there is a place where the digitized vinyl gospel funk
intercepts the rumble of passing cars
and creates the most electrifying revitalization
sharper even than the razor blade air
running darting
from underneath far-off frosted leaves
on starch high branches
scraping my fingers and ankles
with ceaseless sounds that show
the bristled boundless scuplted green plane
how to dance

soon the sun loses its hold on tranquility
and leaps from the halos
of buildings and coloratura crowns of trees
painting the bustling scene with an overlay
of glossy jubiliation

I knew a little monster
I called him, “petit-bête.”
He was my pretty china doll,
He was my fragile pet.

I saw him walking down the street
Towards that old country road,
But something wasn’t right with him
Something he wouldn’t show.

From my perch I studied him,
And was relieved to see
How brightly shined his cheerful eyes
And gleamed his happy teeth.

I apologize if this disturbs
Or is a bit contrived,
But something changed that boy into
A monster before my eyes.

That happenstance-I stole a glance
When a corner ‘round he turned.
His guard had dropped, and that which I saw
Made the fire in my belly burn.

His eyes deep pits of rage
And, choking on my gasp,
My trembling legs fast rumbled towards
That tortured heart he grasped.

Then petit-bête was sitting,
Just staring at the wall
Clutching with warm hands of health
A smile so white, so tall.

“Deception must have stirred!” said I,
“Waking from her sleep-
Invoking fear in my trained eyes,
Where it need not be!”

So there he sat and growled out
His chipper little tune.
My monster and his .45
Lost a battle with the truth.

My hands pace out both pain and pleasure
Though my bones may tire from the relentless chase
I began with an echo of a gun sounded by man
The visage of a cruel mistress, my spirit is plunged
Into the corners of the cosmos,
       the cray, the quam, and the quivvy
You may use me to measure your own panics and pursuits
Though my own face is stoic, harsh-an honorable messenger
I do not mark the ******
But in their fatal perils
I am ripped from some wield-hinges
My arms still grasping to their convenience
And am cursed for my omnipresence
You granted me my meaning
Now grant me my name

White collars meet soil
Holy hangings, righteous men shake their heads
Throw your glory before the swine
And hold still your parasols, ladies
Hold high your chins

Keep bound any doubt in the depths of your dejection
Lest ye be like Adam
Y bounden
Betraying
That which is written most outright is the stone
That only the condemnèd break

Change is a sin
So take your pills and see to your woman, son
And silence that serpent that seeks
That seeks to remove the crown you wear
That seeks to find peace in those arms

The warm and thick arms of the ******
Collars of white
Books of blue
Robes of red
Two thousand years of turmoil and discipline
Brought you this?

By the power of my hand--in pain you’ll repent
By the power of their cloaks and their words
My boy

Love is patient; love is kind
So do not insist in your own way

To blacken your robe with pagan ways
Is a disrespect to the starry crown
Gather your pearls
For myrrh is no longer abundant
Turn to the sun, bow, and
Tighten their chains

Give them their aid with the strength
Papa taught you
Slack is cowardice, doubt
Rows chained up behind
On my knees I pray for their salvation ?*

I will pray salvation, truly
From hypocrites
From legislature
From the smoke and the mirrors and the smiting
“Justice”

In the arms of your forbidden
Light your candles and share your vows
I’ll pretend while I can
But don’t you keep your hearts
To yourselves

a lit candle rests on a mirror
she coaxes the cold from the corners
the candle smiles at her reflection
her fiery birth was for selfless light

she coaxes the cold from the corners
globules of wax wilt her happy gaze
her fiery birth was for selfless light
she sees herself shorten in the mirror

globules of wax wilt her happy gaze
she feels the heat press on her brow
she sees herself shorten in the mirror
she’s being burned at both ends

she feels the heat press on her brow
she cries for help from the warmed ones
she’s being burned at both ends
hasty blotches of wax and wick are desperate assist

she cries for help from the warmed ones
the candle can’t see her reflection
hasty blotches of wax and wick are desperate assist
a candle melts into the mirror

Sordid stepping from the left arise
For to the right she’d seldom think to see
Lashes just like spider webs o’er eyes
Which sweep the mist and catch me as I sleep.

The new Sprit with the eyes in wich he’d trapped
The strings of many precedented fates
Grazes on the threshold of the lapse
Of recognition; there the left berates.

The Sprit of spirits potent in her kind
Her all-assuming manifested craze
Ejecting me from woeful holds I find
Rejectamenta clothed in urbane gaze.

The Sprit of desperate threaded fingers jousts
The Sprit of spirits: sovereign of doubt.

Sometimes I sit in my cold, clammy gray
Then a jovial red, or a honey-gold will pass by
I perk up, lose the dust and become a blindingly happy white
A quip, a quirk
They leave
Return to monotone
Return to gray

I remember looking,
looking at a bird.
And saw it standing still o’er looking
places undisturbed.
It seemed so dark attentive,
staring at a fox;
whose fur and paws and back stayed hunched-
like to take down an ox.
He stayed so tense, so silent,
and eyes fixed like a stone,
that upon me following his drawn eyes,
I came across a bone.
The bone be from a lion,
the bone be from...a man?
Yet soon my realization
made my attention further span.
I remember looking,
looking at a bird,
whose beak was frozen,
feet ybounden,
and eyes in horror locked.
The fox so tense so stiffened,
claws digging through snow to rock,
looked forn’t a source of nurriture
but a friend lost ‘gainst the clock.
I remember looking,
looking at a two birds,
whose prayers been made,
whose sympathy shown:
yet compassion never heard.

A mocking, a knocking, a rock at the sill
I untilled out the fill like mill undistilled
A swoon not too soon- at the moon's right prevail
A pail-friend, a trail end, and a heartfull of ale
A whiting, a blighting, a light-hollow place
Undisgraced I defaced the lying lier's place
A sweat-vine, a death mine, a whetted time, my beau!
In the shallow grave's hallowing, comforting bow
A mocking, a knocking, a rose on the sill
I lay his arm over me an pray I fall ill

Ropes across my hands
A bold march across the sand
The tan bland of my hands
The release of pain, I brand red
Ropes across my hands

residual voices casting
ruffled dusty shadows
of uneven pulsing
one sure burst cries through
woolen cloth
humid walls, yet
hollow and dark over my eyes

sad sag and lost-its-pep grey-blue
dingy-typed letters overlapped
I am too disturbed
by the pulling on my temple
and the taughtness
of my scalp
like the thin skin was instead
a weathered safety blanket

And it's been too long
Somewhere along the twisting, contorting, confining, conforming
I lost that internal rhythm that was truly mine
That hopeful march, the steady essence
It shattered
And as a gear breaks the system takes and before long the machine shakes
And it will knell and call
It's scraped, raw metal shriek is muffled by cold hands
A myriad of soothing, numbing touches
Returning its pining wails
Her name is a pallid reference in blate modern tongues
Syllables unpronounceable, the mouth cannot reach around
Save for the desperate, despondent calls
A call that wrenches the heart
Rasps the ears
And bites the soul the same
It is an ancient pull, shamed and lost in smog
She bears the burden of the stull
Chipped, fallen asunder, struggling
To be the stuffed papers, empty and promising
Pushing apart the covers of a book
Until the ringing
Ah, yes
That abrasive howl, wrenched from the wretchèd
She laughed and leapt- released her hold
And as a gear breaks the system takes and before long
The gap was sealed
And she has knelled and called
And I will cry and cry

An arid lantern exhales abrasive hums
It rests in the smothering cloak of humid anticipation

Names of children are scrawled on the nicotene crickets’ lattice backs
The crickets bumble in drunken waltz along the ground
They cannot fly through clouds gasping on the chains of Cerberus’ collar

The sticky smog and shadows scuttle through the low-hanging, lifeless clouds
It’s innocent origins trickle from the hem of God’s garment
To the jaded, cracked doorframe to deliverence

This sympathetic shack of dim-witted yellows and hosiery pink
She lays porcelain petals on the descending steps into indigo overcast

It’s clear to me now
Why some burdened men and women
Try to lose themselves

Before I saw no intent
For drowning oneself in the sticky entrapment of alcohol
For burning away one’s heart and one’s fingertips
For vivisecting the pain and stopping the pulse of the problem
For inhaling the stench of despair and smokey desires
For wrapping oneself in the poison arms of another, if only for a night,
As a desperate attempt to seek comfort and affection

Not that I am not loved
For I know how much is given up for me
I know how much is sacrificed that I may walk the paths of my peers
If only to saturate the steps as a shadow

Not that I am a burden
Of this I am also made sure
‘Till the sleeping guardian of days awakens and sends his horsemen unto the earth-
I could be told that I am loved and I am treasured
I could be told
Yes, told

Temptation was a distant planet
Floating in the same path as I, yet, too far for concern and too different for comparison
But yet
It seems that I am even unsure of the physics of this world
And some unseen force that I should have accounted for (and failed)
****** me into its many tearing, sharp moons and blazing, sarcastic stars
Until I found myself composed of their same dust

Sometimes I think that I am disadvantaged by love
That because I am nurtured and privileged to some recognizable degree
I have no excuses
That because I can venture the haven of my room and come back
With all of my bones intact
And all of the neurons firing
I have no excuse for physical pain of the embodiment of my heart
That because I am told, “I love you”
Everyday
An automatic response
I have no excuse for the damp, echoing void I feel
That perhaps is the lack thereof
If someone would just hit me…

But I must haul myself across the fields
And I must carry myself onwards
Yanking on the lifeless pieces dragging behind
Because to fall into false help and lying love
Until two years time-
Or, worse yet,
To be ungrateful
Is worse than the weight of bearing all and being carried
Clueless, obtuse, waste
When they already suffer enough

I only feel the kindling of warmth when I bring the fire to others
But even then
Daddy locks Prometheus up
Because somehow, the little brat even managed to ***** that up

And now I’ve gone and wasted an hour
Thrown away the precious gift of time
For writing this spineless catharsis of complain
When I should be thanking
As I’m working,
Studying,
Reading,
Mending,
Anything but creating this raging text of teenage angst and ill-excuse

I only encourage myself when I fall back into the white riverbeds begging me to fill them with life
It’s no wonder that when I picture myself happy
My queen and I reside miles past the familiar horizons
Alone in an uncharted temperate road that stretches
On and on
Taking me forever away

Two more years

Ange de lumière, je serais ravi de suivre
En vertu de la mèche et à travers la bougie
Dites-moi comment vous faites un ruisseau
De la pensée et de l'amour comme un rêve de fuite

La ruisseau par lequel je me guide les pas
Une lumière par laquelle je remplirai ma tasse
“C’est le sang des ténèbres” je chuchote, puis le bois, donc
Plus profonde est la lumière je ramasse

The best thing about me is that I'm mute
I can say whatever I like and no one seems to hear me
I like being mute
I don't feel the guilt of my words
Because they go unnoticed

The best thing about being mute
Is that I can throw my voice around
And I can scream my words of pain eloquently crafted into the night
And I'm not deemed, "drama queen of the year,"

The best thing about being mute
Is that I can I sing "Hurt" at Joan Sutherland volume
And the only thing suspected
Is that I'm widening my range
Becoming well-rounded in my repertoire

The best thing about being mute
Is that when I'm approached by my comrade
Four years my junior
And am scolded for not taking care of what I was "supposed to"
And now HE must bear the burden of my carelessness and selfish tendencies
I can drop my vacuum and set down my washing
Beseech him to not use those words against me again
And am later chastised for usurping my lieutenant's role
Out of personal, hormonal hurt
No-one suspects
The fact that I am scolded in this way
Means that they don't hear

And that's when I start to wonder
When my throat is sore and my lungs ache
If I'm not really mute at all
And if they're just deaf

The best thing about being mute
Is that no one hears me at all
No fingers of shame and eyes of admonishment are cast

The best thing about being mute
Is that I can look in the mirror and tell myself,
"I'm strong"
"I'm smart"
"I'm generous"
"I can do it"
But the words mean nothing
If there is no fog of breath
Ghosted against the glass

Hearing cracks in daily bells,
and waking from a friendly spell,
of evil likeness never lets me sleep,

But just see past the “won’t”
and for those who simply don’t,
have ne’er stared in the eyes of a stress itself.

And my notebooks ne’er rest either,
when I think of reaching higher,
I’l still scrape it till the paper bleeds deep.

So of others I shall think,
when “insane” on the brink;
I’ll soon collapse hard for the sake of myself.

And I’m sorry for the pardons,
For of work I’m far less ardent
Than of distraction, worry and zealous self-doubt.

So to you say I quite candid,
Think of my mind further banded
To the places requiring far less sneaky stealth.

I can hear a drumming
A pounding in my head
Of footsteps hitting wood, tile and stone
Yet I don't feel the dread

And when the earth is softened
By the might and motion of feet
A torch-light gingerly carried down past all of them
To me

I stumble 'cross the ages-
Feet lighter than the last-
To pluck it from your tiring hands
You tensions flee then, fast

Although it is quite heavy
This light in my hands bare
I carry it high and smile by its light
To see you easing there

I trip and fall and fumble
In my cloudy, foreign trail
Although I, myself, am burned, this is
Not why I cannot fail

I cannot fail and cause the world
To stop from lack of light
I cannot fail to see you love
And live so joyous and bright

I cannot fail in any way
That'd ever cause you to hurt
For you deserve far better than
This path I lead of dirt

My generations past all
Rose up on sweat and bread
Thus for you to live free again
I'd bleed and toil myself dead

Dearest one you hear the agèd
Popping of my back
This bearing that I love
Turns my eyes old and black

Let it all to me, I beg
You don't deserve more hell
I'd fight skinless to get you out
And never escape, myself

Tears and cans of pop, tear gas and the police
Races and arms, the backdrop of the arms race
When I close my eyes to respect the dead
All I see is red

Races and arms, the backdrop of the arms race
Tear at your textbooks for a page colored in peace
All I see is red
Breathe in the brackish scent of stagnant air

Tear at your textbooks for a page colored in peace
Is there never peace at no human expense?
Breathe in the brackish scent of stagnant air
Exhale whispers of hope to break up the despair

Is there never peace at no human expense?
Must there be blood to see red?
Exhale whispers of hope to break up the despair
I let them encase victims of ceaseless attacks

Must there be blood to see red?
When I close my eyes to respect the dead
I let them encase victims of ceaseless attacks
Tears and cans of pop, tear gas and the police

Birdy, mind your ears: my howls dash the desert’s edge
My passing gusts will matt your feathers fair and faint
And scratch your eyes of liquid soul with grainy kiss
And gentle downy is unsuited for the desert’s bipolar breadth
Accompanied by what I fear is desperate, decrepit depth
Yet you flutter further in the flats, breaching the jagged heart-planes

Doleful dabs of curt dismay smatter some sodden planes
The wrenching, soaked, woolly pelt fumbles at the edge
And he hopelessly attempts to slow his slide into the depths
The depths ****** in dew to make heaving paws faint
Paws drowning in imbued imbalance: my broken flooded breadth
Washed out and faded just short of amber kiss

Who does he yowl at night to kiss?
A range of mismatched capricious planes
Breath for miles of biome breadth
Between each bound a splitting edge
As fate would weave, his heart is faint
And craves impassioned, tender depth

Perhaps the hiemal hillsides bear a greater, sanguine depth
Beneath the snow are pines to smell, daffodils to kiss
Amid the pungent, frigid, fear the air contains a faint
Hint of something sweeter there, buried in the planes
And when the blunt ice trickles warm, beneath the caustic edge
A range of life of a new kind: unbeguiling breadth

Who forsaw the vanguard hunch of birds and bears for breadth?
Not I believed that birds could dive in deserts and find depth
Not I believed that bears could whet love from sharp edge
Not I believed, thus almost missed, fate’s gentle ghostly kiss
Not I believed and thus I blew dark clouds across the planes
Not I believed in him, thus it was I who was so faint

And in the meadows lions crawl and crocodiles faint
And happily, with wherewithal, the boa to gaur breadth
All coexist in mystery perplexing on placid planes
Burrowing through sand and snow, birds and bears find depth
Jumbled earth and tumbled thoughts, a misty morning kiss
Stitches the bipolar planes and hems the obscure edge

Across the crystal planes you see their trusting dives to depths
The bird’s faint singing drifts through waves as it explores the breadth
The bear’s protective kisses peek just beyond the edge

Sometimes I think my childhood went to fast
But frak-lookin’ back that castle was glass
Lasts longer than the beams to break the ceiling’s fall
With my puns I’m probably driving Carter Rhodes up a wall
I diggin’ in the dirt for those three words, words, words
My angry arrow’s at the birds, birds, birds
But like, Thelma and Louise could’ve given me their keys
‘Cuz they always hashtag swerve, swerve, swerve

This is me being personal
I don’t like to do it, but it’s
Best that I do it ‘cuz it
Saves the fuss of a
Sloppy, sole seat in
A sterile room
Where she gives me tissues for a twenty

Call me Mx. ‘cuz I missed the Mr.
Kyrie crown me the king of the sisters
You knock one down I’ll get up, defend her
And mix you up in my gender blender
Just like I'm out on a *******
To numb the pain from this Jen or Ben curse
And I’ve played chicken with the blurry ground
And I’ve breathed heavy as I looked around
My feet kissed the air and my arms were spread wide
Hoping against Hope that Jeckyll would beat Hide
It’s been a while since the last time and all
So if I jump-either way the other shoe’s gonna fall.

This is me being personal
I don’t like to do it, but it’s
Best that I do it ‘cuz it
Saves the fuss of a
Sloppy, sole seat in
A sterile room
Where she gives me tissues for a twenty

Heavy from flight, I’m drawn back to his call
My knight’s tarnished silver in the clutch of peeling, old halls

Echoing in me the breath from his head bowed
Clasped hands’ silent weeping unravels my thread perfect-wound

My grace is alight, on fire and
Charring my senseless, absent heart
Oh, my wings are reaching, stretching but
Confined-won’t deliver me so far

Help me hold you; relax your knuckles white
Help me understand these chains that confine me as an ethereal stoic plight

A bond profound holding a trust undeserved
Lets go of fear; this is no hellfire curse

Hand in hand driving off jagged cliffs alone
I know you, too, feel it, else you would have let go

It puts me tight on the rack
Heal my senseless, absent heart
He knows I can’t go back
But its tearing me apart

Oh, my leather-clad soldier locks away his drunken thoughts
Like the picking of petal, and having it tell you
“He loves me not”

Knock it back, your temptation
See me not as desperation
For love is facing fears alive

Je beaucoup cherchais
Poussant les immeubles j’ai pensé de savoir
Creusant les endroits qui me griffées
Tirant les rideaux
Mes crayons, mes bras, et ma pelle ont m’a dit,
« Ceci, C’est tout. Donc regarde le soleil même si ça fait mal,
Et sans même devoir lui parlé, tu sais ce dont
tu ne sois jamais l’une qui goûte l’or, parce que
c’est partout »

Mais après avoir eu mes doutes
Comme quand la lune n’était pas la chose terrible
Dans le ciel qui marque la condescendance dans la terreur
Mais elle s’est levée avec du calme
Et notamment quand la fugue de ma pelle m’a fait découvert la lumière jeune
Par accident, j’ai frappé une énigme consacré

C’était quand je suis parti ma grotte
Le monde a l'envers
Et trop lumineux
Et trop tangible
Et plus vaste et réelle que je n'avais jamais connu

Je mets mes lunettes
Et avec l'aide
Moi- un univers d'atomes- je suis devenue un atome dans l'univers

Gasping stars awaken in the break of night, ordained to defend
Gaping at the grasp of man, potent muscles tuned with starlit sky!
She gasps awake in the break of being, ordained to pretend

We put up big White Walls, Neon Lights induce a Heart attack
Our Demons Burn; Royals Unconditionally Young & Beautiful
We see only Blurred Lines: even if we Say Something, We Can't Stop

It's in the scarred lines and scarlet gargles I often dwell
On the ugly, weighted, guttural g's of the word struggle
But followed easy and elastic by running tongue on teeth

What's my Problem, Doc? It's that simple-glaze sugary madness
That gingerbread, paired with lysol and lipstick: paired with street and box
Those perfect, angular crumbs that file my highbrow into conformity

In limbs outstretched like grandiose wisefolk, the eve's magnolian
Flame-feathered finch saw naught, went unseen: crown of tree, bead of red
Kindled prayers granted ageless passage to embrace the sun and kiss the sky

Emmanuel the umbrous lion crawls
‘Twixt filth and brush and charring inky skies
Rippling like the sea of men, with all
Brute and fire the vassal of the mind
The temptress of the shadow often bids
Embrace so cold scars shan’t just be repressed
But senses drawn in vials out from skin
So skin can drop its vie and fall to rest
But not his pelt is that he lets decay
In temptress dance and corner-forfeit songs
So let no muscle ever stop in sway
Gracing woven thorns a thought of moral wrongs
So long shall eyes be shut and bones be chewed
He’ll smear my name with blood he won for you

I saw it a few days ago
I chanced a glance into the void
The place in which all emotions fall and seclude themselves
The place where there are no stars and there is nothing but loud space
She'd just tore away from me
A small tear in the muslin
But she pulled and pulled
Until the void was exposed in my shredded star chart
That subtle darkness in the undertones undulating thickly
Turbulent waves beneath the glorified surface thinness
And behind the closed door it-
It was just a second really
And the hopeless scientist behind me
The dark and big and pragmatic and meek
He didn't see
But he knew
And he wanted it back
And again
She left me frayed

In another winter
Before I could look to the skies and find meaning
When our world was lit only by the fires of forthcoming fears and futile flickers
What clouded the far-off pinpricks, the soft pinching of reality knocking at my door?
It was her straight-edge fragility
And her straight-edge solution
Now her world is lit by a different kind of fire
A fire that numbs
So she said
A fire that heals
So she claims
A flickering flame that destroys every membrane of my being
And binds my hands to my feet
And shoots wildly across the sky
So I cry
And I weep
And I, a universe of atoms
     feel like a lost atom in her universe
I safely encased in my crinkled paper, but
Hot holes slowly eat their way through

No maps or constellations face any competition before her
But all she sees is a world of comets and fire
My short fuse is wilted
So she unzips her skin with a zippo
And she freezes time
And she runs across my horizon
Bright, beautiful, blazing
She is forever above my hands
Her path unseen and unforseeable
A spectators daydream
The astrologists' nightmare

Her whole world was spinning
And her hair was thinning
She creaked like the pliers that she
Would use on her brow
And to wrench up her frown
And the chorus would sing out of key

La la la lai and her waist and her thighs
Soon sighed and relaxed their firm hold
La la la hey and she steamed for she ate
And did everything that she was told

But naught was regarded
As dearly departed, from
A vantage the damage was void
But for that mannish girl
With muddy-water curls
She felt destruction on her was employed

Perhaps it was her,
Why all this occurred
And her head faced her heart in a round
A series of moves
And she's further removed
And the choir shrieks another round

La la la lai and her hands and her eyes
Both twitch and scrape to react
La la la hey and she'd hiss and she'd cry
If that ****** voice inside hadn't cracked

I jammed the space in my corona and poured the desert in my dove
We let our scars battle and breathe with their unprofessèd love

And I stumbled through the waltzing stars in your crayola eyes
As the light flickered and blind-we closed our waiting rings in line

My eyes carved words of fear deep into your winged back
And we'd hunt the empty space only to fill it with splintering cracks

How many times, love, were we fooled by dividing that same zero?
I asked and you broke to feed the void that would only growl and grow

And now I burn in the dust cloud's salty silhouette
I carry you in my hip flask and do the dance of the dead

I dig a hole now once or twice,
Wherein that hole I somber hide.
From all the troubling symphonies,
And how it shrieks and shakes and pleas

And when I dig that hole so wide,
But also shallow for me to hide,
I leave the top uncovered there,
With no protection, I am bare.

So bare that one may still so touch
And comfort the mind becoming rough.
But left exposed without care,
A blackened heart will desist there.

And when the birds and sky and earth,
Hear not the drumming that once occurred,
The stone-so heavy in my chest,
Draws down the earth; deeper yet.

And once it goes it will not stop:
That bleating song for why it drops.
Th’ abyss it makes goes further on
Forever more; continually withdrawn.

And why it can continue so,
To the notes so high but the words so low?
For the ditch I dug to that doleful tune,
Had adjoined not with the ground’s slight hewn.

Instead the hole uncovered,
Was from there which first tears were shed.
I died not from the harsh and wind,
I died, in fact, from the hole within.

There are many ways
to break the spine
of a book.

Line the jelly-bean backs
too close to the battered floor,

Hide wedging polygons
between pages and binding,

Or open them and stack the backs
in lateral,
frayed Vs.

Fix me, for I am torn
Stitch me, for I am worn

I wrote it all down, Ma
Many times, all for you
I dug it all out, Pa
Every word, each line is true

"Do you need," you start to say
"To leave the house today?
"To walk outside and leave behind
"The anger you display?"

Perhaps its come at last
My moment the levy breaks
I open my lips but the wire is tripped
"I'm fine," a smile, a fake

But I left the page open
The tab with my last poem
I think to myself, "**** it to hell!"
And bring safari back to home

Is it even worth it?
The wound from afar is small
A scrape, a cut, we all endure as much
But then the other shoe falls

Should I keep it up
My facade, dramatic and spritely?
Or like in the song I've not for so long
Should I let it burn brightly?

Fix me, for I am torn
Stitch me, for I am worn

But put down the ******* needle
I'm fine

Sandman climbs through the etched window-lace
Tim Hunter and his owl race
They unite the family of stories

Sandman climbs through the etched window-lace
The Tree the children climb Grows in Brooklyn
They unite the family of stories
The window grows dim and pallid

The Tree the children climb Grows in Brooklyn
The same Tree grows Cold and Sassy
The window dims and grows pallid
Can the Guitar Gently console the clock that Weeps?

The same Tree grows Cold and Sassy
Throaty melodies iron the Wrinkles In Time
Can the Guitar Gently console the clock that Weeps?
We’re too quick to bemoan the nostalgia Dust In The Wind

Throaty melodies iron the Wrinkles In Time
Tim Hunter and his owl race
We’re too quick to bemoan the nostalgia Dust In The Wind
Fleece blankets comfort a jazzy guitar

When all the men in white gather ‘round,
And all their smiles they have pulled down,
And God is all they learned in school
That’s when the Church picks up their tools.

When later drag in insecure,
The men that know they aren’t sure,
But must proceed and light the fuel,
When Francesco joins the duel.

When tall in stance so unafraid,
The man behind the trouble made,
With talk of Suns, and Earth, and joules,
Galileo ties the crewel.

When in they come, right on time,
And keep close guarded a biase unprimed,
For no! They shall so not be fooled!
The jurors come, and keep their cool.

When all these people uneasy meet,
Pull out their papers, take their seats,
And all our luck we share and pool,
When the Court does come to rule.

The stone prophet calls, "you've got some work to do, son"
Moon's sleepy coruscation wake before me runs
I instead reflect the light of the pulsing hot sun
To blind all the answers until the question's given up

A light warm and safe and easy to unfold
For another to wrap 'round your tongue and your nose
But my dance you catch in your searching eye rolls
So I refuse to bow and to pick up my rose

Because light is simple and reflected and not mine
Far easier to slice into thrices and dine
On the fine wafer fillers and loose-legged wine
Because though light is heartless- it's far from unkind

So why must I face, then, the undulating moon?
The immensity, instensity, the blue lover's swoon?
The well of reflection white clarity in tune
To the spotted man crouching, denying his rheum

My starry knight buckles and falls down depleted
In a panic, I frantically get my men seated
I wring out the cosmos for what I've become
As I turn and say
"You've got some work to do, son"