If life is a war,
Remind me again which side
I am fighting for.

In loving memory of Kurtz's last disciple:

Welcome to the circus,
A three-ringed show in
The center of the dark.
In our multifoliate arrogance,
We seek out a familiar face
And forget to turn on the light.
Fumbling by touch,
Grasping at straws,
When faced with the truth,
We crave the lie instead.
Each and every one of us
The architects of our own catastrophe.

Maybe one day you'll let me
Trace the constellations of band-aids
On your patchwork heart.

Maybe one day I'll tell you
The story of the ink on my skin.

Maybe you'll give me the words
You want to forget.
Maybe I'll tell you why I need to remember.

Maybe.

Heaven and hell in five letters.

If you were a poem,
I'd hold you real tight,
Crumple your fragile edges
In a white-knuckled grip.
I'd study you by candlelight
And your secrets quietly allege.

If you were a poem,
Would you even be mine?
Would such a lovely thing
Belong in my desperate hands?
Your heart could contain answers,
But I'm still questioning.

If you were a poem,
Could I ever be brave enough
To share the wonder you see
With the world you love?
The thing is that you were the
Selfless one; it was never me.

If you were a poem,
I'd memorize every stroke
Of your artful frame.
Then, with your words
Stowed in my heart,
I'd set you aflame.

I take all my thoughts of you
And throw them in a pine box.
Have to sit on the lid though,
Because they all pile up,
And the lid won't shut.
My feet can't touch the floor.
The box gives a rasping cough
And little memories tumble out,
Scraps of technicolor confetti
In my hair and on the floor.

Toy soldiers resume their guard
Over that pine box with a beating heart.
Draped in a veil of translucent lace,
Hold me together or pull me apart.

Music making my eardrums bleed,
It's all just catharsis in the end.
Confetti on the floor,
Base in my pulse,
Take my heart and do the work
For a little while.
I'll sit here with ink bleeding from my fingertips
Until every single thought of you is gone.

My prayer is that one day you will understand,
Maybe, understand what I did,
Understand that I did what I did for both of us.
But mostly you.
You see, it was never about me.
Not even now.
You may think me cold and callous
-heartless-
But I'm not.
You see,
I broke my own heart to save yours.
You will put yourself back together
And move on one day,
But I will still be stuck an infinite loop
Of mind games and second-guessing.
Maybe one day, you'll understand
That I shattered us (me!) because I loved you.

You took a red balloon by the string
And led it deep into the woods.
  You snipped the string from around your wrist
   With the switchblade I didn't know you had
    And let the balloon float away.
     You turned your back and didn't watch it fly away,
      So you wouldn't know that it didn't fly very far.
       The string tangled in the branches of an oak overhead.
        You didn't see it; you were already gone.
         I had once had a red balloon;
           I could have one again.
            I climbed into that oak tree after it.
             Wrapping my other three limbs around the branch,
              I reached my right hand for the string.
               It came undone easily beneath my inquisitive fingertips.
                I tied it to my own wrist.
                 It reached for heaven,
                  And carried me along with it.

There are secrets that we never even give voice to,
Like squishing them inside ourselves will make them go away.
But, they don't need lyrics to have their own voice
-even instrumental pieces carry feeling-
And the music escapes when I open my mouth.
It tumbles out like a discordant symphony,
And I can't take it back.
I try, but I can't,
So, I stumble over the wreckage my silence has wrought,
Still denying the secret all the time.

*Maybe you know, now.
Regardless, consider this my confession.