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.

Autobiography

Life is a harried confession
Told to no one and everyone
So how does our own narrative get away from us?

Tell me, are we not responsible because we looked up
Before we ever thought to look down?

When we fell, and we did,
Were the sounds we made a quiet anguish
Or did we rejoice that we no longer had to talk so loud?

I think life is a story,
Lies we believe to be truth
Truth we take for lies

And that is how we lose our own narration--
When we open our mouths to share it

Dreamsong

I'm afraid to dream
Because dreams have a way of disappearing round here
I'm afraid to try too hard because trying leads to disappointment
When all I wanted was a lucky break

I can't push past my limitations when it's comfortable here

Yet comfortable is scary when your future
Relies on new frontiers

So I try a little harder
Until the blood drains to my fingertips and into the pen
Where I write my words in the only red ink God ever made

Hoping poetry can prove that there's life to be had
Beyond the one I've disappeared into

Sometimes I think I write when I dream

So I write a little more, dream a little dream.
It's practice for the real thing.

The Places You Died Are the Places You Lived the Most

**This poem is a composite of some 2006 rant-writings, so if it sounds familiar that's why**

I am more than the composite of everything you know.
I am a dead weight of immobile fear lodged in my belly.
I am giving birth to a nameless fear I know all to well.

My heart is heavy.

Will you hear the artificial
In my voice when I create
A Truth from my lies?

Only for you.
I lie so well only for you.

I will sing!
I will sing and I will whisper
Until only the raw rasp of breath is left in my lungs.
(You like me to breathe)

Salty sweet surrender is a keepsake
In my heart and in my lungs.
My voice screams but I cannot
Quiet it with whispers, though I try.
I try.

My head aches with words unsaid,
With life trying to escape the veins.

No escapes, not this time.
No spiderweb kisses of a former blade.
But the scars, so soft, are evidence
Only I can see.

The devil's in the details,
The god is in the rain.

Emptiness is nothingness
Nothingness is everything
And everything is god.

I want to shed this skin
Find a new person underneath, one empty of god,
So that I don't have to feel the pain
Of nothingness anymore.

It is Friday.
Rejoice in the good news of the Lord
Because the bad will call its time
So rejoice in the days, the hours of contentment.
Pray for rain.

Pray for that slow liquid pull to the ground
Pray for a day in the dark,
For forever and the blink of an eye.

I need you to understand
It isn't about dying, but about living.

You will read the words of my pen
As though they came from your mouth
And the sounds you make will sing
And you will understand.

Can you handle this much hurt?
Can you deal with this much damage?

If I am a poet,
I'm a double-edged sword
And you are at the tip of my blade

If it hurts enough to bleed
It hurts enough to taunt you with it

Because the places you die,
They're the places you live the most.

Weekend Pursuits

Silky Sweet Abandon
Lying in bed again
The Great Nothing
Sharing my sheets

And how wonderful it feels
To indulge in Nothingness
The Weekend game--
My favorite pursuit

A Writer's Fate

I write in golden dreams
And teardrop reams
Of failures big and small

I meditate on spoken word
Translating it to the page
In fits and starts

Nearing the age of no return
I sit, expanding, decompressing
Until tears well in my eyes

And there is no room to turn
Once I've gone forward
No way to go back

The future is scary
One fat teardrop after another
And the world gives no slack