Poetry Shortcut

(As yet Untitled)

Love does not (necessarily) dictate or require
Us to spark as we collide, forever
Setting fire to each other's lives
As we burn down and out together.

Before the last fleeting ember flies,
Soaring, even as it dies,
Completes its Kamikaze mission
Into Love's velvet starlit skies,
Tell me that my words have lifted the scales
From your wandering,  covetous eyes.

But most of all, my treasured friend,
Tell me that you finally realize
That love can be a memory,
Though it may be bittersweet,
Of nights when we allowed ourselves
Together, once, to dream.










***  Sketches  ***


[Never Enough; a Fool's Incessant Trust]
You're not alone in your head now,
I'd bet a million bucks,
and I've got a lump in my throat
that's been choking me for months.
Tell me something, sweetheart,
when did it start to go south?
When did my lips begin to taste like ashes on your mouth?
The last of my weary spirit dies as I realize
I've become the poster child for everything that I despise.







WALKING DEAD,  (Owed to the)

...when the days turn to summer
the nights get so long
and sleep is my enemy
running from memories
masked as dreams

looking back to a past
that doesn't discriminate
in its destructive and somber rites
sacrificial lamb to
wounds that never healed

i love him and he's more than enough
so why do my thoughts
in all their distracting inevitability
constantly turn to
that which is dead and gone

i watched you bury it myself
and lit a candle for all my hopes
as you murdered them
and left us both... behind.








[Phoenix or Failure?]

Twenty-five years since I first felt the flames.
Always burning, but never receiving the resolution of consumption.
Twenty-five to life, but I never could decide
if it was a sentence or a testament, cowardice or strength.
I'm different things on different days,
hour to hour,
I change my skin, rearrange my brain.
But every shift still carries the same pain,
I'm still waiting to be saved,
figuring out my next play.
Twenty-five to life, still trying to figure out the rules of the game.
Out of sync, forever strange,
surrounded by blissful ignorance, innocence unstained.






Starstruck (in progress)

Not all stars shine in the night
Indifferent light, winking from a cold and distant height.
These formed of sun, glinting off of tears
I see welling in the rearview mirror,
Burning the heart of me to desperate ashes
As you sit in the driver's seat, holding the matches.






[ Broken Mirrors ]
the air in here today, it feels oh-so-familiar
your frozen (in)decisions; irresponsible condition
my yesterday's reflected in your eyes
a fatal collision; her heart and your fear
fleeing past the point of forgiveness,
you're just another broken mirror.






[ Racoon City Refugee ]🔑
Woke up again, just before noon
With supernovas burning in my eyes
And your ghost still in the room.
That time you asked if I ever slept,
I couldn't properly express;
It's not the sleep that I dread and flee.
It's the quiet agony upon waking;
When the entity that is We,
With a flicker of an eyelid and
the end of a dream-
With a vanishing worse than melodrama and death-
We simply cease to Be.





[ A Blur Beneath the Tide Line:  Wash "Me" Away ]
Sometimes, this is what I fear you see,
When you look and tell yourself you love all that is me.
A flash, a blur, an image incomplete;
Something that, if viewed too near, just falls to pieces
under the magnification of expectation-- debris
On the ground between your feet.






[ Phoenix In Progress:  (Butterflies Need Not Apply) ]
Watching HD flashbacks behind my eyelids
Running film of all the different skins I've sat in
& shed, the same soul always struggling within
All the different people that I've been
Beating wings against glass, thick with thirteen hundred pains
Memories three or four lifetimes since
Conflagrated, half a blink from fine to flames
Burned, consumed, down to the ground- no rescue- then I rise up again
Forever headed home with no hint to where or when
No direction, no clues, no map reference
Hence, I abide, to everything I have lost, cling
And albeit scarred wing to wing, laceration, mutilation; all soul-deep, even down to the scratches
Never reaching a finale, not a failure, but a phoenix
Who will never be content with ashes.

Watching HD flashbacks, behind my eyelids...






[ Lethe:  (Amnesia Is Bliss) ] (REBIRTH edit)
You persist in perceiving this in all the wrong ways
This in itself, was never actually the disease
If overdosing on trauma can be considered malaise
Then it was keeping the closest to defeating the monstrous repeats of every tragedy
Locked up sound, deep underground, begging that this time the graves go unfound
And as you come back around,
Pick me up and put me down,
Just leave me bleeding on the icy ground-
I'll dress my wounds with used shrouds
and stolen hotel towels.
With even just the echoes of blows and shredding of clothes, capable of killing
Everything one can try to be, every step above insanity, every ray of sunlight found
Even the willingness, chilling ability to chance a glance at the chaos within-
Can it be that the perceived disease was really psychological release..?




[ Confusion's Psalm:  Finding Doves In Demons ]
Pray for wings, pray it flies
Take another hope and let it loose
Memories of hope denied, falling lost from empty skies
Wondering; has addictive loss's self abuse left trying just a convenient excuse
And when everything you gain
Is one more dream left to lose
Wrestling with your everyday pain
The only nightmare left to choose
Is it habit or masochism, heroics or cowardice
Do I see, or just march blindly on?
Inhabitant anachronism, buried deep within this
Singing an eternally lonely, discordant song.










***  Reductio Absurdum:  Haiku Heaven  ***


(Im)possibilities
form your face in the mirror.
You haunt me always.
--Haiku Heaven Series #4  🔑


In our night magic,
Rabbit hole adventures bound.
You own all my dreams.
--Haiku Heaven Series #7🔑


Stars glimmer for me
As songs deep within your eyes.
Celestial Morse code.
Haiku Heaven Series #8🔑


Yearning for a touch,
Warmth, I never feel awake.
The piece I'm missing.
--Haiku Heaven Series #11🔑


Caged by circumstance,
Cling in vain, I can't let go.
You hold safe my keys.
Haiku Heaven Series #12🔑


Once upon a time
Hides inside my feverish mind;
You, reluctant prince.
-- Haiku Heaven, Series #23🔑


Mornings dawn with hope,
Clocks turn noon's long hours to days.
Nights, missing your smile.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #13🔑


Talk becomes tumult;
Translations misunderstood.
Our own Tower of Babel.
-- Haiku Heaven, Series #14


I reach out for you
Across a Canyon of Time;
Fail to touch the past.
(Or "But can't touch the past?")
Haiku Heaven, Series #17🔑


Your words, startling warmth--
Gold sun spears eternal fog,
And I am undone.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #12🔑


Keep me rather, caged.
Only pain proves loyalty.
Clipped souls cannot leave.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #15


Contrary nature,
Once, following structure, rules,
Now, chasing danger.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #19


Rise above, trust love--
Such, the lovestruck poet's cry.
Wiser, the lonely.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #22