Cold nights
               It's always Winter here.
It seems this season's stretching on all year.
               The beers are gone
               so let's get walking.
                           Grab
    your coat and let's do some talking.
Loud, through the night.
Know our strides will crunch through old snow
beneath old street signs.

                                              Best
      ­                                   bets aside,
                                    did you gamble
                                       on my days?
                               Did I waste your time?

Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
4 blocks down the street, you're screaming,
"**** the cold and this town. I'm leaving."
                     Sheetrock walls
               and paycheck borders
                     keep us pinned,
                in line, on short order.
                              Cook
                    our­ melting brains.
                        Froze in place
and broke your heart, rinsed me down the drain.

Cold nights
               It's always Winter here.
This frigid season's stretching on all year.
               The beers are gone
               so let's get walking.
                           Grab
    your coat 'cuz them ghosts been talking.
Howling each day.
Haunting all our snowbound steps and
rattling their chains.


                                          Alarms and cars
                                        and pulsing hearts.
                                               Cheapest
                                        prices paid to make
                                                our wage.

                                         The clocks in bars
                                       count tarnished stars.
                                                 Cheapest
                                         prices paid to pave
                                                 our ways.


                                              Best
      ­                                   bets aside,
                                    did you gamble
                                       on my days?
                               Did I waste your time?


Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
2 blocks down the Ave., I'm shouting,
"**** the wind and the snow that's pounding."
                     Rent check walls
               and sheetrock borders
                     keep us pinned,
                in line, on short order.
                              Cook
                    our­ melting brains.
                        Froze in place
and broke my will, rinsed you down the drain.

                                            And I'll move

                                                4 blocks

                                              next Spring...

Looking on both sides of the fence
sure takes some stiff upper lip, I
haven't succeeded.
Have you, yourself, found success?
See, it's so easy with a different kind of head
to absorb the different energies around
you, so much so, you can't draw a difference
between yourself and the other.
In fact, you'll only draw in threes.
Holy? I'm no ******* fool. I see a loop
in the trinity that's ***** as my breathing.
Looking on both sides of the fence
sure takes some stiff upper lip, I,
to see the positive, won't erase the negative.
Giving credit, where I must just to survive,
I suppose I've found mild success.
Do I regret living? No. Not one ******* bit.
Give credit to myself, where I must to thrive.
I can't be the void that eats the positive
charges and value life.
I won't deny the beauty inherent in myself,
as I see it outwardly in all the lines preceding,
and the lines to proceed.

Sometimes my heart
Feels so cold
Like a piece of metal that has been left in the snow
Sometimes my heart feels so heavy
Like a five hunded pound wieght
Sometimes my heart feels so tired
Like a teen sitting in a boring class for an hour
All the time my heart feels out of place
Like a giraffe left in the ocean

the deeper, I went
the darker, it grew
a lonely place, your heart
made me lost in you.

In this dark place,
Invisible vines wrap around your throat,
As your entire world is suddenly plunged
Into a darkness so silent that
It echoes through your chest like a
Quiet Earthquake.

In this dark place,
You can't hear above
The roaring silence in your head
And your heart.
Here there's a darkness so complete that you can't
Even see how shattered you are.

In this dark place,
Your demons are the only voices
You hear above the silence,
Demons of your own making.
Demons that scream because they've felt pain,
Demons that scream to be healed.

In this dark place,
You become so desperate to be free that
Even your bones become tired
From the everlasting noise that never quiets and
Demands to be freed from this hell your mind has made.

In this dark place,
Your worst fears suddenly become moot
Because the dark inside renders
Life as a past time
And death a sweet release
Because at least then it would be
Quiet.

In this dark place,
Every part of you is hurting from your
Shattered glass pieces that cloud
Your eye's window of all the love and light
That you used to see.

In this dark place,
The only thing that can heal you is
The light of sunrise when you finally
Realize that the monster-like shadows
Were just broken trees.

In this dark place,
You need a fire burn off the debris
That keeps your eyes sewn shut,
And you need a fire to heal your
Wailing demons.

In this dark place,
Only when you see with clarity can
You heal your demons and
Regrow from the scars your hear left when it
Shattered and
Learn how to heal your
Festering wounds.

In this dark place,
Once you find light again,
You can learn how to live.
You can finally see.
You can eventually heal.

In this dark place,
There is still light.

clarity spoken in whimsical tones of timid grey
face of paste as mind reflects seventy-three
feet of cinder
passage of bright fog
destination an illusion of mind

Place the day
Shredded paper soil pours the rose composed for those with better things to grow into the air
Smokey silhouettes dressed in regret pressed against the echoes of its flare
Sparing the nights received stares of ambivalence
A sentence spun to run on too long
In a song with too many notes
broken in a sense few would know how to sense
or think to try
To vai through ethereal rope for ways to cope
with another day of smoke
Just wait and choke
Consider the ways it broke
Deliver another craven joke
Then slither away at once and pray the planted stems response
is the one we'd hoped it would evoke

But we haven't spoken have we
Coughed a sick joke and no ones laughing
Are you happy
Free from a tether whether we were ready or not
Lock step in a crowd head down
Feathers in a knot
Trapped me in apathy
Had to be hard
And I'm sad that I'm happy
Playing the part

Place the night
Over a lifetime of work and lurch
When the dirt under your nails edges into pale skin
Sickening little scratches tapping rickety veins placing marks to track the pain on a line this thin
An addiction.
Affliction born from your own choices
sworn to poison from the inside out beginning to end.
Send the sin from your nerves with urgency
turbulent little displacements of adjacency
And graciousness erase us
As we face and feed the fire
With emaciated traces rehearsed  when we preach to choirs.
Indecent liars
destined for and inspired by greatness swooning under the weight between each action
feeling dire chasms open
soon after the broken reflections of our spoons feel the heat from lighters