#erwinism
A song can hold me together
when I’ve been torn apart,
when I’m at the verge
where jagged edges jut out
popping bloated bright
many a things of life.
Lost notes coming together
and stitching my seams
with threads of sound.
Music doesn’t ask for permission
—it breaks in, a trespasser
who knows all the rooms of my head,
who rewires the walls with chords
until they buzz and climb on air’s back.
On the top of their ethereal lungs,
they belt out polished groove
where reflection of my days are caught.
It’s there when I need it
—when silence has teeth,
When the world gnashes,
pressing its weight on my chest.
in the blackness of spirit,
when the lesser light pale
into insignificance,
when all of me is ground to atoms.
Like spring faeries, they uncap the lid, lift it, unleash the lilt cloistered in secret years, they ride gilt-edged fireflies, flitting and fluttering in the mist of colors. And like spring, life comes back to the earth.
I have heard harmonies
build bridges across days
that feel like sinking ships.
I’ve watched melodies
cut through the static
of my thoughts,
Clean and sharp as a blade
sliding through skin.
The bass is a heartbeat,
steady and human,
the strings—veins
unraveling their stories.
Syncopated at times,
as if an arrhythmia.
A song can hold me together,
there was one leaping out of nowhere,
lost in the night,
found its way in my ears,
then in my heart,
in my half-awaken state,
while I clung into sleep under an eye of dreamless rest,
it was light on its feet,
free of gravity.
When I feel lost,
I press play,
and I teleport here,
a night crawler
a room filled with
nothing but sound
and no judgment,
my acoustic soul gets to drink,
where my fears untangle themselves
like knots in a rope.
Music doesn’t lie.
It doesn’t care,
It’s not a ***** coyote
the petulant thief
mistaking mediocrity for simplicity,
Music forgives,
about what I’ve done
or who I’ve been.
It cradles me as I am:
raw and flammable,
A man with a match
clenched between his teeth.
In the slant of the highway,
I roll with tunes sanding
until the roads are even
and the bends straight
for this drifter with a match
clenched between his teeth,
the song pulls it from my mouth,
lights it,
and says,
burn, if you must—but listen.
It tells me I am brave
when I don’t believe it.
It tells me I am whole,
even when the pieces don’t fit.
But I’ve always been a puzzle,
a riddle to myself,
a mystery in a mystery
and a Jack-in-the-box.
When asked why I trust music
like a heathen
collapsing down drear gloom,
funereal mood,
sulked out.
I’ll pause,
let a silence fall
where words should be,
And instead let a rhythm
beat through the air.
A small offering.
Because some things
are answered best
by the sound
of their own making.
There is a gaping chasm in all of us.
One way or another,
we loaded our fractured hearts
with longing,
hoping for an escape,
we shot an embittered gaze
at words that danced on the pages,
swirled in the air on winged notes.
In the dark, I didn’t find myself alone,
I swept the pieces,
ugly, but a whole,
the way a song can hold me together.
Dec 17, 2024
Dec 17, 2024 at 1:23 AM UTC
Years’ worth in our days swirl in our thoughts of lovely hands clasped in ours with no resolve of ever letting go.
Though the fates and sanguine melancholy conspire to break the bonds nothing can keep this sight from being enthralled
shall he, happiness dancing waltz with the sea, ever forget?
The tempest-swept shore of unyielding grace remains true to the beacon, be it in the peaks or prairies; a promise,
no matter how trampled still blossoms without the acquiescence of seasons, be they winter or spring,
until the day a tombstone is offered and a coat rack for weariness to hang,
no smiles will eternally be wasted on a frown as is with fear will be on Pennywise the clown.
We are here, and we are now until we become yesterday, our hearts unbowed
And yet, long after light has left times eyes, and last fogging breath has been drawn,
the echoes resound, love, unyielding, seared into the skin of eternity.
Strands of flesh, a promise, binding lives that once strobed like starlight, the universe chants with shared joys, sorrows, and dreams.
For every stumble, every fracture, every tear that pelted our time, we rise, reforged in the fires of devotion’s heat.
Love is no fleeting gale but the tide that shapes continents, despite the world’s cruel dissonance, harmony prevails.
And when the final curtain falls on this fleeting stage, let it be known we did not merely survive but thrived, kindled.
Nov 24, 2024
Nov 24, 2024 at 3:12 PM UTC
Cedar wood house
aching with arthritis
still standing atop a hill,
at me, she blew a kiss,
dreaming I could feel,
and as made my way
down the horizon
where the flowering
dogwood-covered
peaks rose
to this valley,
where whiskey flows,
old mountain ranges
have always been
November’s ghost.
I’m on this road
thinking it will lead me home,
but all along,
I was wrong,
my home lives with me
in my bones.
Faces I knew by heart,
in time faded until forever gone,
I’m left here singing their song
with their names etched
on winter stones.
This road has grown weary
leading me to golden places
that weren’t even there;
all the while it was I
chasing castles in the air,
and I was foolish enough
to care about running after
a mirage anywhere,
all along,
by my side, the happiness
that I dared myself to find,
has always been with her.
Oct 20, 2024
Oct 20, 2024 at 2:07 AM UTC
Yesterday hid behind the dense
switchgrass
on the look out for us
to light candles of thought,
so it may remind us
of scent, quiet but lingering,
of a fragrance, infused beneath memories’ skin
and ferry us back in time.
seeking forgiveness,
seeking that we might forget,
on the eyes of restlessness an obol shall rest
and leave what was as dead,
as if a rash, cooled to no longer rage,
to no longer itch.
Yet, we can’t forget.
Unbidden, yesterday returns as spring
but with a hint of winter
and the frailty of things.
Do must we,
But break clocks
And wish gears lost,
In the end we are found
On the road where we
left our ghosts.
Sep 22, 2024
Sep 22, 2024 at 2:58 AM UTC
Not long ago
the twilight called you into her arms;
into to the depths of the unknown,
left your name in the care of this world
sweetest sound that leapt from your mother’s lips
and ours.
The tides where you are is unperturbed
by the mortal wind,
and in the clouds a garden sprawls
and thrives at the tip of its universe.
We can only imagine.
If such letter scribbled here shines a light; if our candles burn
may you find it a star in the night.
You are no more,
no more to share this borrowed life;
no more treading in the stream of time;
no more but with me still, stirring yet ever still,
shattered heart never heals.
as the last rays of the sun through the window of your room dim,
Your soul is lit up in our dreams,
as though a candle that eternally burns,
I bid time, return
for you my father had taken flight,
silence lingers in restless nights,
where you be, you be
for we shall have our time,
to reflect on this life; the endless sea
for too, shall we; in the crossroads meet the end of our journey: an inevitable destiny
and where you be, we be.
Sep 13, 2024
Sep 13, 2024 at 9:46 PM UTC
At times, you choke on your breath as you fall. Then, the lids of your eyes shoot open. A sneak preview of a nightmare. You were asleep all along.
Life is but a dream.
Sunset-amber flames curled from the cedar kindling of the great divine,
and lo, from an imperceptible dimension he crouches down to a wick,
you,
us,
them,
me,
on a wax of chance,
on dirt not far from the sun,
we hiss into being and flicker in the cold wind of uncertainty.
From this, a hard-earned lesson; a lifetime is spent reeling love into our arms until time pries them open and make off without yielding to consequence, save for us who are foolish enough to believe we can outlast it.
Who lived to ever tell?
Fracticous hours know not the pain of wasting away as it saunters by, leaving wilted hope frozen beneath its shadow.
Storm clouds in the horizon charged with crackling blue bolts that split trees in the open.
Grief flashes through our eyes like headlights bracing themselves against the graying sky metastasizing into darkness.
Moon-white hair, dyed by the endlessness of crossroads leading to nowhere, is sheared short, and shorter still until they fall limp on the scalp that cradled them.
One can only hope that their roots reach deep down into throbbing wisdom which a weary body has amassed over tumbles and falls.
We know not.
Some nostrils come powdered if only for a moment feel alive until it wears off.
Some hang on cliff of smokes sailing through the air if only for a moment artificially induce emotions other than loneliness.
Some wicks come bent, breaking dirt, submissive, submerged in salt water or oil for a chance to burn another way.
Still, there are those whose heels are filed by dust and sand, smoothening them perhaps, but praying they could be planted and hold flame elsewhere.
But there are wicks that are born with eyes weighed down by the ego and sights nailed to their chin and nose s anchored to the clouds.
Some wicks are coated tips, but in truth are fuses to fireworks that light up the skies. Often loud, leaving s stamp on time.
Some hide, losing themselves, they do.
Heinous crime against the essence of being.
Hiding behind an image that does not exist.
Hiding behind expectations.
Hiding behind a false construct and letting the play of light warm up and comfort misled believers.
Some pile up blocks of wood, glass, steel, silicon, and plastic, hoping to burn brighter but in the end just burn out like the rest.
Perhaps as wicks, we can light those who cannot for themselves, for those who are obscured by shadows, for those who are dampened by the downpour.
Perhaps the world wouldn’t be as dark. Even when the sun is going about her day.
We’ve been falling all eternity.
Life is but a dream.
Sep 13, 2024
Sep 13, 2024 at 9:42 PM UTC
Will I ever reach you
when there are tides surging and sweeping anything in between?
Have you seen something on these stair steps winding within?
Wild-eyed hope scurry into the woods of the night to heed the call,
wasted so many years growing up to find nothing beyond these walls.
I falter hearing blood and friends are in their ways broken, but all I do is listen and pretend to understand,
decipher encrypted messages of fate engraved in their calloused hands.
We are spent being rogue satellites looking for a sign of life,
fledgling wanderers cut by thorns through age made contrite.
When time plucks us out of the tree I’m hoping to pop up somewhere where the sun is free,
unlike this place where the end is only thing guaranteed.
And you and I laugh about it, a reprieve from crying out of sight,
so we hide behind comforting lies,
for the hurt is in the try.
It’s hard to own a face
in a confined and crowded space,
quietly we must go
and in time, leave without a trace.
Yet, though there are waves between us, let me know when you find a beacon guiding you back to the shore,
that unseen in the great unknown, there is much left unexplored.
Sep 13, 2024
Sep 13, 2024 at 9:43 PM UTC