The Lover and the Artist

There's a petal lain for every day

We've walked this path

Front door to bed, I remember every

Moment, from Decembers cold and hopeless

Where we were warmed only
By the fire's breath, and our kiss
To the summers' sweat
Where we dared cool off only
After we were spent
I remember the salt on your skin
The crumpled dress
The unspoken invitation
The expectation of unrest
I draw your figure on the canvas
Lay the brush down in deep red
Color full lips, still damp with my kiss
Each stroke culled from moments
Where laughter gave way to passion
Where one look is all it took
To give in, live in that bed
Where fears and clothes were shed
For hours, devouring each other with our eyes
And mouths,  traversing newly discovered lands
Whose hills and valleys kept us climbing and falling
All over this
There's a petal lain for every day
Save this, I and a single red rose waiting
For you to come back in.

Stars

I see her in the stars

Burning bright, alive

With energy

Dancing across the blanket of time

And space
She races across my vision
Rests upon my heart
Sets fire to my convictions
And smiles on the ashes
These nights
I wonder who we are
Who we've been
And why my tongue
Is emptied of her taste
Washed clean
That these words seem
Banal
Dry, and I'm heaving
Wood into the fire
Maybe she'll recognize it
But who knows, I've only
Just begun to face this
Wondered at the spaces
Between the flickers we played in
And why, just like them
She's light years away
From this moment.

Waking Up

"Maybe I'm dying and

This pain in my chest

The numbness on my left

The crack in my bones when

I stand for something

Signals the coming end

Maybe I'm falling

To pieces, and nothing

Will ever change it

And every time I wind up

My fists, my knuckles are ready

To break, every word

That spills from my lips

Begs to be the last, the best

I've ever had

Well if so, here we go

Cause I'm not dead yet."

Live like you're the first

To discover love

Give like these are the only words

That could ever touch

The whirlwind of the mind

The ill-defined, the half-blind

The wave of the ocean when she says goodbye

These are the days to turn into nights

These are the reasons we stand up and fight

The passion behind the depression in our eyes

The fire that burns long after we've died

Shed the weight of the skies

Discern the truth from the lies

And understand why

You told them to begin with

You want them to recognize

You're different

No compilation could be complete

Without your ink within its pages

Because life isn't meant to die

Quiet, we were built to fly

Given the mind to accomplish

To drive ourselves beyond the edges

To survive the god damn consequences

To look upon those pretty white fences

And jump over them

Don't settle for less than

The beauty in the explosion

Of your sentence, the defiance of even

Gravity, we could hide all night

But better that we're free

To own these moments

Perfect and broken

Screaming and singing

To every thought we've composed as

The heavens shake their heads

And the devil smiles knowingly

Live like you're the first

To think these things

To breathe in this noxious mix

Of obsession and compulsion

And exhale a fire cleansing

Every desire we've had, but didn't dare speak

Every brush with death

That comes together to compose

This painting

Take a moment to breathe

If you need.

See, nothing we've accomplished

Means a damn thing if we've forgotten

To keep dreaming when our eyes are open

Take those hits and be stronger for them

Shake those thoughts that you can't do it

In the end, all you've ever been

Is a fraction of your lifespan

A distraction from your purpose

To bleed and fight and scream and die

And smile through every moment, knowing

It is only hopeless if you give up

Instead of giving in, if you turn your back

Because you doubt your own direction

I might be dying, might find myself

Lying in a cheap coffin, someday

Or buried alone in an unmarked grave

But when I am, I will have had a hand

In giving something this world

Is all too often missing

The willingness to step beyond survival

To erase the idea of merely existing

And empower us all

To begin truly living.

The Nature of the Soul

Discussing the nature of the human soul,

Boundless, flawless

And the world we might dwell in

Should we choose to listen to it.

What comprises us

Ego, Id, Superego

Emotions, faults, talents

Passions, dreams, reality?

Love.

It is the only perfection we might know

Some call it God, Jehovah

Yahweh, Buddha

Muhammad

I am agnostic, or atheist, or spiritual

Or maybe I am

All of those, and I don't know it.

Yet the soul, the soul sees it

Touches the center of the mind

And heart, intermingles the physical

With the fantastic.

All perception may be encoding within our complex

Minds, or chemical reactions spilt

Onto the canvas of our bodies

But do we not all sense

Something more, something beyond the veil

Of conscious perception?

To what do we attribute

Our connections, our distances, those fleeting moments

Of abstraction?

I can describe

The touch of a lover's hand

Down to the most minute detail

And yet, without having felt it

Yourself, you would not know it.

We are foreign to each other

Walking within the shadows of

Our petty grievances, daring to step only

Within our carefully constructed

Isolation.

Love, the soul, the indescribable familiar

Within, that which ascribes tears

And laughter.

Our own perpetual motion machine

That which ceaselssly and easily overcomes

Our own science, our own understanding

Of the function of our universe.

That which in giving, is received

Without external need, the propulsion of man

The fuel of our progress.

Love, the soul

Who grows by mitosis

Multiplies through division

Accumulates within ourselves, only through

Being given away.

Some call it flawed, broken, painful

Loss, heartache, grief

Loneliness,

And never realize that what they describe

Is not love, but a life without it.

A life without a soul

A machine, cold and calculating

Whose each step requires

Recalibration, to overcome the sensation

Of emptiness.

Should we take the time to revel in it

Love, the soul, by any name

Is savior, a quantum step

Toward enlightenment.

In discussing the nature of the soul

We enter into a conversation with it

Confirm its very existence

And open a path to empathy

Peace, the harmony we need

To overcome the varied methods we've developed

To neutralize it.

So I ask, my friends, my love, my fellow

People

To open your day looking inward

To stretch your arms out and embrace

The beauty of your divinity

Your flawlessness

By any name you may call it.

Through knowing yourself, your soul

Your love

You will come to expose the beauty

In the billions of others

Who travel this same rocky path

As you.

Absence

Where do we go from here

Sitting back, gathering the years

Like dust on the lens

Filtering out the sunlight

I wish

But I won't say it right

And you won't hear above

The volumes of repression

The sentence of depression

Under dark skies

Where our thoughts condense

Coalesce

Into the sunlight's absence

Where do we go from here

When all I want is

A smile, my children's laugh

And all I have is

This distance

This barren existence

Where they are not

And I am

And I hate it

This degradation of beauty

Into bloodshed

This capitulation of love to

Punishment

I have given everything

And still this is what you've chosen

To take from me

They tell me have hope

Keep the faith

Maybe even let go

If it'll make it okay

Instead I'll swallow the world

And still not fill

The void inside of me

The world cut from my chest

That left me broken

And hopeless

And knowing

The only chance at happiness

Is to overcome this

Hatred you harbor

Through the strength of my love

And I wonder sometimes

When the sun hides

Behind the clouds

And I want to shout

To scream from hell

I can not do without

I am not doing well

I wonder, if I am enough

If I have the capacity

The love

To withstand the torrents

You have rained upon me

To know trust

When it's been shattered

So completely

To live on

Despite the calm in your seas

While my ship is ravaged

By the havoc you've wreaked

I doubt

Sometimes

Though I know life's sublime

Peaceful moments

The beauty divine

And complete

I have my wreckage, you see

My crashes and recollections

Of dreams

Once painted so flawless

Now aged and fading

Quickly

Where do we go from here

I wonder

I can hear the thunder

Approaching

As I sit back, gather my tears

As memories across

My sleeves

And I in my darkness

I in my shadows

I and my demons, well

I know how it goes

I've seen

And I can only hope

Someday, I'll find the course

That ushers me away from the scene

That touches the wasteland

Of my dreams

Breathes life into my seams and

I'll stand, you'll beckon

But I'll not hear

Over the sound of the years

You've stolen

I don't fear

What is to come anymore

For what might bring me to shore

Surely, can't be worse

Than what set me to sea

Maybe I'll drown

Before knowing the beach

But where I go from here

All my doubts and fears

The years spent thrashing wildly

And loving with the veracity

I have, dreaming with the capacity

Of kings

Well, that all belongs

To me.

Acknowledgement

I never stopped loving you

I never turned my back

Never withdrew my hand

I never thought less

Was never unimpressed

By you

And now we're old friends and

Watching the tides roll in

Lamenting how quickly they

Withdraw again

And we're left with miles of darkened sand

And traces of years that should have been spent

Differently

And now the time has come and gone

The skies have rolled over

Into the storm

As we fight and dig and claw at the world

Hoping to unearth what we were

Before the sun collapsed across the horizon

Before the gun went off in our hands

As we watched the corpse of beauty lying quiet

And the wind changed direction

Carried away sanity, left only

The weight of depression

On our breath

I never stopped loving you

I never turned my back

Never withdrew my heart

I never wanted us to part

Never wanted it to end

Like this

And now we're alone in orbit

As close as we've ever been

And your as beautiful as I remember

As unforgettable as ever

We're watching the stars cower

Behind the cloud of a cigarette

Talking like we've forgotten who we were

Like nothing was ever different

Now we're wandering through the world

Pondering existence

Exhaling glass over the song we played then

And for every light that peers from behind

The echoes of our death

We've a shadow ready to dress in

A darkness born of hard-earned lessons

Who could trust us

After where we've been

Ferried away by the impossibility of

Subconscious suggestions

I never stopped loving you

I never turned my back

Never banished these memories

I never wanted a moment's peace

Never wanted to sleep

Again

And now I see these pictures of you

Now I hear your words

And dance around the uncomfortable truth

That where we are is not where

We were

And you're far beyond the corners I've turned

Too far gone to hear this verse

I wonder, what differences might come of a world

Where we might be

What we might see, if all that transpired

Hadn't, and if we might sit on this beach

Old friends, who wrote this poem

Together, instead of lamenting the tides

Or the hidden moon that draws them

Or the weight of the world, that had fallen

Before we ever knew her name

I wonder if love and loss are

One and the same, or variations of a composition

We've both played

And if so, what note might come next

Is it hope, or withdrawal by reflex

Will I know more than words and

Context

When you lean across the dampened sand

And ask me where I haven't been

Will I have the courage to ask you

To come with?

A Moment Misspent

If you ask me
(You didn't)
I'd say you're as beautiful
As you've ever been
(Stop shaking your head)
And if you listen
(Put down that magazine
That you're not reading)
Maybe you'd hear
Why I keep coming back
To this sentence
(Don't pretend you expected
Any different)
I'd say we've made waves
(Tidal, even)
I'd say we've let go
But I still know
Every crease in your hand
(Without looking now,
Smart ass)

If you asked me
(You did)
Why things are different
I might've said we'd been in motion
(No, I didn't miss that)
And if you had  listened
(Look in my eyes
Really, I mean it)
Maybe you'd have understood then
Why the wind kept changing
Directions
(Don't contend it had anything
To do with the environment)
I might've said we'd braved fate
(Conquered it, even)
I might've said we were right here
Right then, and no place
Less than that
(There are worse fates
Than death)

If you asked me
(I wish you had)
I'd have taken it back
And never have lost it
(Sorry I said it to begin with)
And if you had listened
(I swear to God
I didn't even halfway mean it)
Maybe you would've started to believe
That love doesn't leave, even when
It's hidden
(That hand, that was tapping nervously
I'd like to hold it now)
I'd say it still exists
(Flourishes even)
I'd have said that in that moment
We'd nowhere else we needed
To be
(I wouldn't have gone then
Anyways)

But you didn't ask me
(I was waiting for you to cool down)
I'd have apologized first
And never lost this
(Sorry I never insisted)
You can't listen
(I hope the guy who ran you off the road
Knows he killed us both that instant)
Maybe you'd still be here
And you'd wipe my tears away
With those perfect hands
(How selfish that now
I wish I had died instead)
I'd have held you in my arms
(No matter how angry it made you)
I'd have kept you closer than I did then
And you never would have left and
You'd still be here
(I never should have let you go
But, I did)