twentyfour

The basement was long forgotten since
I shut the door and windows
on those meanders of my memory of me.
Ruggedy and dirty – oozing blood and mold from every crevice
It was true to my necessities and soul,
genuine and sincere about imperfection and passion.

I left it for an uptown condo
crisp, expensive, and clean
that has plants and love and good food.
I thought this is how older people live, the price to achievement
And that I was getting older and more ambitious
Or so I thought
I thus shut the door to that basement
I put it on the market waiting for a buyer that never came
Till I forgot about it
The memories, inconvenient, faded

And you broke in
Burglar of my heart
You opened the windows, turned on the light
Painted the walls in bright colors, and sang notes pure and true
I chatted with you for an evening, on the windowsill
Trying to make you leave and wishing you’d never do
And then I left

twentythree

Blood seeps from my brain
sight fades into unconsciousness
and those realities that once were
stones at the foot of mountains
are now shattering quietly
like empty beer bottles in a trash can.

I look myself in the mirror
And see empty hallways
Full of books never read,
and of silence greying out the shelves.
The weight of doubt rests on my sword,
Which, unsheathed, is laying on my heart
Slowly cutting in...

twentytwo

Leaves grow, burn and fall
Life is born, lives and dies
like a mechanical clock.
But life flows over us,
and we are transported
to remote shores of existence,
where time stalls,
feelings break in the waves,
and life loses meaning
to sensations, passions, and hopes.

My life grew out of the barrel of a gun
straight and purpouseful.
And yet my heart, drunk,
is now waving this gun as a wand reaching for spells.
I thought my aim was true,
but the targets,
shifting with responsibility,
were dead well before my shot.
I only now recognize the deceit,
looking over the landscape laying about me
littered with dead purpouse.
I fall on my knees, and let go of the trusted gun,
gasping for air, as the Garden of Eden I was hunting in
reveals itself a desert;
elegant, silent, and noble.... but lifeless

twentyone

After a night and morning of slipping into peaceful thoughts,

sudden as a ricocheting bullet,

your silence shaves cold slices of doubt through my mending heart.

I am left gasping for air,

as my heart and breath lose synchrony,

as my hands and my lips are shaken by

jolts of electrical energy which traverse me

like shivers in a dark, cold, and misty night.

I realize I have lost control of my heart,

which pumps on its own rhythm

a blood which I thought lost,

sprayed as it is on countless stones.

twenty

Wrecked by the raging ocean

The ship spills its contents like blood from its guts

There are toys, vinyls, guitars

and precious photographs, flowers and love letters

And all sinks or float apart

as an uncollected misery of confusion.

I stare from the deck of the sinking giant.

And while my everything hangs in the balance

I am distracted by that Prelude from Chopin,

interrupted, incomplete, and imperfect,

and yet brimming with the infinite energy of the unexpressed.

Silent as the sun,

you have burnt through my closed eyes.

nineteen

Your silence is fog for my heart.

It embraces everything,

turning sight into hope

and ego into passion.

And as the memory of you fades into my own undomitable self

with its unsolved quandaries

I, just I, walk your fog without realizing

that the destination is important no more.

It is known no more.

eighteen

God, father in heaven,

Where are you?

My soul is prostrate. Bent and shaken,

my pillars crumble under the weight of illusion.

A lion appears in the distance

I remember its mane and yet not its demeanor

I am afraid. I hide.

I seek shelter but

the temples are in ruins,

the forests are on fire

Am I running from you, O Lord?

Am I running from myself?