Seven billion people gathered, their names scribed in black and gold above one of four doors. Three billion, six hundred fifty eight million, nine hundred eighty seven thousand, two hundred seven over the first door, two billion, one hundred fifty eight  million, nine hundred forty seven million, five hundred sixty three, above the next, one billion, one hundred eighty two thousand, sixty five thousand, two hundred twenty nine, above the third.
My name was crudely scratched into the rickety shambles of the fourth. My name and my name only.
The people fade away as the door closes behind me, their laughter drifts from my ears, their faces begin to blur in my frail memory and then they are gone.
I am alone.

I love you, I miss you, I want you, I adore you.
What do you do when I love you is I miss you, when I  miss you is I want you, when I want you is I adore you, and when I adore you is I still love you?

I love I love you.
I sometimes miss I miss you.
I have wanted I want you.
I will always adore I adore you.

*life would be so much easier if they were all one

I don't believe in god
but I know you do
and I find myself afraid
that my love is not enough for you
And so I pray again tonight
to a force I cannot see
to a deity I do not feel
from a faith that's not in me
For truth is true to each and every one of us unique
And I'll lie to me a truth to you
if it can grant you peace
For I love you more than my pride
more than honouring my view
I'll help you walk toward pearly gates
Though I can't go in with you
I'll stand beside you every step
If you'll have me on your way
To a heaven known by one of us
Until my dying day
For my views my truths my foolish pride
They aren't worth losing you
For the pain I'd feel to lose my heart
Is what I hold most true

I am a master of knots who could secure dreams to man and tie the deepest feelings of love round your heart in gentle bands.
But for all of my skill a chance never arose, to do more for this girl than write gentle prose.
If given a chance, I'd tie a noose round your pain and stitch your soul back together to bring you happiness again.
In blissful peace you may continue to roam but know for as long as I live it shall never be alone.

I am anchored
I am grounded
I have a solid base
I am restrained
I am shackled
I am held in place

I'm gonna save my suffering
gonna bottle it up inside
cap it like a mason jar and let it sit awhile
put it on the shelf with all the pain and tears I've cried
and wait forever and a day
so all the tears have dried

A while back I met a girl. No. I met “the girl”.
As the quote goes “To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world.” and that was it, she was my world.
Now before you go thinking that I’m just some love sick, idealistic, hopeless romantic teenager caught up in the beauty and wonder of his first love just think!
Actually don’t. Don’t think, don’t rationalize, don’t mull it over assuming and judging, just listen.
Because that is exactly what I am. I am a love sick, idealistic, hopeless romantic teenager.
I am head over heels for this girl. I am knees over elbows, I am elephants over tricycles!
She drove me crazy, actually I think I walked there all by myself but it was nice to finally have someone to share it with.
She was my friend and then she wasn’t my friend. She was more than my friend.
She was my friend, my teacher, my counselor, my idol, my source of instant joy in a world that had proven itself to be cruel and bitter at the worst of times.
She was that person that I could picture running down the streets in the pouring rain in shorts, a T-shirt and bright yellow gum boots handing out colourful umbrellas to people trying to stay dry. She was that one spark from a campfire that stayed brighter longer than all the others drifting up out of the flames into the dark sky
and just when you thought it was going to go out it joined the stars and became immortalized.
She was my love, my everything, my world.
And I didn’t love her for the big "look at me moments".
Its true what they say about loving someone for the little things.
I loved her for the whispered secrets and the quiet murmurs.
I loved her for the way she held my hand when I had to leave.
She had the softest grip but with all my strength I couldn’t break free.
I loved her for the way she looked at me when we danced around her kitchen in our socks laughing.
I loved her for the way she stood up on her tip toes making our kisses last just one second longer before our lips parted.
I loved her.
It didn't matter that I couldn't think when I was around her because her presence turned my brain to mush
because I was with her and that made everything else okay.

One day she stopped holding my hand when I had to go, we didn't dance in our socks anymore, she didn't stand on her tiptoes for kisses.
When she left me I told myself I would get over her and move on, that was over a year ago.
For a long time I wondered how I was going to live in a world where everything reminded me of her.
I  tried to date other people and failed miserably when my thoughts were filled with pictures of her. I struggled, my love for her tore me apart.
Eventually I began to live again, functioning with an acceptance that I may never be over her.

Today I met a girl.
No. I met "the girl", the same girl, the girl I had met over two years ago and today, she's my friend and I am still elephants over tricycles for her.

I can flirt with the best of them
and maybe I have
I can lust and desire
I can move mountains to impress and cross seas to give smiles
I can dance and spin and dip and dazzle
I can wink and smile and buy you a drink
I can get the door walk you home conduct myself with all the chivalry and charm of your favourite rom com

But to love

To love in the way I wish to love and be loved
Both feet deep end too fast too much overwhelming nonsensical hopeless love
I fear it will be a fools errand to search it out again

….but I’m glad I know it exists

I am flawed,
I have failed, and I will fail again.
I am flawed in major ways and minor ways and yet the music is as persistently beautiful as the mountains in my dreams and the song can never fail.
Because my failures are mine, they are unique and they are new. My failures are condemned to never have a chance as repetitive falling climbers on those peaks for they will never take the same route twice.
I am free, my failures are free. hence the music is free. The music is pure, the music is blissfully unaware that it's growing beauty is rooted in the ashes of these failures.
And somewhere between the first failure and the last note I fell in love with it all.
Freedom, the beautiful music of mountaintop flowers, planted in the failed attempts of rock climbers ashes.
Freedom, such a beautiful failure.

Another scale has fallen from my dragons armour hide
and seek to find the feelings that get more and more out of reach

i love you
i love you too
these words we did recite
which makes falling asleep so ******* hard
when you sleep with him tonight
i miss us
i miss your smile
ill end things with him today
and every time i trust you
every time my heart betrayed
i can't do this
it's ok
you lay
i lie
you sleep
while my heads not touched a pillow and no slumber did i keep
and now i pack a bag to see you
and of course him too
and promise i won't start ****
because i meant my *I Love You

She breathes beside me
in the stillness of the night
her heartbeat
the metronome to the whispered sections of our symphony
quietly
pounding out it's steady rhythm
keeping time between the sheets

In a garden of stone statues
I walked along and traced
My fingers over sculpted forms
Such detail in their face

And slowly as I plod along
I came across an arch
It was rough and worn and smelled of dust
But inside I did March

The air was cool and calm and still
And my footsteps echoed loud
And as I ventured forward
I began to feel quite proud

For I ran my hands along the walls
And covered them in dust
And wondered how this marvellous find
Had gone so long untouched
  
A few more steps around a bend
And a faint sound I could hear
The sobbing of a maiden
Did fall upon my ear

I hurried forth and and called out loud
Dear miss are you alright
I heard her shriek and sliding feet
And I ran with all my might

I flew round one more corner
And straight into a stone
And fell into a heap
I may have broke a bone

I cringed and moaned and groaned and sighed
As I clambered to my feet
I called dear maiden just once more
And began to feel defeat

As I turned to head back out
A soft voice spoke from near
You are not like the rest of them
Why did you come in here

I turned toward her voice
But she told me look away
I don't want you to see me
Not looking in this way

You look hurt she carried on
Your arm is damaged bad
Stay right there I'll fix a sling
Just don't look back dear lad

I heard her sound drift off
And return a moment later
I felt her soft hands wrap my arm
And to my health she did cater

I took her hand and kissed it
And whispered miss you're very sweet
I'd like to thank you properly
May I take you out my treat

She said that would not be wise
For as you'll plainly see
I'm a beast of little beauty
You could never care for me

I laughed for a moment
And pulled her close to me
Sweet maiden I am blind
I'll never plainly see

I turned my gaze toward her
And she looked upon my face
My still eyes gazed unwavering
As she gently held my face

She smiled at me a moment
And then began to cry
You're  the only one not turned to stone
When you look in my eyes

I kissed her once and smiled on back and pulled her close to me
I'll only ever love you for the beauty you can't see

let my love be the shield you wield in the war that goes on when no one is looking
may the battlefield scars you wear on your heart find ease in my morphine kiss
when surrounded and fire rains let me shelter you
let my weathered back soften the blow till the gunshots fall as raindrops  in the shower we shared the night you cried to hide the tears

The quiet has never been louder booming around me in a cacophony of every way the words used to be safe here

Before I shared them

Young, strong, And eager. The stallion drinks of the blue green waters. Ripples of tranquility lapping over him. He drinks in this new place, so fond of feelings that coarse through him. So fond of the peace that encircles this land.

Young, beautiful, And pure. The rider slides from atop her stallion. She lands softly, her feet sticking, catching her as they have countless times before. She ties her stallion to the old post and kneels drinking of the mesmerizing waters herself. She stands and fades off, exploring the beauty of the place.

Old, tired, And lonesome. A dusty scene materializes. A dried up waterhole left battered by the prying hands of time. Buzzards sit picking apart the final remains of a frail skeleton, still shackled to the old post he once knew well. The last drop of murky grey water sits beside a pair of one way tracks, laid down years ago.

Beauty comes and beauty grows but in time the dust will always blow.

She wasn’t mine to tarnish
though my touch her skin corrodes
she  pure unblemished
A porcelain unicorn among men
till I wiped the tears from her eyes and brushed streaks of rust across the perfection of her cheek

The sunset shades streaked over the dampened skin that once cried dark circles into shirts I never knew I would miss

For the prettiest rose cannot go on once picked by hardened hands
the lines written on my skin forced in under the gloves that have seen barren cold that can only be felt in lonely places.

Crude cursive scratched and scarred over a landscape cursed to provide shelter to hearts fallen short of paradise but to never hold them for fear of damaging that which they seek to save

In the moments between is when I know I love her

The fraction of a second before she looks up again when her gaze softens and her brow unfurls as the artwork enveloping her soul releases her back into the world and reality fades gently into her periphery

In the moments when she’s singing along and the music finds the breaking point where she lets her voice fall silent and leans into its embrace before joining back in as if to preserve the feeling of the notes like a pressed leaf that was too pure to be piled with the rest and jumped into with careless abandon

In the pause when our lips part and she breathes me in savoring the moment
stirring the hopes and dreams of my younger self back into a frenzy without so much as a word

In this moment
in the break of our nightly conversation to be whisked away to help her family as she often does I find my love only grows as again and again her generosity with her time is out on display and I take my place in the court side seats I so proudly occupy and I silently cheer her on.

And in the long days between our last kiss and our first embrace
like soldiers come home from the battlefield her moonlight skin greets me each time like the arms of long lost love
She melts beneath my touch and all the in betweens culminate and I call it love

Truth be told, it was over before it started. The flowers bloomed and wilted before ever seeing sunlight, fire turned to ash without a moment as a flame, and the few fleeting moments left, were wasted on the recognition of this time passing. Life had come and gone and no one had lived. We took our first steps too late, missing the last car and fell down on the third rail.

Shakespeares words once beauty were,
through thought and speech they spoke to her.

Though in translations time was lost,
at dire end the beauty cost.

For only few still do perceive,
the words wrote down as he would need.

A scholar wise will still read on,
pursuing beauty long since gone.

Dead set in ways that harbor pain,
when sleepless nights is all you gain.

For trust of past is love soaked daggers,
each will stab and you will stagger,
and only now must I believe
it is not Shakespeare,
it is me.

Tell me why the feeling dies?
Tell me why after all the longing, all the passion, and all the promise of future, it still leaves just as suddenly as it came.
How does something with such proclaimed importance mean so much one day
and nothing the next.
Tell me why?

When it's over will you crumble
Will your walls come crashing down
Will you stand there in the rubble
Afraid to make a sound
Will you pull the last stitched thread
And watch the seam be ripped apart
Will you stare blankly at the world as it tears apart your heart
Will you cuss at those around you
Will you yell out words of rage
Or tremble ever silent
Inside your mind your home your cage
Will you accept that this is your life
And you deserve your shame
Or will you stand in all your glory
And call triumphantly your name

I want to write poems
but the pencil won't move,
ill pick up a pen but that just fails too.
I reach for the old well with ink,
that just stains the page through,
it's not just writers block
it's poets pain too.