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The perilous foray into another heart, interchange as yet unseen: Unique moments shared between individual beings; And for all the constructs, even outright lies; Two bodies shall remain so, united by a single mind; Until one day, one half can no longer return; And even the most eloquent words fail to describe: A tether unbound.

I never really thought it would come to this, I mean sure, I had an idea of how my life would turn out; I was well aware that loneliness was an inevitability; But, I guess I didn’t quite understand how far down the rabbit hole the depth of longing could go; I assumed, like everyone else, that one day everything would change.

Beneath the blue sky; A trick of light, captured and reflected, like the glistening of a sociopath’s smile; An entire planet so woefully alone; Empathy as a simulation; Existing for a singular purpose; Reaching out into the void: An entire species so hopelessly devoted to finding anything more than what we have become.

It consumes me: This productive dis-ease; Some call it passion, others, inspired work; I call it creating one man’s own canon; A revisionist history, where dreams meet reality: Falling asleep mid sentence.

Winter’s requiem: A solemn note, frozen solid; As the crow flies, straight through the eye of a needle; So do these gossamer threads hold up walls of stone.

An aphotic breeze crossed the great divide: New efforts shot into thin air; Under the moon nearly full, passed a single tear; In a moment; Between black and white.

Ownership, a rusty blade; Occam’s razor cuts both ways; In the trenches now, light trickles in; Illuminating slow breath; Waiting for sunrise: At rock bottom, we will meet.

On spring’s cusp, by the water’s edge, sand meets the sea foam once again; Darkness consumes the slow ebb; I court the night and play with her like clay in my hands; Striking a balance; I tread with death; Yet another heart caught in the undertow.

Sometimes, I wonder if you ever think of me; If you ever drink alone, and wish I was there to keep you company; Because God knows we’re both getting older, and more stubborn by the day; And well, I sure as hell am not happy sleeping alone every night; But I won’t pretend to believe that your bed is ever empty; I will never be your fool; Nor will I play the Hades to your Persephone; For though I may lament low hanging fruit, I refuse to waste my effort on that which cannot be attained.

If there were more for man to do, would he even understand? The goal of life, a golden egg, lain and naught for human hands; So fit to rule, we find the eyes devoid of life, a tarnished soul; And grimly now, the man in grey, juggling skulls on glowing coals.

I close my eyes and see within: A globe of blue and speckled green; Drenched in satin, crimson hue: In droplets, as rose petals, pooled upon: An obsidian foundation.

Weary though the days may be, on into nights of deprivation; Through holes in rubber these soles will bleed, raked once o'er an’ under an’ through; Twisted like pretzels, held together by glue.

There were nights: Alone; Times through which you will never pass; During whence my clamour was lowered to a moderate whimper, and your eyes more oily than even the stone could glisten; Then, as lucidity began to set in, and resolution, sharpen; Vile moments emerged from the clockwork of gods; Passion encased within each and every one; Transmuted and extinguished, under it’s own cold, dead weight; The conductor, a mere firing of neuron; Freshly dead in a grave I sure as hell didn’t dig! Perchance revived, simulated, emulated, or purged at the whim of more enlightened men?

Some nations rise as civilizations fall; The Tower of Babel crushed under its own weight; Five hundred ways to say the very same thing; Doesn’t it beg the question: what’s really in a name? If Ra watched from the pinnacle of the Old Kingdom, how many faces could he really see? And if Zeus rained down thunder and lightning upon the people, can it really be said that he ruled the hand of man? And if Isaac, son of Abraham, husband of Rebekah, mother of Israel, had not forsaken Esau, would the book even be worth a second glance?

Black coffee; Black cloth; Ashes to ashes, upon the wings of a moth; If to each was given the very same breadth, then why am I now the only one left?

The older that I get, the easier it is to see: Wherever I lay my head is where you lay with me.

I’d be lying if I said that there were nights I did not regret the last words shared, but it comforts me to know that we are both better off, in spite of pain and misplaced wrath; The lover scorned, now the lover past; Drink with me from this cup of tears; The last words shared, forgotten, over these long years.

Stains and scars; A lifetime lived in the dark; These four walls holding me up, holding me in; The shutter closed; Another smile captured and kept for the stores, of a lonely heart; Projections; Upon the smokescreen, dissipating; Molecules unbound and recycled: Again and again.

I will never get married, I will never have kids, I will never find a companion, and I won’t have many friends; I’ll be a bit unhappy, But lie most of the time; I guess that’s just what life is like when you learn to cross the line; I’ll always be a stranger stuck in an unknown land; I’ll often be dishonest in matters signed by hand; I’ll be all around you and it won’t be very pretty, but if you know for what you’re looking, then it won’t be quite so shitty.

The very nature of the passion I feel is ephemeral, fleeting; A translucent longing; Like watching a silhouette through frosted glass; Never satisfied by a single being, only those aspects of every person for which I have ever felt affection; What a sick interpretation of romance this must be; For as soon as I admit to myself the one that I adore, the desire has already passed.

I am already dead; And in this knowledge, I find my peace: This is, without a shred of doubt, the only truth I will ever know; The mere presence of my perception, being observed by my own ego, on a linear timeline is all the evidence I will ever need.

It’s easy to romanticize, to fantasize, to intimate; But to demonstrate; To be the one out on that limb, testing; Spitting into the source, just to see if electricity flows upstream; Oh; Now that’s a different story; Because, you see: It’s easy to romanticize, to fantasize, to intimate; Until the details become too intimate…

In the chieftain’s arsenal, quivered, the tribal chant: Ownership of resource amounts to the very ownership of man; Dominion awarded by violence is harsh as a lone rifle’s crack; To the victor goes the spoils, upon the people’s backs.

Love is not achievement; Nor potent ejaculation; It is not the passion on another’s lips; Nor the searing gaze from a seductive mate; It is the soft embrace of a bedsheet, on a cool autumn evening; Shedding tears, alone, into a pillow; Hoping that one day someday will be tomorrow.

Finding friendly words to say: Conversation and small talk; You never know just what you have, until you know just what you’ve lost; There were days I broke my back by standing up too tall; And nights alone in contemplation of the coming fall.

The settler’s rite: “As slaves we pined!” A land worked o'er, and under the ground; These men made callous o'er a fertile plot; “‘Twas not our fault!” Exclaimed as chaff; Like valleys o'errun by the sierra’s flood: Bellies full of rotgut; Pockets lined with lead; The best dogs run rampant, without masters left to heed; Throngs of men hardly differ, if only in taunt and tease.

There was a moment, when it hit me; The sheer form that I had become; Neither demon, nor monster; Neither hero, nor liege; I had simply come to be, like every other living thing: An organism; A brand new colony; And mind was granted its domain, and body allowed its sovereign right, and I was no longer two parts; I was no longer incomplete; For to live without as within, and above as below, granted me democracy.

Street sweepers followed by garbage trucks; Spick and span.

We were never chosen, and yet, like cracks in the cement, sprouted in the interim; In the moments, between moments; Where time ceases to exist; Even drawing a single breath becomes an epic occasion; A relative slowing of the heart’s beat, reverberating through fingertips; Coursing back through and into the engine of existence; The thoracic cavity; Oxygenated and re-distributed, entirely un-aided, and yet completely dependant upon mind evolved from body.

It was my childhood, throwing clays in the field; Picking wild berries in the tall grass; The dam’s siren, and the deluge swallowing the bank every hour, like clockwork; Listening to cattle, grazing in the pasture, on the other side of the river; Stalking the woods with a .22, while my father staked the property lines; So many squirrels crucified, just to be thrown in a cooking pot; A snake without a head, splitting it’s body down the sides, its final grimace, hanging in a tree branch over the fire; A hunting party as a young boy, the smell of pierced intestines, and the crack as antler was separated from skull; Catching catfish with tree grubs, and throwing back the common carp; Like that recurring nightmare: In a bed with posts, in the middle of a field, with a blue tarp overhead, shaking violently; The cold nights and exposure; Seeking warmth around the oven; Shitting in a bucket in the corner; There was a baby bird that fell from the rafters of the new patio; Its brain looked like creamed corn.

It seemed such a simple task: graduate, work a job, find a wife, have a kid, maybe two; And now I find myself wondering if it’s too late to even try to turn it all around; I’ve got my money, and notches on my belt; I wouldn’t make much of a father, but I would try my best; And I’ll be damned if I didn’t give every single aspect of my life that same treatment; So how’d I wind up here, in a room full of hollow stares, stale coffee and broken smiles? When did life get so predictable, so boring, so effortless? Wake up, punch in, punch out, sit down, kick back; Wake up; Who decided that this was how I was going to spend the rest of my days?

I was born in a new port town where the James River feeds into the Chesapeake Bay; In my mind I can still see clearly the weathered remains of the old fort’s walls, degrading down at the shoreline; And to this day I still hold within me the grim vantage over McLean’s lawn: The imagined stench of gangrenous limbs; The implied cacophony of splintering bone and the caterwauling of men already doomed, but not yet aware; This was merely the beginning.

I never thought I’d live to see an easy woman seeking company; Enraptured by the bleating of her hungry mates; Captured between the fence and her mundane fate; Bolstered by the desires of those she cannot sate; Cold and calculating, until she’s all alone; And if she has not yet been moved to tears by irrational fears, or unfettered words spoken without trepidation; Well then, I pity her.

Isolation; It’s such a foreign concept until it comes upon you; Talking to yourself just to hear a voice; Masturbating to memories of better lovers; Keeping up appearances just to avoid conflict, discussion, exchange; Piping in news from New York, Chicago, LA; It used to be so simple, I told myself last night; But now I look in the mirror, and my eyes tell me otherwise.

Bleary eyed; Am I depressed or exuberant? Only alone in my room will my mind know the difference.

It’s hubris, this incessant whine in my head, like a beehive set in the center of a field filled with tuning forks planted right side up; Fragile, handle with care, we were sold lies of dystopian dreamscapes and made reality a living nightmare; Having sex with pieces of plastic; Wading through fetish and pools of dog water; Tirelessly travelling these miles of snail trails. Don’t expect me for dinner, I’m a little bit busy tonight, honey.

She egged me on until I was but a puddle at her feet; And the sad truth is that I would have done the very same thing. You see, it’s the struggle that haunts me; Not the easy speech of whimsy. The failure of words is what draws me, but that doesn’t translate to flowery poetry, or romantic gesture; No, you see, for me, it’s the playing of dark and light; Like shadow puppets on an unfinished cabin wall on a cold winter night.

One cannot reason with the dead, as the passed are but a memory. Those days and nights spent by their side can only be spoken in hushed tones or jubilant outcries, never re-lived. It is the one thing that I have in common with you, without doubt.

Catharsis doesn’t cover it; If you only knew half of what I went through to reach this moment; This exact point in time; And now it’s passed, I am left empty; No woman to coddle me; Without even peers, I now stand. There is no romance in this revelation, as even apocalypse would imply release. For we marked men, there are only the rigid demands of our conditioning; Right up to the bitter end.

Scars and burns up and down these clumsy hands; Faded ink, adorning flesh, reminding me to heed the creeping decay of: Beauty. Immaturity. Chastity. This eternal wasting until we are nothing but another deficiency.

Tonight, allow me to bear this burden; With you; For you; As you need; As you will allow. Let this tear be shed for you; Let this sob, and this sigh, and this wincing of my eyes, grant you a single moment in which to understand that you will never be alone. We are always here. So, when the doubt and darkness of inevitable decay overtake you; In your most private moment, simply know: I have felt this with you.

Bills to pay, sheep to the shears; Black lungs mired in the mountain’s vice; A grim scythe swings o'er the forsaken harvest o’ fools too early taken; You will ne'er be forgotten; For it is your bones upon which we tread; And credit for your graves which made men great: We'er in union blues or shades o’ grey.

Do you remember the novelty of that very first one? Fingers interlaced, an implied, inevitable, outcome; Reduced to pins and needles, racing thoughts, sweaty palms; Feeling her pulse, as rapid as your own, through her fingertips; That disarming moment; When innocence was more than just a game for you to play.

She only wants me when I’m not myself, but who else could I be? She only needs me when I’m all used up, with nothing left to give. She only loves me when I’m all alone and the dark is creeping in.

Three in the morning; A cockroach dreams of flying.

I’m nothing but a name on a box I shipped to you, with precious stones and trinkets, and something you can use, when you’re feeling like it’s hopeless, and need reminded that I cared, never mind the fact: I could’ve been anyone sending anything from anywhere.

It truly is the worst kind of feeling: Loving from a distance. I mean, tonight I’ll be tapping like the sun’s first light on her window, and tomorrow she’ll be rocking my cradle as I fall asleep. It truly is the best kind of feeling: Loving across these miles. I mean, this morning I’ll be like the moon’s rays singing her a lullaby, and tomorrow she’ll be like the rising sun in my bleary eyes.

How I wish that she were greater than just the phone within my hand; Something more elaborate than the words upon my screen. How I dream that the days could be spent closing the distance, so these moments wouldn’t be wasted with a million miles in between.

Sol dominates; The golden altar, Talos guards.

There are dimensions beyond space, beyond time; Interwoven into this tapestry we call reality; Even as mere children, we must one day learn the harsh truth of our permanent impermanence; It is up to us, to make a world in which they who are without guile may cast the last stone into the abyss. Drawing straws; These straight lines and crooked smiles.

I close my eyes and I am empty, I gaze upon the stars within, I watch the end coming. It won’t be pretty, it won’t be anything at all. The final firing of my neurons will last an eternity, I will not be born again: I have seen everything and I know nothing.

Playground games; Children gambol in the sun.

My dad keeps the lights on. I love the sound of helicopters, flying along their patrol routes: Back and forth, back and forth; Sirens blaring at the edge of awareness, I hope they aren’t coming for me: We are calm, you stay calm; Rifle rounds fired in the distance, mowing the lawn twice a week: Back and forth, back and forth; My dad keeps the lights on.

These dreams of mine have shifted into nightmares on their own. This heart of mine is hung up, torn to pieces by unknowns. This life I live is nothing more than hanging by a thread; But never have I found a word that’s better left unsaid.

I court the night and play with her; Like clay in my hands.

Would I allow just any lover to wander into my bed? Would I allow just any scene to play within my head? Would I allow just any heart a place within my chest? Would I provide just anyone a home in which to rest?

Inferno raging; Coals beneath the pine.

These collections of moments, we’ll call them memories, I’ll carry in my head for the sake of you, for the sake of me; For the truth of consequence is a damned shame, you’ll see, when tomorrow fades away, for the sake of you, for the sake of me.

Thunder rolls from cloud to cloud; Cricket waltz.

I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, all I know is won’t be the same; So give me your hand this evening, and I’ll show you how to carry a flame.

Blood moon; The morning star stirs within.

The man with no regrets is lying through his teeth, emulating the wisdom of the man who holds no grief; A good man knows his limits and exactly who he’ll be, but I will always live with the intent of being free.

Light trickles in, illuminating slow breath; Waiting for sunrise.

As the dew drops from a blade of grass, dips my head and heaves my chest. The recycled air o’ brethren fallen ignites my ire, a primal rage. How the moments stretch and shrink at will; In the present only; Neither future nor past defined. Beneath the surface, you will unearth a man, made whole.

Stepping foot on the other side; A dead drop.

Are you in the world, or of it? Would you rather serve in heaven, or reign in hell?

The world around you; Moments between black and white.

The star that falls fears not consequence; For when the beast doth call, it will sate his loneliness.

Will o’ the wisp, a perfect blue; Summer’s din.

Along the flume, my ghosts coalesce; Feeding the soul of another lover; Little does she know, forever was never my intent; As certain as the days grow cold, and the autumn harvest thins, the drumming within my chest will slow and one day cease; There is nothing to be undone until my final breath has passed.

Across the great divide passes a single tear; Scar tissue.

I never claimed to be perfect, and yet she wished it so. An unspoken promise to which I never agreed; And now she knows that unrequited part of me that took a lifetime to overcome; And now she sees with eyes wide open that I chose to return; An unspoken promise to her, now realized: I never claimed to be perfect, and now she knows it’s true.

Darkness consumes the sea’s slow ebb; On gossamer wings.

How I rue the siren’s call; She treads within these muddy waters; The morning star shines above; Torrential love, won’t you ease my mind and carry me under? From city streets and wicked deeds this heart was forged; An emptiness like no other. O woe is me, tonight the voices infect my mind and strip bare an ego so carefully crafted. There is no respite from your serpentine allure; The two sides of your mouth have worn thin enough for me to see: Wanting you is like a disease and my body has grown weak.

Striking a balance; The crow wanders between the lines.

So you want to play this game? You think I’ve never been here before? You want to be so innocent? You want to pretend that you’re so pure? You think I’ve never broken my own heart, just to see how it would feel? You think it’s easy being me? You think I enjoy being real? I don’t have friends, and there’s a reason, so let me tell you to be sure: I’ve ripped myself into seven billion pieces, so they could all go knocking on heaven’s door.

On spring’s cusp, by the water’s edge; I tread with death.

Presently, I await a knock upon my door, a rapping on my window, a smile, and nothing more. I prepared for years, and learned how to relate, but as I found my voice, you just walked away. Was it something that I said, or simply who I am? Whatever the reason, I won’t feel like this again.

Parenthetical; Lovers caught in ones and zeroes.

I always seem to fall into that hopeful place, and hope clouds observation; I become impulsive and I become deceptive; I say what I mean and I am neglected: I never know when to stop. I never know when to stop, it’s easier when I let my brain take the backseat and put my hands on the wheel; I say too much and it never means enough, but my heart bleeds for her: I never know when to stop, I never know when to stop.

An aphotic breeze, playing in her hair; The setting sun.

Romance is for children, and so I leave it to them; But reality is such an easy game to play.

From shade to shade; A forgiving breeze fades into dead heat.

I was born to be a withered husk, I was always going to end up alone; There was a time when darkness scared me, before I knew death was just the journey home.

Ravens above; Another heart caught in the undertow.

Whispers in my ear; The dead wish to live again. A soft strumming of worn out strings; The dead hope to rise. From coffin nails to slow exhales, the living wane and slowly fail. I tie my knots, I lift my sails; The dead setting off again. From Roanoke to Jamestown’s walls, the sea consumes another soul; And I’m settling down on this foreign shore without a line to cast back home; The living dream of growing old; The dead remain, trapped, in rotting bones.

Be mature and accepting; Don’t mind her silence; Let her be herself, don’t cling. Tell her you love her. Prove it: Be patient.

The oily fish; An angler’s reprieve; Taking the bait.

Faith is requisite in all matters. Science is built upon the supposition that one man’s abstract representation of the world around him was accurate. Multiple streams of information are required, lest the feeding pool stagnates. Trust the word of no one man; Blatantly ignore the cries of the masses. An’ it harm none, do what ye will.

Winter’s requiem: A solemn note, frozen solid.

Tiny little pin pricks loaded with black ink; These tiny little moments impressed in memory. It took me millions of tiny little pin pricks for someone else to see, that their tiny little story had been written all over me.

In the trenches; At rock bottom we will meet.

It’s humbling, the growth of a man; A loss of words, the taming of ego; All of the tomorrows never guaranteed. The shedding of shackles. Real shit colored in Kool-Aid, like city water for black teeth. And it’s humbling, the death of a man; Mourning shared by those with nothing else to carry on, except the yesterdays never forgotten. The shedding of tears; Millenial mindset; Cars as gifts and suburbia as a black hole.

Shill game; Sophists selling empty shells.

And though you may become embroiled in affairs of life, liberty, and happiness; And though you may fall prey to worries, troubles, and the promise of brighter days; Simply know that your entire life will amount to nothing more than the very moment before your inevitable death.

Ownership, the slow exhale; A rusty blade.

There’s rain moving in from the west; Thunder; A steady ebb and flow of the season’s change: From wet to dry, from light to dark, ever so slowly spiraling into and out of itself; As if the sands of time were simply postcards littering the streets of some saccharin sweet, contrived, final destination.

Elevator music; At the end of a long, dark road.

Far from prying eyes, the prisoner sitting pretty in the confines of his own mind; Segregated, defenestrated, separated from general population; On the surface calm, betraying a maelstrom beneath the cool exterior of a shattered head; In his eyes, the dormant flame of animation, so adeptly masked, beaten and bleary; Embracing the finality of his imminent demise; Finding faith in the final moments of the wretched excuse he called a life.

Never giving up, beats the slow and steady heart.