Throwing Up Tape

Throwing up tape.
Putting down tentpoles
Trying to keep up the roof
Of these stifled ambitions
The stranglehold of giants
Crushes this windpipe of life
And the self aware notions
Of the useless savant
Gives rise to motionless dreamers
Immune to fulfilment of wants
Standing idle in condemned houses
Counting down destruction
Plastering convoluted solutions
Up against foundations settling into obscurity
Attempting to maintain functionality
With bouts of normality
Ignoring demolitions
Scheduled for futures too near
The charges strapped to unwitting casualties
In the reconstruction of tomorrows
Not included in these fantasies of dreamers
Existing solely in their heads

Too late for wonderlands
When triggers fill their roles
Still throwing up tape
Putting down tentpoles
The shouts never rise from the unprepared
The truth of ruination
Dies buried in the wreck
The night falls quietly
And lies to us all
The lots will be cleared
When these dreamers come to call

Sky Blue?

Back when my heart pumped with a vigor
Know only by the youth of yesteryear
And the road stretched before me
Back when soft earth rustled underfoot
And the true color of the sky was known
We were told the world and consequently
Forced to wade through misconceptions and biased constraints
These eyes confuse me, yet this heart forgives them the things they see

Dying too quickly
Living too slow
Through the fire
And down the drain
Was the only way to go

Spreading the seeds of ourselves
Through our bluffs and our tells
The wandering walk on
To their graves and their cells

On the histories of the future
We were never more wrong
Our hopes manifest
We perpetuated so long
Trading ambition for expectation
As we clamor through the throng
The twilight of the morrow
The banging of the gong

On the precipice of fatal contradiction
Holding out hands to receive what we were due
Sits a child of every generation
Thrown the remains of all that they knew
Awash in acceptance of deterioration of faith
What is failure in the face of triumph
Mere Maybes tumbling from grace
Thoughts entertained for torturous results
The What-Ifs and Coulda-Beens
Both well established cults
Holding captive the masses
In prisons of self-pity and defeat
We fall victim to the game of society's greatest deceit
The lie proposed
The rules served us all
Equal and fair
We all took the fall
Into a barrel of crabs that we all became
My eyes watch the massacre
In the name of money and fame
The treachery forgotten as we scrapped at the walls
The tender scars on my heart cause my soul's somber call

The sky no longer breathes its tender caress
On the back of my neck I feel only death's excess
I look up at at ceilings of washed out white
Motionless and unchanging
No more flight just fight
I can hardly remember the shade of blue
The brilliant sunsets
The tone or hue
The vision of sunrise so strong and new
The misty fog and morning dew
Back when the true color of the sky was know

Blades Of Grass

I want a reason to fight convenience
I want a passion to burn me to the core
I want to reject that which I know I should accept
Because acquiescence would crush me completely
I want to stand on something bigger than my own two feet
With more than just fingers in my hand
I want to set something on fire in the metaphysical realm
And watch it burn into my perceptions
I want to kick the constructs of man
Till they sway to the beat of the world
Till my boot print stains their walls
I want armor crafted in the bowels of my insecurity
I want to whisper my truth through a speakerphone
And watch it travel from my grasp
I want you to love me as much as all the things I could never say
I want to bleed something other than quiet cries for help
I want to know that someone can hear the words I've talked into the moon
Even on a cloudy night
I want to look into a strangers eyes
And make them believe in something other than what they know
I want to spin the tangled mess of the world into a fine golden thread
And stitch the holes in my head
I want to hold someone's heart and know they would be content with me never letting go
I want to know that there was more to the story of
The Beginning, Middle, and End
Something no one could guess
Something no one could break
Something no one could comprehend
I want to know if me missing you does anything at all
I want to know if my pensive thoughts change anything at all
I want to know if the ground is real
Or
If I can fly and just don't know it
I want to know what happens if I hurt and just don't show it

But mostly I just want to know what was on your mind
'Cause we're all just blades of grass
Bending in fields of time

A Note From Elsewhere

May our souls wash upon shores
Speckled with gold and the like
May our bodies wear with grace
And wither with a softness
May our smiles be recalled fondly
With bright distant eyes
Staring into heydays fading to gray
May the histories of our days in the sun
Be recounted now and again
Accurate and forgiving
May time be good to us
Like it has to no other
May these years be not in vain
May the wind whisper reminders
To our loved ones to keep us close
Lest we slip away
For if we are to be forgotten
The church bells ring for naught
And the tears of beloveds
And the ambivalent faces of youngsters
Staring into open graves soon to be undone
Will be all but empty rituals
And the somber fears of the unknown
Creep swiftly on

We took ungrateful breaths
And wasted away
Aimless we walked
Now buried we stay
We've passed through the ether
Through six feet of sorrow
We've broken the halo
Everyday is tomorrow
We drift and we drift
On your memory's shores
We were beyond your reach
Forever more
But if we may offer
Just one last request
These words whispered from Elsewhere's address

Remember us.

Pawn's Wrath

Like purposeful opposition
I flow against the grain
Against the currents and the masses
Swimming against tides of thick molasses
Throwing fists of fury
Cursing kings and gods alike
Pounding a chest full of anger
They will cower at the sight
Once called a tantrum
Now called a break down
These are the fists of the contemptuous clown
I'm building ladders to take me higher
To heaven's peaks I do aspire
On Yin's and Yang's battlefield
Lay the legends I have sired
To the greats that I admire
I dedicate this empire
Built upon the words and actions
Of those in unassuming attire
Like most of what I dream
We all must end in steam
Evaporated and cleansed
Like the puddle
On the corner of Queens Street
And the boulevard of Kings
A shallow little thing
Where children of pawns play
And unsavory knights stay
Where the bishops have claimed their day
To take what they want and convert who they may
And the castles stand empty
Except for ten percent full
Because the drawbridges have been drawn
By avarice's fool
And the front line advances
All during the meanwhile
And the children stay playing
Not knowing that their tile
Has great forces impending
Upon its position
I rush behind enemy lines
With rash imprecision
And make it in time
Miss the slaughter of the front line
And weep for my once friends
I have become that which I would have never been
The new temptation
So intoxicating when
It seeps under the skin
Forgetting what I meant to do
Forgetting who I am
There was something I was fighting for
Sometime before the fray began
A long time ago
Way back when
Something so utterly important
Colossally intense
The long lost origins
The warriors repent
I see steam curling up from the battlefield
And figures tilted to their sides
While the back lines sit contentedly by
Happy to watch us wage their wars
On the corner of Queens Street
And the Boulevard of Kings
I remembered what it all was for
I dart across the battlefield
Now with ease and grace and thunder
Much to their awe, disgust, regret, dismay, and wonder

They will say that I had lost my mind
Or somehow become unhinged
But what you've just witnessed
Is simply pawn's revenge

Reluctant Adults

Reluctant adults
Dumped into the real world

Still children at heart
Wearing grown ups skins  
Uncomfortably held in place by needles and pins
Because imagination dead ends
Where adulthood begins
At the bottom of a crapshoot        
Your future depends
On the alignment of stars
And the rulings of men
You'd never care to meet
And who care less than too little about you
From the tip of your top
To the toes in your shoes
Because you stand alone in the crowds of the many
Numbers running through the Perfunctory administration
At the bottom of a crapshoot
You find no willing participation
No cohesive indoctrination
On the challenges ahead
Or the pitfalls to come
Just the dazed and confused
The shaken and numbed      
The rattled and concussed
Reluctant adults
All empty shells
And shriveled husks
To start new lives and create new worlds
At the bottom of the crapshoot
     
We begin                            

Freshly from the ashes
And newly from the trash          
Baggage in hand
Fleeing from the  past
Kicking up debris
In the wake of our beginnings
The folly of the future
Stays clouded in our eyes      
Stays wandering in surprise    
The great shadow of doom
The pessimist might surmise
But we hope to stay hopeful
The crapshoot's greatest trick
Was stealing wonder from the young
And hope from the innocent

Applause For the Valiant

To all my once upon a timers
To all my dreamers in the sky
To all my long lost familiars
To all those who dared to try
To all those who wished upon shooting stars
In the midst of propitious nights
To those who twisted middle around index
And tussled with maybe and might
To those who swayed with the ball
Hoping it might swing in their favor
To those who clutched at their beating hearts
And still chose to move forward
To those who excluded rhyme and reason
From their bags of tricks
And stocked up on Why Not and Just Because instead
To all of you
Who looked out at bitterness and pain
But still never said die
To everyone who whistled a happy tune
Whilst the ground cracked and trembled beneath you
To those who sprouted wings
To be better than circumstances intended
To those whose spines never curved
Under the weight
To those whose passions
Still burn bright
Even after the world has since declared checkmate

To the ones under the starry starry nights
With twinkling eyes and good company
Unknowingly hanging on for dear life

I applaud you

Blink

From dust
To sleep
To waking hours
The shutters close every second
Recycling your view

Lifetimes spent in fits of darkness
What do these blinds really do
Hiding visions of the future
Or tools to fix the past
Portals to these neverworlds
Glimpsed through one-way glass
Seen and then forgotten
In a literal blink of an eye
The spaces in between
Are what I'm keen to understand
Gone until the next time
Gone within a span

I am just getting around to feeling
Utterly and completely lost
The darker shades of destiny
Stay floating at the bottom
Waves pressing on the bubble
Rising by any means
Crawling to the surface
Tearing at the seams

Eyelids like low bids
On this one reality
That was once concrete and cemented
Struggling to make it back
Eyes opening to inconsistencies and
Cracks in the facade
Holes in the veneer
Salted poison in this droplet
One might call a tear
Rolling down a cheek
Sourced from a sealed window to the soul
I am still lost
This escapade will take its toll

In this propagandistic sphere
My bubble is shrinking ever so near
The infallible crumble
The blinders tremble in fear
What seemed like a second
Turned into more
Forgetting the surface
I am too far from shore
My vision is darkness
Heartbeating, the chore
And then, there I am
Back like before
And all in the blink of an eye

Traveller's Confession

Reckless vagabonds
On the road to damnation
Stay twisting in the wind

Disappointing prophecies
Fulfilled with time to spare
This life was forfeit
We were always headed there
Forks in the road
That converged into one
Still twisting in the wind
Hanging in the sun
Deals brokered by a man in black
Our friend in function
Our foe in fact
An obvious endpoint
On this roguish adventure
Vagabond choices
Picked our route every time
X marked the spot
From A to B we drew the line
We saw what we could
From ocean, dust, to pine
We licked the curves of Route 1
On the California coast
Breathed the Tuscan gold
With all we could hope for
We stood atop the world
And saw that it was flat
We walked the grounds of forests
Whose trees stood to the sky
As if they were pillars
Keeping space from collapsing in on us
We wept
Underneath a green twisting beyond
And lost ourselves
In the great falling forever

We were never as we appeared
Spinning lies to control fear
Weaving deceptions
To shape perceptions
Holding candles up to these dead men
To see what's left after rotting ends
We lived in confusion
Contradictory amusement
Perpetuated by a ubiquitous force
A constant abusement

Help me
I am drowning
Our adventures, they are crowning
For now until the foreseeable
These ending terms
Are less than agreeable
Holding hands at the grand chasm
Of these deserted lands
I just wanted you to know
I still had fun