Time means nothing
a world apart
and truth in black lines
is still subjective

Concrete emotions blend into surroundings
and the mix perplexes those
who cannot live in the gray clouds
of a pending storm

But boy does that rain smell good
the peace in the falling change
lulls the heart into a trance
hypnotic rhythms change the beat of a dying heart

Alive or almost so
the dancing droplets look like
jellyfish flowing through life
in a grace one can never hope to achieve

Life provides the weapons to win
and the power to combat all
that comes to harm
but it does not hand us discernment

To choose to fight for or against
to be who we choose or who we believe
to trust love and doubt choices
or trust choices and doubt love

We are the warriors of our destiny
in a land that never teaches us to fight

a limp body
carried in broken arms
to a funeral pyre
hidden in the woods

tinder, salt-saturated
won't catch
drowning in the perception
of failure

life flows out
and seeps in
healing in unfettered
emotion

exhaustion bleeds thought
cracks fuse invisibly strong
still feeling both less
yet more, somehow

pyre lays unlit
as the heart dreams ablaze
in lost memories
of a life not yet lived

one without the other
cannot exhale
breathing in all the nothing
looking for the only thing

not knowing what or where
but the when is now
as wood sits on the ashes
of what came before

in the jolt of drowning
on overflowed tears
it flows out of each
and into the other

cracks fade
accidental truth is never an accident
too tired to continue
it was found where it lay sleeping

patient and blind
sprouts into the best
of unseen possibilities
the day you carried me in silence

They call it guilt, John.
That's what the voice in the dark of the night,
would always whisper upon me.
But I was deaf, so I would never hear it.

Oh, it's just what they'll all say,
"It's not your fault",
That your brother died,
That you're a broken husk of a man.

Worry not, worry not, fair snakeskin,
fair caterpillar,
surely you, too,
will shed your skin and fly, fly away.

But he doesn't get to fly now does he?
No all he exists is,
as a sad, cold face,
dead, under the refraction of light,
that pool's death gleams.

Hmm, but you enjoy this don't you,
John, the voice said to me.
The tragic backstory, the shameless reason.
For such gleeful ecstasy, surerly,
The small price of the lie called brother,
of innocence, of life,
of something you never really had, something you never really lose,
what an even sacrifice, John, what a fair toll,
in fact how favored are you, to so enjoy,
self-flagellation.

I won't tell if you won't, she says, whispered. Why always a she and who? It finishes anyways; whether I want it to...

Spencer died,
So I can have,
my whip in hand.
That is my truth.