HINDSIGHT

Does it take a fool to not recognize
a black truth, staring them in the eyes?
That the the crawling skin speaks the truth, a dark ivy of telling
and that the ringing in their ears is the bluebells, knelling.
A knock on death's door is not always a wish, but a question
for the sage to whom you might mention
the things you're afraid to know, but he does for you.

When I die, Sir, will it have been worth the lie
the struggle, the stifle, and the blind eye
to all the things waiting in shadows for another day
and all the words never braved to say?
Tell me, Sir, what'll it be-- a screaming cry
or a dejected sigh?
When you send me downstream, remind me
please, for the sake of all things lost for others to be
that I can choose it, that I choose it.

What's never spoken is not a lie
and what's not the truth is kindred nigh
if the betoken road is taken-- head cast down, eyes on the ground.
Do as they say, not as they do, dirty and down
behind their own blackened windows
and you'll never walk yourself to the gallows
but you will also never never smile, breath hitched, and jump.

CRACKED

Fingertips touch cold on a broken mirror
that shows too many faces
and feels like the parting glass
between you and I and our torn-out pages.
What was it that we laid on the battleground
staked on brittle words and naive resilience?
Is it through the looking glass,
a barren fairytale, waiting?
I would reach in and take it
but we all know that no amount of sun
can chase away the grays and poltergeists
wrought by something as unforgiving as time.
And then there are the maybe's
the greys and the poltergeists on this side of the glass
that remind me that I couldn't reach in if I wanted to
because somethings that are broken
can not be broken again.

APRIL FISH

Staring at the pristine white
until it all comes back- memory recite
Call to me, but fade away
until the line between reality and fiction
blurs to a sensory friction
A bell stricken on the backhand
an apotropaic rhyme
with a parasitic chime
Defiant, dejected, I let the pages catch wind
Little black flowers of a forgotten day
little black flowers bleed from the inlay
And my paper cranes, strung on a kite string
speak of an age, a life, a wish
remembered only, by the April fish.