Armor

Here's the thing.

Love is never wrong.

It is never wrong

To love someone.

But what you cannot

Cannot

Under any circumstances

Do

Is let your love

Break you.

Love

With all your heart

Whoever it is

And yourself.

And you will fall

Into despair

That ink and paper

Can never do justice.

But you will also rise

Beyond any and all danger

To points higher and further

Than space or time can know.

Your love is strong.

And you are as strong as your love.

Love is pain

But love is not death.

Pain is not death.

You are alive

And you are love.

--2.28.14

Wound

Does my heart still beat?

I don't know if you can feel it.

Touch your hands to the wound

Deep purple at the edges.

This is bleeding that won't stop.

I ran upon your sword so long ago

Let my insides fall apart.

And you trickle out

Ever slowly

From the chronic sore

Hole in the middle of my soul.

Black and blue

From a fight I stopped fighting 

Before you ever realized

There was a weapon in your hand.

--2.27.14

Eternal Gravity

Sky on fire at the edge of the world

Flames up in reverse

As I stand looking out at

Where the stars should be.

Meteor to the heart.

Shooting star through the chest.

I break apart into pieces,

Blood in my veins shattered glass.

A cosmic dagger I constantly await -

News that you are gone.

Imperfect, red dwarf, I glow,

And I cannot like you.

But my celestial soul

Can only love you, knife in hand.

Yours or mine, I cannot say.

Only the spheres and the spiders know.

The man who fell to earth.

--2.26.14

A Haiku About Sleep

I'm going to bed

Without being deeply sad

It's so hard alone

--2.25.14

Persevere/Preserve

Could not predict

Intuitive, but not psychic

As I feel myself fall away

The clarity of a common sadness

That I wish you would just let go

As I forced myself to do.

You are drowning in an ocean

Of my rain

As I swim away

Yet I keep looking back

Can't quite leave you behind

If you might reach out a hand

Could I be your salvation?

--2.21.14

A Quote about Love

We are not meant to be alone, that is why we love. Love does not quench thirst or feed us or shelter us in the literal sense, but no one can tell me they have not been nourished or sustained or protected by love.

Stardust

There are moments when

I can feel you thinking of me

With a familiar flutter in my chest

In the secret cave that the Girl with All the Answers

Tried to hide away.

I reign in the sunlight

In the dusky late afternoon

Like when we first met

In the closest moment

Before you began to flee.

And sometimes the night falls apart so swiftly

At the thought of you

So far from here

That I feel the tingle in my fingers

Trying to catch something

They never quite held in the first place.

--2.20.14

E(u)legy for a Lost Friend

The moments where it mattered
Where it mattered that you didn't love me
Have faded away
Lost to the ancient halls of memory
Where you no longer tread.

We shared together the moment
"Don't let me abandon you."
How did you disappear?

But what matters now
What matters is that I loved you
More deeply and truly
Than ever I have loved anyone.

And what matters is
What matters is that still I love you
Even as the thought of you
Makes me want to rip my veins from my arms
Fling your heart in a grave
And leave you there to rot.

I would have loved you
To the ends of the world
Through times we could never live to see.

For all that wretchedness
You killed my friend
And exactly as I feared
It was indifference, not hate
My love could rescue you, or me.

I can never quite let you go.
I don't want to go.
But I did.
--2.19.14

Desert

I held in my hands

All the love from my heart

Let it sift slowly through my fingers

Like water

Raining down upon you

Until my hands were empty

Until my skin was dry

I could see drops caught in your eyelashes

Taste them on your lips

And still you told me

You were living in a drought.

No one could save you.

--2.18.14

The Truths He'll Never Hear

I understand you, perhaps better than you will ever know. You, who proclaim yourself to be brave and proud, who values honesty and loyalty, and what you think of as justice. You are the victim of your fear, and in your fear you are neither brave, nor honest, nor loyal nor just. You are nothing worth being proud of. But you are not nothing.

Think of what a miracle it is to love, when so many things happen to take away our trust and our faith. It is easy to fall victim to the faults of others and blame our own upon them. Yet blaming others does yourself no favors, and only harms those closest to you, the few and loyal that you slash at with your righteous sword.

You are angry because you are afraid of hurting. You are arrogant because you are afraid of being wrong. You are mean because you are afraid of being attached. You are alone because you are afraid of trusting, and being abandoned. You are afraid of trusting, afraid of admitting you cannot and do not want to go through life alone, afraid of letting yourself feel loss rather than power. But your independence and your power and your control are products of fear, and they will keep away all that you truly want from life.

I understand you. I have felt these things myself. I know what it feels like to be afraid to trust, to discover feelings and be terrified that they are beyond your control. What we must learn is only through true bravery, pushing past fear to love and trust others, will we be happy.

I pity you, alone and afraid to let yourself hurt, instead wrapped in self-righteous anger, the anger that will continue the destructive cycle you have found yourself in for so long. I know how hard it is to be vulnerable, to admit you need help. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is admit we are scared.

I love you, with all of my heart, for it is souls like yours that need the most love, since they refuse so much of it. I pray for you regularly, in hopes that one day you will let go of your anger so that it can let go of you. Letting go of your anger will hurt. In its place will be the pain you won't let yourself feel, and that is a scary thing to face. But when you decide to be brave, you will be free.

Some will say you do not deserve my prayers. Some will say that you deserve whatever you get, and I deserve so much better. But I believe everyone deserves love, and, as much as it is possible, freedom from fear. I tried to give you both. I took them from you for myself, and wish to give them to you in return, but freedom and love are gifts you have to be willing to accept.

You cannot accept freedom and love until you strip away your armor of steel anger and cast off your iron cage of fear. I have reached through the bars, but you have not given me your hand. I have had to move on, for your cage is not mine to inhabit, your armor not mine to remove. All I can do now is let the strongest heart continue to beat inside me, braver than ever, and with all the ferocity I posess will you to seek for yourself that which I know can be yours.

Put down your sword, my love. Stop fighting and be free.

--11.3.13

Story Over

I write the words over I write the words over I write the story over Do I rewrite the story?

I learn the lesson over I learn the lesson over I write the story over Do I learn the lesson?

The words are new The words are the same I write the story over Do I rewrite the story?

I live the story over I live the life over I write the words over Do I live a new life?

I love the life over I love the story over I write the story over Do I rewrite the love?

Do I rewrite the love? Do I requite the love? Do I require the love? I write the story over.

--12.18.14

No Good

So hard
Not to speak the truth
Words I'm not allowed to say
But no one else would understand
What this "I love you" means
And so I hold it
Tight and close
As I long to hold you
Alone, tender
A whisper
As thoughts of you blare on.
It's no good
We're no good
We're no good
What to do
Without you
I don't know.
--1.3.14

Young American

Guitar heart strings

Arteries of steel.

I'll love you like thunder

The storm you're afraid to feel.

I've got a lightning bolt heartbeat

In my rock n roll soul.

Brave and honest to a fault

Though virtue takes its toll.

Stubborn and hot tempered

Like a heavy metal riff,

But with a bluesy bass line

A love that's never swift.

I'm a sword-slinging rebel,

Defender of belief

Protector of fragile hearts

Vanquisher of love's thief.

With magic in my spirit

And a warrior in these eyes

Follow the sound of my music

Your adventure this way lies.

--12.19.13

All Too Well

Hallowed ground

A smile hides in the familiar corners

Of your frowning mouth.

Sad-eyed sacred

Your muddled view

Speak quick think slow

Live fast love long.

Fingers creep across the empty space

So heavy with everything unsaid.

You've run out of wonderland

Left the ground behind.

Free fall tumble up or down

Just behind your ribcage

Beating out a storm.

Earthquakes in your coffee cup

Betraying the holy tectonic shift.

--2.4.14

Cloud Cover

Sickness of a man on the edge of a precipice

Hunting owl circles low

Could I love you a little longer

Bottom looms closer

While farther away

Precipice of a man on the edge of a sickness

Hunting owl glares, wise to tricks

Could I lift you a little longer

Strength begins to falter

You're so far away

Edge of a man on the precipice of sickness

Hunting owl calls out in the dark

Could I kill you a little longer

Truth seeps in

Daggers fall away

Sick man on a precipice

Hunting owl in a tree 

I on the bridge

What falls below

Who goes away

--2.4.14