See the Stars

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And what made it for you?
And what made of it, did you?
The utter lot of blathering
Was it simply a nonsensical symphony to you?
Never once did you ever stop to tell me.
You did not know the time signature
Nor the key
How was it then your harmony was written
With every nod and shake
Nodding right off         the edge of the paper

Is it a sin to ponder the line
Lingering along
One’s faith
Daring spirituality
Comforting conspiracy
What shame is there now to
Wander on by
When the wilds have already
Overgrown and overturned.


Is it not all from the Earth?

Didn’t your mother ever teach you
The right way to sweep your
Squirrel’s tail to grasp on the edge
Of fences to callus your wrists
              To bludgeon your knees? It
Ought to be child’s play.

Laundry day!
Wring out your dirty sheets—

Is that it?
All you dragged in
And loathed and loathed
All you? For that load.

Why, why even waste all that
Rigor then? Why, no castile
Comes by easily these days.

Is it despicable
That soft sour tang?
Wrenching in the crevices
After affirmed satisfaction
Once when nothing else seemed
To be oh so more important
No.

Even then I was a swallow
And my nest:
A hive

Without intention
I find myself
Threaded in between braids
Bowed into knots
And swung forth in the pendulum
Knocking knocking
Offset just enough
That entropy feels like a lifetime

Will I ever remember
If I’ve gone here before
If every bridge
    I’ve ever burned
          Is built back in between
My own fatal                ignorance
To never find a way to escape?

Is it harsh to be a proponent of
Ambiguity yet, so partial to
Hard, defined stops and
Ends of ropes torched so that
They won’t fray, or ever split
Away again

The journey of a toy train
Is more marvelous than I’ll ever know
Further than any real train
Could ever go

Maybe those moments will
Forever be shy

Oh, but to be a toy train
Chugging along tracks
Constantly contorting onto new paths
All especially made for me

How does a melody
Lust for a rhythm

And what was music
Before that time

Rain can be so kind
To hesitate to lay us down to
The boiling of acidity


At the bottom of a porcelain tub
Flesh is made raw


And we may sink away into
An eternal fall

The stagehand dons themselves
Dapper from tip to tongue
Warm weather does not stop you
From your sleeves been tightly wrung


Stumbling through the darkness
You set the stage grand
In this dim auditorium
There is no need for sunny days


So long as curtains close
On rolling thunder

Truth
To be betrayal
Eyes lingering too long
On a stage rather than
The lines forming across your face

Even as hands were clasped tightly
Bound to one another
Did not form to hold our hearts
Just as close together

So as it began to slip through your fingers
Clasped they were
Around my neck

In humble possession
The brush stroke
Uneven in its spread
Bristles bending unwillingly
To unveil its secrets onto
A canvas waiting
Patiently to hold onto an eternal form
Defined intimately for
Infinity

The muttering at the back of your neck
Whirring back like a roll of film
Unraveling into the projector’s core
Recoiling the prints of a mind split between
Worlds and hazes
Rest your head

Softly

They roll out
Unceasing
Scattering out into atmosphere
Clattering over the concrete
Captured in the threads laid about you
With my head down I recollect myself

Once the tides recede
Your net is full

When we first collided I turned a blind eye
To the hot dust that began to mold me until
We melded into one another into
Another

Until you swung out of orbit
Our equilibrium
Slow to bond yet swift to dissipate

I remain crafted
Wholly me

You roll yourself into bleached sheets
In denial of what is yours to keep
To yourself and not give up to
Recent lovers
Distant lovers

Finding that all unresolved
All insufficient to do any trespasser any good
Except for the light left on

If we are to grow
I hope I am to grow away from you
And be the most of what growing things can do

While being doused in sunshine
And nurturing fertilizer

With roots that tear through the ground
With roots that fear to be bound

But I for one no longer dream
Of poppy seeds

Visibly
I'll be vulnerable enough
To parade and expose myself
And be watched in a performance

Just. Your gaze. It must not be
Present in the engagement. Do not
Seek me to know me. On the tip
Of your tongue. On the border of your
Sight.

Who would I be to claim the sun
To be me who looks fondly to the sky
With the sun held up high
Lofted so that all can see

That sun, you know, it was I who
Cultivated it with my own hands
And let the tips of my fingers singe and burn

Yes, it was I who ought to desire to manifest
At the center of this all
To pull everyone close towards me
But not enough so that they would burn

I jeer, I jest

Ah, but the sunshine, it knows me best

Who decides on the lucky draw
Sprinkle coincidence on qualifications
Drawn on what we have decided
Looking up to those beyond me

When the spirits call me forth
To raise me up out of waters
To place me back in gentle favor
Back into the deep
Out of a lucky draw

Your craters shudder to the changing of constellations
Shrug off when those bitter platelets cling
They've never done you any good

But it was romance when they tried wasn't it?
Wasn't worth all the stars falling out of the sky?

Being pulled by those starving tides
Down into the darkest depths of their hunger
I hope every one of them bloomed with rage

They're cracklings down there
Waiting to be harvested back into the heights they once knew
Would you ever do the honors of blowing life into the dust?
Or wallow in the glory of being what could have been?

Scritches through the narrow marrow of your bones
Free flesh for the hell bent, have your sweet supper tonight


Have you chided yourself for batting it away
Flickering your third eye


Hey ancient thing, were you born yesterday?
Did you hear what the last ones had to say?

Can love be put on trial?

Arrange the hymn for judgement day
Take nectar and a steward’s sacrifice
Enough to feast into the serpents fears
Scatter the ashes with your wings
Dedicated for lossless rapture
Out of a sinners reach

And on the cloudy days
I would tear apart the sky’s cotton candy
And unveil to you vice and void

Plucking stars to make
Your every wish come true

All that overwhelming chaos

To be reoriented
And refined

I tear through each volume and
Through the pages I
Search for your words
To complete my citations I
Close my eyes and try to visualize that
Memory of your hand moving that
Highlighter across the lines

The interruption distorts your balance

As you crouch unable to hold your
Own weight even while on

Your frozen pedestal each granule scatters

Under the torrents of time flow

Grains of sand

There goes that high pitched echo

My body reels inwards
Struggling to contain:

A siren’s song? Does it come from within
Or beyond the doors?

Am I released from knowing myself?

I cannot blink

My eyes are dry from the nights I stay up
Listlessly

Unable to accomplish anything unable to move
On

I am always sleep walking through the
Day

I cannot think

Behavior can be aggressive
Aggressive like hitting delete on your messages
Of conversations I will not carry on with you
I’ll be on my way

Behavior can be passive
Passive like walking in the opposite direction
In a hallway I need to get through
Because you are blocking my way

You are again
Imprinted
Captured fractals carried into the night

A grand ball for past lovers
The chandelier hangs
A myriad of refractions

Getting caught in the spider’s web
An invitation to feast and fester
Till daybreak

Inside there is a garden
Blooming with a feelings for someone
Else. Yes. There has been a
Garden planted inside of them. It is
Watered regardless of the
Rain might come down, happily or
Sadly. These are not their flowers to
Grow, they are merely the soil, the sun, the
Sky. A terrarium case claimed by someone
Who spilled their wildflowers into a
Innocent and foolish child.

Gentle hands they are not
Slender and nimble
They are worn and wrinkled
Too small to be held tight
Too small to hold up against a fight
Tracing lifeline of their palms
What life this heart has lived
How many times has it grasped for
Something out of reach?

My heart was bloated until it exploded
And each tear and strain pulled me towards
Something new and strange
Something enticing and dangerous

Tearing         and         straining
Ever        the                 more

Till I die with nothing left

Your lens makes me shutter
On the other side
And behind prisms I would hide
Until the camera licks
To the edge of the photograph

Loved the things you used to say
I wish you’d say them to me now
But my record keeps
skipping on the part
That you decided I wasn’t enough

I can’t do anything more
Than to store your vinyl in the back of the room

Unable to forget about friends whose
Voices haunt your bedside and your
Will begins to dwindle remembering
That the kindest things you’ve heard
Will never be said again by the
Kindest people you ever knew
Until it’s Four AM and you’re still
Trying to remember

Just who those friends
Were

Appraise ourselves
For what are we worth?

“Nothing and Everything”

And I?

I am not for sale.

Search for dead faces and dead names
In a sea of those with the same
Sweet faces and sweet names

Rewrite the memories slightly differently
Cling on to what you remember

Rewrite these faces and these names

Search for your own dead body one day

Perhaps if I stopped chasing strangers
Perhaps if I stopped trying to                 discover
Something beyond                myself and instead
Stopped to                 discover something
Within                 myself
Then perhaps

Then perhaps I would finally meet.

A gift not meant for you
But a gift happily given
Allow others to distribute
Their treasures however they like

        Our right to take a gift?
        To steal a heart or a kiss?

Our right may decide
Never to give again

Love as a flower ever blooming
It still leaves a heart ever beating
        Waning wanting
        Wanting waning
Love as a flower ever blooming
Has all its scars forsaken

Love them and let them go
In everything you do let them know
That there is a love made for them
A place for them to come home
If they would just let it be so

Footsteps followed by a
call

For a name that defined someone
You couldn’t really grasp in your mind

Someone you knew you knew
Someone you thought you thought

You heard
Footsteps followed by a
         call

A call that never receives a
response

Perhaps you got the number wrong...

Loneliness isn’t real considering
We are never alone!
There is always someone else
Far out beyond!

I wonder who they are and
If they know

Assumptions so bold to declare one’s own
Tricks...
and...
         l                i            e        s
Laying right in front of them to be
Beheld and taken for all its face has to offer

Yet even in those midsts all that is done
Is to wander….
Wander...         o               v            e        r

Everything else so clearly hid
Among other things we insist
Don’t exist

There is a sound that seems to
Never leave me

Even if I cover my ears
        Or close my eyes or try to
Desensitize and hide all
That I know this

This echoing voice
my >piercing< mind

Comforts me in the worst times

Was last night’s love just from the
        Story I read before bed on that
Sleepless night where I

drowned.

Myself in words until I could no longer

Understand.

Last night’s love, was it cliche?


Was it revolutionary?
I can’t quite recall.

Are we still in love today?

Let the knight swear off the blade
For this is how he was made

Thin is his consciousness
        Thick is his anxiousness

Bring him to the cleric's hands
        Bind him to the laws of the land
May he find humanity again

The greatest hero | His own villain

We desire to place the weapon
That took the life of someone so
        Dearly held in our hearts
Right back into
our own hearts

Only to find we cannot die for them

The elephant hotel was full of
Things so extraordinary!


But you could never quite put
Your finger on because

        You could never ignore the elephant
        In every room that seemed to change

By the day

A dull blade makes shallow marks
        As if pure force can sharpen its blade

Marks are made
To be remembered

Good marks to show you’ve learned
        Emotional phrasing replacing
fact. This was
what it was to
learn to love

There can be many complex things
About love that we try to simplify

But isn’t there an equation for
        An emotion other than
        A chemical reaction?

And if love is so scientific maybe
It really isn’t meant for all of us


I’m not particular to such inquiry...

To hold their hand is more intimate than
Holding their body to yours in a

Quick second

The warm that could surround you
Centered on one placement can bring
Fleeting happiness

Centered on one placement of
The lack of intimacy in a

Moment.

Words spilling out like gold and
        Silver. Riches that could not have been
Kept in the heart. A heart that burned
        And bound itself too tightly
Together creating a warmth that
        Seemed to come from an old
Wound. We have to insist to ourselves
        That we aren’t making the same
Mistakes and that we are learning
        And making change.

At this time of night
We would put away our books
And become adventurers
Of worlds we have never seen
Yet have seen time and time again
Because of all the things we compile
We can never perceive infinity

Tonight our ship has been set to sail
But I will not travel to lands always seen
There will be no time in space again

I kept the words that held our
        Hatred and understanding between
Gritted teeth thinking that
        Someday things would change and
I would try to show you what
        I had to hide for so long

There were a lot of things
You have told me not to do

        Who do you see
        When you look into the

mirror | mirror

Is it not you But Once?
But Twice.

Salt | Pepper

Meant to used to be used alike yet
        Not every palate needs us equally