101213A
-----------
In the world we have come to,
unwillingly, and reluctantly,
beauty is always endangered.
This becomes the essence,
of both commerce and romance,
in this place and time of great tragedies.
Horror rarely evades us,
the way beauty constantly evades us.
We are perpetually confronted by it.
In those persistent confrontations
we lose sight of horror,
taking it habitually for granted.
It dots our landscapes
among the drab reminders
as to boxed in feelings of despair.
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191213A
------------
When silence takes you prisoner
it shakes you in its jaws,
until it breaks you open,
spilling regrets all around.
Something always perishes
that you wanted to keep alive.
The way it so often is as to dreams
that you do not want to awaken from.
It is always about something
that you did not have any of.
Each time you wake up to that loss,
you learn a little more about despair.
Eventually you know everything
that there really is to know,
about despair and awakening,
feeling ready to give up both.
The lucky ones do not know,
and would never understand.
You become merely another cipher
that they cannot decode.
Wrapping yourself up in darkness,
you try on various masks,
to hide an expression everyone knows
it is best not to ask about.
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191213B
-----------
I thought it might be different,
but it never really is any different.
One catastrophe
eventually leads to another.
Everything else falling through
somewhere in between.
The way an empty room is full
of unanswered invitations.
The way peace is only a gap
that holds apart wars.
The way expectations prepare us
for new disappointments.
The danger is in imagining
whatever might have come true.
Then having to rewrite that chapter,
to an entirely unplanned ending.
Trying to wash away all the stains
that left reminders on everything.
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291213A
------------
Thought you saw a signal
on some far away horizon,
from all the way across a room.
as to what might pass as true.
It took you somewhere deeper,
when you wanted to make shore.
The way mermen and mermaids play
when they find the drowning.
Tossed rag dolls in the waves,
abandoned on the sands of time.
Was it the look in those eyes,
or was it the color of that hair ?
Was it something you heard
that you thought that was said ?
You try to find the real meaning
in those tangles of words.
You know you did not win
at any of the usual games.
The players always knowing more
than you could ever chance to guess.
It was only another ancient ritual
turned into another bloody mess.
where there is nothing to hold on to.
You fall back down to Earth,
wondering how anything ever started.
Another fossilized impression,
another cave sketch in charcoal.
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301213A
-----------
People are angrier and angrier
about nothing.
They say nothing
makes them angry.
They get angrier and angrier,
and nothing makes them angrier
than nothing,
Everything about nothing.
All that nothing
that they have to endure,
between coming from nothing
and returning to nothing,
hoping for something
in between
all that nothingness
that makes them angry.
Even that is something,
that battles with nothing.
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301213B
-----------
If you had set me free,
I would have loved you,
to be that free.
What is there left to do
when getting too old for wars
feeling too young for funerals,
and being tired of counting sheep ?
Ritual propositions,
no better than uttering prayers
to any of our dead gods,
and always left unanswered.
We commonly learn to abandon
abandoning in the same way
that they abandoned us,
to abandoning each other.
Imagination runs wild,
trying to find a few lame reasons,
hanging from plausible arguments,
conforming to torments of logic.
Maybe the envelope is too flawed,
looking torn and ragged
where it reflects in the mirror,
always presenting a wrong image.
Maybe the words were misunderstood,
malformed and monstrous,
as to how they held their lines,
on that new frontier.
There were no survivors,
from that expedition.
There were no lasting souvenirs
to commemorate the moment.
It was all too imperfectly perfect,
to remain uninterrupted
the way turning something off
makes everything go dark again.
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080114A
-----------
Having run out of words,
the remaining syllables drip
from new wounds.
Eventually it will be an alphabet
slow trickle of shattered letters,
where each exemplifies a new torment.
It is no different from sending signals
into the vast reaches of deep space,
hoping that someone might answer.
I was waiting for a few words,
but they never came,
and now everything has frozen over.
---------------------------------------------
080114B
-----------
Hopes are always premature,
no matter what they are about.
Purveyors of heart break,
they provide a sales pitch
as to what it might really be like,
if it were possible to suffer the cost.
That negotiation seldom takes place,
as the entire matter is closed
long before it comes up for discussion.
It is remarkably similar
to receiving kisses by proxy,
along with a running commentary.
You had me hoping something,
even after the dissolve to nothing,
leaving me waiting for the scene
that comes after the prologue.
All the roles we never got to play
in what passes as real life.
when you left me looking
at the possibilities we do not have,
making me feel as if nothing has happened
in between when I first discovered looking
and when I first considered giving it up.
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