(n)ice

you get the wind knocked out of you,
you stand right back up.

The sun always shines brighter
Way out across the lake –
The lake frozen over
By the endless winter in your mind

Climb the mountain
Cross the finish line
Make it across that lake

Trembling slightly,
You take the first step
Fists clenched,
Breath held

A layer of ice –
This is your obstacle

More steps, quicker now
Until you’re halfway across
And your breathing slows

This is where
the thin
ice
cracks –
You drop down
into icy
waters

A sharp inhale,
and your throat is sealed;
a rubber bung in a test tube

The ice above you seals as well
Limbs thrash about violently
for a while, then you stop,
push upwards, straight through the ice

And you’re back where you started,
in your bed, under the covers
curtains shut,
sun seeping through

12pm and your feet find the ground
4 hours earlier than the day before
12pm and there’s no one around
2 times easier than the day before

empty as I came

fill me up to the brim
with words you find on a whim

lead me down an endless road
a road where they say legends once strode

stare into my eyes, wide with wonder,
wonder that instigates many blunders

–

shake me, rattle me, belittle me slowly
shoot me down till I am lowly

cut me, stick me, trick me, kick me
leave me down here, lost and sickly

smiles on faces, all the same
left me; empty
as I came

serenity at sunset

she can feel her body
combusting
under the pressure of all her
fears and anxieties

each and every muscle
and joint
protesting,
wails of anguish with every step

anguish that turns slowly;
slowly but surely
into apathy
and then finally
into hope

a weak, translucent hope at first,
the beginnings of a scab waiting to fall off – fully healed

and the four walls that surround her
everywhere she goes
steadily collapse
brick by brick,
egged on slowly by the crisp, cool air

the air that softly caresses
her numb cheeks,
numb cheeks coming slowly to life,
nerve endings awakening
one by one,
the cool wind kissing
every bit of facial surface area

she smiles at the child
in the reflection of the river
she smiles slightly wider,
that’s all she can give her

so low

Six steps up the road
And I find myself swaying
No direction comes to mind
Am I going –
Am I staying

Six minutes past the hour,
Sixty seconds pass
And I’m power
Walking –

just to get somewhere,
anywhere but here

Sometimes being alone
is the least lonely place to be

I look back now –

In your arms was the loneliest place I’d ever been

gunsmoke

Hush
Try for a minute or two
To listen –
The soft caress of the wind
Against the leaves,
The steady, silent hum
Of the engine that won’t start
Then splutters into action,
The shadows, down the road
Sharing whispers and muffled laughter

Stay
Let your mind come to notice,
The softness of the words that she speaks;
Listen,
as she tells you that
She is drowning,
Listen to her say that
The hundreds of words
She never says each day
Act as an anchor
Pulling her deeper
and deeper
Down into nothingness

Stop
Stop for a moment
To breathe in the sharp, cold air
Just to feel alive
For a second, or ten

Stop
Listen
As she tells you
She is fading
Away

dr. nobody

‘life waits for no one’
she says sitting still
she’s resting her arms
on the windowsill

she has got two ears
she uses so well
but she doesn’t know how
to receive what she sells

this girl with a smile
she wears all the while
has got tears running down
from beneath her cracked crown

she buries her worries
so deep in her head
she’s buried them all
you’d think they were dead

at night she unburies them
alone in her room
she sits and she worries
and it fills her with doom

–

Good morning –

Heard the news today
And is it only now dawning
On the masses –

Blood stained pages
Shots fired, more blasts
Outrageous

In the name of a book
That none of them have read

They wreak havoc on the books
The innocent here have bled

Wake up
It’s nothing but another
Good mourning

take your broken a$$ home

each day will break you
in a million different ways

but you aren’t as fragile as you feel

each day will take you
in a thousand different directions

hold onto the moment, get a chance to steal

a dance with the wind
into the arms of mother nature

waiting to nurture you back to

un-brokenness

our hour

Someday if the silence
Spirals out of control
And into chaos

I shall call you;
The loudest whisper
Carried on the tension
Of a thousand thoughts
unspoken

I shall call you
So you can whisper
Sweet nothings
Into icy air
Stale and lonely
With
regret

khoda hafez

Wading through water
Knee deep, lukewarm
Jeans rolled up
Past her thighs

The pre-sunset sunlight
Shimmers off
The droplets of fresh
Perspiration on her shoulders

The haunted ebb and flow
Of dark and mysterious waters
Holding her
Down

And what was she holding onto
But this weak anchor
Of small talk
And broken promises