Tuesday, November 29, 2011

On An Open Ended Book Shelf

I tried to climb climb climb out of this world
The reality is better in my mind
The only truth I need
I can find in sleep
In escaping through the universe's cracks

She never really truly deeply believed
That the sky was blue
Says it's just a trick of the light
Playing with your eyes
She'd prefer to let the fantasy die

My open wound
A thousand tiny cuts
Through my thoughts
A delicate balance
Between caring
And forsaking
Between living
and escaping
Whether to capitalize
and lower case yourself

Shimmering
Shimmering once.
A blue cascade of light
The reality is better in my mind.

Monday, October 17, 2011

.1

The last time she said
'The last time I cried'
Kept going over it again
Until the moment the truth started to break
Like fountains springing in my mind
Blinding me to the truth I tried so hard to find
Still I get up one more time

And say...

It's like a crack, a mirror, a spiderweb
Crashing cascades of fractured thought
Inside a fractured brain
A mental note that could fill a library
And other assorted analogies
That it seems I just don't have the time for
Not today, not yesterday
Ask me tomorrow and we'll see

What we'll see, when we see
What even a blind man could see.

Friday, September 02, 2011

Murmurs


Sometimes I must
Admit I am remiss
As these lives tick by
And something doesn't click
Was I just lost
In some screwed up innocence
Tell me what's
The point of this?

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Retraction

Where do I go anymore?
When I'm tired of all the voices
When I'm tired of seeing too much
When I can't even stand to watch the news

Your words are like poison
Your philosophizing takes me back to a time
When my questions were unanswered

Everyone's got to find their own way

Where do I go anymore?
When I just want to hide
From all the lights flashing
Through the windows at night

I'm tired, these days, all the time
I don't need any justification
Not when the question is why

Where do I go anymore;
When I just want to be broken?
And not have to think about putting myself together again
At least for awhile...

Everyone's got to find their own way

Thursday, August 04, 2011

People

The night invested in him
Myriads of understanding

"I just want to run"

Breathe and be
Simple and quiet
Like the faintest whisper

"I'm tired of being alone"

Half filled glasses
Shattering the night
With their merry voices
Tinkling crystal
And exploding emotions

Till the days began to sing
He would say
She would say
Till the days began to twist and fade

No more a whisper,
No more anything.


Thursday, May 19, 2011

Tangled Lines

Drift away with me
On a cloud of quiet shape
We will float away
Till we're forever lost in haze

Yeah, till time no longer has a face

Drift away with me
Like ripples on the sand
You can count on me
All your secrets will be safe

Yeah, cause I've no longer things to say

Oh, and in the morning
When they come out from the rocks
Search the mountain scapes
Find our ship has run aground

Yeah, but we're nowhere to be found

Drift away with me
And I'll drift away with you

Monday, April 18, 2011

Bristols At Dawn

I want to feel dark
With a cloud or two overhung
No little whispers
Of spring
Sprang
Sprung
I want to feel dark
When the lights are still on.

I want the thunder in my head
Crashing around my mind
No little peaks
Of sun
Shown
Shine
I want the thunder in my head
While it's raining inside.

Tempest and the Night Owls

Shudder stricken
Quiet nights of momentary lapse
The girl on the page burns
Dancing flame against the sky
Violent and murderous rage
Dawning in the painted frames
Of a fairy tale glass.
Etched by the broken heat
In her nightmarish place
She clings dear to anything
Cause there's nothing left to hold onto anymore
Least of all him

Monday, March 28, 2011

Picture Show

Turn out the light
My heart shines too brightly
And everywhere I go
I'm like a walking picture glowing

Turn out the light
My heart burns too brightly and
I'm afraid that you will know
When I'm a walking picture now showing
You

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Wave

Five years to the day I woke up crying
Not really understanding why I was
I found out when the night fell
When the quiet broke my heart

It really should have been raining
But it never works out that way
When you're standing, left empty
By the phone call come and went

I dreamed last night that you were back
Like you'd gone away on a trip
I went to get you a book
One that we'd discussed
Then I remembered that you were gone
But the dream it didn't end
We all went on as we had before
Except that no one paid you any note
We left you just sitting there
A fading light in the corner of my room

Monday, March 07, 2011

Sunrise

Time so vast discouraging
Like the thrashing of the sea
Misting grey and crashing blue
Letting waves roll over you

What has lasted wasn't right
Like the holes torn into night
Park light trying to consume
Empty benches nature's pews

And I stand by
Waiting for the sunrise
And I stand by
Waiting for my sunrise

Just one last chance to see the colors shift and change
Before the emptiness of night has fully been washed away

In The Out Door

Caught in a familiar place
Our hero dances resolute
somewhere between kitchen accessories
and the freshly butchered steaks
the voices sounding overhead
singing one come one all
but our hero isn't listening 
He just stands in the aisle and says

Every underdog is a heretic
Flying in the face
Of convention and establishment
demanding he come in last place
there's no time for course correction
when you're slamming into the shores
Breaking down your own beliefs
Waltzing in the out door

Saturday, January 29, 2011

A Little Nonsense


It was quiet over the city, which didn’t matter to me in the least as I was in the suburbs. Rain battered the outside of buildings, somewhere, but I was inside looking out at the warm winter night.

Maybe it was my sentimental heart, or maybe it was the tequila… Either way I had just one thing on my mind. Trouble is, I couldn’t think of what it was. Also I didn’t have tequila in the house so what I had drunk was a mystery to all.

Beside me the exercise bike had seen better days. Not many, mind you, but beggars can’t be choosers; sometimes. It seemed to be a metaphor for my life, always in motion but never going anywhere. Deciding this was too deep a thought, I quickly threw it out the window into the grass. It laid there looking back at me, hurt. I tried to tell it that I might one day have time for it, but not at the moment.

I was busy you see.

Off in the distance a bird was calling. Another bird answered, but the call was collect so it declined it. Ah, to be young and a blue jay.

Suddenly I remembered what it was that I’d forgotten; the thing I’d been trying to remember all along. Quickly I hobo’d my way onto the train of thought which was just leaving the station. As I sat in the car watching the progression of mind meeting relevance, I was startled to see that everything connects one day to the next. It was a humbling realization.

One that I wanted no part of.

An instant I jumped from the moving train, remembering just in time to tuck and roll, and came up safe in the place between thoughts. It was all at once empty and full. I tried to think of something. Anything. Alas, in such a place no thought exists. Madness descending, I quickly leaped out of the way, landing back in my flat beside the exercise bike.

As things had turned out the way they had I decided there was only one thing left to do. So, taking hold of the stationary bike, I rode off into the night.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

A Murder

Last letter on the left,
Typed in a time of silence
His thoughts cold to the page
"My life needs an evacuation plan"
Voices echo dimly
In the sunlit halls of a child's memory
Where building blocks
Abc'd their way into being more than a foundation
While the man sits with coffee
Cigarettes and lighter for companionship
Lights up and mouths quietly
"All my life I've wanted to go home"
But no one listens to the words
Of children and old men
Except for the birds
That circle above.