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Torin Jul 2016
From first call to final rights
The door badge a colorful arrangement
Announcing only loss
We lose the plot
We march in procession to the grave
Our uneneding disposition
We only wake for the deceased
The mourners
The bereaved
All that remains
And how does it register?
When we speak the language of death
Torin Jul 2016
Maybe everything around me is a metaphor
As the old me is dying
Shots ring out ten thousand miles away
Chaos and confusion in my own heart
And in the capital

And the really scary thing
Is not how big it is
But how little it takes
To turn a world upside down

Maybe it is something I can't understand
How my pain can feel so large
While there are woman and children weeping
Pain and suffering in my own heart
And in the capital

Still the strangest thing to me
Is how I can be so selfish
When my own heart still is beating
But there are one hundred people dead
In the capital

And the really scary thing
Is not how great the pain is
But how little it takes
To cause it
A poem I wrote about the attacks in Paris.  You don't need to be religious to pray for the families of the slain in Nice.
Torin Jul 2016
Even through his blue
He painted starry night
His favorite chair
His favorite pipe
And a sealed up bag containing
Hashish
He could not smoke the pain away

A missing ear becomes a symbol
Only the madness of knowing
Ear lobe
His love
The way no one else does
*****
No numb could take the pain away

Van Gogh
Died poor
And alone
In a field that was
His last expression
He died by his own hand
It wasn't even raining

It should have been
Torin Jul 2016
She fell too far to the right
For me to be at my center
And hold her
Better than any arms ever could
I couldn't break at the red light
The only way to stop
Is like a star
Falling in a black hole
She fell too far to the left
So far my hands can't reach her
And all I feel
Is the pain
Of what should have been
Nothings really right
          What
        Is
Left?
Torin Jul 2016
As far as eyes can see
There is distance
The ***** of the world fading from view
Failing as love
I fade from you
There are horizons
Where the sun never rises
The moon in its many disguises
Unwelcomed as night sets
Pocked marked by meteors
As far as eyes can see
There is black and white
The color lost in shades of grey
Indescribable definitions
With no clear line
As far as eyes can see
There is no meaning
And no reason
Only skin that doesn't care as much to feel
And pain that's becoming all too real
Torin Jul 2016
There still is hope
In America
Still
There is
Hope
Torin Jul 2016
We want to love
A simple perfect world
Some masterful design
An unknown
We have heart
Still our blood moves now in vain
And if you cut me how it spills
Always the scars

As long as there's injustice in the world
There is room for jealousy
As long as jealousy still lives
There will be hate

We want to live
Denying the natural order of things
For every up there is a down
And only light when no more darkness
We have faith
Only because these gloomy days
Have taught us how to lose
And lose all hope
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