Lament for the Poor

If my throat could bear to curve this tune
I'd have a poem, a lament for the poor
The poor at heart, the scorned

If my emotions could be taught to sing
They'd play a song for you
But my heart is stone--
And you left when I had no voice

If but the beat of my pulse
Were enough to keep alive a memory lost,
I'd never consider this drive
This drive of pain and perhaps shame

But if's and and's are all for naught
And it is my hand steering this wheel

The ways and days of these midnight hours
Fill my head with weariness
I remember loves and wonder
If I've ever loved at all

And then I laugh because
To not have loved would mean release,
Relief, resolve

The resolve to never sing again
To never let my heart be polished
By a sweet song

To mend the ways of a broken spirit
To knit together my soul--
So tight!

With each tick of the clock
I grow closer to Death
Like lovers meeting in eternal shade

I'd sing for Death
I'd crack open my heart
And pour out my love--
So fast!

So fast I'd fade away
A soul leaping from this grave of a body

But Death is no friend to me
He snubs me at every turn
No accidents befall me
No switch is flipped
No light is burned out

So, weary still, I sit
And my heart keeps time
With my breaths
Betrayals both

I don't know how to make you understand
My poems are not about dying
But about living

Living a life, as others do,
Of tedium and despair
Through heartaches and laughter
Just living.

I can make it known that I want to die
But that's just surface--
There's so much more to me

If my heart is that stone
And the moon is just and always
A moon
Then the world is a cruel mistress
Kept at too high a price

If my song were enough to make you stay,
Would I be any happier?
I think not.

These chemical miles I have travelled
Have professed to help
But I still feel the same
(I hide it better)
And the difference is that no one knows

So is it a life I lead, or a lie?

Can you tell me friend,
For only to you could I be so intimate,
Is life worth leading when you've forgotten how to sing?

The Emptiness that Burns

(written February 7, 2008)

The hard edge of life is getting to me again
Tired muscles hide what was once a long goodbye
Language is a barrier I can't seem to breach
So I lie with my words
I don't practice what I preach

I say I'm an open book, but see, you have to pry
And did I say it would be easy?
Well, that was just a lie.

I tell you what you want to hear
What I want to hear too,
But I know it from the truth

I'm not as well as I pretend to be
But I'm not the despondent mess I remember
Or the manic idiot dressed for surrender
So maybe I'm not as bad as I've been

Does that make it less of a concern
When I say, I want to die?

Sometimes I think I am a Sally
Pinned to the wall by love
Like an especially interesting bug
And that tears at me, until her words are mine
And I can't remember which of us has
The emptiness that burns.