I hurt you
and I hold that,
I feel it,
I know.
I am trapped between
Silence and consoling.
I love you
because, even with these empty words,
you hold me closer
than before.
We are so afraid
of losing
what we've built.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

When it rains,
do the cracked tips of your fingers itch
to play?
The secret between creator and created
overwhelming.
You, piano man, live.
Empty slowly full
letting go but never fully going.
Sunburn on your back, music in your ear,
I will never understand life
as you do.

Heavy beast and heavy burden
Burned into growing feet,
a mile above all great sentiments of
Home, clouds settle into molds
Carved inside carnivorous minds.

There is no quadrant on this island
You could go
Where I could not see who you created
In me, fiery and dormant, whirlwind
Of silence and fear. I see you everywhere,
In every line on my face,
You exist.

I exist amongst a million cold dandelions in a weary field.
Inescablable youth, river stones wrapped to knarled knees
To ground me to three separate waterfalls,
All who whisper of the dead
To creatures who eat the love from out the backs of children’s heads.

I own a million fragments of a life
And nowhere have I found the one
Who makes them whole.

Was it you, who burned a city
At my fingertips?
I’ll blame it
On the rampaging fire wildflowers
Suffocating California.
Either way, I cannot breathe.

What haunts me?
It’s you, isn’t it.
The 12-33, code 12-56,
No help is coming,
“Refusal to comply” morphs to “missing persons,” reporting
The silence.
The screech, the blip
Of a scanner, seeing red,
Like I could hear the pain
Of a few thousand shaken children
Who lost
Their mothers
To a cloud of noxious smoke.

That’s what haunts me.
Isn’t it.
Children, charred and homeless,
Roaming crumbling streets.

That’s what haunts me.

Open gangly arms are reaching
Forward, to a magic gate
Red and faded, painted beady
dragon eyes.
Little water house, you sing to me,
Ears floating from my head
Towards wispy cotton cattails.

I crave a jaunt with ducklings
In icy morning air,
Even if the pond is softly frozen.

Who lives in murky water?
And sings early winter songs
To a fragile gangly girl
Who's prone to listen
And respond?

Palm-sized apples, bitter cores
Losing noons to grape groves.
I wished to be a raspberry ferry
Floating downstream
Forevermore.

Inferiority perched ready in the waiting misty lake.
Like magic, she floats atop a rippling plain.
Rest in water, breathe deep - the fool.
She flutters above, air bubble out of reach.
Drown drown in the void you create and breathe deep.
"I pity the corpses who lie in the water," you say in the grasp of dead hands.

You are a force and your mind is the block, so do as you wish, but lay still.
However long you gasp for air, you will die regretting free will.

Chipped or ***** or dying
and you can't look past it.
What's special about new? Or is it
that it is
unused?
How much beauty
can you see
in damage?
In use?
I'd like to believe you see worth
in the imperfections
of me.
But what do I know
of your soul, really? And who is to say
you will leave me in any better shape
anyway...
All I can do is hope.