There's a peculiar kind of beauty that can only be experienced
with the innate knowledge that the moment is fleeting
and the most intense beauty can only be seen in
the presence of both light and shadows.
For it’s often in the loss of a thing
that its worth to us becomes
most precious and by
letting it go with
grace we can
best savor
its purest
delights.
Realizing
that the pain
runs so deep only
because the beauty ran
so deep and that without
it having once touched us we
wouldn't now know the emptiness
of its loss, our grief will eventually turn to
thankfulness that it ever touched us at all, and
we will be left awed by the mystery of its haunting.

They say pictures paint a thousand words,
But I'd rather hear the ones drawn by your lips,
The ones lost in the movement of your hips.
As if the air your lungs exhale,
Was the only air mine knew how to inhale.
As if the melody of the sound waves your vocal chords send my way,
Were in perfect harmony with the sound of my heart beating...
... Broken and out of sync, like it's on the brink of collapse

And I know that pictures paint a thousand words but actions paint a million more
But the only action I seem to recall is my hand holding yours,
Pressed up against the wall, your lips pressed against mine,
Not drawing anything more but emotions, raw pure affection, pure movie magic, pictures in motion.

Pictures do paint a thousand words but you left me blind,
And now all I can do is hear the words one by one, haunting my every thought,
Leaving me a faint image, the memory of a picture painting no words at all.

All I want is for you
To stop.
Stop acting like nothing happened;
You and I both know
You only came back to me
Because it was convenient.
And now you're like a ghost;
When I speak to you
It haunts me because
It's like you're not really there.
You're only a memory
Of what used to be.
I can't decide what's more painful:
The fact that everything we
Used to have,
Used to know,
Has vanished,
Or the fact that
We never really needed each other
In the first place.

I will escape from this world,
see the hero enter
imagine it is some beautiful mystery.
Whisper the truth about why
you ask this of me.
Can I haunt you in that life?
Imagine you in a different dream
create a new character,
give it all a new description,
answer all of your questions -
some of ours.
Fight against another chapter,
make you my favourite ending.

You chased
I ran
You yelled
I turned
You swung
I ducked
You huffed
I pushed

The back of your ankle caught
on the underside of a gnarly root

You twirled
I watched.
You screamed
I watched..
You bled
I watched...
You gasped at air
I watched....

The old jagged branch penetrated
through your squishy eye
and kissed the back of your skull
blood burst and squirted
while the rise and fall of your chest slowed
and your body grew cold

A rose bush was born amidst the clutches of an early winter

I left
You haunted
I cried
You permeated
I stayed silent
You spoke in my dreams

I know they found you
I visit and leave you flowers
But I am through,
I finally convinced myself
that it's not my
fault.

after swearing you would never hurt her
you discarded her along with all the other pretty hopeless things
not broken (NEVER broken)
but anachronistic, paradoxical, incongruous
a past that won’t leave the present.

glimmering tears falling in the dark
unseen, muffled, tracing the fossils of his breath on her cheek.

a sequin dress on the living room floor
with a naked moon child sticking a head out the window
still suffocating.

eyeliner wings searching for halos
but turning up empty
knowing angels don’t exist in her world-
laughing at the thought.

when you, a ghost, moved towards the light
(even though you see a new light every day-
never her, always something, still not enough)
you left her in the blackness of your discarded dreams
like a tool you had no more use for.

ghost stories are meant to scare little girls into sleeping with guns and walking with keys interlaced between fumbling fingers
and as he fades into that ghost from her story
she will try to sleep.

disbelief in ghosts
does not stop them from haunting your dreams
nor stop you from becoming one yourself.

she’s stuck in a timeline that moved on without her
watching like a ghost as life around her naively continues (how? do they still believe?)
hand over mouth to prevent escaped screams
phone in pocket to prevent escaped words

he must not know.
admitting she is still here
is admitting she is pretty hopeless
on her own.

She was a ghost
floating through rooms
listening to people's stories
She noticed everything
while
They noticed nothing

Verse 1

Why do I have this haunted feeling?
Something is moving in the shadows.
Working secretly tides flow,
as night steals past the day.
A voice is singing to silence,
a thousand petals falling windblown,
the still earth will lie strange, unknown,
a tolling bell brings on the night.

In the fullness of a falling tear,
In the garden of remembered time,
In the silence sung before the song,
Life will find you there.

Verse 2

What moves a fallen leaf to swirling?
Couples are speaking words of love songs.
In the hour of the dawn's glow
a rose will scent the night.
Moonbeams will stir the waving waters,
while feathered wings caress the breezes,
and your heart sings to pierce the dark,
a falling star will shed it’s light...

In the fullness of a falling tear,
In the garden of remembered time,
In the silence sung before the song,
Life will find you there.

With the turning of the heaven's sky,
With the dancing of the seasons by,
With the yielding of your lover's sigh,
Life will find you there,
Life will find you there

When the darkness spreads from near to far,
In the cascade of a falling star
In the motion of a bird in flight
In the sweetness of your lovers light
With the beating of your yearning heart...

Copyright © 2007 Gary Brocks

Ghosts are real
They live within us
Haunting our past mistakes
Having us live in fear
Of the future