Beauty is an empty cage that shakes the world anew-
Yet, falters at the slightest rage, or faintest sickly hue.
A sweet yet poisonous embrace, it slowly clogs the pores,
Of lonely men of a pious race, slumped against heavens doors.
A heavy weight upon the back of those cursed enough to bear it,
Turned to salt for looking back, now eternally doomed to share it.
The elegance of poise and grace send shackles up the palms
Of the amorous eyes of a lover's face- the most perverted kind of alms.
Oh, Aphrodite had her laugh, her poor afflicted soul,
And now she revels in the past, as penance casts its toll
Upon her sweet reflection, the sole source of her empty joy-
As her heart cries out dejection in the name of Helen of Troy.
Ah, fragile bird have you no cause- to hide your face with shame?
Does happiness subdue your flaws- or is humility to blame?
A lepers skin can hardly hold the burden of an empty nation,
Yet, still the world has bought and sold innocence for infatuation.
There's a subtle pain beneath the ring of a mother's sordid song,
Still she bites her lip as she's forced to sing,  while the audience treads on.
The ****** Mary cast her lot among those new and pure,
Then temptation came from Camelot, and knocked her to the floor.
It's faith that holds her safe and whole, a figurine atop a shelf
Alas, her eyes so bright were smeared with coal, for love has lost itself.
Yes, virtue finds her strength in those too weak to carry further,
Doomed to bear a thorny rose, eternally sworn to serve her.
She's rattling her bones again, in hope for something hidden,
Beneath the glistening shards of glass, twisting and churning within.
How sweet it is to stomp the ground of all that hides the eye
From righteousness and morals sound- is beauty but a lie?
Rituals and good intent lay stagnant at the feet
Of Cleopatra's testament, too indifferent for defeat.
Heaven thrives as the world recoils, collapsing crumpled to the floor-
A rotten corpse of ancient toils, too tired to implore.
I've heard the sirens sing their alms, with intentions pure as snow-
As sailors mindlessly follow along, cursing the maidens as they go.
There's something to be said about a grace so bent on fate
Of that which crafts a sultry face: vanity in its purest state.

A burning star went out last night,
While I paced across the floor-
For, nothing casts as bright a light
As that which is no more.

I saw it flicker distantly,
Across the tortured skies,
Lamenting it's torment, patiently
Because passion yearns demise.

And now, as its reflection wanes
With the subtle, indifferent moon,
Rays pour through my windowpane
To announce its emerging doom.

Oh, fragile beams, you're not alone:
The world is too at bay,
As you beat against the night- unknown,
For, your splendor casts decay.

Yes, I've seen the sun set many nights,
And held my head to sea,
But never felt a greater fright
Than the light quivering in me.

Growing up never comes when you expect it:
It's when you realize that the suicide note under your mattress
Probably has a few too many commas where semicolons should be,
And a little too much emphasis on the last four years of your life-
Missed due dates, flunked exams, and friendships that were supposed to be forever.
It's when you figure out that the boy you spent your freshman year of college worrying about
Never even knew the name of your favorite book,
Or anything else that really mattered.
It isn't something you can predict, or prepare for-
It isn't a sudden shift of priorities that all of a sudden appear
Somewhere in your subconscious, making it a lot easier to get up at 9am for a statistics class
That you're inevitably going to fail.
It isn't anything you do that will change, but rather
A shift inside of you that slowly shakes your entire being.
Youth is only beautiful until it's corrupted,
By the sultry hands of time, beckoning you forward when all you ever wanted to do was hide.
It slowly seeps down into the darkest corners of your mind,
Swallowing up all that innocent ambition
Flung upon you in the fifth grade by a board of indifferent teachers
Who decided to deem you gifted, introducing you to a world of knowledge
Too fascinating to mingle with the uncertainty of responsibility.
There's something frightening about growing old,
Maybe it's because you spent one too many hours of your childhood
Pretending to be someone else- caught up in a storybook world
Full of daydreams and simplicity, too one dimensional for reality.
It's not that it goes away all of a sudden: all the premature doubt
And impulsive wishes of death, or something like it.
But rather, it takes a different form-
That which was once a big red ball full of passionate emotions,
Has deflated, leaving you with only a faint residue of what you used to feel.
Maybe, you got your wish after all- something had to die, you know,
In order for you to carry on without losing your mind.
It's a sad paradox, this sequence of living,
As intuition slowly deteriorates, and common sense
Slinks in, in its premeditated, yet lackluster manner,
And before you know it, you're not a kid anymore.
Peter Pan flew the coop years ago, but Neverland still remains,
A testimony to all the lost childhoods of the ones
Too eager to lay their stake in the land of milk and honey.

My aunt is 40 years old and she was coloring
with crayons on the bathroom floor after a bad spell.
We kept them in the cabinet under the sink
so she could pull them out to calm her down,
or pull her out,
of the dream she was having over glazed eyes that weren't sleeping.
She would talk to us about silly things
that happened to her or how she met
her husband after the war in his pretty,
neat, and navy blue military jacket.

She really met my uncle
on the train to Chicago in 1977,
but we don't tell her that because it doesn't make a difference
and it won't make her feel any better.
The truth never really does that
I've learned.

That's the thing about the rest of your life.
When you're sixteen and beautiful with
a cute brown bob and eyes to match
you think you can do anything
and when you picture
the rest of your life it doesn't include
lying in a bath robe talking to your niece
about something you never did or never had
with spit on your chin and hands that need washed
coloring a picture in a book meant for kids.

You never thought you'd be stuck
being a kid
sometimes.
Out of control,
shaky,
twisted
and a little bit beautiful
through things.
You never thought you'd be missing some parts,
or you'd be spacey
or empty
in bad, bad moments like this.

But that's how it is and that's how it was
for my aunt as she tried to formulate her thoughts
into something she was dying and dying to tell me.

I didn't know what she wanted or how to
fix
all the things I didn't quite understand were happening.
All I know is that she
is a child
and children need attention, to be played with, and to be loved.
So I picked up a crayon and starting coloring
around the edges she had missed
trying to fill her in.

Religion brought me tea at noon,
And taught me how to pray,
To God, and birds, and indifferent moon
That holds the world at bay.

Heaven came to me disguised,
Beneath the heavy drone,
Of millions of silent prayers,
Pleading to be left alone.

I heard the cries of anguished souls,
Lamenting their fate,
For penance costs a heavy toll
To walk the narrow and straight.

I found my heart laid out to dry
Upon the chapel floor,
As saints and sinners passed it by,
Too busy to implore.

I paid my dues at Sunday mass,
And sold my soul last June,
Because infatuation with the past
Brings even the pure to ruin.

I heard the angels singing out
A sad and passionate song,
As the world shrunk back in pious doubt,
They continued on and on.

I fell into a rabbits hole,
Full of all that isn't,
I accepted Him to make me whole,
The most righteous kind of prison.

Losing you is like waking up on your 18th birthday,
And feeling no different than the day before,
Yet knowing that something inside you is taking its course.
Week after week, gradually you become older,
In a way that can't be measured by years.
You mark out your calendar as if keeping record will stop time from driving you mad.
Birthday dinners, doctors appointments, and important obligations
Peak out from under black scribbles and abstract musings.
Moving on is when the page is full and blotted,
And it's time to move to February.
We're fated for that kind of closure, I think.
The past months aren't any less real or poignant now that they've been pushed aside,
But they can't affect me like they once did.
Missed lunch dates and last minute schedule revisions
Don't mean anything less than when they were happening,
But their significance was left, crumpled and blacked out on the face of January.
Stuck in the distant space where past months vanish.
Holding on is when you accidentally write 2012
Instead of 2013, and have to quickly distort the two
Into a three, before anyone has time to notice.
There's no sentiment attached, instead it's a testament of broken routine
And nothing more.
That's how losing you feels.
There's no wilted rose or breaking waves
To symbolize a heartache that's no longer here,
Those sentiments of emotion left along with you
And the cold, indifferent agenda of January.
I tried to fight it off as long as I could,
By pushing you into a corner of my mind,
Almost impossible escape,
Holding fast to the memories we share,
Convincing myself it wasn't over,
That there was still hope,
That I still cared.
I was never afraid of moving on,
Or losing you,
No, I knew that would be inevitable,
Beautiful, almost.
Instead, it was no longer caring that scared me:
My capability to shut off all emotion,
With the switch of a button,
Obliterate all of what we had.
It's too late now, even these words fall flat
Against my self made wall
Of gentle indifference and time.
Soon February will fade to march,
Leaving January buried deeper beneath the fabric of closure.