Burned

Loving you is like

Trying to catch smoke in my hands.

Hot and elusive 

No matter how hard I try

To hold you

To keep you from hurting others

You escape.

I cannot tame you.

Embers become ash.

Swirling mist goes to ground.

Loving you is like

Holding fire

Never safe for too long.

Lighting things I've never seen

But burning some along the way.

I cannot keep you forever.

The light goes out.

But loving you is like

An eternal spark

Flying through my heart

In quick bursts of feeling

That never truly die.

And a spark can become an

Ember, and an ember a

Flame, and a flame becomes

Smoke that I keep chasing

In a dance that never ends

All from one little spark.

--12.24.13

Little Lost Boy

Perhaps you never grew up

Because you gave your shadow away.

Little lost boy

Hiding in neverland

Angry, afraid, and abandoned

While your shadow dances

On the shoulders of others.

Poor little lost boy

I'll happily return your shadow.

I don't want it.

Style yourself captain,

Your own villain.

But who will come to your rescue?

My kite has sailed.

No one clapped.

The light has gone out.

Little lost boy,

It's all in your imagination.

Take your shadow back and live.

--3.8.14

Oblivion

Your shadow follows me

Will not let me go

Has become mine

In an anti-gravity whiskey prison

Floating or drowning

Turning out the lights

To make the shadow disappear

But all that's left

Is darkness

And oblivion.

--3.8.14

Bleed

How long would you have let me bleed

Before you

Cauterized the wound

I set fire to myself?

I tried to bleed to death for you

But my body just wouldn't let me

Perhaps because

You were already

Dying yourself

And there was nothing more I could do

To save you.

--3.8.14

Attack

You were shooting blanks

While I was shooting film

Trying to understand

Your murderous ways

Who is the hunter

And who is the hunted

Who finds the monster

Under the empty bed?

--3.4.14

Long Gone

And yet I write you elegies

Long after I am gone

So lost are you

As words flow

Unbidden

Filling in

Around a story already written

As though

Adding belated subtext

Could somehow

Rescue the past.

--3.4.14

Anartchy

I can't stop filling in the empty spaces

Left behind by you

On every inch of

Blank muscle

The beating canvas in my heart.

As the slash of paint

The violent brush

Tries so very valiantly

To drown out the

Raucous

Silence.

--3.4.14

Resistance

You are so easy

Too easy

To demonize

And yet

So hard

Too hard

To love

And yet 

Somehow

Though I try

To do neither

I do both.

--3.4.14