I'll give you my fingers,
If I get your bones,
You can have my arms,
If I can take your skull.

You can take my heart, beating, from my chest,
I'll have yours in return,
If it isn't the best.

I'll give you my thoughts, wrapped up in saran,
If I can have your dreams,
The fastest in your clan.

It'll be a trade-off,
So easy you'll see,
So take me and I'll take you,
We'll fill in those empty spots,
That just won't do.

To whom am I bound,
On this winding road,
As I dream of better things,
But with chains that bind me and pull me back,
Two steps for a single one,
The world at my fingertips and yet so far away,
Dirt on my weathered boots,
I sing a lonesome tune.

Lifeblood (Poem 1)

They called me the sun. I used to rain my light down upon them like it was my lifeblood, torn from my veins and arteries for them, for them, for them. They took it and hid it away, my blood, using it for their own gain. Some might have screamed Praise the sun! but for naught, as their brethren took and took and took and I was left a withering husk of my former glory, no longer golden, clouds on my once-fair brow. There was no glory in dying alone, without a battlefield or comrades. And for what? They complained, complained, pushing their hate towards me, for it was too dry, too hot, too much, too much, too much. How would I know? They wished for me on rainy days, hated me on the sunny. I was never balanced, I was always giving and taking too much.

To A Moonlit Dream I Can't Recall (Poem 2)

I dreamt in slow waves, shining so bright that the dark was chased away from the fair sheep I tended. My brother was off with his own, dusty with his own exhaustion when the day broke over and bled into the night. He was never much for talking, but when I spied on him, hidden in dark groves, he was alight, fiery with his own happiness and pride, until the sheep began to complain and the clouds crept in to watch. Wolves, were they, but I paid them no mind, for my sheep ran where they could not follow, to gossamer hills filled with hopes they could never express elsewhere. When my fingers ran in ribbons through their wool, the fair strands separating and splitting, dewdrops on a window pane, I sheared them, weaving tapestries of what they created within the confines of themselves.  

When my brother came wandering in one day, his arms ****** with his own life, splashing golden on the tiles, I could do nothing. We were our own shepherds, we could not take each other's flock. The day could not replace the night, as I could not replace my brother. I could do nothing to assist him, could not ease his pain. He would have to continue bloodletting, to give his sheep his blood until he was drained. My teardrops were on the fire until the night spread in thick tendrils on the floor.

I believed myself limitless,
A god, if you will,  
Unbound by nature and my own mortality,  
Or so I thought,  

My hands clasped together,  
In applause or another's grasp,  
Unknowing of my and others' fates,  
And such is the folly of youth.  

I once drank fine wine,  
And bit into apples like those of Eden.

My "friends" were the same,  
And I thought of us as loyal fellows,  
In war and peace.  

It was not to be.  

On the fringes of revolution,  
Hanging onto it's fragile coattails,
There was a new danger,  
The hatred of me and anyone like me,  
Those blessed by birth and standing.

I learned quickly of my own ability to fall,  
Off a pedestal of my own design and otherwise,  
And those I considered friends fled,  
And my so-called comrades betrayed.  

It was a swift execution,  
The beheading swift and true,
They hung a man after me,  
Some said it took an hour for him to die.  

Now we wander these once-princely ruins,  
Afraid of what lies beyond the mortal plane,
Yet craving it,  
Some have gone insane,  
Others sit in corners and fade into nothingness.  

I am neither.  

I tell my story to the winds,
To the crashing sea beyond these crumbling walls,  
To the birds and the sky.  

Sometimes, on the lonely days,  
When the sun is buried beneath fat clouds,  
And the cool West wind flows over my insubstantial skin,  
I can see the barest glimpse of what was once here.  

It lasts a mere instant,  
Then a seagull will shriek,  
And both I and the ruins will fade.

A gateway into another world,  
It reflects the stars, hanging in the sky,  
Immaculate dewdrops  
Twining into each other
Like so many dancers
They twist and turn
A finger wipes through them
Their partners are whipped away.
An exhale and mist covers their dreams

can you see me?

can you tell what i fear?

can you stop this?

i'm looking through thick windows

you seem like a mirage.

I wonder what it would be like to live
Somewhere else
Without him.
I tell him.
He makes a face.
"You're not going anywhere."
The car keeps moving.