To tell you a story
I plucked the stars
Displaced the mountains
Words float with thee
Wandering mad and alive
Yet it kills me
Your distraught face
Hidden beneath a mask
Treacherous ways to lure
Mark and hunt a naive dove
Pure white Angel of love
The devil you walked

Between the songs of the Nighthawk
and the Mourning Dove
the sound of apples beneath us
and sirens rushing  between
life and death,
we lay together in the darkness
like two blind people reading love poetry.

With sweet nostalgia hanging in the air, the winds pick up and spread it through the park like butter on toast. Orchestrating the poplars' subtle and routine symphony, the winds travel, leaving a slight coolness in their wake. A clue to their presence. The over-powering scent of familiarity lingers and invades the senses, prompting a catharsis. A feeling reaches deep into the soul and reacts. The product, being of a something...of two somethings, perhaps, unknown.

In response, the heart skips a beat, jostling the distracted mind awake and alert to the surroundings. Opening the eyes.

And you notice, quite suddenly, how alive the world around you really is. Like the curtain opening to a show. And an array of beautiful notions dart to and fro, as if attempting to escape your understanding and into the wind that journeys; even through the tiniest blades of the grass at your feet. If an idea could only wander from one spot to another, like the sound of children's laughter echoing between the old trees. If one pure thought could escape and find host in another, would that not be a beautiful thing? Or for the indomitable affection of two lovers sitting at a park bench to trickle over and illuminate the heart of the old man passing by. If only beauty and love be so easily given and not so easily taken.

The gentle fluttering of wings breaks concentration, as a nearby dove settles upon a low branch that is set to swinging. From its perch, the park must seem smaller as it watches the people move amongst the greenery, ignorant to its presence above. Save one. A face, upturned. A soul reaching out for an understanding of beauty's very nature and being met by the gaze of a single, white dove.

Oh dove how are you so bright,
when I the Crow so dark?
We both are,
but bird's lost in flight.
But I fear the Strawman's bark.

You, a target of gluttony, lust, and greed,
Pure of heart but long for that addictive seed.
And I, the blackened crow am shot by scorn
You are the rose by which my heart is thorned.

And you my blackened crow,
Your lie so simple
Why can't you be?
We are the same, but different.
Your ignorance and blindness set you free.
I too fear, but spiritual pestilence.
You are bound by the hands of ghosts,
shaded in death, you show bliss
In your sorrow day by and tomorrow,
you'll wait: a bird on a post.

Ragged dove of golden locks,
kept hidden from the world,
when caged away
how can you say
you prefer your freedom withhold?

I offer you my open hand
to free you from this prison,
knowing all too well
you've chosen this hell
for as long as your years tick on.

Run away those years did,
giving me much time to think
of why you've chosen
to stay beholden
under a heavy, metal lid.

I fear, to my dismay
after believing you a fool -
I have discovered
          You are better kept away.

My dearest
twin how
democratic might
hour depart
and orient
adrift with
pan verdin
nigh that
sing melody
so true
only peace
alight that
we still
sleep together
amiss here
in sunken
valley again.

Why did you stop writing?
I have inquired this so many times,
But all you do is shrug as the tears well up in your eyes,
All you do is shake your head as little diamonds fall,
But, dear heart, I know why.
You stopped writing because you have managed to effectively **** it,
And by it, I mean that demon inside of your head that gnawed at your soul
Until you were a shell of a human being,
That demon that would not let you go despite your agony,
The one that you battled for ages.
But why did you stop bleeding onto paper?
You stopped dotting your i’s with tears
And curling your g’s and y’s with smiles,
Each crossed t was your anger,
And each semicolon symbolized a struggle that you’ve overcome.
Oh how I miss your soul
Because the demon that you fought off,
It came back and stole your words from you,
You smile more and write less,
You laugh now but write no more.
Was your creativity in your sadness?
The misery that consumed you drove you mad,
But the consequence was beautiful,
And I’m happy that you’re better,
But I mourn the loss of the artist that painted images in my mind from words on paper.
Where are you?
This is not a selfish plea,
But this is a call of desperation
Because I thirst for the words that flow from your veins,
The stories that gush from your mind.
Can only the raven be your muse?
The dove coos up above but it does not tickle your fancy like the darkness did,
You preferred black to white, scarlet to yellow,
And by God, you were the best of us,
But my Lord, you were the worst.
Why do I mourn you?
You were beautiful but damaged,
And each word, line, stanza was deep and dark and heavy,
And through the words on paper, I could sense the poison in your veins,
And I felt more of your soul there than in all the years that I’ve known you.
But what happened?
I saw the correlation between the madness and the artistry,
You spilled your emotions onto the paper and it was lovely,
And then you got better, and it was beautiful,
But in doing so, maestro, you seemed to have lost sight of the song of your life.
       But what of the dove, of the light?
I miss the art but I care for the being,
But no song is worth your pain,
And nothing beautiful is worth your depravity,
So when I ask for you to write again, my friend, I ask not for the darkness, but for the light.

He was the sole affliction, the disease of her mind at 2:48 am,
She sat frozen on her bed, plagued by the memory of him,
Her thoughts were assaulted by his face, and his hands, and his smile, and the way his eyes twinkled in the sunshine,
And she just knew that she was in love with him
But that boy--he shattered her heart.
He promised her the world, but he gave it entirely to another
So she drank and drank and drank until even her blood fermented.
The beautiful pictures that etched themselves into her mind were asphyxiated because of the nicotine in her lungs,
And the butterflies in her stomach were drowned because of the ***** in her veins.
Her soul went from alabaster to atramentous.
And her tongue cut like a razor when she spoke,
And the glaciers in her head looked into the souls of all she met.
A wall was built around a delicate, beating heart that was slowly turning into stone.
The heavens wept for the death of her beautiful spirit
Because after a while her eyes lacked luster and she started to smell of sin and formaldehyde,
And the bitterness in her head refused to allow her to take even the briefest glances in the direction of another.
So many offered her solitude, respite, love, a haven
But, she was a dove that morphed into a raven.