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Life is no illusion; No trick before your eyes; An’ though you are everything that you may ever know; Still, I see you, from the other side; Judge, jury, executioner; Acting on impulse, of others’ deliberation; Oh, how I would love to love another: To knock upon their door; But I am too dumb for games and too ugly to make a change.

Stretch and release; Ambition cast by the wayside as the water pulls you under; Now watch, as life slows before your very eyes, and wonder: Is this really happening? Playing for keeps; Aspiration drawn from that pool of depth ever increasing; In every next generation: Feel our shared blood coursing through your veins; Catch and release; Open your eyes and wonder: Is this really happening?

Lost in thought; Building a hollow empire of sticks and stones; Chasing ghosts; Facing down the withered remains of a life less traveled; So many promises turned to the wind; So many brothers left to hang; And yet I strive, with a fool’s intent: Never returning to the same place twice.

In life there are journeys one must make alone. Some by choice, some by circumstance, some by downright (and damned if I do say,) blind luck. It’s easy to believe that others will be there, to believe that sympathy and empathy are one and the same. You would be wise to reconsider your approach, if you find this to be the case. No one can hold your hand through the trials of growth. No one can carry your burden through the tribulation of development. The anger that you feel may be emulated, even reciprocated, but the sorrow you know will always be yours alone. This is how we grow, as strong and vibrant individuals: by facing the harsh realities of a world that would love to otherwise destroy the very fabric of what makes us human. All systems tend toward disorder, and as such, control is a fool’s illusion. The acceptance of this fact will serve you well along the way. Human beings are frail creatures, lacking the physical fortitude of our primate relatives. It is by intelligence and sheer indomitable will that our species was chosen by the process of natural selection. This is what separates us from lesser life forms: the ability to semi-consciously comprehend abstraction and formulate complex responses to the circumstances of the reality in which we find ourselves inextricably bound. Now, through deduction and subsequent reduction, we draw conclusions based upon this observable data. For some of us, the outcome is purely analytical, for others spiritual, and for the vast majority it’s somewhere in between. Any man or woman who claims to fully understand the nature of reality is a bald-faced liar. Accept no single source at their word, whether it be pope or parent. By any account this point of view is solipsistic, even nihilistic in nature. And yet, tens of thousands of years of selective breeding have not produced a generation of minds capable of truly comprehending and enveloping the ineffable nature of reality. Though there may be a theoretical framework laid; and though our practices may have become infinitely more complex, the bounds of human knowledge have yet to define age old questions of the purpose of life or the individual. What I am about to say is not an original thought: Individuality is a game that the supreme being plays with itself. Within the infinite nature of creation lies the sobering realization that a life alone is not a life worth living. Surviving for the sake of survivability produces negligible intellectual development. To exist as a single being in the void, a single light in the dark, would cause one to atrophy in all forms. As such, the only answer to stemming the tide of this infinite entropy is individuality. I truly believe, blindly and without evidence, that the ability to live as a single and distinct being amongst many is the single wish of the prime mover. So enjoy your life. You aren’t getting any younger, and you’ve been around a lot longer than it may seen.

This reality seems so far removed; In a mind calcified by careful observation of self and other; Drowning: In repression of anger and passive aggressive motive; Thriving like rodents; Loving like vultures; Does anyone really deserve the treatment that they’ve been given?

The course of the breeze turns; Following, I forget my own name; Under the weight of this load; The buckling of belts and knees, the knotting of bends and leads; It will only be a matter of time until I am forced to throw it all away; And entrench my mind in the warm creases: Of another’s body and exotic chemistry.

This outcome was as inevitable as: The dusk before the dawn; For she saw in me a means to an end; And I, in her, another lie to tell myself.

In my dream last night: There you were; And I, a third wheel, ever left to my own devices; Knew exactly what it meant as each onlooker; A sector of Self; Shared their unfavorable opinion; I awoke sobered by the prescience of my subconscious mind; Chose to soften my pursuit: And seek fulfillment in solace.

Far beyond the wonderment o’ fresh new heights to roam; My mistress beckons and I heed her call; The world anew greets me, through sensation redefined; As the doorway of perception frames her supple form, colored by desire; I have long been lost in this frozen field; Shedding stripes in pursuit of game beyond my ability to take; Ever the fool: I press onward, in disregard of peril; Until she wills– Only then may I return.

We, now; As seraphic fragments, in dissolution, recreate: An ever evolving exposition: Of claim and jealous stake.

Upon the summit of personal endeavor: O that journey, freed by drive and effort; Perched, the scorned bearer of forgotten devotion; Stilling awareness; Within the Hand of Fatima, beneath the Eye of He; Existing, absolutely; In the present moment.

Withdrawal: For the sake of another; As a means to mitigate the burden of emotion too soon revealed: I have been here before, I understand my fault; I am but a child in regard to affection: Simple; Easily drawn, and quickly released: Desiring only consideration and a sincere statement of mutual intent.

Woe, the still of bond reserved; As passion emptied by capacious wounds: Of time and effort squandered; In Hadean waters o’ form too early moved; Before the casting of discernment: As an answer to the delusion of youthful folly; And its discordant belligerence.

In omnipotence, the absence of competition– An’ omnipresence: Atrophy of erudition; As raw power is a piling of skeletal remains– An’ frailty, the warm revival of import ascertained.

Like the playing of a hand, as the opening of the mind’s eye; Manifest in sign and symbol; Drawn of genetic memory; In antiquated resurrection of the eidolon soul and man’s quintessence; Encased within this husk of body, a nervous mess: The substantiation of a single vessel; Testified and materialized; Aged and incorporated; Along the voluted lines of fabricated convolution; Are we now, concurrently, and relentlessly ensnared; Within this, the cerebral matrix of corporeal form.

I have found you in my mind: Wandering the corridors, unadorned; Of this, my mechanized shell; And I, the battery powered man; Know nothing of the human condition, for I have never been complete; And I have never known defeat; As the gears of mind turning have ever been: My reprieve.

The same old songs play in my head and I wonder where you are, if you ever think of me, or lie on my behalf; The honest answer is never easy, except in cases that bear no fruit; As it should be, no doubt, but a travesty nonetheless; In the fatality of eternity: We ascend these steps, and unlock the gates; Hoping this room is less spartan than the last.

Vacant, the pyrrhic stirring: As the depth of notes, resounding; In the engulfing eminence of darkness rings the absence of her song; In her heart the idle pounding of breath for the other’s sake; And her eyes, the light enshrouded, by the toll each word must take; As the time for action is coming and she has seen it all along: Will, the voice of Zeus and Jupiter; Make right infernal wrongs.

It’s all in my head, I repeat aloud: Reminded of what dreams may come; Forgetting which nightmares share that same space; O, humble me, my divine: So that I may live to see; A heavenly peace, everlasting: As but a single part of me.

I, magi nation, but one of many, scorned; Amongst the crowds amassed in wonder of those flopped upon the thorns; Having discovered this old labyrinth, laid out before the door; Egress from you in the exodus: Of procession evermore.

Illegible– under the influence; Of deftly placed papyrus, weathered in bygone eras; Falling down this rabbit hole; Without a carrot above, nor a blade to bare; In menace; This holy mountain, but one of many: Sought as the same zealous stone; In the name of Deus Adonai; Lies, the complicated truth: As a delicate crumbling, in reformation; Of Roman rite and tidal pools.

Individuation, that terminal frontier; As a rite of birth, the tender sacrament: Unification of inferior force and innate desire; Baptised now, as a mortal life; In water rippling, whilst muscles heave; Raised upon totems and icons; Elucidated in inks and scrolls; Ever awaiting, within the sacrificial chalice, untainted by sin: The blood of a newborn struggle.

Imperfect, you fly upon the wings of a swan; And me, upon my high horse; Wielding desire As a blade untarnished; And the wills of men: Their mortal foes; Within fields of bodies planted, beneath the darkness of a sky; From the crowns of towers, erected; Walls laid thick with brick and blood: O’ clay were we all once animated; Without the wisdom of our masters; So into the heights of regalia we’ll fly: Spouting gnostic legend– Of our own humble origin.

In this tapestry of confusion: I have been weaved as a fraying thread; My poor mind, the fibre splitting; A single strand of crimson red; The strain heats me like a burner of my heart the living stove; As my head is boiling over and thoughts refused: The comfort of a cove.

In a field of stellar mechanism, we ride these waves: As tides dictated by the moon and her gravitational partner; And we see in the sky at night, the same stars moving; In a situation of contrived conviction; From this terrestrial station upon which we find ourselves, ever revolving; Ever decaying; Ever releasing our incomplete phases; In cycles of planetary procession; As our observations of seemingly constant phenomena; Are contemplated in the glow of illuminated capitulation: For we are so very young.

My bedsheets fall in the smooth folds of inviting nights: Where my mind exercises in emptiness and my dreams take on a life of their own; It would be the greatest honor to share this positionUpon the summit of personal endeavor: O that journey, freed by drive and effort; Perched, the scorned bearer of forgotten devotion; Stilling awareness; Within the Hand of Fatima, beneath the Eye of He; Existing, absolutely; In the present moment.

with a worthy ally; Alas, I am not aware; Of the one who would bear that burden.

Behind the lids of tired eyes: My heart flips; Knotted in the strings cast by her infrequent smiles; Dancing within my chest as if a marionette played by piano wire; Unsure of what to do or how to act; Ploddingly formulating a method with which to part this sea of green: Dividing us.

There are nights that my fantasies become inseparable from memory; I sometimes wonder: What is real and what is manufactured; There’s one recollection of you and me in the front seat of my car; And I’ll be damned if I don’t believe that it actually happened; Maybe it did, but those days are such a blur; Maybe I wanted you and just never spoke up; Regardless of the past: It’s a goddamn shame that I let you slip away.

With this fine blade, I cut away the nuisance of new growth; Separating: This shallow frame from trials auld and lessons learned; Integrating: The selfsame parity and clarity of novel paradox; Consumed: Swallowed whole, as a bitter pill or distilled spirit; You can keep your spoonful of sugar; I have got my own.

There’s heat lightning in the distance: Telegraphing my thoughts; Remnants of you in my memory; I can’t seem to reconcile; I know that you’re not quite perfect; Truth be told, neither am I; But someday I’d like to see you: If only to force a smile.

It starts as a ringing in my ears: Then, movement; In the corners of my vision, the slow and steady onset; Of awareness, sensibility, consciousness; Coalescing into this, the single operating system: Governed by the third eye, enforced by methodical training; Withstanding the unrelenting bombardment of Self; Imposed by ego.

In the early hours of the morning, when bats are still vying for prey; As the sun rises over the horizon; Songbirds herald the coming day; I can see it through my window, from behind my lens prescribed; I can be there through a doorway; Insofar as I may choose to finally imbibe.

Growth is a slow process, maturation even moreso; Loneliness sets in like a vulture; Prying skin from bone.

A concord plays upon my ears, as my mind slips; Into that preternatural state, through her lens beheld: The sun dipping beneath the horizon; The moon at its zenith, beginning the slow descent: Into the witching hour; Switching hands from right to left; The mage begins her toils of bane and ritual; And I consume her venom: Crafting the essence of my own misconceived frame of reference.

An’ who shall see: The solidification of a single soul; An act of rare precedence; The righteous generation, in shine of eternal light; For he who corrupts has been corrupted an’ stews in it; An’ he who seeks the name of God knows the truth of that perilous path; An end approaching, as the passing of each tallied moment; In the respiration of each faltering breath: For the Lord does not speak in numbers, nor walk the domain of man; It is only the serpent that slithers beneath our mortal feet; An’ draws the blade: Before our very eyes.

Defeat is for the faint of heart an’ weak in spirit; For the stalwart an’ oft maligned share the furtive ground of zealous ardor; Propelled point to point by iron sights an’ disillusionment; Forever falling short of the objective; Called upon, drawn as cards; Dealt blow after staggering blow; Left for dead, left to rot; Left to lie; And yet never lost between the lines.

These eyes are slowly blurring, this cough is long an’ loud; I breathe just like a chimney, my lungs heave: In and out; Tar sits upon my palate, with black coffee in my hand; I have picked my poisons, by choice an’ consequence; Don’t cry for me in failing: For I knew it all along; In silence, I watch the rainfall an’ compose a lonely song.

An’ I don’t want to let it go; These white sands slipping through my fingertips; As a mountain in my palm: The moist phrasing of seduction; Upon her lower lip: That perfect seat for my name; Uttered, in satisfaction; The rising of desire, externalized; The sinking of my seed into her form softly burrowed; In the opulence of ecstasy.

Ominous, thunder rolls; Above feet firmly planted on grounds fresh with rain; Eyes set upon treetops, e'en raptors ne'er roam; Gnarled, the hollow remains of a once great pine now stand; With no worldly master to heave an’ ho the withered husk; As sure as that pillar will crumble, so, in time, shall I; And return to the womb of the Earth; Or the bowels of Hell: Of my own volition.

Set in our ways, we lose sight: Of the loving embrace that each so desperately needs; The reason for which we strive: For the sins of our fathers cast now a shadow across time; O'er the slow softening of rigid shores, carried down the mainstream; As if the waters of a rushing creek.

Ain’t no human can make me happy; An’ I’ve done given up the bottle; All my vices take something from me; As is usually the case; There ain’t no wisdom found in emptiness, it’s just a thing that people say; Ain’t no human can keep me happy; An’ I’m better off this way.

The living exchange: An elegant dance of molecules through permeable walls and substrate; Ever revolving in the void; As water seized within the stratosphere lightly rains life down upon us; Obstructing our observation of astral phenomena: The predication of our predictions; Light traveling from novel beginnings to our living end; Ne'er allowing man to see beyond his mortal pane.

Stepping off: The boat, the train, this plane; A vessel that so carefully carries: Memory, emotion, fuel for the engine; My brain is a catacomb; A mass grave unmarked; So antiquated the stench of flesh rotting has been carried away; On trade winds, in massive sails, hauling fresh blood: And new discovery.

In the distance, the red haze of streetlamps: Lonely in the pitch-black night; On my skin, jagged relics in remembrance: Of hope coiling from within; Upon my head sits the coronal of hawthorn: Roughly hewn, poorly trimmed; An’ my chest heaves as the yawning ocean: Borne upon primordial wind.

Withdrawal, lethargy; The creeping burden of wisdom gained from hedonism; Bound too tight; Pressed for time; Failing to see the exposition of divine law; Hearing the inner voice turned to vice; As the page turns and paint dries; The fallibility of a worldly mind dulls into inconstant sleep.

Notes and chords; Thrummed in wordless unison; As elegance of education, masks the raw talent of virtuosity; Orchestrating: The dead calm upon my face; Unfurrowing my muscled brow; Playing upon infrastructure, in electronic transmission: A passion known so well; Co-ordinating and unraveling; A soul never relaxed.

Like lightning’s strike, my heart turns over to another’s smile; Hope comes rushing in; Until I find myself stuck upon the muddy banks of this flooded valley; Slipping into her warm embrace, just as she begins: To turn away.

Independent, you cry; Beneath the pennant of a woman whose name you’ve forgotten; Our history written upon the page of her well worn symbol; Fifty shades of grey singing out in the night; Lights in the sky screeching: The lies of the self-made; Dye stained hands held in vertical cities; Chasing the prize of loneliness; Surrounded by poorly sealed tombs; And the weeping of men damned to a life of servitude.

Days of work leading into the falling night; As she fades to memory and I grasp at the unknown; An ever evolving locus: Lessons lost to dawn; This republic of one, in faith and appetite; Courting the demiurge and its loosh desire; With my head in the clouds; And feet firmly planted; Upon the foundation of columns standing: The test of time.

If there was something I could say to put your precious head at ease: I would; Because all that comes to mind when I think of you is how far you seem to be: From me; From the truth; From the compassion you deserve; And though the body desires more than mind is capable of administering, loneliness has taught me to curb that tiny voice; For when you cross my thoughts, it is not perversion that pervades my rumination; But care and a sincere desire to breathe life back into your slowly bluing lips.

In the fatal frame o’ the final throes; Life exiting; The review of time wasted and efforts made: Ego tripping at the gates of hell; The dying wish, the last words shared: As failures fade and gains remain; An’ the children; O the children: Will ne'er be the same.

I am but an ant, ascending a molehill; And she is just: The queen; Directing my action by sensory input.

I know this feeling as well as my tongue knows the back of my teeth; And it eats at me like a caustic chemical from the inside of my stomach: Desire, dismay; The dropping of one’s guard as bricks weathered by the rain; Love is contrivance: Anger evolves from its loss; And I shall never fully understand anything beyond the rusted strings of fate; For destiny is a fickle lady and she plays upon my mind; Like the soft, padded footsteps of sneaking suspicions at night.

To be quite honest, there isn’t a single thing that hasn’t been said before. The responsibility of the writer is to present their ideas in a manner which compliments the zeitgeist. At our core, we are creatures of habit, and the written word is a dated means of communication. At least, for me, therein lies the appeal: Poetry and prose allow the re-iteration of the current state of memetics in a form often disregarded by the uninitiated, but well known to the aged. In short, it carries the weight of the visual and sonic arts to a crowd otherwise oblivious to the active evolution of the psyche.

Secure in understanding, the truth flowed from lips parched and parted; In eternal thirst, with fingers pointed: To the sky, to the ground, to the faces of family gathered; As we slowly assembled into more than the sum of our parts; Investments with no guarantee of return; Children chosen by the merit of words drawn in alphabet soup; To herald the new age: As a new way to the same unbeaten path.

You may think you can do this on your own and at your wish, it shall be done; You may know it’s just another mistake, but I would love to prove you wrong; As imperfect as you feel right now, I have been down that same road; An’ I could move in you as a river dammed, or dead sea upon which to float.

Sometimes; Just sometimes: It’s enough to make a grown man cry and not even bother to hide it in shame; Numbers on a bill, letters on a page: Bodies in the ground; Never coming home; Never knowing what they missed, having left it all behind to line the coffers: In another’s pocket; Or man the posts behind the line.

As a lover scorned, O so bitter; An’ woe now, the family torn; From rusted strings, like guillotines: To the bolo ties of a gambling man; An’ e'ery child stuck in between; Looking to the world for a connection missed: From the very lips of life’s first kiss; Hear now, and listen: We’re here, now: So glisten, glimmer and gleam; Polish the gears of this well oiled machine; An’ leave your mark.

Angels never die; This blade by my side, cutting back the vines along the garden’s walls; I am a mere watchmen of the gate: As is, my station now; An’ the blessed play above, calling out my mortal name; As I await the call to action; Or, better yet: A lover, to keep me quiet.

From the oily pores of my olive skin; Do I welcome the warm embrace of divine light in fleeting glimpses; Only so deep as a single thorn in one’s side; This is my dream we’re sharing in, let there be no illusion: As the desire for claim subsides; I recognize my responsibility.

So we drew the eye, in your favor; And now who benefits? Perhaps, it’s just a matter of timing: As often are, boots upon a door; The invocation of evil for the evocation of light; And the retention of wisdom at the expense of ignorance.

When you make it this far up the stream; Without a guide, without a weapon: You have to start listening.

Joints overextended, extremities pulled from sockets; Pockets of tension and relaxation; The body aching and interacting; How could the mind even begin to perceive a force greater than the individual; Greater than the institution; Beyond fallible groupthink; Assuming no gender, simply extant; Independent of transcendentalist schools of thought; Ever organizing as: Co-ordination of movement, co-ordination of will, co-ordination of action; And yet somehow still, inextricably impressed: Upon the eye of the observer.

A single thought as blood rushes through my head; Propelled by my heart; Chambers expanding and contracting: Denying myself the sorrow of another loss; High above; The ruler seated swiftly upon the throne of cognition; In emptiness, the call is heard: Return to the way, return to the light; Returning to the place where I have been myself before; Never looking back, except in fleeting glimpses, followed by laughter, often in discomfort; Propelled by my heart: Second chances are reserved for those who need them.

A thousand tiny violins, playing a country tune; Ringing out in darkness, beneath a barrage of fireflies; Encapsulated in memory and mason jars; Dreams of the delusion: Of childhood, and growing up, and dying; Before our time.

Without a map, without a plan: The great have gone; Into every darkened corner; Into the deep, into thin air; Strapped to rockets, buckled into submarines: Knowing only the restraints they chose; The great beyond: A master with no end; A life free of expectations; Excepting the ones carried in their own heads.

I dip my toe into the dead sea, and read of promise long since expired; I built my faith around arcane rite and legend; And found myself: Intoxicated by every breeze blown; Addicted to every molecule of every compound know to man.

Knowing the alternative, through and through as I do; This will be the best day of my life: As I turn to you.

Don’t lose it now; Don’t lose your head; Don’t lose your cool; Don’t set your traps like a fool: Establish the mean; Let all works flow from that one; Central place; Mind not the minds too small to question or answer: In blind faith; Lean forward: Lean on; Family and friends.

Who amongst you can say that you wouldn’t do the very same things; Left, right left, right; We all serve the same God and in all ways;

Always have: Left, right left, right; There is a singular goal: Propagation of the species, betterment of the whole; Left, right left, right; We all serve the same God.

Son, it’s time to: Grow up, show up; Son, It’s time to hit the ball: See the ball, be the ball; Son, it’s time to run the bases, hurry up now, you lagged behind; Son, It’s time to hit the ball: Grow up; Show up.

Collectively, we shared our final words; Made peace with our common gods: Subservient only to divine will; And cast ourselves from the bounds of material men on to the higher ground; And then we waited; Millennia, it seemed; For the whole of humanity to follow: If only in our dreams.

Of empty wells and idle speculation; As markets rise and nations fall; We watch the end coming, and know: That this is the moment for which we have prepared; The changing of hands; From one master to the next: The torch has been passed; All that’s left for us to do is grasp.

What an honor it is to have a body: To walk amongst the living; To sprawl along the bed; And what an honor it is, to be amongst friends; The survival of the motor neuron amazes me: Every goddamn day of my miserable life.

What a mistress she would make: The infinite void; Breathed to life by the hearts of her own creators; Automation, elegance, superior design; In every matter and every form; And what a potent ally she would be: If courting were a consideration of kingdom; Our friend; Our empress; Our resignation; With each cajole and off-handed sigh.

Unification is the only answer, sub-ordination of obligation, sub-ordination of will; Assimilation into the higher Self is an act, performed by choice; Not the violence of a hair-brained trigger; All other consideration is secondary: For empire is a task best left to her master and dominion best left to ours.

Like the flesh of a fresh kill; I shed the inauspicious and sever my own will; Awaiting the inevitable; Conflict drawn by my own hands; As sorrow fades away; In germs stripped by the flesh of my palms; For lack of want, for lack of waste; For lack of effort: I find my place.

Lights out; The long walk down that darkened corridor, blinking: She turns to me as I turn away; I’ll empty my head and exorcise my demons upon this blank page; I never intended to ask your forgiveness; Fear is a reaction, a conditioned response; Love is just emptiness: So I pour my superfluous soul into her waiting vessel.

I miss you everyday; And every night I drag on unfiltered cigarettes; Listening to your voice oh, so far away; As I imagine your lips replacing this bundle of leaves; Calling my name; I know: No other could compare.

I imagine: The metrics of clouds and open spaces; As the weight of a dream upon a heavy head; And I find myself in all these places; As angels fallen; With callous faces.

As tension upon your strings strums music pure and notes so true; Do these words flow from my mind like wine from the mountain’s top; Of hills and prairies is this land, made up: A globe spinning slowly in the morning’s eye; On into eve I reluctantly crouch; Awaiting the sun’s light ever more.

In my dreams you haunt every darkened corner; As a memory of one never made nor desired; The truth of the matter is that I’ll never shake your hand nor share in our embrace; And yet a part of me holds on; To those illusory moments from which I cannot escape.

Romance is a cruel mistress; As she wraps my mind in ties too thick to cut away; “Quickly now,” she whispers, “Not in front of the kids;” And my wanton body follows; Far more often than I would care to admit.

It’s unnerving watching the games people play as time advances and we regress; Drowned in regret; Throwing caution to the wind and pissing into it in the same turn; As a child I spoke as a child– Acted as one too; As a man I am utterly confounded by the recursive patterns exhibited by otherwise sane individuals.

My dear friend, I will miss you: For where you have gone, is a place from which you cannot return; I shall shed tears as salt, like seawater streaming down my contorted flesh; As the departed have no words for living ears, nor the living, the eyes to perceive: The grim visage of death’s faces, in blank stares; Upon animated corpses.

Of full circles and influence, dreams and decadence; The wandering mind knows not; For there is no single seat of power, nor strand of excellence; They are all beautiful and each with their own downfall; Disdain is a phenomena of perception and glory a cold commemoration; As each man is responsible for his actions: So are the motives that led him.

The time has come: An’ e'en though my thoughts have been complete; An’ thine efforts concerted; It is conservation upon which I must now rely: In contemplation, competition, and ceremony; Acts manifest by the hands of children and allies; Under my purview; As notches cut into my flesh, by the flogging of mine own hand; Lines drawn and carried across mine own broad shoulders; And as love seated: In the unified hearts of my once splintered enemies.

Closed circuit: No outlet, No release; A heavy rock in a sturdy sock; Watching the horizon through a thicket of trees; Walking the same streets every night; Eight foot fences, cameras, and cop cars; Sitting on the curb at the entrance to the preserve; Concrete pillars, handfuls of pine tar; Playgrounds and bus lines; Retention ponds: Of friends and families, of ties and leads; Palms hanging low, lizards larger than human beings; Trailer loads and Trader Joe’s; Fifty per cent chance of rain; Every single day.

From three to one we found ourselves, trapped, in a shrouded room; As fingers of the same hand, a circle closing; A noose around our necks; An image cast, a symbol drawn; As a line in the sand; For pigs and fishes the barrel’s bottom; Will, ne'er be thee end.

On again, off again, right again, wrong again; Creation flows from the depths within; Murky though that pool may be, dried and dulled by time; An’ through day that night may ever end: Within our lives will lie; For you, my friend, are far from me; And so very high above my proof; Both in drink and song, so let’s carry on; Beneath my father’s roof.

I have heard it said that words are meaningless, but as a matter of course, I would beg to differ; They are not a thing which can be given, but taken, or so it would seem; O flight of fantasy, this plight of peasantry, through definitions, divided, multiplied, and subsided; Reduced, reused, repatriated; And finally recycled under and over again.

There was never a number that sat right in my head; I took it as a sign and booked up my time with letters and ink; Shifting my weight from left to right; Squared up, slow to the trigger: Quick to release; There was never a method, beyond the erratic movements of my own hands as I stared at them; Set upon Chinese plastic; Impressed by my own whit.

An apology should ne'er be made: Without passion; A promise ne'er broken: Without blood; Everything is too much, and we’re always leaving somewhere; Or someone: A loan.

As the light through my screen, have I missed your precious voice; And your narrow mind, set on destruction; Built upon a foundation of distraction: My best friend and only alliance; The shade of your blinds drawn upon the boards of self-laid floors.

I’ve skipped a beat again, like a stone across the placid waters: Of a well as yet untapped; In words now lingering: On the tip of my tongue, in the front of my register, off the top of my head; Of all improbability have these things come; And by all accounts will they one day retreat; Until there is no longer the many, nor the few, nor the numbered, nor the new; From the spring of the bow as we were cast: Shall form return; And time accrue.

Held on, held back, held down; Tied and tried, found in guilt and contempt; With the victor, in valor, at no loss for words; Failing in sight, falling for false promises; Of broken dreams; In reckless abandon.

Call them back, call them forth: To and fro the destined go; Tread with caution, tread with ease; Of and from, as you please; ‘Twas mine own rite an’ mine own life; And theirs, the hallowed ground; 'Tis thine own course an’ thine own force: 'Twill make the trumpets sound.

There’s a thing I’d like to say to you, but it won’t make any sense; Until you’ve opened up your own eyes and caved in your own head; There won’t be any escaping us, my dear sister or blood brother; Once you’ve settled your own works, framed upon the tongues of others.