every word i ever wrote is for you,
every breath i ever took is for you.
you're the version of me that lives on in my head,
kept alive by the lives that i haven't lived.
you're the reason why i'm still here.
i'm afraid,
i'm afraid of the stillness that captures the thoughts
and refuses to give them back.
there you are.
all these years between us, but there you are.
there i am, all alone, cold and terrified
of the day that will come, but i'm still here,
locked up in a room inside my mind.
you're alive, so alive despite everything,
and i owe you a second chance at life.
you're the reason why both of us aren't dead.
every breath i ever took is for you,
every word i ever wrote is for you.

Can you hear me?
I come to you now,
birthed in the granite chaos
of your mind,
in the forgotten scars
of your heart.

In the reverie
of a definite
composure
you’ve come to hate me-
for disrupting your balance,
for denying you stability
in the reckless way you require.

Please.
I wish to be heard,
to be endowed with your graciousness.

I hurt. I am hurting.
You see that.
I make you feel that.
And you hate me for it.

I will not apologize.
I will hold onto you tightly.

Together,
we are nothing short
of juniper-blushed skies
in the July monsoon-
tenderly raging.

Please.
I need recognition
so I too
am not released
into the decay
of all things.

i failed,
please don't hate me.

tears fall,
nose aches,
throat burns.

hands tremble,
heart clenched,
lost in this ache.

my love can't defy you,
my weakness.

before the mirror,
"I'll make them proud,"
murmurs to my heart.

i failed,
please don't hate me.

Just a girl with
All the colours of the rainbow
Flickering behind her eyes.
The dullness of masks,
Of confusion,
Dulls the shine.
But when you look deeper,
Into her soul,
You see it brightening.
Ideas weave through like a river,
In the grassy fields of thought.
You see the hopes, the dreams, the fears,
Planted like seeds.
When she smiles,
The room lights up with the joy,
The sincerity,
Of the girl painted with all the colours of life.

~ inspired by, & for Sally~

the modern internal combustion engine
is a series of controlled explosions, a spark
ignites the flammable gasoline, the pistons
moving, dispensing energy to turn our
wheels so we may voyage as a pair, to
there, and to here:

our very hearts, the original model of
this energetic blood disbursement of
oxygen ignited by electric pulsations,

one contemplates
at this late hour, at this late date, when the
moving parts, obedient servants,
collectively concur
that the use-by-date has nearly arrived and
we must soon take a sabbatical to the whereafter

what two, surely not three, digits will complete the right side of our hyphen,
our from~ to, as if that were an achievement,
more than merely, an identifying bracelet

think upon it, thousand of explosions,
millions of sparkings electric, we have been
engineering our reactors to go to over 100%,
until we cry out
how long you gonna run that body down,
and when the answer is ascertained,
we now done and undone,

we
no longer care, that last datum,
we are, of it, unconscious,
the date prior inscribed in flesh,
its mate, its uncomplimentary
complement,
can be only scribed in
Vermont granite,
as a warning
to any passerby
that yet harbors
the illusory that
the future can
be foretold

Here I am,
a tangle of roots
buried deep
and reaching down
deeper,
looking for a sign of life.

But no,
I sprawl and
twist around,
widdershins,
round and round
the battering thump
breaking the walls
under my flesh.

My waking hours
remember,
thick with the weight
of words left unsaid,
an iron on my tongue.
Unmoved.
Unperturbed.
Stagnant and decaying,
until I’m a stranger
to my own voice.
A crow lost in a cornfield
lulled by a scarecrow’s
siren song.

Like a crow,
plumes as dark
as a saint ‘s hope
wandering in the arms of limbo.
Wings bruised
for hammering obstinate bars,
voice hoarse for singing the blues
over dissonant chords.

Over and over again.
“Like a broken record,” they say.
Singing the same old song.
I have been.
Songs like plastic bags
of cans that digs into a tender
palm until the blood supply is cut.

What does the sky
Feel like on my wings
The stretch of endless blue
Soft wind threading through my feathers?
Tell me, the feeling has long escaped me.
Emptiness ringing in my ear
in the space between
where song once lived

Time has a way
Of erasing memories,
Of erasing wounds
and hardening them into scars,
of stepping into clear water
and muddying it.

Now the air is stale,
silence dense,
solitude burning red,
my bones rubbing against
my soul,
Leaving blisters and scuffs.

These heavy eyes,
the sky’s allure has faded from their gaze.
they have learned to shrink
into this smallness.
no horizon here
only walls,
and the dust taste of dullness
is vapid.

How I miss
how the sun makes
the salt on my skin rise,
or how the rain can seep
into my thoughts until
it colors it sad.

Now, there’s just fields of
milky grayness, playing labyrinth
until I reach the end,
only to be devoured again.

And sadness is too mundane a word,
at most it’s an espresso
that keeps you awake,
A defibrillator,
that jolt that makes eternity
an agony.

I am but a riddle I cannot solve