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