Awake

I wonder what those big oak doors

are saying

I wonder if I could read something carved

into their polished lines

because I am down here searching for some

sense of believing

when God isn't sending me any dreams 

tonight

Aftermath

I am sinking straight through

right down to the 

briny deep

You were the tank full of

butterfly breaths

I so very much wanted 

to breathe

The Ugly Cannot Always be Made Beautiful

Tell her the devil is pounding
on the gates
salivating
waiting
God reserves a special place for you
it is where the clouds burst and bang
the loudest
It is His business to forgive
not mine
His
Because now even the furniture is different
And the ugliness way down here
it smells like you

Collision, Pt. 2

The riddle, he says.  When?

There is no riddle, I answer.

Just whispers that eat away at 
denial

not the rotten bitter kind

but the type that keeps the

hopeless alive.

How sweet it was,

that blue sky.

I saw it.

Now I am resigned.

Tell me

is this victory?

There is no winning,

the dragon replies.

There is only acceptance.

Remember the riddle.

It is your only choice.

There is Nowhere but Here

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture again and again, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  They roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing and turn written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  Because I am a master.  I am a genius.

Lost

My lungs whisper love songs of 

you 

only to betray them  

with spasms of 

breath

The Problem with Memory

I hear riddles all day long

words but not in 
English 

no one wants

me to know

My heart is a tinderbox

I am not allowed to 

open