Calm down.
It's steady as she goes.
Shadows flutter in the curtains of the open windows of my heart.
Fall days crisp the edges of lips in incomplete connections.
Feelings play together with a butterfly in the panic room.
Clouds pass.
My heart races from phantom fears.
Sighs cherish light years of youth that is on the edge of these streets.
Fall down.
I move too fast.
The way I miss you is on the flutter of angels wings.
Just an undreamt state of mind.
The way we are stuck in moments of time.
Haunting the various passerbys.
Stuck in these dreams where you come back to me.
Sitting on the edge of sunsets summers fade, fall embrace.
You were my one wish, an arcade cocktail of hymnals that we cannot preach.
Find me where we let go.
Moments in spaces I cannot yet speak.
Homesteads echo, on the sunlight, and farewells.
Come down.
Because I can't forget.
Leather jacket bowties swoon in summer night
Eyes alight in soft somber roman candle smiles
Running starts into sky diving the coastline in her smile
Painted sky lines of dying suns swirled in amber spread across the embers of daytime
Hanging hopes like fairy light the music of fluttered heartbeats escape into heavy blue scene
Promises, hearted eyes dot the lines where she parked on the lawn
Disguised in possibilities the words so spoken and sweet
Abstract in my thinking the way her way of human has caused me to be
Fine art on the horizon, hair that dances with no invitations for me
Holding my breath for the moment as the dream calls out
Dreamers alight and spread out like birthday candles
All breath, all heights, feet dangle toes touching stars
Floating up, swelling in protest as the downside is all up
Shared atmosphere vapor trails in blank stares across a room so crowdedly desolate.
Always there, always filthy. Slideshows flicker like the magnavox eyes shuffle lid to lid, moment to moment as time fleets like dust shimmering in my heart. Always filthy.
Brought out of the infectiously swollen cardiac arrest, through the waters, so thick drowning with due care. Peeled back potential baking like hot glue amongst the weight of glory that was never there.
Love against the glass ceiling swimming above while the sharks swim below. Sinking into the black and blue that ensues carbonated lungs scream alone in the waves below a somber rock a bye into the phonetics, into the pride less afternoons wasted in silence.
Alone in the drink as all the hands let go awaiting always filthy waiting to sink out of mind and out of sight.
Daytime ghosts
Windows bring light that exhales a dead-end world
Softest intentions drown to sleep at the bottom of shallow wells
Neon memories bubble to life the static scores that bodies hide
Mouthed confessions of loveless intimacy that knows no swirls of radiance
Soft embrace of the life above from the cold souls that swim below
Hugless lovers reclining in the bleak blue edges of summer lights hung on horizons
That never knew the scores composed from names that never met
Fainted in pleasures unknown to sender as the tape decks click B-sides search for depth
Tears for two at an empty diner booth that is abandoned along travels to far off destinations
Reservations for taped confessions of vows never thought, as the food comes shared aloud
Relief by numbers in collections of good vibes, better company and lives well lived
High tides come and go as wells stagnate the fishtank below
The heaviest sound lays us to rest
Tied to the steak and eats our heart out
Composure fixed to the evening sky
Swivel the scenery then throw me away when I am colored dead
Let's all pose then fall down the well together
Understudies for the part we weren't meant to play
Courage for cowards in the rewriter's chair beating the around the rose bush
Sink thirty thousand feet into the shoes too narrow for human feats.
Back to factory settings until you can learn how to sing let alone speak our names
Caution tape leashes the struggle bus in gear on your best days
One step further than slipping up on a Monday, blue and battered
I wake up to the sight of the out of boundaries shred to pieces
Water for the pills stuck in swallowing fashion
Wings tied to the bed abstract as ever
We dreamt of the rise and fall of the house of us
Blueprints of further disappointment with marble inlays to hold onto this moment
Shock jocks of jealous siblings gnashing at ankles going home
Nostalgic for chaos and that bitter root
I didn't know that I was this obvious
Innocence donated with and without the will to live
Lover, Lover
The nighttime sings our names
Ballads of the figurative Juliet
Radios hiss hearts spilled the shadows hide naked ambition stilled
Neglected emotional hills wafts through valleys of past lives
Karmic backlogs review their closing percentages
Futures flood the floors hold the line between fate and tears
Shadow people alone in the twilight
Illuminated letters, walls woed to sleep
Dreams from the shoreline as phantom vessels waltz on the silver linings
Postures of stable footing, top of the line, kings and queens of value
Thumbs circle the knuckles, bone kisses bone, the familiar taste of home
Haunted hems lines explored in tribal pursuits
Please keep me waiting
The specter of tender frames evaporates
Morning ghosts caress the memory in travel
Neckties versus deadlines
Power brokered, breath that betrays the dream
Folded napkins
Cocktail napkin epitaphs
Check please
Is it just exscuse or ignorance
Its been over twenty four year
Shes still taking this substance
She is so bang on the gear
Though often says her reliance
Could one be anymore sincere
How anyone has the paitance
I am suprised she is still here
Perhaps a high level of tolerance
Though has little worrie or fear
What seems like a life sentance
For which l would stay well clear
An old write 2014 follow on to a stark reality
Chasing the light written rewritten 2020
Emotional turmoil
Sudden surges of recoil
Bursting flames of rage
Black chunks of coal
Purged from the soul
Embers of grief and regret
Made promises you didn't keep.
Just words in the moment to appease.
Words that sounded good at the time.
Mere words with no substance.
Words not worth their weight in gold.
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
In my country
For you to make sense
You need to have money
For you to be respected
You have to throw money around
For you to find love
You need to have money.
Every effect
A cause
A man's wife may either
"Make" or "break" him
Everyone has their
own style of expressing things.
Forgetting we're souls
Not the body
The soul is limitless
And the body is very limited
We're from the infinite source
Never to be limited to substance or things but purpose.
Having tasted substance abuse,
today in truth,
many of the young
are wasted in their youth.
But 'God damn' only the pusher
you didn't oughta
as, without the doer,
the dealer, he'd be dead in the water.
One and the same, they're both to blame,
as off each other they will feed,
the former for avarice, a.k.a., greed,
the latter for a misconceived need...
if not to allay his fears,
but cede to the pressure of his peers.
If only my life I could live over again
and the years unfold in my daily scuffle,
as at the thought of growing old,
I recoil from this mortal shuffle.
With apologies to; George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) and William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
Filled with substance,
Never know who I’ll be next -
A person in disguise
Like the back of an earring,
Lost in the fibers
Unsure of what thought comes next -
But I feel more aware,
Yet still so alone -
Misunderstood,
Substance,
You’ve held me so tight.
Made me feel safe
But without you, it’s so much clearer
I cannot replace,
I must escape
And learn to live without you
Breathing in can be the hardest part
When you stretch your mind and heart
So very far apart
I'm bleeding from the inside but no one see's the kill
I read between the lines.
Those lines are where I write my will
So if you'll take my pardon
I'll fall back into the garden
to return...
To the substance of existence
I would rather be the incense
you burn...
SUBSTANCE WE 2-
You have access to me
I am me inside you
Let us be real
Being truth and true
We are the substance same we two
6/5/24
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2024©
I speak my thoughts...you do not hear. I reach to touch...you are not near.
I matter not to you, nor to any other. I am invisible...you do not see me.
I have no face; I have no substance. I try to speak, there are no words...you took my voice! So, now I huddle, fetal form. I strain to hear the dullness of my heart as its beat slows and fainter gets. Now even I can no longer see a speck, a shadow left of me. I am void.
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