Desperate Distraction

There’s a fading pulse

I’m trying to recall

I can’t quite remember what

Like waking from a dream

Or remembering a program between all the commercials

Perhaps that’s just me

The one the previews make me forget the movie

I wanted to see

I just want to sit still

And listen to the waves crash over me

Not the waves of static and media and opinion

That bombard me daily

But real water. An ocean

Who’s salt can clean these wounds

And the tide can drain all the stress away

But those moments would seem wasted

Amidst the rat race, where we keep chewing our legs off

For all the traps in our midst

And on bloody stumps we scream and cry

Trying to go faster

As the finish line gets further and further away

And we’re lost in this maze

An experiment of the elite

Wondering which way we’ll turn next

When they’ve only left us two directions

I press my hands to my eyes

And breathe through my fingers

Hoping the world will stop spinning

Time will stop moving

I can stop moving

I’m too young to be this tired

I’m too old to be this confused

And I’m used to difficulty in life

I was born poor, with no advantages,

No birth rights, no helping hands upward

While being reminded by friends

From wealthy families, how lucky I am

To be me

I want uncostly quiet and reflection

That doesn’t cost me another work hour

Another pay day

Another way to get myself out of

Where I never thought I would end up

But here I am

Living the dream

Realizing the dream

Wasn’t meant for me

I was meant to believe

So someone else could achieve

And give me hope

Not know hope is a four letter word

That curses the middle classes to always strive uphill

In a mudslide

A torrent

A circumstance most abhorrent

For you’re meant to ignore it

And go on believing

This is how life should be

Closing In

Shifting walls and closing doors
Back to where I was before

A different map, another name
But inside still feels the same

I call out to ask what's ahead
My own voice reverberates instead

I find a new path, hope alights inside
But as the halls grow dim, doubt slows my stride

So many paths were open when I was young
Yet each new turn, they fade, one by one
The halls now shrink, the ceiling slopes low
Not sure what to think, much less where to go

Each step feels uncertain, in each turn there is loss
The darkness a chasm I can never quite cross
That chasm the distance between my dreams and me
Even as I'm racing forward, I watch it recede
My pace then slowing, disquiet closing in
Narrow tunnels constrict, panic begins

Do You?

Heart’s beating too fast

And my feet can’t keep the rhythm

I can’t keep up

There’s too much going on

Did you know?

Didn’t you read?
Didn’t you see the news on my feed?

No. I fucking didn’t.

I’m not everywhere at once.

In the omnipresent stampede of

False information and updates

I get lost in the shuffle

You do to. You just might not know it yet.

They don’t see you

They can’t

There’s too much to see now

A cacophony of sea how

To believe thou

Can somehow

Seethe now

Believe how

Your opinion matters

In a sea of belief

And shifting tides of what truth and information

Even mean

It’s all about spin

And can you even begin

To understand

All they can

Do to keep spinning

This top under our feet

Information is false

News is entertainment and advertising

Pushing uninformed agendas

That the companies don’t even understand

So long as the right hand

Is greased

And not least

Of us

No longer believes

What is really real

Which is we are the sources of information

Did you see it?
Were you there?

Do you know someone who was?

Get to know these nameless faces
A world a way

In the age of the information superhighway

A highway full off road blocks

Meant to keep you ignorant and apathetic

While a whole world spins

And you’re given the narrow filtered lens

And the next Hollywood Wives

In order to contrive

Your sense of reality

Or hopelessness in it

While the bars are built all around us

And we hand over the keys

Because we’re told this is what we believe

The polls say

Everyone agrees but you

Do you?

Do you know what to do?

Do…

Do what you have to

To find the facts

That make sense to you

If the puzzle seems jagged and broken

Perhaps it’s not as the moving pictures

Would lead you to believe

Ermine Dance Floor

On this ermine dance floor
Silhouettes of memory
Spectres of my longing
Stanced in poise of recollection
Just as they were
These book marks of my passion
And in these dreams we dance again
In back drops we have never been
To hold this ethereal reminiscence
This fleeing opiate gauze to my heart's suffering
Once more let's take to the dance floor
So I may step in time with you again
While away the fancy with these ghosts of reverie
We lilt, one by one, as I forget to hurt
And smile in a hall where joy of past convenes
Then I blink my eyes and the hall is empty
I stand here alone once again
But if I could dance with you, just one more time
And feel alive again
Close my eyes and hold this moment forever
Even if it's just pretend

Drifting

I walk these halls beneath the ocean

Through these tombs of memory

Drift along within the current

A thousand miles deep

Hot one ventricle, cold aorta

Pump through these ancient coral streams

Exploring the passages pure and sordid

Of my fantasies and dreams

The phosphorescent spectral reflections

Of all my memories

Then turn the path of recollection

To luminescent fantasy

I traverse these passageways to enter

Vestibules of relic ghosts and those that will never be

I need these moments to find my center

When ethereal’s more real than the world around me

And I just need this moment so I can breathe

I Think of You and Smile

When the smile shines upon my face, and I laugh for no reason

I often think of you and smile

When I am walking along and see couples dancing

I think of you and smile

When time rolls on endlessly, season unto season

I think of you and smile

And when I think of the random chances, of us ever happening

I think of you and smile

When I make a goofy joke

I know you'd roll your eyes to

Or at the end of a long day

When I just want to be beside you

When I think of your sweet smile

And the way that our eyes meet

Or when I've been gone a while

And we hold close when we greet

And life isn't all roses

It beats us down without mercy

And it's in those times most of all

Thoughts of you set me free

From all the aggravation life will give

When it seems it piles into the sky

You make it easier to live

You give me the reason why

And when I can still all the torrent of life

With a simple thought of you

It's reminds of all the sacrifice

And everything I do

Seems now to give me comfort

When I think of you and smile

And smiling isn't always easy

Sometimes I just want to scream

Some days you do too

And you know what I mean

But it seems worth fighting through the madness of this world

To hold you next to me

And go where e're the path unfurls

Where ever that may be

And as with so many sordid days

Where your smile keeps me sane

When the worlds sets my plans ablaze

And I built it all again

And one day when I close my eyes

To take my final breath

One last thought I'll realize

As I take hands with death

And even though we'll be parted

For a long or little while

It will just as it started

I'll still think of you and smile

Devour

A touch from a far away place

A hint that ripples through my skin

This dark pool where feeling is knowing

Hold my breath while the lesson begins

Cat's claws touch like a feather

As the shiver runs up my spine

Horripilation meets anticipation

When wrapped together as the heart beats call time

A soft caress

Across my lips confessed

Exhale the id

Torrid blood now bids

Like wild beasts we collide

While the monsters inside

Devour so sweetly

As the moments tick by

As the steam coalesces

Sweat drips from our eyes

Prostate we fall

On an altar of storms

As the thunder recedes

Echoing back to our core

In cadence the drum beat

That resounds in our chest

The animal sated

We curl to rest

Polished Marble

Polish marbles to shine like stars

With aching hands and broken hearts

Drop one more down the spiral

Wishing well

Knowing well the wishing

Don't go so well

It's not denial

But resigned bleak hope

What we strive to do well

Isn't just a joke

That this counting glass we pass as gems

Might hold value beyond this narrow lens

That they don't vanish forever when they hit bottom

When we hit bottom

When our own wishes vanish forever

Forgotten

Tragic Mirror

In the mirror there is magic

In the mirror there is truth

In your eyes the door to all your secrets

While your lies become your proof

And truth becomes your demon

And magic becomes your chance

To hide from all you should be seeing

In this dance of circumstance

Where life is what we perceive

Where truth is what we spin

What's right depends on what we believe

So no new truths can make it in

As belief and dogma become the blinders on both sides

Which slowly drains all the periphery from our eyes

Friend

From the edges of this darkness

Caving in around me

I see light arching through this

Emptiness surrounding

The cold and tepid waters

I horrified awoke to

Instead of falling farther

I held tight when I found you

Upon the buoy of our good times

I keep afloat in the torrent

Long after we've said good bye

You'll never know how much they meant

You're not just a friend to me

You're a fragment of my soul

A spark in my identity

A jewel that makes me whole

Through the hellfire and the maelstrom

Your essence will sustain

No matter where I go to or come from

I'll always call you friend

Risk

Caught up in the echoing serenade
These words upon the mirror speak
From the roads where memories made
The paths that we still seek
And still we find from time to time
Tokens that remind us of affection
But in love; no reason nor rhyme
Our hearts left without protection
But in struggling toward that failing light
We reach moments that in brilliance shine
So if the treasure is worth the plight
Then grasp each moment and make it thine

Best in You

When the world seems to be testing you

Circumstance besting in you

Want to just rest, be through

Of those trying to get the best of you

But they don't want the best in you

They want the worst in you

They want you to see the world

In the sordid way they do

Their emptiness deep inside

In vanity they try to hide

The part of them dead and dried

With the mangled altar to their pride

No matter how bad they make you feel

How much they cheat and steal

Their joy will never be real

Let that reinforce your will like steel

For they'll never know the peace you'll know

At the end of each day

From the dastardly lengths they'll go

To get their own way

Their avarice

Ugliness

Cowardice

Vacuous

Web that they've woven

Each curse that they've spoken

Tangles around them

Pulls down to drown them

In looking over their shoulders

Paranoid on their radar

That they'll be mistreated

By someone like they are

So enjoy satisfaction that

They'll never know

They can watch you from where they're at

Achieving your goals

They don't run the same race as you

So you don't have to beat them

Let your own heart be true

While their ugliness eats them

And shake the dust off your shoes

As they recede in the distance

For all that you have to lose

Is left back their with them

Deviated

Oxygen measured in the moments

Stolen

By distraction, contraction

Within face and chest

and all the rest

Blurs, receding in a distant vacuum

Another, one more gloom

Day, as my nose and mouth heave
That today I just can't breathe

Drugs and nose guards and stimulants

Just don't increase the performance

Of what I was born with

But can no longer enjoy

Gulps of breath stolen

Glands swollen

And I awake gasping

Throat rasping

Teeth and gums dry

And I cannot deny

That I would try

Anything, to return my respiratory functions

To employ

My eyes and dark circles

Hand fulls of red pills

To make one more night bearable

But I feel like I'm failing

As nothing's prevailing

To help drag me through one more day

Stimulants clustered

So that I can muster

Enough strength

To face another day

I greet each day ragged

From my breathing so jagged

That it alarms my lovers

Fills them with dismay

Hours of sleep threaded together

By drugs and drinks

And whatever

I can find

to get me through

One more night

Each night a patchwork

Of panicked wakings

My body shaking

My chest heaving

Because I just stop breathing

And I'm fighting to drag

Each drought of oxygen

Into starving lungs

That yank the air

From an ever tightening sieve

Clawing for breath

From deep in my chest

I'm not greedy

But I just want to live

And I drag myself from bed

My face aching

My will breaking

Not knowing how much

More I have to give

Intangible

A light that dispels from eyes

Like heaven

Descending, trascending

This never ending

Place between the gods and I

Reach for the ineffable

So often forgettable

Reaching for dreams
With the coming of day

Dissipating smoke

Leaves us in a fog

Trying to recall

What meant the world

A moment ago

But I still see those eyes

At the edge of perception

Right there before me

But I cannot reach there

Are they watching me?
Am I watching me?

Am I far off disapproving

Of what I cannot see?

And from that far off nowhere

Somewhere inside

A sentience

So tenuous

Fleeting

Like dreaming

Then I awake

And try to recall

again...

Dream House

I want to build a dream house

Decorate with memories

Paint our dreams upon the walls

Opaque and crystalline

Till we see straight through

All the shades of you and I

When all the things we do

Reminds us of the how and why

We fell in love and decided to stay there

Bricks of faith we built up hope

All our artifices we finally lay bare

Daily devotions of love we show

We put our plans upon a shelf

Read through them in eves at home

Lean upon pillars when we need help

Built of our strength when we're not alone

Warm ourselves by the hearth of both our hearts

Wrap ourselves in blankets of our support

Bring that balm with us when we're apart

The bricks of trust that build our fort

Hang our past in portrait frames

Review the cascade of images together

The roof of comfort, against sun or rain

Solace that we'll survive against any weather

As the paint will fade, the house gathers must

Old couches settled with napping and holding hands

And our stories carried one by those that through here pass

The recollections of this house of dreams and we to understand

You'll never have today again

You'll never have today again.

Farewell today and it's hello tomorrow

I fall through the hourglass, heart full of sorrow

Because although nothing is perfect

I kinda like my life right now

I look back on those colorful yesterdays

Full of manic and laughter

Till we all went our separate ways

Left in the panic of the here after

Because some of them died you see

And others went on living without me

And I went on living too

Do what I always do

Pick a direction and go

The echoes of memories

Live on inside of me

And hey, I just thought you should know

You'll never have today again

Dance with that special friend

Take one risk and let your heart be broken

Because guilt's for what you shouldn't try

Regret's how you couldn't fly

And you'll only regret good feelings unspoken

Take a look all around you

While spinning in circles

Falling down when you're through

Laugh til you're purple

And cherish all the moments that will never come again

Life will move on leaving only the dreams

Sing with your friends

Unabashed of the harmony

Take an adventure

Not knowing where you'll be

Leave this life with the least regrets at the end

And know in your heart that you lived this life til it burst at the seems

Breathe

Breathe

As the endless cacophany

Breaks on top of me

Pressing in directions

Asserts against my predilections

Heart beat slamming

Against the cage in my chest

I'm doing my best

From going into arrest

So I breathe

Close my eyes and take a moment to breathe

Let it recede

All the needs and calamities

Taking these pieces from me

The world will persist

So I must insist

To keep the bending from breaking

I will be partaking

Of a few moments of solace

That no one will notice

But will make an endless

Breathless

Difference for me

Breathe

Close my eyes and breathe

Empty my mind and breathe

Open my eyes

And breathe

Unalarming Awakening

I prefer my awakening unalarming

Let the transition be disarming

Bask in the memories of the never was

Whatever was

Happened to be in serenity

Or confusion, the story protrusions

Within the blurring sections of my recollections

And the sheer creation of imagination

From the bizarre to the ordinary

Ideas proprietary releasing involuntary

The id, the ego and the incognito

Blending the edges of what we think we know

Unknown inside me that even I can't see

In the land of dream where my soul is free

So I try not to open my eyes

That I might view the infinite landscape

Of all the potential my mind can realize

Hypnagogia, I never want to escape

Tears of Ice

Fissures open from the top of this cavern

Rain keeps pouring down
Rain keeps pouring down

Howls echo from the distant horizon

I'm chilled by the sound
I'm chilled by the sound

There's a lingering presence here
Though I know I'm all alone
Trapped in here by my fear
Though this is not my home

That last light slowly subsided
I'm shivering in this cold
Shaking all that I've confided
The story that's never been told

Scratches on the wall from my resolve
Paint the pictures of my fading story
With the trickling water it will all dissolve
This flooded tomb will be my glory

Icicles rise like spears from the ground

As the rain keeps pouring down
As the rain keeps pouring down

Reasons so lost in these shadows
That I know they'll never be found

Time slowing down
I'm slowing down

My breath mists like the ghosts in here
Haunting me within this place
Am I shaking from the cold or fear
Of these spectres I cannot face

And their faces eb and flow
Names of which I can't recall
They whisper secrets I should know
The mystery my downfall

Contemplation heavy; palpable, the misty gloom
Have I found my solitude? Or has this cavern become my tomb?

My final shudders, my body giving in
Death now tapping me on the shoulder
Eyes closing as the cold settles in
Enclosing whispers, their touch so much colder

My mind is still, these drops freeze to my face
No longer pondering riddles of the spirits I see
The past now a haze as memories erase
For I am the spirit and the spirit is me...

Hearts Shared

I cannot absolve you but I can listen to your sins.

I cannot take the pain away, but I can be your friend.

I cannot make life better, but I can help you smile right now.

I cannot show you the value of your soul.

But I hope someday that you'll learn how.

I'll hold your hand when you get lost.

And hold you close when it gets cold.

I'll wait and let your heart beat time with mine.

When you're scared and don't know where to go.

I'll build a blanket fort too

When the world gets too big.

And stay right beside you.

When you've forgotten why you live.

Share your tears and hold your pain

For what little part I can.

And stand with you out in the rain

Until I finally understand.

Or until you're okay

Whichever first.

My love for you may

One day burst

This little broken heart of mine

That feels quite full when I share with you

And if magic fails I'll give you time

Til we decide what else to do.

Morning

Morning.

The element
of possibility

Realization
of a brand new day

Anything could happen,
Open our eyes to see
What we can see
Open the door
To know what we could be
Awakenings bring us

To a new reality

So much potential
As we open our eyes

In the still of morning

We plot our next move

Sounds of our world

Enter our minds

With the last vapors

of passing Dreams

And in this moment

We can be Anything