All the things you should have left unsaid

An hour later, the thoughts are still running around inside my head,
like my brain is unable to move on beyond the coldness of your voice
as I listened to you expressing your sense of betrayal and pain.
Was it the anger that drove you forward to express you fears?
Was it just the first moment to really say it after all these years?
Was it just happenstance, that this has ended our tragic romance?
Was I the one who really needed to hear all the things that would
have been better left unheard, unsaid?

An hour later, you still won't even stop pacing to look at me,
I said I was sorry although it wasn't something I had done,
it wasn't even a thing I had even thought nevertheless even said.
What was I to do as you railed against my lack of compassion?
What was I to believe as you stood there in fury, like you were
right and I was wrong, that I had missed the point, that the ship had
sailed, this was my one single chance, did I pass you by without
a pause, not even long enough to linger on my view askance
Is this a question or just one last plea?

An hour ago, you burned this bridge, case over, put it all to bed,
yet I lie here sleepless with more questions than answers in my
mind, am I always going to feel that I have been left behind?
Was it wrong to shed the tears, admitting the wrongs that someone
else committed, giving into imagined guilt, just to make peace
trading all that I have loved in order that we preserve what little
we have built of this relationship, like a sinking boat with no rats
we scrabble over such minor depressions like a pair of wet cats,
as it should be left unwritten, no tears wept, sanity is dead as I
reconsider one more time all the things you should have left unsaid.

The Legacy of Thorns

When the world makes perfect sense forming patterns in the flowers
that entertwine through the tangles of the vines of higher powers.
When all seems stable and endurable as we walk out into the light
that surrrounds us like the wings that seem holy and divinely right.
Then life is perfect, free from the shadows of pain, awake in the morn'
Why, in all this do we still find the thorns?

She dreamed the dream that girls have when they believe that they will
become Queen.
To rule with beauty, grace and the justice of all those who wish to be free
only to find that instead of roses, your truths are like the thorns that grow
inbetween.
Are we but spiders weaving our webs of deciept? Are we but conniving asps
biting our backs in a vain glorious attempt to hold onto ideals we never can
fully grasp?
She found that her power was only to dance on the ends of the puppet's strings
like a sad marionette moves to whim of the words her master want her to sing.

He dreamed of glory and the fortune that comes hand in hand with fame,
he believed that his might made all that he had done just and right
he believed that the Church would give hime identity, a holy name
he believed in so many things that turned out to little more than lies
whispered among friends and enemies like secret lovers lost in the night.
In the end, there was only pain at the failure of his word, his eternal shame
In the end, there was little else to do but look into the abyss, endure the
scorn.
You see, he forgot to look for the sorrow that comes when you stop looking for
the thorns.

The Knight falls, the moon fails, love, truth, freedom ending in this our tragedy
was any of it meant to become real, was it not all meant to be?
was there ever hope that we would change the world for a brighter day?
was there actually a chance we could succeed in any other kind of way?
was there a prayer for love amidst the ruin of ashes, tattered and torn
Will this be our legacy, as we find we live between the roses and the thorns?

Look now for another path that lies like the Sun in the east
wait for the change to come, wait for the coming of the Beast.

Walking in the Wasteland

The sun falls down from the sky and fire washes the earth clean of the human stain-
like a promise that only through the atomic fire can there be an end to strife, an
end to pain.
I walk upon the highways of molten glass, all that really remains of the paths of mankind,
was this all we were but travellers on the land, as temporary as the windslept memories
in my mind
Did all that we hope to achieve end with the child-like tantrums of half a dozen men
all screaming as if the world was a toy to be fought over in the middle of a school
playground?
Did all that we hoped to dream for come down who had the biggest bad bomb
as if our collective thumbs itched to press the flashing red button just to hear that
awful sound?
The end will come with a flury of fury, why are we in such a hurry?
are we but rats on the sinking ship of humanity to scuttle and scurry?
Is the wasteland all that will survive as if to say that all can be assured of
was the passing shadows of out past failures to make a hell below and another
hell above?

The sun sets on the wasteland where my feet had once walked through the ash
All that was, is no longer what it could have, should have become, hope defied
in the momentary angry clash
like school yard bullies laying waste to the efforts that would assured us of a peace
like we have never known
like the absolute denial that non-violnece was what we should have pursued instead
of weapons of steel and stone.
like there was a chance that we could walk hand in hand, finally knowing what it was
to be free
and all that should have been was like a universal love that could be shared between
you and me.
Now all is dust and I will find no place to place my head, the is no rest wherever I shall
roam
There is nothing but the wasteland and it's memories that lie scattered like skeletons of the
place that once was my home. 

Why you should never write poetry when you are depressed

Woe, rhymes with toe and who cares if it doesn't make a good metaphor.
Sighing, yeah that's what its like but even more so and that is what it's for.
Agony, is awkward and tragedy trumps the analogies that follow
tears and general miasma leaves your lines empty and hollow.
Despair is more amiable because you can juxtaposed against care
it's almost as maleable as using the rain like tears, pain like fears
like fog and mist and disaster and rhyming yet once again all the 
while as the thunder booms and the lightning flares and somewhere
in the middle of all this emotion, you forget that it mattered
that somewhere in this drunk moment, that you forgot to say something
about death and happiness and Kipling's words are to remind you
that this like the similes that preceed it are but pale imposters
will end your reign of coffee and madness, there is still some
random chance that you will find a meaning to all this sadness.

Aftermath

The rains had fallen is steady waves mirroring the destrcution of all the things I had known
or rather I thought I had known.
There were no more tears to be cried, everyone that it mattered to had already lived and died.
There was only the road upon which a thousands storms had worn smooth what once was rough
yet still the ghosts that surround me continue to whisper.
Was it enough? Was it enough?
Yet, if there was more I could have done, I would gladly redo it, I would reap the whilrwind once again, i would forget that I had paid all my dues, i would stride back across the world wasteland
just for one moment more to spend with you. 

The winds roll the few remaining clouds across the wide open skies each day, the memory of the rains wasting away like the promises I made but even as I made them I knew that they could not
be kept, like the space I wanted to preserve on my bed where once you had slept.
I shall not regret all that has passed, these are words to be unwritten, feelings that must remain unwept for if I am to remain walking down this desolate road knowing no end to that which I am not looking for.
The echoes of the laughter follow close behind, the ringing of her voice is still around me, here to nudge me, ever to remind.... of the days when I welcomed the sun and the rains, when nothing would harm me and by your side I would stand, smile in hand, as if that was all that life would
demand.

There is only the road now, the broken bits of pavement, the glassed remains of the places to travel
nothing is left to see. Was it for truth that you left. was it for love, was it for me?
Life is about the struggle, life is about the loss, life is about life and death and the tragedy.
I feel like MacBeth on this road, left the burn away like ash in the wind, I will strut and fret no more on this stage, I will not be remembered like the last words you wrote upon the pages of my heart. I am the idiot and the fool, who's tale will not be heard as your touch slips away down this lonesome path.
I walk on into the future, I walk away from the past, I walk on not knowing the outcome of all that I have won and lost in this our aftermath.

Dog Days

There it is out the window- in the sunlight, the moment when the heat slogs

in with humid tension and you know that the summer has gone to the dogs

sweat runs down your cheeks and drips off the tip of your poignant nose

the coolness of shade shrinks away from where ever you try to stand

as the memory of rain shrivels away like cellophane crisp upon the sand.

Then the clouds pull together as if to declare that they still can unite

bands of lightning spark and flash between the edges in and out of sight

the skies grow dark with the promise that there might be a gentle fall of rain

thunder pounds in drum beat precision cracks and snaps shattered glass

but no water drops come- just the sound and fury, nothing comes to pass.

These are the long hot days when a little bit of water would go a long way

to cooling the mad passions that rise up and tend to go wildly astray

where everything is so dry that all you can think of is finding a garden hose

spraying freedom to act like the child that you remember somewhere within

to dance upon the grasses, to run, to slip, to slip one more time again.

Waking Life

This morning as I lay in my bed semi dreaming absolute half fantasies
the web of the world I believe in frayed against the one that is without
and the change in gravity pulling me back to the sunlight and shadows
cast by the curtains that can only hope to block some little particles of
that which separates me from them.

Refusing to face the world without I pull the pillows over my head only
to disturbed the woman I dream of sleeping with in my lonely bed
she stirs and shakes as her reality begins to shrink around her and then
with a groan and the briefest of fingertip touches she slips away with the
last detritus of the night along with the now invisible stars and I am left
sprawled on the sheets in silence.

I live in this my waking life in anticipation of chance meetings that refuse
to occur, hoping and dreading that at any moment the woman that I have
longed my whole existence for will turn in the checkout line and talk to me
and I will stand there praying in fervent rushes that my reply will not drive
away this one chance of her being in this reality and that I will never have
to return to my lonely bed.