Cease to Resist

We used to go through three packs a day,
Marlboro Reds we bought from
Change we'd find behind stained
And dusty couch cushions,
We'd hike it back from the Mobil
Up the stairs to our cave
Cut into a mid-century apartment building,
Plug in the Fender jazz bass,
Turn on the Peavey amp,
Throw in Lou and Bowie, Kurt and Frank,
Re-string the black Strat,
Tune forever while everyone else
Just kept on fucking around,
Smoke, smoke, smoke,
Bakesale, check out Bakesale,
No, you gotta check out the album before that,
Yeah, I'd totally fuck Kim Deal,
She's nothing without Black, though,
Do you even know what you're saying,
Puff, puff, puff, cough, laugh,
Fuck you, man, turn it up,
We were drifters, no-namers, addicts,
Kids trying on different masks,
Reinventing or hiding or both,
Talking like experts about books we never read
And quoting somebody's cool big brother,
Laughing at words like "alternative" and "grunge"
While wearing flannel with our Cons,
Trying to win the game of not giving a shit
While totally giving a shit,
Unaware that we were dreaming the whole time,
And completely oblivious to the self-loathing
Gaining on us like the feedback we loved so much

Pangaea

Erode, erode, with sands of time unfold,
Make strange this love with sediments washed down
From weathered peaks once high, once proudly bold,
This mountain dies to lose its lover's crown

Let glaciers carve, let rivers cut, let rain
Strike down each heartfelt grain, let wind transport
Each piece to rest and dress this valley's stain,
Blood-iron red, amid this earthly court

Transform this world, beat down this sacred land,
Destroy what form held semblance in your mind
Of the majestic mountain that did stand
And fix your gaze upon the sun to blind

Your eyes so that you never need to see
This lonely hill and its estranged debris

Hurry, midnight

Today
in another universe
right next to this one
there's a guy
just like me
and he's getting dressed
in his tuxedo
surrounded by his friends
all his best men
and he's nervous with excitement
There's a girl like you there, too
and she's putting on her
wedding dress
the one she concealed from him
for so long
the one he was dying to see her in
In a few hours from now
they'll meet in a garden
and he'll finally get to see her
in that dress
and his heart will swell
Today,
in another universe
He'll say, "I do"
and she the same

Lethe

Though I have yet to leave these fields of green,
And daily rain has broke for bluest sky,
I beg Mnemosyne for the vaccine
To purge all that remains, to help untie

The images still lingering enclosed,
For though these skies remain in cloudless form,
Malignant misery awaits composed
To flood the guarded gates by darkest storm,

A tempest called forth seeded by the most
Perennial of memories that yield
Not to the wishes of their tired host,
And so I beg to drink and to be healed,

Still I do breathe but ask that she relent
And baptize me to end this long lament

Asylum

In one version it was just an old house
a Victorian or Queen Anne
decayed though, with weathered siding
and dark broken windows
In another version it was an institution
a grey monolithic maze filled with dead ends
and the diminishing shadows of
caretakers I could never catch up to
sliding down concrete walls
Wardens or killers whose footsteps
cracked on pine smelling linoleum
shapes of people outlined by echoes
And now I'm outside running from it
then running to it
A man on the roof looking away
Something on the roof
Nothing, no, nothing
Then I'm inside again twisting down
rickety spiral stairs to basements under basements
and always a fireplace
a cracked fireplace to walk past in fear
There are people in this house
There are muffled voices in this ward
forever in the next room, in another room

Refractions

That's how I remember you:
As pure white light
Behind smiling eyes,
Eyes that loved me,
Crystalline light shining
Pure from virgin joy

I remember you like
Every shade of grey,
All shadows of indecision
And stricken doubt,
From ashen white
To murky coal

And I remember your
Darkest places,
Black like obsidian,
Outlined by glints of hope
Punching through leagues of grey
Back to whitest day

Your Nose

I tried to draw your nose today
on the right hand margin of my task list
using a blue ball point pen
I first drew it wrong
with no arch
none of the curve of your
eagle's beak
or the sharp point it ends on
it was not your nose
I scribbled over it and began again
I drew it right this time
with all its imperfections
your perfect nose
next to my mistake

Triage

It must be cauterized, this injured heart,
Its edges seared to cease the slipping soul
From spilling out, char every aching part
With unforgiving flames, use burning coal,

Use red-white fire, use billows fanned from pits
Of blacksmiths blind and deaf to the soft pleas
Beseeching amnesty, reprieve from fits
Of rage, from bouts of doubt, scorch this disease,

This pain infested heart, with Hell’s high flames
Ablaze with wicked light, this man condemned
To never feel again, to seal his shames
Within his cracked tomb, the blood now stemmed,

Shored up behind these blackened arteries
Of which sweet numbness will soon softly seize

Cygnus Olor

Old memories awake from slumber creep
So gently to the forefront of my mind,
Faint phantoms lost in darkened corners deep
Once quiet now scream agony to bind

My thoughts, thoughts tethered by the heavy chain
Of ill regret to the decaying flesh
Inside my head, old visions flash then drain
To depths beyond my consciousness can mesh,

Is this the dying of those dreams to which
My once true love’s foundations had been laid,
To rise and fall through frequencies in pitch
So like the sounds of waves to shores that fade,

Each memory now sings their last sad song
In the concluding verse from this mute swan

The Vandal

I would rush to repair the space within
This fractured frame’s borders, a canvas torn,
Painted by fear as true if truth would spin
From the belly of splayed bristles so worn

By the even stress of beguiling strokes,
How brightly these colors burn upon my
Brush, bright colors caked by this painter’s hoax
To turn the course from pain of love’s true dye,

I would rush but now refrain, to mend so
Soon this canvas torn, to patch and compose
With more deceit - to what ends would I go
To end the pain of loss, this vandal knows

These false strokes must yield - for he dare not taint
Her heart - to let itself the picture paint

The Read

I’ve got fifty millimeter eyes
that pop open to f/3.2 in the wake of fear
In this self-imposed paralysis
my ears, tuned between frequencies
of 20Hz and 20kHz, can hear every sound
around the table
except the accelerated beating of my heart
drumming against my ribs
pumping blood with precious oxygen
to every muscle in my body
now primed and taut
should I decide to run for my life
when you call my bluff

All Her Music

You are still talented even though
you're fossilized under a different life than
your musical life from before. Do
you remember?
You were
younger and I was
your friend and we laughed - well
you did most of the laughing at my stupid jokes. I wish
you still carried on with
your music because
you're so sick talented, the world should know
you. People should hear what
you have to say.