Pens & Needles

Tapping the page
For a delicate vein
To inject with the dosage
Of ink and its stain

Struck by remorse
For the injuries caused
To offend such a fabric
With my brand of pain

But I pressure the point
Through the skin of this ivory
Piercing the heart
Of an innocent leaf

And it never revolts
Against me and my thievery
Innocence torn
By the words of my grief

The unspeakable, spoke
From the absence of healing
Prescriptions I wrote
In the songs of the night

A transfusion my throat
Sacrifices from feelings
Like dissonant notes
In the wrongs that I write

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Dancer Down

Oh there she goes
We’ve seen this song and dance before
Too many rounds
And now she’s bleeding on the ballroom floor
Pay her no mind
Pay her no mind
She does this all the time
Try not to stare
But don’t feel bad
She does this all the time

And when the crowd closes in
The music–oh the sweat and angst
She lost her footing yet again
Trying to move at a different pace
Dancer down dancer down
Dear mr. DJ keep the beat
The pandemonium resumes
Don’t stop the band just play on

You tore your dress
Silk has a tendency to catch
On sharper edges
Chiffon and lace don’t ever last
Pay her no mind
Pay her no mind
She only wants attention
Just step around
And keep in line
She only wants attention

The floor is cold on the face
The angle much more riveting
What people hide up their dress
Adds a sense of danger to the scene
Dancer down dancer down
Let the doorman lend assistance
The pandemonium resumes
Don’t stop the dance just play on

Dear, did you shatter
Your last glass slipper
Did the clock strike
The end of the day
Did you think they
Would want another diva
Nobody hears you crying
When the music playing

Untimely

For hands that lift the fallen
Shift the heart from severed calling
Stolen love from life forsaken
So untimely from you taken

From the empty reach extending
From the emptiness unending
Shattered words now left unspoken
Silent packages unopened

For the ears where quiet settles
Dreamt of noises drowned and muffled
By a silken veil dissevered
For the seconds ticking ever

Lips unmoving in their slumber
Tides retreating pulled us under
And unwittingly we followed
Fears as one and joys as hollow

For the heart left unrequited
For the wrongs left still unrighted
In the bed your form indented
Now unfilled and unattended

And the music keeps it’s beating
For the world undone and bleeding
While the solemn angel’s finger
With no charge for which to linger

Moves to part the summer evening
Ray of hope for light deceiving
Drawn by fragile blossoms beauty
Trade the guardian his duty

For the eyes not understanding
For the mind as mine demanding
This our plight not yet determined
Not by sight nor yet by sermon

Tear these torrid shadows lurking
Out the rooms of victims hurting
Mend the ancient circle’s spinning
Set in motion from beginning

For the lifeless and the broken
For the remnant still and chosen
For the living and the dying
For these fleeting glimpses trying

To unravel this–the fabric
Of our stringed and stranger labyrinth
We are lost but not forgotten
Left to live as life our coffin

Bombs & Hearts

The sound is clear
The cold night air
Betrays the pitch
The state of this
I know the sound
But can’t make out
If this is love
Or bombs above

Hearts can fall and blow us all away
Dropping like explosives from the sky
Love is not the safest place to be
Love can level everything in sight
Something much like playing with a fire
Waiting for the world to detonate
They should package all of my desire
Drop it on the public from a plane

The long descent
From where I went
Cause and effect
No accident
I’ve been falling
Hard in love
And this is what
The fallout does

Here I am
Ground zero and
I heard it coming
All along

Here I stand
This cratered land
Is just the place
Where I belong

Drop the bomb and calmly walk away
No one said that sentiments are fair
Fired from the barrel of a heart
Love could be the frontline of a war
Something much like orders to advance
Fighting for a higher sort of cause
Hearts and bombs are weaponry of chance
Hearts just have a longer way to fall

String In My Chest

There’s a string in my chest
Attached to the mess
We left unswept
The day you left

And I keep it all in
Away from the friends
And prying eyes
That ask me why

There’s a string in my chest
That will sometimes catch
On certain songs
Or random thoughts

And unravel the seams
That spill all the things
I try to keep
So nice and neat

And the string in my chest
Is hanging from my heart

It’s a dangerous game
I’m sure it’s not too smart

For a valuable thing
To be so quickly torn

But it wasn’t my plan
It’s just how I was born

There’s a string in my chest
That sometimes comes undone

When the threads are snagged
On fragments of my love

There’s a string in my chest
That makes me think of you

It’s a beautiful mess
We got ourselves into

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

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