-Incredible Machine-
My soul's ringing bell
echoes in my heart.
My mind's brightest thoughts
leak from out my hands.
My mouth's hardest truths
flame, in pride, in my ears.
My every living day
hopelessness restrains.
-Stuck Like Glue-
One two three
your hand to me.
Here right now
we make a vow.
This short life
forgets the strife.
Please say yes
we'd be the best.
I love you
will you love me too?
-Operation: Working Vacation-
Let's go
let's get a bottle of wine.
Right now
plane tickets to somewhere hot.
Get gone
train ride with a sleeper car.
No plan
just you and I and wings to fly.
Just think
all day, all night, all alone in a room.
Let's go
follow 'now' to the end of our life.
-The Constant Truth of Love-
What if we can't
live with each other?
What if we can't
last a moment alone?
What if we don't
let our hearts let us in?
What if we do?
What if we fight
about every nothing?
What if we scorn
such vivid communication?
What if we end
dark and damaged?
What if we last
forced to face the constant truth of love?
-Songbird-
Is this how the songbird feels, when bright spring sets aglow the leaves in golden sun?
Does she see the world again after months of clouds and chaos and is she relieved by the first sign of light?
Is her frigid vigil cut short by the renaissance that resonates from the sky into the soil and up into her soul through the roots of her home?
Can she understand the cycle? Or does she think her first flight in the new spring is a betrayal of the life that came before?
What if she wishes for darkness and dread, for her world to be dead so that her silence has an excuse to exist?
And on that first warm day when the sun coaxes the cold to go away, does she pray for it to stay?
Is she able to imagine that any season could be as bright or dear as the year before and though her mind tells her to keep the solid silence, to respect the passèd life, does her voice disobey?
Is there some inner instinct that forces her to sing when the spring rises up from the frozen Earth?
When a force for joy as irresistible as a lonesome flower, refusing to be held down by cold, breaks through to her sight, how can she refuse to rejoice?
At the sight of a million shades of every colour, of a land birthed out of hell by hope, how could misery cope and keep a hold on that old bird, when her rebellious soul revolts and refuses to respect an agony so thick it licks at her like fire at a log?
But she will not burn.
She will throw her feathers wide and fly and her note will rent apart the ice inside her heart so that her mourning will end and her bright new day begin.
Is this how the songbird feels when her widow’s winter draws its final frozen breath and sets her free?
-Commencement-
The time has come for us to part our road
to leave this place and find another home
we’ll follow those before us as we roam,
but also pave a course to find new mode.
These silken gowns obscure the coming phase:
charcoal shadows cast by future’s light.
What follows now seems blindly out of sight,
a hidden box that holds a million days.
So now we face our frightened plans and dreams
which feed our passions and remind us why
we want to find a cliff and leap to life
from off the edge. A brand new life’s great schemes
allow us opportunities to try
and find a happy future free of strife.
-The Lover, the Mother, and the Unscrupulous Brother-
An ode to my lover, a note from my
mother, a lesson for my most unscrupulous
brother. Time may be patient and seem to
be kind, but healing my wounds takes a lot
more than words here’s the truth of my feelings.
Dear you broke my dear heart when
I gave it to you and you turned from my
love and betrayed with my blood all the faith
that I had in our piece of forever.
You should have held loyal to tight binding chains
of the promises woven from your lips
to mine. But instead you chose him for your
arrows from Cupid and mine were torn out
leaving holes bleeding faith in a river
that leads to the circles of hell. If only
you had such a mind that could grasp all the
pain brought from words that he spewed
on the night when he wood you away.
Perhaps that would lend you the wisdom to
see that your wounds on my soul run as deep
as the sea and because I can’t swim I
am breathing in water and swallowing death.
Woman who raised me then tore down again
all my dreams and my hopes for a life free
of pain. I’m sure you will find if your life
keeps its grip on its sanity happily
wading through memories, never has
anyone loved you like me. The curse of
Penelope settled inside of your
once tender heart but instead of her faith
in the spirit of he who you claim to
have loved you ignored the years past and you
cast off your grief like a rain sodden hat.
Then you wrote to your son and told him to
chase love and I lost my whole life to your
payment for all of the time that I spent
pouring tears down the drain in my sorrow
for he who deserted the vows that he
made on the day when he pledged you his life.
My man, my friend, we once were so close but
now we have nothing but years in between
us and just like the rest of our hate-ridden
clan what’s left of our blood bond will soon start
to fade. I’d found what I wanted a woman
I loved and could smell my own happiness
settling upon me like snow on the ground
in the winter which leads happy bears with
full bellies to drift off to bliss as they
sleep finding true rest for months at a time.
But then you came along with your heat and
your light and you melted the snow so my
world was soggy and suddenly fraught
with the trappings of frescoes unfinished
so angels lack halos which renders them
men. Here’s the cost of your pride: you are now
like your mother and brother abandoned.
I need to move on and be done with this
life in order to grieve and start over
again. So call this farewell you won’t see
me again. I’m leaving right now and just
like all our love I’ll fade into the dusk
-Honesty-
I’ve never valued honesty
as much as other people do.
as much as other people do.
White lies have been
my habitual protection.
The jagged edge of sharpened truths
have left so many scars
on my once unruined tongue
as to render my speech useless.
And how, as a writer, can I do my work
when every word is forced to navigate
a labyrinth of white scar tissue
just to swim in air and ear.
But some lies are not dove white, they are raven black.
Black as night, black as hell, black as death,
black as the shadowed midnight corner where a woman is raped and a man is murdered and a little girl’s sweet life is torn to shreds by the hands that once held her and protected her and a little boy cowers because his grown up self can’t stand to be labelled a victim.
Is this what truth is supposed to feel like?
It didn’t the one time I scratched away the dark
with my bare hands until my nails broke and my fingers bled,
the one time I let that little boy in the dark corner step into the front and shout:
not merely “I’m alive,” but “I survived”
The one person I told,
not the parents who have always been my best friends,
but the girl who I’ve trusted with everything else.
Every part of my body and my soul,
but who practically scoffed at the revelation
I made for the first time in ten years.
“No!” I want to scream at her at the world,
it’s not “just” this, it’s not “merely” that.
It's the truth.
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