pink violet sky
scared hearts and horses
thunder and run
Over the hills
chasing falling stars
twisted and spun
Blacker than midnight
porch light on
returning to what I have done
Before Midnite
dark night
in new moon phase
cloying coils of black satin
mere shapes of surrounding buildings
I am lost in my thoughts
The other woman lives inside of you;
I can see her silhouette in your eyes.
Her tendons twist through yours, interwoven,
down through your fingertips, I see her there.
The other woman lives inside of you,
I can hear her hungry heart through your chest
Her whispers bleed like poison through your mind,
echoing in your voice, I hear her there.
The other woman lives inside of you,
I can feel her presence through your body.
Her figure snug beneath your satin skin,
radiating through you, I feel her there.
The other woman lives inside of you,
I can smell her cloying rose upon your skin
Her scent smothered in your tousled brown hair,
absorbed into your flesh, I smell her there.
The other woman lives inside of you,
I can taste her lust when I kiss your lips.
Her secretive tongue in your starving mouth,
That name stuck in your teeth, I taste her there.
The other woman lives inside of you,
and though you assure that she isn’t there,
could she too be capable of sensing
The haunted woman who lives beside you?
Nothing gets worse.
Other people.
They try to wrap me in a blanket.
I was cold.
It’s all thawing, and feels feverish and horrible.
They learned things.
Lessons which are dedicated to kindness.
Are cloying.
It hurts my lungs.
Coughing and trying to laugh through the coughing.
Eyes watering.
My eyes, their eyes, horrible eyes.
Acceptance has clawed through the world.
As I claw up farther while rocks slip from under my feet.
They accept me.
From up above.
Nothing gets worse.
I just climb higher.
So do they.
Nothing gets worse.
Then I fell.
They said “Acceptance.”
Just not for me.
my tan fantasy
melting cool but not cloying
sugar surrounds me
The tang of salt imbues the mist –
a calling I cannot resist.
I walk along the rocky shore
held spellbound by the ocean’s roar.
As darkness falls, the fog rolls in
and, from the lighthouse, shapes begin
to stalk within the opaque veils
like illustrations of its tales.
The cloying haze seems to transcend
reality, here at land’s end.
I see the ghosts of tortured souls,
their names inscribed on filmy scrolls.
There stands a lover who lost hope,
there a traitor, wrapped in rope,
a lost ship’s crew, still foundering
and fighting off the storms of spring.
Above it all, the lighthouse stands
illuminating within bands
of light this silent history
of struggles with the mighty sea.
A small breeze starts, a whispering,
a dirge that only oceans sing,
and soon the air is once more clear,
though I can feel the ghosts still near.
I sit upon the rocks and stare
out to the sea and wonder where
the lost souls seen now reside.
They ebb and flow like time and tide.
Tell me
Can a tree without roots
Ever bear fruit?
Tell me
Can a ship without sails
Ever make haste in the boundless sea?
Death creeps, cloying
Knotted garters frayed
Under the sea the sirens wail
Forgotten, ignored
But for the ones who live on
The feet do drag on
Swollen, septic, deeply forlorn
For those of us who are aware
Who live in a world; awake
Be sure to spare a thought
For us lowly wretched
Hope exists of course
There must be light for shadows
But fruit does surely rot
Make haste, the eye of the needle continues to narrow
It was raining.
I thought I’d wait it out.
I tuned the engine on to help.
Still in place, but the engine rumbles.
Flipping through the stations.
Music, static, music.
Cloying sounds, I’m used to it.
It’s only a drizzle now.
I turn off the engine.
And fall asleep.
I wake up to the knocking on my window.
Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.
I’m glad I live alone now.
They say that’s bad for me, but it’s peaceful.
No one calls and asks where I am anymore.
Where are you? Where are you? You already know.
My apartment is around the corner.
Sometimes, my apartment drives me crazy.
So I sleep in my car, so I don’t go crazy.
It should be safe to drive home.
But I almost crash anyway.
Each morning as I wake
my eyes will seek the sky
be it blue or heavy overcast
my spirit lifts in flight -
to behold the natural world
is a miracle of being
when I reach my final hour
let the light touch my skin
no shadow’s cloying weight
give me a room bathed in sun
or a view of rain quenched earth
trees flush with living green
let it be an ordinary day
familiar as I’ve often spent
with nothing overwrought -
a bird may cry overhead
perhaps some errant clouds
like me passing out of sight.
Goodbye is a feast finished
The last morsel down the hatch
Improper to ask for seconds
No aperitif to this lonely hunger
For every goodbye must be a hello
Even if no one arrives home
Welcome your darkness, don't go
My mistrusted companion
I forgive your cloying reach
Can you recreate human touch?
Let me be the one to say goodbye
Just to feel my forlorn space
Selfishly you take all the oxygen
Leave the left with a hunger for air
There’s no comfort in goodbyes
Better to say hello to re-gen
Goodbye to time with loved ones
Hello my solitary depression
Revolution brings me back to light
Goodbyes are a global constancy
Even without hands that feed
Goodbyes consume me with it all
A constant depression never satisfied
A hunger feeding on memory
Say goodbye to hello for now
Say goodbye from dusk to dawn
Twighlight is the start of a new day
Depression coming to hello's light
The way that fireflies are captured in a jar.
And they say “just one more firefly, I guess.”
And the firefly is glowing weakly, so they try not to laugh.
They are making me dizzy with their kind words.
In that cloying way.
I’m here, I’m here.
I think they know I’m still here.
Wondering how they are all so dazzling.
Together, they are dazzling.
Inching away from them,
So that I can feel the mellow landscape.
The endless landscape.
Where the trees are calm, and never chatter.
Where closeness does not exist.
Joy dances in even to the bereft
She cracks my frown with a tango
Then she leaves my house swept
Joy is a hummingbird trapped indoors
Her iridescence lights up all my grime
Usher her out before I’m enamored
But, happiness is like fish overstayed
His cloying perfume overpowered
He is a rhino to her phoenix raised
Sometimes joy is an elephant
Hiding under a tablecloth snickering
She exits invisibly like an ant
Sometimes she’s Mary Poppins waltzing
Scrubbing a spot that I cannot dirty
Sprinkling a spoon full of sugar on salt
A lifetime of joy waltzing in wears me out
Then happiness retires to a piece of furniture
I’ll give her a ticket to dance and not pout
Someday when I am old and feeble
Too tired of laying ashes down
I’ll let joy lift my frown with needles
I’ll let her cat sit on my lap untamed
When I’m too demented to sully joy
I’ll let joy feast upon my remains
Till then I’ll leave the door ajar
** Luke 12:36
"Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks."
Vines curved around the thin pillars,
Which supported the house that once held a family of three,
And was now merely inhabited by insects and prickly weeds.
The roof was bound to cave in at any given moment, no longer stable,
Just like the family it had once housed.
The faint aroma of freshly baked bread still lingered in the air from that fateful night.
Faye could feel the presence of her mother through baking wafting right beneath her nose.
The tire swing swayed slightly,
A hallucination of a young child kicking its legs gingerly,
Clouded her vision.
Shattered pieces of the silver ashtray were scattered across the porch,
The familiar sight of her father crushing the butt of a cigarette
And his dignity.
Fragments of that night resurfaced in her mind.
The cloying scent was suddenly replaced with a metallic one.
Crimson liquid coated the round black tire now.
Her father’s dignity was now so splintered
That his hidden derangement had peaked through the cracks;
All on that one night,
Which was supposed to be filled with love,
Now stained forever in her memory with blood.
I knew you were gone.
In the startled-now of a wide-eyed night---I knew,
though you were beside me all along,
I sensed.
A cloying doubt,
a premonition of you missing
fastened tender gums to my pulse.
I knew we would no longer
teach flesh to speak,
knew down and deep
even though that thought
struck me dumb.
A space opened, I saw it
from the bottom of a dark stairwell.
I saw you leaving in the closing evening
of a memory.
I remember when my mother died
I held the phone away from my ear
listening to the nurse run through
her rehearsed lines,
and I feeling a strained tendon
finally snapping. I knew then
that 'gone' meant gone away
to a place where hands are
blind owls.
Now laying here in the dark,
god knows how many years away
from our last touch
I know my `once upon a time'
has again stepped through a door
in my mind
that always leads to nowhere.
Gloaming hast come to greet min once again
Thy scent must have faded in my mem’ry
Longin’ for the old days cloying-cold pain
A stolen gaze of serendipity
That one selcouth-soothing scent in my life
Wend extensively depth in my lone soul
Thy countenance set mine heart to ignite
This fate converged the dawn and eventide
Fugacious affection, short-lived romance
Eulogized the inscribed poems of the stars
But tree had to lose grip on foliage hand
To fall and kiss the ground and tree bear scar
The zephyr’s love turned to sourly-sweet breeze
Only thy morning dew scent sends me peace.
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