.4

Telling tales never got me anywhere
Just a drop off point in the middle of exclamation
With words that pour from the faucet
Ideas that cling like static
Hopelessness even as I'm hoping still

In the end they tell me - in the end all that matters is what came before
In the end they tell me, nothing really matters before it all

Comes crashing
Blasting
Like a shadow chasing a ball
Caustic
But not causing it
Like the acid corroding away us all

In the end they tell me, nothing really matters before the end

.3

You be in charge of me
I'll be in charge of you
You can grab my coat
And I'll help you with your boots

Oh, I, think it might rain today
But between you and me,
That's okay
I was never really bothered by rain
It's the days without weather
I can't take
And anyway
I think I can handle anything today

.2

Where with her, he thought suddenly, solemnly
She's just another angler, angling
Dangling the dream
She treats life like it's just a facsimile
Indifferent to say the least

She wears her smile like her press on nails
Breaking when scratching at a surface
Twin spirals
A Gemini pushing through the outside
Two sides to every story
And she always has five

415

She's charging around my heart,

Like a bull in a china shop

Just a quiet girl, at the bus stop

She takes the 4:15

Every day it seems

Sits across from me

I don't know why it is

I always feel like such a wreck

Sitting on the 4:15

She walks across the parking lot

A mile from where they drop me off

Just oblivious

There's an ocean tearing at my seems

A mouthful of words I can't release

Every afternoon, when I'm sitting across from her

On the 4:15

I'm exclamation points and capslock

When we pull up to her bus stop

My eyes resting on the clock

When it's 4:15

Yeah, Again

Sorry mister, seems you just missed her
The girl with the too-long sleeves
Is unraveling at the seams

Should have been there
Had to be there
To get the joke

Not that it's in or out
Not that she's in or out
We're nothing if not extreme

Until they dance again
Fabled misery
Twisted hearts
Entwined, but unwinding
The girl with the too-long sleeves
And the boy with the headphones on his hip

Tell him how you feel
If you can pry the music
From his cold dead stare

Starry Starry night
He cuts his heart
Like others cut cocaine

No more mystery
Too much history
Behind his eyes

Until they dance again
Like they did eleven-ty years ago
Bowing, then promenade
Unbound, but binding
The girl with the too-long sleeves
And the boy with the headphones on his hip

Surreptitiously

"If it's a mistake, we're making
I'm happy it's with you..."

Bet you didn't know she cries at night
When the lights go dim
And the laughter's gone

Bet you didn't know
She only smiles bright for you

In the end, together in the end,
All the loose ends get tied down

Bet you didn't know she lies all the time
The melancholy she hides
Is closer than a friend

Bet you didn't know
You're all that separates her from herself

For "all the right reasons" sometimes
Is the worst reason of all

March of the Centipede

When I die, bury me on a hill
I wont roll down now
But everyone will see
Make it under the shade please,
Of a tall, old, bent birch tree


And now I see it, see it
Sunshine around the eye line
Just a fading back
Now towards the downtown,
In a frosty not quite spring

Fire up an old fashioned comet,
A star to sail over me
I'm out of wishes,
But I wish just one last thing
When you think of them
Don't think of me.

Dinosaurs in Lithology

Misery is misery
I never quite seem to find
When I'm pretending to be happy
That solitary peace of mind

People tell me to 'enjoy life,'
'To be happy with what you have'
'After all what's the point of having anything
If the little things don't make you laugh?'

My mind's just never worked that way
I always seem to feel the dark
Clawing out through spiderwebs
And eclipsing mind and heart

I feel like apologizing all the time
Though I don't know how to begin
My head is so full of thoughts
Everything just feels like an end

Grayscale

I won't do

The avenue, windswept, darkened by time
The whole damn street is wiped
Bled away the light
While the comets crashed overhead

Now it's like flowing backwards
Floating in a pool on a sunny day
When all I could see when I looked to my left
Was you

How it came to be? Reading too much
Into stars
And the day after Valentines

All life demands change
It's the nature of nature
Burning our bridges for us
Without even having to be asked

But I'd still dance with you,
Even if my card was full

In Case Of Emergency Break Heart

Would you rather be, should you have the choice;

A saint in a cathedral, singing praises unto God

Or would you like to be, a king of the high streets

Sweeping out the gutters on that straight and narrow road?

Don't look at me like that.

I hear that God bottles every one of our tears

He hears us when we call to him, when we say our prayers

I understand his wrath, his judgments, and that he doesn't change

On the just and unjust both he'll forever make it rain.

But I guess I just don't understand

What it is that makes a man.

Cause God bent down and he formed Adam from the earth

He breathed in deep and exhaled into him

Gave him a world that few would dare believe

And Adam like a man followed his God given Eve

Don't look at me like that.

It makes it hard for me to stand.

And I guess I just don't understand.

What it is that makes a man.

Cause it's hard to deny, you're the apple of my eye

And that sometimes the truth is less appealing than the lie.

Sixty Lines of Hate For Every 1 That Loves...

She took her watch off looked at me and said:
I thought we were just enemies,
That then became good friends.
What the hell happened, how did "we" begin?
I took her hands, I held her eyes and I said:

I fell in love when you weren't looking;
Every time you turned your head
Or shut your eyes my heart opened
And every time you closed a door
I smiled inside because I knew

There wasn't ever going to be anyone for me but you.

She took her time to clear her mind before she said:
How bout we just go out for coffee instead?
A perfect bookend to to a catalog of let's be friends
Another ending to another could have been.
I took her hands, I held her eyes and I said:

Sure.

The Tree

I hope you don't fail in the summer
When the sky is still burning with rage
Cause under the auspices of autumn
We will all get to tumble again

I hope when you open your letters
That it's with an unyielding hope
Cause no one should have to dread their own name
Or find they're surviving to cope

And the ladder unfurls
Rolls down the tree
A little bit of twine
Perfect for scraping, your knees

I hope when tomorrow comes I'm with you
We can plan out the day to day events
We'll spend a season in minutiae
Till all of our reasoning is spent

I find there's no tree
That can't be climbed
If you've a mind to it
So, if you want to climb the tree
If you want to climb with me
Then ladders be damned, scraped knees and all, you'll be fine.

Revolutions

The earth revolves around the sun
The stars are set in their place
The oceans are contained
The sky, the clouds, are as they have been.
The children are at play
Man and woman run around like ants
The trains run, planes fly
My world lays fallen and cracked
As it was the days before the day before
Today before and there after
The universe is in balance

Wherein We Catch Up With Sir Thomas McNulty On His Expedition Into Uncharted Forests On Foreign Lands

I'm lost.

All In All

All my,
All in good time
Is all but gone

The thick canister is rusting through
The acid from inside
Used to hold it tight
Burning from the inside out now all around
Spilling on the carpet, etching through the ground
It's all I can do to lose in private
Quiet, away from you

Now, to hide the truth...

Seeing dark spots clouding up my sight.
Tiny black holes trying to find
A way to cut down this my little light
Holding onto tightropes
Afraid of what is down below
And everything I do know
In a straight line

Now, to hide the times...

Stay away
From everything
Anyone you find
Who reminds you every night
All of my
All in good times
Were all but lies
All but not forgotten
For awhile
It was nice to smile.

Borne of Light

I don't hear your voice anymore
Not that I ever did before
It's just gone now.

And I want back what I never knew, but felt I should

Where you do hide
And where I want so badly to know
All those little things...

Was I right before I went wrong?
Was the circle just a que;
Standing in line
Waiting to get back to you?

I see your shadow,
And I wish to be there again
In the comfort of your branches

No more epithets,
No apologies,
I have, I was, I'm not
Now, can we please get back
To where we weren't?
Where I stopped?

For all have fallen short...
Notwithstanding, I wish to run.
Through the grass dipped in flecks of liquid gold
Chasing back through the tunnels now gone vague.
Till I find myself back in your fields of grace
Just a tumbler in the locked dawn

Down the Road

When you break,
Where do you break?
Like a thousand little pieces
Each with points where the wall gives way
When you break,
Where do you break?

Well I've spent the last few years
Breaking over you.
Bending over backwards
Twisting every which way to avoid the truth
I've spent the last few years
Breaking over you

Tell my love, should we never meet
I ran down the road, not across the street
Traded everything in a quiet flowing stream
Down the road, not across the street.

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.

.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.

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?