seeping sheepishly along ever-widening paths,
the road less traveled is still a blast,
for what is wrought with calamity,
is certainly more fun and interesting to me.

These are just words on a page,
But they originate,
From where I think my heart is.

The same place that tells me,
That I've always loved you,
and could never stop even if I wanted to.

The same place that shows me,
Those things in life that are worth living,
Aren't worth nearly as much without you.

But sometimes the words can come from blackness.

A different place that sits near a pit,
Adjacent but distant,
This place is a house of torment.

The same place that tells me,
That I never deserved your love in return,
and will destroy it even when I don't want it to.

The same place that shows me,
My own demons that serve to entrench me,
In my own shallow misery.

These places exist in the same domain,
And I hope you see this,
With the hopes that I can explain,
That the things from the pit don't hold as much weight,
Nearly as much as where you sit,
Near the place where I think my heart is.

it's amazing
the way that she sings to me
inside my dreams and while i sleep
all the while calmly waiting for me to wake
so she can continue to take my breath away
and make each day brighter than the last
what a blast
it would be to stay with her every day

abating reality
a cascading personality
softly resonates in the ether
grappling psychology
plotting such reverie
subtly calms sleeping beasts fear

bereft revelry
a superficial analogy
carelessly endangering children's lives
a spattering of blood
that came from above
cut through these lines like a knife

metaphysical manifestations
desperately perpetual
these are just words on a page
their meaning could reveal
what our feelings concealed
are we just lost props on a stage?

i will miss the way you snore
and the way your lips meet mine in the morning
to wake me up
and take my breath away

each day we spend is a gift we've given each other
to continue giving seems its' own natural wonder
hiding from the light of life's boredom
we walk together in the shade we provide one another

not often it is found
the missing light from one
that lives in another
so it is something that must be held close
for as long as you can muster

and you are still snoring
and i am dreading the passing of each minute
that might take this raspy cadence away
opposite in the way i welcomed their passing
as if time itself was bringing you to me

we are never separate
as long as we hold our love together
though separate we can rest
knowing that this will last forever

if we sat inside a square
and someone were to point out the corners
counted them
assigned them names
and listed them alongside other examples
as if they were trying to tell us that it was a square
could we believe them?

so we are now dreaming
but sleepily awake in our own confusion
drifting once again between reality and fantasy
it's almost weightless and we feel so fast
and warm

wrangling emotions to suggest they are important
when we can't tell each other that they aren't distorted
there exists a lens in the heart of the mind's eye
that seeks to bend the light that beams from the source
pure brightness that feels the way a sunburn does
that if left unchecked might just leave a scar

can we be the sunscreen to each others hearts
so that we might protect one another from stars
that bleed the light that could sear sensitive skin
so we can hope to make our broken selves somewhat whole again

As calm as a passing rainstorm,
As clear as a crystal glass in an empty dining hall,
It cuts through the monotony and drudgery of all struggles,
And echoes softly along close chambers,
Circling around pleasantly until memories begin to fade,
Should I be lucky enough to hear it again?

Affably awkward and as lovely as the starry sky,
Laughter dances along endless gentle hills leaving streaks of light,
Such that it seems almost choreographed,
Graceful in its own chaotic splendor.

So delightful it's almost spiteful in a cheery unique way,
It continues to resonate,
And never hesitates,
To enthrall me each day,
It's a mystery to me how that what can seem to be sarcasm,
Is actually a clever mask guarding sincerity,
Either way it's fair to say it's great,
And that you've got me hooked, okay? cool.

As I sit listless,
Alongside the river supreme,
Silent stars gently rise above me,
Kissing the clouds with reckless abandon,
I watch the light bleed and create individual paintings,
As if the heavens were but one giant brush,
Though guided by luck and not creativity,
It seems it doesn't matter either way.

All things are connecting,
Dissected by interchanging strings and correcting,
Paths that most others would not take,
That wakes and creates an empty covered-grounding,
This is what we dream of and must make.

A selfish soliloquy that was written in haste,
Left a bitter taste from the poor and hollow remarks it made,
But it spilled out in every direction anyway,
Until the world left a cloak and dagger in it's wake.

The sunshine blasts my eyes and I am startled by reflections,
Memories of the dreams that we shared that night,
Our children are the thoughts that now follow us,
The remnants of a dignified trip into our own minds,
Alongside the river supreme,
In the shadow of our collected consciousnesses.

I saw our worlds collide in your eyes,
Placed carefully behind the looking glass,
A chance encounter as you stare back pleasantly,
With a shy smile hanging delicately beneath,
Brown eyes that look so clever.

And as I learn more about you,
I'm left intrigued and wanting more,
Anxiously awaiting the next carefully crafted sentence,
You have become more interesting every day.

I suppose it's childish,
To see your name written in lights inside my mind,
A dazzling array of electricity and such lovely spectacle,
That does draw me in from the boardwalk of life,
But I would gladly pay the price of admission,
If only to have a chance to win your attention,
Which is surely anything but a game.

please be my distraction
and take me away from myself
grow wings that might carry us
you and i
away from the sunset and toward certain disaster

per chance these phantoms do chase
we must go faster and escape
our own hallowed grounds do wait
freedom must be so sweet to taste

i can't stress how important it is that we leave right now
we mustn't delay as beneath their cowls
do lurk the hearts of ghosts and beasts ugly, fowl
or are they mirrors of ourselves
hatred shelved and stored away
that which cannot see the light of day
for they are monsters we must contain

lest we can't and must fly
far far away
and become new people
though our hearts' gone astray
we haven't died yet and still have chance
so pray
we do find ourselves again
though now amongst shadows we must play
maybe one day we'll find the lighted way

If I could look at your picture
I'd be able to tell you about your eyes
And they way I knew they lit up a room
They are those that can sing without speaking.

If I could look at your picture
You'd quickly hear about your smile
That would eat menacing clouds on a sunny day
If they failed to bring rain and thunder
So sublime with its apprehensive disassociation
And subtle with its grace

If I could look at your picture
It'd be so easy to keep looking
Until stars move across the sky
And starlight hangs upon my windows ledge
As if it were there to shepherd me to sleep completely
Slumbering along the edges of a frame

Yet I cannot look at this picture
Stuck behind a locked door without a key
Among so many unrequited metaphors
I'm standing alone in a place of indecision
And the sheer uncertainty of not knowing if I should

It's something I've come to accept
Along with so many other things in this deceptive life
Because if I'm not meant to look at your picture
I can still hear your voice
And even if it isn't mine to cherish
I could be one of the few to have claimed I might've been able to

it sits upon a scaly throne
bones covered in gold and other precious ores
flowing out from its neck like so much plumage
trailing onto the floor and into pools of writhing dead
those that might attempt to flee its gaze

and oh what eyes it has
a plague of pulsing orbs that float lazily above its head
drinking in the wasteland as a vampire does blood
each one focusing on a different tragedy

one thousand mouths regurgitate infinite platitudes
such siren songs carry across the countryside
and into the ears of one that i love

they always float on air when they leave
but i am left grounded as if an anchor is tied to me

must i become the beast to pursue it?

I saw tendrils of smoke rise in front of your eyes,
That did linger and waft around your head like halos,
Some getting caught up in all of your breathing,
Much the same way I'm caught up in your speaking,
Bluntly landing with deadly accuracy,
Specifically demanding intransigent factors flee.

Melancholy stares from across the table,
Your thoughts waiting in line for me,
Each sentence I finish is a cue for you,
To race towards the end where your words are crushing.

My breath is now short as you leave the table,
The room begins spinning,
And I feel unable,
To stop what's been coming for so long,
I've been running in place,
Still face to face with the truth through all these years.

It was broken the whole time,
And you'd be the one to leave the table first.

be still beloved devils and fiends
we need silence if we're getting this right
we've only got one shot tonight
sitting on the edge of oblivion's front door
if only that we had the key

brimstone and other drivel
3 blind mice that stand to shrivel
in the mouth of the wolf that caught them
sitting in the house that formed from the old man's riddle

casting shadows now the moonlight is set afire
and souls burning brighter take wing and seek
higher aspirations that soaked in blood and other nonsense
could douse us all in a witches emulsion
it would melt the skin right off your bones, fellas.

but we got 'em now,
you can almost hear them howl,
and scream their silly night away,
so terrified
and wide open eyed
a lifeless limb dreamscape parade

Such eyes that stand on starlight,
Atop a vessel filled with hopes and dreams
Drowning in the gravity of reality
Know that they can still shine when they want to.

With ears that can't hear what they want to,
Or be told what should or not aught to,
That clearly have a mind all their own,
Know only the solace of the mind's disowned revelry.

Cherry-picked cheekbones fixed to the frame
Holding up an absolute smile that acts as a crack
A break from the banal and crushing clarity of everything else
That which isn't absurd or nonsensical.

All of this to say that I see,
In you what yourself may fail to perceive,
This wonderful and indescribable thing,
If its dry
Sarcastic
And ever questioning glory
Or if its something more subtle
That you'd probably think is boring,
But it keeps me hooked,
And keeps me going.

I felt an ocean breeze spray delightful freedom,
Heard distant gulls cry out in infinite disdain,
Watched the timeless shore stand defiant,
And learned so many things about human nature.

Crying children begging for candy from their mothers,
A pack of wolves surrounding a weakened calf,
Drunken businessmen ambling in ever widening circles,
Entire choruses of angels singing hymns to lift the ******,
All connected with threads intangible and expansive,
All connected though pain and suffering,
Heartache and disrepair,
Broken and pleading for sanctuary.

Leveraging our ever approaching demise
Against the hope that an outcome favorable to time
Tells silent stories to our children's children
Lullabies that border on legend rock them swiftly to sleep.

I am what lies after the fire,
Ember and fading heat,
Slowly glowing under a blackened sky,
As ash begins to collect around me,
I am begging to stay longer than I'm allotted,
My birth so long ago even the trees don't remember.

Red and furious I know to bide my time,
As all my hours spent here amount to knowledge,
Intuition and cunning are beyond my better days.

But with knowledge and time come responsibility,
And with responsibility comes disappointment,
From others that have been failed by me,
For my flame was not hot enough to fight,

Here I lie,
With twilight by my side,
Fleeting heat seeking kindling to start,
Anew what I know cannot continue.

We are the light everlasting,
But inside us all are darknesses,
Swirling and festering,
Until released and sprung forth,
With teeth that gnash and bite.

Delicious souls of prosperous brotherhood,
Life and decimated breath
Left bereft the seeds of our creation,
Blood rituals and desperate hope,
Do cling to our lives as faith to the blind.

Unironic apathy led to qualitative disarray,
And into it's kingdom I fell,
Such sweet demise of youthful detachment,
Our laughter just falls away.

I am the night sky,
Endless and blackened,
And you are the sun,
Standing unopposed on the opposite side,
Together we are what make shadows.

I sat upon the shores of heartache,
and knew in one glorious moment
what i had to do next.

Reigning sulfur and fire,
brimstone and all the terrible things,
I rode among thieves and frail ******,
those that would soon hang in the gallows,
and took them under my wing as sunlight would save them,
So I drug us all into the hell below.

As all infinite pain and dismay do hang themselves on these walls,
a beautiful melody beings to play in the distance,
THREE children walk slowly towards a glimmer,
life in their hearts getting brighter as night approaches,
so that they might take upon them the dreams of the ******.

We arrive,
thunderous and warranted as all justice is inevitable,
thick smoke and desperate tempest flow from our fingertips,
and we shall know no defiance dense enough to deter our wrath,
so many bodies fall and lie silent forever.

Until we reached their playground,
the terrible fear of absolute salvation,
and redemption of our eternal souls did our slaying so stutter,
such abject terror inflicted upon such abject terror.
We had to stop.  

Hope,
Kindness,
Honesty.

Their names shot through the dark,
swept my companions away and bled them dry,
hung them by their necks as all justice is inevitable,
killed them and placed them at my feet,
A sacrifice to save a the heart of a soul intangible.

I cried. God how I cried. Until life poured out of me and fell upon those carcass and burned them away. Until the sky cried for me as a family cried the day their beloved died.

I felt beauty again,
in every pore and it filled every empty crevasse until was full,
again and again the names rang through my head,
until all i could hear was the warmth of reasonable thought,
and memories of blood and terror fading away.

I have nearly infinite wisdom,
The only thing I've yet to learn,
Is how to use it.

Such confusion alludes to the heart of the matter,
What matters the most is the loveliest banter,
Brief talks between stars that sound near but so far,
You cannot discern from the clamor,
The noise that trades thought,
To all empty and dark,
Dreams that sing to the world that it staggers,
And should it soon fall,
It will take us all,
If only we'd think that it matters.

she stood at the top of the stairs
and smiled
the way the sun hangs above the earth
and creates life in all of its wonderful forms
warm and everlasting

and everything that breathes
thanks the sun for all it brings
in that same way
does she even know how my heart sings
illuminated by the corners of her mouth
how my bones echo her laughter
then resonates with the blood in my veins

how would the ocean thank the moon
for the way gravity brings motion
and currents that circle the globe
spread warmth
fueling life

all i can do
is show you the way you light me up
and hope that you see me
in the glow that hearts do bask in

i walk
wandering among the stars
and starlight to have framed
placed upon the brim of hearts' memories
if just to love the strain

the strings that pull us together
from so very far away
are the same ones that tear us apart
and plague the minds' array

binary stars in orbit
while black holes lie in wait
radiation forms a silent storm
space metaphors are lame

If the universe is constantly expanding,
That means that I am too,
And soon my heart will grow big enough to hold you,
The entire world composed of you and I.

Our eyes that met across a galaxy,
When stars did portend their alignment,
As we were joined,
A quantum fixation,
Against a somnolent summer sky.

Now we can travel,
At the speed of heartbreak,
The only universal constant.

Surreptitiously
Quiet words fall from your mouth
Please don't ever stop

Lets walk together through the rain,
It's falling like brats and hogs out there,
That would wash away our innocence with sweaty disgust,
Impaled the beauty in what we thought we saw,
Sought by those that hold the intangible.

Floor it,
We're getting out of here this time,
And with blinding lights leading us,
Put your hand in mine and let me know we have faith,
That this infernal machine isn't running smoothly,
So where we're going isn't where we're going to wind up.

Because this love game is hard to keep gassed up,
But with every look from your eye,
I can fuel my heart so that what burns black bleeds bright,
Baby we can keep this going all night.

I am a silky sky,
And silver linings around dark clouds,
That washed in from the shore of my subconscious.

Necessity birthed the invented man,
A charade,
Puppets on strings dance a cliched canter,
Feet in socks with strings as shoes,
Tightening around,
That act as a noose.

That I might not be touching ground,
Was never my inclination,
As I float five feet above the earth,
And falling surely wasn't part of the plan either.

I have swallowed ambition
and forested glory
to produce for you
the words that guide the story

along a path of branches
a soothsayer marks their prayers
with blood and spattered innocence

and gripping dirt patterns
my foot dangled from the ceiling
cascading lingering feelings of doubt
to walk away from the parchment laid bare

what were the dreams i used to have
daylight hallucinations brought by
some unknown chemicals
in unknown quantities
that did pulse through my veins

bound to the ground
i walked among the heavens
and did sup on the knowledge they gave
if only for the instant between dawn and dusk
so that i might know the color of the universe

endless parades that i did watch
infomercials at 4am
buy now while supplies last
enough to fill a lifetime

and moments better spent reading
were spent in the hollow of my own mind
watching stars fight
and discussions had
on the meaning of nothing
were these really the good old days

i woke up a specter of my former self
a hollow casting that used to be filled
with promise and ambition
that slowly faded away as i sat fixed
upon the chair which bore my name

strangely intangible
the feeling of having woken up ready
able to take on what's coming head on
and it's now barely a memory
as i quietly make my coffee in the dark

i am not ready now
to be filled with indifference and hardened disposition
cold and unfeeling i must lurch forward
until i reach my destination with reluctance
a way to keep myself alive

so only that i might find it again
and remember what it was like to be filled with light
to do whatever it is that i may please
in pursuit of the entirely superfluous
the lighthearted and the lazy
******* I miss the weekend

if i could write all the words
that needed to be written
to open the pages up to you
so that you might see my heart
and know that it is for you
so that you might love it back

and that when you wake up weak
i'll be there to separate you from the *******
you might know peace and quiet
and gain your strength back

light broken into arrows that pierce the heart
like the ones that bend from the tears in your eyes
and the darkness that came from the words you wrote that night

scribbled on a napkin
your final words to me
"you might want to get yourself checked out"
"the doctor told me I have ******"

what madness does find me at this hour
before the sun rises and our shame sleeps
that i might find myself in a lackadaisical daze
drifting in and out of awareness of the world around me
and on the shores of my consciousness
do i find a wayward scrap of a memory lost long ago
where i saw you standing in the moonlight

and you did dance, as i recall

staring emptily into the abyss of the soul
astounded at its chasms and respiratory failures
an inability to breathe in the toxicity of subconscious desire
and drowning in its own shallow loneliness

a raft was built
to carry me on the flow of memory and pain
that do associate itself with your images
the ones that had tried to be forgotten
and twisted through the entirety of time
now seem like a movie playing backwards
where the ****** was two strangers walking away from one another
never to have known each other again

i am dizzy
sitting, spinning
careening out of control

losing my place
never winning the race, pacing
back and forth i lie shaking
while hungry buzzards pick at my soul

heart revival, perspired desire
revels softly with patience growing thin
a cadence dancing
some might call it prancing
across the empty court-field

lets all sing a song
while we wait for mourning eyes
that upon death's doorstep might they play
but sadly mistaken,
the poor road less taken,
has led us to life's light astray.

and rambling, ambling
swiftly i am still spinning,
like the bathwater does 'round the drain
emotionless crying,
a soul left denying,
it would be better to have been set,
left in place.

the warmth
of vibrant colors in soft sunlight
makes a child of me
in the way i might run to chase the wind
as the leaves are dancing toward the heavens

what simplicity
separate colors on their palette
do paint until blended
mixed with all the hues of life and energy
so that they may build the blocks that breathe this world
with light and creativity

of all these colors
do i find you with black on white
with wires and impulses
numbers arranged in a way that have no meaning
but to other machines on the other side of the world

and that your eyes might find them
so that if only for a second
those colors might exist in your mind
the way that memories exist in your heart

If the cold pavement knew you so well
it would know that your name spelled disaster
and would not hold you up
as you fell upon it
a broken needle in your arm

but i know your name
it once spelled redemption
a curse'd spell that once cast would creep upon sinners
and render them asunder
so that they might begin to beg for mercy

and as the mites might crawl through your ear
so must your name bore itself into our brains
like so many maggots that feast on our memories
that repeat back and forth
until their origin, distorted
become more lie than story

you could line up the alphabet
repeat it upon itself
until your name appeared against it's actual meaning
track marks and broken houses
stained couches and crying mothers
a dream left abandonded

oft was the night as a child that i did dream
of such eyes that would captivate
and stop the earth's rotation

and in adolescence i found so many reasons
to think that i might have found those eyes
only to find that they did pale in the comparison
so i found myself dreaming again

though i did not want to wake
as the dreams held more promise
the hope in me did not cede

now as a man i had lost the dream
until i saw yours in the dimly lit cabin
of my pale green 2003 nissan altima
and that every day since
has been but a dream come true