such heat

There's so much noise
in this empty room
there are too many
prying ears and eyes
waiting just outside
I've spent so many years
building up my immunity
to all of you
I've forgotten what it's like
to live without care
to inhale without tasting fear
You crashed on my surface,
sputtered and splintered
into such pretty, shiny shards
You made sense to me
your brokenness melted
everything between us
You were a meteorite,
and you were dying on my shores
Such heat, such force
I could not ignore
my craters, my scars
bear witness to a burning past
If any of you were there
do you remember me?
the way I was
cannot be rectified
but I'm holding out my hands
under the heavens tonight
and I'm waiting patiently
for another direct hit,
a hot and angry message from another place
to make me remember
how it feels to race headlong and strong
and how I've strayed
from such simple truths.

shades of man and monster

Not long ago
I held you
and it felt like a miracle
so natural
so real
so undeniable
Not long ago
we rioted in syncopation
we stretched beyond this place
nothing could tame us
nothing could alter us
nothing could break us
But in this hour
my joy has turned to mourning
my laughter into lamentation
We have left that sacred place
to embrace the stillborn,
the questions that plague us
the thoughts that never lay down
the ideas that never sleep
I don't want to leave you
in their jealous grasp
but my desire is the suspect device
This fill-in-the-blank war
has left me here,
staring at a frozen street
wanting only to snare you again
and whitewash the graffiti
that has colored me
these shades of man and monster.

the warning

Who saw this house
in her first glory?
who saw it meander
down and out of control?
When the wind was in her hair
on the edge of town
I was there
She was a glyph and I could not read her
She was gone so fast
and I was left
with no breath in me at all
Drowning with,
drowning without her
I am chronically hopeless
forever off-task
wandering in thought and emotion
tattooed, carved
with my own enemy words
The pictures I've painted
are the most elementary renderings
of real people, real pain
On the surface
you could never guess
of the biohazard beneath
Polluted earth
where nothing can grow
Burn me to my core
start over on a distant shore
There is nothing to be learned from this
just the warning,
the blood on my door.

those other voices

You'll have to forgive me
if I don't seem like myself
you know I've been this way
for a few years now
It's hard to say how it began
but something shook me hard--
so hard that I never came back
I remember that frozen road
when I was seventeen
those locked up brakes
two brothers in a ditch
I was forever changed
so I was told
There was the realization
of death sniffing outside my door
and the proximity of the end
Something like that is easy to see
how it can change you
boil you down into simple parts
but there is a difference this time
Still, I know something came
and something went
What it is that did me in
is still and silent in my memory
You found your little girl lost
you found your voice
even though no one cared to hear
you found the reason to run
but now you are tired in a worrying way
you are destined for something
and it tastes like the same old misery
You know she'd be fine
if you shuffled off
she has found the peace that you preached
and that has made you proud
Her laughter echoes in your vitals
but you can't stop the reverberation
of those other voices
Something has changed for sure
because you can't keep them quiet
they've got their marching orders
you have two fists of hate
but hate is for questions you can't answer
they just hang in the air
like pollen, like warplanes
and wait to reveal
that the life you've constructed
is nothing but paper-thin lies.