Assurances

People speak of love as though it holds to given metrics
As if X and Y should always equal Z
And it would be alluring
Knowing outcomes so assuring
But it never works so mathematically

Gravitating all the same to traits that are opposing
Then, at other times, to ones we surely match
But never knowing clearly
Why we hold another dearly
What divides the ones we chase from those we catch?

Even writing pros, and cons, and merits, to assure us
All the logic falls apart, it always does
We edit what we’re listing
Adding pluses and insisting
That our love is something more than what it was

Knowing this, we still continue acting like there’s reasons
That with love we can assess what we should do
While never being certain
What should be behind the curtain
So we hold to leaps in logic and we all just keep pretending we’ve a clue

Iudex

Softening the edges
Cut the overhanging hedges
And I see a scene I might have overlooked

Hanging on the phrases
With my fingers on the pages
Like I’ve found what could become my favorite book

Fighting trepidation
Battling my hesitation
And my eyes, they simply crave another look

Trying not to falter
At the candle of your altar
But I struggle and I know not what to do

So, I try conveying
What I’m so afraid of saying
When I look into your eyes of vivid blue

Trying all the while
To resist your glowing smile
Or to take the leap and hope you take it too

Withdrawal

I give the roads away to new erosion
I pull down all the lights that shine your way
I slip out of the halo that I made of your reflection
And let your ruby lips resign to gray

I put away the mask with the expression
I painted with the color of your eyes
I cut the strings between the clues I made from dead connections
Since meaningless or meanings made of lies

I let the cycle meet its resolution
And put away the memories I bent
Until they fit a pattern I could twist into affection
Calling stolen arrows ones that Cupid sent

I let the symptoms swallow the condition
I throw away the needles with your name
I let you keep the pieces like a final intervention
Since the drug and the withdrawal hurt the same

Adieu

You once
Drank
From the part of my
Dark
Blank
Shriveled heart and I
Once shrank
From the garden
That you grew

You once
Sang
Me a lullaby
Bells
Rang
In a shuttered sky
Soft fangs
In the pardon
You withdrew

You once
Told
Me I have a chance
Words
Cold
As an avalanche
Fool’s gold
In the hardened
Lands of blue

You once
Led
Me into a place
Fears
Bled
From a loving face
Tears shed
And departed
With adieu

Heart

Was it a cross
Or just another feather on your heart
I’m at a loss
When you, much like the weather, just depart

Why do you speak
If you know that you’ll punish my reply
Why do I seek
Hello from one who banished my goodbye?

Was it the truth
Or merely a convenient turn of phrase?
Was there a use
Believing in a lenient turn of phase?

Was it a heart
You crossed the day you told me you forgive?
Was that the start
Of when we both became too cold to live?

Dear

Dear, I’m afraid you’ve been sleeping
And sleeping so long
That I feared you might never awaken

Oh, and what secrets you’re keeping
And keeping your song
To yourself out of fear it be taken

Tell me, though, what are you dreaming
And dreaming again
When you’re not in this place? In your palace?

Is it a land of new leaning
And leaning for when
You have emptied your heart and your chalice?

Is it a world of new angles
And angles that shift
Til the world is adrift in a spiral?

Is it one tired and tangled
And tangled to shrift
What is golden and precious and vital?

Dear, I’m afraid I was seeking
And seeking so long
That I fear that I finally found you

Tired and no longer speaking
Or speaking a song
That I no longer hear or know how to

So to your chalice, I scramble
And scramble so fast
That I fear I may never retrieve it

Back to your arms do I shamble
And shamble and crash
In your heart and then beg not to leave it

For, dear, I’m afraid that we’re dying
And dying so slow
That I fear we were not really living

But tell me, just tell me you’re trying
And trying to go
To the dream that was never once mine for the giving

Six

The days inflict
And nays depict
The ways in which
I’ve begged and wished
In every way I could
To get a single word
Or fix

The way I’m mixed
Abrade and kick
And maybe this
Is laying bricks
On my old coffin lid
Farewell to bid by
River Styx

The waves afflict
And sway, constrict
And say conflicting
Things – an itch
I keep trying to scratch
But there’s a catch
In every click

The waits affix
And phrases nixed
And maybe it’s
Insanely sick
But ‘lo you never speak
And so a week
Turns into six