I utter the word ‘hello,’
And reddened in the face
You look away
Hands in pockets
Lips a tight line
Containing a smirk
That’s for me, only mine
I know not what was said or done
But your embarrassment is palpable
I guess, I must be in the wrong
Later it will come to light
The tone of my voice wasn’t right
Or the way I stood or looked down
Or it was the way words sound
When coming out of my mouth
And the bashfulness on your face
Communicates to everyone
And like a virus it infects them all
Permeates the air
And I become
The cigarette end of jokes
And I, left in the ruins
Become the ash
Greyed and cemented
Into shame
Poetry
Time gone by
An explosion of thought
Ideas tunnelling
Early birds collecting the words
Beaks snapping
Butterflies smashing
Mammals cracking
A whirlpool of dreams
Steaming from teacups
Of time gone by
All a reflection
In a dinosaurs eye
All of this streamed by
A river
In my minds eye
A flicker
A flash
A kingfisher
A silhouette
A shadow
A stick figure
A wood preserved
In a prism
A lens
Capturing
Natures gems
Upturned umbrellas
Collecting confessions
Handles up toward the sky
In accusation
Of time
gone by
Dead to the world
Emptiness grows like weeds
Crawling and creeping
Inside of me
Knotweed spiraling around my veins
My roots pulled
Till nothing can ground me
Life thrives around me
But the essence of me
Has long since died
Writing letters
Writing letters with blades
Addressed to you
My madness
Take these veins
And wrap them around my sadness
I am host
To all of these dragons
Waging war on this brain
My island
Dinosaurs teacup
The wind may gush
Naysayers hush
Rain pour over us
Loss become ever present
And silence us in sentence
Lost in the prism of someone’s absence
Tears may come to pass
Despair making maps
But one must imagine
A dinosaurs teacup
That never gets smashed
Prism
It shimmers still
All things perceived
In the prism of your absence
Bleed
Piercing through the sadness
Like trying to shine a light through the madness
But all that comes is blood
Running down, making tracks
A wreckage embroiled on skin
With maps of violence
Filling the silence
Sadness like an unquenchable thirst
Our skin has been shed
outside renewed
this is how it accumulates
like dust on books
inside all the days
and years spread
and every time we scream
it’s wasted breath
because in our voice
our sadness can’t be contained
It simply runs wild
Within our veins
too powerful for outside
Much too strong for us inside
The tears are never enough
for the accidental goodbyes
the shock & horror
always there, always filling lungs with empty
This is how it accumulates
Till we’re undone
one with the dirt
no more synapses producing hurt
All these thoughts
All these thoughts swim
Till they run
Merging and
Words become undone
Falling away
Somewhere hidden
The thoughts gone
But the feelings remain
Without a name
And then a new thought
Falls into view
Only to fall away
Before you really knew
And the feeling grows
But the words, you do not know
And you wonder
Something
Somewhere
The letters of the thoughts
R
u
n
n
i
n
g
.
.
.
.
Chills to the bones
Empty promises ricochet
Between the stone walls
The sound of squeaking shoes
On polished floors
Haunting this place
Full of laughter and evil
Paint on the walls
Dripping with humiliation
Seeped through all the years
A stain on hearts and minds
A reminder that life
Chills to the bones