Flowing. Freezing. Frozen.
Ice on the Delaware.
Another summer has to come.
Once again, we'll fish there.

Speeding. Slowing. Stopped.
We'll decorate the world.
One or two, no, ten times more.
Before the strings of fate unfurl.

Racing. Running. Rest.
We'll reap what we sowed.
Into the fragrant Mother Earth.
The seeds of life will go.
And you will help this silly child.
Because you always know.

Winning. Losing. Lost.
The sorrow does not soothe.
And right now, I'm that kind of sad.
The kind forbidding you to move.
My soul is burning in my bones.
My skin's surface so smooth.

Sleeping. Dreaming. Dreamt.
The stories told and never told.
The arms will wrap around you.
When you're alone or not alone.
The tears you'll cry when you are young.
Etch out the canyons of the old.
Point to the memories of everything.
That nostalgia has foretold.

Living. Dying. Dead.
Cats and Dogs and Birds.
Carved into your backyard.
Driving by the herds.
Green, green Pennsylvania.
Silent, sad Narrowsburg.
Where water is just glass.
Where the train is seldom heard.
It is vague, vaguer, and vaguest.
While it's taking you away.
Where you must've gone to stay.
To create the land of made up words.
And make tomorrow yesterday.
Because the time is always yours.

Frozen. Freezing. Flowing.
Found and never lost.
Sleeping. Smiling. You are here.
Ice is barely frost.
Shooting. Shooting. Shooting stars.
You will decorate the world.
You'll wish for me. I'll wish for you.
The Earth will always twirl.
And I'll be alone or not alone.
One day, I'll simply be too old.
One day, I will ride that train.
The train that will be just as vague.
But I know that I'll stay young, stay bold.
My stories will be told.

And your arms will wrap around me.
Living. Living. Alive.

We walked together one day in a chilly October-
through the woods, I recall this moment over and over,
I remember how the temperature was nearly freezing,
I remember how we were warmed by each others breathing

You enjoyed nearly every aspect about this place,
the smell, the sound, they brought that smile to your face,
that smile, the fire that made me feel so warm,
I wanted to do everything I could to keep it from harm

You fancied the trees especially,
I loved them too, I wrapped you in me,
I loved the isolation, we were free from intrusion,
only the sun penetrated the trees creating our illusion

The trees were as orange as the sun that set them aflame,
the sort of beauty so captivating, it remained unnamed,
as orange as the horizon behind the dark mountains-
the heated heavens, hot as the molten emotions born from the fountains-
of the orange flames that burned so deeply they scorched our hearts-
with the unstoppable orange fire that only you can start-
the orange flames burned so clearly envisioned in my brain-
the flames the same orange that feels so far away...

The warming orange sun left, bade me goodbye,
removing its welcome presence from the darkening sky,
you were gone, you were never there, my heart grew insanely sore,
the illusion of having someone here with me shattered once more...

The forest fire inside burned out and left me to myself,
it burned out my insides and left me an empty shell,
I'm so cold and alone and too afraid to go home,
I feel so old, I'm being shown how Ive lived all on my own

This horrible loneliness I cant understand or command-
that it leave me at once and remove its heavy hand-
from off of my chest, from gripping my heavy heart,
but it wont, watching me struggle not to tear my hopes apart

The flames were as orange as the hell of my life,
the sort of beauty I imagined in my imaginary wife,
as hot as the lake of fire where the Devil sits
watching my struggles, licking its blackened lips,
as orange as the fire that cant warm my heart,
as hot as the flames that no one will ever start,
as orange as the iron demons stab into my brain-
at memories like the illusion that are just too far away...

No, I haven't given up yet
   I'm just really lazy
I won't get up and chase you
   so you leave and I'll go crazy
And I won't lie, I'm depressed
   but, man, you just cant see
How content I am with this-
  my mind at work inside of me

It just isn't like me at all
   to fight for what I want
It's just not in my brain
   glowering and gaunt
I'm tired and I'm lying down
   in a grass field so green
Stretching on forever
   innocent and clean

I never was very optimistic
   but I'm not a pessimist
I just don't know how to be happy
   don't know if it even exists
but I don't know how to give up
   how to lie down and die
I don't know, does it make me tough-
   cause I don't know how to cry

No one out there believes
   and I'll say that I don't either
we all lose our bliss sometimes
   so we're all non believers
I don't believe in myself
   and I don't think I can
but I don't feel sorry
  that's just how I am

You know first loves cut the deepest
   first loves, the ones I miss
First love's the one that trapped me
   that made me feel listless
the first love's always the one-
   that seems like a big deal
yes, the first love always hurts
   but quietly I'll heal

It happens very slowly
   but the burns will scab in time
and eventually they'll fade away
   the scars throughout my mind
and I still won't have a thing to say
   Oh, the silence, how it taunts!
I said it once, I'll say again
   it's just not like me
      to fight
         for what
            I want...

Here I am again, first poem in x amount of days
3:13 in the morning, street lights are dull orange rays
Feeling the inspiration I've lost for the longest time
Surprised I actually got this far without messing up the rhyme

I am sad, alone
So tired, unknown
To the new people all around me
In this new and empty place

Faceless foes have bound me to the lonely human race

Sitting at a bus stop, a can of duster at my side
This storm that slowly rages must be a billion miles wide
But even when it passes my anger will not subside
These torrential raindrops ain't got **** on my insides

I miss my home, my lover
my father, my mother

I have friends who are frankly not there for each other
Screams that no pillow or pistol will smother
No way out, or at least not one I can discover

So here I am, 3:43, chain smoking my cigars
Listening to the storm pounding on the thin hood of my car
Playing with lighters and knives while the sorrow survives
Writing this while waiting for a dull sun that won't rise

I want my old, comfy bed
A few people dead
The few hopes that one day my few words will be read
My hate to be filled
By a few knives running red
A fire, an earthquake
Things a few people dread

Because of the few faceless foes in my head

I don't want to be myself right now, I want to die
But I don't, I get scared, so deep down that's a lie
But I can't get it out, can't shout or even cry
Just smoke, huff more duster, watch the lightning lit sky

When you **** yourself up just so you can pass out
You'll truly know the desperation that I'm all about
So I'll just chill in my room with my few faceless friends
With brain cells to **** before the world will end

I'm a white snake
moving against autumn leaves
all of the trauma in the world couldn't keep me down
and I'm gonna fly away

The wet leaves surround me with nature's scent
and the dirt fills my mouth with the gritty taste of life
I love this planet, all that's left of it
when I'm with no one but myself, when I can scream without an audience
I can finally feel free

Free from the stress
anxiety attacks that no animal needs
fear in the form of spontaneous combustion
frustration which leads to-
anger which leads to-
pain
are only shadows on my scales

Surrounded by synthetics, I'm just a worm doomed to crawl on my belly
when I'm a white snake
moving against black asphalt
and I'm not all alone, but in the bad way
the tar stains my skin

But when I return to those autumn leaves, I can wipe away that tar
and I can feel like I'm free again
and all of the trauma in the world couldn't keep me down
and I am all alone, but in the good way
it feels like my scales will throw off their shadows
and turn into feathers
it feels like my bones will break apart
and shape into wings
and I'm gonna fly
I'm gonna fly
I'm gonna fly away

I'll be a white hawk
moving against the clear, clear blue sky
and the wind will wipe away
the frustration which led to-
the anger which led to-
the pain
and no trauma in the world ever even had a ******* hold on me

We're like two forces of nature

I am a storm cloud
That covers the sky in black
With fury that will tear apart the face of the Earth
My words are a hurricane screaming in the dark
And my eyes dam a flood that would
Erode the mountains into solute
I am the cold that freezes the ground
That cracks the road into gravel
An eruption that scorches all I touch
The kinetic energy of my soul
Is like the shower of meteors
That bombarded the beginning
Of our world
I am death

And you are the atmosphere
You are the warmth of the sun
The darkness and the moisture of the soil
That cracks open a little seed
So that a flower may face the sun
And wonder how it got so lucky
You are the breath of the ocean
And the smell of the spring
You are a bird singing at dawn
After a long, lonesome night
You are the tingle in the chest
That makes people fall in love
You are the kiss that leads
To wonderful things
You are life

But sadly, you are also pain
And no matter how many cataclyms
Occur over lifetimes
No matter how many extinctions
Happen throughout the aeons
You always find a way through that pain

You are so much stronger than I am
Far more majestic, mysterious, miraculous
Storms come and go without purpose
But life's will to survive is endless, amazing
And here we are, caught
In each other's grasp

I can't wait to whisk you up
Into the air and hold you in warmer winds
While we watch our world
Watch the stormclouds
Moving together
Falling apart
While the life underneath coalesces
Cell by cell, a beautiful algorithm

I can't wait to show you
How serene the eye of the storm can be
Instead of all the ****** little things about myself
Instead of how easily
A storm can destroy something beautiful
I can't wait to touch your face
And wash all your sorrow away
With gentle rains

There's a man in my head
He speaks to me in silence and in dreams
What he is, I do not know
But it doesn’t really matter

In the silence, he asks me
“What do you hear?”
I hear the hissing of the sand
Falling through the proverbial hourglass
Like a vaporous snake sifting through the silt
On the banks of an endless river
Like snowflake after snowflake
Caressing the ground with winter’s edifice of ice
Until everything is locked away, buried and frozen
I hear the ringing vibrations of subatomic particles
Ascending to crescendos and sinking
Into gentle diminuendos as electrons are exchanged
I hear the Earth trading momentum with the moon
As they rotate and revolve through the vacuum of the Universe
In a continuous gift before forever falling away
And leaving nothing behind but an empty ecliptic

“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“It hurts like hell.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“Sometimes I cant. Sometimes all I want to do is sleep.”

And in my dreams he asks
“What do you see?”
I see a cell growing and dividing
Into all the people that I know
I see their blood vessels transmuting into trees
And their arms folding into wings that
Carry them to heaven while stone shifts like water
Beneath them and the seas go dark
I see the Earth condensing out of asteroids
And being swallowed by the Sun
I watch inertia carry light and color along the tail of a comet
And into clouds of gas and dust that swirl in the vacuum
Of the Universe, like the stars of a galaxy
Crumbling into a black hole, down the drain of gravity
That bends superclusters into the blood vessels
Of a human eye, I see nothing and everything
I see life and death and the profound mystery of existence
Most of all, I see myself

“Does it scare you?”
“It’s ******* terrifying.”
“How do you cope?”
“Sometimes I cant. Sometimes all I want to do is die.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Because sometimes it’s so beautiful.”

And in my nightmares he asks me
“Why don’t you just end it all?”
“Because I’m afraid.”
“Don’t you want the suffering to be over?”
“I’m not so sure it will be.”

The only thing I know of death is the absence of life
Just like darkness is the absence of light
And I can’t fathom what that nothingness is
I can’t comprehend the absence of life

“Well, do you have a soul?”

Is all that I am a murmur of electricity?
A chemical reaction inside of some adipose?
Is there nothing in the darkness of my pupil
Or is there only the absence of light?
Is all that I am just a sequence of nucleotides
Transcripted and translated, again and again
For no reason other than the absence of chaos?
If that’s all that life is then how can there be peace in death?
Or is there only nothing?
The only thing I understand
Is that there's something more
That I can't understand

"Well, do you?"
“I don’t know.”
“Then what am I?”
“Something that exists in dreams.”
“Then what’s in a dream?”
“I don’t know, please go away.”
“I can’t go away. I will never go away.”

There’s a man in my head
He speaks to me in hatred and in bliss
And I don’t know who he is
Or if he even is
But he lives in the pit of my stomach
He lives in between the wrinkles around my eyes
And he is oh so curious about things that we aren’t meant to know
And he will never go away
But it doesn’t really matter

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas! Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We ***** together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper

-T.S. Eliot