We rip out phrases by their roots

Only to be met

With fistfuls of nothing

As the silence deepens.

We encompass the empty

And bleed into the barren,

Broken,

And devoid of beauty.

And when disembodied voices whisper,

"Only a little farther..."

We tread these polluted waters,

Bartering souls with wraiths

For inspiration and haste

If they would only move us

Beyond this god forsaken waste...

I saw this challenge

Described so succinctly

And laughed a bit

I must admit

Because too much 

Freedom

Is too scary

It's never as easy

As two words

Like

"Abusive Relationships"

Or, "I do"

She is indomitable,

incomparable to anything else nature ever fashioned.

Tempests might devour the budding fruits of labour in seasons so short,

we barely remember the havoc wrought

Her storm seeks not tranquility

but new shores where it sweeps up everything missed on its last visit.

Sometimes the sun offers some semblance of a challenge

with golden hues so near the light her skin carries.

Dim attempts to shine as she did with infallible beauty.

One that matured instead of wilting

and Time himself was left to admire,

thus Death joined suit desiring her too.

As long as they coveted her, no mortal could hold her.

So long as they reigned, her beauty remained unrivaled.

I am tracing your shadow

Outlined by

The sandy white rocks

Wet and unappreciated 

And beaten by

The waves of indifference  

Walk with me

I will show you the Way --

His encrusted tomb

Sealed his eyes

Blinded by darkness

But awakened by Light 

A poem could be roses,

A poem could be stars,

A poem could be you and I,

Or maybe a poem is roses,

A poem is the stars,

And you and I,Well we are a poem.

In an effort to contradict those around me, and that person I do love most,

I offer only the statements of a rebel,

who really is no good at being a rebel,

(and never will be any good),

to say that a million things do make a man,

including himself,

but most certainly not only himself,

and only that reaction if you are to say

that it is his reactions to the world

that make him make himself, himself.

But is it not the hands of those,

whom we have passed through,

in our course of life upon the waves,

that have shaped us like the potter at the wheel?

Surely, we have created ourselves many times,

within our own known and result,

but haven't we formed, at least in part,

by others when we were too young,

and too unaware, to have formed anything ourselves?

discards of 

distillate woven

distillate impregnates

a denouement by

chemicals .

(sweet bounty of earth                 (cracked oil fraction

 apples, planed trees                       extruded and reset  

   settled by finings)                          synthetic sheet)

take the medicine dearest

stout heart . be brave

slowly the ice needle 

perforates epidermis 

force behind 

sends fattening tube

through fat

to flattening vein

until

it gives to the point

there is blood in 

the needle

pressure pressing need to

scream

there

pressure pushing plunge

system

into chemical rush

there there 

hot needle withdraws pulls

with it blood

bloody dome

on skin grows grows

half a blood orange

fallen valients 

violet the skin

pressure. hole seals

seized by capillary 

suck

see only cotton

white before a flesh 

coloured plaster 

is there 

I appreciate the willpower behind recreational drugs and social drinking. 

It's the walk against the wind that gets me high.  Going to edge of nowhere and feigning the jump. Adrenaline racing.  You're numb and yet you feel so much. 

The tentacles of the world are dismissed and there's freedom in the buzz. You fall with the safety net of your will. 

I embrace the false truths of it all.  Hope for demise but I'm overjoyed with the love I feel. It's a Catch 22.

But I toss the half smoked cigarette to the ground and I look at irony of you.  And rhe acceptance in your eyes and I think of her.  Alone in her prison pf clouds and darkness and I cannot help but draw away.

To love the love of indifference.  How I long for your touch. How my soul feels severed without her.

I take a drink and hope for the best.  My heart is rapid. Holding guilt for the hurt in her voice and from the intensity of your touch.

I'm a floundering bird without direction.  The winter is cold and I need the warmth of her love and you are so far away. And you are so very cold.  And the love is different and the high is filled with the beauty of it all.

And you'll hate me and she will hate me. But I wish upon the blacken star of my final edge...that I could hold you both forever. 

The better of me wrapped up inside the beautiful tragedy of your love. Hold me until the end. For abandonment is unworthy of the beauty of us all.

And I will cherish her touch as I cherish your fading voice and I will exit this world in awe of the two. 

You saved me from myself and she saved me...unwilling amd unaware. And my heart cannot bare the loss of you nor her.

And I cannot let you down, i cannot let  my soul and my purpose fade. But I cannot let her down

Nor can I deny myself the love inside of her or the gentleness of a simple touch. 

  Ill take a drink. Ill light the bong and ill pretend for a moment that she's you but in the midst of the passion I'll see her eyes and ill make love to the hope we once held. 

Tonight she'll fall asleep in my arms. There will be a twinge of pain and guilt as I kiss her goodnight. 

But the better part of me is you... and her and without that rhe willpower is gone and I jump...I battle the wind and I become a ghost of what could have been