Introduction
The end of 2024 ended almost as rough as it began. I was battling loneliness,
boredom, working a job that I loathed, and everything that I was working towards
seemed to fall apart in my hands.
But words... words were always there.
They always will be.
If you ever find yourself in the coldest and darkest of places, I hope words, either
written or read, will be the warmth in your heart’s winter.
To all the ones who long for Spring.
In your distant skies
Brimming with promise and stars
A triumphant expanse
Where my woeful soul yearned to find fresh hopes
With my wings fashioned out of burning veneration
I paid the great price
For wanting to know how flying feels
Leave the ghosts to haunt the photos and the letters
Don’t oblige
Don’t oblige
Don’t oblige
Agitating apparitions
With their ghostly cries
Covering their ghastly crimes
Your mysteries felt like home
Where I could reside in wonder
Of your divine, anointed form
An emissary of sacred texts
Yet to be written and revealed
Proclaimed and protected
Oh, that I could have been your converted chosen one
With reverence and revelry
But judgement’s trumpet cast me down
Filling my mouth with sorrows
Becoming a morose predicant
Uttering in the holy tongue of the jilted
Words that I wish would conjure you again
A phrase to defeat the distance between us
But the wind can’t carry what your ears refuse
So, I’ll whisper them across the page
“I miss you”
Signs on the Waffle House restroom door read:
Restroom floor maybe wet
Use caution
They’re always wet
From mopped up puke and piss
The tweaker at the counter talks about fucking strippers
To the overwhelmed black waiter
Who is just trying to earn the demeaning dollar
An old man shuffles in and doesn’t want to wait so he shuffles off
Maybe off this mortal coil
I can’t blame him
Scattered brain chunks covering the Waffle House restroom floor
Use caution
How many nights have I whispered
A quiet adoration of your name
Remembering
Radiant pleasure
Filling the expanse of our bodies
Consecrating
As we collapsed
Enlightened and exhausted
You’ve taken up residence in my heart
A squatter in my mind
That no landlord can evict
Nor can the police beat and drag out to the streets
As you throw a party into the early hours of my dreams
Leave this place and let the windows and doors be shuttered
There is nothing for you here anymore
The power has been cut
The pool has been drained of the water as leaves and mold gather
in the deep end
Yet you still lounge
Languid and naked
All feline like
Waiting to be served by your chewed up cabana boy toy
There was a burst into my dreams
No monster
No tragedy
But a beautiful little bird
That flew north for the winter
Taking a warmth with her that I’ve wandered the world to find
My feet have grown weary as the years pass
Some have been kind
Some have been cruel
Joys and sorrows
Heaped in equal measure
But the little bird’s song leads me
Onward
Hoping that this exile’s hearts will find rest again
I wanted one more taste
One
Final
Communion
To drink the fruit of your vine
To delight in your divine body
Hoping that we could be reconciled to the heavens
But betrayal and denial were among us in our garden
And with your Judas kiss
You made all others seem sincere
Shame on you and shame on me
For trying to read
The unspoken words in our hearts
Placing distance between us
A space cluttered with wanting to be understood and needing to
be right
Losing sight of that true north that shipwrecked us on each
other’s shores
Man and woman overboard
Not seeking a final rescue attempt
Tossing the preserver around you and me in the tossing sea
Instead we drown each other in contempt
With our judgements in place like a cornerstone
Don’t let the selfish empires crumble in the fear of being wrong
Like the fires of Rome burning strong
And all the roads leading away, away, away
From what we were building that we lost in a day
I’ll put it all on the line
To lift my voice
Making it roar
Becoming a freight train on fire
Barreling into the station
Crying out
Get off of your knees, dear ones
Because it’s all aboard
Out of this tear stained digital nightmare
Leave your pixelated heartbreak baggage
For the technicolor missionaries
With their insane influencer flu
We are bound for where our beauty isn’t made small
Nor our dreams digestible
Let them choke on our joys
Crafted from an honest heart
That moves down the tracks
Towards the kingdom
Where we can bloom and color outside of the lines
Into new wonders and discoveries
Of the world and of ourselves
The train is coming
It is near
All aboard, dear ones
All aboard
If only you would have pressed your body against me
Instead of your judgements
That bend just to break
I still see you in your garden
Summer’s twilight in your golden curls
Beneath the mimosas and muscadines
All is beautiful and full of bounty
I’ve come to lay down the guns of my youth
That blazed hot with haughty sadness
For I was the sorrowful son of what went wrong
Walking around covered in blood that wasn’t mine
Dragging my chained contempt from town to town
Laying low unarmed well wishers
While searching for the devil that loomed within all along
Practicing his tactical tyranny with the simple whispered words
“You’ll never be enough.”
But enough was enough as I steadied my hand
Placing the barrel in the maligned mouth
Letting the liar taste my new truth as the bullet breathed back,
“But I am.”
So, I’ve come to surrender
To bury my wrathful arms
And bear a joy unshakable because
I am
I am
I am
She took one psychology class
Now she psychoanalyses her boyfriend
Your boyfriend
My boyfriend and I don’t even have one
Reducing the simply complex
Experience of our humanity
To a series of buzzwords
A siren’s song caught in the throat of the angel
Dashing me on heaven’s edge
I sought paradise’s soft welcome, but found inferno’s jagged ruin
Astray
Astray
Curse the makers of her beauty