I feel lonesome hands approaching mine
to walk me through the desert.
I tense my arms against the open night sky
which cannot be pushed away.

I want you to love my grey skies,
my pensivity that rolls across mountain ranges -
the same to me as sunshine igniting streams.
Just a different lens
through which my creature plays with light.
She is elemental
and sloughs skin off the earth like lava flowing
into the ocean to close its eyes.
I'll eat my own tail
to discover what I already know.

Again I think
Crazy yet it may be but still
Racking my memory of sounds and pictures,
Going over them, again and again.
        I lay there, before God
        I lay there, on my dreams
In a room where light has been shut out.
And I feel, as if I were blind
As one sense is blind, another becomes not.

I read one another's and learn more of them.
How they have a devotion, not an obsession.
To one, and only one.
I discover a mistake, I scold myself.
One reassures me, yet I do know better.
I fear disaster of that beautiful devotion.
For I try to not ruin another,
And take it all for myself.
Or do I?

Time runs on, and clues elude me.
Until a word, is said, and I think,
The truth all rushes to me.
At once I feel overwhelmed.
One word triggers the clues.
One proves their devotion to me.
Their devotion another.
One word, so generous.
One word, so harmful.

In pain, I cry, of my own fault.
Looking for devotion in all the wrong places.
And now should I control this?
To be controlled forever, the undying devotion?
Only to keep myself out of pain?

My third shot, if failed,
Shall be the zenith of pain.
I sense myself starving for it.
I ask the Lord, "Why is it?"
To be so happy and said
That is the price of peace.
So, I face the grim truth,
Instead of becoming desperate.

Never before within my life
        Have I ever been loved.
And never again of this life
        Shall I ever be loved.

Yet, I still hope.

You wish to think deep
    Yet wishing what you thought is wrong.
I walk with a heavy heart
    From the source that which fuels desire
I think, can I trust any?
    With what the little trust I already have?
I wonder, can I love any?
    Only if they do unto me that trust.

But there are those I love
Yet fueling me the heavy heart.
And bringing me into this cursed life.
However, they're my birthright,
And are meant to love.

From Chicago to Atlanta on the 5:45
I contemplate the fragility of being alive
I sit on the wing with a view of great breadth
While I dream about life and wonder of death

The sun has just set, the moon kisses the sky
And the atmosphere echoes its exhaling sigh
As darkness sets in, the graduation emerges
So I, in the sky, view its majesty in surges

The window is a frame of the moon as a crescent
And I spot a town way down, like a queen to her peasant
There is life, there is motion, there is somewhere to be
There is conflict, there are problems, and then there is me

I snap out of passivity like a casual thought
To locate the flight attendant complementary cart
Since her mobile vending machine is a couple rows down
I return to pensivity and stare at the ground

The tail lights of cars pulse when my true focus starts
As if they were red blood cells exiting the heart
There is a conversation I over hear from 27 E
The girl has dreams of studying alone in Italy

The man has a daughter and he rocks in his seat
They talk like old friends even though they just meet
There are young men in the Navy, and business folks
There is an air of community, peanuts, and hope

As my ears pop constantly and we climb higher
I think of my future and to what I aspire
And I wonder if there's anyone I'll see here again
Close and far away strangers, a view from a plane

sometimes, out of great pensivity,
instead of telling the truth
when people ask "how are you"
I hold on to the idea of "privacy"

not today

for the second time this week
I break

the parts of me I dammed shut
came bursting out fast as Niagra Falls

these words I scream are like rocks,
breaking happiness on friends faces
like stained glass churches

and my happy dust falls away
leaving everyone in stunned numbness

shadows of questions drip off their faces
as if they had wicks sticcking out of their heads

what do you say to people you love
when you didn't mean to say anything at all?

nothing.

you run out of there
as fast as legs can move
and hide sobs
with pillow cases

Fixed on repeat with stagnation as aural salvation
they dance to the archaic discord
entombed in relics from 1973
rooted in pensivity behind the repetition of each melody
they've heard this one before
used it to pick themselves up from the floor
an effigy to lost lovers
who used to sit beside them
smoking on the balcony
paying duty to a capitalist society
taxing themselves with each breath.

They never hear the strings breaking in silence
dancing through progressions
which paint plaintive signs of the times
disparity haunts the rhymes
but nostalgia stole the show
apathy drives ignorance
to the songs, they don't know.

Artists gorge on the decline
too many pills to swallow
so instead, they'll do another line.

The sun sinks lower in the west where it has set the sea afire
Standing on the beach we, with baited breath to see the glorious green flash
The phantom phenomenon lives for one magical moment
Why is it that we, all of us, want to see that which will inspire?
Dipping feather quill shed from a seagull in ink I make my slash
Furiously writing and dipping until my pensive mood is spent
Sitting in darkness, pensivity gives way to discontent
Ghostly presence or absence of you.  I'm haunted by your urn of ash
I wouldn't need a summer day one last dance is all I dare require