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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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

Drinking Arsenic Like Medicine

Ladies and gentlemen
Let me present you with a
Perfect new precedent
For acting like an idiot
Here in this very room
Over in the corner sits
The hero of our story, or
Should I say the idiot

Some people simply have
No shred of common sense in them
Would you believe that he is
Something like an idiom
A metaphor or simile
For oblivious naivety
A character for study if
You can stand the scenery

Let us have a toast to his
Odious achievements. He
Had the best of health before
Showing up this evening
Staggering in agony
Begging for the Tylenol
Was poured a glass of arsenic
And presently imbibed it all

The moral of the story
Oh, ever-present audience
Is: when you have an ailment
Never look for medicine
It’s safer on your own and
You are better off with loneliness
Than asking for assistance
And ending up with arsenic

Oh God, the Blood

So delicate
This skin we pull
So tight to hide ourselves within
It isn’t much
For us to cut and drain
With but a simple touch

So delicate
These sentiments
So fragile in their infancy
It isn’t hard
To break apart the trappings
Of a weakened heart

The smell of smoke
Nicotine ghosts
In structures emptied long ago
On the better side of the worst side of town

At last she spoke
“I made my choice”
A whisper quivered like her voice
While traffic passed but it never heard the sound

Oh God, the blood
The stains are deep
A river cut
Into the streets
Oh God, the blood
My hands, unclean
Have testified
Of things we’ve seen

Oh God
The massacres we make
Of ones we crave
With sharp mistakes
Oh God, the blood
Is crimson red
From tender love
We left for dead

They Wait

From whence these apparitions came
I cannot say; I dare not think
Alight upon my window frame
In form, as birds, yet not the same

With talons curved and plumage preened
Observers, they appear to be
Such beady eyes may scarcely tell
but I will not be fooled so well

“I know your kind, oh wicked beast
In patience perched upon my sill
Expecting here to find some feast
But I am fine, and hardly ill

Away from here; away! Away!
No feasting will be done today
Remove and leave no trace behind
For nothing here is dead nor dying”

Yet, still this blackened gathering
Has marred my views and jarred my plans
As nightmares, somehow given wings
And so I sat for their demands

I spake into the lot of them
“What evil plot or tainted wind
Has brought you here to mock my rest?
If you have tongues, at least confess”

At length no answer they prescribed
And did but stare with ebon eyes
Yet, not at mine–below perhaps
Into my core and through my depths

A sudden jolt–a thought–a start
Impaled my wonderings with fear
These foul ghosts await my heart
The weakened beat of which they hear

From far below, the suffering
Of this, my spirit’s offering
A broken heart and bleeding love
Has called them out and up above

A netherworld I dare not name
Cacophonous, unholy lands
Had heard the deepness of my pain
And traveled here to see my end

But not my body do they crave
No flesh nor blood they hope to have
They hunger for my sanity
And this poor heart that beats in me

The brokenness within my chest
These demons seek to drink its blood
Of what I’ve bled, to take the rest
And wrest me of my dying love

So long upon my window’s base
With empty eyes and solemn face
They wait, despair for me to take
They wait to see if I will wake

And maybe they are justified
The scent of wounded heart to seek
Although my frame retains its pride
The warmth inside is far too weak

As I recline against the bed
They stand there on my window ledge
Unspeaking, but I feel their gaze
They wait to see if I will wake

Kiss/Kill

I want to kiss you as you drive the knife in
Kiss you as you take what I’ve been
Wanting to surrender all along

I want to kiss you as you drain my last breath
Kiss you as you take what I guess
Somehow seems to already be gone

I want to kiss you as you cut the feeling
Kiss you while my head is reeling
Running out of reasons to resist

I want to kiss you as my world collapses
Kiss you ’till this nothingness has
Traded in my agony for bliss

I want to kiss you like it’s suicidal
Kiss you like your lips are vital
Medicine for me to overuse

I want to kiss you like our world is ending
Kiss you with my heart pretending
This is all that’s left for me to do

I want to kiss you as your fingers tighten
Kiss you as I lose my sight and
Slip away in waves of consciousness

I want to kiss you in my final motion
Kiss you with my last expression
Kiss you as they lay my soul to rest

In Absence Of Tears

When I could cry no longer
My tears became a fire
A brand upon my passion
To set the world ablaze

When I could cry no longer
My eyes abandoned color
Abrasions from the anger
Impressed upon my gaze

When I could cry no longer
The shadows in my corners
These denizens distorted
Invaded my respite

When I could cry no longer
My life became my torture
My waking turned to anguish
Which followed me to night

When I could cry no longer
The emptiness and hunger
The stresses I was under
Became a prison cell

When I could cry no longer
My grief became the sulfur
My pain became the chamber
My mind became a hell

The Band Played On

Oh God, we’re sinking slowly
Cold and lonely
This is a tragedy

These icy depths below me
Rising slowly
Witness calamity

Oh God, where are you now
We will drown and
What will they say of you?

The lights are going out
All around me
What are we meant to do?

And the band played on
A melody
A sad sad song
Hear the horns and strings
And the whole world crashed
Down on me
While the band played on
Through the final scene

Oh God, we die so soon we
Don’t have time to
Say our last goodbyes

This gaping wound that makes us
Doomed before we
Ever close our eyes

Oh God, I wanted this I
Don’t have strength to
Point the blame at you

But as we’re going down these
Fates appear so
Cruel and undue

And the band played on
A melody
A last surrender
To the deep
While the whole world crashed
Down on me
But the band played on
And so did we

Everything Is Tainted

When your eyes are scratched
By objects unforgiving
When your vision warps
The colors you perceive
Everything is tainted

When your hands are marked
By scars that steal the feeling
When your fingers reach
For things you cannot find
Everything is tainted

When your dreams are gripped
By demons uninvited
When your sleep is torn
In pieces you can’t mend
Everything is tainted

When your heart is broke
By bitter disappointment
When a void replaces
Things you once believed
Everything is tainted

Dream For You

Being alive will always
Come with circumstances we can’t change
These bitter nights will always
Come with chances for a brighter day
Sometimes the fight will take us
Far away from where we want to be
But it’s alright to lose your
Focus for a moment if you need

I will dream for you
And believe in bigger things
You don’t have to make it through
I will bear you on my wings

When your hope is gone
And the world is wrong
Let your heart be calm
I will dream for you

We all need something that is
Far too large for us to do alone
We all need someone who can
Find us when we lose our way back home
We all need dreams that help us
See the world like no one else before
We all need keys that let us
Open up our deepest inner doors

I will dream for you
And believe in bigger things
You don’t have to make it through
I will bear you on my wings

When your hope is gone
And the world is wrong
Let your heart be calm
I will dream for you

Tragedy Is In Love With Me

Tragedy is in love with me
And I’m in love with her
Can you see what she’s done to me

Tragedy is my bestest friend
I take her everywhere
We can be what we want to be

Tragedy is in love with me
And she can be so sweet
Everything is a fantasy

Tragedy is my nearest kin
I feel her in my blood
We can be what we want to be

Tragedy is in love with me
She likes to hold my hand
We make up when we disagree

Tragedy is my mirror mask
She always understands
We can be what we want to be

Tragedy is in love with me
She never wants to leave
Every evening she follows me

Tragedy is my better half
She helps my heart believe
We can be what we want to be

Second Plan

Was I brave or was I reckless
I can’t decide as I look at this
Mess I’m in with only me to blame

Was it wrong to think that love is
Bigger than the walls around us
Nothing here will ever be the same

Clouds roll in and I roll over
In my bed but it’s not over
Questions linger hanging from
These ceilings where the pain began

I don’t know how to recover
Grasping just to face another
Day where I can understand
To love without a second plan

Was I brave or was I reckless
I can’t decide as I look at this
Mess I’m in with only me to blame

Still I must believe that love is
Bigger than these walls around us
When it comes it changes everything

Translucent

Do you see me
Am I here
I must be crazy
But I don’t feel like I exist

Do you see me
Anywhere
I must be fading
Why is my face so colorless

In the mirror
Peering back
I must be dreaming
There’s a stranger in my skin

It looks human
Still intact
But I feel hollow
Like a fragment of the wind

I can see right through my tenuous disguise
This lack of substance and this faded enterprise
Maybe now in form I start to realize
I am translucent and I hope they see the light
Through me

Enclosure

Interred in juggernaut walls
Rifted as it were from form well fit
By cause or catastrophe untold
Folded for wilting
Petals lain in tired heaps about this enclosure
Swept up in figure crumpled slumped and sunken in efforts spent
To rend mortar from brick to crack sick structured severance
Laced in loosely laid arguments
Spun for movements yet untaken
In desperation resolve forsaken
Trapped
But not apparent
These exits hid for time when waking reason sheds inhibition
When sense and sensitivity are molded first for what cannot be seen
Which here now resides
Bent in shadow
Drawn for eyes of brighter respect
Whose lenses cleansed again repent the disbelief in trade for what is made
Gentle fingers to trace the contour of this devil’s grave
In truth to discover the clever architect of such cruel monuments
Could not a tyrant be
If indeed as tyrants go a hand external this would mean
Entombed in grave remorse or faded course
For drunken charting in love’s throes
A figure fair and sovereign did fashion such a cavern
If not by reason
Then by lack of will to look beyond a cold unforgiving frame
To name an enemy unseen a thing of dreams or even more a ghost
But ghosts do not here dwell
And ghosts
Though present nonetheless
Do not the dwelling of the living form
Nor lay the bricks
A holding pen
If that is what it is that you are in
May rise but ‘neath the guide of only one
The one in which resides this mortar
This brick
This mob of walls from which is not a certain door
And so laid
Crumpled on the floor
A figure bathed in cascaded darkness all it’s own
To wrap in rags from sorrow sewn
A thing of beauty
A thing of bright elements infused
Of such a race that angels envy for their loves
Disfigured in despair by air oppressed and rent of rest
And yet…
Free
If by choosing she will be
Uncluttered by restraint to paint a stroke of brilliant light
Across a night in need of such
For out the darkness
Blushes paths untaken
Words unspoken
Exits formed of threads being woven by hands which built
Perhaps unknowing
This dim and dreamless dark enclosure
To unravel walls well fabricated
But not from necessity here created
A farce are they
By motion shattered with ease
Poor creature you are not caged
You are not clipped as birds with wings
You are not held within these
As always you are liberated
And have been since when first created
Birthed unclothed and unashamed
Untold untrained and untamed
To build grander things than tombs in which to cower from a world of tombs
A world of rooms
A world of flowers wilted in walls built
By hands not meant for such doom
By eyes fused with colors unreflected without others
Arise to face these juggernaut walls
And find them weak
Made to fall
Spend those finely sculpted hands on other tasks of greater chance and higher call
Lit from a fist thrown firm beneath the tired chest of these apparitions
Move and live and love
And in so doing be the destroyer
Of your saddened heart’s enclosure

24,901

Twenty four thousand miles
The circle of this sphere
Surely somewhere there’s a place for me

Twenty four thousand miles
And anywhere but here
I don’t know where I would rather be

But I would like to belong
And I would like to be home

Twenty four thousand miles
Across this speck of dust
Floating in an endless open space

Twenty four thousand miles
The distance between us
I want to set the galaxies ablaze

And I just want to belong
And I just want to be home

I want to tear apart the sky
Rip the colors from the leaves
Burn the atmosphere to static

If we could light it all on fire
Maybe then I could believe
We could rise up from the ashes

I can’t feel anything at all
But I feel nothing very well
Someone wake me when it’s over

I’ll either choose to sleep it off
Or I will blow us all to hell
I guess I’ll go back to the covers

But I just want to belong
And I just want to be home

Happy Face

I think I need time or space
Maybe just a bit of both
To bring back a smiling face
Tonight it’s out on loan
Not that I’m all that sad
I think it’s the aftermath
Of crying too hard too much
And they don’t make pills for that

The pillows I sleep with know
Oh when it rains it pours
I turned all my insides out
There’s nothing to say anymore
But I’ll get along just fine
And soon I will find a place
To translate these tears of mine
And put on a happy face

Trouble has come and gone
Maybe it hangs around
I don’t feel like checking tonight
It’s late and I need to lay down
The world is an awkward place
For being a sensitive type
There’s too many ways to fall
And not enough help to rise

But I’ve got a drink beside
The bed stand where I will sleep
The headache will fade by then
Along with the rest of me
I do what I can to believe
The choices we make will count
For something beyond these dreams
It’s all worth the cost for now

It could be worse I suppose
And that’s what I tell myself
We have to keep feeding our hope
We have to keep up our health
When all of these tragic times
Have turned into history
I’ll look back and say it’s alright
It’s still worth it all to me

Giving Blood

Bleed me
Take what you need and
Release me
Make these incisions
So deep we
Feel it inside
when they cut
This is the greatest divide

Bleed me
Drunk from the pain and still
Reeling
I’d give the last drop to
Free you
Please don’t be scared
You can have it all
Promise I will be prepared

Wake up strapped to the table
I will keep pumping as long as I can
You can have all of this life I am able
To give you and then I will give it again

Bleed me
Take my inside out
And see me
I will not hide when
You need me
Here I will stay
Give what it takes
Till they take me away