Pounding heads and churning guts lie
next to me on an old quilt under fleece
Still stuffy air enters heavy lungs and leaves
Coming over the hill behind the sea
was an overwhelming sight to see
Endless gray intersecting with sky
reflecting backward and forwards
where perspective meets the eye
Rotted plankwood will lead to demise
executed by jagged shore rock and waves
carrying one away to the ephemeral light
bobbing below the surface that fades
Out with the old days to make room for new,
recounting last year’s glaze
Remembering like it was yesterday
how sick you’d gotten so soon
A tender heart I’ll always have,
and an old, nurturing soul, too
Awakened by life with fresh eyes,
stimulating a walk to take with you

rain is addicted to gravity
pain is addicted to chemistry
love is addicted to empathy
safe is addicted to security
it's all good

dreams are addicted to imagining
age is addicted to hurrying
empty's addicted to nothing
everyone's addicted to something
and it's all good

we all seek comfort and that's just fine
a bit of yours for a bit of mine.

submerged in ice cold water
drowning deeper into the unknown

our bodies are not moving
our souls traveling between worlds

i remember dreaming of walking through a vast forest
we were lost, we were preys of the dark

but still we go further, we march
hoping we'll be home when we open our eyes

we met lost souls, guiding us deeper
luring us to succumb our fate

and the surrounding grows darker, making us breathe harder
we are falling, we are drowning, we are dying

my dream was reality and reality was my dream
i'm sorry, i caused all of these

we go deeper till we reach the ocean floor
i'm sorry, we shouldn't have went over the garden wall

I saw the light, but I swear,
It flashed between my eyes.
This tunnel I walk blindly
Being hit a hundred times.

My skin I tear and tear,
To find the light once more
But all I get is nothing,
But blood and flesh and gore.

I head out at twilight
only to return each dawn,
wading the muddied waters
of my youth, and mysteries
of a history misremembered,
or wishfull, wistful memories,
wanting to revisit in dreams
those things that defy the laws
of physics, yet knowing I can't
go back, and each breath I take
reminds me forever of that fact.

Some nights
the moon throws its light
like an old man
who can't hold his liquor in
and spits blood in the morning

Someone ought to kick some sense
into me, if they did I'd hum
like the body of a fiddle

I propose we all strip down
and take a swim with my friends
the dragonflies, but no one will listen
to what I have to say when I throw my voice
like an empty bottle deep in the forest

When I think of all the dark
and swift things of my rivers,
I wonder why time the old boot -
legger hides his maps and goes
on traveling the low roads

Alone I can tell you there is so much
beside the point of the thorn of the rose
and why the moon is with me always
whenever i choose to go it alone

I drink from that blue jar of time
and breathe the breath of sweet infants

Believe you me the dead shepherd
we sent up the river in a faraway land
in a time so long ago still holds us
all by the holes in his hands

You can see the dark clouds up ahead,
my cloisters I am always walking through them
with you children of the lost dreams,
and with you fifty-something snow-headed men

We have just collided with our lost sons
on the high road of morning, we are rising
dust like the dirt on our children's graves
saying nothing to our brothers the stones.

hands raised to the sky as he runs,
young and wild, curious, carefree;
sunlight bleeds through his fingers
not enough,
he wants to touch the sun.
you mustn't get too close, Daedalus warns him
and then Apollo smiles;

it feels like soaring,
being on the receiving end of
something so bright.
full of youth, seduction is easy
i think your mouth would taste like summer
he surrenders
slave to a burning star
forgive me, father

when he flies,
the taste of freedom
is sweet and heavy on his tongue
but you're not really free
sunbeams envelope him
his skin is golden; Apollo's touch is fire
he's never felt so warm
loved

i could destroy you
he's always been reckless
you won't
throws himself into the flames with abandon
it burns; it's violent; it consumes him
this isn't love
defiant, he smiles even as he screams
it's love to me

Apollo watches as he plummets
falling, falling, collapsing, wings singed and broken
gods shouldn't feel this helpless
it was love to me too
the slap of skin,
the crunch of bones breaking in the waves.
nothing could convince him to keep looking
as Daedalus screams
and holds his fallen son

gods bleed ichor,
gold like Apollo's light;
Apollo has eyes like a clear blue sea,
that's what Icarus once told him;
now Icarus paints the ocean,
bleeds scarlet into Poseidon's waters
and the sun god watches.
how fitting that you'd taint the ocean like you tainted me
Apollo's eyes are red from crying

was it worth it?
in the afterlife, he wears scars
where he used to wear wings
i'd fall a thousand times over just to kiss your lips
immortal now, his soul is sun-stroked
they'll write odes to you,
the boy who flew too close to the sun
even in death, his spirit is bright with innocent joy
he laughs
it sounds like Cupid's lyre

let them, he beams. at least i flew.

i haven't missed you at all
and it's been kinda peaceful,
being able to breathe.
must be what asthmatics feel
when they get that first puff of an inhaler
after a brutal attack—
that's what i imagine, at least

overwhelming relief, like
they just lifted 160lbs of weight off their chest
and expelled it like a breath on the breeze.
oh, it's still there: the problem
but the jitters are gone for now;
inhaling doesn't feel like being a whisper away from a panic attack

you've induced plenty of those.
you're no medical condition,
nobody's going to find your name on my hospital records;
but i bet if they cut me open
they'd see the scars on my lungs
from where my ribs couldn't expand enough
to fit the anxiety you exhaled into them

you're a disease in your own right
but like a lot of mental illnesses,
you've been easy to become familiar with
to the point where the absence of the discomfort you cause
makes me feel uncomfortable,
and it's been a welcome break
but now i'm wishing you'd come back to me

i'm not sure how i'm supposed to breathe without choking anymore
i don't know how to sit without shaking
you did this to me
now come back and fix it

Echo, cricket,
Thump, stump.
The very loud things
Galloping through the silence.
The creaking of stairs like the breaking of bones
That snapped tin cap,
Clinging onto the prophesied labor of your last breath,
Oscillating through your liquefied ontology.
Ethanol overflown and embodied.

Cricket cricket,
The underlying intrinsic.
The empty tone of a distant voice.
The spaces of letters and words so magnified
So wide,
Expanding like an unstoppable void.
Oh my,
Here it comes,
Shadowed by your hissing tongue.
You are glittered,
Pinnacle bitter.
Cloaked in pure white.
Not a thread of disguise.
Twinkle, twinkle,
Buggy, rugged eye.
Those razor touched lines,
Translucent and caressed,
Reminiscent and enmeshed,
Like faded pale stripes,
Hugging the armor of canvas flesh.
Walking among these thin lines,
Head down, musky powdered stench,
Awaiting the inevitable rise and fall.
Of the intangible crux of a hollow memory,
Woven inside the synthetic fabric of the undelivered.
Oceanic cold shiver,
Piercing through our empty, untethered souls.