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?