Shoe Laces

Heart bleeds,
skips a beat,
whispers lies
and takes bribes.

You're much too far away
and I can't think quiet enough to pray.
I miss the words you wrote
and the song from your throat.

But it's your hand on my back,
that warmth I now lack,
the keeps me awake at night,
that keeps you within sight.

I'm not in the business of interpretation
and to try would be a great sin
and just because I miss your eyes,
doesn't mean I'm paralyzed.

So, tell me something meaningful:
words that wake the idle
and bring me back to you
where my vision's always glued

to soft faces
and shoe laces
and smiles that bite through
even the thickest fog and dew.

****************************************

It's about the little things we notice about people that make us miss them the most.





"So let my hands stray past that boundaries of your back to get you breathing and get this started..." Brand New Logan To Government Center

Myth Born

Tell me the truth
or a convincing lie:
words so mangled
and mismanaged,
their meanings are
muffled and mutated.
There was a story
whispered or maybe
wimpered, but not told:
remembered,
restored,
resurrected,
rewound, and
ruined.
Written and
written off:
a lie spewed
a myth born,
a happy ending
to save face,
to let you leave
with a smile in place.
But it's fake
and fraudulent
and it sickens
every inch.
Disappears
in a sinch.
Aches on your skin,
a pinch.
You want the truth
to sound so sweet.
Oh, disappointment,
a fatal defeat.
But you force your head high
and you smile real wide
and you cover and conceal
that which you can't feel.

**************************************

It's about the lies we believe and the truth we can't believe.




"Believe in me ' cause I don't believe in anything and I want to be someone to believe..." Counting Crows Mr. Jones

Back

There's dust and a haze
I get lost in these days.
The shadows are too thick
so I lose you when I blink,
search through the muck.
Why should I give a fuck?
I say it's just a phase
I get lost in some days.
I wander around an empty house
behind the ghost of a lost spouse
who was never really mine;
I was yours to pass the time.
It's just your gaze
I get lost in most days.
A song sings through
the walls of my room.
The needle is dirty,
but the record keeps turning.
Your words and your ways
I get lost in nowadays.
A slip of the tongue
and all hell has begun.
And I just want to go back.
I just want to go back.



***********************************************




"It's seven-thirty. I can smell the candles burning. I could go to sleep now. I'll just wait till morning when the melodies come and sing me stories. All the birds that can talk; no, they're never boring..." Wild Sweet Orange House Of Regret

"In the shadows buried in me lies a child's toy..." Sunny Day Real Estate Shadows

Falling

It's something in the inside
and I don't have words to write it out:
misleading and misunderstanding,
speaks in tongues and scribbles.
Peeling out from behind
a weak and weathered mind,
it's misshapen and mistaken;
and it was never quite right.
Just like us.
It boroughs back
into it's shell:
cozy and cold,
falling into the comfort
and complacency
of normalcy and patterns,
of admiring from afar.
Teeth, like bars, hold back,
a trap,
a language barrier we built
and never broke:
silence,
in which so much is said,
but every word misheard,
indiscernible.
So, in your face,
I read a warning;
it tells me:
stay away.
Another step farther
and I won't see anymore;
I'll just fall away
while falling harder.
Because I want to know
your song
and your smile
and every inch.
But that's not what I say,
only what I mean
and I fall behind the horizon,
so I'll always be falling.

********************************************




"With your head up high, would you try? 'Cause you're the only one to pull me through - it's true - and it seems a waste of time to grow old alone; we've been dyin' since the day we fell apart..." The New Frontiers The Day You Fell Apart

"Shivering cold, I woke up in water and wrapped myself around the toilet seat. I spoke in tongues and took all my clothes off. The tops of my fingers touched the tops of my toes..." Wild Sweet Orange Ten Dead Dogs

"I got this delicate lisp that speaks in tongues and upper lips. Your silhouette's my favorite. I'm not letting go of it..." Northstar Pollyanna

XO

Clear your mind.
Pass the time.
It's late,
but it's so crowded.
Listen to a voice
through the headphones.
You can turn him up louder
than the noise in your head.
The sky is falling,
but who's to notice.
Each dying star
unseen or forgotten.
It's all the same to you,
another sign of destruction.
A hand to warm your shoulder:
placed there by a dead man.
His visage would startle you
if you weren't expecting him.
His voice sings and sooths,
but you'll never know him now.
And the pain,
like that of not knowing God,
aches in a place you didn't know existed
and makes your skin burn inside to out.
You reach,
but the hand is gone.
No remnants to grab.
No warmth to calm.
To honor his words, I vow,
and I'm gonna love him anyhow.

***************************************

This came out of nowhere, but it happened last night. Not shitting you.




"What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see that all I want now is happiness for you and me..." Elliott Smith Happiness

In Mirrors

In mirrors, there's a shine,
but not in mine.
It's stale and bitter
and looks like me.
A glare, a dagger,
a meaningless mess,
a tie untied,
and a secret to confess:
avert your eyes
so you can ignore the rest.

I felt it in your glance
and saw it in your fingers.
I tasted it in your voice
before you went silent.
It was a brilliant mirage
I fell for in full,
framed into focus
and forced into view.
Now: a back turned
and a book closed

mid chapter,
dialogue choked.
We are a story unwritten
or never quite conceived
or shelved for a rainy day
in Paradise.
And whatever weak lines
are written for me
are probably better off
remaining in the silence.

********************************************

More to come.



"We saw a spark within your eyes. Your face reflected in the light. We are all angels in the sky. We are all mirrors in disguise." The New Frontiers Mirrors

You'll Have To Wait

Save your voice
from getting harsh
by biting your tongue
and sucking it up.
It's getting late
and for your wishes,
you'll have to wait.
You'll have to wait.
Those screaming sounds
from behind your ears
are telling you:
give into your fears.
Another fall,
another failure,
another mark,
a brilliant anchor.
I wear it well:
my seal of honor.
It's nothing,
but a constant reminder.
And even louder,
a clamor.
It shuts me in
and up
and down
and where I land
is in the dark:
the only place
where I can see
what's sitting there
in front of me.
A cloudy sky,
a rotting Earth,
and all the things
I should have thought of first
are tearing down my walls.
A riot.
Wait some more
and then you'll see,
all that's really left of me,
melted in your eyes
and evaporated to the sky.
Up here, there's a better view.
I wish you knew.

*************************************

^ Written in a Waffle House in Phoenix.



"I met a girl on the square who showed me how to kill my cares, but once that's done, man, there's nothing left to do. Time's running backwards from me to you." Elliott Smith Riot Coming

Cold

It's swollen and it hurts
and it's lesser than it's worth.
A badge, a mark, and name tag pinned
in vibrant red onto my skin.
A scowl sketched inside my skull
reminds me that my fists are full
of fire and a choking heat;
the blood spills SPLAT onto my feet.
You can't find it in the words I say,
but you read it in my eyes anyway.
And it twists and turns
and disappears before you learn,
cried out in a tear
and whipped away out of fear.
Without words, a plea:
you want more from me,
but the syllables make it real
and that breaks the deal,
breaks the latch and starts the flood;
hear me fall and make a thud
on a floor of glass that cracks
under the weight of useless facts
that leave me done and out of breath,
just out of reach of crooked death.
It's the story I've written in ink
of how I never stop to think,
about the hand that leaves mine cold;
my God, this story's getting old.

****************************

Still working on that one about the end of the world. It's sitting there staring at me, but it's too much to think about. Especially since I leave for tour tomorrow and I don't feel like thinking about the end of the world.

For now, here's some inner contemplation leaking out. For whatever good that does.



"This is the life you went and earned because you never fucking learned." Kevin Devine Carnival

Mercy Street

Almost gave up today,
threw another one away,
like the sky was falling down
and on God's face a frown.
A let-down, a disgrace
and on my hand is placed
the mark of sin;
an evil grin
peers at me across Mercy Street.
He swears - for me - he is sweet.
Or his ripe red apple is.
He cons me just like this.
Redemption is too lost to be found.
She's dug herself far under ground.
She fears false confessions of
faith, remorse, or love.
So, I take from the grinner
his apple for my dinner.
But before my tongue can taste,
my veins spill out their waste;
my hateful heart can no longer beat
upon the concrete of Mercy Street.

**************************************

I guess, in keeping with a theme, it's about wanting to feel forgiven. There's a story in there somewhere, but figure it out yourselves.



"With every breath you drink in the night, you won't give up your blues without a fight. And looking at the sky, there is no pain, and the stars keep falling down like burning rain. They were fired by the mightiest of guns..." AA Bondy The Mightiest Of Guns

A Crooked Crutch

From savior to son,
from holy spirit to the one,
to whom repentance is owed in full
and forgiveness is a sober tool:
when all is said and done
does it really matter who's lost or won?
Whatever you hold true
is yours to hold true
from the landscapes of Eden
to the edges of Hell or even
the space in which coming clean
leaves you buried and unseen.
War, Famine, Pestilence, Death,
a thunderous gallop you wish to forget:
don't look twice; we're well on our way
to a judgment which will wash us away.
That heavy gavial, that heavenly judge,
that holy jury: will they hold a grudge?
Will the gates open wide or slam in you face
the day the clouds fall and earth is displaced?
Oh, Sin, you say you know me well,
because my heart, from Heaven, fell.
You keep me far from home and love,
and from almighty God above.
And yet you don't appear in space
or occur in any single place.
You are nothing but an abstract fiend,
a crooked crutch upon which I leaned.
You are Fear without Faith
and I think I like your taste,
but I hate your big steel bars
and - most of all - I hate your scars.

********************************

It's about a fall from grace.

I'm not sure whose.

It didn't make an impact.






"I don't want to talk about Jesus. I just want to see His face." AA Bondy Rapture (Sweet Rapture)

Spin

When failure's not an option
you spin inside your head,
finding faults in every detail
like you're wasting more than breath.

Each frame of every film
and each smile laced with guilt
reveals a shining, desperate quirk,
a secret you died for, but kept.

Like you're racing more than time,
you clinch your fists and grit your teeth
as if such empty gestures could compete,
as if you don't just want to bleed.

It's the debt you earned and owe
for writing less than what you know
and letting that which saves you
break, shatter, scatter, and blow.

***************************************

I wanted this to be a lot more than it became. Then, I just got annoyed with it. I'm out of school and I just feel like I'm floating. I could be what I have been. I could be what I was. Or I could try to be something different if I had any idea how to do that. I feel like the magic 8 ball would say: "outlook not good."






"Keep looking, but get any inkling of 'failure' out of your head - you're doing the right thing by enjoying your free time and the weather..."

Begin

You tried to fix me,
but I broke
free and fell
like stars from Heaven.
There are footsteps beside mine
so I must be going mad,
but He whispers not to worry
and takes me by the hand.
"I don't know you,"
I say with a stutter.

And He doesn't reply,
only raises a mirror to my nose.
But I don't know
whose eyes look back anymore:
there's no reflection without light
and it's all the same with eyes shut anyhow.
So I won't see the world
and I won't taste the sun,
but I'll hear the songs
and I'll feel them through.

But can salvation be sung?
Can it be lost or won?
Is it written in ink?
Can it dissolve or shrink?
It's something like faith
that keeps me awake.
Hazy eyed and terrified,
I wonder if he knows I lied.
Forgive me, Father, I have sinned.
Don't even know where to begin.

******************************

Abnormal poem. Especially for me. Stanzas that aren't four lines long? Haha. I don't do that. It also only rhymes in the last stanza, which is something that would normally bug me. I like consistency. I decided to tell myself to shut the fuck up on that, though. This time.

It's sort of just about how you can't know "God" or you can't have faith or spirituality until you know who YOU are, until you know what you're all about and what you stand for / believe in. It doesn't have to be "God" in any religious sense. You can't have any idea about what you're life should stand for until you know who you are. If the light's off in the room and you can't see who you are, you can't even begin the process. If you can't be honest, you might as well live in the dark.

Don't worry. I'm not converting or dedicating my life to Jesus. Just because I've had a Bible on my desk opened up to Revelation for the last two days doesn't mean shit. I'm just studying. Thinking.





"I hope Jesus is the one, but what if we're wrong and he doesn't come? Who will give us love?" The New Frontiers Who Will Give Us Love?"


"I'll take something to believe, something with long sleeves 'cause it's unpredictable. Now Jesus said He'd fill my needs, but my heart still bleeds. He's just not physical." - Pedro The Lion Promise

The Joke's On You

Caves and Earth's crust
and crisp, clean air:
breathe better before
the Fall.
Preparing at night,
those false saints
for their judgment,
their last triumphant stand.
Divinity swings on her cloud
watching the cars pollute the sky,
the lit factory lights
shown through haze towards Heaven.
Gates closed:
no more admission today,
no more deserving souls,
just weary soldiers.
"And it's not enough,"
she sighs.
"Spare me your prayers,"
her lamentations trail.
A mocking laugh,
a mushroom cloud,
a menacing eye,
a machine gun blast,
and all the rumors
(lies we spread),
the paper thin promises
(ripped to shreds)
create a world of nothing true,
nothing real, and nothing new.
"This time, kids, the joke's on you,"
Divinity heckled, her rage grew.
Melt away, regenerate,
retell the lies you swear you hate.
She'll have you realize your own fate,
but only once it's much too late.
So, go on about your mission of might
and how - for freedom - we have to fight.
Remember well the words you write:
they haunt the rest of us at night.

**********************************

This could probably fit in somewhere with the 'Emperor' series, but I don't think it quite makes it there...but maybe. It's along those same lines, but dealing more with morality from an innocent omniscient point of view. It's about the end of the world, about doom, about someone 'up there' saying, "Fuck you guys; I'm tired of you and your useless bullshit." It's about all the ways we kill ourselves. It's all about the end because, really, nothing and no one is forever and when all our bullshit is said and done, does it really matter who's won? It's about: "Can we all just get along?" and "Can't you just kiss and make up?" It's about wishing that people would actually do what's right, what makes them happy (while not hurting anyone else), what makes them tick. It's about Divinity and she wants you to know that "life is what it makes of you." (Yeah...I've been into The New Frontiers for a week and a half and I've decided I'm awesome enough to quote them.)


"I've been writing a lot about God," I told him.
"I've noticed. You write about God a lot for someone who doesn't believe in her."
I snicker.





"It's not what we're owed, but it's what we've earned and it's closer than we realize and it's time now to burn." Kevin Devine Time To Burn

"Once there was a time to join the army and once there was a time to hear the news and once there was a time for easy silence, but now the jury waits for you." AA Bondy Witness Blues

Landing

A pretty paradox:
perfection and detox.
I lost the words I meant to write
to mist and shadows and a vacuumous light.
I tucked them away in a box
and weighed it down with rocks.
They were too weak to win a fight
against her eternal, omnisent right.

And in their deep sea dungeon,
that place so foreign:
no screams are audible,
no sylables recognizable.
While her heretical surmon
acts as more motivation:
this urge, insurmountable
and the mark, unmistakable.

Scribbled lines on tattered pages
left forgotten for ages and ages
are my only hope for understanding,
redemption, love, or landing
on my feet through these changes
of hearts and minds and places.
And through my staggered planning,
erase all evidence of my branding.

*****************************************

"...
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:

Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,

It grew - a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain..."

- P.B. Shelley, "The Mask Of Anarchy"

He Looks Away

But you never said it, did you?
And you never made a sound,
and the words that passed your lips
were always only partly true.
So, there's no one left to blame
except that sorry, misshapen sap
whose empty eyes gaze back
from behind your mirror's cracking pane.
I picked up the pieces that I found,
but they didn't fit anywhere anyway.
And falling, they landed and
looked more whole apart than as part.
Of a larger hole
where passions are misplaced,
perfectly prim paradoxes
play with forced-quiet tongues.
It rages in your skull until you burst
or tear the seams that suck you in.
One day, all the things you should have said
will poison you and take your breath.
Folly's in the silence reached
when fear controls you voice,
when Love bats his eyes, but you refrain
because you swear he looks away.

Your Pages

Thievery in themes
among words and worlds
of thought
and heart:
what's right,
what's not.
And each measured line
written in hasty rhyme
is written and rewritten
and plucked from piles
of your pages,
only with perforations.
Poesy and Piracy are cousins
rooted together in branching affection:
an understanding unspoken,
uttered alone in eyes.
There is not in the world
either malice or matter to alter it,
I think.
I hope.
With inspiration as elusive
as an aging angel,
I anguish as Antigonus
in restless agitation.
Art has never been
so very close;
now it teeters terribly
on the tip of my tongue.
Something so near,
but never mine
because I am only
what I say
and I say
so very little
of what is truly
mine to say.

****************************************


Sources:

CAMILLO: Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia.
They were trained together in their childhoods; and
there rooted betwixt them then such an affection,
which cannot choose but branch now. Since their
more mature dignities and royal necessities made
separation of their society, their encounters,
though not personal, have been royally attorneyed
with interchange of gifts, letters, loving
embassies; that they have seemed to be together,
though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and
embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed
winds. The heavens continue their loves!

ARCHIDAMUS: I think there is not in the world either malice or
matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable
comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a
gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came
into my note.

- The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare

AND

The Ecstasy Of Influence

Mauled And Masked

There's a word
for people like you.
I'm sure of it,
only I don't know it.
I can't pronounce it
and I can't spell it.
It gets caught in my throat
and stuck between my teeth.
Mauled and
masked.
I'm a terrible poet
and worse at 3am,
but your miles
are in my eyes.
Wide open,
wide awake,
and that wide smile of yours
wades through the width.
Whispers and whines
and wayward eyes
and the musty shine
of lucid lines
make clear intentions,
no false accusations.
It's true;
all of it is.
But fancy words
can't create bridges.
If time and space
were nothing but terms,
this bed would be less empty
and my body less cold.

**********************************************

Couldn't sleep.

Fuch yeah, dude.

I'm still cold.




"'You sink your voice, but I can distiguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.'" Captain Wentworth / Jane Austen Persuasion

Voice Betrayed

Itching to etch for days:
the fog, the rain, the haze
and inspired fortunes phase
you in and out of stirring craze.
Words turn meanings - switch in phrase -
and syntax taxing tampered praise
create a patchwork puzzle of blacks and greys
and meaning is lost: alphabet decays.
Language thrown into the blaze
of reds and yellows; your ending frays
and falls apart in neat cliches,
but it's only your voice you did betray.
Your feather or pen, your ink well lays
as welted proof of no todays
as past swallows you whole and weighs
upon your shoulders: kicks and plays.
Wake up: it's just a phase
'cause you're not done with all the ways
you write and wait through his delays;
I wonder if this one stays.

*******************************************

Title comes from an earlier draft.

Listening to a lot of Elliott Smith, though I'm not sure that explains anything. Upon first reading, this won't make any sense, but it is really quite literal: sort of about writing out your life and then revising when someone tells you it's wrong until it makes no sense and then you quit complaining about what has already happened to start focusing on what is happening or could potentially happen next...though that may not be any better. Something like that.





"So, wake up 'cause you're not done. You could pick yourself up, kid, and you could learn how to love..." Kevin Devine Ballgame [Live]

Advance

Putting broken words together:
you are form, formal, formidable.
Our split speech spits
and spews in sync
with lavish decor
around the door
way to a place where
language is love.
Your eyes and mouth
defy the possible
and your sentences
lack sense;
they conflict
and contradict
with action,
with what I know.
But I feel your glance
on the back of my neck
and I see the tips of your lips
advance.
Adverse am I
to my own defeat,
to an end unknown,
and a truth never shown.

***************************************


Among other things, I adore your words.




"I'm falling back in love with the letter you wrote." Kevin Devine The Longer That I'm Out Here

The Riders Ride

I watched the Sunrise shake
and sip down lemonade
in springtime's blowing breath;
he wrapped himself in flames.
The devil's humid heat
sticks to your melting flesh
and as the Riders ride,
their gallops' genocide,
the Almighty hides his head
and weeps into his palms.
Too sunk to swallow up
redemption, pride, or love,
you choke down molten rock
and drown within hell's wicked walls.
It's fate and it's yours to own,
no pearly gates to welcome you.
It's not your fault; it wasn't you:
just your nation, your leader, your vote.
His Grace disgraced in gunfire and guts,
and with no mercy left Him to offer,
your wrinkled words of worship
can’t do a thing to save us now.


*************************************************

^ Mostly written during Later Romantic Lit.


It's spring and beautiful out and all I can think about is the Apocalypse. Does that make me weird?




"I prayed for providence. God said, 'Don't pray no more.'" - Kevin Devine All Of Everything, Erased