Never Again

I've known the angry kisses of a tack hammer against the bones of my ankles
And the chill of an un-dulled needle placed lovingly between the bones of my spine
The nausea and ecstasy of blood fighting to escape your body at all cost
The pain and weight of giving in to fear before an audience of peers
The shame of ambition and greed placed on the wall in the shadow of honesty
The chaos of having it all stripped, signed, and filed away in the offices of the gods
And the terrible unforgivable depression of youth.

But never again will I be such a fool, as to forget the immeasurable pain that can be summoned from a few simple words.

Colder than that pole.

A mechanical ache hangs on me like a cloak on nights like this.
No twist or pivot aids me, but like and addicted fool I gnarl myself into an old oak branch.
A gentle throat clears itself, leaving a bullet hole in the silence. It bleeds.

The sharp clicking of silver against glass foretells the cold flood that washes the ash and tension from my chest.
Pink and black steal my plans for the night. I let them.

No matter how deep into the smell of nature you may trek, you will come across the stink of shit.
Welcome to earth.

Awaiting

No one knows how cold it gets
in the space between my skin
and my clothes.

Wild and unkempt darkness
entangles and shields
I know they are out there
Those kisses I need to live
But darkness first
Never second

I come to terms
These times are important
When all of life's flavors feel gray

Stages of emotional celibacy
Always seem to make that first break
In the darkness
When the color and lips and warmth
All come flooding, tearing, and trampling
me back to my senses.

The Truth About Yesterday

Damnation is the stitches in my hide
I look not to promises of what is to come
For the birds will eat my trail of bread
And die on the poison of it's failure
The swath I cut is one of longing
I wish to stand on the highest hill
And see what is mine
I long for my bones to lay shattered
Across the sands of distant shores
My flesh to be the banner of a War yet waged
My soul to be the pushing force
That sets lips to lips
And guides the lost
Back home
To their bedroom window's pane
I want to live
God Damn You.

Tense

In silence hour face of night
He asked what else to do but write

Control to take and then exhale
He leaves behind another trail
Of inside's ashes, dry and pail

No longer lost
No will to fight
No moments left
No wrong or right

A drape of then weighs cold and dense
With terror wakes his skin repents
Against a wall of stolen thoughts
The spotlights trace
His hidden face
Vitality gives way and rots

No longer lust
No longer life
No longer bottle
No longer knife

Aside from reason, ever sought
His love and lust give way and rot
His spotlights trace a shadow's face
Against the trails he then exhales

A stolen ring from freedoms wife
Control and terror never fail
To blanket faith from head to tail
Cut free and seek another life

Cut free and sing the song he lost
Escape from shadows clung like frost
Take knife and thaw with freedom's saw
Take faith and light and bottle tight
No longer trust
No wrong or right

The Moth Hunter

A broken chair creeks in protest as I surrender to the gravity that batters me throughout the day. My arms hang heavy, like sides of beef, and my head rolls back and around as a fountain of withheld smoke evacuates from the empty pits of my chest.

The window, open wide, blows in frigid night-time that cuts to my bones. I make no move to close it.

In vain I blink my tearless eyes. The LCD has baked them dry like corn chips for what feels like days now. The ashtray overflows and spills soot and cancer out over my keyboard. I make no move to clean it.

I look up to see myself looking back down on me, and frowning. I lift my middle finger towards the heavens to exorcise my meta-cognitive manifestation. I know he's still watching.

Even that music that once washed me clean and patched my mind and soul, like a childhood blanket, simply lingers in the air. It floats through my ears and leaves a tasteless residue on my mind's tongue.

Empty words spill out of emotionless hands to faceless names a world away. I tell myself they love me, and die when they fade away.

I've become a moth hunter. They serve me no purpose, but to look on them gives me joy. They simply seek the flame to engulf them, and set them free. Yet I keep trying to catch them and put them in my empty little jars, so I can watch them closely and tell myself they love me. 

Transudation

This cage of ether

These bars of night

My hands are free to touch your face

And play this violin

This second fiddle

She said its tune is the sweetest of all

yet I'm still behind the wall

of sweet sweet ether

can't cross the line

addiction

tradition be damned

I can't get enough

I play as loud as I can

But the seat is the same

The second seat

The back row

I sit alone and watch the show

And when she takes a bow

I throw my rose

Falling short of all hope

I sit alone

A Twisted Pair

Don't ask me why I always pair these two together, but they just sort of came into existence at the same time, and so I leave them as a pair, even though they have nothing to do with each other.

Tear cork, 'er pouring overflows
A flood of forty days
Wash out, we hopeless from our homes
And quell our common flames
The lions claws made dull and neat
Deep sour hibernation
Another beast awakes for meat
From boiling acclimation
Oh liquid night, oh prison glass
Take mind, and touch, and sight
For senses show us only past
When all we seek is light


-----------------------------

The hand that feeds is not alone
You modern dogs of war
One holds the leash and takes the bone
As seen in days before

So live in kenneled chains of fear
And beg for every scrap
But let them not between your ears
Our you'll fall in their trap

Devour every scroll of text
And read 'tween every line
For they can keep you tethered
But they cannot leash your mind

The Lord Without

We lost of heart, with empty hands
Now disengaged from ether strands
Once choked and cold like winters fist
Who spits a curse at flavor's kiss

In gates and bars the lord did rest
A knife of pride within his chest
Out from the keep he kept his dreams
And laughed to hear his maiden's screams

The last and first forever tied
Unwanted from the taste of pride
Sought wander till the watchman lied

His road and sky and past unknown
With hungry palms he sits alone
Until at last his face is shown
To choose between his heart or throne
The hide of beasts and fangs of bone
With hungry claws he sits alone

To bar the doors and break the chains
Outside the walls he keeps his pains
The path to take now mapped in veins
The first and last forever tied
Sought wander till the watchman lied


And in the end he only died

The Murder's Song

 This is one of my simplest and most straight forward poems, but I think that is why I like it so much. I wrote it outside at work while smoking and watching the crows fly.

I dearly love to watch the crows
There dancing in the tree
The murder's song is dark and sweet
They voice it just for me
On chilling wind their wings cut clean
Above the park of green
They only perch to wish me well
These shadows in my dream.

The Cycles of the Moon

 Okay, this is as nerdy as it gets, but this is a poem I wrote for a fantasy world that I run with dungeons and dragons. There are four different moons that quarter the year, and between each is a dead gray moon. This song/hymn/poem reflects those cycles and their religious meaning.

The Azure Princess, Cloaked in white
Stands vigil over kingdom night
Her frozen tears take wind and wing
And guide the dawning of the spring

The Green Eyes Goddess slowly paws
Into the darkness sinks her claws
In prowl she seeks the hidden light
While cutting pinholes in the night

The Warrior with his golden shield
Rides brave across the midnights field
With lance of dawn held tight in fist
He races down the mornings list

A sanguine scar is carved on high
And bleeds across the broken sky
Like ripples in a crimson lake
It guides lost spirits in its wake

And after each the ivory woe
A ghost with gloom and death in toe
And while his eyes are last to show
He sees what others fear to know.

The Mother and the Sun

Some see the night and lay to rest
As though the window to life is shut
Lock and Key
Time and Place

It is the Earth's Shadow
And I for one feel safe
Behind of the shield of my Mother
My home

For what threat does the Universe hold
For her children
Than the near and looming flame

So many babes
Each scared and alone
And though they hate her
And though they kill her
She kills them back
And loves them

It is family
Where we fight the hardest
And Love the most

So I will feel safe in my Mother's shadow
And though my feet trace her wrinkles
And the smoke from my heart rises
I will embrace this night
And the next

For the darkness is my shield

Life is like a Yard Sale, only you wish you were home.

I look back and say "I loved that jacket.
And now some damned delinquent has it."
For when the world was ours to make
We took the give and left the take.
So bite your sorrow just to taste it.
You had the mirror, you should have faced it.
When I said tongue in cheek was fine,
I wanted yours inside of mine.
Some people dance to not be sad.
And some move slow just like their Dad.
So go up top and try to shout it,
But please just don't write home about it.

New Night Will Fall

To all the girls
I've loved
I've loved
Each instance true
Each instance true
To all the girls
I've hurt
I've hurt
A stronger me
A stronger you
I bare each dearly in my heart
A world apart
A world apart
For every time a fool I've been
The pain returns
Again
Again
New night will fall
New night will fall
And for the pain, I thank you all.