To Brady, Vauhn, and Kent

CRY OF THE LOST

Can you hear the cry of the lost above the hammering of your desires?
Sweet tone of the almost forgotten just behind the ringing in your ears.
This isn't a fairytale, so don't wish on a falling star
They can't hear you here and they're not coming back.
The world above this is falling and tomorrow you will lift up your voice.

Do you hear the cry of the ones who slide through the holes in your thought?
Her bells remind you.
Faces haunted by voided memories.
You can't see them, but they can see you.
The Clock strikes the hour and that will change.

Will you hear the cry of the fallen; their forms traded for shadows, and their eyes nought but flickering lights?
You speak of them in the deepest realms of sleep and taste their names at morn.
They flee from you as a dream for remembrance makes of their loss a reality. Do not pursue them.
Do not make them real.
Can you hear them--
The cries of the lost?

Fearful Nostalgia

It was the residue of a laugh that turned my stomach. The thought of the joviality dying to be succeeded by a silence that blistered my ears.

Is it in me to kill? I would have said not, but I've murdered my time with you with cold-blooded efficiency.

Is there so much hate in me? It would have surprised me had I not hated every word that came out of my mouth with a fiery passion.

I asked God and He told me that I am who I make myself.

Is it truly possible to die of fright?

What is in my head that has the power to trap me there? Something tells me nothing. Something whispers that every time I'm locked in there, I'm the one who turns the key. I wish I could lose that key. I wish my mind had no doors.

I've gotten better. I've gotten stronger.

Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.

Spider in the Sink

It isn't too far to say fear; not far enough to say despair. 

 It isn't fair--screamed too many times like a curse at the sky as he wishes away his hopeless cries on the torrents of unfailingly dramatic rain falling

Down stairs backlit by terror to a dark room where none can hear him sobbing for his

Mommy is too enamored with the idea of who she wants him to be to have any idea of who 

He wants to be the good-hearted man that walks next to his wife in fifty years as she piddles through the store looking for

God knows what will happen when the picture of him is presented unadulterated, uncensored and they see

Him

Only as they want to see him and that is failing

To find an answer to the question

Why can't you see what we are trying to 

Say over and over that you love him, but love forgives and you forgive

Conditionally giving "support" that tears him

Down to a bite-size version of a man who can't remember his 

Name the last time you told him you were proud of who he was and that he was trying

To piss you off because he just

Wants you to realize that you don't have to accept him for what he's doing, but 

Accept

Him 

For 

Who 

He 

Is tired of playing this game for which the rules are changed all the 

Time is running out and he is ready to quit trying

To find the right way to say

I love you.  I miss you.  Talk to me like I'm your son and stop staring at the corpse of the man you wanted me to be.

I'm right here.

And you're missing me.

"I Am Your Eternity"--A Lost Magnet Poem

Death blossoms as he plunges through the cascading sludge of music and she impregnates eternity with the synthetic taste of life. Climb into death where man listened alone. Dissolve through a delicate diagram of a black night to celebrate a full moon; dissolve surprise for my burning tongue. Hell's music is burning like a spring rain symphony. I am your eternity after the sky is dead. The dead do not recall when he smiled or what they said; only dirt and wind. Hide me in wind. You still taste sorry in the morning. Her laugh will color morning red.

Give Me Wings That I May Fly

There is no light

Yet somehow I can see all too well that

There is nothing to see.

Just me and the one who calls himself me.

We sit together on a plane of

Thought

With holes big enough to fall through.

The power of the faith in the lies

He/I

Tell me protects me from the plunge.

I'd rather fall.

No sound

But the whispered words carried by a

Voice

That slips from between clenched lips.

I cannot hear them.

My ears are stopped by the

Smothering

Weight of the silence that echoes

Through corridors and caverns

Too filled with unfinished but outdated

Thoughts

Ideas

Fears

To traverse without the trap of

Time

Wasted on

Worry

Catching me by the feet to

Hold me locked in

Guilt and

Shame.

Still I know what is said.

The darkness is thickened by a

Mist

Supported by

Promises

Of Pain

Unfounded

Unexplained

Undeniably powerful in their

Carefully constructed

Half-truths.

Night becomes heavier

Noctem Aeternus

The eternal

Night.

I can no longer see as clearly the darkness thickening

In the recesses.

I feel only the drag of fear and worry on my

Consciousness and the hands of the one who calls himself me lovingly

Caressing

Embracing

Feeding

The quicksand of fearful thoughts that

Suffocates

My focus on You

Lord.

Imprisoned in my mind.

I cannot see, but my eyes are turned to You.

Set me free.

Psalm 3,722

I would cry out to you "Oh, Lord, help me step out from my trials!" but I feel no justification in calling you my Lord.
I have called for you in the thick of the smoke rising from my smoldering skin and you showed not your face. I reached out my hand when I was sinking into the fathomless canyons of my thoughts and I saw you not. I whispered in exhausted supplication when I felt terror's dominion over my mind and still you were not there.
I feel no justification in calling you my Lord.
I felt the fire of time singing the fringes of my life until I was frayed and scattered. I bowed my knee before you and you would not turn your eyes to me. I prostrated myself in your presence and you paid me no mind. I opened my mouth and begged for strength, for the ability to help those around me who were in need. I moistened my lips to plead for forgiveness for straying from the path. And you turned not your eyes on me. I cried out "Oh, Lord, why do you deny me?"
Your voice came from motionless lips. "Do you call me so? Am I Lord to you? You kneel before me with a stagnant heart of fear and doubt. You deny nothing of yourself and beg for yourself all that you will not give of yourself to others."
You turned me out from your presence and your face has been far from me. I have forgotten your face, my Father. You have forgotten mine.
I feel no justification in calling you my Lord.

Tell Me Again

I want to hold your hand like we're five years old and I'm sneaking a kiss on the cheek behind the twisty slide where the playground monitor can't see us.
I want to flirt with you like I'm still in high school and I have no idea that the lines I'm using were used by my dad a few millenia ago when my parents were dating.
I want to reach out to you like there are a million people in this room but you're only looking at me.
I want to carry you in my arms like a superhero rescuing the love of his life from a plummet of unimaginable height.
I want to hold you like my arms can keep out the world and melt all your fears.
I want to kiss you like my lips can keep in the tears and fix the pain in your heart.
I want to dance with you like every song ever written was for us.
I want to lie with you on the couch like tomorrow will never come and there's only your soft breathing and your heart beating against my chest.
I want to talk to you like I'm a semi-normal human being who knows how to use his words properly without tripping over them or spitting on himself.
I want to walk into your room like I'm coming home and there is no question about where I belong.
I want to tell you I love you like it's for the first time and hear your breath catch.
I want to be your best friend until my last breath like God couldn't help but put us together.
I want you to tell me again that you will be mine for forever and always.
Now I want you to tell me again.