Like this,
You're any way I want you
Wrapped up safe and sure
Inside my head.
Pull the string,
I unwrap you with
Closed eyes
Play with the gift I was never given.

My mind
Is the ultimate preservative
Where time touches nothing.

You will find me
Street-side,
Where the gazes of cars do nothing to
Name me;
Breathing in Silver and moon
Lilac and asphalt
While they sleep in lattice mortar.

You will find me.
Where the Earth slopes in a sea of stone
Face up, skimming the summer grass with my fingers
And searching for the voices of the dead
In the cotton-wisp sky.

You will find me
Weaving through a sea of trees
Tracing their ashen skin
Like the carapace of each lover I've
Discarded along the way
Drinking the air of the
Earth and leaves underfoot.

You will find me
Surrounded and
Alone.

Down where the water sprawls to touch,
The banks of where the wraiths of us
Cling beneath the half-mast moon
My memories must not exhume-

The path of fingers, hair and skin
Where one touch ends and one begins.
Or how the words, too high a cost
Curled in the wind- forever lost.

The taste of green's
A bitter bite
That's left me bleeding
Fled my sight.
The restful red
Sustaining me
Has fallen Grey
Unerringly.

The grass is greenest where it's watered,
Yet I know where it rains is broader
And here above-tipped gray- the weight
Informs me that my reach is great.

I skirt the line
Tread the edge
Of the 'maybe'
At the ledge.
See the eddies,
Traces the swirls
That coalesce
To join our worlds.

The words unsaid are wraiths, unspread
To ears they should collect in.
Unspoken speech, they do not reach
The ears they should reside in.
Instead they're bred within my head
To ripen forth and spoil.
Each carapace returns to this
The over-barren soil
And yet, alas, the words that pass
Take root and choke the landscape
From world around they do resound
In never ending earthquake

I've tasted Infinity
Acrid on the back of my throat,
Twisting my tongue around the periphery
Of what was both forever and fleeting.

I've dined on the Divine-
A place between The Nether and Earth
Where the smallest of deaths brings
The biggest of discovery-
Sending me crashing
One way or the other.

I've slept with Reality
Felt him slip, cold and hard
Into a place that will remain forever
Desecrated with truth and injustice;
Felt ****** beyond belief.

I've grappled with time
Shoving against a pervasive advance
That colors the way I see
The new line from things I've
Done and said
Built and Broken.

I've breathed and walked
The routes of monster and man
Knowing naught between the taste of blood and chocolate on my tongue.
Savoring both with bitter abandon.
Yet somehow-
My feet continue.
The day dawns.

I've persisted.

I live my life in metaphors,
In memories- and muse
Of different ways I can preserve
The echoes left of you.

I saw goodbye in the green
And shuttered in the space between
The paces that would close the gap-
Where I would take my silence back.

Yet parted of lips bore nothing more
Then wisps of breath, just as before
And turning without tracing back
My march on forward stays the track.

With nothing more to fill the air
My feet sought miles far from there
And yet the shell marched forward when
My heart did circle back again.

And then the gap grew to contain
Seasons past, The wind and rain
Weeks to months, a year's refrain
Would never see us touch again.

For months I dreamed, (or so it seemed)
That I had lost Orion.
Eyes to the skies on summer nights,
Across the dark horizon.
I raked the skies, the hidden lines
To find that midnight archer.
And yet the stars, silent and far-
Did seem to grow much darker.

My arms cut through the water in a
Bid to stay afloat,
And even as my muscles scream
And ocean chokes my throat-

I twist and dart between the waves
To steal another breath-
Dreaming of the moment when
The stormy seas will rest.

In me, you are quiet now,
The silence in the snow.
if only I could keep you there
So flowers could not grow.

I caught the tail of cigarette
In the parting peal of breath.
And even as he walked away
The shame washed all the words away.

I've written scads of nonsense, hence-
A futile need to recompense.
But all of this means nothing now
And nothing lends to reason how-

He may have strode those parting steps
To leave when there was nothing left.
But my words fed the final blow
The nail to coffin down below.

I watched the wind on summer days,
The way it plays havoc with the meadow grass
And wish the words
MY words-
Could be plucked and carried on that breeze
Like a seedling
To go where they need to
And where I cannot.

The mirror of the lake
Where herons hurried during day-
Hailed the hazy nighttime
Off a long forgotten way.

The billows of the water broken
By the cashmere wind,
Painted a mirage of which
The hemlocks dwelled within.

And up against the inky shore
Where dafodils did bloom,
Two bodies did embrace beneath
The new September moon.

Beneath half-mast moonlight,
Above the night-dew grass,
Against the inky darkness of the
Shadows that They cast-
The pines stood tall like sentries
That barred the dark and wood.
The wind wove through the treetops
As it's fingers chilled my blood.
The gaps within the ranks of trunk
Bore whispers of the void
My hopes, my dreams, my nightmares
Had been tucked away and stored.
And there, I gazed for hours
Between the teeth of trees
To delve into the reasons why
His specter haunted me.

The cold night air is a blistering kiss
Touching images and memories that I'd rather not miss-
And yet my eyes trace roadsides as they buckle on by,
The moon's a silent siren in the aubergine sky.

I left my mind behind me in the whispering wind
As the tires drag down miles past the motels and sin.
The city bright and glowing lights slash colors down my face
And I find my mind's now in rewind to settle on in.

Oh the cruel air it does not care to spare me from the dream
Of lilac breeze, the swaying trees, the water's subtle gleam.
And the way your eyes sought cloudy skies - with your back against the earth,
You traced the lines above the pines and reveled in their worth

My weary feet, they hasten me; a foot down to the floor
And spinning tires, the cable wires are a steady blur once more
Yet, that hidden place, that sacred space, follows deftly behind
With the cruel wind- the city wind- that carries better times.

I paced the squares that mark the days;
Each footstep took me far away-
And yet the circle joined to touch
The echo of the ghost of us.

I'd seen the seam of wet and dry
Of Salt and Sea, of Earth and Sky
Yet, once upon a yesteryear
When five was close, and ten was near-

The navy stretch front side to side
Spanned far beyond where eyes could spy-
And all at once it rushed to me,
That first breath of eternity.

Then- at ten I once again
Meet the ocean, only when
A set of eyes cast down on low
Wandered up from down below.

And all at once home was here
A feeling that would persevere
With each footstep, my stride would swallow
The Ocean's path was mine to follow.

The breathing to the side of me
Fades into obscurity
I sink below the membrane then
To pierce the veil of time again

Muscles within flesh and bone
Unfurl into the scent of home,
And there beside my destiny
I stow my sight to rise and see-

The way it was, The way I want
The way that's rocky back to front.

Walk out,
Ash and dust into the
Winter wind
Where your breath is nothing more
Than an echo to aging ears-

And I will follow
To find you in all breezes
Slipping a summer kiss
An autumn football game
Or a Spring car ride
Deftly into a place against my skin.

It's not the end of everything
Just of what was left
And how to salvage nothing when
You walked out with the rest.

It was only one chance left
To shape the words with baited breath
And yet what slipped past gritted teeth
Plagues my waking memories.




I'm not the type to barter,
To plead for what's not mine.
But I would trade my everything
For just a touch of time.

Tell me so that you may
Keep me or cast me
Off to a place where I can
Forget, forgo
A life of missing you.

Am I the void
Or one who feeds it?
The writer-
Or the one that reads it?
The whimper
Or the sigh that follows?
The hunger
Or the yawning hollows?

Leave me please.
Leave me in this last way.
Remove every shard-
Even the ones that will bleed me,
Leave me gasping like the wake of a severed limb.
Take the parts of you that are no longer Distinguishable from the parts of me,
So I might heal around the edges
Or unravel one last time.

I kept the crescent in the sky
And held what was in both my eyes-
Swallowed back that last goodbye,
And focused where the sun would rise.

See you soon, December Moon-
But I will see him sooner.
Behind closed eyes, somewhere in time,
If sleep shall come to humor.