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

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To Pull You Closer To My Heart

Dreaming of a dialogue
Waking to an empty room
Singing of a foreign life
Sleeping in a shallow tomb
Oh, it’s easier than we would like
Being empty oh so deep inside
When the smiles take your breath away
But we didn’t really feel that way
Did we?

Shaken to the inner core
Radiant–a shade of love
Taken to return no more
Taken what should be enough
Oh, it’s easier than we pretend
Holding everything beneath our skin
When the beauty makes you turn your head
But the ghosts are always in my bed
Did we?

Dreaming of a dialogue
Maybe through a clouded glass
Whispers in a borrowed car
Something for my hand to clasp
Oh, it’s easier than we believe
When we turn around again to leave
Does our story ever wear you out?
Do the memories feel as faded now?
Did we?

Saving all my energy
Palms outstretched as I emerge
Dreams are never what they seem
Coming up for air is hard
But it’s easier than letting on
That the little things are passing on
If I encountered you in open air
Would you remember me like I was there?
Did we?

Dreaming of a dialogue
Messages and simple words
Even though I know it’s gone
Sometimes, with the night, returns
Shadows of a dearest friend
And I feel like I could fly again
With my arms outstretched into the dark
To pull you closer to my heart
But your gone
And I’m here
Going on
And I ask
Was it dreams?
Was it real?
Did we?

Wolves Against My Heart

Do you know the sounds
The creaks–the moans
Of doors on hinges bent to break

Do you know the nights
The weeks–the months
Of barricading my mistakes

A moon has risen but from spite
These apparitions–they assail
Our weakened walls, exposed to night
As lanterns fail

Then come the wolves against my heart
We cower, peering out the cracks
When all the seams are torn apart
With broken backs

Do you know the feel
Of roughened grain
Against the flesh of sweaty palms

Do you know the dreams
Of the insane
Once driven out of town in arms

A sun will rise against the east
To burn its trail above our heads
And with its destination reached
We will be dead

To feed the wolves against my heart
With scraps and portions we have left
A fragile remnant of this art
That we did best

A Conversation

I look into your eyes–you stare
I find an irony somehow
In everything about your face
But I push that aside for now
I ask you of the life you chose
And is it working out so far
Behind the tired rings you wear
All the bitter nights have carved
Colors tell the story well
Though you simply shrug and laugh
But we both know you’re not yourself
And maybe he will not come back
I look into your eyes–so deep
I ask you if you have regrets
You slowly turn your head and speak
Whispering replies in breath
“I wouldn’t want to say it’s good
Or claim that I am glad at all
For how it all turned out–or could”
But then you lift your head up tall
“I know that this has cost so much
I know I may appear unwell
But heaven here is hard to touch
I guess I had to go through hell
It doesn’t mean I’m scared to burn
It doesn’t mean I don’t look back
I could have walked the easy way
But I choose not to think of that”
If all the sleepless nights were stars
The galaxy is in your look
If all the tears you cried were words
The lines across your cheek are books
I look into your eyes–you stare
I find an irony somehow
I see you every day right here
But cannot seem to search you out
And when I think I know you well
Or when I think you’re feeling fine
My mirror finds the truth to tell
Your tired face is just like mine

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

Too Soon

Press your fingers on the wound
We can’t
We can’t allow the blood
To leak away–this is too soon
A love no memory can fill

Breathe again–you cannot stop
I want
I need your eyes to move
Do not succumb collapse and swoon
These gashes surely have to heal

Take my hand–you must respond
I won’t
I cannot leave you now
If only just an utterance
Bestow a sound upon my ears

Look within these pleading eyes
We were
We are the stronger sort
No matter how our heart is hurt
The pain reminds us it is there

Oh, agony has pricked
Into the depths of what I hoped
But still the battle rages deep
Beneath the skin of my desire

Oh, the beauty we inflict
Upon a world that never knew
Has been distorted into blame
To feed the embers of our fire

Oh, you know I’d give the last
Of every breath I’ve yet to take
To pull you safely from the fray
Into the circle of my heart

Oh, you cannot slip away
Beneath the torrent of this pain
There is so much for which to stay
And I am not retreating yet

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

Not A Traffic Light

Traffic lights have such an easy job
Blinking life away, oblivious
To shattered glass and acts of tragedy
Or signs of cardboard begging charity
Who am I to stand aghast at life
Twisted metal spilling in the streets
And ask the reasons why it all should be
When I could wait in quiet apathy
But I am not a blinking traffic light
I am not a lifeless entity
Conscious to the wreckage we create
I am not content to sit and wait
We have felt the force of passing forms
Ripping through the course of our intent
I can taste the spillage of our hearts
I inhale the putrid bitter scent
Burnt and broken heaps that once were love
Scattered on the landscape of desire
Empty vessels gutted in the dark
Hope that we abandoned to the fire
Sometimes I would like to be machine
Incapable of tears for what I know
But I am not a traffic light that blinks
I cannot tell when to stop or go

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

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

The Night/The Open Road

The night–the open road
Where hand-in-hand the lovers go
With quiet eyes and hungry souls
And in the lights, a path is shown
But only to the end of where
The beam illuminates the way
And to their darkened fate they plunge
With hands and fingers wound as one

The night–the open road
Where fading in his arms she hung
Against the still receding songs
From newly smoldered wreckage sung
Now overturned, the spinning wheels
Of those whose light can see just far
Enough to drive them further on
Into the dangers of the dark

Migratory

So delicate against my palm
My pretty bird
I held you close
And cradled you when you would come
To call upon me

With every note your precious song
Awakened love
Inside my heart
A symphony of open sky
And clouds below me

I curse the cold that drove you out
A banished form
A faded tune
To come no more against my ears
Or cheer the lonely

And pray someday you may return
My migratory
Little bird
I paid your passage with my tears
And miss you always

Quite Warm

I found you
Arms pulling knees in to shield off the dark
I found you
Crippled and broken–collapsed on the wall
I found you
Clutching your chest in a bid for your heart

I said “there you are, love”
You said “this isn’t me”
Something happened out there in the silence

I said “come to me, love”
You said “I cannot breathe”
All these bones have been crushed from the violence

I found you
Wounded and lost with those marks on your back
I found you
Cold and abandoned with shivering hands
I found you
Shrinking away from the thought of attack

I said “trust me, my dear”
You said “I cannot move”
In the corner where you had retreated

I said “do not be scared”
You said “what can I do?”
With the strength in your muscles depleted

I found you
Helpless and cold on the untidied floor
I took you
Up in my arms from the shadows below
I told you
“I will not leave you. You needn’t cry more”

“I have a heart that could keep you quite warm”

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?

Imploring Sparks

Imploring sparks
A kerosene from broken hearts
Has taken refuge in the cavity
Beneath the surface you once placed
Your tired head upon to rest–
The empty cavern of my chest

A potent mix
Of fractured things I cannot fix
Is soaking through the fabric of my dreams
And now, escaping through my pores
Is inundating me once more
As I kneel, willing on the floor

If this must be
The violent finality
Of pleading for a cause that no one sees
Then take the agony in me
And light it up–set it ablaze
As I dispel the dark in flames

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

Not The Fall

The rain lands muted on tired cobbled stone
Repenting the sky
Doomed by its own mass
To plummet helplessly to the pavement below
“it isn’t the fall”, they tell me
“it’s the sudden stop that kills you”
And somehow I see myself as a raindrop
A tiny ball
Falling
With my stomach in knots
And my heart in my throat
But it isn’t the fall that hurts
It’s the sudden stop
The cobbled stone
Crashing head first into reality
Finding that the long descent is nothing
It’s the hard, hard world
Rising to meet me
That hurt the most
And falling might be
The best feeling of all
Except for the firm
Stone ignorance
Of an unsympathetically dry
Sidewalk

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