How perfect we could be:
Loveless and free.

Honey

Soft eyes in the morning
Heavy arms resting still
Your grey hairs and smile: honest
Stirring as the day unfurled

Now the mornings ache
and the nights they moan
Too bright, then too dark
Two empty spaces, blank and then cold

The leaves are turning back into dirt
With them my heart falls still
Footprints and memories
Less than an echo, you're an empty space to be filled.

Only

Sinking with the sun
Fading with the sky
Filling with stillness
Turning with the shadows
Breathing in the electric lights
Pressing against these sidewalks
Wishing for fewer steps
and more rain.

Worries and Wishes

Come set your tangled head down
Let my hands cover your wanderin' eyes
Come lay down beside me
Lets not say goodbye

Tomorrow could be better
Tomorrow could be the same
Tonight let go of your sorrows
and I will let go of my shame

Come here darlin'
Please come my way
I'll shake the cold out of your clothes
If you could make up your mind to stay

It's time to stop your worrying
and time for me to stop wishing too
The night can be such a long time
Like the worst movie to sit through

I know there isn't a good ending here
No matter how we hold on
When two hearts have always been broken
There is no way to be but gone

Come set your tangled head down
Let my hands cover your wonderin' eyes
Come lay beside me
and lets not say our goodbyes.

102

Light flashing yellow, orange, then red
Shining through leaves changing,
Against a green wall unmoving,
Into eyes softly shifting

Dust between boards
Paced back and forth across
Shedding what was lost
What was not known, so not forgot

Eyes fading from blue to brown,
Eyes fading from brown to honey,
From honey to green
Haunted by a place somewhere in between

Thoughts caught in the cracks
With hands clasped to nothing
How many have sunk into this room, still spinning?
How many will leave this room, still aching?

All the time it takes for a night to pass
And a lifetime grows as the day comes down

Strangeness in Reflections

I am not sure what to think of myself anymore. Today I opened up my portfolio, full of the past and my life as an artist. Or rather, the time when I thought of myself as this. I suppose I still do think of myself as this, at least when I am feeling wishful. I haven't created something that reflected back at me for nearly 4 years. It seems everything I have made as of late have been silly things that I don't take seriously and thus remain continuous and I unfulfilled.

I wonder if it is just me that has resulted in this out come, or if many of my peers have ended up the same. I think of the people I respected as artists and I can't tell if they are the same as I or if they are still trying. My whole human life before art school was filled with forming my identity as an artist, and in my life after art school I have become fearful of being so. Maybe it was how I broke into pieces, maybe I just lost that piece when I was reassembling myself. Maybe I am just so scared of falling back into those pieces. When I think back on me making anything all I can recall is that gnawing feeling at the pit of my heart, that feeling that turns roaring as you work on something. It's that need to get what is inside of you out so you can see it more clearly, but that thing inside of you just gets caught somewhere at the back of your throat, just tickling the beginnings of your tongue, just stuck there. I have never completed a single piece, I have always stopped right before its end. Everything I have made is just suspended in time by fear. Most of who I am is the same.

I still feel the need to make, to turn myself inside out. Maybe that is what an artist is. I really don't know. I know a part of me has died, or maybe is just sleeping. I know that without that part I can't be certain of what is real and what isn't. I know I am more alone because of this part being dormant. I know that I am in no way less of myself because of it, but I am often mistaken in thinking this is not me at all.

When I boiled it all down to nothing the same damn pot was on my stove.

Collecting Losses

Suddenly you are walking away and your head turns to glance at me over your unfamiliar shoulder
Hands reaching to grasp another, far too far to reach
Words falling short of 4 ears, breathing in nothing, saying nothing
a feeling deep at the pit of my stomach, tearing everything up
Making thoughts so close only hours before in another damn galaxy
Untouchable as you are, what else can I do?
Desperately grasping, nothing nothing nothing.
You are not anyone else, you are you, you are not going to do what they did
To me you have to be different, but those fears, these fears, they are all the same as before.
Suddenly you are walking away, but how could you be walking away when you were never really walking toward me?
My arms and hands too heavy to even lift a needle and thread
Empty promises, empty notebooks, empty lines
I asked myself why, and thought "because you let me"
My mouth kept forming a word that my ears feared to hear,
Every time, tears, but the best kind
Reminding, reminding this is just me.

A Future Memory

Inside a dusky twilight
Dug into/between fraying mountain silhouette
Resting on a faded grey sky
Soon a new night will fall down around you
Wrapped in the heavy scent of wetted pine, you lay
the ground holding your head calm,
fulled up with uncertainty,
your eyes blink heavy.
"It has gone" she whispers,
It has gone, you know.