In a labyrinth of words
Where ideals meet the sinews of flesh and bone
We learn there are as many broken hearts
As swords and broken bodies.
Love hopes never to ache so badly,
Quietly praying to conquer everything
In the end, knowing what must never happen
Has happened and will again.
Human beings always believing,
Being beasts in angels' dreams,
In anything but the inevitable disaster
Of being born for suffering.
Tag: Depression
This House Was Always Haunted
If you can find it,
I dare you to look inside
The black house on a hill
Where three suicides were survived,
The remnants of their pain
Reach vapourously for a light
To expose their nakedness,
And the hollowness of their eyes.
If you're nearby,
Why not chance a look?
The forgotten undead
Would be glad to have known you.
There are fantastic stories
Hidden under the splintered floors,
Romances and tragedies
That you could be part of.
Why not have tea
With a dysfunctional malevolence?
The eyes that inspect
Every movement, chill, and hush,
Have a hunger for your love,
You devotion, your affection
And a hatred for pain,
And the gentleness of touch.
She's wrapped up in sheets,
In the bedroom, where she lived
Still hungry, still aching,
Still decaying from inside.
This Halloween, you should go,
She'll be delighted
To find the Haunted House
Is where she has always resided.
Falling For …
Cool, quiet,and still mornings; alone.
A chord striking, resonating, and going silent.
Pale light still warm enough to touch faces.
A pit in your stomach, nowhere to go.
Fall, fall, September;
Autumn sadness, stillness,
Peace and horror.
Burning, burning, bonfires and leaves;
Passions singing, sang, and then falter.
You'll never know their love again.
The sky is beautiful, blissful, and so are you.
Radient Ideation
Allow me to indulge my radient ideation,
A spectacle of bittersweet sunbeams breaking through gray skies,
Eeking their way into my ugliest days
Like transcended smiles projected from the purest celestial lights.
They reach me bedecked in wilting blue flowers,
Exposed to the heavens in a gown of silk white,
Seduced into a dream that lasts for an eternity
Between the fragility of a body and the soft sting of twilight.
It’s wearying to be deranged for the sake of beautiful things,
And as they dull, to come to know, that madness still remains.
A song I knew grew up to be a different kind of tune,
It plays the notes that made me up and broke away from me.
Intoning prose for my own health prolongs the point of breaking,
And sharing them from mind to mind is life that’s worth the saving,
To make a scene of who I’ve been to stimulate your feelings
Is all I need to brighten up this dream I can’t stop dreaming.
Burn me with the autumn leaves, with cardamom and honey,
Leave a house to my mother on the shores of a lake that’s crystal clear and foggy.
Find me there in ashes, free from poverty and wealth,
Dead to all the world, but not dead to herself.
A Touch In Bad Weather
Some people can’t be reached no matter what you say,
Who probably wouldn’t care to feel your touch anyway,
And for all those who need, in some way, to be reached,
Our fingers might wave but they rarely ever meet.
In a dark windy heart there’s cracked glass in the rain,
Palms still untouched can be cut all the same.
Quieting the air with a gesture, I find
It helps, when you reach, to shield your hands with mine.
Those stinging cold moments with warmth underneath
Pour lakes into places overridden with dead leaves,
An Autumn-stained blush from a spring-tinted gaze
Briefly turn skies that were black back to grey.
Sixteen Hours
It’s over and begun again
Before I was awake to contemplate my place therein
And now there’s decisions to make before another day is wasted;
Time to get out of bed and make the most of who I am.
Sixteen hours to occupy.
There’s money I need to make,
Feelings I need to hold at bay,
Friends I ought to engage with
Dreams of mine to explain;
I know I should write another poem,
I know I should do more for myself,
I should work harder to realize my potential,
To help others and bring more beauty into the world,
Oppose oppression and lift up the beaten down,
Make new memories and new connections into love,
Write meaningful stories as impactful as I am able,
Speak truth to power and lead others to something more.
Sixteen hours.
A day’s weight to carry and divide
With all the urgency of our dwindling time.
My God, I need a release and space to hide,
Some poison to feel temporarily satisfied,
A window to the make believe, to live a life that isn’t mine,
Immediate pleasure, to be ok alone and pacified.
A day’s tension and relief , begun again, immobilized,
Consistent as death with all the awareness of being alive.
It needs to end, this state of being that leaves my paralyzed,
Because all the stress within a day hurts less
Than witnessing your life go by unrealized.
Depression Cycles
Silent waves sink perpetually through my chest.
Someone like me shouldn’t think too much alone.
Graves remind us that something can be nothing.
Something about you leads me back where I’d begun.
Lying to pacify the waves,
Dying to be worthy of my allotted time.
Wind and snow flow endlessly from my foundation.
Warmth and touch are more like burning teeth.
Better than wearing a heart that’s butter-soft.
How long can I hide from thawing in your spring?
Lying to savor little stops in my misery.
Dying a little more to feel comfortable alive.
My Recurring Themes
Being loved for me
Without expectation or fantasy
Seems difficult to believe
With my experience of me.
Not so much a wreck,
I survive and reflect
On which parts feel neglect
Like an Art without affect.
My solace is stained,
In my solitude contained
With a sadness ingrained
And expression estranged.
I mumble and shake,
Needs pulsing and awake,
Demanding that I break
Whatever is at stake.
I’ve worn out these flaws,
Dissected their causes,
Accepted my losses,
But still wrapped in their familiar claws.
Why Is There No Perfect Place?
A world to be happy in,
To be lost in,
Just to rest again
Without this stress,
This uncertainty,
This anxiety,
Taken hold of me
Having hurt.
Show me mountains,
Show me fountains,
The sublimest
Of their kind.
Let me stay there,
Waste away there,
I shouldn’t dare
But I would
To sleep forever
In beauty’s tether,
A watcher weathered
Down to rocks.
The Broken Heart Of A Thief
The thief’s heart broke
When sleight of hand failed
To hold onto his refuge
Inside another’s care.
Cold-empassioned power
Over objects he desired
Dissevered him form owning
Up to his affairs.
Compassion held at length,
Practiced sparingly at best,
Serves a frigid education
On attatchment’s frail grasp.
Cleverness and cunning
And other secrets of the craft
Stole nothing more than money,
Indifferent to the last.
Clasped in no one’s arms
And kissed by nothing’s lips
To procure another hour
In which to exist.
The theif consumed a fifth,
Broke the bottle, cut his flesh,
Threw himself through fire
Till he physically was numb,
But the bleeding never ceased
In the lovelessness of loss,
His temper always burning,
Wishing feeling would be done.
At length, despair entrenches,
Cruelly cradled in its womb
With his temper snuffed to ashes
And abrasions scabbed away.
To live or not to live,
To steal and not to give,
Decisions made in silence
Over living on this way.
Is it some force of fate
That the labor he hates
Is the credit he desires
Now that all else is dead?
He begs for bitter toil
As a mercy to his hate,
Hoping somehow to be healed
From his existential dread.
The thief turned to begger,
Not for money or relief,
But for service to another
For submission to defeat.
Humbled in desperation,
Pleading to be re-loved,
Bleating for a shelter
Possessed at someone’s feet.
The heart hurt more than hunger,
The misery worse than rage,
The spleandor of his plunder,
The thief, for love, would trade.
Poems and Short Stories 