lionheart

burn your tomes, boy, you've got it made.

you've got your arm stretched to yesterday.

keeping secrets wont seal your knowledge away,

so arcane.

but you keep it so clandestine

when i'm standing on the mezzanine

and you're hurling your soliloquies at me--

i'm not listening.

i know i've no part in your work of art.

all this pretension will pass you away

to lesser age.

now is your time to gather retribution,

standing like a harlequin:

"do your worst, darling."

playing atlas for transience,

a transient, in transit,

a love-fettered romantic.

old stories are written before they're made.

wait for a memory.

a moment of clarity,

parried disparity:

make your choice now.

anthemic

i've marked the map so you could find your back.

i've crossed "t's" and dotted "i's" just to stay tact.

tactfully assert their roles;

carefully narrate their goals.

where they go we will not follow.

there is no indiction of your worth, so

iconoclast, you speak out of turn.

outclassed, in turn,

we'll watch you burn

these manifestos out of reach

and communiques the public breached.

(private lives are others' now.)

your monikers will run their ground:

corpses rot,

and buildings drown

as the blood floods the gutters of our beloved cities

"cut the head before it speaks.

we are lying to the weak.

we are lions among sheep;

slaughter unfaltered."

pariah,

one year goes by

as your desire

only feeds mine.

sergio leone

patron, i know you've had this all planned out--

we are peons on oblivion's dime.

in sight, in mind, never run too far to find

what is

beyond your path;

beyond my sky.

so you chalked it up to truth,

but i knew

that there was more work to do

beyond

the plaza signs

plasma signs that burned bright

in effigy of the memory

of all the worn-out ways they raised me on

"pursue your happiness--you'll be content"--

all i ever wanted was happenstance;

all that happened was your fate.

and so we fall behind

what is beyond your skyline

rhetoric to praise progress

only befalls those who want it.

you swear to the sun you'll believe what you're told you foolish child now youre only half away from your bed you cannot create this and you've gotten by just to stop me from thinking that it's colder now than i ever wanted and i'm feeling the carbon torn down i know my limits i know my crown costs a dragged lake i'll fall asleep and i'll awake two days later with the old amends that i could never escape like "its time to get up" if being chosen for words means i know my limits and where i can take them but i i'm a garden of archery and apples discard what i pay for discard my limits i paid for what i can breathe out we'll guard our backs if we trust too much i know my limits i know where i can reach yet i'm at my own arm's length i know my limits i know how to reach them but i fall beyond arm's length

chrono trigger

she casts her stare out the window to find the Chicago sunrise
like a ritual. you ritually catch the sun before it ascends, so all
the orange, yellow, and red can remind you of the place you left.
and all the people you left, regressed and became "all those
people" you knew who would announce your name (when you
came in the room). and all the people you asked all responded
the same, "what do you have left to lose that you haven't already
annulled?" and you could leave this place, but all your methods
of goodbye will be over in a minute; all that matters is time.

but you want it moral.

is this just a question,
of what you wanted moral?
is this just a question
of which you wanted more of?
is it just a question of whether you depart or arrive,
of what have you got left to learn, of what have you got to lack?
"and do they know what I’ve done wrong? i can't quite get
passed that yet."

what are you running for?

is this a question of what you wanted moral,
and is this just a question?

are the hours sinking in, can you carry on?
should time just stop, would you laugh it off?
come the second hand,
will this feel wrong when it's over?
whispering,
"nothing matters, love.
time is all, all that we're a matter of."

"just water through our hands,
sands shifting a glass."

sands shifting through our hands or water filling up a glass.
that is all we're a matter of.

whispering,
"nothing matters, love. time is all we're a matter of."

ensign,
you're on your way.
it's time,
you're on your way.

halcyon, on

halcyon,
on those days when you fell from grace
with your cheek
pressed up against the windowpane:
that was your moment.
and it was your moment,
when i was your moment.
that was your moment.

now recall a movement,
some subtle, untouched, unbridled movement
you're a warrior on your back.
with your eyes locked
on the ceiling
on the ceiling fan.
(with your eyes locked on her eyes locked on the ceiling fan,
does it make you sick?

well, does it make you sick to know that this will all go
full circle.)
"just like your mother, just like her daughter."

i was walking out,
and you were walking on the ceiling.

I’ll wrest my wings
when the storm comes crashing in.

halcyon,

you're not fooling anyone;

you're the same old girl you were

when you were young.

when you're sleeping in,
the waves come lashing against the shore,
look down the list of things you wanted her to have.

"you're just like your mother."

"you're just like her daughter."
and when the storm mercifully comes crashing in,
rustle your wings, spread so gracefully,
and throw your frail body
to the sea.
just like your mother, just like her daughter.

i'm drowning
while you’re wading.
are you waiting
for those seven days of peace,
for seven years of tranquility?
we're set on a new name:
reclaimed.
Hallelujah.

(This song is about the sea.)

threads of light

the summer's been cold,
and all the plans that it's crushed
were left fleeing and fleeting
or passed down to us
we try, but it's never enough to gather our sense
as we spend our late nights and mornings planning our
intoxication and facing the consequence
what's left of the day is devoted to rest
it's this iterant pattern, this pattern i intervent
it's this pattern, this iterant pattern that i divest
and build anew, built into an establishment
poems that keep me awake and the measures i take
to avoid the ranks of those who self-medicate
i'll never be that

are you seeing clearly with that smoke in your eyes?
are you breathing clearly with that smoke in your lungs?

pose, poise and impose
it's poison that flows through every impulse
you said,
"though i make my own luck,
the half that i lack is the whole we make up"
wait love,
we're caught in the fray
and just being alive is half a reason to stay.

what we've had falls victim to memory,
ennui.
on we who keep marching

onward
on and on and on.