21st Century Soliloquy

numbers trace the signal
electric clues to the source
hints of reminiscence
a garish glimpse of remorse
an empty text of long life in the living
partially paused in plastic places
twisting fiction of memory
hollow names and backward faces

if you want the truth
i’m afraid of anything that could make me feel
my missing you
is just a way of looking for something out there real
but i have found a way around it
with scattered words and misplaced humility
the disconnect my only grounding
when all i know is my own fragility

the dust, electric in its transport
now claims new eyes unseen
blinking slow in patterns blurred
sterilized yet never really clean
a generation on the edge of ending
cynicism, a regulated response to fear
connections, one island to another
listen loudly to the static of one deafened ear

synchronize the angst and agony
smiling synonyms rushed to end for pictures’ sake
post another pastime on a pleading public
perchance they writhe under the winsome wake
so much for breathing
too many hands to hold within
a deft and a dashing
mistake, missing the very feel of skin

if you want the truth
i’m afraid of anything that could turn the tide
my leaving you
is just a way of running from the hope you held inside
i couldn’t find a way around it
with shattered hearts, declarations of futility
my deepest desire now dead here surrounding
when all i know is my own fragility

JUST ADD WATER

the hunger is a sword that cuts down the population
and tracks you like the government across a foreign nation
the GDP of industries that call themselves economies
are run by debts of innocence lost to separate parties
agendas formed from greed and fear
till politics just disappear
replaced by something a bit less poli, a bit more tactical
while the old ones tell you to be responsible, logical, and practical

and i used to think that not conforming was like secretly storming
a castle made of clay baked too long on a hot day
a code ready for cracking but reacting got us back to where we started
but that departed, so i thought revolution would be less like prostitution
selling our bodies to companies, consumers to the core
and i thought all of our ignorance would even out eventually
but what’s more, it seems that we’ve all gotta be attached to something actually
intended for the remaking, just shaking with fragility

we’re blinded, we’re blinded, my brother, we’ve all been blind-sided
caught off-guard by those we trusted to protect what we could never know
we’re gifted, been enlisted in a program to deny it, though
an institution that has skated by for long enough to satisfy a temporary rush
all the time ignoring that there’s a big, big picture, and we’re all just playin’ paints
with a very tiny brush

so cast aside the anarchy which still plays by the rules
of societies built on so many self-centered schools
of thoughts that are not so much progress as progression
in a desperate search for happiness that leads straight to depression
and obsession with the madness of the me, me, me
as i hear an international chorus that can only ever agree
that as long as imaginary boundaries still separate us all
then is it alright to stumble as we wait for it to fall

cast it all aside like a temporary squall
a wave or two will crash but the game is made of walls
you can scale them if you wanna but the outcome is the same
it’s at the center of our souls and it knows all of our names

Out of Here

like a boulder of notions, i can see it rollin’ across your eyes
that we’re emboldening oceans to rise above much safer tides
and i guess i was never told that
a compliment is equal to a contract
but your looks fill up books with their poetry
two eyes, one pen in synchronicity
and your words, they have a way of stoppin’ me
cold dead in my tracks, taken aback to where i’m honestly wondering

are you my way out
‘cause i need a way out of here
my head’s filling with doubts
can’t find a way to make this clearer, now
i can’t be the one to save your heart from breaking
we could’ve live out whole lives of better choices
in the time this is taking to change
are you my way out
‘cause i need a way out
are you a way out here
are you my way out, my dear?

stepping aside, take a look at the life you’ve made
hurts too much to hide, but i don’t think it’s right all the same
what happened to love?
what happened to living for more than all these empty choices
beautiful and reminiscing voices in chorus...
‘cause california’s calling her
and new england is so much colder
and there’s the other side of the world
or there’s just down the street
and around a couple corners
from here

are you my out
‘cause i need a way out of here
shut off my heart valves
till all i’m sinking in is fear that you
are gone, but you were never the one
i finally found out
that you’re not my way out
you’re not my way out of here
(gotta get away from here...)

abstractions

such cares in turn
do tell your secret prayers
unleash those little lies
for only your own ears to hear
and twist inside the wires
and the wireless reflections
voiceless communications
senseless exclamations
thoughtless invitations
tiny little characters

while caricatures hum
the inaudible song
a dangerous game
adrenaline and kerosene
in eyes that light dark fires
so systemic intangibles do tell
marketed by the dawn
bought up by the gloaming
in effervescent telescoping subtleties
and time’s lonesome owl eyes

so tell me, is this silence
the space between islands
or the gravity around
a falling star
as i can’t seem to find
the corporeal remains
of my personalities
long lost in some dusty attic
whose wind-washed fingers hold
a delicacy of emptiness
within their machinations

Perchance the perhaps
Is greater than the sum of the collapse
And these inhibitions
Are indelibly mismatched
As situations stay stationary
With each breath, a mountain falls
Proving again I was too slow
To rebuild these prison walls
Thinking it would be easier to construct
A structure around myself
That somehow would overcome itself
And its maker’s weakness and familiarity

Fumigation (pt.1)

I’ve found something worse than goodbye
The way you can never leave a lie behind
Simple words can swallow up your life
Like the mouth of a river than runs you dry

Forget who you are or where you’ve been
They’ll put each thought in a vice and squeeze out any hope within
The system’s set up to make you lose
But only if you play their game and you stick to their rules

Too young to live, too young to die
Why does each sunset feel like a day sacrificed
To the idols of idleness and complacency
Living in a country where my freedom is my currency

I remember wondering
Whatever happened to the sunrise
As we left so early that morning
But it might as well have been midnight

There was no glimmer, there was no hope
In your one, forever open eye
Looking onward, forever upward
Somewhere above the sky

And I remember asking myself
Whatever became of the land
Towers rising from the waves
Of poison waste and electric sand

As we approached the distant sphere
I’ll admit, my courage faltered
For one brief moment, I forgot
That not one step could now be altered

Just a beam of light
Out of the silent planet where she slept
No longer home but now away
So here to stay alone I wept

And we upon that dusty ground
With boots and coats and bags
Did fall beneath the eery shadow
Of mountains shaped like hags

With long, curving noses
And fingers stretching for miles
Caves in the right places for eyes
And cracks for crooked smiles

I climbed these mountains by myself
And you stayed by the ship
But warned me not to stray too far
And also not to slip

But as I gained upon the ground
The farther did I desire
And that night I did not return to you
But stayed by my own small fire

For I was an alien on this world
And you had conquered me
Neither one of us anymore human
Than the dust beneath my feet

For humanity had a place called earth
A round and welcome home
But we raped it for all that it was worth
And left it as only a lifeless stone

That’s why we went so far away
And that’s why now I am lost
For I cannot return to you and ship
You never saw the cost

I’ve seen your cities and your skies
Covered o’er with death
When the man with nukes knocked at your door
You packed your bags and left

So this is our future as I can see
Not in tech or in wealth or in wars
But you’ll leave the Earth to rot and burn
When all that’s certain is mutually assured

For I saw no glimmer, could glance no hope
In your one, forever open eye
Looking onward, forever upward
Somewhere above the sky

Enamored, I Clammered for Some Resonating Sound

To her, upon these brittle strings, my tune I awkwardly unfurled
To me, in words like pigmentation, she painted her eloquent world
Sitting in screaming, singing silence upon the floor of a foreign royalty
Captivated by a glance, the hanging moments of uncertainty

To say the truth, there is little honesty in my own self’s dark discussion
I’ll speak with such confusion in thinking yet act without instruction
Till all deeds are met in a friendship more laced with strings than yarn
And all tall tales that e’er prevailed shall this faerie tale string-out anon

So we speak on stone walls by false wall’s urging explanations
My words so tangled, vines that crawl up and down to no real destination
Without much reason, we sit a hundred seasons it seems, but not
As with only a second in your line of sight is drawing made, those lines there caught

Years pass and still I could stay for this weak and wanting passway
A bridge to some dark forest’s gates and a goldrush of needed change
Who I would now wish to be and who I am so far between and far apart
Time relative to the surprise of your eyes, their haunting of my broken heart

Still I am not a paradigm, though still I keep repeating
Still I am not a liar, though every peace of me is false
Still I am not a sane man, though they diagnose me free
Still I am not a door, though you’ve opened me wide