I beheld terrible sights of horrifying things; with frightened eyes I saw the dragonflies, soaring on their brittle, burning wings. They came from the darker places of the rivers of screaming faces that branched out into mazes, of smaller ****** streams. The banks of the streams still smelled and steamed and were lined with the cast off crowns of kings, their fallen skulls among these golden things and still there were other, more sinister beings, beings that froze me cold and made me shake as they appeared to me in the shape of snakes, with teeth like sharpened iron stakes, that seemed to drip and gnash and gleam. Oh how they moved so menacing, slithering through their venomous oily sheen, with knife like tongues that cut so clean, all images of things that cannot be unseen. They were weaving about, in and out, and between, surging wildly, like an ocean of green, and no matter where I would stand, I was just a mortal man, in a place where safety was an intangible thing. I was losing my mind, about to scream, these detestable sights that were so vivid and keen, my sanity was frayed, bursting at the seams, but then I opened my eyes and awoke from my dream.

I am the tiger that hides from himself, eating my stripes to become something else, in a jungle of my own design, where I’m trapped in the thorn vines of enemy time. Yet I, in time may change my views, staying the same by trying to become something new. Like Icarus with wings of wax, until my self-destructive choices made me fall too fast; into a past that seems filled with sorrows. Another crash landing, where I find myself in tomorrow. “Tomorrow” a word that seems deceptive at best. For tomorrow is only a past that I have not lived yet, but the memories will be there, still be piled on the shelves, just another day of wishing I was somebody else.

I want to go faster
Faster!
Shifting gears!

Rev the motor
Pop the clutch
And spin the rear!

Faster
Faster
Faster!
From this burning city

Choking on the smog
Of doubt
And self-pity

Faster
Faster
Faster!
Till I get away

Chasing the sun rise
To break a new day

And maybe I can make it
I can get away
If I can just go faster
Faster
Break the chains!

Faster
Faster
Faster!
Every thing’s a blur

But the memories
They haunt me
As I start to swerve

I was almost there
I could’ve made it
Going so fast!

Faster
Faster
Faster!
No more looking’ back!

And just as I was almost free
Escaping my past
I realized that
I had to stop for ******* gas.

I wear this camouflage so that I can blend in. Khakis, and a sweater, and some loafers and then…I dissolve into this city, into its dreary streets. An unnoticeable part of this life set on repeat. I don’t want to be noticed, I don’t want to matter. I just want to blend in to these lonely sleep patterns, and this rhythm of a city that has no reason. Time after time and season after season, but I was there, carefully camouflaged to match the despair, seen in the eyes of everyone else. Everyone whose life was left perched on a shelf to collect more dust. Though, it would seem that they call it dreams. I call it what it seems, life put on hold for a city so bold that everyone wants a chance to hold that candle flame.  Shaped like a dream of music, or of fame that falls lame as their hands become cracked and bleeding from washing so many dishes while their wishes become fleeting. Then reality sets in, and another one falls to join the rest of us denizens. Welcome new guy, I have a surprise, here are your khakis, sweater, loafers and plastic smile. Don’t you worry, you’ll get used to them after a while. In a lifeless city with a lifeless heartbeat, you’ll learn to blend in to this day to day defeat. It hits everyone after all, and there’s really no way to dodge. So now that you know, don’t forget to wear your camouflage.

Sometimes I feel that my life has been lived in stages. Each moment is as separate as dead birds kept in rusty cages. Scattered at the bottom where they fell to remain wasted and it’s all been written down to create a book, with blank pages. I have never seen behind your masks and may never see your true faces, but I know who you all are, you’re the same person from different places. We all want to believe we’re different, but regardless of our gender or our races, we have all endured the same; the strife, the struggle and the rages. Add the love and laughter and the scars collected over ages and still all that we’ll have left from this life is a book filled with empty pages.

The apple rots on the tree over time
It’s smooth bright skin becoming paper thin
Paper thin and grey effected by age
Effected by the flesh that was once firm
But has now decayed
Until it falls to the ground
Never to move again in the gentle breeze

Boogey Man

When I was a young boy, I had a fright
That Monsters would come out at night
And that they’d eat me, I was sure!
But my parents helped me to endure

They showed me while the lights were on
That the Monsters were all gone
In fact they had never really been
So off to bed I should go again

But sleep did not come easily
And I would lay awake nightly
Wide eyed, hiding under the covers
Until exhaustion won eventually

In the morning I would awake to find
That it had all been in my mind
And that there was nothing to really fear
So I grew up believing it clear

Then I went to school one day
And bought all the lies the teachers gave
In fact the older I got in life
The less I saw with my own eyes

I got a job that would make me a man
Where I ended up deployed to foreign lands
And in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan
I saw the terrible nature of man against man

Those visions hit me across the face like a smack
In fact I’d say they brought me back
All the way to the days of my youth
Where suddenly I realized the truth

That Monsters are very real you see
They walk and talk
Just like you and me.