My art isn’t inspiring
I’ve tried that
It isn’t me
My hands shake
Most of the time
From negative thought
Do I write for catharsis?
Or is it wallowing?
Are those any different?
I try to stay positive
But my writing turns dark
Like an unwanted sunset
Though sunsets are often beautiful
I’m just as much a force of nature
As that oceanic blitz
Just as hit or miss
Sixty percent water and forty percent pain
The embodiment of the thunder and the rain
I’ll always be this way
A torrent and a grace
Obsessive and compulsive
But secure in my own space
I’ll always be the breaker
You’ll always be the shore
You need the calmest waters
I’ll always want much more
Maybe there’s a wrong way to do this
And maybe there’s a right
So wrestles my mind
As you lick the honey from your lips
Sweet-mouthed and sugar-eyed
I’ll wonder from this point on
If you made the right choice
Between my voice
And the words of other boys
I never got finality
I see that’s the problem now
Left hanging like a severed branch
Thinking it may still grow
One good gust and it was over
Every new day brings us closer
To finally letting go
I have no words
When I feel this way
Sadness and angst
From you and for you
My hands go numb
When I allow my heart
To take the journey back
Towards the start of this road
I can’t forget the finale
The unwinding of the story
A frayed and tattered end
I can’t forget the future
Threads divorced from tapestry
Allowed to weave again
When a droplet of reality
Disturbs these glasslike waters
The entire surface dances
Shaken from peace to turmoil
Awakening from slumber
Is that ever a negative?
For better or for worse
You’re made alive
Quickened to moving and breathing
From stagnation to stirring
Given new vistas
New ways to view what’s old
Rekindled from long-cold coals
I’ve met the lonely soul
The face of a stranger
In my own eyes
It’s only in the rippled view
That I see myself clearly
For who I am
Rather than who she made me
That water of life
Is of my own making
I. Echo
Gnarled branches cramped the air
Owls in the treetops stared
A broken man on battered knees
Gazed upwards to the canopy
Then from his lips a cry arose
Cold and wind the woods enclosed
His shout as icy as the frost
What once was fair was choked and lost
Tree and leaf by chill was razed
The forest now a frozen waste
Yet still the Watcher stood alone
For flesh and bone had turned to stone
So as the ages come and go
He who watches, in ancient snow
Indifferent to the wish of men
Sleeps in the Wiles of Eruðinen
II. Vision
Upon a chance one day there came
A maiden to that tundra’d plain
From home and hearth in halls ablaze
To walk the Wiles and tempt the fates
With a start she came upon
The Watcher and his watch at dawn
Her trembling hand then grazed the stone
That eons there had found a home
To be continued…
You wanted me in totality
The stuff of your dreams
Untainted by my reality
Where I could only offer bite sized pieces
I wanted you in quiet moments
When the edge wore off
And my nerves weren’t firing
On all the wrong cylinders
We wanted something
Bigger than ourselves
Somehow we got it
Two beautiful faces
A glimmering future
I’m all caught up in the symmetry
Of a thousand rainy days
How one thing leads to another
As the roadside river meets the grate
I’ve lived this day before
With places and faces different
I fared this storm once then
The only difference? You aren’t in it
It’s the first time in a long time
That I’ve seen this
The mottled sky caress the starry sky
It’s the first time
In what feels like forever
That I’ve done this
Taking to you until 2 am
But it’s different now
There’s loss that adds its hue
These feelings of nostalgia
Mixed with the joy of the present
It’s all beautiful
Things that have passed
And the ones that are reaching forward
I find myself on a beautiful precipice
Between the two
Black and white are often wished for
But reality is like this sky
All mottled-like and astonishing in its subtlety
OVERVIEW AFFECTED 