Sunrise

Sleep came and went for him that night
And as the hours wore on, the world turned
Just out of sight. Just out the window.
With the dull light of a book light illuminating
A graphic novel, not quite reaching
The sheets covering his body.
The dark walls, the piano, the wooden carving;
These only existed in his memory.

Yet, slowly but surely,
A dull light rose from the West,
Bringing the world back to his eyes.
And he rushed out onto the deck.

The flames slashed their way through the atmosphere
'cross mountaintops, into frost-covered valleys,
Touching the morning dew, with no heat, no sound.
Simply a shimmer, a reflection of vitality.

Behind him stood an old friend, her face turned
Towards the horizon. She was there to watch too,
White, glowing, pale, yet sentient as always.
Smiling as she had always been to see him rise at this hour.

He smiled. They smiled.
As she fell behind, never lost in the light
But at the same time fading,
The world turned, and life itself erupted from the horizon.

Sleep

Sleep comes but once per day,
Then takes its leave, leaving you to wander
and wonder what your wanderings during the night
had been. Why you are still
Head on pillow,
Body under blankets,
Bladder almost full,
Stomach almost empty?
The brain and body waken...

Or do they
Fall back into the sleep where they are constrained to
Think certain ways,
Act certain ways,
Obey certain laws,
Breath the air,
Consume the food,
Rid one's self of waste,
Rest the head,
Go to bed?

The body falls into predictable rhythms
And the mind falls into the same trappings, singing:
"Stay thy hand, for this is not how we should behave."
Sleep comes but once per day.
What would you dream?

Crazy

Some people may call me crazy
Sometimes I call myself crazy
But I think I know what's truly crazy:

The man who takes sticky notes
And a pen whose ink smears
Onto the top of a parking structure
4 stories high
Who yells at the noisy lights
Whose cacophonous, showy "light"
Blinds and hushes the symphony
In the night sky.
Who sits in the corner of a parking space
Glancing now and again at the moon;
the reason he came all this way
The blushing, beautiful moon

He is not crazy.
Who's crazy are those who refuse to do the same.
For their passions, their inspiration, their gods or goddesses, their loves.

And if you do not agree with me,
Well, then I'd rather be crazy
If I can continue in this "maddening" love.

Mountain-side glowing
In the blue bath of moon shine
Intoxicating
As the most ripe draught
Without the side-effects of
Alcohol. Beauty
Drank in by the eyes
Absorbed by the retina
That all men thirst for.

Meadow

Putting power to the pedals
I was able to fly
Over ground, under sky
An earthbound glider, quickly flying high.

Then, a sudden quiet
As the blackened cavern spread wide
Became quite sparse, then none at all
As the solid walls of pine and cedar
Gave way to:

Shuddering, silent, shimmering sprigs of grain
Hushed as the wind lazily pattered along their tips.

Further still, a single sentinel, stood in solitude, watching over
The heads of grass and looking towards

The shadow-borne silhouettes of a
Forest untamed. Jagged peaks penetrating

Skies of the bluest blue.
The last rays of sunlight licking monoliths of granite
Crumbling gods of other eras still ruling mortals today

All stood
Watching, quietly, but surely
The meager creature that had sped into their domain.
The meager creature that had become completely entrapped.
Like the deer to his light.
Or the guru to his epiphany
So was I in the meadow.

I am dissatisfied

I am dissatisfied
With this piece
It is too trite.
The structure is too common
Too common for the subject matter
I am no pop song writer
I am an artist
A wordsmith
A listener to the soul
To the intagible
The transcendent
Which makes no sense
And guides us nonetheless

Shout your words, Muses!
Through the woods, they echo
And I hope that I may catch
A sound, a murmur, a quiet whisper
Of the wondrous things you said.

Milky

The mountains are
Much closer to
The heavens than
The sky would choose

So pouring out
Her milky white
She hides behind
A milky blush

For trav'lers see
Much more of her
Then blackest sky
Would choose to show

To other men
Entrapped in lives
Who firmly sit
In holes below

To beauty blind
They trod along
To tones, they are
Deaf, deaf to songs

She sings of things
All greater than
Those sung by mean
Who die below

To mountains, run
My invalids
Such wonder see!
Hear notes again!

Her milky blush
Made not in vain
If men can learn
Her song again

Static

It was a cold and biting night
As I donned my plastic sandals
And ventured into the bite
With a fire in my heart

One heated with my own wrong
Furnished with the fuel
Of a thousand unsaid apologies, long
Burning inside of me.

I flipped open the phone;
She picked up the invisible line
And I poured out my heart, slown
Only by the crests of time.

We both made small talk.
Ideas picked here and there
Jobs, weather, all flopped
Clumsily through the speakers.

Then... static.

For minutes at a time.

Nothing but a null signal.

Floated through the cold.

She told me I was missed.
I told her I missed her back.

Then, static again.
Frightening, quiet static.
As if the electrons themselves
Were afraid to move.
And, instead, whispered quietly amongst themselves.

The girl on the line;
My girl on the line
Was completely absent.
No familiar, happy words,
Not even the sound of a breath.
Just that ever-present, ever-frightening static.

Where did you go, Stephanie?
I missed you.
And not just your body or your mind.
I miss your warm tones over the speaker
Which were replaced by static.

Light

The room was cold and empty
And dark with nothing but a screen
Lighting up the shell of a person
So certain in his self-conviction.

He cooled down and his throat dried.
And his breathing slowed as his fingers
Froze. Unable to move.
And he turned his eyeballs inside his head.
And saw nothing.

Nothing that could inspire
Such wonder-filled
words.

Despite his greatest hiding of the truth
Some light shown through.
Through the cracks it shone
And in the darkest corners.
It shone. That despite everything,
She was willing to say that he was wrong.

She was willing to serve as the exception
In a pefectly constructed system of artifice
Designed to deceive even himself.

No, the poet was not dead.
He was suffocating.

The once optimistic hero
Ruined by reality never died.

They were trapped
By his choice.
By the barriers constructed by
A man trying to escape pain.
By choices made in mad, animalistic
Fear. Isolating himself from himself.

And so the poet told him to write.
And the optimist slowly stirred.
As the tears welled up in his eyes,
He realized this was inspired... by her.

Poetry

The ability
Inside of me
To render thoughts beautifully
Has quietly
And secretly
Taken its leave of me.

So deliberately
And liberally
I render my words simply
Hoping to see
That some of them
Had dribbled out as poetry.

It runs like blood

It runs like blood, this mixture
That slowly drips off the fork
Textured, speckled, red as tongues
That have been bitten far too often.

It's thick like blood, but thicker
And it coagulates much quicker.
The bits give it something to hold on to
As time does flowing through the heart.

But it's sweet; not like blood.
Yet, blood is sweet. It brims with
Sugars and memories, sweat and tears
Though its taste is never pleasant

Life runs like blood, but thicker
It is always sweet in memory,
But unpleasant in the sense.
And it's textured, speckled with experiences.

It runs like blood.

To Prom?

Just a few weeks ago, I hardly knew
The wonderful person that is you.
It's strange that the beautiful fruit
Is hidden by the tree, colors made mute
Behind veils of green and thin stems.
I regret not having seen you behind them.

So it is to this end that I propose
Through my rhyming words; poetry, not prose.
I've finally asked for money, permission,
Now I must take the final step of my mission:
The question I ask you, Stephanie...
Would you like to go to Prom with me?

The poet in me is dying

The poet in me is dying
Which I find quite disturbing to say
Who needs the crazy old imagist inside of me anyway?

Though these words are rhyming
And the rhyhtms are not well-set (as they always are)
I find myself writing about nothing incredible (instead about topics sub-par)

Such as how I cannot find inspiration
In the most menial of tasks, nor in the flower
Who is swaying gently in the grasses all the day, every hour.

As the trees move in the wind
Their seeds swim in the breeze and shake.
They all eventually fall loose so that they may procreate.

So is the poet in me, swaying in emotion
Tied up, steadfast, in the mind of a rationalist.
Dying desperately to escape and inspiring me to write this.

On Dying

One of the great paradoxes of life
Is that man is not living, but dying.

From the moment he is born,
It is a constant struggle against
Forces of great opposition
To live. In living, you are dying.

For how could there be life
Without death?

However, most feel death to be
A definite moment.
When the heart stops its movements.
When the brain becomes insulated and sparks no longer fly though it.

Save for those rude deaths instantly caused
By man or nature which take lives instantly,
I disagree.

Man is dying, not living.
From the moment he is born,
He is fighting a losing game.
His senses dull he wages a war against his environment.

The things he can once see, hear, touch, smell, feel slowly
Start to lessen after years of nonstop fighting
Until the man himself loses the will
To prolong his destruction
And waves a white flag
Giving himself up
While the others
Still choose
To die
Living is easy.
Any creature can live
Without ever experiencing mortality.
How will you die?

Apology

What is an apology? Just words

Words spoken in coated thick in regret

Maybe sorrow, maybe sadness, maybe sarcasm.

Words that hesitate

To slowly

Drop off

The

Tongue

As honey would.

They're golden too.

But are they sweet? That is not for me to say, but for you.

What do they taste like, dear girl?

Do you accept them with silver spoon,

Drizzle them upon your feelings and consume?

Forget, forgive? Go on to live?

For they have covered my mind in dread

And sat unsaid for far too long.

But like all good honey, an apology must ferment.

And like all good honey, an apology makes cavities.

In the mind, in the soul, in the heart.

But never the teeth.

It is always a pleasure to bring the syllables out

But never one to see them received.

And as I contemplate what I have done,

I hope that my honey has fermented long

And is pleasing to your pallet

Because I feel that I have done wrong.

But I know not how your buds arrange

To taste that of which I am about to say

So please, dear girl, if you would please

Take a minute, hear bee's food, and stay.

For I have missed you in my life

Though you stayed far distant from me

And to talk with you once again

Fills my hole-ridden soul with glee.

Shoving Knives In

Walking my way down a straight corridor,

I spied a view that I had never seen before.

It was on a face which I knew too well

It was sitting, drooping, born from hell.

Upon the mask was a look of fear

Combined with surprise at my being there

As if in another situation we had been.

She seemed to be saying I was shoving knives in.

First reactions are always the truth

Because emotions are wild in their youth

As they age, they can all be guised

Behind fake smiles and averted eyes.

Though your blades fell heavy on me too,

I'm sorry, dear girl, that I've hurt you.

It's too damn quiet around here

It's too damn quiet around here

I realized venturing into the night

And listening for fear of nothing

I soon found my fear was right.

No noises of the night owl,

No blowing of Zeyphr's breath,

No murmurs among the mountains,

No sounds but quiet regret.

And there I sat a-brooding

Atop my tarnished tree;

My mind fell through the present

Into the past of you and me.

The nights were much more noisy

Filled with the sonorous coo

Of two night owls flying

Now utterly silent, me and you.

It's too damn quiet around here

If I may say it again.

I had to lose a lover,

But I feel I've lost a friend.

Words to a Night Owl

The night owl, in the tree, cooing softly

To the moon? To the stars? "Who? Who? You?"

Yes, night owl, it is you that I see:

Golden beak, glowing eyes, as you flew.

Oh night owl, words succinct, why do we

Try to give such a feeling imperfect words?

With a grace unmatched, you fly so free

With your solitude, you stir me, bird.

Which brings me to a matter of heart

When asked why do I try to describe

The emotion I feel when I start

To set eyes upon your person, alive.

I must end with a word on the truth of these words.

They degrade. Too much beauty for such wretched herds.