You’ve got the sleeves of your sweater
Pulled up past your wrist
It’s chilly, but not quite that chilly
I’ve got the scarf
That I think makes me look sophisticated
It’s chilly, but is it this chilly?
It’s that hot apple cider chilly
The fuzzy blanket chilly
Preferably with you chilly
They tell us that blood is thicker than water
There are many times when that is true
But I’ve lived days where the water rushes
Louder and stronger than the blood of our birth
You dive deep into me
Often to uncomfortable depths
But unlike the others
You can withstand the pressure
Touching bottom when I need it most
I’ve felt every neuron humming
Every synapse firing
With both love and hate
Herein
I’ve held fractures and hope
Dreams and cynicism
In this heart
Herein
This body is a temple
It was razed and rebuilt
A testament to the strength
Herein
There are echoes in these halls
Dancing among the pillars of memory
I’ll always hold artifacts of you
Herein
I clench my jaw
As the world turns
Is there respite?
Is there grace for the weary?
Is there strength for the weak?
Or is it all myth?
Is myth as powerful as truth?
Is truth more the power of an idea
Than its accuracy?
The outcome of a belief
More than that belief’s validity?
One can have knowledge
Of the machinery of the universe
But do they possess truth?
Does that knowledge inspire?
Is truth really just inspiration?
There’s always that one day
When we shatter
Our porcelain existence rushing downwards
To a concrete awakening
There’s always that one day
When we scatter
Grains of sand displaced
By the tumultuous wave of reality
There’s always that one day
When we bleed
Profusely
There’s nothing more to be said
Goodbyes at the airport days
Sudden phone call days
Goodbyes in a hospital days
There are always those days
That define us
You were right here
I know this happened
Before the gaslights
Before the firefights
I’ve pretended that I wasn’t
That it was a different person
In many ways it was
But I was right there
In spirit
It’ll seem like a blink
At the end of this road
That happiness so small
That pain echoing louder
With age we may forget
Should we?
Dance with me
In this Castle of Lost Dreams
Under the slumbering spires
And the wistful clouds
Silence cascades over sea-slicked stone
A testament to history forgotten
To lives well lived
But living no longer
You and I come here
On the windswept banners of sleep
Across the dreary oceanic wastes
Our ship borne gently
By music and memory
We never meet in the waking light
Only in sun-bleached visions
Forever banished to this lonely island
Grateful guests in the Castle of Lost Dreams
I’m like the quantum
Only constant
When you’re searching
When you need me
It’s physics
The way you come and go
Gravitational waves
And I’m the airless space
I needed you
Your voice was lost in the singularity
That void left after the nova
I’ll voyage by the light of my own stars
Another can map the celestial freckles
On your face
Today I drove by the house
Where I first lived with her
The house that love built
And labored through
Before love left
Today I drove by the parking lot
Where my grandmother
Spoke her final words
Laughed her final laughs
Before she left
Tomorrow could define
The places I sat today
As meaningful or empty
When today leaves
Mouth covered by reeds
Clawing through water
At the glittering sun
Above the surface
No screams
No silence
Just your heartbeat
Rhythms in the deep
Face drenched in sunlight
Rays dancing on the surface
Serenity’s lakeside
Beneath the cloud-sails
No screams
No silence
Just your heartbeat
Rhythms in the deep
OVERVIEW AFFECTED 