I can feel the ever-weight
of sights that never leave me;
lead images, one on the other
filling the head with wet cotton,
weighed down and dream lost;
it makes for a good ether
that I might become vanished

I am the only thing
that haunts this graveyard,
the only transparent man
to wander after the last of light
has given way to a cooler night;
there are no voices save my own
while the dead are dry or rotting
as am I…as do I
and there is comfort in the thought
that the passed on merely rest,
it tells me they, and I, will wake one day,
on the left and on the right

night is blue T.V. light ghosts
flickering on stranger’s living room walls
spied through windows in the dark;
it is a closer time for those with extra arms
a lonely time for those without
who sit like amputees alone
mourning the sense of something missing;
night bleeds a different light
that reveals an inner landscape
where things like the Elysian are dwelt on…
too long…too long;
it is a black ocean that pulls us under
that we might drown in sleep
to awaken on a different shore,
in different country cleansed of what came before

there’s one thing
crazier
than listening to
than listening to
than listening to
there’s one thing
crazier
than listening to
than listening to
the voices
the voices
inside
inside of your head
there’s one thing
crazier
than listening to
the voices
inside of your head…

and that’s –

listening to
when you are
listening to
listening to
the voices
those voices
the voices
the voices
outside
outside of your head
those voices
outside of your head
that try
they try
to tell you
when the sky
above
the sky is blue
when you know
by God
you know what’s true
from the voices
those voices
inside of you
those were the voices
tried and true
they
they grew up
they grew up
with you

there’s one thing crazier than listening
the voices inside of your head
and that’s listening to the voices
the one’s that live outside of your head

there are songs that i cannot sing,
i have the words but not the voice
every melody i press to the world
becomes dissonant when the air rushes
round the curves and hard edges

there is no governor in the state of mynde
just a wild raging place of water and flame
where one can choose to be drowned or burned
depending on what in this life they may have earned;
or perhaps should they have fought a better fight
there may be, above the maelstrom, some well-earned light
to show a way unknown in the present time
a way past each obstacle horror, each crushing crime

once i was 5 and quiet
in a shell-shocked, mop-topped kind of way
stalking loneliness like shadows in long grass
too young to know the ache inside

once i was 10 and lost
running with friends in the concrete
seeking the way to heaven in the quiet back
of the grand castle of God

once i was 20 and red-hot
a fire walking with a burning embrace for the slow
fevered in the world with words to infect
like a plague carrier

once i was 40 and younger than before
finding myself a vehicle carrying a lost boy
still crawling through the sewers in my mind
unsure where i would come out; when i would come out

now i am 46 and i am whatever i want
sad or happy, heaven or hell – it’s a switch at my command
an analog, binary best friend that has never left me
humming the song that i want to hear…when i switch to want

there are cracks in the shell
that surround this place
through which the light leaks;
through which the world bleeds in;

some song and sound
comes like a stranger
past the guardian white walls
to the safe place inside
invading the emptiness that
makes us all feel so safe
forcing us out into the air
where we must breathe,
where we must live…

oh that we should have to live