The coffee brews

And you know just by the smell

what I’m going through

Drawing warmth through lips slightly patent

The caffeine keeps me waking

Justifies the shaking

Over you

 

One round pill 

to stop the shaking

A shot of booze to stop the aching

The song timed to the beating of my heart

Precarious rhythm bound to stop 

Here I am sitting all alone

In the dark

 

Six bronze strings

With too much tension 

Needing relief and the action is low

An anticipated note resonates through

The vibration stirs deep inside

Fretting down you close your eyes

Imagining your hands on me

Vibrato

 

In a room

Some distance away 

Not privy to the sound you play

Unaware of the notes lofting in the air 

There lies a girl, unamused by the start of the day

Too numb to feel, too sad to sing

She takes her coffee

Black

 

I just want to ride life in your wake

Block the arctic winds blowing my world

Blowing the tides I cannot change

 

I just want to ride life in your wake

Take a little resistance off the tidal surge of my mind

Let me sleep at peace today

 

I just want to ride life in your wake

When it's giving me more than I think I can take

When it's all fading away like the sand slipping through my hands 

 

Ruins wasted, souls rusting in my palms of my hands

When it's all slipping away like the sands of time

I try to hold on but that's the life that slips away

The solitude of the mountain

The loneliness you cannot see

Summed up to letters and papers

The cheapest things don't come free

 

Night gives our efforts meaning

You sleep with head on familiar pillows

While you are chasing your rabbits 

We sit up chasing our dreams

While we silently prepare those who never dare to dream again

 

We hold our heads high

tassel covers over bloodshot eyes

Our eyes dry from the tears deprived

All meaning lost in the goodbyes 

 

 

 

You're the only one whose smile makes me forget what is right

I struggle with my belief like I struggle with the night 

I struggle with my desperation to have you touching me in this light

 

As we walk up to the cabin

It's a certain kind of feel 

A letting go and a giving up 

A questioning of all I hold real

 

Either way I lose 

So I give way to you

I give way to you

 

The autumn air blows the same temperature as my soul

My skin glows amber, camouflaged by the leaves beneath my feet

It sounds like burning embers 

I'm unsure from which

 

The ground gives way with every step 

like I give way to you

If the sin doesn’t burn me black

You'll still drown me in my blues

 

Either way I lose 

So I give way to you

I give way to you

 

The night transpires to day 

Skipping over any civility this dawn could offer

The day radiates through me like truth

Like a little girl in daydreams 

I hide my eyes under the cover of you 

And I fall asleep, wake me in the night 

 

 

 

 

Miles Ahead

Should I refrain 

Mountains, too afraid to climb

Ledges sharp and steep 

Falling, shadows over all my aspirations 

Looking up for inspiration

But is anything worth the trek

Just to say it’s been done

Just to have to walk back down again 

Bragging rights soon forgotten

And in time I’ll return to lust again

The void still unfulfilled

 

The sky, of hues so happy

The stars, shined triter than you 

The flesh of skin never looked quite right

Stained glass windows like lens to my mind 

Like art disguised as truth 

Even the broken looks beautiful

And you stare until the image doubles 

Knowing it’ll never appear that way again

 

Miles ahead of desperation 

Hands rusted in defeat of the climax you couldn’t reach

You don’t use them anymore

 

And you lay it on me like salve to a broken wound 

You never asked but you know, the truth I’m not inclined to say

And every descending glance affirms it even more

Words covey little, against the transparency of a soul

 

So I climb, a mountain too vertiginous

To a pinnacle I know I’ll never reach 

But it’s driven by compulsory force   

Every move aches with purpose

Every pull feels like pushing veracity away

I’ll die with my ambition, but at least I didn’t stay

 

Miles ahead of desperation 

Hands bruised in defeat of the love I couldn’t reach

I don’t use them anymore

Bent like the pages you are turning past

not to stay, not to last
Revelation you’ve missed all along 
 
One step in front of the other
It’s all such a blunder 
Epiphany of what could be
Sparse autumn leaves
Flushed against a wall of green
 
They fall on us dry and brittle 
like the friable edge of my soul
And if I had half to sell 
Could the other half still keep me whole
regenerate in to something new  
And leave nothing left to long 
 
Birds above in sync and tune  
I’m feel incapable of the same
I’m reminded that there’s life above my trenches
But my skill doesn’t reach 
And into the depth of song I sink
Out of rhythm, out of tune
 
For a brief moment of thought is 
All I can call mine, all I still own
Our rank apparent by the colors we wear
But our knowledge fails to transpire
We stand around the limbs of objects 
Far removed from our present spot
Both in time and in thought
 
Do better next time
Ideals, if only we could live up to
Beneath the green we wear like years 
we’re just sweat from pores and porcelain white 
under the blinding lights
Trying to clinch the life as it slips

No better than last time

I feel some type of way

I feel a little bit off

I feel like I’ve been locked up

Feel a little left for dead

the spoor of your ghost all over these rooms 

 

I’m battling demons

Struggling deep down inside

Hanging onto wants without reasons 

inevitable ending

brewing for years

Somethings I need to restrain 

Can’t let go or stay away

Coming back when I’m still in pain 

 

I must like the way this torture feels

pulls like magnetic attraction

If only your abs were really steel 

Then maybe this conduction couldn’t carry on

Physic doesn’t understand the limits of this interaction 

Covalent bonds aren’t as fervent as the one you held before

 

Take my time

Try not to rush 

Not need to hurry

This tragedy that’s coming up

It’s become so complicated 

All this continuous insinuation 

Treading so light you can’t hear my feet

My heart so subtle you can’t feel a beat

I’ve never understood where boundaries fall

The view from the ledge never looks too far 

 

It should be so understood 

But it’s the coy look that you give

The trace of your hand on the small of my back

The tension that can’t relax

It’s the heat rising against my cheek every time you speak

Fixed look in your eyes

Pinpoint pupils like drill bits bore into my mind

It’s not well defined 

 

With a look, you 

skin me alive 

expose everything I’ve tried so damn hard to hide

Skin for sin

a dilapidated compromise 

parting the seas of of all we believe 

And you’d do it for just one look from me

 

Skin me alive 

Conquered by a coy smile

Willing subject, arms out, Trendelenburg 

Or anyone you prefer

Split me stem to stern 

Hollow all my feelings out

Taxidermy to make me look alive   

 

You brush my arm and lean a little closer

Which way will you move 

Like a pawn or like a knight

en passant

 

Hum of trolling trawlers 

Sway of sturdy waves
I walk beside them
In the void of day
 
Flashes from the lighthouse 
Tell me to go the other way
Bifurcated shoreline
But no indication of the better way 
 
The sight of my breath 
Holds firm to this moment 
Flustered by these feelings 
I cannot accept
 
Departed from the truth
Once as bright as day 
The mottled clouds
like the reflection of my skin
unpressed and empty handed
Sickness rises from underneath my chest
It beats in time to…
 
The sound of the crank of the sunken nets 
Pull me away 
Can they see me standing there
A lanky silhouette in their sights 
Too dark to focus 
Too far from the perception 
Of the person they perceive
 
These men are pulling up their livelihood
I’m tossing mine away
They smell of their occupation 
We call them cast away 
But they see the world from the other side of shore
They see life a different way 
 
I’m waddling waist deep
To wash away these feelings
The ones I never wanted to find
the blood from a broken vessels 
Still stains the same as mine
 
Sullivan, I’m slaughtered on your shore
Years of unlearned lessons
Just to call on you again 
Sullivan, can you teach me a little more
 
A pleasant disposition from the roads I usually see 
Entangled in the disorientation of the ever moving sea  
I walk the Serpiginous lines
Looking for the answers to
Questions wrapped around the
Matted gray matter of my mind
 
I wish I had a hand to hold
To furrow into mine
But everyone I’ve touched I’ve broken
I stand defeated
Do we meet again 
Maybe all I feel is just beyond my eyes
Maybe I’ve touched the mind, of another time
But have I anymore time to try
 
This seems the only place 
That still makes sense to me
And it’s worth the pain
to stand here watching 
From this side of the shore

 

Your Hands On Me

Baby I’d wait all night
There’s no where I’ve got to be
Nowhere better than 
That place I’m in 
When you put your hands on me
 
Been a long, long time
Been trading glances and looking for advancement 
Had to move so very slow
Tightly braided knots kept you cleated 
But it got so frayed in time
You cut it with the steel of your heart
After being battered by her storm
 
You said if you could ever float free 
You’d float on over to me
But did you mean it?
Did you mean those words you spoke like a poet reciting love to me?
Or was it just your escape? 
I’m looking for fruition, in promises once easily made
 
Baby I’d wait all night
There’s no where I got to be
If the winds are right 
Blow on over to me
Put your hands on me

 

 

North of Jacksonville

Windows down 
interstate bound 
close enough to smell the sea 
Just north of Jacksonville 
 
I wasn’t looking into making 
something that would last 
but it’s the type of love that 
you can’t let slip past 
 
On the way down you said 
I would make you wreck
But you kept it steady 
and I got a thrill out of the danger 
Of your bare white knuckles on the wheel 
 
Windows down 
interstate bound 
close enough to smell the sea 
Just north of Jacksonville 
 
I didn’t want anything else
I could have froze in time
I could have died right there
But nothing stops the tick of time
And damn if it isn’t such a thief 

Deprivation’s Spiral

Deprivation’s spiral
Fall right in
Watch me spin
 
Do you want to spin around with me 
Do you want to spin down with me
 
Pitting swollen desire
Push it down to the bone
Watch it hold its place
 
You wait for the rise
But you’ve already compromised 
Your sin for your soul
 
Slowly it fills
But the fluid, ever stagnant 
Lingers just beneath
 
Do you want to spin around with me
Do you want to spin down with me
 
Deprivation’s spiral
No way out
Man of clout 

Right There Before Me

You were right there before me
You’d never looked so good
You were right there before me
Wish I could hold you like I could 
But then I wake from
the peacefulness of slumber 
It’s dawn and sun and morning 
Everywhere around me
I want to pull it in
To the dark and hallow space
On the inside of me  
 
It’s like you left me by the sea 
Where you washed upon the shore
Sandy, cold, dirty and broken 
By the life that I adore 
 
If I rest here a little longer
Will I drift back to the safety of my sleep
The weight of life presses close my eyes
Will I rest in the peace of your memory tonight 

To this painful reality 

Still

When I’m head between my knees 

Blood draining, brain dry

Bottom of the chair

Pain I just can’t hide 

And you ask, what makes it better? 

 

It’s Jekyll in the winter 

there’s no darker sky 

Our backs against the sand  

The waves are crashing down

Hum of a familiar tune 

Heavy in my heart like a bundle of yours

Chest falls like my pride

unsteady in my breath 

For me, the world is still

But it’s still moving, around you

 

Night gives way to day

But I don’t see it

Don’t even know where I am 

Nothing in sight 

Semiconscious haze

Why’d you ever want to make me this way? 

When you can’t make it any better

Alone in a vast ocean of mind 

Only curve I can see is,

Is my world bending down

 

Like the strings, like the sound

Like the joy, you land on me 

Like the steel,  like the shame

Like the stones beneath my feet 

The dichotomy I can’t explain 

 

I can recognize the touch of your hand

A humble abode, a refuge for my body 

I get lost, thinking I’m somebody 

You’d ever want to know, ever long to touch

For me, the whole damn world is still

But it’s still moving, around you

Sleep Where You Lay

 You’re lying still against my floor

Your problems bigger than can be ignored 

In desperation for the air 

You gasp and rasp for the words to describe your despair 

They move through you the way fremitus feels

Slurring words that smell like shame

Seeping in the sweat of your pain

Too far gone to leave your spot

Your makeshift bed of a concrete cot

Awaken to the reality

You can’t sustain the life you’ve got

Some make due and some subdue

Slip from reality

The thin line you’re slipping across

You’re asking for a hand

But I don’t know how to give

You’re begging for forgiveness 

But it’s bitterness that permeates 

My nerves not my bones

You close your eyes so I roll you to your side

You whisper ‘want to die’

And I don’t know if you’re living in the enemies’ lies

Or if you’d just say anything for me to stay

So I just let you sleep where you lay 

Tall grass rising beyond the world I can’t see 

Winds blow, it encloses around me

I wish that you’d just join me hidden beneath

The surface of what earnest eyes see

Me hidden in your gentle face 

Against the ground of your shelter 

 

Pressing hands into my translucent skin

little bones bound to crumble 

did you mean to press this hard 

all the way through 

Sit beside me in the gentle silence of the truth 

 

All my soul 

An empty bowl of time

Contents consumed 

All too quickly 

But still I hunger 

 

Gravitational potential 

Indefinitely far apart 

Pondering the laws of time 

Through the wounds of a mortal dying heart 

Feeling the years behind me rather than ahead

 

The spread couldn’t make it any weaker

It’s the last bit of weak 

Before the bonds give way  

There was nothing I could do

To stop what was imminent 

 

Rushing over me 

Like a broken dam, waterfall 

Pulling me down

 

Proliferating desperation 

As I sit back alone in realities’ seat

One last sound slips through 

But these words I speak sound weak

 

The color of a man

Fades to a monochromic clone

A live that was once living 

Now but skin and bone breathing into a microphone

 

You look to me as you speak

The breath comes out like meaning

Just as hollow as the music sounds

It fills the room 

But it’s just as empty as you

 

It’s falls like literary commentary

A voice that cracks with reason

I oversimplified my feelings till 

It becomes a lapse of reason 

 

You ask what I’m looking for tonight 

I smile cause I know by the question 

I’m just not going to be you’re type

Cause I didn’t come here 

Looking to be any one night lover

You want to touch my skin but you’ve tapped against my soul

 

I’m approaching you with the pain of my convictions 

I’m landing these words like confessions 

On the runway of a heart not cleared for what’s ahead 

 

Can you control my course seems I have no directions left

As I make every last attempt to land 

On the solidness of your stable ground  

A sum of many faltered parts 

Drifts violently in the winds’ fluctuating motions 

(or is it emotions) 

Buried in the grass

My still heart

Not in Love

Not in love
Just not my type
I lie, looking through the eyes
Of all who question
Cuz I won’t speak, it into existence
I won’t admit it
I won’t be naïve 
Not a good look
On anyone
 
So you try
And you try and you try 
Like pieces of a puzzle 
You can’t put your finger on
So you try
And you try and you try and you try
Hoping to discover 
A clue you can stumble on
 
For years
I’ve been dead silent
Like the calm portends the storm
How can I be honest?
I want to take these secrets to my grave
The subsonic combustion of truth
destroy the lies my mind’s enslaved 
 
I’m worth my weight in gold
I’m worth your heart
I’m worth my words
But I’m not worth your soul
 
So you try
And you try and you try 
Like pieces of a puzzle 
You can’t put your finger on
So you try
And you try and you try and you try
Hoping to discover 
A clue you can stumble on
 
Its dark and dusty 
The wanting soul
And it makes no damn sense 
That there’s even a reflection 
From which I dully glow

Even If

Cones and rods shifted by the light you illuminate 
Could you stand still so my eyes can catch your gaze
Look to me 
You’ll see where I stand
Come to me 
Be part of who I am  
 
Sucking you in through the black hole in my eye
Absorbing you in through the black hole in my eye
Crushing you in through the black hole in my eye
You can’t escape the black hole in my eye
 
You wouldn’t like me even if you could 
You wouldn’t like me even if you could 
I shouldn’t like you  
Even if I could 
 
I look through the black hole in your eye
Looking for the outline of a soul 
I can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there

Just beyond the physics I’m aware
 
Burning like lava
Desire spinning at my core 
Cool surface wanting
Your skin to transfer 
 
You wouldn’t like me even if you could 
You wouldn’t like me even if you could 
I shouldn’t like you  
Even if I could 

I Don’t Know

I don't know  

Much about you
I don't speak
But I speak to you

I don't know
Where you've been
You don't know
The pain I'm in  

My hands on the strings
They can feel what I mean 
They harder I press
The stronger it seems
x2

Now I don't steal
But I like how this feels
Now I won't speak
But it wants to shout

Now she must have told you
To let me go
Don't let her get lonely 
In bed by you

Sounds good in my head 
So I let it play through
My thoughts they fall
To rosewood and spruce

Absorbed in the wood
I'm barring down
But the sound of you
I can't play through 

I’m not your Annabel, I’m not your Lenore
I’m not the one who keeps you rushing
Against the darkness of the shore
I’m not the one whose got you 
Standing, waiting at the door
 
Would you haunt me after death
Push my books right off their shelf 
Would you even think of me again 
I’m not that much to you 
And you’re just the thing I’m going through
 
You’re just the playlist on my mind
One song on the track and it’s playing on repeat
What I would give to make the music stop
But I’d sell half my soul if I could hear it from the top
But it doesn’t stop
And you won’t strum
And the guy at the dive with the Jackson  
He’s got me feeling uncomfortably numb
Or maybe it’s the tequila I chased with rum
Maybe I can manage to sleep it off tonight 
Hold out for the clarity that comes with civil light

Standing Still

Time narrows in life’s sandy jar
Shattering, it scatters over all the roads left unseen 
And for just a little longer
We’d pay almost anything
 
Here I am standing still 
On this tilted speck of dusk
Go ahead, it’s ok 
I won’t hold it against you
Leave me if you must
 
Here I am standing still
On this tilted speck of dust
Honey, it’s ok
Save it for another day
Leave me if you must
 
The things remembered most
Are those from long ago
Younger days and careless ways
Oh, the price we’ll stand to pay…
 
Hell, l really should just cut the check for you
 
Here I am standing still 
On this tilted speck of dusk
Go ahead, it’s ok 
I won’t hold it against you
Leave me if you must
 
Here I am standing still
On this tilted speck of dust
Honey, it’s ok
Save it for another day
Leave me if you must

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

XXXV "Things Not"

It’s a secret desperation 

A longing that does not sleep

Swaddled like blankets 

Wrapped around me like the words I dare not speak

It’s the earnestness of a living 

Built from the flesh of two bare hands 

It's the deliverance of a word

Whose sound I've never heard

It's the visions in my dreams

Not black and white, it seems 

Our eyes cannot see the colors 

Our language cannot describe 

XXXIV - "Dusty Road"

 Dusty road beneath my bare feet

I uncharacteristically took my shoes off

Because this walk didn’t feel like my reality

I needed to feel the truth

I built my dreams up like elated fairy tales 

The grandiloquence of the stories we once read

You think, it could come true, it could

You think, just once, could a prince really come through

But then I realize, he doesn’t look like you

They trained me to be wise 

To see beneath the mistrust of sparkling eyes 

To see the face value of withdrawing from a failing investment 

Just to save any face than can still be kept

So I’m standing on the dirtiest of roads 

This is not a destination I know 

So I keep walking 

Till I can find someone or something that’s worth the hold

XXXIII - "Hold"

 
You want to bet it all and win with just a hand
But that’s not me
I play deal by deal

Win the game in small gains and strategy

I like enough to fall back on

The rush of the win, it doesn't get to me
I've had my share of bad hands
To teach me just how quickly it could go

Your holding a hand of diamonds 
Flush, like the complexion of your face
All I have is a pair of hearts
But I won’t fold
I’ve come to make you sweat
My poker face isn’t usually very good
But my pride won’t let you see what I have to lose

This is all a game to you
I know you don’t like to lose
I won’t lay a single card down till I’ve counted for everything you’re ready to put down 
I won’t take the chance to lose on a game I know how to win

XXXII - On This Way

Sitting in your backseat
My head leans against the glass
You’re singing along to a song
You see me through the rear view 
Your smile makes me feel a certain way
I return the gesture but then I drop my glaze
 
I don’t linger
I don’t feel
I don’t let myself take the chance 
To let myself be real
 
I’m hiding my eyes in the passing trees
Like they could ever be more interesting than you
Cuz I don’t want to have to explain to you
The reason why I stare
 
I can’t tell you that I’m a little fucked up
That I’m hung up on these ideas
Residing in the once clam, sanity of my mind
And now the redness of my struggle is written all over my face
 
My moral compass in misdirection spins
My moral fiber tattered and frayed at the ends
I don’t want to break the rules 
But I’m thinking hard about just giving in

But then the gravity of the situation hits me

And it just gets locked into a song  

I long to be still
I look for the anything to conceal
I cant speak the words
Those are the words I could never say
So I just go on this way
 
 
 

XXXI - Slip Knot

Brand me in gold 

Whole heart but not soul

Knotted in a tattered twine

Loosely bound and in time will slip

Something new but still so blue

Puzzled by a wayward grin

Juxtaposed to words that vow to never end

Expanding like a heat that will one day recede

and to whom did you cool in your crisis of fleets

Left with the ash of the flames of your youth

You try to hold on but it's the cracks in your hands the truth seeps through

Faint black stains, the only evidence left

That it ever existed at all 

With every last attempt 

You swallow whole

Your pride served on a platter

Like a pardon for your soul 

XXX - I Don't Know That Girl

I don't know that girl

I don't know who she is

She let him get the best of her

She's thinking that's all there is

She forgot how to rise

She forgot how to climb

Too strong to sink but too weak to swim

Dangling with both hands on the limb

Do you let go?

Do you crawl back on?

How far down?

Will it make a sound?

She gave it her best

Gave it seven years time

But when it came down to promise

The only line he could find was a fault line 

He was a cunning magician

He cast the most clever spell

He had a trick up his sleeve

But you can't deceive someone not willing to believe

She was onto your trickery

She saw through the façade

She traced your steps and followed your hands

Funny, where you land

XXIX - Play My Pain Away

I sprawl my words across the paper
To lift the weight off of my chest

To ease a mind that cannot rest
But tonight 
Nothing comes and nothing flows

There’s nothing but a void within this hundred and twenty pounds of flesh 
I can feel it, sunken down like a sadness into the walls of this chest
But I can't bring it to the surface
The language doesn’t offer the word I need
To articulate the unfamiliar feeling 
To describe the piercing pain
That there’s no one here for me 
Not a soul for me 

Not the soul I need
 
Now, I’ve got friends
And I’ve got family
I’ve got the ones I can call every hour of the night
And the one’s whom I can trust with everything or nothing at all 
But I don’t have the one who
Could ever really get me
Could ever really get to me
 
I thought I had someone 
Who really meant a lot
But it turned out to be another transient season
Of what love’s just not suppose to be
And it’s got me bent over broken
Thinking there’s no one 
Who’d really take the heat for me
Who’d really burn in the fire with me 
 
It comes on like the darkest of despair
And it hurts almost everywhere 
But it’s just a season 
I know cuz I’ve weathered one just like it before 
Not that I’m keeping score
 
So careful as you’re passing 
I feel just like a hallowed out dying spirit
you could almost walk right through

Scattering the shame that foreshadows all that's past
Scattering the blame, that, that man cannot undo 
 
And in time, the atoms can realign 
And in time, I can reassign the sad and blue
To someone, who can make it all feel ok 
To someone, who can play my pain away
 
 
 
 

XXVIII - Succumb

Burning like a thousand flames 
Each the equivalent of a fingertip
Tickling want upon the skin
Of a lover I cannot claim
 
A spark of mystery 
Uncharted land of crevices and cracks
Deploy my hands in a desperate search 
Gracefully guided,  piecing together the tomography that is you

Favoring the mines of your gentle explosions 
In hopes to detonate a mass destruction of resistant
As your pleasure builds beneath my hands
 
Want to back down the mountain but your already up to high
About to succumb to the built in mechanisms that sustain our lives
Mind over matter won’t stop the things in motion 
Won’t stop your body from shaking
 
Chemicals of candescence 
Channel down into your ropey streams
The resistance to which you cling
Is ripping at the seams 
 
Trying to feel an entire soul without a touch

Longing to soothe the ache but no such luck

XXVII - Verse of Time

You’re speaking in riddles
I’m forcing a rhythm
It’s a familiar sequence 
Since the start of time
 
Some girl just like me 
Back a thousand years time 
Poured out her words like flooding riverbanks
Into some old man’s empty tank 
 
And though we’re different through distance 
We’re really the same
The verse looks different in words 
But the meanings never change 
 
It’s always the hour of contentment 
The one before the feast
Dying to devour 
The love we dare not to reap
 
Conclusions of pain 
The harrowing goodbyes
But no number of historic lessons 
Can deter a young heart not to try

XXVI - The River Rises

Lingering moments of thought give way to days of crippling pain
Seldom speaking of the weakness that defines a coming of age

Thunder claps us back to that place

Startled like infants that only time can console

Cold and dripping, feet swollen by the fluid of defeat

We close our eyes to take a momentary break

But this lucid dream keeps us awake 

It’s the way the river rises
Around the undercut surface of a soul
It’s the way the river rises 
A firm grip that won’t let go

 
Steadfast through the embankment paved by fears
Hastening the steps when the river rises
Apprehensions forbidden, thoughts deafened
as the vortex of wind circles overhead  
 
And the summer rain smells like memories 
Of the naivety once known
the colors of the truth’s rainbow
Bleed together over the rock where you lay gone
 
It’s the way the river rises
Around the undercut surface of a soul
It’s the way the river rises 
A firm grip that won’t let go
 
It’s all useless, against the grain
It’s time spent exhausted 
When you know you’re taken in
Meaningless objections against the surrender of a life
It swallows you in completely
It’s the object of control 
From which you know you’ll never heal
 
It spewed the rocks and the rafts
It drew out the very last breath
It forced the tears we fought so hard to hide

It ripped the ropes right through raw and shaking hands
But it couldn’t spew the one thing,

The life we loved
The life we knew so well 

It’s the way the river rises
Around the undercut surface of her soul
It’s the way the river rises 
A firm grip that won’t let go
 

XXV - “I Can’t “

He looks to be undressing me in a single look
Exposing the expression of his bedroom eyes
As soon as he realizes, he quickly hides them in the other direction 
 
I can tell he’s quite discerning 
Ever so careful not to stare
And my mind wonders, to how many lovers does he have me to compare?
 
A number high enough to know how to please me
Low enough to avoid the disease
But I’m willing to teach all he’d ever dare to know
 
I think that I may break him
Too gentle and chaste a soul 
But maybe he’s just dying for someone to give him a reason to lose all self-control 
 
To say I want to know you 
Is really just a lie
I just want to know the rhythm of your body against mine 
 
I don’t want to break you 
Like the broken glass 
We’re bound to pierce our bodies through 
 
I don’t want to shatter the best pieces of you
I don’t want to chip away at the wholeness that is you
I don’t want to leave a scar you constantly look down to
 
But I just can’t not make love to you
I can’t not be twisted in the warmth of you
I can’t not know the sounds that flow through you

I can’t, but I can’t not be one with you

I can’t, but I can’t not be inside of you

I can’t pass through this world and not make love to you 

XXIV - “Just Enough Reason”

There’s someone I know at this bar tonight
And he wants to pretend like 
he doesn’t know he’s the reason
For this difficult season 
I want to time travel through 
 
If I let you take me home tonight 
I’ll be the reason that you fall
Maybe I’m past the point of walking
But I wouldn’t trust myself not to crawl into your bed
Just enough sober to know I shouldn’t 
Just enough lonely to try

Metabolized out my reason, like my body to the beer 

If you’d any sense at all you’d wait for it to clear 

 
So smile at me like you’re none the wiser
And brush my shoulder like the static doesn’t electrify me
Tell me all your jokes I’ll try forever to forget
Walk away so easily like it’s just the end of a shift
Like you don’t know my eyes are still on you

 

XXIII - “Humans, Not Gods”

It’s going to be a hard night 
It started with a long day
And sadness fills the hallways
Along with sweat of our gift
It’s become so apparent 
We’re nothing like the gods they groomed us to be
 
We say the prayers 
as a means to cope with the knowledge in our heads 
We roll the dice
And hope the luck of life ends up on our side
We don’t save lives
But sometimes we’re lucky enough to extend them 
We buy the extra time 
To keep the match off of the wick
 
The screams of the unruly 
The smell of the drips
The crack of the time in a worn out voice
The still of a room of all those who relate 
The sound of metal collapses into the door
The end of a shift you’re longing to ignore 
 
You know it won’t be easy
You know the woes of regret
But you hold yourself steady 
When the tsunami of sadness breaches your shore
We’re trained to keep the fluid on the inside 
They say ‘we’re only human’
But we never really see it that way 

XXII - “Entangled”

Entangled in the moment
souls of a time past
polarized like magnets
My space shifted by the presence of your mass 

A white dwarf 

Up against a red giant 

Just the remnant of what’s left

 
If only I could see into your space
But I can’t get past the edge of your darkness
Everything warped into my view
Except the you in front of me
Lend me all your journals
Let me deep inside your head
Listen to your theories
The lives that you have led
Take me to the places you’ve passed your spirit through 
Show me all the scenes captured in the retina you peer through 
 

Entangled 
In the blackness bound to absorb me
Entangled in
The one thing I know is going to crush me 
Entangled in the theory of your love 

Could I meet you in space
Would it still be too late
The universe would revolve around us
Two masses on the edge of everything 
 
But then you couldn’t hear the sounds, of two souls in love

And there would be no dawn to look up to 

You couldn’t hear the song I sing
You couldn’t hear the sound of the string 
That I bled my fingers into
To make it known to you
 

Here, there’s light to see me 

But you’d be blinded by lust to ever look this way

The things that burn this bright

Never burn for long

And compress everything in the wake

But Here, I can hear every single thing
The tears, the sighs, the sobbing cries
Even the silence of nothing between us
Because the odds of time is between us
Bound to the laws
That keep me in my place
Bound to the fears
That confined me in this space
 

Entangled 
In the blackness bound to absorb me
Entangled in
The one thing I know is going to crush me 
Entangled in the theory of your love 

 
A pull so strong 
Even light can’t get through
You’re the event on my horizon 
And I was merely passing through
 

XXI - “Another Wolf”

You don't really care the who

As long as she keeps you warm

Any body will do

Just another coping mechanism 

On which you rely 

 

You were a wolf in wool

You had so much pull

I let you get so close

It made it easy for you 

To take a bite so deep

 

Now, I'm just the wounded Phoenix

Blending into your dust

I was designed to rise

But even wounds dipped in ash

Can only heal so fast

 

Love use to overflow from this place

But there's a crack draining all that was full

Even though I'm a fish in your pond

I'm parched and dry

In this school of second tries 

 

So bite as deep as you can

You'll only get this one chance

Lie as long as you can

You can only keep the truth hidden so long

Even your wool is bound to shed

 

 

XX - “The She”

The rattle of your phone on the desk

It's after midnight and you pretend not to notice

And you know exactly what I mean

When I say "she needs to give it a rest"

Whiteness covers your face as redness does your eyes

When you finally realize

Two halves won't make us whole

"I'm sorry" won't convince me

To forgive your broken soul

Maybe god can see past

The thing I can't see through

You say "it's so benign" 

A simple cut to the flesh

But now the blood cascades out of control

And you're not good with the pressure 

All the memories of us swirl like regressions

And it's all you can do to keep your head above the depression

Gone like a comet in the night sky

You brace for the explosion but it only fades like scattering rays 

I’m shielded by my atmosphere 

Two halves won't make us whole

"I'm sorry" won't convince me

To forgive your broken soul

Maybe god can see past

The thing I can't see through

I thought you were the kind of guy

Who'd always have my back

Thought you were the kind of guy

Who would never need a take back

But I’m just not the kind of girl

Who’ll ever want a redo