Pulse.

 I seem to not understand how all these things come together.

Timing worries me, yet I'm not worried.

The words move and I move,

And I stand still, standing strong,

Yet, strength is not mine,

As I cannot stand still in my own strength,

Scattered, traveling from word to word.

Never quite fully here,

Always in some way, somewhere else.

Scattered like the shattered glass,

Of mirrors shattered long ago,

From hating the eyes staring back,

Never knowing whose they were.

And I fall into my thoughts and disappear,

And I am disappearing for awhile,

To my heart to see what's going on,

Because from this distance, I'm unknowing

And as so much is happening and moving and being dug up,

I'm fighting the crowds of voices to hear the quiet

Beating inside my chest,

Beneath the ground, undead,

Only put away awhile

Dust collected, coughing, sneezing,

Opening the boxes of unrested thought.

Thoughts just pulsing, volume turned down,

Now the mute bond is breaking,

And there is some sorting to do.

There is some honesty to be had.

So I will step in front of the mirror,

And we will have a long talk,

The long avoided,

Long put off,

The conversation,

And my nerves are raw,

I hear my pulse in the deep of my throat

And I wonder if the eyes looking back at me,

Are as nervous as I am.

Disappearing

We take a drag on the cigarettes we hold,

Silently noting what we share and what we don't as moments pass that I would not trade.

Its like I want you to know everything about me.

I want to be selfish with our time.

I want you to know everything.

As much as I've hidden about myself

As much as I've not known,

As much as I've wanted to blurt out everything about me,

I want to be selfish in the time we've only begun to have.

I want to be selfish and take the time until I've had enough.

I've been a user.

A selfish breed because I've wanted.

And at some points I've wanted in vain.

I've made myself to expect nothing.

I expected nothing.

And now I don't know what to do,

Don't know how to get a hold of myself.

As you puff on your cigarette,

Puffing away your thoughts like pieces of trash on the floor,

Only to be thrown away later.

Too clouded to think past the next few hours,

Maybe even the next few moments,

All the while, aching while I'm away

Because I want to steal you away and know everything about you.

The lack of your presence has ben too long.

Even in the distance, I understand a few things,

It blows my mind, and I see your eyes,

And I know too many thoughts,

Wondering about the ones I don't know.

Another long drag, and another flood of memories.

Our present and past seem to swirl all too fast.

The smoke filling my lungs was the only constant,

And in some ways, the disappearing smoke still is.

In the lack of knowing myself, I am sad I changed my hair color

Because I want you to know the real me.

Not any type of projection.

The scariest part is that in far too many ways, you know me 

better than I do.

The Hours Moved. The Minutes Came. The Seconds Passed Away.

Our breath is being held.

Honesty is like fresh air to our lungs.

We spend our time burning.

We'd rather burn.

Our lies build us castles,

Nicely adorned with moats.

Cold stone floors,

Cold stoned windowless windows.

We are the damsel in distress,

And dragons rush to enslave us,

Keeping us where we are,

Scorching us with their breathed fire.

We long to hold the fire,

So we hold our breath

We hold dishonesty a close friend.

As long as we believe the lies,

We can still be the victims

Claiming pity

Claiming attention until we've had enough,

When the real aches of us are probably more serious still,

Pathological Liars

To play our own games because it started out as a game,

This life, this fire-playing.

We'd rather burn.

So well held is the fire, we can breathe it,

Even though we don't know what breathing is,

Yet, as we lie her breathless,

We realize, to play with fire, we need oxygen,

But that doesn't work when we stop breathing,

And the blue face worn,

Is shock and disbelief,

The victim is down

The selfish victim is down

And no one was there to hear the final cry

Because there was no crying.

No crying and crying out, as there was no breath left.

The fire burned.

We all know fire absorbs sound.

And leaves a forest, fired to the ground,

And nothing remains.

Anything within miles was consumed by the overwhelming blaze.

Exit Signs

I've got all these questions.

Some simple.

Some too complex to bring to light.

Too many things swirling like different storms

Coming to the front of the door

Dropping the wind current

Knock me down.

To be surrounded,

I am surrounded,

And they always seem to surround us with their words.

Negative in existence,

The pessimism drips forth like venom on the tongue

Wicked words finding their way to the surface,

And it makes me never want to know any deeper,

Skin deep is enough for me from you.

I can only take so much,

And your skin deep cuts like a razor blade to the chest,

Making patterns as if we were drawing pictures

With our crayons on a cream colored paper

Smearing the color as if it were paint.

You were always a fan of finger painting.

And the chest finds a way to swell with colder air

As the lungs constrict and restrict my words,

And I restrict your words letting you know my ears are full.

My heart is full of your words,

Yet I make you think I did not hear a word,

Because if you knew how deep this cut,

You would know how hard it would be to recover.

Ripping open old wounds with words not well thought out,

Your insensitivity has done you in.

You've been shown the exit sign, and have been left in the dark.

Reality

Marvel at the ways

Count the leaves like corn flakes

In the mornings cereal

Surreal in the complexities

Real in the Reality

The reality that seems like a dream.

Knowing

Did you ever know what you were doing

I never did know what I was doing

And now I keep on moving

Solving nothing

Without the soothing melodies

Of heart and rhyme in rhythmic melody sublime

Without the doors opening to hear the going.

Oh, I keep going.

And I am losing.

And I am choosing what I should never have chosen

I am broken

I am opened in a way that leaves me

Ready to be sore

Ready to be laid upon the tourniquet

"She's bleeding

Yes, she's breathing too deeply

And her heart is slowing beating

Its repeating, repeating repeat

Re...peat no more"

Tell me the score

I'm losing my mind

I'm losing the time

But what's lost will be mine

I will find

I will find

What I've been looking for

Tell me the score

Are we competing

I won't play games with you

I couldn't if I wanted to

I've never been explained the rules

Don't worry, love, it will be over soon

The agonies inside that burn

Turning over in your bed,

The sugar plum fairies far away

I don't know if I should stay

I don't know if I should

I don't know many things

I know there's water everywhere,

I know there is no drop to drink,

I know I'm thirsting for more than I can handle

Oh, I know

I know, but I don't.

If I knew the spelling, I would spell it out for you,

But since I've never been a good speller,

The phonetics of the matter won't be known.

Twenty One Years

Twenty one years of emotions bent
Twisted beneath the surface of my skin
A thin layer holding the rivers in
The flooded season of doubt and wonder
The flooded season
Opening doors can be a bad idea on a crowded room
The layers so thick
Yet the layers so thin
Between cracking
Between leaking and pouring.
Shouting and whispering the heart to mean
Whatever was meant
Twenty one years worth of meanings
For your forty years of meaning
And I always wonder what you mean
As I'm finding out meaning
Meaning what exactly
Churning and ebbing within,
Fountains fresh and stuck
As the ice makes us stuck
And the quick sand makes us sink
Twenty one years.