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

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Clouds I Packed

Fragments of the bridges we burned
In the charred grey haze
In the soft blue grass
My hand on your future
Your palm on my past

Little scraps of clouds I packed
In the zippers and pockets
Of the walls we moved
And the paint we peeled
For the dreams we drew
Under stark white dots
Oh, the skies we knew
Were

Bigger than the snowfall over those mountains
And bigger than the love all over these hills
Our sky was on fire
Our hearts were our needles
Our eyes were a compass
Our bodies unbound

Bigger than the words repainted from ancients
And bigger than door frames over this house
Our sky is on fire
Our blankets untorn
Our love is like water
Our bodies still warm

(sorry for the delay. I’ve been relocating and adjusting. Thank you for your patience)

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

Ready Or Not

Summertime dreamers
Wintertime love
Drinking up starlight
Waking up God
I could die perfect
We could die young
Tied up in angels
Ready or not

The River And I

The river and I go side by side
It runs, though I, content to walk
Am in no rush, though tossed about
And ever turbulent, no doubt
But less intentional in stride

The river and I, we both do long
To find the sea–the open deep
I feel my path will longer be
For I am less at liberty
To chase the places I belong

The river and I have much to share
The downward path we both pursue
I feel I fall but never rise
And dashed upon these rapids white
The fate I find is rarely fair

The river has more voice than I
It has no fear to speak its mind
It gladly tears the earth apart
While on its path with steady heart
It makes no stops and forms no ties

The river has more force than I
To cut away at standing stone
Its lonely goal by soul inspired
It runs always and never tires
With naught a thought to quit or die

The river knows not how it moves
Nor does it out of malice roll
It merely seeks its distant love
Relentlessly at every ebb
And presses in, around, and through

The river and I, we both know well
The destination of our call
We know which way we need to go
Though how to turn we may not know
And what may come we cannot tell

The river and I, though without words
Walk side by side along the bank
I long to run as does this friend
But how I fall and how I bend
Has broken me in shattered thirds

The river and I have parted ways
It perseveres while I digress
Returning to my former lot
A life, a day, a time forgot
With sentences I long to say

The river and I will both go far
Adapting to our circumstance
Perhaps, since I am not allowed
The river will reach you somehow
In freedom on some distant shore

Midair

The bullet pierced the breast in flight
In plummet, life has traded light
For darkness as the feathers fall
It never touched the ground at all
But somewhere on the journey down
Relinquished fate and slipped away

‘Tis better to be killed midair
Than caged upon the ground in bars
Or traded for the songs you sing
Without the use of heart or wing
I would much rather die in love
Than live as though it’s not enough

Painted Vessel of Passage

Skin, oh the falsities stretched over flesh
As a smile, or a laugh, or a wish
Twisted in foreign hieroglyphics
Subtle nuances of portrayal
With which we deftly parry
The thrust of probing questions
Or misguided salutations
But skin is not what I am
And this boxcar bears no resemblance to the passenger within
Merely a painted vessel of passage
Oft’ the canvas of a graffiti made to fade
A forest, blocked by trees
Or, perhaps, a tale that no one would believe
That is us
That is me
Beneath

Maybe Dragons Are Misunderstood

Just because you’re hard to kill
Doesn’t always make you tough
Just because you never smile
Doesn’t mean you never dream
Just because you’re breathing fire
Doesn’t mean you cannot love
Just because you’re different
Doesn’t mean you’re dangerous

What if all the dragons
Are just brokenhearted fairy tales
What if all the monsters
Are just souls without a home
What if all the blood we spill
Is digging our way down to hell
What if everybody
Didn’t have to be alone

Just because they don’t believe
Doesn’t always mean you’re wrong
Just because they cannot see
Doesn’t mean there’s nothing there
Just because you’re far away
Doesn’t mean you don’t belong
Just because my skin is thick
Doesn’t mean that I don’t care

What if all the villains
Are the heroes no one understood
What if all the peasants
Are just kings without a throne
What if you and I were never
Scripted to be bad or good
What if everybody
Didn’t have to be alone

Stratus Arrested

Stratus arrested
We escort the vestige
Of dusk and deliverance
Over the threshold of
Coverless endings
A yarn of our spinning
In blood we invested
And stratus arrested

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

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

Sometimes You Can See…

It isn’t all that often, but sometimes
You can see love
In tiny pinholes
Bleeding through a ebon sky in variable densities
Light
Ignited
Ancient
Caravanning the distance in waves
Predating the cracks in our fragile hearts
Washing upon celestial shores in swaths we call constellations
But we never really knew them
These eyes in the heaven are to faces unblinking
A glance by chance or divine
Falling across time
Onto a serendipitous second in which elements align
Providing oxygen to my tired mind down here
It isn’t very often, but sometimes
You can see God
Burnt through in the autumn hues of dying dreams
Shaken and piled up for sweeping
Where today’s decomposition becomes tomorrow’s fuel
To wake life where death stirs
Like children coming forth from sleep
It isn’t often, but sometimes
I think that centuries may just be unwitting catalysts
Love, launched long before the orbits breathed a full rotation
Locked in motion
Ancient beyond recognition
Struck here tonight because it was the only place it could go
And we are nothing new
Me and you
Just tiny allegories of immortality
Caught tightly
Spun lightly
And bundled up in woven threads of something
We did not create
Embodiments of unity even the stars do not comprehend
While bending arms of light to touch us
These broken compositions
These stolen notes
We have written in stone over the face of what we know
Are our epitaph
That
We love
And it comes with no permissions
Branded deep within a sky that casts no shadow, but is its own reason why
And so am I
So I decide
That if the sky makes no apology for light
Despite the blind eyes we bear
And if the stars believe the distance here is worth the weight of infinity
And if the pain of decomposing becomes the beauty of tomorrow’s bloom
Then I love you
And it must have been true
Before they wrote the first line of the first word
Or spoke of things like this
It isn’t often, but sometimes
The world moves
For small things
And life springs
From cracked dreams
Under the ancient eyes
In this ebon sky
Where, it isn’t often, but sometimes
You can see love

Eponym

Are we the embodiment–conflicted fictive eponym
Of amorism, tainted–like a monolith for martyrdom
Scandalizing passion with our profligated fashion
Disassociating servitude from actual attraction

Are we the antithesis–the artificial flavoring
Of catalogue compliance–like iconoclastic bravery
Subterfuge for living with superfluous misgivings
In redundant disapproval our dissident divisions

(forgive me for being away so long. I have been quite sick lately and I promise to make time to visit my blogs more now that I am in recovery mode)

Elastic, Resilient

Elastic
Resilient
I stretch and bend but never break

I’m plastic
And brilliant
Invented for the worst mistakes

A perfect combination of
The hardest spine and weakest heart
Surviving hate to die of love
While holding things that fall apart

Afflicted by the purest cures
Astounded by the most mundane
Confused by things I know are sure
An innocent deserving blame

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

Chandelier Of Stars

In the vaulted cathedral of night
An endless chandelier of stars
Dangles brightly overhead
Where bedded oceans
Speak whispered waves
Upon a shore of bronze-grey
Sometimes in the recompense of chance
Two hands pass
In fleeting grasps along parallel lines
Where neither gravity nor time
Stays long enough for tea
And neither do we
Surety for a pact yet unfulfilled
These glimmering fragments
Of twinkle-eyed enchantments
Blow in on the offshore breeze
For a dance on the hem
Of secret seas
Beneath the chandelier of stars
Where all we are
And all we ever were
Is a blaze of torn sky
Trespassing the atmosphere in night
To write initials
In a constellation
Visible for one millionth of a moment
To be held on lips too small
And kept in safes too thin
Before the breeze returns
And claims its stray sand dancers
Beneath a chandelier of stars

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

A Question Is An Answer

A question is an answer if the answer is a question
A mystery is ruined when the secrets are all told
A moment is a lifetime when you live within the moment
The past was once our present but the future never comes
We love to hate the things we wish we never had to know
We hate to love the things we know we never can possess
We seem to be the best as seeing all the worst within us
But often we are worst at seeing what we do the best

I wish I wished I never knew you though I know I don’t
I’m glad to say I’m sad to know I never will forget
The smiles that make me cry inside and tears for which I smile
I’m proud that I’m ashamed to say I cannot find regrets
You’re always here when you are gone and present when you’re missing
I couldn’t do the things I could for fear I’m not afraid
A question is my answer when I ask if we are asking
For changes we would like to think we thought we might have made

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

Sarcasm: The Last True Language Of Love

God so loved the world
But the world so loved itself
Strike a match and start it up
We could use a bit of help

Everything is broken
But we play with it just fine
Keep your hands inside the circle
Keep your things away from mine

Oh, they call it falling
Call it falling if you like
But we fell before we started
And we all are brokenhearted

Dissonance is bliss
All our comedy is free
Light up this apocalypse
And save a seat for me

Amorous and oh-so-coy
Inflated with the words you say
If love is indestructible
Then plunge it through my arteries

Perhaps the silver bullet
To a world full of intelligence
Is found within the confines
If our cynical romanticism

Just when I thought arrogance
Could be the death of us
I took a chance on sentiments
And got shot right through my gut