I don't care if I only get to live once,
Because at least then I get to look at the stars.
I want to cut them down one by one
and keep them somewhere safe,
in an old yellowed journal between the sheets, I
I wanna keep you somewhere safe between
my sheets.
This light globe keeps on spinning makes me dizzy,
it's a ride, it's my stop and I wanna get off.
Make this carousel stop.
Or lay it on the table, all promise and paint,
let it play you a sleeping song,
Til your butterfly lids crinkle in a pale yellow light
Like the paper in the journal
That held the stars.

I remember story books - Hushed fairy tales. (Mine).
I remember history - a secret and a fight.
How I wanted perfect, but missed the details. (Yours).
I forgot to water the plants again, now they have weathered.
I could never care or nurture. You gave me far too much.
I remember maps, biology, anatomy. Yours, Mine.
That anatomy spilled on to the floor, dripping cells. Mine.
Bones too brittle and warnings unheeded. Yours and Mine.
simple physics to build momentum.
It's all just movement after all, isn't it?
You were the first push on the pendulum.
History spinning in the dirt, hardened in the rocks.
It was all bound in to books ( yours) to teach us better than to repeat.
It's all just lessons never learned, isn't it?
Circles, cycles, spinning- the dancer in the music box.
It's all flashes from childhood (mine) - to here.
Offered up on a stained platter, tarnished silverware.
I was made in to your ******* feast.
It was mine,
Now it's yours.
Diseases polluting the gene pool- Mine.
Sickness diluted then strengthened with each pass- Yours.
I wanted to see what was underneath.
The chambers of the heart, hollows in the bones.
It's all just the skeleton's charm after all, isn't it?
Breath that burns (yours), tissue paper lungs (mine).
Please make me part of it, let the water swallow me.
It's all just a shore, traded for the tide,
Replenished by waves, always rolling.
Littered with grit, treasures, old paper. Yours. Mine.
That's all it is, isn't it?
Movement (yours), Heartbeats (mine).
Trapped feelings (mine), forced motions (yours).
A search for truth, a nightmare, a document,
A determined fate, is that all it is?
It was yours,
Now, it's mine.

Enclosed clock, I was held, every round had a cell,
Second hand, handsome hell, spinning in a clockwise shell.
Steady sound had me wrapped around a single finger.
As it poured through the years, seeped and formed single tears,
Distilled nightmare as they got clearly confused.
And time turns us to poison, so we'll drink and divide.
For all those souls that had lifted from bodies that fear heights.
We never knew we could float, so we just stayed here, we'd lie,
On the ground that fell victim to an apple.
It created a law, a theory of sinking,
and how there'd be falling after the lifting.

Every time you go up, you can fall further down,
So welcome to the reality: We're stuck here on the ground.
I mean, one day it slides and all clicks in to place,
a moment of clarity to the 'upper class' race:
We're no further than the ones still depending on grace,
hoping one day that something can save us.

We're all waiting now, for that moment of conclusion,
A sidetracking flurry of false word pollution,
And in all that screaming, smoke and confusion;
A camera will gain a new angle.

The screens will all flicker, and truth will be aired,
What our existence had built up to, the words we all fear:
You are now that apple.

So, it hurts to know, I said my prayers, now count and trace bones ‘til I sleep.
Searching for outlines, sometimes I hope I don’t die, before finding that elusive piece.
Every night I hear that heart-beating outside these echo walls,
Each time the mirror reveals more structure,
Courtesy of bathroom stalls.
No, it’s not the drug that whispered to me,
But the feeling created by lure.
To all those patterns that boasted on my wall,
Newly defined from a former blur.
From the stories of stars, as they interchange and connect,
To the images behind lids as you make yourself get sick.
Acidic release hurts each time you breathe,
Said “Momma, I’m just a dancer”,
Finding the truth in matches and ashes,
As you follow trends of high fashion cancer.
The smoke dissipates, with it sense of time,
Can’t catch or control it, counting clocks in your mind.
The numbers watered down, now time means more than recording,
With each alarm clock scream, you get lost in reality distorting.
In that time that was lost, you were prey for a prayer,
Couldn’t stand witness to god, no, you’d much prefer swear:
“This ******* churning, what’d I do to get this”?
The dizziness now burning, heart flutters in your chest.
The scaled belief, even parts never learn,
But logic trapped in the counterweight learnt crash and burn.
The science is unavoidable: get high, come back down,
Opposite actions are equal ‘til we’re laid in the ground.
What happens while we’re down there, is fuel for debate,
Like the lies muttered to momma when she asked if you ate.
The bruises on your knees, marks on your neck,
Give you away as a new- found wreck.
With a few dollar bills, you made cash out of treasure,
Performing for shadows that pay you for pleasures.
Got a handful of pills, and this sweet time to ****,
Figured this would make me relax.
Just ghosts of society that bloomed in the past,
But society took you down here: **** to pay the tax.
They said “Now flames turn to ashes, and then in to dust”
Were they talking about death or this love- blinded lust?
With doctors and prescriptions, note pad perceptions,
They swore they could slow down my brain.
They said “ Take them every day, make the ghosts go away”.
Acting like the answer was plain.
A capsule and a half, part of the daily trap,
To help me forget his face.
The panic sets in, the flashback begins,
Never guessed the heart knew this pace.
The scars are there, he put me here,
Saw I fit the part for his stage,
Wish he could read it now, take it back somehow,
As pain fills out page after page.
These secrets formed foundations, where we’ve built our crooked homes,
At the same time gave me stories to get out through my poems.

Apple falling to the ground,
Look what you've set in to motion now.
The gravity that loves to pull me down,
The defiance that loves to get me high.

Just the bright balloon you forgot to hold.
Acidic clouds framing my distant goal.
I can't look back, I see the gold.
Let go and fall in to the sky.

To a patchwork space of stars and time,
Holes brimming with unknown, an endless mine.
To the string that ties me, your authoritative bind,
You can't say goodbye, so you just lie.

I am only filled with air, no helium.
This knot my balance, sweet equilibrium,
delicately pressed between your forefinger and thumb,
I am leading your way, just like I should.

You've considered the scissors and a brighter place,
Sending me on with a last glance at your face.
You go off to your addictions, their calls you can taste,
You'd entwine me in a thousand pound weight if you could.

This suspenseful sinking is all that I know,
Bought as a souvenir of that cheap city show.
Just a light globe of laughter, an unwanted load,
Get out while it's still good.

Those scissors slip and cut me free,
You took all you wanted to from me.
Lift me as high as helium could,
This lie was meant for Hollywood.

I, nightmare, will take this deconstructed lie and rebuild it in to grace.
Every brick can form the wall of what you fear to face.
The truth cementing things in place, during this post- trashed haze,
The shadowed wall, clock-collage consuming all your space.
I’m sorry for what I’m about to do: destroy that beauty face,
But all these past few weeks were to you were decorations for a calendar page.
Just tear them out, another gone. Time no doubt, will move on.
No, time won’t stop, clocks wave to you.
The second hand has fallen through.
The time has divided, or so you’ve added up,
For the years that spill, leaks will fill you up.
I promised you in a green July, that I wouldn’t be that girl.
You asked me what I meant by that, I said, the kind you swear to stay in touch with,
And never will.
I saw the liquor in your hand, a disguise I’m not used to on you,
When you were asked about it you said “All we have is what we do”.
Once we stop, there is no life.
There is no past or present time.
So hold your title, you know this well:
We all have an identity we must sell.
You told me how we all have a story, and it bears a cover,
Just that some are more concealed than others.
Oh, imposter, I promise you,
I’ll say lies that you’ll perceive as true.
You’ll mean nothing to someone who’s nothing at all,
We’ve built up this high to watch ourselves fall.
Coming off track, the air makes you sick.
A sulfur concoction of emotional wreck.
Dreams waiting to play out, but you can’t fall asleep,
Feel like its lies as you pray for your ‘soul to keep’.
Don’t know which religion the static wants to side with,
Years spent as congregation just left you undecided.
So, you think you’ll believe in science, death as an art,
That the world started off as a carcass, floating in the dark.
Then exploding with noise, dust, raw sun pollution,
The world evolved to ‘here’-your simple solution.
And I need to see what makes you tick, since the clocks won’t give in,
Our time here is impermanent, and with years, they will win.
Captivating tendencies, a secret for all,
It lies in a cloud, a spot on the wall.
Twin stop-light once green eyes find their way to mine,
Despite your pledges to quit ‘after one more line’.
Well, I do lines too, but of a different sort,
The kind that create images for your eyes to distort.
These words just keep molding my lines, forming poems,
About you and your lives, multiple personalities, homes.
I promise I can’t take these bi- Polaroid pitches,
Boiling down to descriptive word play glitches.
Confusion taking on forms I never knew it could,
Confusing confusion in the way that it would.
That sickening planet-spinning has really got to you.
You heard the tales, now your head spins the whole night through.
Blinking lights doing something in the back of my mind,
An ill omen, bad signals, as we watch planets unwind.
“It’s just- this is getting too long..”
“But there’s so much to say!”
Those words accompanied harsh looks as they took you away.
Didn’t know what to do, you got caught on a steep *****,
Said I’d write you a letter, encoded envelope.
I guess, maybe, my words aren’t as good as yours once were,
But now you gotta hand it to me, they beat your chemical slur.
I wanted confirmation, conversation,
But I’m left with a deal of word contemplation.
I drew a good hand; love’s just a card game of chance,
Can you beat my number with something higher in your hands?
Or does your palm of snow cover every card?
I’m sorry I asked, but I liked making this hard.
You got yourself caught up in a blizzard of “us”
But you threw in your hand of ingredients, reduced visibility to dust.
Status just a ghost of what could have been
As you drown all the pasts and the truths you have seen.
Now they’re rising up, lift their hearts to the sky,
It’s just truth that holds them down when you want to be high,
This is reality, its low, only chemicals create rise,
But this dead and dying bedroom left a nightmare for your eyes,
That water’s turning icy – clichéd – like your heart,
There’s nothing left but to promise you,
I helped with that part.

We were dust and dirt, free falling to nowhere.
Gravity got the better of us and started to draw us together,
Weaving and gluing and mumbling “I think I’ll stay here”,
We began to choreograph a ballet around unheard of gods.
We began to form something larger, pieces of a portrait, short circuited.
Don’t call me out on it. Hold your tongue, lend an ear.
There really was light in the beginning, a glorious king called the sun, and noble planets obeyed him and bowed to his pull.
We began to get dizzy, so we slowed our circle, some lazily tilting on their axis, and lined ourselves up, ready to serve.
We grew from one of the soldiers named Earth.
Mere cells, but that was enough; We were alive!
We had succeeded, so we grew exceedingly selfish.
Confidence blossomed. Ignorance flourished.
And with that defiance, building blocks were formed,
Frames raised.
Years passed, and cells began to join, like the dust had Out There.
And shedding layers over centuries ’til evolution propped us up,
On our shaking legs we stood and ventured from the darkness.
There was a whole world laid out before us;
A buffet. Appetizing offerings for our starved eyes now made tender by light.
We had feasted on forests and oceans for too long,
There was land out there, with no hiding place, forcing us to lay fears on the table.
When the wind blew, the Earth breathed, and could sallow us whole.
We would have been certain if it weren’t for the grass,
reminiscent of poetry. Waiting for nightfall when we built fires, burning beacons.
Mimicking the pools of light in the sky overhead- stars made foolish by hope.
They burned on, an ego outstanding space and time, to reach us long after they had fallen to rest.
They were brazen things, those stars. But from them we drew maps, reaching out to years to come.
The maps proved useful. They guided our ships, lead us to conquer.
Helped us claim territory. They were spread on rough wooden tables in ill-lit compartments,
As drunken men stood around, plotting destinations, while ignoring the increasing illness in their mind.
The greed kept growing as they used their ships and maps and power to claim the Earth for themselves.
Everyone wanted to own a portion, and each wanted theirs to be bigger, richer.
Wars broke out and they too evolved.
From sticks and stones, to swords and arrows, guns, knives, bombs.
Right until we were here, in our modern day, which was the ‘new’ age.
No. We are the last age.
As we stand around watching people say goodbye in their native tongue, to generations before us and to their own families, we must understand that Earth is growing sicker.
It is sad, polluted, rabid with bitter hearts, cutting words spit over the surface.
And from our foundation of time, that counts away the seconds in the core, we have had a light to guide us.
From our king and establisher, to our flames and foolish stars, and now our light we took control over and called electricity, we have never been left in the dark.
But if we keep boasting our authority and all that we conquered, slowly crushing the earth and leaving her inhabitants in despair,
We will find ourselves crawling back to the forest we so powerfully left behind.
When we denounced its darkness and declared us better.
We will seek shelter, transfer our cells back to the surroundings, and be converted into one with our land again.
Until we have nothing but the memories of a planet we left in despair,
Credited to our illness, our need to control.
Those being the only words left in our hearts, madly beating as we divide,
And become nothing, except dust and dirt, free falling to nowhere.