Exhalation (The Long Goodbye)

Right before the sigh when I wonder why I even try

Today was like the stutter that starts the long goodbye

Right into the arms of a ticking clock I cry

A day can be too much like a long held breath sometimes

I dream in salty air

As marsh winds blow against the tide of time

Leaving my residence in the City of Presidents

Seeing it now as if my whole life i’d been blind

Take the long way out

Shaking hands by holding hands to keep from falling down

Take a piece of me now

I don’t need much more than what I’ve already found

I wake to salty air

The last day in a long string of beads held by praying fingers

I leave enemies and friends, ‘cause every beginning has its ends

As the pages turn, every lesson learned still lingers

On my breath

No words I say can make my meaning come out right

And yet

I will try...

To start the long goodbye

Right before the sigh when I wonder why I even try

Today was like the stutter that starts the long goodbye

Right into the arms of a ticking clock I cry

A day can be too much like a long held breath sometimes

Dissatisfied, Discontented, Disillusioned, Disenchanted

“Get your degree, son,” they told him,

“And then you’ll be free, son,”

So that’s what they sold him.

And now they can hold him

Hostage,

‘Cause it’s not over yet.

“Go to college,

Let them collect your debt.”

Get a good job, they taught him,

‘Cause that’s what you should do.

Education has bought him

No good jobs—He’s sought them.

Empty,

Is all that he can come up with,

Resenting

How he now is forced to live.

“Why are you yelling? Can’t you see,

We’re too busy selling

Your future on Wall Street?

You call all our greedy

Choices

The reason for the state that we’re in, but you’re

Voiceless

‘Cause we will not hear what the newsman just ignores.”

“Get your story straight,” they now say

Like they once said, “Clean your plate.”

Police move tents away,

Keep order with pepper spray,

Igniting

A movement that terrifies the upper class,

And lighting

An inferno that dares for once to ask...

“Get my degree, sir?” we’ve realized,

“What about this is free, sir?

What’s so good about the good life

At the price of people livin’ hood life,

Starving

So I can have all the finer things?"

Alarming,

Isn’t it, when all these “whiners” start to sing?

He then Called it Galvanized

I bleed a lot these weary days

I paint in shades, yknow the kind

My head weighs heavy like tusks on the mantlepiece

Their shadows on ashes

Two branches like arms of a clock

Crystal shards dangle on cobwebs

With limos up on blocks in the front yard

Forsworn

I am not you anymore

I've been kicked out of that house

One thousand different voices

Now reside under my bed

I am not you anymore

I've been tricked out of my inheritance

One hundred different voices

Now spend what I can't earn

I am not you anymore

I've been licked out of my race

And ten different voices

Now call out from the stands

I am not you anymore

I've been picked out of my crowd

And one single voice is

Now all I need to speak

Doorstep Artery

It gets so much harder every day

To see a cut of beauty and bleed but pain

From farther than the sunlight on a sky of palest grey

Your eyes the illusion of my drought-laden veins

I'll trip the drying drip of my faucet wrists

Grip the lip of a cliff I once resisted

And kiss the misty-eyed myths of a former insistence

Enlisting bliss that I've missed but can't strip down to what my wish is

'Cause, well...

I'm sick with it

I'm coughing up blood

In stains shaped like memories

In crimson reflections

I see the haunting eyes

I see all my goodbyes

But I did what you said

Tried to make some new and different friends

Despite the feeling in my head

Every good thing in this town always ends

A Sharp Tongue Can Be So Blunt

Each page burns brighter

As oceans of acidic

Nostalgia lap my fingertips

Veins held at knifepoint

And my left eyelid

Won't stop flicking at dust specks

Coldly parting lips

I hear you speak

I see you breathe

I feel your kiss

Don't talk to me of my departure

When you're already so

Far away

Like those adolescent games

I'll do all I can to appease

The popular opinion

But in vain

Alas

Low Tide

I'm trying to read the words that hide between each blink

Tryin' real hard to trace the scars that shift out on the brink

And for once I'll sit in silence, wonderin' what you really think of me

It's like you're a better version of the person I once knew

But I have yet to see a better person than any version I've seen of you

I'm trying to catch my breath in a vacuum made with stares

Tryin' real hard to trace the stars in this early morning air

And you say that low tide looks so very lonely way out there to me

It's like you're a better version of the person I once knew

But I have yet to see a better person than any version I've seen of you

It's like every dream I've ever had then woken up to curse

'Cause good dreams only make me miss you so much worse

Oh, calamity

Perspective seems a bit skewed of late

Everything I ever wanted inches away

And all that I can think of is how easily shale stone can break

Beachisms

I'm wrong

Sour like milk still sold but thrown out at the first sip

I'm twisted

Two-faced like compliments made out of contempt

I'm lonely

Heavy like the quiet of an early morning after a sleepless night

I'm bitter

Stoic like the angels carved high above the grave

I'm stretched-out

Ripping at the edges like clay slowly drying

I'm awake

Floating like a bottle whose messenger has long-since starved

I'm delirious

Fluctuating like a grenade you'll never feel

Uncovered

Beneath it all

The rubbish of "supposed to"s and "shouldn't"s

Behind stacks of masks and almost cracking walls

Behind prison gates and a thousand defenses

Hiding back somewhere in the corner

Where what's expected doesn't matter

And all that is really is

Back there in the midst of nothing but honesty

Broken perhaps, weak maybe, and certainly imperfect

But honest and true and real and unladen

Unjudged, unsteppedupon, untwisted, unbelievable

But so very genuine

Back behind, beneath every label and costume

Every sheet and curtain and calamity

There

You are.

I miss you.

So much.

I'm Awake, I'm Awake

And I wake again

Cold from a fan that was once such a comfort

And I wake again

Feet twisted out from underneath the warm blanket

And I wake again

My head hears a ringing but feels like a pounding

And I wake again

To see that dear face in a photo instead of beside me

And I wake again

To remind myself why I keep living

And I wake again

Knowing I could, with a thought, make the pain stop

And I wake again

Because even snooze cannot bring all good dreams back

And I wake again

Knowing that maybe today I will see you

And I wake again

Resigned to the midnight of everyday life

White Picket Fence

These are the nightmares I hold in my hand

And sprinkle like ashes among the elite

From towers, the titans have forsworn the land

Which once was as rough as the driest of peat

We toiled and toppled their towers with gardens

And forests that flourished and climbed to the clouds

Then ballroom masks wore till the floor was re-hardened

From dancing and stomping and laying dead down

Then we built new towers from gold-covered farthings

And remade our image in the image of yore

And set slaves to carving and sewing and starving

And remade their image in the one we adored

Then revolution, the people were massing

And we on our couches called down in disdain,

"Who are you to be wond'ring and wishing and asking

For fairness. Your wages—our profits—are plain?

"Who are you to build gardens and topple down towers

And climb for your own selfish motives and greed?

We give you reason and we give you hours,

So don't talk of justice, it's us that you need!"

And with that the people stopped trying to climb

And thought for a moment 'bout what they should do

Then finally one of them held up a sign

And others soon followed; it's message, "Screw you."

So here is the moral, my children of ages,

If ever a lesson is learned here at all:

Some cycles just circle and spin 'round in stages

But towers are cages and they too may fall.

Barometer

I'm waiting for the perfect to come back around

I hear it's voice

Sometimes

Catch an almost glimpse

Darting around the corner

The edges of my eyes

Watered

Like a field of weeds

In a nor'easter

I'm waiting for the simple to mean something heavy

Brace myself

Inside

And hold tight to ropes

Tied to a subtle causeway

My heaving breaths

Filtered

Like a used cigarette butt

On the old armoire

I'm waiting for my logic to match up with the facts

And box it in

Half alive

Grinning lobe to lobe

Wrong all along after all

But I don't mind

Damaged

Like a, like a, like a, like a

Y'know

Alone at the Mad Tea Party

a picture of smiling faces framed on the desk behind me calls attention to a happier time

convicted by familiar places named by regrets remind me of intentions i can't ever resign

like a dream from which i woke too soon

do you see what i mean is i so miss you

it's not right

saying goodbye

to dreaming

so will you sleep if you can

'cause i can't

you need it more than i do

not sure yet who i am

i recant

harsh words i once claimed true

and i wait now

and i'll keep on hoping

the choice is yours to make

just lay down

i'm fine with knowing

that my heart's still yours to break

Shoelace.

Come on Down (possible new lyrics)

we’ll give you our money, tax all that you can take

drain from the poor, let the rich get the big breaks

then spend it to bail out the thieves and greedy ceos

wage war on the poorest, our streets filled with hunger

debt rises still higher as the working fall under

corporation are people ‘cept for having more rights and more gold

so much expectation, for this disappointment

with checks and balances and progress so disjointed

yet still we rely on the hill to make the law of the land

i’ve come to learn that you can’t elect a savior

the most good i can do is just to love my neighbor

that is unless they get deported by popular demand

if there’s still love in your heart for orphans

if there’s still love in your heart for widows

if there’s still love in your heart for anyone [repeat]

come on down

priests and kings and presidents

industry’s irrelevant

hope is where the lost are allowed to come home [repeat]

so come on down