i never

living breathing fantasy
people pain can't follow here
cause it's mine
i make the rules

There's some things
you just don't tell

lonely killers
empty hearts
living each in tiny compartments
like ticky tacky little pink houses
how many of these are there
for the little spaces we live?

Protected from the others
ourselves
severed just so

Thoughts don't count
nor meanings
or memory
only lies,
yours and mine
that leave you smiling happy
and send us scurrying for cover
like so many rats.

Like you didn't know that was coming
yeah, right
we're not stupid
not exactly

Lies that spread like slow poison
the kind with kernels of corn in wax
driving us from our cover
thirsting til death
in our fealty to family
or is it Jesus?

Turning us yellow with fear

This little space
too small for loving
not big enough for the emptiness
swallowing
like a python one wrapped tight ball

We're going to hell now
first cutting us open
to see if it bleeds.

Only the living have room to breathe.
I've lost our mind, out the door.

My heart cracks and spills
echoes ricochet where a soul
once we thought it to be.

All this comes to an end
It will. sometime
Doesn't it?

suck

writing
a coward's way
ripping the net of decorum
stretched to contain
howling blizzards
searing
tornadic winds out raged

above and through
crumbling ruins
bleak in the light of those stony eyes
we take flight
jumping free for that second,
falling
far away, where reality denied
cannot exist
where no one knows
we are free
to be other than

inching slowly back
like a shiny mirage on the parched desert floor
seen yet ever invisible
never to be reached
not by you or by them
nor any other

We are beyond.

the vision nears
our delirium leaves no room
but to obey
forces greater than we've known
real or imagined
like puppets on strings
they are but dummies
with the master's voice
whispering close in our ears
we wait, we watch
never wanting to actually see

the master tires
memory or what passes in ignorance
each day comes closer
seeping through
small holes in bindings we cannot see
feeling only a constraint
pushing rottenness loose
theirs and ours
laid out in purposeful irregularity
where no one can see
what it really means

paper to pen,
but why?
we don't write
we dare not yet...
words and images
best confined to the silent minds
of those we shelter unknowingly
where we can see but only in the darkest dark
imagery is the devil's work
yet they line up
soldiers ready for battle
forming thick lines of defense to truths
we can't imagine
refusing truths to keep sanity
against whatever is thrashing
pulling at the nets, the bindings
to keep intact what makes us up

Words get in the way
like battle shields raised
against what passes for truth,
however twisted
words like ants march up front
uncaring, unafraid
of our mind
as far away as can be
flowing from the pen
fleeing from the pain
flowing like blood through our vanity

A buffer zone
once used
they lay silently and die
as we once used
lay quietly, pretending not here
untouched
waiting with breaths held
til called again.