False Idol

 Sometimes you miss it even more

when you never actually had it.

When your imagination does that thing

with the pedestal and perfection.

When you get ideas

of what the person is 

or isn't

When you never realize

that neither

are true. 

The Only Ghost

Everything

has become 

smoke and mirrors

even the very limits

of my soul

 i have been

thinking of you

as a revenant,

but i'm the one

haunting the places

we shared.

i'm the only ghost here.

For the longest time, i've thought of you as a ghost and in a way, the women i fell in love with is a ghost; or a mirage depending on your point of view. Something that haunts all these places we shared.

But the truth is, you haven't been haunting anything. i'm the one who still sleeps in this bed, walks these roads, listens to the music we loved. i'm the one writing about you, remembering you when the light escapes the sky. i'm the one holding on to what we were like i haven't learned to be alone. i haven't even crossed your mind. i'm the only ghost here. 

The Bar

 if the bar

was so much fun

they wouldn't need

to serve alcohol

and yet

if alcohol was 

so much fun

we wouldn't need

bars

Straight-edge

 You think i should sedate my demons

you tell me numbness will bring relief,

but i know you mean relief for you.

Because you only ever loved 

the plump-laden invitations of good days.

i want no part of a Valium-lullabied hush.

i sit with the darkness and let it touch me

in places you can't reach,

i let it kiss afflictions

no diazepam torpor could subdue.

i swim in the night-salved ocean of my melancholy

because it feel so good to be wanted.

Nasty

 Your love is a rotting onion

infecting everything it touches with moldy stench.

Decomposing skin gurgles away

to reveal your brown sludge center

oozing at me solicitously.

i wish you could understand the finality of this:

Vegetables can't unrot,

and neither can love.

But composting can make fertile soil,

and perhaps

using what you are

and what you did

can grow flowers 

on the grave of my life

Home Builder

 i built a bird box

yesterday

i wanted to make

a home

for something 

other than words

are you in love 

again, yet?

i keep thinking

about your palms

placed 

on my chest

and where they may

be resting, now.

i've spent 

a lifetime

building shrines

and temples

to things

that cannot, and simply will not

love me back, 

you chief among them.

i try to keep my hands busy; to distract them from the distance between my bones and yours. The truth is every part of me remembers you; remembers the weight of your touch.

i want to make a home for something other than these god forsaken memories, but it all keeps finding its way to you. It always has, and i fear it always will.

Half-man

 i am now only my abridged self,

shoehorning the parts of me you didn't want

back under my ribcage,

drinking down the slurry of my curdled heartbreak,

i return to sobbing in the shower,

to filing down all my edges

to being alone in every room.

i watch as the fantasy you created about my visage

peels away from my skin

like old wallpaper yellowed with nicotine.

And i fill my bisected lungs with truncated breath

and exhale abbreviated laughter.

Finding out your love had seams

tore me asunder.

Take

Hold my heart

and watch it burn,

i promise

you can keep

what the fires 

do not take.

 If you want honesty,

then here it is

some days

i want to step into the rain,

set myself on fire

and see which of the elements

wins out.

but this is just a moment;

a single stone

on a pebble beach.

If you like, we can

fill our pockets with moments,

and walk ourselves

into the sea

If You Could

Could you knock 

against my chest

and tell me 

if it sounds Hollow?

Hold my tongue

and feed me soil?

Else, what can

root here?

What can grow

in emptiness?

 

i Think

 we loved i think;

but,

we never loved enough

to set each other free

Sands Of Time

 What scarab-shelled secrets lie within this sarcophagus?

What mummified fires now crawl forth

to light my dancing from this tomb?

Under ancient dark i filled canopic jars

with the hibernating drunkenness of my love,

and now i will cross the desert like a Bedouin,

carrying all that is mine.

The hieroglyphs that named me prisoner

shaken as dust from my sandals,

for i am pharaoh. 

Born again in the palm of Anubis,

and embrace of Sekhmet,

my heartbeat a wild drum song

pressing on toward the Red Sea,

where you will find only waves,

licking the cartouche of Her chosen from the sand.

That Night

 Moonlight stooped down that night

to illuminate the last jagged curves of this road,

like cypress knees punctuating a haunted marshland.

We would trip and tumble now,

splintered sheaves of fate usurping our balance,

Samhain stars in the distance 

pulling us by our covenant onward,

all the time between us shrinking.

Even eons die.

You thought the falling sky foreboding .

i thought, "at last.

The clouds are unafraid."

Define

 i still

and will

wear your goodbye

like a definition.

i guess i don't know

how

to be anything other

than the person

you left. 

of course 

i still miss you.

it's the nature

of every

dying and broken thing

to do all it can

to stay. 

it's horrible to think

that now a picture of me

is simply a picture of you

and an ex,

like all the rest.

Self Chosen

 mundane

feels like an

attack to me.

we crave meaning

out of this meaningless life;

so we put ourselves into boxes

and numbers,

into routines nine to five.

indeed we feel weighed down

by the chains around our neck

but, whom would you blame now?

when your misery is self woven.

when your emptiness is self chosen.

Winds Of Winter (so edgy)

 You would say

i love you

like it was

a suicide note;

like the last bloom

of the rose

before the grip 

of winter. 

In the end tho,

the only one who ended up

being ended,

was me

i've been thinking about you recently; about how hard it must have been for you to love someone who can only exist in pieces. i know your upbringing left you with scares on your skin, and i think it left marks on your heart as well.

i don't think you know how to let someone love you, and i'm not sure i do either. Some days you would tell me you loved me and it sounded like goodbye; like you were always waiting for me to leave. i often felt like things were so intense because you were trying to take all you could from us before it ended; like you were grieving us even when i was next to you.

i guess, i'm just trying to tell you that i understand, and there's nothing for me to forgive; you never took more than i gave. 

You Could Have Been

 to believe that

you already have

what you are after 

is a façade;

a trickery of your mind,

to stay stick in what

feels easy.

to search in others - 

a home

for you have never felt warmth within.

it's a pity,

it's abandonment

of the home that you are.

Without Restraint

i do not know

any other way

to love

than how i have loved

without restraint

or regard.

And perhaps

this is my mistake

to love like we are

meant to love 

Assembly Line

 How can't you feel?

i feel the cosmos

pure and simple

the burning

building

stinging pain of desire.

Who is the broken one?

Who is buried?

i am no golem

like you choose to be

you and you and you

you come off the factory line

like all the others

one dimensional

in every way

you may look like art

but you have no soul

and bore to no end. 

i am dead clockwork

you are inanimate

clay

That's Alot Of Night

 Evening twilight

beginning night

rusted gears

grinding ancient souls

dawning night

What About Today?

 The sickness grows

and then implodes

it sinks

then fades away

do we know 

what this day holds

or 

should we just obey?

Think About It

 acceptance comes in waves

crashing upon the rock cliff of my existence

you know not what you do

you have no idea

how broken you are

and how broken you will remain

my driftwood self reflection

grows cancerous

mirroring your blindness

and selfish control

how pitiful yo be with...

that...

and yet have no idea

or maybe you do,

and that makes it all the worse.

if i sit and dwell

on what i am 

it brings what you are

so much closer to home

and even tho 

that shouldn't be the result

a doctor can't help

but point out a tumor

when he sees one

Gang green

 Depression is an infection

permeating into everything

we do

i fear spreading this

contagion

to all those i love

or dream to love

but how does one

stop

the rotting

of a soul?

You Are Nothing

 You come to me dressed in demise

as though the black bile spewing from you lips

has any acidity left when it reaches my ears.

You think yourself a sovereign,

but i am not your fiefdom,

and i have grown immune 

to your caterwauling litany of offences.

i will not wade through the mire of your moping,

and i won't bleat apology

when you fancy your threats fearsome.

Good Grief

 i write because 

there is a more

we never made it to.

And that is what the broken do.

They told me that grief

was a dark and fearsome thing.

But it doesn't feel like that to me.

It all just looks like you. 

However,

grief i have learned,

is really just love. 

It's all the love you want to give but cannot.

All of that unspent love gathers up

in the corners of your eyes,

the lump in your throat,

and in that hollow part of you chest. 

Grief is just love with no place to go. 

Hear That?

 nothing is left unsaid

in the end. 

the departures

say it all, only if

you choose to listen.

the answers

you have been waiting for...

maybe they have been given 

already...

Fin

 She felt like the end,

like the second between teasing the edge

and meeting god at ground level.

Like shy awake or almost dream,

when i'm still left with the taste of gravity;

of first love blood in my teeth,

first fall swallowing pain like dead-weight.

i learned to hold my breath there

where she felt like last;

like life playing back in an exhale.

Sun Chaser

 i gave you

every star,

every single star,

in the sky 

and wrapped 

the moon in a blanket

of gray and black.

You just glanced,

unimpressed,

and asked for the sun.

What Was Left Behind

 Don't let me in.

This heart has grown

into a feral thing,

all wide eyes

and clicking jaw.

i am made of edges

and tapered bones

of the ashes of what 

was left behind;

not something 

you can hold.

Not something 

you should love,

even if you could.

Not everything that grows is worth holding; not everything that twists its way between your ribs is a sign of life. 

Right In The Feels

 i have run out of space in my chest

to store all the things on which i should ponder.

Instead i stack memories and musings

in the cave system of my gut.

And sometimes i turn in on myself

and sleep under the acid rain

because the burning of remembering this hoard

feels better than a life with no caverns or chasms.

Some things should be burrowed into your identity.

To remind you that you stole something from Heaven once,

and that love, stout enough for your famished heart,

does exist.

Come What Come May, Time And The Hour Run Through The Roughest Day

 here then gone

not built to last

we turn to go away

do you know

what will come

to pass

on this 

another day?

Remains

 cracking

breaking

broken

bent

how much left remains

to give?

what remains

of the remains?

we are all pieces,

the question

is if all those pieces

amount to anything?

Mia Musa

 A lighthouse 

black and gray

we build

then bend

then move to be

away

closer yet

and closer still

we'll soon see

if our orisons

have been heard

to be