He worked vigorously
Tired himself out
He began to forget
What true loyalty was about

He played even harder
Exhausted to the bone
He wandered aimlessly
With no where left to call home

He touched the sky
On more than one occasion
No matter how many people cared
He kept himself out of the equation

He reached rock bottom
A few too many times
Got himself stuck in a hole
That was too far down to climb

He laid on the ground and prayed
For his one true saving grace
She reached her hands down
And pulled him up, with a smile on her face

You wake up in the same place, every night
Sixteenth and Cass, a cramped studio space,
lying awake, listening to the city jive,
texting me moments you’ve lived through today
cause you choose to keep out of my arms

“Some distance may be the best way to help
combat the feeling we’re moving too fast,
caught on the same old track of committing too soon
and falling too hard.”

And that’d be fine if I felt it too,
but I still smell the shampoo from your hair tattooed on my sheets
I still feel the indent your head left on my chest
and I have to ball my hands into fists, because
letting go reminds me your fingers aren’t between mine.
But it’s for the best I guess, because I don’t believe in taking breaks
I believe in real love until someone’s heart breaks,
and it looks like its going to be mine again

It’s warm tonight, and the lightning feels alive
one flash starts as another begins while two more crack the sky
nightfall reaches for the falling rain
and it’s haunting,
to see shadows shift and crawl,
as bolts race across the sky.

I cross my arms to the errant wind,
but its fists beat upon my face.
Try to brace for when the thunder's on me
but the crash still echoes up my spine.

I close my eyes and smell,
the ozone, as it explodes onto the concrete

I imagine my six senses work as one
and it’s fully engaged
each drop of rain is a moment
falling and ending a million times in each second and
I live in each of those beautifully short lifetimes
caught up and split apart all over the sidewalk
remade, at last, on a porch swing
with an empty seat.

And I am still there,
bound and breathless
my world caught in summer storm.

Polished and refined,
With death I have found
A life below ground
A place I can call mine
Destruction and evil deeds
A breeding of pure hate
Is all that I can create
Out of all these heartless seeds

I punch them in
To the deep sullen dirt
Water them with vengeance
And a sprinkling of hurt
Tonight is the night
I find what dwells below
I don't have a key
But I can bargain with my soul
As I place it into these seeds
I am but reeds in the grass
I'm letting go
Only Heaven knows
The blackness of Hell's wrath

I plant my lifeless soul in this plot
To groom it as it grows
So slowly that nobody knows
It's the place the devil goes to rot
Watered with tears, warmed with fire
And as time stands still, never changing
This fruition of evil continues growing
Until the depths of hell can go no higher

Then it will bloom
A flowering gloom
Growing out of control
The ground will harden
In this here garden
Fertilized by my soul