I’ve faced the pinnacles of darkness
and the depths of Illumination;
but the faces that kept my sight
were always vague but constant.

There’s been dark times of laughter
and saccharine times of sorrow;
but none were so merry as the times
of prolonged grins and short scowls.

When the fires were stoked within
‘twas a friend’s quick gaze pumped the bellows
that quelled the fires so sacrificial
and returned my mind to the mellow.

So forever again ‘twill be those nearest
that will face the hottest flames.
Forever again will those nearest fan
away these flames from a face so fickle.

This breeze will coax the life from dark-
will cull away a smile from lips so grave-
resurrecting life from dead social graces-
until grace finds a perch in a heart once
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More time runs away as fast as it can
More lost dreams lie wasted, not part of the plan

If the future could share a warning
It would see our concern growing

A light in the night can’t be so bad
But it kills you if darkness is all you have
The light can take your sight
It can rob you blind tonight

With the light on the horizon getting brighter
The burden on our back isn’t getting lighter

So the hopeless soldier on in vain
And the champions stay out of the rain

Only to find their fulfilled hopes flimsy imitations
Of a life spent unworried of negative connotations

A bad dream never wakes the tired souls
A grim future doesn’t worry those with no goals

When I look within my arms, there’s nobody there.
No head on this shoulder, it doesn’t seem fair
for the chauvinists and players to always have a girl.
While the nice guy sits alone, the only pearl
in an ocean of sharks and poison, waiting
for the unsuspecting to bite on this strange thing
called love, shared between those too drunk
to drive, but still steering their lives into the abyss
where there are no pearls and no lifelines to save them.
But still they plunge deeper, fated to do it again.

Only time will expose the light of day
and they will blink their eyes and say,
what was I thinking?  What was the point?
and finally they realize what they really want.
But all that’s left are the sharks with their egos to flaunt.
So they pick one and get used to the bitter ocean.
They keep up this lie in order to go on.
And then when the tide finally rolls in,
they can’t swallow their pride anymore
so they choke on reality and swim to shore.

But there is no pearl necklace to hide their past-
no amount of make-up to hide their last
affair.  Its mark will always mar that perfect face.
And when they’re finally ready to find a pearl in this dangerous place
he’s been snatched up, made his own mistakes,
gone places impure, and hard to erase.
So these crimes of adolescence can withstand the waves
and wear away at the innocence sending us closer to our graves
Stealing away the weak and repeating the cycle.

I wish to return to the days long completed
when the strangest fantasies lived only in our dreams.
Now there is no more fantasy within the lidded eye.
Sleep exists only as respite from this cruel life.

We find extravagance and folly in every gilded screen.
What use is there then, for unconscious sconces within the mind,
where we can tuck away originality
until it sprouts and spreads like ivy on a British house.

We cast away any respite from this mundane wonder,
staying eager to see what else there is to see
until nothing is left of our ivy covered minds
except for meager impressions of what once was.

People who wait much further down the road
will one day walk back to this forgotten hideaway.
They will see the traces of what was
but they won’t be able to piece together
our lost lives of slumber.

And so the real unselfish tragedy,
is not our decline-
but the ensuing confusion
caused by impatient minds.

I see a face staring through the pixels and plastic,
a face I recognize, even as I search it for familiarity.

It is a face of a starving child about to die
and in this realization, a tear forms in my eye.

For how can this be fair and how can we accept it,
when earlier this night, I bought food I didn’t need?

After eating far too much and appreciating nothing,
I see this face crying out and I know that the words
coming from his mouth share nothing with what people see
when they think of starving kids who share nothing with you and me.

What is wrong with me, with us
when there are more jokes about these starving kids
than efforts to help fill the spaces between his exposed ribs?

I see wrinkles around his mouth, emphasizing his eternal grimace
and wonder why we face a surplus for those who don’t need it
while the needy and wretched sit waiting and defeated.

A log on the river
Time keeps on flowing
The past comes quicker
Than the future can keep growing

No more retrospective
Only blinders forward
No more fresh perspective
Only preying to an earthly lord

When the future is waiting
Nobody can stay
To maintain your daydream
Again ends the day

A fighter against the current
Gets stuck in time
A victim less prurient
Than the status quo’s kind

No longer is the present
So long is the future
Condemned to be a resident
Of a time so impure

All we do and see
Only a chip in the log
Flowing against our plea
To stop and stare agog

No more wonderment
Desire long gone for us
A race without an end
Slowly approaches the finish

But waves crash even in the river
Divine nature swaying in the balance
Fighting for our lives, we find a giver
Beaten against a timely phalanx

A river runs and grows weary
As our oars are sacrificed
A happy race no longer cheery
Our hopes and dreams put on ice

A beautiful world turns round again
A simple man must meet his end
A bright new baby is born anew
A cycle can do nothing except renew

But no sick cycle is meant for us few
No endless circuit to remove us from the slew
Of public discord raining down from the heavens
We only stay on track to see where it ends

A broken sidewalk is our path to somewhere
To carry us away to a brand new nowhere
But no preformed path can lead us away
Unless we walk forward to find our own feet at play

A brand new day comes to find its own end
What irony arises from the end of a beginning?
When does a fresh start turn stale and still?
Do our new opportunities hover until they fall?
Or do we have to pluck them out of the air
So thick we can’t see, what the future means us to be

Are we failures or successes?
Do the powers that be know that we
Are the next wave of an endless storm
That batters the public consciousness
Leaving it forlorn and ragged
By the dissent of the vocal minority

We will forever be we, and that is a fact
The sullen masses can’t remove our power
An urge to survive will rain down like a shower
On the poor souls without the life of their dreams

The possibilities remain locked inside heads of lead
While those without any move on ahead
A world for the doer but not for the thinker
Can doom the ideas of the intelligent and weaker
People without the urge to move and shout
Living a life of inadequacy is their only way out

A great ending for these is not in the cards
Instead the powerful push down the bards
The dreamers who knew not the hunger
To leap to the top and remove any wonder
As to whom they could be
Must lie at the bottom explaining the lives
Of those successful but simpler spirits
Who lacked the essence but held on to ambition
A world that is just never comes to fruition.