pit stop

Your such a special human, I knew as I learned more and more about you I was not anything you were looking for. Used up and run down, an empty house with it’s best years trailing in the rear view mirror. Even the darkness longs for warmth from time to time.

Barking at Shadows

 

“She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”

~Lord Byron

Beautiful Land

I lied to you, 

I have never wished I hadn’t met you; 

I just wish you were the second woman I fell for after Jill, 

Not the first. 

Why did fate have to make you first; 

I held her for so long it tore holes to set it down, 

So many years where thoughts were undying

Then I learned to face reality. 

In quantum physics they say that every decision we make is played out in a parallel universe, 

In another reality the glazed madness built on the blocks of death smashed against another woman’s shores. 

The unrequited stranger would have taken then blows instead; 

She would have received the composted thoughts at 2am, 

Disjointed text messages would have filled her phone 

Yours would have been left quiet. 

She could have been the lady to have broken the back of the sorrow 

Traveling in my shadow since Jill took her last breath.

Fifteen years of love would have broken against her instead, 

Been processed with her as the backdrop; 

I could have met you with a clear mind and an open heart 

Not the mess that approached you two years back. 

Knowing you made me a better man; 

Your phantom lent me it’s strength and determination to confront her ghost 

Clean her clothes out of my closet. 

I filled the holes in the darkness with a child’s thoughts of you and what comes after. 

Benjamin Franklin has a quote that goes 

“it is better to say nothing and let think you the fool than to open your mouth and prove it true”; 

When I open my mouth, I put my foot in, 

To cure it I shove the whole leg in afterwards. 

The peek you gave me of the ink on your back 

Looks to tell a tale beyond a life of privilege, 

Something outside of European vacations and trips to Disney World. 

My fingertips would have traced all of those lines 

Back to there well spring, 

Taken each story into myself 

Until we would become lost at where you would end and I begin. 

Letter Unsent

The words almost slipped away, they spent the week dangling on the edge, this would be the letter that showed you I wasn’t that bad and deserving of another chance. Eventually the voice of reason reached my ears and I’ll dissect the pages and stick them here in some form instead of sending unwanted garbage to you. I will continue to pretend that the bots scraping my words are your eyes instead, its somewhat more palatable to hide in that delusion than to bask int the reality that in a moment of panic I destroyed any possibility…

Raskolnikov

Neglect the wisdom given to Laertes,

Revert to the wild animal beneath the breast,

Bite the hand,

Let the chaos run and the mind race.

 

You’re the old dirty old sweatshirt

Slipped off without the passing thought,

Discarded into the corner and already forgotten.

 

I tier even myself,

The monotonous beat of the drum continues;

Let the pens tip cut the skin,

Tear a hole deep enough to let the beetles out.

They scratch on thoughts,

Crawl down the spine until they can chew on the heart;

Let them pour from the skull

Until their bodies fill the pages.

 

You became another butterfly

Something chased,

Not meant to be caught.

 

Only the blanked cake is remains,

The good bits have already been chewed off

Only the gristle and bones are left.

 

The devils whisper,

 It’s slippery words that hold their shape until pulled from the darkness;

Hope,

Love,

Trust,

Crumble at the touch of reality.

 

When simple kindness is diluted,

Polluted in the minds eye

Until what comes out are thoughts that bare no resemblance to life’s surroundings.

 

To many back-alley bets

Leave your pockets as empty as your hands

Grasping at the smoke of apparitions

That only send you to bed cold and alone.

 

Life slips back again to its old worn groove

When you live by the backwards riddle,

Where the more you give the less is wanted.

 

The doom clock wound down

It no longer chimes,

Replaced with the empty forest

Where the birds have all gone silent

The wind no longer blows;

Back to empty window

Staring into the nothing,

Letting the abyss wash you over.

 

You take up the pieces

Ready them with soap,

Holding the fools hope

Another could cross your path,

Walking with the black cat at your side

Looking for your next ladder to walk beneath.

 

 

  “If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.” ~Lord Byron

The Paper Bag Prison

Watch it scatter like ripples across still water, 

That itch that digs into the tight corners of the mind 

It crawls up out of the awake 

Only to be toppled just another domino 

No sense left in the birdshot brain. 

Folding thoughts turning them out my own origami, 

Each colorful paper turning darker with each bend 

Until you’re left alone with the original sin. 

Teaching yourself anew with each rising dawn 

You aren’t what you are, 

Caught in the echo of yesterday’s dreams 

Rebuilding what you tore down 

Without all the pieces. 

Left with only the mirror watching you, 

Its unblinking eye following you even when you turn your back. 

Today’s irony is just yesterday’s forgotten deeds 

With too many deaths bed wishes left undone, 

Turn away from the sun before she burns out the retina and leaves you blind. 

Where does reality and the reflection break, 

How long can you carry the shadow on your back 

Until your legs give out under its weight. 

Lost in the paper bag like a puppy 

Craving for release 

You run on legs bound for nowhere 

Smacking into to any obstacle in your path 

Until fate removes the paper shroud 

Your eyes can then see once more. 

My stepfather always said I had a guilty conscience 

Perhaps he was right 

It is just like a dogs paws 

I just needed to grow into it; 

But once I have what is left 

But apparitions from the past 

Or broken visions of the future 

That wink out in the present 

Leaving your mouth dry and unsatisfied.

Fractured Fables

I hoped you were Aesop shepherd, 

Gentle hand that would free the thorn; 

The head full of afterbirth keeps the rational at a distance. 

With a keen eye 

You would see it is your name between each line 

Below and above. 

I taught myself Necromancy 

Wrestled the dead 

Until the thought of you drowned out all her screams. 

If fear and anger smashed the looking glass 

Leaving the path to Wonderland is forever blocked; 

I will teach myself to be happy with your door prize 

Slowly suffocating your memory with my pen. 

Trading a scream for a whisper, 

Putting down a boulder to pick up a stone; 

Let the pieces that remain scatter 

Like dust in the wind 

The unfinished life, 

Swept away in the ever-turning breeze. 

What is meant to be will never be hindered 

The inverse must also true; 

What isn’t meant to be can never come to fruition. 

Till the ground with the minds eye 

Until the broken and barren have grown rich, lush 

The new field ready for planting. 

Let the night come once more 

Bay at the moon until your teeth rattle in your head 

Let yourself feel the release deep withing 

Dressing you for the inevitable dawn. 

To Thine Ownself be True

It was brief two concerts and a movie, 

Mom I wish I could follow your eggs advice when it comes to love, 

I put it all in one basket every time and its never worked out. 

How many more pages will you fill with my meaningless and empty thoughts 

That hold it all together like old Liza’s bucket. 

I cry out for answer’s but then I remember those answers had names. 

Is a sociopath built or born, what if you decide that you don’t want to be what you’ve become. 

I should have given you that stupid Peanuts Christmas gift that traveled under my car seat for the better part of a year, it would have been a better home than a gas station waste basket. 

Life isn’t a game, no homebrew rules to fall back on no do overs no rerolls; 

I miss that unwavering trust, 

I miss not being afraid all the time, 

I miss knowing that no matter what shit life would deal it was two against one, 

I miss slow mornings and idle conversation, 

I miss long discussions and being proven wrong, 

I miss slow dancing to no music,

I miss long hot nights dripped across each other,

I miss passionate kisses that come out of nowhere,

Fed to many stories in my youth have me looking for something that can’t be found and only finds you 

If its not true there is no point. 

If you weren’t the one then you weren’t the one, 

Another one way out of my league. 

Disco Lemonade

What malfunction did God have when he was sticking the stuff inside of me;

why did you have to be the next one. 

I could feel the spark at times it felt so close I could almost touch it. 

I stomped it out with my big feet before it could give off any heat. 

Like the greedy fools cutting open the goose looking for gold 

I gut my life and pull out the insides until I’m hollow once more. 

In another life their was no rain, 

the big Navaho blanket worked perfectly, 

you loved the show and we talked all night and 

with a kiss I left you off to sling the morning bread. 

Instead I spat venom at the kind hand; 

you scrape the surface and the gilding frays and exposes the cheap metal beneath, 

then the band begins again to spin up the carousel once more. 

It burns more than I remember; 

eat the beggars trade until its dirt fills the belly and 

your stuck scratching at your eyes fighting to let the light back in. 

The words ring through my head 

‘it never happens the same way twice’ 

I have my doubts that it even happens twice. 

How long this time do you suppose a month, 

a year, or some unending time that ticks away the moments of life as it slips away. 

Would it have been better to have said nothing and let it slip away into obscurity? 

Barry wasn’t good for much but he did see straight, 

people realy don’t want honesty, 

they prefer the comfort of a lie to the uncomfortable truth. 

The bars don’t bend and the warden never sleeps, 

the visitors never stay with each day a repeat of yesterday, 

I always thought you were the bird that visits Dantès in the Château d'If, 

never meant for me to fly free with you just a reminder that there is more outside. 

I so wanted it to be with you, but I was thinking that their was a second act but perhaps the last one was it and I’ve just started its long finale.

draft 2