You see the slump in my shoulders
the way I carry myself
the burdens of boulders
that threaten my health.

When you ask what's wrong
I pull up my guard
don't want your pity or sad song
won't tell you why life's hard.

So if you want to know
I'll bottle it inside
wrap up all remains in a black bow
and tell you I'm fine.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

I lay in the bathtub soaking
wet with water running
around my silhouette.  Shaking
as the washcloth smeared regrets
over my skin. The bubbles
give my sins a scent.

As I vent I leave the shower
running so my sobs
are the only thing drowning.
The constant tapping on my face
keeps me awake as I sink into
the various stews my mind creates.

Weights are lifted with pruning. Peeling
of dead skin keeps me from
reeling into depression. There is a harmonic
progression between the faucet and my face,
the scrubbing and my disgrace, the steam and
my own embrace.

I need this state. The decompression
from being bottled up, like a coke, with a smile
is worthwhile. It teaches me
that the expression of  weakness
is key in the building of a better Timothy.

---

I've done some research
On cancer's cause
Western medicine, Dr Oz.

They don't have answers, I'm afraid.
And the cure is in what GOD made.

Cancer's vector? A simple virus.
A parasite and a fungus.

Candida overgrowth.
Radiation. Stress.
We all face this in the West.

So are there answers? Well. Let's see.
Tell me if you don't agree.

Sodas should go down the drain
They have sugar or aspertame.

Sugar feeds cancer. Cut it out!
I KNOW that this will make you pout
But you can find nuts a tasty treat
Find some that you like to eat!

Say NO to coffee. All caffeine.
Eat kale and other leafy greens.

If you want nutrition saved
Cut the cord on your microwave!
They watered plants
with water nuked
They died. Nutrition down the tubes.
So no TV dinners. Processed foods.

No fruits or veggies grown GMOs.
WHEAT is bad! And on it goes.

So it may cost a little more?
Shop your local health food store!

What does it matter?
What's cancer's cost?
And your life will not be lost!

If you tire of reading this
There may be important
things you miss... READ ON!

NATURAL REMEDIES FOR CANCER

Blackstrap molasses. 1 tablespoon
Baking soda. 1 teaspoon
Mix with a glass of water and drink.
(Baking soda should be found at
a health food store)
Blackstrap molasses can also be used
topically for skin cancer.

Tincture of the husk of the
Black walnut nut. 2 drops
Tincture of clove. 2 drops
Tincture of wormwood. 2 drops
Mix in a glass of water and drink. Add lemon and honey.
It'll taste better.

IMPORTANT!
DO NOT USE TAP
OR BOTTLED WATER!
Get distilled water and add
Minerals in liquid form.
Your health food store will have this.

There are many herbs and spices
Which help.
There's iodine in common kelp.
Turmeric
Cucumin
etc.

VERY POWERFUL
Soursop tea. Green tea sans caffeine
Fresh vegetables of the rainbow...
Colors are viamins!

Vitamin supplements
Especially B-17

If you can't find these in your
Health food store ask them to order.
Or go on Amazon and order.

From Alan Lomax to the commercial art and now the money machine.

At the turn of the century; when sound recording 1st became available to the masses, recording a song was an opportunity for folk to reach out; and tell the world something up front and personal.
It meant that people were able to put themselves on “The record” A way of leaving a permanent audio statement, an epitaph, an audio sound bite immortalising ~ life, mood, emotion captured and bottled for all eternity.
(A medium that conveyed messages from artists and storytellers of all kinds)

A recording was also a great addition to "The family album" something more tangible, a window to a real person, with a real life, a message and a point of view; a legacy, a blast from the past.
Few people expected sound prints to be re-designed, homogenised, formulated, copied, repackaged and that art and the message would be played over and over again by new artists in the form of "cover music" or that the style of the messages would become secularized, seperated into distinctive groups, or constrained by an elite clique or commercial genre.
Labelling and streamlining art & music mostly benefits the commercial art & music industry; and no longer the artists and creators.

I've no problem with good business, or the multi-billion pound industrys that have gained commercial success.

However the process of mass homogenisation, product synthesis, marketing, streamlining and then packaging fashion, sound and synthetic culture to sell a product, leaves very little room for creative people to just be creative.

A medium originally open to many for self expression, a historical record, an archive, a voice, a personal message;
Is now just a vehicle for advertising and perpetuating a genre of nonsense, so much so that there is now more white noise immortalised than messages.

To re-cap ~ I Think that creativity and expressionism; like story telling conveys moods and messages from the present and past!
Artists and musicians should have the opportunity to create and produce more information than they copy; thus creating a richer more colourful tapestry, whilst not devaluing the message of their predecessors!

Purcy Flaherty.

Raised
in this floating
world, forever
deep.
You can’t drain the ocean

Decidedly from down
south of here
You can’t un-trace the roots.

You can’t lie and say,
“This isn’t where I grew up”
You can’t deny the fruits
of what was planted two generations ago
when your grandpatents arrived from the Philippines, seeds in tow
soil for the taking
You can’t confiscate what they claimed
when they planted their flags
into the moon-white sand of a beach in Florida
on a far side of the planet
their forefarthers have never seen

You can’t say those flags weren’t there
when wind came
You can't ***** out that pride
of country,
cut off its native tongue and its acquired taste, or pass up the plate of fried lumpia and rice passed down from the kitchen of your Daddylol
feeding seven kids day in and out with tomatoes he planted,
chickens he raised, Malonggay leaves he grew
with thumbs so green they wrote in the papers about it
He was a farmer
Your grandmother, a nurse
And i was writer
And this is our story

You can’t erase the letters of your name,
your lineage written all over it
like a map
of everywhere we been
You can’t take back the words in Tagalog and Chavacano
your Lola Shirley must have sang your mother to sleep with
You can’t take their dreams

You can't just wake up one day and undo
the ripple effects their moves
created across waters 10,000 miles east of here,
the rolling waves they curled into
or the faraway shores they washed up upon
Bottled messages in hand
Our legends held within
You can’t say centuries from now that they won’t feel it
when their feet hit the sand of their own frontier
beside the waves we stayed making
a history written in deep water
for those who come after you
to sail above and beyond.

i.


not bad,
i commented to myself as i watched you do your thing
for the first time ever ;
not bad was my way to say
extraordinary
still is today
i have standards, you see and —
well...
they were met when i
heard you say,
"that's only half what
i can do."

let's get this straight:
i was the best at what i do until
you came around ;
it's not like i'm mad though —
quite the opposite 
in fact.


ii.


here's something else:
i have always liked the way your eyes
shot daggers
even when you were smiling ;
a death stare, they named it and, you know,
i won't call them wrong —
i'm rather fluent with the concepts of
death
and staring myself, after all.


ah,
do you remember?
when we spoke to each other —
it was always a sparring of
eyes
rather than words.


iii.


a fact:
you have been called cold
more often than
you have been called pleasant ;
i know  —
it's not like you'd disagree
not like you'd be stupid enough to
deny ;
cold is a comfortable shadow
to hide in,
something people like us
wear as a coat or
a scarf
from july to june.


now,
there's this saying that the addition of
two negative objects
turns them a positive
result ;
i'm not much of a scholar so, honey,
what's on your mind?


iv.


i get it now,
if i'm propellers
you are wings —
rather than a mirror, we're
distorted reflects
a thing evolution knows
a great deal about ;
this yearning is the aspect of you
i'd wish to keep
bottled up ;
"what for?" you'd ask.


no,
yearning is not a thing
i'm a stranger to ;
i've yearned for many things including
strength
sleep
serotonin
and you —
i've been struggling
to make them mine, though
perhaps because i'm never really trying.


v.


that's how you do it:
you take what you want with
clawed hands
accomplish miracles with
thunderous silence —
an entity of cruel fairness,
icy anger but —
what you want is a complicated
thing
with definite shape to your eyes
but blurry to those of
others.


okay,
i'm neither believer nor seer but
here's a little prediction :
the day you are satisfied is the day
hellmouth
shuts down upon us all and
half of me
prays for it.


vi.


about extremes —
some will say grey is a better shade and
though i confess
it does have its charms,
it still has to paint me a picture more striking
than a soul with
adamentine purpose.

see —
i stare as you pass by,
terrific in beauty
beautiful in hardness and
off —
goes my heart, sanity, ego
and shirt.

Mashup

Part I (and there is a Part II & III)

I mashup me, myself, and perhaps thee too.


Excerpts from my poems about poets, poetry and the process of compositions. In chronological order, earliest to latest.
---------------------------------------------------------­------------------

With words we paint,
With syllables we embrace,
Tasked and ennobled,
We are forever fully employed,
Missionaries to all,
You too, are one as well,
Your fate can't be renounced,

when the rusted unborn poem notion is almost done,
but remains unpublished,
for no beginning, no title, can be found,

Then I recall the cornucopia days,
when poems spilled forth like
there would never be a when they wouldn't,

I revisit my old friends, couplets, twins and triplets,
seeded inside every tear, happy or sad,
sweetly and freely,

my old friends, reread,
words rearranged in new combinations,
old poems, plants bearing new fruits,
re-titled all of them, one name,
a collection entitled,
My Solace.

My eyes, my eyes, see only the
Totality of this moment.
When mastery of multi-tasking
Is the single best poem this man ever
Penned with his entirety,
Of which not word survived
For its unspoken silence was its glory.

My compact with you is to
remind us all, through
music, dance, words (poetry) and love,
This is the only compact
with the power of human law.

Color me flesh ****,
Color me blue bottled,
Red ripped asunder,
The sweetness ascribed to my love poetry,
A subtraction of the bitterness of a failed life.
Colorist of my seams, my woven words,
I am white now, my canvas completed,
Waiting for another poet to write over it,
And chaining new words to what was prior writ.

Al,  what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.

You ask me how I find the time,
(To write)
But time is not the issue,
For they, are all prepared, needing only recognition,
For they, are all in readiness, needing only composition.

For who's who in poetry
is all of us!
saviors and failures,
recorders and decoders,
night writers of the oohs and aahs
of dreams and nightmares.

When this poet cannot,
no longer, anymore,
tastes his poems upon your lips,
keep your poems within his heart,
then he breathes no more,
and becomes one who was, yet is,
because of you, in poetry.

Awful poetry, some good, you will write.
But write and write till your heart be calmed,
For even ancient kings felt the anguish  of the soul,
And we profit even today by King David's psalms.

This wizened fool has his hands full,
Mouths to feed, bread to earn and bake,
As midnight is almost nigh,
He rests prone and adds a verse to this old poem
He long ago scribbled down, grimace-smiles now,
Realizing there is little difference tween him and the
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland.

For poetry salves his wounds still, even now,
Unashamedly, he thinks, hallelujah!

The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.

The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.

To write but a single line,
That uplifts the heart,
Eases pain, gives delight to strangers,
And makes you laugh out loud
With shivery pleasure,
That usurps a whole day and night,
That is a poet's true measure.

Mastery of the poetic,
Measured not in quantity,
But in tears of satisfaction
When others love the taste
Of newly born stanzas
Upon their lips,
couplets born and transcribed
In the wee hours of the morn.

You can have my love, my soul,
But leave to me the labor of poetry.
Loving you with words is my domain,
The speciality of my terrain,
So no more hasta la pasta if you please,
And by the bye, I would love some
Tonight, say around eight,
At a restaurant where the moon is
The only light illuminating our faces.

Until you have bent your ear to Shakespeare's sonnets,
Till you have laughed with Ogden Nash,
Wept with Frost, visited Byron's ghost,
Read the songs of King Solomon,
And once you
Despair of being their equal,
Shed your winter coat of worry,
***** your courage to the sticking point,
Begin to write then with reckless courage,
Unfettered abandon, make a fool of yourself!

Scout the competition.
Weep, for you and I will never surpass
The giants who preceeded us, and yet,
Laugh, cause they thought the same thing as well...

All I can say is
En Garde!
I will be coming back soon enough.
because you are my best poem,
and the there will always be another stanza needed...

I am no Houdini, it's quite simple,
After 5 years, I read her like a book,
A book of my poems that she has inspired,
Entitled the Mysteries of True Love.

Each letter, a morsel in your mouth,
Each phrase, a fork full of pleasure,
Each stanza, a full fledged member in a tasting menu,
Perfect only in conjunction with the preceding flavor,
and the one that follows,  and the one that follows.

Taste each poem upon thy tongue and then pass it on,
you know how....

Each word, whether chewed thoroughly,
or lightly placed upon a bud for flavor,
needs the careful consideration of your mouth.

When I hear Shakespeare
My own voice is stilled, it's poverty exposed,
I am ashamed of every word I ever wrote.
Hush me not, for t'is true,
Yet I write on for an audience of one, on but one subject,
A subject, a life, mine,
yet, still unmastered, even after decades of trying.

My poverty exposed, unmasked
for what it is worth, or not.

Lest you think this is paean to men
Another grand male boast,
Be advised this ditty be writty
By a man who, while no longer gritty,
Just put jelly on his scrambled eggs
And ketchup on his toast!

Mmmmmmm there might be a poem
Lurking in that too...

So baby,
shut it down,
turn me on,
make me warm for real,
glide your now practiced fingertips on my grizzled cheek,
whisper a phony "ugh,"
cause I know, you will read
this iPad love poem
and cherish us for evermore.

Soul of brevity, poetically,
I'll never be, this insightful critique,
("Your poems are too long")
I've received in multiplicity, from sources internationally,
perhaps, lucky me, you've read this far?

Surely still a chance that an angel will touch my lips,
my internal parts sign a final treaty, inside an armistice,
night sweats sighs a thing fully forgot,
poetry writing can now be dispatched,
maybe that will be my Act III,
if I can stay awake for it.

Walk a Single Word.
To write a poem, a single word select,
embrace it with a fullness that lovers, family and friends
and the *** who cut you off in the middle lane
do daily provide

Grasp said word, walk it onto a yellow, blue lined, legal pad,
touch said word with the whisper of a single tear, a single curse,
like a pebble in a pond,
said word will miracle expand
hugging you with concentric circles of lines of poetry,
visionary words and stanzas that almost complete themselves
and you

The rhymes you will require, the meter you will select,
no need to struggle, hug your child and as Abraham told Isaac,
God and Google will provide

The simple trickster, a wordsmiths, even your average poet laureate,
got nothing on you that you don't already possess, to offer them
Plenty stiff competition.

Therefore,
My life is mine to take,
Should I wish to choose the
Place, date, the time
To let the poetry cease,
I will announce it mostly gladly
with a blessing of
Shehecheyanu* and a
Smiling "by your leave."

Sometimes the pen, unnecessary.
The poem, fully formed, in his mouth, born.

Silent back labor, unbeknownst the existence
Of such a thing, yet knowing now
His contractions, coming fast and furious,
Eyes many centimeters dilated,
The sac's fluid breaks upon the poet's tongue,
He pronounces in a single breath his
Immaculate Completion

When his hand to mouth, goes,
Like Moses, when he touched the burning coals,
The words are signaled, freedom!
The words announce:
We are now created, conceived and
This new oxgenated atmosphere is now our
final resting place.

This child, the poem, this exhalation,
Once freed, is lost to him,
It's been renamed, retitled,
by hundreds of newly adopted parents as
Ours.

Words needed to create another love poem for my beloved,
Nose and toes, ******* and eyes all regularly poetically,
Cherished,
Now I have knuckled under
And competed a full poetic body scan
And have paid tribute to each n'every part of you,
Even your knuckles...which I am busy kissing
While writing this poem in my distracted mind.

The next time it be for the morning meal,
I will eat it in bed,
far from their kitchen hiding places,
And celebrate my heroics with original
Frosted Flakes and milk,
And extra sugar just for spite!
The bedroom fairies, living under the pillow,
Emerge to beg in iambic pentameter,
Won't get nary a bite,
Until they they return the poems they stole
From my midnight dreams.

I am exhausted. So many gems to decorate
My body, my soul. I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out, none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.


On and on thru the night,
Riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
Ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
Single words and elegies,
Free verse and a lot of fking curse words,
It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ

You may think this story apocryphal
Which is another way of saying untrue,
But I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
To this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
And it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
And it has never since that day,
Left my grasp

Some poems never end,
Nor meant too.
Alliterative phrases, invitations,
Add a verse, a word, even a sound,
An exclamation of delight,
A stanza in its own right.

Unfinished work, forever additive, collaborative.
Modify mine, pass it on.

Read somewhere some poems never end,
Now I understand that better,
Cause there are no bandages, stitches that can close,
Cause there are no pills, switches that can shut off,
The ripping sound, the cutting noise, the raging inside
Heard blocks away, almost reaching a house where you live,
And dying in the same **** place that
Poems come from after midnight.

And even if I am stranger now,
I'll prove useful to have around,
Giving you poetry precisely couture designed by command,
So I fully expect to be hugging you happy
Soon enough.
You'll see.

No matter combo or organized, a good nights sleep
Elusive
So poetry is my default rest position,
My screen savior.

**So when I warn,
All my poems are copywrighted,
My meaning simple, words crystal,
They belong to us, but mostly to you
Who are reading these words

She walked in with a cut up eye, stardust in her broken bones and a smile
And before he and I could ask, "what have you done now" she held out her hands
In her palms she collected galaxies that sprouted not from this universe but strength.
And when you looked in her eyes instead of brown,
You'd see songs from seabirds that I never heard because,
Seabirds don't sing,
But in this scope they also tight line across the ways her eyes lit up the moon in the sky.
And then she says, "little sister, never let anyone make you manageable. Always remain untamed."
The swirls in her dress when she spun out of the room
Burst out flared frayed and flamed.
She was an atomic cloud of energy, but her rain didn't fall; it splattered.
Then that night wrapped in white sheets that failed to hold me still
Watching her from the bed across from mine,
I whispered: "welcome home, I’ve missed you."
But instead of peaceful prayers and stories of springing surprises,
I hear the sounds of hurt dripping into soft pillows and wet tears.
My sister never cries.
Sitting up in bed with the streetlight glowing on her face
The only thing she tells me using sea salt and lemons,
Dangerous dreams from swimming with the devil
And daggers made from hopeful rising levels
Is, "please don't fade away.”
The cobwebs on my lips where spiders have spun intricate art
On my teeth told her I don't speak very often.
This individuality has been stripped off my tongue
Now I only taste fire made of wooden chips, not adventure.
The sand grains from the park on school premises
And not the beach where at least they'd be water kissed.
Please don’t fade away.
I could be the replica of everyone else; my shadow kind of looks like yours doesn't it?
I sunk back in the sheets afraid of her tears but before I could disappear into blankness
She gathers feathers in her words and asks,
"Who wouldn't drown the stars for you?
You painted yourself with the colour of the ocean
But only you understood the ocean is not just blue
During sunset it’s the colour of fire running through your veins
As you sink your teeth in the bar of yogurt, ambitions, dreams and raspberries.
In the middle of the night it is the colour of the moon
And the ruffles of waves that shake you awake.
During the birth of dawn it is the fight in your heart bleeding electricity in your eyes,
The light of illumination never lacking loyalty in those dreams of the sea you swallow."
What’s more familiar to us, time? Or memories?
Instead of playing life on the record player
We play it by the clock and repeat the same day over again
Our air smells the same, and we all play the same games.
The message is urgent and it lies in all of us.
Please don’t fade away as I lose all of my trust.
Dying in secrecy that no one wants to touch
It’s a boundless barrier, scary bordering scarier.
Please don’t fade away.
Everything inside of us that craves to be heard,
Is bottled up in the same fashion trends clothing our bodies
The same career choices that teach no new hobbies
The same sentences cling to the walls in hallways and lobbies.
The ignorance in not trying new things
Flies into everyone
Maybe it was a plane crash
Made of rumors and old traditions
That killed people’s appetites for new choices
That suffocated the volume in people’s voices
That left me swimming between everything but rejoices.
When I cant think right I walk left
But we are not old photographs that deteriorate our personalities
We are bodies of water but no one needs a shore
No one needs to send you approval when you’re so sure
Like I was told using sea salt and lemons
I’ll build on that with cucumbers and daisies,
Break out. And please, don’t fade away.
How can someone made of flowers be degraded to dust?
How can you sit there in chains that turn you to rust?
How can ugly gnomes manage to catch stardust?
How can monsters keep murdering like they must?  
I don’t know which way the wind will blow
But when it does it will blow strong
And I will not blow with it.
I heard you say society tells you to be yourself
You are yourself, and then society says no you’re doing it wrong.
Here, watch me, it’s like this.

The radio alarm is a bit too strong
for his afternoon hangover taste.
He goes downstairs, sets the coffee to brewing,
rubs his hands through the hair on his face.
As he sits and he smokes, he can't quite think of the joke
she once told him about wooden eyes.

The coffee is ready, his hands are unsteady
as he pours his first cup of cure.
He tries to be happy he woke up today,
but whether being awake's good, he's not sure.
Outside it's raining, but he's gallantly straining
to keep his head and his spirits held high.

As soft as the flower bending out in its shower,
fiercer than hornets defending their hives,
the memories of sharing her secrets and sheets
run him through like sharp rusty knives.
He decides that his cup isn't quite strong enough,
takes the ***** from the shelf, gives a sigh.

He goes to the porch to put words to the torch
he still carries and knows whiskey just fuels.
Thunder puts a voice to his hammering heart.
Through ink, his knotted mind unspools,
writing of butterflies and of how his love lies
cocooned under unreachable skies.

From teardrops to streams to winter moonbeams
to a peach, firm and sweet, in the spring,
he writes of pilgrims and language and soft dew-damp grass
and how he sees her in everything.
He rambles and grieves, and he just can't believe
how much he has bottled inside.

He writes how the leaves, when they whisper in the breeze,
bring to mind her warm breath in his mouth,
how when walking through woods he loves the birdsong
when they fly back in the summer from the south
because she would sing too and he always knew
he wanted that sound in his ears when he died.

He writes even the streetlights, fluorescent and bright,
make him miss the diamond chips in her eyes,
how the fountain in the park plays watersongs in the dark
when he goes to make wishes on pennies
and while he's there he gets hoping
there will be some spare wishes
but so far there haven't been any.

He writes that the cold makes him think of the old
hotel where they spent most of a week,
lazing and gazing quite lovingly,
and how he brushed an eyelash off her cheek.
The crickets and frogs and all of the dogs
sound as mournful as he feels each night.

He writes about chocolate and fun in arcades,
he writes about stairwells and butchers' blades,
and closed-casket funerals, and Christmas parades,
then sad flightless birds and tiny brigades
of ants taking crumbs from the toast he had made,
and political goons with their soulless tirades,
old-timey duels and terrible grades,
strangers on  buses, harp music, maids,
the weird afterimages when all the light fades,
the pleasure of dinnertime serenades,
sidewalk chalk, wine, and hand grenades.

He writes of how much fun it would be to fly,
and saltwater taffy and ferryboat rides,

sitting on couches, scratched CD's,
pets gone too soon and overdraft fees,

the beach, the lake, the mountains, the fog,
David Bowie's funny, ill-smelling bog,

jewelry, perfume, sushi, and swans,
the smell of the pavement when the rain's come and gone,

and shots and opera, and Oprah and ***,
and tiny bikinis with yellow dots,

stained glass lamps, and gum and stamps,
her dancing shoes on wheelchair ramps,
that overstrange feeling of déjà vu,
filet mignon and cordon bleu,

bad haircuts at county fairs,
honey and clover, stockmarket shares,
the comfort of nestling in overstuffed chairs,
and her poking fun at the clothes that he wears,
and giraffes and hippos and polar bears,
cumbersome car consoles, monsters' lairs,
singing in public and ignoring the stares,
botching it badly while making éclairs,
misspelled tattoos, socks not in pairs,
people who take something that isn't theirs,
the future of man, and man's future cares,

why people so frequently lie
and bury themselves so deep in the mire
of monetary profits when money won't buy
a single next second because time's not for hire,
and that he sees her in everything.

Lost and exhausted, he sits back and reads
He barks a mad laugh when he suddenly sees
After such turmoil, just one words he needs.
Everything.  
She’ll always be everything.

Songs of Oregon: No. 1 “Gonna Make You Crazy, That Place”

nuts, crazy peeps

whomever wherever,
regardless of race creed color or gender (did I get ‘em all?)
current state of residence (geo-identified)
a poem - the very same recited,
as a disclaimer, a yellow finger wagging warning:

“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”

now kids, I’m a veteran of foreign travel,
many continents, cold and hot, rivers and seas,
some living, some dead,
some so big they named it Endless,
been to the great cities, Swiss villages,
pyramids, climbed Masada,
danced on grapes (why can’t I recall where)
skied the Alps, trekked the Sinai Desert,
clubbed in Rio, and danced till morn,
on a certain Greek Isle that rhymes with Mickey’s Nose
even been to L.A and San Fran, left poorer
but in sync,
always came home
with my mind decently reshaped

me/ a product of gritty unpretty grime,
streets of normal humans
acting like normal escaped mad persons,
this brutal city island instilled a
layer of fat and smog neath my skin,
a kind of migrating duck-like survival kit,
came with a homing beacon included

the those of you who know me,
perhaps too well, ken we citified islanders
love our beaches (fire hydrants)
cherish our sun dappled blessings
upon on farms (window sill herb gardens)
and sunning settlements (rooftops)

they say our tap water is secretly bottled,
sold in places where the springs purportedly
run crystalline

though we don’t got no pinot, just sweet concord grape,
so sweet, the wine of children and street nodders,
needy for instant sugar highs

so as we new Yorkers proudly
say on our license plates,
prove it or stfup!

so a first hand investigation for which
the taxpayers won’t be charged even a lousy mill,
deemed necessary to put to rest this crazy claiming warning

“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”

guessing must be something in the water and the wine

855 miles between you and me.
But yet I feel your pain as if we were hand in hand.
I've given you the strength to keep on living
And you've given me the love I lack.
Baby girl, I worry about you.
Your tears are the rain outside my window
And your blood runs in my veins.
The emotions bottled up in your scarred body
Explode in my own heart as well.
Four more years, my lovely friend.
I expect to meet you there.
Please don't give up.

Blue sky, smooth sailing
Balancing neon lights of my mind's eye
(as glassy waves lap against my feet)
And the innocent sands of a white-gold beach fantasy,
Soft, warm, and as sure as the day.

Graying sky, persevering
Forging ahead through tempestuous waves
(growing faster in speed and height than a father's son)
I cling to the sample of that white sand,
Bottled up in a tiny plastic nip.

Blackened sky, capsizing
Plummeting into jet-black sea
(stained in the lights of my fallen Titan)
The nip shattering, without my notice
Icebergs visible on the horizon of her heart
My sand lost into the radiant black seas
Never to be seen again.

Waves crashing, upon my heart,
All I've come to know, was ripped apart,
My clean arms, have bleeding scars,
My thoughts, have been butchered,
Emotions never ending, bottled up inside,
The screams you never hear, the ones I always hide,
In this lonesome room, yet another,
Suicide.

We are a collection of our own experiences. A destruction of our own making, we undo ourselves with what we've learned, unlove ourselves with what we've learned.

I have looked in the mirror to a stranger too many times for my liking. The girl that I became mirrored back in agony to the girl she wanted to be. She wanted to be a poet, she wanted to be a portrait. She wanted to be stronger.

My experiences have become me. But I don't want to be defined by broken hearted and tormented by my dreams. I don't want to be defined by the dark circles under my eyes, the heart beat in my ears. I wanted to be stronger.

I have looked in the mirror too many times and seen stranger, seen liar, seen a girl who kept too much bottled up and my demons creep behind me like the horror movies I'm so akin to watching. They wave hello like they belong and I have to break my stare.

The poet in me says this is another experience, another lifeline, another tether to the earth that I love so much. An earth that I love so much that it broke me.

The poet in me says this experience will make me stronger.

I must report the passing of a dear old friend today
I'm not sure when it happened, but I felt I had to say
That the Vegas that's in movies, books, and on TV
Is not the one that you will find, it's not the one you'll see
I know your expectations are of glitter and of lights
Of singers in the lounges that play into the night
The lounges now are empty of the singers and the bands
Instead they're full of djs, and bad magicians badly tanned,
The song that was Las Vegas is not one thats in your head
The one you know with Elvis, is now gone, you see it's dead
The old hotels are gone now, It's not like it was before
The new buzzword in Vegas is now just, MORE, MORE, MORE
It's now a culture aimed at being bigger than the rest
For now it seems that bigger, means you're now known as the best
There's hotels full of bedbugs and the service is the *****
But, the casino doesn't care if there are people in the pits
The strip is nearly two miles long, and almost half is blank
It's like the desert opened up and ten casinos sank
At one end is the Stratosphere, it's got a real cool view
But, because of it's location it's not easy to get to
The Sahara was next closest, but now the Lady's gone
And to walk from this tram stop at night, well I cannot say it's fun
It's dingy and it's ***** and it's not a place to be
I wouldn't recommend this part, it's not a place to see
Freemont Street, The Old Vegas is off the beaten path
It's an hour ride upon the bus, and a taxi...do the math
It's just a place to go to once, there's no reason to return
And if you ever visit here, I think that's what you'll learn
The middle part of the strip is glitzy and spread out
It's kind of close to what Las Vegas is about
It's not all geared to people who have childeren all in tow
These ultra cool casinos is where you might just want to go
The other end is busy, but it's full of gloom and doom
And on every single corner, you can get girls to your room
There's people handing out small cards with women with a price
Who'll come up to your room and well....let's say they don't play dice
On every bridge across the strip, there's beggars and there's hawkers
They're selling everything from cds to bottled dollar water
It's tourist town, a fast food mess, it's Disneyland on crack
There's lots of things to do down here, but you must always watch your back
Did The Mirage **** it?, when Steve Wynn said let's go really huge
Hotels like this were ten times larger than the Moulin Rouge
It wasn't when Hughes came to town and bought the Desert Inn
You know the land that's now the new home of the casino known as Wynn?
It didn't die when Elvis left, it sill was full of life
But at someime since the town has died, it has fallen on the knife
The strip itself is two miles long, but you know that that's not all
In the years since Elvis left, it's become a big strip mall
There's stores here selling plastic , and the people shop in streams
I'm not sure, but to me NIKE is not the Vegas in my dreams
Rolling in their graves, I bet the stars who made this town
Are sitting in heaven or hell, saying when did it go down
There's more shows now of tribute acts and hypnotists galore
And you can find a Circus from Quebec through nearly every hotel door
At some point rigor mortis set into this old girl
I wish they could revive her, at least give it a whirl
There's buffets selling fried foods, obesity....my lord
And if you don't go out to Denny's, the restaurants you can't afford
My mind has got an image of Vegas that is cool
It involves going out late and spending daytime at the pool
You dress to go to dinner, maybe dancing and a show
And the concierge at the hotel is someone you should know
But now, you go out shopping to the outlet in the day
The casinos are all empty, since there's no one left to play
Getting dressed to go to dinner, means you switch from shorts to jeans
And the ways some people act now, well it's borders on obscene.
So, today I'd like to ask you all, for you may know more than I
But, can anybody tell me, just when did Vegas die?

A simple cafe
The woman with the latte
I see her
Those peach pink lips
Your jeans fadded blue
Blonde curly hair
Skin so fair
Oh the things I would do

Across the room
Her Carmel colored skin
Brown long hair
Breast perked so
Coke bottled body

And you
Oval shaped eyes
Sun kissed freckles
so fun sized

Burgundy bleached hair
Suckulant grape lips
Thick curved waist
Coffee hazeled eyes

Eyes....
She pierced my sight
I glanced back
She knows I'm looking
My deviant thoughts
Tension rises
Three seconds four and five
I break contact I head to the door
Stumble
******
She's at the door
Our bodys touch

"Hey do you dance"
I so dance
Respond
"Yeah I do"
" well you should meet my boyfriend
He does to"

As he walked through the maze of streets from the tube station he wondered just how long it had been since he had last visited this tall red-bricked house. For so many years it had been for him a pied à terre. Those years when the care of infant children dominated his days, when coming up to London for 48 hours seemed such a relief, an escape from the daily round that small people demand. Since his first visits twenty years ago the area bristled with new enterprise. An abandoned Victorian hospital had been turned into expensive apartments; small enterprising businesses had taken over what had been residential property of the pre-war years. Looking up he was conscious of imaginative conversions of roof and loft spaces. What had seemed a wide-ranging community of ages and incomes appeared to have disappeared. Only the Middle Eastern corner shops and restaurants gave back to the area something of its former character: a place where people worked and lived.

It was a tall thin house on four floors. Two rooms at most of each floor, but of a good-size. The ground floor was her London workshop, but as always the blinds were down. In fact, he realised, he’d never been invited into her working space. Over the years she’d come to the door a few times, but like many artists and craftspeople he knew, she fiercely guarded her working space. The door to her studio was never left open as he passed through the hallway to climb the three flights of stairs to her husband’s domain. There was never a chance of the barest peek inside.

Today, she was in New York, and from outside the front door he could hear her husband descend from his fourth floor eyrie. The door was flung open and they greeted each other with the fervour of a long absence of friends. It had been a long time, really too long. Their lives had changed inexplicably. One, living almost permanently in that Italian marvel of waterways and sea-reflected light, the other, still in the drab West Yorkshire city from where their first acquaintance had begun from an email correspondence.

They had far too much to say to one another - on a hundred subjects. Of course the current project dominated, but as coffee (and a bowl of figs and mandarin oranges) was arranged, and they had moved almost immediately he arrived in the attic studio to the minimalist kitchen two floors below, questions were thrown out about partners and children, his activities, and sadly, his recent illness (the stairs had seemed much steeper than he remembered and he was a little breathless when he reached the top). As a guest he answered with a brevity that surprised him. Usually he found such questions needed roundabout answers to feel satisfactory - but he was learning to answer more directly, and being brief, suddenly thought of her and her always-direct questions. She wanted to know something, get something straight, so she asked  - straight - with no ‘going about things’ first. He wanted to get on with the business at hand, the business that preoccupied him, almost to the exclusion of everything else, for the last two days.

When they were settled in what was J’s working space ten years ago now he was immediately conscious that although the custom-made furniture had remained the Yamaha MIDI grand piano and the rack of samplers were elsewhere, along with most of the scores and books. The vast collection of CDs was still there, and so too the pictures and photographs. But there was one painting that was new to this attic room, a Cézanne. He was taken aback for a moment because it looked so like the real thing he’d seen in a museum just weeks before. He thought of the film Notting Hill when William Thacker questions the provenance of the Chagall ‘violin-playing goat’. The size of this Cézanne seemed accurate and it was placed in a similar rather ornate frame to what he knew had framed the museum original. It was placed on right-hand wall as he had entered the room, but some way from the pair of windows that ran almost the length of this studio. The view across the rooftops took in the Tower of London, a mile or so distant. If he turned the office chair in which he was sitting just slightly he could see it easily whilst still paying attention to J. The painting’s play of colours and composition compelled him to stare, as if he had never seen the painting before. But he had, and he remembered that his first sight of it had marked his memory.

He had been alone. He had arrived at the gallery just 15 minutes before it was due to close for the day.  He’d been told about this wonderful must-see octagonal room where around the walls you could view a particularly fine and comprehensive collection of Impressionist paintings. All the great artists were represented. One of Van Gogh’s many Olive Trees, two studies of domestic interiors by Vuillard, some dancing Degas, two magnificent Gaugins, a Seurat field of flowers, a Singer-Sergeant portrait, two Monets - one of a pair of haystacks in a blaze of high-summer light. He had been able to stay in that room just 10 minutes before he was politely asked to leave by an overweight attendant, but afterwards it was as if he knew the contents intimately. But of all these treasures it was Les Grands Arbres by Cézanne that had captured his imagination. He was to find it later and inevitably on the Internet and had it printed and pinned to his notice board. He consulted his own book of Cézanne’s letters and discovered it was a late work and one of several of the same scene. This version, it was said, was unfinished. He disagreed. Those unpainted patches he’d interpreted as pools of dappled light, and no expert was going to convince him otherwise! And here it was again. In an attic studio J. only frequented occasionally when necessity brought him to London.

When the coffee and fruit had been consumed it was time to eat more substantially, for he knew they would work late into the night, despite a whole day tomorrow to be given over to their discussions. J. was full of nervous energy and during the walk to a nearby Iraqi restaurant didn’t waver in his flow of conversation about the project. It was as though he knew he must eat, but no longer had the patience to take the kind of necessary break having a meal offered. His guest, his old friend, his now-being-consulted expert and former associate, was beginning to reel from the overload of ‘difficulties’ that were being put before him. In fact, he was already close to suggesting that it would be in J’s interest if, when they returned to the attic studio, they agreed to draw up an agenda for tomorrow so there could be some semblance of order to their discussions. He found himself wishing for her presence at the meal, her calm lovely smile he knew would charm J. out of his focused self and lighten the rush and tension that infused their current dialogue. But she was elsewhere, at home with her children and her own and many preoccupations, though it was easy to imagine how much, at least for a little while, she might enjoy meeting someone new, someone she’d heard much about, someone really rather exotic and (it must be said) commanding and handsome. He would probably charm her as much as he knew she would charm J.

J. was all and more beyond his guest’s thought-description. He had an intensity and a confidence that came from being in company with intense, confident and, it had to be said, very wealthy individuals. His origins, his beginnings his guest and old friend could only guess at, because they’d never discussed it. The time was probably past for such questions. But his guest had his own ideas, he surmised from a chanced remark that his roots were not amongst the affluent. He had been a free-jazz musician from Poland who’d made waves in the German jazz scene and married the daughter of an arts journalist who happened to be the wife of the CEO of a seriously significant media empire. This happy association enabled him to get off the road and devote himself to educating himself as a composer of avant-garde art music - which he desired and which he had achieved. His guest remembered J’s passion for the music of Luigi Nono (curiously, a former resident of the city in which J. now lived) and Helmut Lachenmann, then hardly known in the UK. J. was already composing, and with an infinite slowness and care that his guest marvelled at. He was painstakingly creating intricate and timbrally experimental string quartets as well as devising music for theatre and experimental film. But over the past fifteen years J. had become increasingly more obsessed with devising software from which his musical ideas might emanate. And it had been to his guest that, all that time ago, J. had turned to find a generous guide into this world of algorithms and complex mathematics, a composer himself who had already been seduced by the promise of new musical fields of possibility that desktop computer technology offered.

In so many ways, when it came to the hard edge of devising solutions to the digital generation of music, J. was now leagues ahead of his former tutor, whose skills in this area were once in the ascendant but had declined in inverse proportion to J’s, as he wished to spend more time composing and less time investigating the means through which he might compose. So the guest was acting now as a kind of Devil’s Advocate, able to ask those awkward disarming questions creative people don’t wish to hear too loudly and too often.

And so it turned out during the next few hours as J. got out some expensive cigars and brandy, which his guest, inhabiting a different body seemingly, now declined in favour of bottled water and dry biscuits. His guest, who had been up since 5.0am, finally suggested that, if he was to be any use on the morrow, bed was necessary. But when he got in amongst the Egyptian cotton sheets and the goose down duvet, sleep was impossible. He tried thinking of her, their last walk together by the sea, breakfast à deux before he left, other things that seemed beautiful and tender by turn . . . But it was no good. He wouldn’t sleep.

The house could have been as silent as the excellent double-glazing allowed. Only the windows of the attic studio next door to his bedroom were open to the night, to clear the room of the smoke of several cigars. He was conscious of that continuous flow of traffic and machine noise that he knew would only subside for a brief hour or so around 4.0am. So he went into the studio and pulled up a chair in front of the painting by Cézanne, in front of this painting of a woodland scene. There were two intertwining arboreal forms, trees of course, but their trunks and branches appeared to suggest the kind of cubist shapes he recognized from Braque. These two forms pulled the viewer towards a single slim and more distant tree backlit by sunlight of a late afternoon. There was a suggestion, in the further distance, of the shapes of the hills and mountains that had so preoccupied the artist. But in the foreground, there on the floor of this woodland glade, were all the colours of autumn set against the still greens of summer. It seemed wholly wrong, yet wholly right. It was as comforting and restful a painting as he could ever remember viewing. Even if he shut his eyes he could wander about the picture in sheer delight. And now he focused on the play of brush strokes of this painting in oils, the way the edge and border of one colour touched against another. Surprisingly, imagined sounds of this woodland scene entered his reverie - a late afternoon in a late summer not yet autumn. He was Olivier Messiaen en vacances with his perpetual notebook recording the magical birdsong in this luminous place. Here, even in this reproduction, lay the joy of entering into a painting. Jeanette Winterson’s plea to look at length at paintings, and then look again passed through his thoughts. How right that seemed. How very difficult to achieve. But that night he sat comfortably in J’s attic and let Cézanne deliver the artist’s promise of a world beyond nature, a world that is not about constant change and tension, but rests in a stillness all its own.

I've kept my feelings bottled up inside,
For so long I can't remember.

All my emotions and secrets and lies
Hidden right behind my eyes.

And of course I'll continue to do so
Until one day...I will explode.

And when I do you'll know everything.
You'll be standing there in front of me.

You'll laugh and gasp,
You might even cry.

And then you'll ask why.
Why have you kept this bottled up inside?

And then I'll say that I had to protect you.
I had to protect you from the feelings that you would have after learning what I've kept.

Because I don't want you to have to keep them bottled up inside.

I was alone deep within my thoughts lost in nature.
in other words passed out in the park as usual from a night of deep research and binge drinking hey everyone needs a ******* hobby okay.

I was just about to do some deep sea diving I'm kidding it's more like explore the hot tub with Jennifer Aniston and Lawrence hey I bought those goggles why not put them  to some good perverted use right?

When all the sudden I was pulled from my ******* utopia and brought to reality with some strange hamster dressed like a troll throwing bean bags at my head Jesus Christ this is why I stopped passing out in truck stops.

I banish you strange drunken  wizard with a banishing spell .
he said as he kept throwing his strange little bean bags at me I tell you
you have to worry about a man playing with his bean bags in the park I mean sure that kind of **** flew in third world countries like Canada  
but here in the states we had guns so we could protect  areselves and go hunting cause who doesn't love some male bonding?
Or buying a A-K 47  to  blow the living crap out of everything insight .  

**** the woods it's filled with to many fury hippies to began with and what wall doesn't say high class better than some animals head on it looking like it just got prison *****.
Yeah it looks so natural  and dead that is .

But enough with the foreplay and back to the bean bag throwing troll nerd .
Hey man your supposed to exit the playing field after I hit you with that ******* .

The strange dressed nerd said then snickred to with fellow dork homies.
You got to love newbies they don't even know a level 12 troll God from a ***** cave spider.

They all seemed to be smoking crack for they all busted up laughing at this strange little escaped from the asylum hamster.

I wasn't sure if I should just run or try to speak with these odd nerd folk  they kind of of reminded me of Muppets on acid yeah that was a bad trip don't ask.
Boy I never knew Miss Piggy was such a **** or a gymnast.

Excuse me gaydolf 
So  is there so reason you woke me up or are you just off your meds and looking to throw your bean bags at the first drunken in semi coma person you find sleeping on a bench ?

Your not part of the game?

The strange little troll nerd asked me and from the surprise in his voice I could tell this weird little hamster was on some great ******* drugs once told me two things.
One I needed to dump these ******'s like a truck stop burrito.
And two I had to  find out who his doctor was cause I wanted triple of whatever this kid was having .

No sir I'm not part of a game or show unless it's being the judge of a wet t shirt contest cause I do believe in supporting the *******.
Hey **** the whales save the *******  they look awesome and who cares bout the environment duh there's sharks in there didn't you ever see jaws besides everyone knows I'm allergic to water.
That's why I drink whiskey its much better for you besides ever see flipper hop out the ocean for a bathroom break ?


Hey this dude isn't part of the realm were in he's just some old *** drunk.
Another strange hamster said to his Troll friend.

Oh sir I do beg your pardon here take this .
The troll nerd handed me a bottle .
Now this was more like it I kicked it back and tasted the most foul tasting ***** I'd ever tasted in my life .

Dear lord man what is this ****! ?
Umm its called bottled water dude the troll replied .

I looked at the plastic container in a mix of total disgust and hell these kids were into some weird ****.

Water huh tastes like **** what the hells the proof ?  
Umm it's water ******* it doesn't have a proof .

I tried to grasp what the two headed tall one had said but was lost .
How could anyone drink anything not to catch a buzz what twisted sick little ******* had I run across?

I had enough of these strange garden gnomes **** I reached for my trusty flask a hit of some good old 80 proof trying to rid myself of the taste of this poison called water .

Look I do not even want to know what your nerds are up to but unless it involves some hot stripper elves  a bottle of cooking oil and a twister game count me out.

Looking at me like most people do with that mix of confusion and a feeling like they needed a bath there strange leader spoke up.
Sir you have to understand we are larping and on a quest we simply confused you for another drunken wizard .

Well I can understand that my sexually confused  nerd friend but I think you need to seriously go on a  quest with me .

Your on a quest the troll dork asked lighting up like Taylor Swift after just stealing the soul of yet another misguided hamster and brainwashing millions in to believe she actually had talent or a soul I'm just saying .


Yes Gaydolf I'm on a mighty quest to get my magic  staff  blown by some cheap ****** but enough about my ******* wife.
Yeah the internets filled with perverts and if you search long enough you might just luck out and find your very own ****** with a heart of gold or drunken long winded perverted ******* like myself .

Sir I have you know me and my knights of honor are true gentlemen why we need no pleasures of cheap ******  we have the company of each other songs and campfires to drive are passions who here amongst my circle would like to follow this demented nut on some ****** bag quest for the earthly pleasures of the flesh?

The little troll nerd turned around to see his round table of fellow ******'s gone .

What the ****!

We could here his cries as me and my new crowd  of  odd little dressed hamsters were off to the Hotseat ******* in search of ***** ,Strippers and hopefully trick one of these naughty dancing hamsters into a quest play hide the sword in the well you get the point.
cause hopefully someone with some cheesy name like sparkle or Bambi or Candy would .


Sir Gonzo the strange looking Cyclops of my new entourage asked?
Yeah what is it amigo?
Do you not fear the wrath of the troll gods mom?
I mean she did bring us all here in here minivan and all.

Well my one eyed nerd friend in are quests you will learn many things there are to fear .
But nothing far worse than the river of fire that spews from thy staff after a goodnight with the ***** of the back alley.

Oh no worries Sir Gonzo I have plenty of spell packs of penicillin .
Hey does ***** Debra still do that trick with a ping pong ***** and a picture of Kanye Wests face?

We  can only hope my one eyed friend you know I cant believe you know bout ***** Debra I said with a bit of surprise in my already getting there drunken lets get this ******* ****** **** story over voice.

Duh what do you think I am one of those twilight homos sir Gonzo?
My Cyclops nerd friend replied.

that night was epic we laughed we darnk we watched a Canadian cave troll totally make out with a ****** from the magic kingdom  Minnie mouse is such a freak and I know what your saying like the nut that wrote this ***** isn't?

Thank you hamsters that truly means a lot.

Are quest was epic are night spoke of in nerds who dream only to grasp a ***** strippers ******* let alone snort coke off there arses .

I never saw my socially awkward friends again yeah I bet that troll nerd Billy Gates sits even now wishing he truly had grabbed life by the bean bag and sized the day I wonder what ever happened to him.

Stay Crazy hamster .

Always your Captain of the insane

Gonzo

it's difficult to describe
why your body chooses to spend weekends
alone surrounded
by the slimy tongues and bottled self esteem
take another hit
while your mind explores the chip on his front tooth or the sweat dripping off his eyebrow
your body takes the pounding while it whispers in your ear how little you mean and you tremble at the thought of being handcuffed
you wonder if he remembered your middle name
Francesca
or noticed the way that when you breathe in your collar bone protrudes
ill ring for you

I remember the first time you tasted champagne.
As the golden nectar effervesces down your throat, you whispered my name.
I raised an eyebrow and wondered why,
you said, “You’re everything this glass contains.”

They tell me the tale of Dom Pérignon
who said, “I am tasting the stars” after a sip of his own creation.
You’ve always loved me like I tasted of stars,
and I loved you like you put the stars where they belonged.

We made the mixture of magnificence,
until we were twisted too much on the shelves.
Pop, bubble, hiss--- all shaken up
everything we bottled up spilled down until nothing else is left.
I was champagne until I became your problem.

And somewhere in between the lines, we got lost in translation
I didn’t know where to find you, didn’t know how else to meet you halfway,
but there was pain whichever path I take.
I was already walking the track for the exiled, I didn’t realize right away.

Others hide a ring in the glass,
But we put the problem in the champagne, babe.

Soon it will taste differently to you,
All sweet and sparkling—no strings attached like it used to.
But the stars are no longer where they used to be.
Every sip will wash down any trace of me,
until you forget.
But it will forever linger on my lips;
and I’ll always remember it all too well.

Sweet liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

She looks -a still,
                  Young looks can ****.

Oh it breaks my heart…
                     It won’t be mine,

Bottled-up it gets better,
                Just give it some time.

Sweet liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

Beauty stop, you stand still,
                              Young looks can ****.

I gave my heart and wasted my time,
Let my love out, let go-o-o-o-o…
Woman on woman -my Woe!

Sweet Liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

Here with a feeble mind,
                                 Now drinking all the time!

Sweet liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

Plump lips, her curly hair-r-r-s,
                                 Never a boyfriend, -she swears!

Sweet liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

That body, does it shine?
                                       I’m drinking all the time!

Sweet liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

Sweet liquor only ages,
                      Sweet liquor only ages,

not all who cry out are in pain
not all who are lost long to be saved again,
not all that are alone feel betrayed
but everyone feels afraid.
not all are afraid of a broken heart
not all are scared of misspeaking their part,
not all are petrified at the thought of dying
but everyone fears crying.
not everyone hides how they really feel
not everyone denies that all this is real,
not everyone covers the empty void
until their heart is destroyed.

to long lost to be called alone
but these tears now seem like home,
why in the world do i feel so forsaken
when i'm the reason my heart is breaking?
i am the one who remembers her so well
memories of happiness now feel like hell,
maybe because i know that i will never be again
closer to the one i love than 'just a friend',
even so happiness sometimes fills my veins
or maybe i just have a numbing of the pain.
i try to stay so strong that no one can see
that this hurt seems to be killing me,
so i rise up and wipe the tears from my eyes
and make it go away with a closet full of lies.
i tell myself that i hated your every kiss
and that you couldn't possibly be worth all of this,
and that i never missed you a day at all
and was never filled with bliss at the ring of a phone.
that the love that we felt could not have been true
and love's not the reason i can't think of anyone but you,
that this was the only way for all of this to unfurl
i tell myself that you are nothing but some confused girl.
some girl that feared a love greater than we could understand
only remembering my failure and faulty misdemands,
how many times we did what we knew was not right
but the desire seemed way too strong to fight.
even now i know i could not fix with a thousand rhymes
because no mortal can go back and do battle with time,
i can't quite explain to you how i really feel inside
only that i can't count how many times i've cried.
not out of self pity like so many believe
but because i know i'm the one that made you hate me,
so here are the tears that i've kept bottled up in my soul
and here's the imperfect person who can't feel whole.
here's all the apologies that i could possibly mutter
when i think back on what i did i can only shudder,
what kind of love did i think i knew
when again and again i found myself hurting you.
i'm not quite sure what it is that i want you to understand
my thoughts are scattered like the breeze-blown sand,
i know that i can't tell you exactly how i feel
because even still i don't know if feelings so strong are real.
i don't deserve a single passing moment of your time
because what i did i believe should be crime,
i corrupted the greatest love that I could ever know
and now that it's lost i have nothing to show.
only hollow echoes of 'i love you' s that made me whole
only an empty void where you existed in my soul,
only seas of teardrops to quench my unending thirst
but remembering your smile has got to be the worst.
Remembering your smile when you saw me draw near
remembering that when you were near me i felt no fear,
remembering you tell me that you felt it too
the love that we were so positive was true.
but as i have fallen away from who you remember
it seems to love you now could only hinder,
it only slowed you down from the wonder you became
i only hope after this your smile is the same.
hope when no one is around you that you feel no pain
that nothing but bliss flows through your veins,
that you find someone that deserves such a girl
the one i love more than any other in the world.

too overwhelmed to express exactly how i feel
but now i wonder if when you see me,
do you remember that what we had was real
or have you pushed it out of your memory?

is this longing and hoping just a joke
that everyone else knows the punch line to,
or have you heard a single word i've spoke
when i tell you that i can't not love you?

my eyes are all out of tears (my dear)
and i can't let you be my greatest fear (can't you hear?)
but i can't seem to make you go away (please don't stay)
so i'm stuck here again in my dismay (one more day)

i'm tired of feeling empty all the time
but you're the only one i can call my own,
so i sit here and write rhyme after rhyme
in hopes that one day i won't be so alone.

i'll take back every word i said, i swear
do you know you're still in my heart,
you're in my heart because i keep you there
because without you i'm torn apart.

my eyes are all out of tears (my dear)
and i can't let you be my greatest fear (can't you hear?)
but i can't seem to make you go away (please don't stay)
so i'm stuck here again in my dismay (one more day)

but i feel that tomorrow might change everything
maybe when i wake up you'll be here by my side,
and the world will stop so choirs of angels can sing
about a love so strong that it will never die.

About a love so purified by loss and tears
that i can't get rid of it no matter how hard i try,
so yet again you're the source of all my fears
and my tears flow freely as i cry.

an uncontainable ethereal essence dampens my soul
a lacking love that disappeared into the darkest hole,
though life's blood was flowing through my heart was cold
because of a story that has been too often told.
the realization of unattainable hopes tore me to shreds
how hard did i fight to free those feelings from my head,
to awaken visions of ecstasy instead of passing life
but it took time to realize i caused all my strife.
the gap extended, cutting off me from me
until i realized i'm not the person that i see,
determination extinguished an impure love from within
denial allowed me to forget all my sin.
though now as dark and as distant as i may be
i cannot force myself to carry a single memory,
but my footsteps slow because i no longer run away
now void of the hope of "someday, someday".
passion all spent they'd have us repent our consent
but only in error could they misconstrue my intent,
once again i clear my head until i feel relieved
but i now believe that bliss, not pain, is conceived.

holding in all that i know i should exhale
these situations make me feel so frail,
losing touch with reality once again
finding myself where i've never been.
frustrations almost make me give up
just want to say "enough is enough",
show you everything that i hold back
so that you can see how much you lack.
wish i could cease this painful game
leave it all as it was before i came,
but the impact you've left i can't deny
but i don't know how to say goodbye.
nor do i want to as you can tell
as much as i love this it hurts like hell,
if you could only see all that i hide
and all that will always be hidden inside

as i'm lying here wondering what i did with all the time that passed by
still staring at the empty pillow beside me but the pain is gone,
i just wish that for one last time i could look you in the eye
and apologize for all the times I did everything wrong.
as i'm lying here in realization that the chains no longer hold my wrists
and the freedom like the wind pushes me out into the world,
i thought in err for so long that you were the reason for me to exist
but now visions of you are replaced by the great wings that have unfurled.
so smile every second knowing you have the angel you deserve
knowing that you are safe with him the horizon will swallow me whole,
the only favor i would ask of you is to love him without reserve
and if you love then love with heart, mind, body, and soul.

it now seems that i have lost something in the overpowering dark
some small bit of myself that once gave my soul its spark,
that which still lingers is the fear that i will never find what i have lost
it seems that whatever price that there is to pay i cannot afford the cost.
and so i sit and pray hour after hour in yet another sleepless night
thought i expend all energy and force of will i cannot win this fight,
the doubt that i had once conquered has returned to reclaim
and it seems after all the progress that was made it is still just the same.
just as i feel as if the world has taken what i hold dearest to me
in an instant i feel relief and wonder what has caused this to be,
and then through the darkness i see the shadows slowly part
for even the darkness cannot stand between hope and my heart.
and as i stand numb in wonder what caused all of this to end
i realize that this hope is contained within my truest friend,
her smile brings back to me so many of the memories of old
and though my body is freezing, my heart is no longer cold.

it is surprising how quickly the sweetness of love turns bitter when you cast it aside. how fast smiles turn to blank stares with no emotion whatsoever. how fast a person full of nothing but hopes and dreams can be made jaded and cynical.

i look upon you and see only eyes that emanate cold
the eyes that chill me to my soul and leave me weak,
there is only a void that occupies the space of the soul you've sold
and from my lips are stripped the words that i would speak.

with the last breath that i could manage to sigh
i let go of everything that i had tried to deny,
because you could never be worth all of this
so the memories of you i quickly dismissed.

The memories left that still exist
Make me wonder just what I’ve missed,
In wasted time remembering your smile
But to see it once more would make it all worth while.
So many feelings I’m still forbidden to feel
Forsaken to the point that I wonder if they’re real,
But all wonder collapses if I look into your eyes
And I can no longer hold in my muffled cries.
Yet you do not care, so distant and cold
What was it that warped and burnt your heart of gold,
You never deny that all I say is right
But you fight your feelings with all your might.
So I now refuse to fight this anymore
Even though I see it’s wrong in my heart’s core to fight this anymore
Even though I see it’s wrong in my heart’s core,
The foundation crumbled, leaving rubble at best
And I leave your life with this one last request.
If you ever think back to feelings we once knew
Just know, although not perfect, the love we felt was true,
And though we may never feel the same thing again
If you ever need me, I’ll be here, as a friend.

For all the love that I once held
Within my gentle grasp,
I’d let go of everything else
To feel that love again at last.
For all the hope that I once knew
When I saw it in your eyes,
I knew it would never return
when you couldn’t hold back your cries.
For all the hours that I’ve lost
Wishing that you were here
Only to see your beautiful face
And forever hold you near.
For all the times that I’ve been forced
To lose you once again,
The pieces of my heart are on the floor
And won’t fit together or mend.
For all these things that I’ve said
I’ll never rethink those thoughts,
There’s just too much pain within your arms
This lesson I’ve now been taught.

A love that you don’t feel
Within your bitter heart,
All the time I’ve wasted
Just to get back to the start.
Before I knew your beauty
Though endless as it seems,
I only see you smiling
As a figment in my dreams.
Before I felt abandoned
Lost in the deep, dark abyss
Before I even longed for your touch
And to feel your gentle kiss.
Before I knew just how it felt
To feel nothing at all,
But with that numbness I know
That you initiated my fall.

How many nights will I stand outside your window
Constantly hurling rocks and stones,
And how many times will they disappear
Destroying my hope and leaving me alone.
How many tears will run down my cheeks
Creating another salty sea,
Only for the waves to rise up
Until I feel like they’re drowning me.

In the darkness of the night
come the tears that i can't fight,
but the glare of morning sun
reveals another battle won.
I can't overcome the love i've lost
or that our paths have uncrossed,
I hope that the emptiness that i feel
is only a figment, and not for real.
I get lost in the memories made
if only so that they will never fade,
and as i reach out my hand to her
she disappears, the illusion blurs.
But she was there for a moment in time
I can still see her as i write this rhyme,
and i know that everything will be fine
because in my heart, she is still mine.


don't think about the pain you feel inside
stray from shallownes and foolish pride
and as your tears swell up so blue
forget the things that anguish you

please don't leave my side again
even if we're only friends
you left an emptiness in my heart
that wasn't there at the start
the loss of you i cannot bear
you act like you still don't care
maybe this is hopeless yet
thoughts of you i can't forget
how does it feel to not feel at all
these thoughts through my mind crawl
i'm not able to forget you yet
i blame these feelings i always get
do you ever lie awake
and let your feelings overtake
the thought process in your mind
no you're too gentle, far too kind
please don't leave my side again
even if we're only friends,
you left an emptiness in my heart
that wasn't there at the start

yet again my timing is off
i'm denying the fact that all is lost
where must i begin, what must i do
to make everything better with you
please take the time to take away
all that i lose in the words that i say
if you could only hear what i feel inside
you would understand what i've slowly realized
i'd break my heart before i hurt your own
but maybe i'm better just being alone
these feelings i feel, i know they won't last
and i'll think of nothing else until they have passed
they consume every thought i create
and to my heart my mind relates
all these facts i wish were untrue
a thousand apologies to make amends with you
why should i be the one to apologize
my words rang sweetly throughout my mind
but now even words cannot take away
all i have lost that cannot be regained

entrapped in my head are all these thoughts
of promises you made way back then
the tears that swell my pain has bought
only to believe your promises once again
your sparkling eyes that made me believe
every single world that left your lips
i never thought that you would deceive
but my hope covered my heart like an eclipse
you made me feel that you loved me too
you made me think i was understood
but when i found your words rang untrue
it revealed the bad beyond the mask of good
just like a single red rose smells so pure
until the blood from your finger spills
all my problems only you could have cured
until all my thoughts of love you killed
just like the winter nights feel so cold
until you find someone to hold close to
you left those caring words untold
and my heart was turned cold under the moon
entrapped in my head are all these thoughts
of promises you made way back then
the tears that swell my pain has bought
only to believe your promises once again.

I think there is something on your mind
some memories that you've left behind
you think i feel feelings that i can't face
which gives me the need to leave this place
you succomb to the knowledge that you hear
with simple sources as sound as the air
you run from the reason from which sadness falls
and in the end there's nothing left at all

Another small tear cascades down my cheek
i'm all alone with all these people surrounding me
the sadness grows and the waters start to rise
i'm the only one sinking in my sadness, i'm surprised
the waters rise as i slowly start to fall
i doubt that anyone even notices at all
the sorrows you have given me have brought my demise
if you could've only seen the hopelessness you put in my eyes
it's all over now and all is lost
the struggle for happiness was worth more than it cost
another small tear cascades down my cheek
and i'm lost in all the pain you have given me

all alone before we met
but those are times you'd like to forget
and as he drifted away
you were alone by day
you always felt that he cared
but still felt trapped and ensnared
and nothing you could do
could bring him closer to you
he thought he left you behind
but that was all in his mind
there is nothing left that he can do
to bring him up to level with you
he thought it was all a game
trying to win fortune or fame
but somewhere along the line
he pushed your heart aside
brushed all of your tears aside
so he could have his foolish pride
but you always knew in the end
that it would just happen again
no emotions he feels
like this whole world is surreal
and as he drifted away
you were alone by day

so lost inside these thoughts you've given to me
of hope and all these feelings i can't believe
it would have been best to say nothing at all
because

My dreams and ambitions were bottled up, so was I.