Trickery Of Fates

Trembling hands tucked tenderly in the pockets
Of an overcoat pretense ministered with a smile
Nervously adjacent to a tangled weave of angels
We administer the dosage of a thousand sleepless nights
I feel the tug of Atlas asking penance for his negligence
While I, beneath it all, can muster nothing but a laugh
The serenade of symphonies concluding these procedures
Is the theme for those who fall in love but never make it back

Counterplot

Dedicated apparitions
Baited into empty white chapels
Where someone speaks
Who isn’t there
And no one else responds
Yet, in dropping pins
And hurricane force winds
Subliminal messages evacuate lungs
Like ships
Squeezed through a channel mouth
Outbound

Someday, maybe, our dotted lines
Undrawn on maps penned by time
Will meet
Where x marks
An island of thought
Everyone there is you
Each driving small cars
Wearing tan skirts, black shades
And a fondness for smiles
Something akin to babies
Who have not learned
To cringe
To reason sensibly
Or to bend beneath the backwash
Of public opinions

There we are–found
A stuttering ode
To all things bright and beautiful
Cadence like chocolate poured
Softly over pursed lips
And frost bitten fingertips
A counterplot
To rule a world once destroyed
Tyrants abolished
Forsaken deserts of thought
Now holding cautiously in palm
A sea of dreams beneath
Where us
And nothing
Meet

My Muse Is Gone

My muse has gone
Alone, I cradle souvenirs
Her phantom dances in the songs
That haunt my ever-waking dreams
Against the vacant beckoning
I hold a tired candle light
A vigil of my sanity
For memories
Of fantasies
And better things

My muse has gone
And, in the absence of my tears
The shadows, in a desperate throng
Are clinging tight beneath my eyes
I harbor them–my dark disguise
A mask across my empty face
Expressionless
Impressions of
This cold embrace

Conjure You

Lonely, I conjure you
But conjure you is all that I can do
Spells with which I summon you
Are whispers that this empty night rebukes

Lonely, I conjure you
A figure woven of the finest air
Ghosts and stolen residue
Afoot upon the vagrant shards of moon

Lonely, I call for you
In saline brews of misbegotten eyes
Wrung from hollow avenues
Of brokenhearted alabaster truth

Lonely, I conjure you
But conjure you is all that I can do
Phantasms and dreams of you
Are dancing slowly in this burning room

Of Those Who Were

Walls–they tell of those who were
The visage, faded, once was clear
Oh where have you then disappeared?

Into the night? Across the sea?
Or do those jaded memories
Still haunt your halls, as they do me?

Foregone–the night so cleverly
With darkness swallows every tear
A soundless cry on soundless ears

But walls–they loath forgetfulness
And not as I do they so turn
Their stories are not fast unlearned

In somber unrelenting tones
A chorus of distress is sung
For spirits absent far too long

T’would be such bliss to quell their taunt
But as I seek I find you not
And feel at last I am forgot

Dancing In Darkened Chambers

The mist has gathered here tonight
Behind the eyes of truth and lies
As we begin this careful dance
Around the lines we cannot cross

Dancing in these darkened chambers
To the cries of dying smiles
Fancying ourselves as artists

Dancing in these darkened chambers
Into this apocalypse
Fancying ourselves as heartless

The crowd has gathered here tonight
The mob of things we should have said
They mock these fallen silhouettes
That steal the heat beneath my bed

Dancing in these darkened chambers
Step by step in perfect time
Fancying ourselves as precious

Dancing in these darkened chambers
Underneath eternity
Fancying ourselves as deathless

5 After Midnight

The pixie dust
Long since swept up
Has left only a fading glow
Upon the harsh wooden floor
And I am here
Dangling between wand
And life
How long will I
Be caught between
Being the coachman and the dog
How long will I
Be snagged in thinking
The taste of these enchantments
Is bitter in the end
A hollow sound
Of fairy games
And riven souls

Dreams Of A Flightless Bird

A wisp of scented breeze
Over gently stirring fields
If time is here at all
Then it must be standing still
My heart escapes my chest
A balloon without a string
The body that it left
All the evidence it came

I want to drift away
Where the mountains meet the sky
Ascending on the storm
Like a bird

I want to disappear
Without waving a goodbye
The sun to keep me warm
On my way

A wisp of scented breeze
Is my harbinger of grace
If pain was ever real
Then it must have been erased
My dreams escape my head
Like a flock of winter geese
These endless numbered days
Are the path to my release

I want to drift away
Where the ocean hugs the shore
The tide beneath my wings
Like a bird

I want to disappear
Like the early morning dew
Alive again and new
On my way

The Darkness

The darkness
The number of our days
The black abyss of dreams
The emptiness reluctantly I crave

The silence
The absence of a flame
The sacrifice of love
The solitude of losing it again

The anguish
The soft mortality
The ticking of the hands
The suffering that never will be seen

The distance
The place you used to be
The disarray of life
The questions we will never understand

The darkness
Is suffocating me
The accident of hope
The disappointments woven in our eyes

The darkness
The wreckage of belief
The vacuum in my soul
The sovereignty that could not be denied

Damaged

Heightening the voltage
Call it current circumstance
I am tightening the wires
Buried deep beneath my skin

Plunging in the dosage
Call it getting to the point
I am ready for sedation
But the needle must have bent

Strap me down–steel restraints
Hold me back from what I want
Everything is damaged in the brain

Pardon me–it’s just the pain
I was once…no, never mind
I have always been a bit this way

Mimic

You lie
You lie
You evil thing
You look so much like one I love
But you are only pixels made to mimic what I crave

You lie
You lie
You wicked light
A mockery of smiles and life
You useless substitution for the things I fight to save

You lie
To me
So bold, you do
And I, too desperate to see
Am taken in your faking like a starving little wretch

You lie
You give
Me plastic food
But still I grasp it hungrily
This tiny morsel of the thought–the last of what is left

If My Pen Were A Friend We Would Not Be On Speaking Terms

Black
The ink is so black
The words are so dark
I must be writing from the heart

The stains are so deep
The lines are so weak
I must be writing from the heart

Sad
The thoughts are so sad
The quill is so sharp
I must be writing from the heart

The strokes are so bleak
The notes are so scarred
I must be writing from the heart

Artless Stabbings

My intent to caress
Made a mess of the thought
And I murdered my lines
Such a waste
Such a crime

Is it art? Does it rhyme?
No, the pulse has been stopped
Taking stabs at this…what?
This release?
This insult

I despise every word
My attempts, I repent
Feeling sick unto death
Nothing made
Nothing left

So I stab and I stab
Until life trickles out
And the art–it is dead
We are both
Fully bled

Replacement

My heart
They took my heart
Replaced by parts
Lithium ion
Underneath

I move
But cannot feel
My life–unreal
I am stainless steel
Underneath

My heart
What have they done?
I miss the soft
I miss the teardrops
In my eyes

My heart
They took my heart
And what is this
My cold replacement
Underneath?

Paper Cuts

Paper cuts
Like razor blades
On tired wrists
A slow release
In rhythmic drips
A clock that ticks

Stretching words
Like knotted rope
From silent lips
Fraying and coarse
The knot–it slips
To snap my neck

Swallowed thoughts
Like colored pills
From bottled hopes
An overdose
A last recourse
My sentence passed

Words Don’t Form

I stare at the lines and they stare back at me
Both of us blank–so opaque and empty
It seems to me I should have something to say
But the words don’t form

Trapped in my head–such a cognitive mess
So many things not worth saying, I guess
It seems to me I can’t be silent again
But the words don’t form

Almost inspired but not quite enough
I tell myself ‘write about heartache or love’
All of these feelings should move me to speak
But the words don’t form

Maybe it’s apathy building inside
Maybe it’s fear of the things I might write
Maybe I’m just feeling distant tonight
But the words don’t form

Sometimes to write is like capturing air
Translating hearts into things we can share
Surely I should have a sentence or two
But the words don’t form

Here I remain without passion or drive
Fumbling for some way to prove I’m alive
Wishing that I could express something right
But the words don’t form

Outside

A shape for a space and a space for a shape
Everything placed in the place it belongs
Circles and squares of predictable make
Molded to fit into holes of their size
An edge for an edge at the angles it takes
Guided inside where the others have gone
Perfectly made so they associate
Coupled in patterns and gathered in piles
But I am outside

Stealing The Moon

Stealing the moon
Gathering fragments to sweep into piles
Tidied and hiding in unpolished eyes
Weary diversions for subtle conditions
Cradled in visions she cannot describe

Stealing the moon
Kleptomaniacal just for tonight
Grasping at beams–she is holding so tight
Keeping reflections in tattered arrays
Tugging at sparkles that once were so bright

Stealing the moon
Storing the pieces in some other room
Wrapped away snugly in linens, but soon
Dark will be on her and she will return
Burning with passion but never consumed

In

Eyes threaded like needles
Sewn up with crude little stitches and sealed
Lips tied up with ribbons
Beautifully binding the passage of sound
Barbed wire and fences
Guarding the secrets we never revealed
Lashed, knotted and twisted
Under these cables that hold it all down

But, underneath, the rest of me
Is struggling to breath
And it may be the death of me
But I would like to leave
If only it were safe to be
The things that I have been…
I want them to unfasten me
And let the sunlight in

Delegates

Warm bodies
Red dawns
The light, the night, the vacant room

Torn follies
Dead songs
The sea, the shore, the distant moon

While feeling secretly disposable
In castles made of sand
We fight the tide and hold the waves at bay
Pretending that we can

Prevent the wake of this apocalypse
When all we have is us
Against the forces of the universe
Like delegates of love