Hypnos Release

I have been asleep inside,
and my furnaces are candles now.
The people who love me crease their brows.
Sideways crescents break the calm flesh.

Signals come at me from everywhere.
I awake to a thousand misty eyes and
unsatisfied frowns. My friends all
want to know where I’ve been.

I AM RIGHT HERE. I AM STILL HERE.
DON’T LOSE FAITH IN ME.
I am the sun today and the
ashes tomorrow; slack jaw.

I’m not dying I’m just sleeping,
and I’ve been weary for so long.
How inconvenient the last fight would come
when I stop to embrace slumber.


But…


Fear not for beneath the cypress
the roots still clutch the bowels
of everything that has supported
the wooden giant all along.

These digits still know the grip and
when it is time the kinesthesia will return
and my joints will unwind like spindles
to take up the task once again, again, again…

(The sigh that births the gale)

Get Up

I’m tired of touching myself
where your hands are missing.
I am pushing my weakness out
the window and letting the air in.

I need to breathe, and I need to see.
I need to let the world wrap its arms
around my tired body, because it’s
time I realized you’re not the one.

Kick the golden spindles down the stairs
and the threads sparkle, tumble, and
still I can’t work magic with them.
No coat of gold to rest in your closet.

When I would go driving the sides of the
road were canyon walls, but now when I look
again it seems I am flying high above the clouds.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn what happens to you.

As I suck in that sweet air, and
watch the clouds roll into the valley
I find inside myself that all this misery was
for nothing; I was always right below the surface.

I Am My Own Jailer

I am my own jailer.
I posses my keys.
And unlike any sailor,
I roam on no rough seas.

I hide in webs of hypocrisy;
the lonely spider soul.
My arms are false synecdoche
that gladly hide the whole.

Who else could weld these bars,
if not the one inside?
I tried to swallow stars,
but my gut has only sighed.

I want those hands to grasp me,
and pull me towards their need.
I want to want nobody,
and overlook my greed.

A queer and quaint pauper
begging problems to resolve.
I trap myself in others,
so I won’t feel so small.

Moving On (or at least somewhere)

I met you.
Then the only eyes I cared for
were those dull emeralds you hid.
Your happiness made me high.

And in the light of all honesty about
how our two hearts really beat
I realize that you were more or less
a fantasy and although you’re real…

You’re not the man I thought you were.

But, the blame is my own.
You are only a human; like myself.
And I am a romantic who clothes you in purple.
I am the one person, right now, who sees you as so much more,
placing glue and feathers across your shoulders.

Now, when tart reality bites my hand
and the cold truth settles on my chest
I feel so foolish for ever thinking that things
were some damn fairytale.

Really, I’m just delusional.
Things are… confusing.

Now with fresh lessons engraved
into the bark of my heart,
maybe, I can deserve love.

We don’t choose which thorns stick us…
But we choose which ones to remove.
And we can endure,
and face the pain of losing that familiar sting.
We can persevere through the hurt and taste soft freedom.

Remove my empty rattling dreams, and
let the new sun fill me with warmth
where the body that used to lay next to mine
left only a cold indention.

My Love, the Illusion

My heart is a horse behind the gates
just begging to run free with
the spirits of love that surround
every Romeo and Juliet.

I guess it can be promising
to think that this melancholy
will pass and that you will
materialize, but can I wait for it?

I’m a child on the porch who’s
feet gently drag across the wood
as I sit alone on the swing watching
the others who get to play.

When I retire at day’s end I feel
a frost creeping over my fingers
and I can’t feel any surfaces as
I drift into a solitary slumber.

When I wake the tape is rewound
and my motions are all too familiar,
so until this is real I’ll be stroking
a smooth empty pillow.