without that input.
Love can happen with anyone anywhere at any time…but sometimes it only happens once at a time. The less scared you are of it, the easier it is to see in yourself.


Here are the reasons that rhyme:
Everyone changes with seasons
Everyone changes with time
As everyone changes around you
You feel like a stone in a fire
With no arms or legs to hold on with or run
And having done nothing, you’re feeling jaded, and so very tired.

And I believe you can make it on your own (with a little help from the angel on your devil’s shoulder, turning hell into just high water, spilling over a little too much chaos into your day, making your nights a little bit shorter)
And I can see you when you are who you used to be, in a simpler time.
Perception is hard to live with when its constantly being pushed at by people who have agreed to act enlightened because they’re scared of the difference and diversity they face every day they decide to go outside their lonely bedrooms.
Is that what its like to hate the world for giving you a choice?
Find me.

I want to be together with you like a hummingbird and a flower, the factor of time excluded. A moment could be forever, or not. If for just the happening we could live…we could be anything…whether or not we’re tired, or *****, or used, or unaccomplished.  Time doesn’t have to shape us if we can shape each other. Like ghosts in books in childrens’ minds, or a hummingbird and a flower, breathing life in deep breaths, together as one.

We could be like one reason

One reason why…

Why ten is just a number
Orion Schwalm Feb 2011
"No mom, I'm not coming home tonight."

What kind of ****** up world would we live in, if we could just be honest there would be no- fun.

"I'm doing really ****** in school Dad, and I know I'm wasting your money, but I don't really care."

If I could pay someone to teach me about living...well I doubt I'd need a degree to help me get the job so why would I do that?      
                                                     ­                There are shortages in that industry.

When you dance for me I get that special funny feeling like you're my masterpiece performing yourself for everyone around me, but really just for me.

It's like your eyes weren't blue until you looked me in mine, and when I let you take that with you, you put a spin on me that no one could handle if it was me dancing.

As far as I can remember, my mom made empty promises. So sarcasm was my first language.



"Trust me, I make all this up as I go along and sometimes my mouth doesn't move as fast as my river but I'm tryin' now."

For as long as I can remember knowing what you look like, I've wanted to talk to you.
Just to have your voice soothe its way into only my ears for at least one sentence...oh man that would be heavenly.

And one day I saw you trying to speak...to me...but you couldn't remember my name.

It was because I'd never told you my name. You'd heard it from some faraway place. And I hope what they said about me was all good and that it was true. But there's about as much chance for me to get lost as there is for you if we look for each other.

...just listen.
I'll call you soon.



I saw a glove on the ground walking home today. Someone had forgotten about it and left it on the street. It reminded me a lot of you.

"It never would've worked."
That's what you heard yourself saying.
                                               And.

You probably lied to yourself a lot. and I'm happy for you.

"It's ok. We can love each other. Even when people are watching."
he said to the sky. as it wept, deep in thoughts of a better time.

Time is a system.



"We need to go to the mountains and sing to the owls"
"There ain't no owls in the mountains"
"I seen't um!"

We've all been drunk on something or other.

"It’s like the fright I have to say what I want to say is gone but so is the intelligence"

I'm glad it was on you.



Son, there comes a time in every young boys life...when he must be beaten. Mercilessly. With many malicious matters and masses. Until he becomes beautiful.
"...yew ***** *****..."

He was so concerned about becoming a man, he forgot the basic human emotions learned in childhood.

Without you, I would never know what it was like to stop going. And then race myself to the end because I was the only one left with the stamina to finish. the performance.



Time is a system.
"I feel like people will be hurt tonight."

At times you crossed in front of me, at times behind, sometimes in reality, sometimes in my mind.

When time was busy, cleaning the house, performing menial and necessary chores, you were nowhere to be found. Probably out at play in the poppy fields, or the fields of yellow tall grass or the forest by the brook.

And when time was at dinner, entertaining friends, enemies, lovers, and other times...you were nowhere to be found, but you left evidence that you were around. Muddy boots by the front door, toys hazardously placed at the top of the stairwell, careless giggles from down the hallway at obscure thoughts.

And when time was running out...and it was raining...you were right outside. Under an umbrella, with room for one more.




Matris silva , incubo vestri liberi.



We're all waiting for heaven. Looking for that band of angels come to take us away. Hoping they'll notice us with the things we don't do, the way we don't act, the people we don't talk to.
But the angels...
      
                                                ­           they're all around us.
                                                           lookin' for each other.


Swing low, sweet chariot
Comin' for to carry me home.
Swi-i-ing low, sweet chariot
Comin' forto carry me home.

and If you arrive there before me
Comin' for to carry me home.
Tell all my friends that I'm flyin' free
Comin' forto carry them home.
Dedicated to (in order of appearance)
1]Nick Heller
2]Lisa Brenner
3]Bennett Berardi
4]Joseph Woodrow Cromer
5]Casey Martinson
6]Savannah Ralli
7]All of anyone I've ever met who I've moved or who has moved me.
Jan 2011 · 858
Giveth Taketh
Orion Schwalm Jan 2011
Will what's worth way out there


Find me..?

Or will I find nothing ever to fill the within
You have the nails the hammers the boards the posters the pins
To take this town to the ends of earth and back again
Never feel what I feel, it makes no sense
Never learn what I have learnt, for shallow waters full of
Men
Come and go with the tide and the common like the wind in the autumn
Never feel my words, we're in

Tents broken from the inside that **** looks like shelter but you'll find

                                                                                     Dents in
Rocks
And cars
And trees
And faces
And ribs
And women and men and maybe me if you look harder than a machine would.

Be.
Because in the end, the nature of the being
Is beastly.
Wow. I never thought I could wish so much for another being to be happy with and in themselves.
And you know the giveth taketh rule?
I'll giveth
If you taketh to flight.
Don't look anywhere
But.
       Up.

Get of the ground. Go.

You know where I'll be.










Right behind you.
Dedicated to Camille Frick.
Jan 2011 · 2.2k
Living life in the fast lane
Orion Schwalm Jan 2011
There's are many spaces in a world,
One can only hope
To find more of them beautiful
Than not.
There's a space between your
Eyes.
And my eyes
tried to traverse
Voyage, to journey through
You
And your
Llllllllllives.

And I felt like
Maybe making something...for you
Or out of you, or...with you
But then
We both closed our eyes.
And when i opened them
You were far
Away.
And I didn't know
Didn't
Know.
Anything.
Dedicated to Kali Hardwick.
Jan 2011 · 1.4k
The Legend of the Fall pt.2
Orion Schwalm Jan 2011
Seeing hailstones pelt the ground (freezing touch of sight and sound)
Their last valiant attempt to escape from Heaven
The sensory nature of the beast will be
Crushed and broken into scarred skin
Midnight strokes me gently like the brush that you paint with (On a canvas)
Nightmarish worlds forming from your fingertips (Carved from angels' wings)
Caressing restless crescents with a lulling iridescence into (So your darkness)
Sleep above a boiling pit of guilt-ridden pleasure (Lasts forever)
Lasts forever


You must have painted a panorama
Of
Your
Dream world
You must have painted a panorama
Of
The
Real World
You must have painted a panorama
Of
Your
Dreams
You must have dreamed you painted a portrait
Of
Me


Take your brush and wield it towards me like a knife
Cut me open, and behold my true colours
Make your masterpiece with what you really feel
Let’s add some brightness
To your never-ending night
You feel my pain
I feel you paint


Still
Life
Still
Life
Still
Life
Still
Life

Sky without clouds…this is the end of it
Hailstones are falling to the ground…this is the end of it
Day without light…this is the end of it
Seeing Heaven robbed me of my sight…this is the end.


Sky without clouds…this is the end of it
Hailstones are falling to the ground…this is the end of it
Day without light…this is the end of it
Seeing Heaven robbed me of my sight…this is the end of it all.

Sky without clouds…this is the end of it
Hailstones are falling to the ground…this is the end of it
Day without light…this is the end of it
Seeing Heaven robbed me of my sight…this is the end of it all.
Jan 2011 · 469
Old Year
Orion Schwalm Jan 2011
High point of my year: you. Congratulations! Also knowing you is one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. I'm not mad about that...thank you. The only reason I've ever said anything mean to you is to keep from killing myself. I feel like that may have been confusing for you...but I also feel like you kinda knew all along that I still loved you and that any mean words were empty. Let this be clarity: I will never stop loving you. I really do hope you're happy right now, and you know what I mean by that. Happier than someone in good company, happier than a kid with a new toy, happy with yourself. And if I can ever really help with that...I will.
Happy New Year, make it a beautiful year.

I love you __.




p.s.
The wedding is still on.
Dec 2010 · 763
RMSH
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
Someone tell me
That I'm doing it right.

Someone tell me
That I am the one person in this world that's figured it all out.

Someone tell me
I know our sky is black right now, and you're hungry, and cold, and nobody likes panhandlers with guitars anymore...but your heart couldn't be in a better place.

Someone tell me
Old man, you form the skeleton that holds in my moral organs, and I respect you for that.

I wonder how we would've gotten along if we were the same age.
I wonder how much can time actually change.
I wonder how long I'm gonna spend carrying out lives I hate just for some small ray of affection from any single person on a day when epiphanies change lives...
before I epiphanize
and suddenly it was all worth it.


I wonder when someone will tell me my name.


I'll be here.
Dec 2010 · 1.3k
City of Sin
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
Good morning radiance
It seems that we’ve found ourselves
In the midst of another day apart
Testing my patience
The distance it weighs in
As we spend yet another day apart
The border and boundaries
That separate us sounding as one
Are meant to be crossed
Wearing our scars
As if badges of honor
The roadmaps to our hearts
Only show that we’re farther
Then we ever should have been
But it can all start again
All we need is a time and a place to begin
It gets so repetitive
It ends and begins again
But at this point the ending
Is far from my mind
The truth that you find
In these statements is all for you
Many things lack fact
But every word here is true

Good evening glorious
The sun has come and gone again
It hides behind the earth
And it takes all of our secrets with it
So let’s go back
To where we were at
Those years ago
When life was so simple
Living in proximity
The vibes all tearing into me
Our heartbeats have grown  soft it seems
And on that note we take our leave
To disappear, to never see
The sun rise and set the scene
For just another wasted day
As our emotions rot away
To turn to dust, as If to say
I  ride on winds of pestilence
And desecrate the best of ‘em
Don’t feel special when you go

Because the battle isn’t won by knowing alone
Copyright: Henk vonStockhausen
Seal of Approval: Ryan Schwalm
Dec 2010 · 722
Destination Found
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
From the porch to my heart
As it skips and it starts
Building memories eternal
Even though you are so far
The stars in the sky
I’d rearrange if you desired
And I’d sell my scars and soul
If that was what it took to find her
But here she is before me
And she fills my eyes with radiance
Struck dumb by your beauty
Now just what do I say to this?
I say that I hope you forgive all my flaws
And simply accept us for what and who we are
The sole time we met
I think I know you well enough
To forgive the foreplay, the silliness, the pestilence
For now we’ll call the distance
A heartbreaking test of this

My life has been defined
And I don’t even know your last name
I just can’t wrap my mind
Around the way that you move
or the things that you say
Each day the distance between us is torture
I’ve known my destination
Since the first time that I heard your voice

I know that this must seem awfully forward
But I hope you can understand all the allure here
This town Is much too small for you to grow
And your heart is too big to remain here alone
From the first time we locked eyes
I knew you were different
Felt something inside
But it wasn’t resistance
It told me that I should approach with persistence
And not just confess these things
But insist them
So when we leave please hold these memories near
I hope I speak for us both
By saying “I won’t forget you my dear”

My life’s been defined
And I don’t even know your last name
I just can’t wrap my mind
Around the way that you move
Or the things that you say
Each day the distance between us is torture
I’ve known my destination
Since the first time that I heard your voice
I hope you move on to better things
When someday you find them
Just remember who you are
Copyright Henk vonStockhausen
Dec 2010 · 1.1k
Road With No Name
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
Coeur d’Alene my dear
The stops are few and far between
And we’ve come so many miles
On this mission so it seems
We dream of life unhindered
By time zones and state lines
Driving three states over
But we’re never sure what we’ll find
Rewinding relationships
And hoping that our statements stick
So let’s steal **** from Wal-mart
And I’ll drink until it makes me sick

So we’re on  a journey to the ends of the earth
But the spark that lights the way
Is being choked by the dirt
The lines, roads, sands and streams
Run together on the page
To form the surface of a face
I’ve not seen in too many days

The earth will move beneath your feet
The sun and moon above your head
And all that passes keep in mind
You’re loved until we’re all but dead
95 winds as the lines begin to blur
Fueled by fumes and rumors
Knowing only what we’ve heard

But I assure you this is not the end of the road
This is only the beginning as far as I know
And as far as we’ll go
Isn’t measured in kilometers
We wouldn’t be out here
If you weren’t something to bother with
We’re following
Like a ******* dog chasing a car
If you fall we’re right behind you
Just remember who we are this time
Copyright Henk vonStockhausen & Ryan Schwalm
Dec 2010 · 824
Laughter
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
I want to climb up to the highest mountain I can find with you, and scream your name until bloodsicles clot the sound, freezing right in front of me in the air, waiting for you to answer but you just stare...



I'd like to stare back at you from across the ocean
when you don't say nothing,
my eyes storm over, and yours just fall...like waterfalls....so calmly.

And we all like the doomsday , hope is gone, we are the few kinda poetry
sing-alongs
to wring out the tears and make us feel wrong,
but ok 'cuz we're together,
it never gets better, and god makes the world better,
but drowns us in his waterfalls for our sins we'll all be drawn as wretches
in the mural of the horizon at the crack of dawn
formed together from all the random journal sketches
that form the lines, that form the waves, that form the storm, inside my eyes, that forms the calm inside your eyes.


I want to take you to the greenest forest I can find, where the trees are alive with the most beautiful birds, and in the middle is a white beach where the sun never doesn't shine, and every grain of sand sinks you into serenity...
                           and I want to whisper in your ear my name, and what it means, and watch you smiling from across the beach, just like the sun.



And if I can't do that, I want you to walk with me into the middle of downtown in some ****** small town in nowhere significant and I will tell you straight up..."Look around you. Look at all this. This planet we live on. All this is part of it.

...But you're beautiful no matter where we stand."
Dec 2010 · 729
A summary of events-
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
We came from dreams

Arrived in our beds

Having just been separated,
we formulated plots                that would return us to each other.

A switch from the subconscious sparked miles between us.

We talked through wires until it was no longer tolerable.

I went to find you, and found myself with you, the journey blurred.

There were others. They were all beautiful. But then darkness took our
                                                                      sight.

And everything was quiet.


I had never known beauty unseen, unheard.
                                                 but...you touched me

You felt me, like a cloud feels a mountain peak before taking the highest point away from the rest of the world's...sight.

Like a confused thing on a strange planet...but not frightened.
You touched me with want.
                                                       And I wanted you.
                                                                                            To know all of me.
                                             Including the bad parts.
And I wanted you to add to me, things I didn't even know yet...


The sad parts.

And a moment was a year to me. And I was wise for a second.


We left. your room. out into the night. the others around us, expressing such joyous jubilation.
And still I couldn't derive joy from their moods.
My capacity for happiness was overfull. All you.

Bring back the sight. Bring back our voices. Remember the touch.

Undying.

Our souls touched.
       The whole night long.
                Until we had to leave.
                        Because we were afraid of a supernova.
                               so we hurried back to our respective beds
                                         and that was the fastest I ever fell asleep
                                               and I know you did too. because I saw you there
In that room. In my room, in my head, in your bed, full of dreams.

Dos mil y seis. Yo fue yo...fue yo y tu. Me odio.
Dec 2010 · 778
Declaration of Independence
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
I don't want you to judge me anymore.



And you won't.
Dec 2010 · 2.3k
Drugs
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
The drugs, oh the drugs, what do they do?

They don't bring me any closer to you.
Orion Schwalm Dec 2010
What can I say about today...
when the ground is red and the sky is grey?
It's nothing but a point in time...



A solid hailstone from the sky...


And where are you now my faithful friend
when the sky is grey and the world at its end?
Are you at home like inside my mind...
Or are you lost in the pictures inside your head?
Orion Schwalm Nov 2010
A podium stands out against the Heavens
Decorated with the bodies of forgotten martyrs
fire from the sky sears the flesh of those undying,
forever locked in a space where the world's memory does not
reach.


I can see this podium
                                          as fate flashes dimly,
projected onto the screen of my unsewn heart...
strewn across the clouds, covering the hole in the sky where Hell breached long ago, the blood dripping demons into the destinies you venture.

As I stand at the top of the mountain
carved from my predecessors
And scream to the stars
         With a sound that would make gods' lips quiver
                    Busting lungs to ask for my heart back,
To seal up the hole that spawns the darkness in your life so the skyfire burns away your torment...light strikes my face...pierces my bones.
                                                I fall from my podium into your night.


                                                It is storming here.
Sep 2010 · 926
The Crescent Crescendo
Orion Schwalm Sep 2010
Precious Days
Through the crashing waves
I see the end of
The crescent sky
The sickle moon
Now in death do I lash out to the
Bleeding horizon
In silence watch it fade

In silence I watch it fade
An echo melting in frozen time
In darkness unleash the guillotine
Bring an end to the precious days
In coldness dark silence sublime

I’m fine
Really I’m fine

Oh what I wouldn’t give
To give you all that I have
The king’s kingdom and his crown
And all his castles in the sand
In which during crescent tide I
Drown
By the light of the moon I see your
Blood-stained and wave washed face…….
Your tear-brimming wavering eyes, I can
See my broken body inside of the sorrow within your eyes
With a moment of time, I could
Save you from timeless night
We are deathless in this our vessel of fear
And I am immobilized by the dark beauty
Of our unspoken screams
With a moment of time I could move the moon
To make time flow right
Seaside Song
Sep 2010 · 687
The Last Winter
Orion Schwalm Sep 2010
The flower wilts and an old man weeps
‘neath a snowy white quilt he lays down to sleep
Cold and alone, but his features are like stone, he is dying so far away from home
His cries he swallows with his freezing tears
As he dies in the snowdrift, the last thing he hears
Is his love calling in his memories from so long ago, this is the last winter he will ever know

But what of the ones that linger back in that place in his memories, waiting for him to no avail for he shall never return. Still they wait at the place he left them scanning the horizon, holding a piece of him, forever, deep within their hearts.

A flower had once deserted its tree
The petals were scattered for the world to see
The tree met the flower at the end of it’s quest sleeping serenely silent, in a white sea of death.
Then, the tree followed suit.

He traveled far from home to prove himself a man
Now in this snow white tempest takes his final stand
And those he left behind will not know how he died but they needed him more than he needed himself. And he needed them more than he needed himself.

Cold and alone, but his features are like stone, he is dying so far away from home

His love’s calling him in his memories from so long ago, this is the last winter he will ever know.
This is a song.
Aug 2010 · 4.8k
The Janitor
Orion Schwalm Aug 2010
Her face, on it’s own, is just one of thousands past and thousands to come…
But the way she portrays it…leaves a certain residue behind that I am betting she doesn’t want swept up and examined.
That’s where I come in. I’m her janitor/detective. I’d say custodian/investigator but **** political correctness. I'm in charge of gathering the crumbs of the cookies she only half finishes, and I try to determine the consistency of each and every one.
Why?
Because she bakes the best ******* cookies this side of the ******* sun, that’s why…Because she puts so much time and effort into perfecting her recipe and because she spends equally as much keeping it a secret. The mystery adds something to the taste.
But she’s overconfident. She hopes too much that everyone will eat every scrap of her devil’s dozen batches of heaven…that they will leave nothing uneaten in their never-ending feast of enlightenment.

Not I.
No Sir! No cookies for this ******* ******’s little ****** mouth. God knows I don’t deserve the sweetness.
So I’m always starving because in MY world, she’s the only cook, the only waitress, and the only ******* farmer left.


…But I still get to be the janitor. I know volunteer work is self-destructive but-  \
But maybe one day she’ll decide…
”Hey, this mindless drone slave…he’s a **** good mindless drone slave,”  and then maybe even later she’ll see I have a mind after all, even though it is always set on the same thing every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every-
well I can’t go that far in writing but I can see that far with my own eyes and I’ll tell ya…years, decades, centuries, millennia, infinity…………..ain’t got **** on this mind o’ mine, cuz the concepts are in there, but then again so is she, so why can’t I have what’s inside of me without having to rip myself apart every night looking for the quickest route to it?
Should I snap the neck clean off and go downward through the rest of this mess?
Or should I cut through the waist right in the middle and spread this search party out?
Or should I just go straight through the left side of my chest, into the hornet’s nest, guns a’ blazing?

But there’s no point in getting it all over with now. I’ve got time…all of it.
Cuz I have seen a glimpse of infinity when I looked through the telescope into the lens of a microscope with a slide inserted holding that one special little crumb I found in the folds of my shirt after the night we slept together, and I think I’ve got just enough of a hunch to say confidently that it is her secret ingredient…infinity.
It’s what everyone wants from her…and it’s the only thing I would take from her…and it’s the difference.

It’s what I see in her face.
It’s her eyes.
It’s her
It’s me.

It’s absolutely…
Nothing.




We love it.
First piece I've done like this.
Aug 2010 · 1.6k
Sasha's Poem
Orion Schwalm Aug 2010
The wren to the falcon and the falcon to the man
Dashed my pain on the rocks of no man’s land
Sighs the sea to the siren, “never leave my grasp”
Sings the siren to the land, “you are much too vast”
Says the sailor to the moon, “we will never be”
Sends the sailor to the sea: the siren singing softly
So the siren saves the sailor from the love of the land
In a struggle at the surface swelling storm
Brings him to the bottom of the sea
Singing eternally.

So the land and the sky, they will never see
Nor the wren and the falcon, will they ever be
Like the moon and the sun are sworn together
Yet will never touch the light and the warmth and the
Love
Of the earth.
The earth will spin, the wren will sing,
The falcon will soar, and the moon will sink.
Hear me write of a gale with a pen that I hate
While I wish so bad that at land you will wait
Having heard my scrawl vibrate within your heart
And seen my fires in the dark
And followed them home.

Hear me write with love from within this gale
As I stand on the brink of the gates of hell
And I know that you think that I hate so well
But I can promise you a world of insanity,
A swirl of calamity, a girl…you are more to me
Than just a passing stranger, or the hope to
Have a family.

So sing for me and sing for us and
Sing for them that are deserved
For your voice and your lyrics,
Your mind and your heart,
Are perfectly imperfect.
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
The pathways are so luminous
As I tread this softened ground
Trying to put into words the
Enlightenment that I have found

I must journey on my own
As the white wolf hunts the forests alone
To **** his prey and prove to his mate
That he is of worth, to create
He will **** or be killed for a chance of new life


So much time separates us and the stars
We see magnificent death in the form of light
If something can be so beautiful after it’s gone
The living light must have cast a remarkable dawn
A radiance so bright, is vile to mar
Perhaps I should play shepherd to the less permanent stars
Whose light would be forgotten in a ripple of time
The stars that reside right here on this land
Beneath the flooding moonlight
Which isn’t light at all.
Incomplete three verse version.
Jul 2010 · 906
Creation Spree
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
These bursts of creativity
Come randomly,
And seemingly
Unnaturally
But when I see
My mind set free
I write endlessly
A creation spree
I guess it could be called
When I go from lying on the floor, sprawled
To shattering these emotional bunker walls
Jul 2010 · 1.2k
Cuckoo
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
Twisting endless all-consuming halls
Drain faith from faceless souls
Drowning fragile minds as a white black hole
Deadening the faint cry of tormented minds’ calls
An ocean limitlessly deep
No bottom, no surface, all sides ever-expanding
And containing, concentrating in this treacherous keep
Forever feeding, and forever demanding

This prison of mind so real in the flesh, always inhuming, never exhuming, always changing, yet always the same. An honest suffering, all who are so free are chained in their own selves. Reality is dementia and insanity is standard, the ambitions of old are long gone to the wind. The candles of emotions are blown wild in the gust melting wick, wax, and burning wooden stand to become one hideous, beautiful, abnormal, fantastic anomaly.


I ferment in this sickening hole
The pungent smell of mindless efficiency
Creates an equality I cannot stand
This nightmarish labyrinth can break a man
The ones deemed just, fuel this travesty
Of false love and compassion, feeds the gates toll
Once I had a meaning in life
But it vanished in the course of a night
In the past I may have had some grand scheme
But eternal freedom has intervened
I wish deep down that I could live again
In the sunlight world away from my pain
In my stormy mind there is always rain
Jul 2010 · 902
Irides
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
Glacial, the gaze of wintry viridian irides
Silken, the heavenly flesh
Lurid, the flames of a paradise awry
Mourning all the sinister angels have blessed
With their tainted perfection, their hideous lies
Hope shines so thinly in an eonian land barren of all love
Great men become emptied, the tormented cry
Amidst desolation, a beautiful dove
Becomes alive, voicing a longing call
Amongst forgotten pantheons, a saviour resides
Though, broken, gashed, beaten, and threshed
Awakened by beautiful birdsong, driven to reply
Was this an augury? He must strike out to answer this call from above
 To redeem some grace, from the woe of it all
Stupid rhyme scheme.
Jul 2010 · 717
Unnamed Poem
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
The sun lies down to die
The void exists, my kingdom never came
These hallowed hands, they bear no sword
I turn my scarred back in shame

To shade these monsters from the light
The choir of undeserving life
Avenged the hand that feeds
And spat back all the seeds
We were all ignorant it’s true

And to this vile earth, only shells remain
Carved and gutted with nether enclosure
A vacuum crown with an existenceless mane
Tiredly playing the façade of composure

To satisfy terrified anti-erosion
The disciples of mine were sent into sleep
And the rest were all charmed with seasong so deep
From the bottomless, black, black ocean

The tears I shed for his glory undead
Wrenched and torn from my soul and his gold and the ghost
And the trifling lies living lachrymose lives
And the soul-stolen dead dug a ditch for their tread
In a futile fervor my cold causeless cries sound:
I have failed you God.
I have failed you so valiantly
Jul 2010 · 4.4k
The Storm Sonnet
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
The lightning came so suddenly
Along with odious hail
The lightning shot right into me and
I was smitten by the gale

The storm of storms then, to me was sworn
Forever holds this young sailors soul
To share with me both love and scorn
And tend to my fire, with rain so cold

And till this day though the storm has past
To rage upon some other’s shore
Still I hear the thunder’s clash
And yearn for the cataclysmic roar
I’ll never forget the beautiful storms eye
I’ll always be lost in those terrified eyes
Jul 2010 · 1.2k
Serenade of Serenity
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
A perfect place
A natural utopia
Snow sails down through the corridors silently
Sunlight glazes above sylvan serenity
Time will peacefully pass
Over the sleet sheltered viridian grass
How life has so deserted this paradise bewilders me
In this perfect placidity I feel so free
This landscape holds no surprises, only beauty
Just as my tongue tells no lies, only poetry
As I top the summit, in shock, I see
A ghastly sight I cannot believe
This defies what I’ve seen and cannot be
But if I can trust my own eyes on what they perceive
A terrible fire
Burns into the sea
That I have created, in my ignorant glee
The sight screams in my soul like a haunting banshee
But amidst the burning debris
Stands alone one rebellious tree
On the top of the hill, like a statue of hope
Mocking the treacherous fiery *****
With the means to end this all
I pray that the tree does not fall
As it’s placed on the edge so precariously
The saviour of paradise, the tree...is me.


Hope I don't **** up.
Jul 2010 · 1.1k
Dreamer
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
Dreamer


As I lay amongst sweat drenched sheets
Staring at the solemn shadows on my ceiling
Unable to move, my legs broken
I envision a sea of leering gleams
So dreary and unseen
And we
As dark it seems
Bright stars in the sky
While the universe dies
But still we’re held high
Ever falling, entwined
Shelled from the blustery, unwinding seams
Held within my conscious dream
I turn on the light and walk out of the room

As I stare at my self in the sheen
Breathing in sporadic spasms at the sink
In my eyes, an almost believable disbelief
Nearly collapsing with each new breath
I know not my own blood
My passion for you has weakened me
Sapped my physical energy
Forever I’m trapped, but eternally free
My own eyes, a river
A whirlpool, the sea,
An earthrent galleon, the flood
A deep black hole in the dark
A shipwrecked city, the flood
An inhumane dosage of love
I turn on the light to see

I have covered myself in the sodden filth of the truth
Wash off my skin, and suppress my dream
Wash you from my thoughts, and become mendaciously clean

— The End —