"Taking a life, takes away all their opportunities."

Beauty strikes the heart,
and rips asunder
the vital viscera,
the furring flesh,
the mud and meat
that makes a man.
It strikes the boy hiding under the covers.
The child with magnificent dreams
of love and life, not yet lived.
It pounds, pummels, and clobbers
life back into my icy veins.
I cry, not for the pain,
but the awakening
of not having lived.
Sap galore,
but fear will not hold the reigns.
Death holds no candle
to suffocating once more.
If only hearts we could transplant
for you to see
what seed you did plant
inside me.

What a shrewd, cruel man I am.
Cleverly hiding my emotions
away from reproach.
If I were a bird,
my feathers I'd show.
Plumage bright and vainglorious,
attracting little birds that know not better.
Til the quick snap.
Affronted by their doting,
repulsed by their affection,
I churn.
Hazarding nothing,
expecting everything,
I draw blood for cowardice,
and call it love.

"I love you,  goodbye",
The tombstone read
in the relationship graveyard
where our love did bed. 

But, who was I?

Who was I?

What figment of me

stood in your head?

An abuser,

too cold to touch,

weighing on your heart

a piece of lead.

Never forgiven, for

never having understood

that tears were proof

of emotions it led.

Am I forgotten?

Is this the end?

"I'm Sorry, I Love you",

the card I left,

read.

You went walking out one night,
through my mind.
When I saw you would not come back
I hid you in my heart.

What does it mean to forgive?
The curtain drawn back,
reveals the barren stage.
A solitary figure stands in the center,
the lights casting his shadow high against the back wall.
Is he real, or the illusion of light?
Is he true to himself?
These questions swirl with the mist
as it traverses the splintery wood.
Below the rot eats away,
the moths choke on the curtains.
He watches himself,
not sure if he is audience or actor.
There he sits in the lone hall,
there he stands on the empty stage.
"Love"
The words echo around.
"Ah" He thinks,
"So simple, so deep."
But the word ends in silence.
An invisible orchestra begins with drums;
"Buh-BUM! Buh-BUM!"
Plaster rains, panels fall.
Having never been,
it does not matter at all.

A miserable tune should be locked away from the night.
Into the cacophony of trees it leads. Morpheus's forest.
"Babylon", the road that feet fall into beaten footprints,
lined with a choir of golden weeping willows.
Mourning on their bowed boughs; tear drop petals, falling all.
Forget-me-nots, blue as sky, pass into the Forgotten.
A dark recess where perfect twines with never.
The resting place of the woods, as the Dawn Chorus trumpets.

A painting in a trash can
of a woman with lovely skin.
She holds in her hand a paintbrush
that creates the worlds she's in.
The years make him cold, and
the man who she belonged to
no longer hungers for.
For the great heights of triumph,
to the rivers of the low.
In the rubbish she sits,
a queen on a garbage throne.
Out side the streets are quiet,
the rain drives all inside.
A silent moment in a world,
for which a painted tear,
she cried.

I wonder how astronauts feel when they return from space.
Do they miss the weightlessness?
To glide so effortlessly would be a ballerina's wet dream.
Perhaps they go skydiving,
and when they do they close their eyes
and block out the wind in their ears,
and just for a second, it's almost like they're back.
Do they line their floors with trampolines,
and bounce from room to room?
Although, going to the restroom would be hard.
And when they dream they get excited because they are back in a rocket ship.
It shoots to the stars, but before they can break through earth's gravity
they awake, back in bed.

A dull moment in the storm.
The seas recede for now.
These jangled bones,
worn from flighting
and fighting,
find a rest.
They creak as they settle,
in a harbor,
but not a home.
Though these bones
long for the eternal rest,
my mind knows
there is still journey ahead.
For home is where the heart is.
After my heart, is where I head.

"Jerry."
On the table, scarred with cigarette burns, "fuck"s, and old spilt coffee rings, lay a mangled mass of what once resembled Jerry's hands.
"Jerry, are you listening?"
Bones pointed in all directions, like a fallen Jenga pile.
"Jerry, I'm gonna say this one last fucking time."
Jerry was unable to answer. Besides the duct tape that he had wrapped around wrists, keeping his life juice all bound under his skin, there was a piece placed upon his lips.
"Jerry."
Blood pooled on the table, running over the edges.
Darkness grew in front of Jerry's face.
"Jerry! Fuck!"
The cold began to creep in.
He closed his eyes.
"Mac! Hurry the FUCK up!"
Under the table, the pooled blood began to drip unto the grime and white tile with the ever-discolored caulking.
There, with a sudden introduction of color to the boring floor and willful ignorance, Jerry's daughter began to paint.