I wish I could have—
(Whispers to myself)
On days like this when light feels absent.
When even the grey begins to fade.
How easily the mind slips into descent—
(Deaf & Dumb these screams are silence)

Fickle imaginations and unkept dreams,
The empty spaces where sunlight gleams.
Forgotten places where darkness looms.
How often is there such clarity—
When self awareness is acknowledging the chaos.
Questioning sanity.
(The Quiet is Echoing)

Lost but still somehow following—
A break in thought that seems so endless.
How, suddenly, the mind can bend.
(Mute)
Taut and out of shape—bent toward reality,
The darkest shades of anxiety.
Absent of color and stuck in perpetuity—
How infinite a moment could be.
With every sound.
(Repeating silence)
Each touch that’s felt and every taste.
This pain that remembers—
This soul that has witnessed how seamlessly time is replaced.
(Still, I wish I could have...)

What a tragedy it is—
To find love where you are not wanted.
To know peace while waging war.
To be a raging fire—frozen in place.

Oh what a tragedy it is—
—to be whole but forever incomplete.

What a tragedy it is—
To be loved yet still lash out with lust.
To own peace but still hunger for war.
To have absolute control.
—To give up your soul.

Oh what a tragedy it is—
—to think free will the same as freedom.

What a tragedy it is—
To have never tasted love or felt it’s touch.
To be without it’s sparkle and still wander the darkness.
To yearn for something you cannot imagine.
To crave passion and embrace—
Words to describe things you cannot.

Oh what a tragedy it is—
—to know love, only as something you’ve never had.

If I were drunk right now, I'd say
I'm too low to be high anymore.
I'm tired of these 4 a.m. mornings that you'd call a night.
I can't remember and explain what it exactly feels to have everything and nothing altogether.
It's filled, but it's vacant.
I wish if I told myself,
that the peace and love I'm trying to maintain around,
is exactly what kills me.
I'm glad that I could keep up,
bruised, broken, smiling.
But now whenever I look at the mirror,
we don't ask each other how we've been,
I would lie to the mirror and the mirror would lie to me.
This heart of mine, no longer wrenches in misery.
There's a different tune now,
that I'm lately learning.
If I feel something, it is
that none of us can escape being a human anymore.
I don't have anything to grab or withhold back,
It's just me, and my space,
that fills with stillness,
all I really hold on to,
is myself, and this silence.
I'd go with the flow,
breaking someone's trust,
building someone's hope,
being someone's sun,
also being the dust.

The tornado in my core is spinning me around,
The absence of variety is bringing me down.
The pills, the therapy, the truth isn’t nice,
My torture, unable to take my own advice.
Keep making the same mistakes, time and again.
Deepening the ever expanding stain.
Confusing my beloved with apathy and moods,
Desertion or abandonment, I think I wish she would.
Once more on edge, all good thoughts set sail
Taunting me, baiting me, wanting me to fail.
Against a backdrop of mindless roiling black cloud,
Surely pain like this isn’t allowed?
Always a roundabout, never the swings.
And then today, the tornado wins.

Past and future mirror one another.
Fixed at their crossing point
Is an infinite and uncombustible present:
Isness as an endless ocean.

An ocean made of words
Fluid words endlessly mobile, where
Anything can be described
Anything foretold.

In deep and shallow utterances
Live all the metaphors
In cycling currents
All allusions ebb and flow.

Some tales are down for deep remembering
Some swim fertile yet unborn,
All the while the ocean shares her stories
Allegoric and relentless as they wash ashore.


MChallis © 2015