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

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The Empty Chair

It mocks me there–the empty chair
So calm, it sits
And acts as if
It hasn’t any care

It taunts me there–the empty chair
A quiet form
That once was warm
When you were sitting there

This wretched pair–the empty chair
And I, we sit
Like counterfeits
And each exchange a stare

It isn’t fair–the empty chair
I wish, I wish
For only this:
That you were sitting there

Bland

Nothing tastes as something should
I wish to have no drink or food
For nothing seems to fill my need
And nothing suits me half as good
Or satisfies me quite as well
As being with someone I love
So nothing sounds like something good
Though everything seems like it should
The only cause that I conclude
Could cause me not to wish for food
Is that I’m hungry this is true
But maybe it’s from missing you
And nothing else has quite the taste
To fill the hunger or replace
The smiles that you provided me
Or comfort felt in your embrace
Nothing tastes as something can
When all is well and right again
Perhaps the mind is meant to sense
A better flavor with a friend
So nothing tastes like something should
For nothing could be quite as good
As being with someone you love
And suddenly I wish I could

Speaking To An Empty Room

It’s like a surgical procedure as I separate the sound
From the things I feel inside of me and how it all turned out
As I tear a little piece of me from underneath my skin
It becomes a rough translation of the state that I am in

Unintentionally
I opened my mouth
And the sound that came out was “I miss you”
But there was nothing to say
The room was empty
And it echoed it back to me “I miss you”

What happened
I’m talking to myself again
I must be crazy

It’s not that I
Don’t know how to live
It’s just that lately

Nothing feels
Like reality
It’s all a little strange

I guess that I
Have a lot to live for
But I just need to say

I miss you
Sometimes I just smile pretending you are there
I miss you
Sometimes I just cry for no reason at all
I miss you
I would not trade any moment I have had
I miss you
In the end I know it’s really not so bad

No one knows the way I feel
Except for you and this empty room
No one hears these little words
But it’s the least that I could do

Unintentionally
I opened my mouth
And the sound that came out was “I miss you”
But there was nothing to say
The room was empty
And it echoed it back to me “I miss you”

And I could almost hear your voice…

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

If Sleep Were A Flavor Of Tea

If sleep were a flavor of tea
The heart of the leaves like a drug
When taken in warm in the eve
Would dispatch the wakeful at length

If sleep were a color of paint
It’s qualities captured in brush
When spread on the canvas and seen
Would lull any eye into dreams

If sleep were a note on the scale
The sound like an ambient hum
When struck in the silence and heard
Could seduce and subdue with its verse

If sleep were a kind of perfume
A subtle narcotic of scent
When tested and taken in breath
Could trigger the symptoms of death

If sleep were a texture of skin
A soothing serene sort of touch
When pressed against lips and returned
Could quiet the senses and calm

Then I should be perfect at rest
Asleep as the sleep of the dead
If sleep were as simple as this
And the senses alive in my head

But sleep is a shadow that fades
In the light of my wishes and pleas
Alone without sense and in wishing I wish
That sleep were a flavor of tea

But I have no tea and no paint
No music nor scent to imbibe
No kisses to take me to comfort
No help for exhaustion tonight

And so I have nothing to dream
And nothing in which to recline
No sense of the senses to sense
No picture for my frame of mind

Alone in the quiet I write
And wait for the final repose
Till near me you’re able to be
Or sleep is a flavor of tea

Parasite

Cocooned within beneath the skin
With tentacles like vices closing
Ever tighter underneath
They tear at me until exposing

How I suffer
Though I try to exercise these demons
I thought I had the strength to face this in your absence

How I suffer
Though I try injecting all of these reasons
But I’m host to all the faceless empty caverns

Wake up screaming am I dreaming
I think it’s eating me alive on the inside
You can’t see it on the surface
But I think it’s eating me alive on the inside

Oh God it’s the parasite
I think I’ve given it a name
Oh God please be here tonight
Before I drive myself insane
We all are an entity
I cannot separate
These open wounds brought the parasite
I cannot amputate

I think it’s eating me alive on the inside
I only want to see your eyes for a while
I think it’s eating me alive on the inside
Theres no resistance for the vacancy you left

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