A house is not a home
Until the storms it’s meant to keep out
Start within.

Brick and mortar, all erodes.
In every home, some broken memories,
Wedding rings and distant lovers.

Yellowed walls and hearts to match-
In every home, an illness.
We’re the disease.

Words unspoken hurt the most.
In every home, a heartache-
An ever-downward spiral.

Mouths are moving, words unheard.
I nod along and play my part.
Elsewhere I’m afloat at sea,
Hushed by waves and boundless stars.

I laugh at jokes and feign surprise,
Each as it’s required.
Elsewhere I’m atop a cliff,
Where land and stars coalesce, conspire.

Exchanging greetings, shaking hands,
I do as do I must.
Elsewhere I’m in front a fire,
Lover near as twigs combust.

I bear the weight of all the words,
From mouths so rarely closed.
Though elsewhere I’m at home, in bed,
Book agape and mind engrossed.

I only came for exercise,
To prove my social health.
And now it seems, the more I talk,
I lose touch with myself.

I don’t wholly understand you.
It’s possible I never will.
But I don’t need to know astronomy
To see the beauty of stars.

And while I may not
Always understand you,
I promise I’ll always be there
To cherish you & watch you shine.

I’m utterly lost
and there exists no compass or map to help me.
After all, no map or measurement
can encompass the longitude and latitude
of a broken soul.

And if there were a way-
though, I know there isn’t-
to delineate the uninhabited, inhospitable
wastelands of my being,
there would be no cartographer
capable or willing enough to meet the task.
Regardless, there would be no point in trying.

The shorelines of my soul are ever-receding,
slowly overcome by an ocean of troubles
bent on washing away all that grounds me.
I’m lost, submerged- another victim in the depths
of an ocean too deep to be explored.
Here and there, you’ll find a wreckage,
a sunken dream, rusted through.
The deeper you go, the darker it gets.

So, how am I to find myself,
when all’s succumb to the tides?
I’m searching for a shoreline which no longer exists.

The impress of form 'neath a veil,
Her scars are but sediments of sentiments
Outlining without specificity the ebbs
Of her dark, internal reservoirs.

Scrolls of indiscernible braille,
Her slashed forearms convey
In archaic lexicon the innermost
Artistry of her sanguinary soul.

One finds within her labyrinthine mind
Innumerable subterranean recesses-
Balmy hollows carved of ashen loneliness-
With room for one and one alone.

À chacun son gout;
She traverses with ethereal placidity
The bounds of her self-erected walls,
Searching for nothing and everything

I’m far from handy,
but from scraps of driftwood
I’ve fashioned a life
perhaps modestly endearing.

Warped and weathered,
the floorboards of my soul
are sturdy, though tired
as the hands which laid them.

The timber, rough and knotted,
groans under the weight of footsteps,
and, in its own language,
says more than I ever could in mine.

But I’m not one for words.

Because it doesn’t matter,
Regardless of how hard we wish it did.
We fold our hands and say our graces,
But a better tomorrow never comes
Because tomorrow doesn’t wait
On us like we wait for it.

The soles of my shoes are worn,
And, tired as my footwear are the dreams
Which, being chased, wore these soles to dust.
I’ve run further and still travelled less
Than almost anyone I know.

But self-pity is the sloth of soul.
I refuse to cheat myself with
Empty platitudes and tautologies.
What I, and we, go through is not,
Cannot be, encompassed by the wrote.

We don’t climb trees to reach their heights.
We climb trees for the experience
Of having climbed, of having felt ourselves
Actively participating in and coalescing
With the world around us.

We find ourselves in relation to the infinite else.

As shadows crawl across my sheets
In the silence of late night hours,
protesting the rise of tomorrow's sun,
I drum my pale, sweaty fingers
Against the tops of my tensed thighs in an angst
Not unlike the tension that arises
In the dull roar of these quiet hours.

In the morning, I will wake, breathe.
I will stretch as if I slept well.
And I'll make it through another day
knowing that the ephemeral respite
of sleep -so reliably comforting to you-
doesn't await me in like fashion.

No. My sheets are the hopes and fears
which weigh most heavily on my chest
in the absence of those who can see my struggle.

Your pulse is the rhythm
by which I pace the melody of my life.

And in your silence,
A symphony arises.

The coalescence of our souls
Is an overture of timeless ethereality.

We are a composition so pure
That our every note is a hymn to celestial realms.

I packed my bags to board a bus
Headed for god-knows-where.
But as the flash of headlights
And hum of engine grew near,
I didn’t know whether to step onto
Or in front of that bus-

Thoughts lost in the heavy mist of that Sunday morning.

The man in town
Killed himself today.
And I heard
The church burned down.
And still, many wars
Rage on in the east.
And someone, somewhere
Just lost a wife.
Or a husband.
Or son, or daughter.
And scientists agree,
The Earth is slowly dying.





And yet, my dear, I want you in my arms
As, for brief moments, we can escape this cold world.

Dear, let your breath be
The gentle breeze which guides my
Tattered sails homeward.

I stand for nothing
But unrequited love and
Empty nostalgia.

I found more truth in your touch,
Than in any book I'd ever read.

And I felt more at home in your company,
Than I did in my own skin, without you.

I paint flowers
So they do not die.
But die they do
As die all does.

In the heat of summer
Or heat of flame;
In leafy green
Or paper’s ash.

Nothing remains
Excepts remains
Of what was
Now something else.

Die they do
As die all does.
But nothing dies
Forever.

I tried to forget you by burning
The memories and hurt I carry.
But when all turned to ash,
I inhaled the fumes,
And you’re as much a part of me now
As ever before.

I fought off sleep with idle thoughts
And sometimes fire.
But what I didn’t dream at night,
I dreamt during the day-
Your face in window panes,
And puddles.

I remembered to forget you,
But never forgot to remember forgetting;
We've stayed in touch
By virtue of my trying to push you away.

And so, I tried to leave this place
Only to find that everything
I’m running from
Is what’s inside of me.