Internal Squall

Storms will beat with indignation

Faulty installations of the heart

Fragile thoughts with soot foundations

Laid to rest in pieces sharp.

Broken, bruised and hollowed out

Cavernous through the winding depths

Echoes of deeds and doubts

Will choke the waning breaths

And drown us with the streams

From our rising chests

And rob us of fainting dreams

And even fainter rest.

Till slowly drifts away

Our folly and our pride

Our will and motivation

To awake

To try

To trust a trail of trickling rivers

Of anecdotes and whim

With bringing back our long lost hope

And make to sing again.

For what are fickle drops of light

In the proverbial well of shame

That only seems illumination

For that we seek to blame?

Our fleeing footprints marching out

With ever fading tread

Away from that we once had loved

But now we only dread.

Peace

Sing

Sing away the thoughts that bother me

So hauntingly they stray

And infect the silence I have sought,

Sing until the break of day.

I know they’ll just return

In quiet mutterings and vaulted shouts

They’ll whisper and they’ll cry

Of injustice and plead for recognition

And sustenance from my flesh.

They ease through cracks and chinks

Flanked by royal invitation

And fool the guard that they are king

In a village of homeless thoughts.

What claim to I have for peace,

Whose stalled return

Is of my own transgression?

The Hunting Lodge

Peaked roof and rolling gusts

Bathed in the powder

Of winter’s kiss

Frost-bitten feet and starved bodies

Trudging through the shadowed steps

Ice refracts shades of color

Red, blue and green

As the boiled skulls of those departed

Fill the air with azure haze

The walls filled with crimson screams

Drip scarlet from skin flung in excess

Illuminated by the gentle fire’s whispers.

Ash clings to vacant seats

And ceilings cave to grief

The blood smeared faces of lovers lost

Trapped within their halls.

Laughter breaks the silent scene

Its shattered, limp remains

And speaks to dreams of evergreen

Somewhere far away.

Not An Artist

I wish I could paint you a picture

With the crushed dyes of nature’s spectrum

Berries, leaves and grain

Splashes of life

Encircled and directed

By winds measured and meted.

I’d hope to cast in color

The thought’s complexion

Captured between sheets of canvas

Stretched across our minds

Interconnection and bisection

Of ideas of beauty and style

Reflected in mirrors and refraction of fears

And hopes we’ve put aside.

Yet, I have only the darkened, shadowed script

Of graphite and pen

To sketch these fickle words

That slope and bend

To the folly of my heart.

Empathephant

You’re my little elephant,

But neither can remember

How we know each other so well.

Nights pass into day

As recollections of conversations blur

Into indistinct smilies and laughter.

Joy has never come so naturally,

Yet there it is

Thriving in a forest of lines and verse.

Stumbling over words that were craft

Simple things weave into rhythms

And songs of elevated thought

Fall short of the emotions

Worthlessly conjured to describe

The majesty therein.

Forgive my weak utterances

My stony fingers and lead tongue

Unfit to even murmur of your grace.

Release found in speech unrestrained

By judgements passed in blind acceptance

Of ancient script and rhyme

Fined by numbers unrestricted

By words unfit for consumption

The height of presumption

And arrogance defined.

Weather the weather

And whether you’d like it or not

Remember November

And betray not the mortal thoughts

That pose in recompense of time

Frozen in stone coffins

Shaped like the dead we’ve left behind

Nailed shut

With the gag orders of sewn lips

And manacled fingers

Bled past color

To fill the ink pots of reconstruction

Of lines drifting and dividing

Nations and notions

Mountains and oceans

Apart.

Definition

They spoke of you in lines and curves

Assigned irrational numbers

Indicative of unquantifiable data

Based on blurred vision

Driven by neither heart nor mind.

And failed to weigh the words

And the actions that made up

Much of who you were,

At least to me…

Hope

Hope is fickle bastard

Born of miscommunication

Well intended gestures

And assertions shrouded in respect

Eluding the surgical precision

By which I remove, displace

And catalog my emotions.

Filed away and compartmentalized

In ways they’ll never hurt

Without consent,

I bar them mentally in neat stacks,

Needles and hay alike.

But hope is a spark,

Easily snuffed if conditions favor,

Or a roaring fire in consummation

Of walls and fortresses of steel.

So give me hope

In silence and absence of hate,

But tremble not

When I am ablaze.

Muddled Conception

Drugs are coursing through my veins

Uppers, downers and in between

Curving perception

Casting precaution to the sky.

Illusions dance before senses ensnared

By gentle shadows shaped

Within a cast of pure existence

Experienced as a moment in space

Preserved and observed

In mute recollection.

Yet, they quickly pass without consent

To leave desolate

Once impassioned pleas.

My tongue is the friction of my thoughts

Sliding against the lips that contain the words

Perched precariously still

It is silent betrayal of motion tangling devotion

To a higher form of worship, in pen

Ink slowly staining fingertips that tilt

With the whims of Calliope

And caress the senseless heart

With promises born of regrets

Unwilling to be forgiven or forgotten.

Haunt me with your token words

Traced in the fluid of broken sounds

Drenched in the precious scent

That lingers from your touch

And fills my mind with your taste.

Shake me from this deepened slumber

Show me why I live

Why I breathe

And why the words familiar

Are alien to my tongue

Whenever you’re around.