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