Never More Nice Guy

When I was slightly younger and read far more stories,
I enjoyed the 'listing fast from ruptured hull' type the best,
now as I read less, I write into my days like chalk on a wet sidewalk,
fascinating stories, the ones that knock the breath out of you,
like a wind kicking up about as you breathe in.

For if I read many of these short figures on stilts around me like books,
the leather-bound jacket would surely meet its opposite,
on the other side, with little in the middle, like a Siamese twin,
and these characteristics fade into the absurd projection of horrible abnormalities,
a collection of faded traits that diary the suicide of human sense.

Like a sense of smell in a slaughter house,
our knack for beauty, has it become a mere scale?
a measurement of another social failure,
do we resign to our caves, now that we have decided there is nothing,
outside worth our blurry gazed attention to missing the point?

Sleep and Making my Bed

Soft as a shelled urging voice,
I have felt this comfort you sent me,
a sleep that would have passed over me,
you gracefully sent through my door,
and I find myself apologizing for holding on to this moment,
reading your face, the only one that seems to listen before speaking.

The face that leads me home,
your words outcry my chaotic choir,
even when I do not want the truth,
it is placed at my bedside like a cup of water,
stubborn yet nourishing past my lying senses.

Of Concrete from Sand

Brought down the cobwebs and around twisted bends,
set a camp on one end and fed the spider stories,
it was like reading faces through a shaped diamond,
pretty but missing the captivated feature.

As the whistling tore into my peripheral hearing,
as I bent over to avoid the thoughts streaming through my head,
as manifold sounds gave way to only one,
I hid my face as if to render myself invisible.

It's hard to realize that for all the view that a mountain top offers,
there's far more basement real estate for safe huddling,
and that the slightest beckon is easier to deny than receive,
can anyone read my mind when I write on the inside of my head?

Hollow Clicks

The muted voices above my head, upstairs,
and their hurried footsteps tell me what the time is,
far from normal pacing that tricked you into thinking they were approaching,
but I know now that they always recede from recognition.

I am an empty staircase, blind to where I am,
stretched between my fear and expectations,
wondering why no one steps towards me.

I Like a Loud Focus

When I see the tree branches bunch together,
like ribs, I see the concavity of the whole,
the closed, knobby cylinders meld to a hollow hall,
yet I cannot say anything, there is nothing here to hold.

As I convert everything to my screen,
I marvel its enrapture,
forgetting how I miss the smell of vector fields,
but as my eyes blur the vivid panel,
I rest my case in black cool.

When you hear numb repetition in the murmuring music,
I see progressive tunnels of pulsing stripes,
as you sense it is time to move on,
I'm just settling in,
comfortable when time has passed by our words threefold.