A clear sky?
When was the last time I saw a clear sky?
I cannot think of the date
The feeling that day is faint.
I’ve grown accustomed to cloudy skies
The day begins with a haze and ends the same.
I see the clouds twist into shapes
I wish I could daydream about beautiful things
Instead,
I see faces above tormenting and sneering
I feel those sneers in the minds of my peers.

I have lost touch of what is true
Is your sky blue?
Do others have a rain cloud above their head?
Can you see the stars at night?
Or are they hidden for you too?

When the clouds won’t part,
I keep my feet on the ground,
And I try to remember what keeps them there:
I’ve grown thankful for the days it does not rain
I try to be thankful for the release those stormy days bring,
I want to be thankful for those who weather the storms with me.

But I cannot remember the last time I saw a clear sky.
Some days, it feels less cloudy than others,
Yet the mystery remains.
A clear sky?
I see it for a moment when I look in her eyes.
I see it for a moment when I see my art on the stage.
I see it for a moment,
But the moment has yet to stay.

The best is a beast I must slay
Living in the valley of expectation
And I know I moved myself there.
The beast lurks late at night
Waking me at three am
Giving me such a fright.

I sharpen my swords
I ******* my shield
And I stay inside.
I practice, practice, practice
Still,
Never perfect.

The best is a beast I must slay,
I will not die buried as I lived
Wrapped in bronze, silver, or dirt.
Cast me in immortality
A golden Goddess
My dying wish is to live forever.

I study
I steady my hand
If it’s not perfect, it’s no good.
I must be prepared and precise
Dedicatedly detailed
A single flaw is fatal.

The best is a beast I must slay,
I am not religious, but giving up is a sin
Second only to failure.
So, I practice my acceptance speech
I know, I know,
I know I will never give.

I know it’s no use
I know I’m too scared
To ever do anything worthwhile.
I fear failure so much
I never even try
And I wonder why I’m still stuck in this valley.

The best is a beast I must slay
This is my life’s goal
Because it will take a life of work to get close.
So close I can taste it
I will probably die
An inch short of the beast’s beating heart.

I march up the hill
I tell myself
Today is the day.
I have done this more times than I can remember
I scare myself
More than any beast ever could.

The best is a beast I must slay,
I remind myself of what’s at stake
More than the glory and gold.
No,
I want to beat the beast
So I can know I can beat the beast inside me.

The best is a beast I must slay.

Colours of the fringe
Amethyst runs through the sky
Burning down the night

Like a tiny moth
I am drawn to these pages
To perish in flame

When I was an
ideal and dreamy teenager walking amidst the
trees in the backyard,
there, curled up beneath a pine, I discovered a small creature and stared at it.
I gently picked it up and held it to
my chest.
It opened its eyes.
I felt The power within .
It went back to sleep,
and I set it down.

The next morning
when I walked
out the back door,
headed for school,
the little creature
was sitting there,
wide awake,
looking up at me.
It had the most
unreal looking eyes.
They seemed to change color.
Apart from English and art class, I hated school.
I didn't quite fit in .
I had good friends,
but I always felt lonely.
Bouts of melancholia struck me at the strangest times,
soon after, I found
it to be the
terminal affliction of being a poet.

I stayed home from school that day and played with the
creature.
It seemed to
hear me, almost understand me.
I liked the feeling.
it became my
best friend.

I fed it every day
and it grew and became unruly and hard to control at times, but overall, it caused me much more joy than pain, way back then.
I missed it when it
was gone,
and threw my arms around it when it
came home.
I named it buffer
because it was an equalizer for me,
and the world, and pain,
It went inbetween the sharpness and vividness, in which I didn't know how to cope.

It got big
and became
a beast.
I had a love / hate relationship with
the thing.
I sacrificed a lot
for it at the
altar of idolatry.
It wouldn't let anyone get close to me,
My wife, my kids,
I chased them
all away.
I was alone with
the beast.

After years of
pain and degradation,
I put the beast down.
I shot it in
the back of the
head, like a rabid dog.

Life raged on.
Pain and joy came with equal measure,
but I no longer
needed a buffer to
keep living, laughing, and learning.
I finally figured
out how to
truly love.

There is a house with only one window,
And seventeen locks on the door.
There is a porch with an ivory doorbell,
That doesn’t get rung anymore.

There is a room with cracks in the ceiling,
And cobwebs that carpet the floor,
There is a box made of tarnished old silver,
With a rusted old key and a door.

An old music box that is all out of music,
And dusty with years of denial,
Inside the box is a little glass dancer,
Whose legs haven’t danced in a while.

There is a house with only one window,
And seventeen locks on the door.
There is a coatrack of cedar and pine,
That doesn’t hold coats anymore.

There is a clock that’s forgotten the time,
Whose bells have forgotten to ring,
There is a cage on a spindly old table,
With a bird who forgot how to sing.

An old fireplace that no longer holds fire,
A collector of cobwebs and lint,
Alone with a matchbox that’s all out of matches,
And a steel left without any flint

There is a house with only one window,
And seventeen locks on the door.
Haunted by ghosts of the dreams that once were,
But just don’t make sense anymore.

There is a room where broken things hide,
With no window to let in the light,
Pretending that they’re safe behind seventeen locks,
From things that go bump in the night.

A room where the silence is thick on the air,
But the quiet, no comfort imparts,
To the girl in the corner made of paper and glass,
With seventeen holes in her heart.