Pwmed

I called your house when you were at work
Just to hear your answering machine voice
You left, walking away in silence
There suddenly wasn't any more you
Or any more me...
Don't leave me alone
I'm stupid, I know
But I'm so sick of living a love song
So sad every day and every night
Why can't I find out why you left...
Why do I always fail in holding in the tears
Whenever I'm standing in the bathroom undressed
I'm still wishing that I'm seeing your face
Hearing your love, and how you used to say you'd never leave
Until the day when you got up and left me alone...
You happy lovers child, smiling through the rain
I listen to your answering machine every single day
It's the number one song on my mental radio
(You were my world, but you came crashing down
Smashing me in your descent
It barely made a sound)

You On The Sea Of Me

Rather than "I love you"
I'd prefer to hear "I trust you"
Rather than having you love me in the dark
I'd prefer you just rest your head on my shoulder in the quiet
Because truth is the best way to live
I feel true when I'm with you (and that's the truth)
So rest your head
Let the sun set
Leave good-byes until the tide pulls us apart
Love is truth and truth is love
You'll find them both in my heart
In every little nook and cranny, in every single part

(I'm the truth, and I can love a liar
So tell me anything, it won't change any of it at all
Take your best shot, my heart is open
No one feels you'll hit like I do)

The Wished Words Of Yesterday Are This Morning's Apologies

You've just made this a disaster town
Why am I so miserably stunning?
Far from genuine, pond-scum cunning
I can't understand why the right thing feels so wrong
I don't want to get involved in her messed up life
No, I'm not for the argument and strife
I'm better than this, I'm worse than that
I'll apologize, say I'm sorry
It might help, even though I don't mean it...
The truth I've picked is gonna hurt you
Worse than anything I could ever do by myself

Think back to the way I held your hand
Warmed it up, so you wouldn't feel icy inside
God, why is the truth always so cold?
Do we only warm ourselves with lies?
Showing up outside your bedroom window
I nod and smile, and walk away as you yell at me from your
Window-sill perch. I can't take you much longer
Slick, yeah, stylish, affirmative
But why do you still keeping stabbing yourself
Right through me?
When you find out how it hurts
Will you have the guts to walk down in all your makeup and shame
And tell me that you're sorry?
(I don't want anything greater than a sorry...)

I'm A Poet, Not A Knight Or A Hero (But I'll Do The Best I Can)

Tried to stop you from asking me again
I don't know if, I don't know when
This'll happen again
I've tried so hard
To get through the pain, to get to the love
But I have a feeling love is busy
And I sense lust is on the other line
Lady, I swear, I say
That I'll never let you down
You've dropped me already, but I won't drop you
(You never call me when I'm down
Your lust is all that wants me)
Can't you understand?
You kiss, and I'll tell you what I mean
I mean that this is too good to last
But I'll keep this alive, keep it out of the past
Keep our hearts pressed in the pages of the dictionary
That beats on the shelves of our love...

I'm trying to say this directly
I'm a poet, not a knight
I have no shining armor, and my sword is only a pen
But I'm trying to do the best I can
Trying to shield you at my expense
Every little word is for your benefit
I know I love you
I think you lust me
What's going on inside your soul?
Let me hear the secrets of your mind and heart
Just give me a sign, are you worth the effort
It takes to protect you? because I'm breaking apart
(Let's try to get this right, one more time
You're the hunted, I'm the decoy
And they're the hunter, the rest of the world
Will you thank me when it's over?
Or just leave me broken on the ground?)

The Wrong Shape For The Hole That's My Life

I'd love to integrate you into my life
But you clash so bad with the decor
I can't see you fitting inside my life
But every night I wind up outside your door
Clutching flowers, grabbing at dreams
Hope comes with sleep, sleep spins me off
I wake up feeling guilty for dreaming your touch
This hum-drum life, these boring friends
Compared to you, they can't compare
But right now I still feel your hand on my shoulder
And I can still remember how vivid I imagined
The words you whispered in my ear
Just wait, just wait
This is my life I'm asking me to change
I've gotta screw it up, force it to rearrange
I've gotta get you into my life
Any way I can (I think I can, I wish I can...)

It's Not Rebellion If It's All In Self-Defense

I know I should love you
But it's so hard to do through all the hate
The world isn't waiting, when all I need is a little time
But you're just another person taking it away from me
I have words that need to be spoken
And all of them you'll never hear
You never were the person who'd come
And scare away the fear
Do you really think I'll get up and dedicate my life to you?
You're just one more thing I'll revel in forgetting
I know I should love you
But it's hard when you're causing so much of the pain
Do you really believe I never try?
Do you really think I'm aiming for the dirt?
Is that why you try to hurt?
The last thing I need is another "no
You'll never make it there"
I think you should just let it and me be
I think if you don't you should beware

A Relapse Of Emotions

With that look on your face
Don't dare pretend you mean what you're saying
Are you kidding? everyone can tell you don't really mean it
But when you're playing with fire, hearts or lives
No one likes a liar

We're your best friends without exception
Bucking rightful shackles and convention
So what's a little armed robbery among friends
And friendly enemies? I'll tell you
Raise your hands like it's Woodstock all over again
And sing like a canary, and choke on the words in your throat
I'm gonna shoot you, I'm aiming to kill
I'm sorry, baby, but best friends and friendly enemies
Are just in the way of the beat

Raise your hands, so we can shoot you
Every lie, punctured by bullets
Don't play tough if you can't even play
Messing with the people who know no fear just breaks teeth
Honestly, we didn't want to hurt anyone
But we're missing our collective conscience
Us pretty boys who don't want to mean it
It's all a game you shouldn't have lied to play

But now you're lying, in the snow
This never was meant to end
Just accept your fate without drama or tension
This is a routine procedure
We're gonna shoot you

Giving Up On Yourself Is Just Swearing Off Lottery Tickets

My music keeps telling me
I only sing like I'm desperate
But my life keeps whispering in my other ear
He's desperate indeed, desperate for her
To ward off the reality I start singing just five minutes too soon
Throwing last-chance lyrics into the crowding room

I take the tears that fall
And I hide them away, so they're never there at all
They don't leave anything but a slight stain
Only noticed by you
My one, true, only all-time blue

Walking through my empty empty house
I notice it's raining, and decide to chase away the outdoors
Barging down the sidewalk
Slipping on the grass
I have to laugh over the pain
Every time I get a wet butt, after the lawn takes me down

Born under a ceiling sky
I'll make sure life gets a kiss to remember out of this guy
Maybe I'll make it fall in love with me
Before I just give up and die
Being older is the same, I know that now
The only difference if that you're the one who wings it
Not the one who doesn't know and feels secure

I trace my life on you as you sleep
Waiting for the fall to fall away, and winter to fall sick with fever and die
And summer will let us run away
No more looking through windows, and watching while you sleep
We'll trade sleepy eyes for awake ones all around

To The Love (or) To The Pain

One of the most momentous things a person ever does is admit to another person that he or she loves the person. But here's the thing; the person usually doesn't know what the heck they're talking about. They know how the feeling of infatuation works, but they don't know squat about love.

In the famous novel The Princess Bride, a key character is obsessed with pain. He believes that it is the focal point of life. And I think there's something to that viewpoint. Although, in a slightly different manner than the Count suggested.

Love is about pain. Love is not about giving gifts and writting sappy poetry and such. It's about pain. About taking the pain that's going to hit your lover. You take off your coat in cold weather, simply so she can have another layer on. You freeze completely, but she stays nice and warm. There's some pain there, especially as your extremeities thaw. Love is also about holding her hands to warm them up. Love is intercepting all the vitriol that others may spit, and hiding it all. Love is taking not one, not two, not three or four or five bullets, but all the bullets that could ever made in the world. Love is about being a human shield for every kind of pain that you block from your lover. Love is all about pain.

Think about it. The greatest expressions of love are not things such as Valentine's Day activities, or jewelry. The greatest expressions of love all have to do with pain. Not meaninglessly hurting yourself; that doesn't show loving suffering, only foolishness and lack of self respect. No, love is about being a sponge, and soaking up all the pain you can from your lover's life. You probably cannot take it all away; but you can try. If you want to show someone you love them and care about them, share yourself. Share their pain, and if you can, take it away from them. Be a comfort, a sense of security. Be willing to stand a lonely guard, and stay on watch for bumps and puddles in the road. Smooth the bumps down with your hands, and lie down in the puddles to soak them up. Be a bridge over every ravine you can stretch across. This is what you must do if you want to show true love. Warm her hands, do every kindness you can think of. Suffer for your love, not meaninglessly, but with strength and purpose. This is a greater, more tender symbol of love than even the most beautiful ring, or the most elaborate evening out. Nothing can compare to placing yourself in the path of the flames, and protecting your love from the heat and fire. While these poetic metaphors may be hard to understand, I am trying my best to say something simple. If you strive to the true love, you strive to the true, good pain.

A Little Bit Darker Now...(But It's Probably Just The Music)

You're the only heart I haven't broken on this side of town
And my life is just the same old story; sucking all around
I'm pretty bad with touchy feely, but with words, I'm so much worse
Your boyfriend drove to the prom in a limo
I carried you away in a hearse

One night to live down the rumors
One chance to cancel all the secrets
One night to prove I am who I am to everyone who cares
All I can do is fix my mental image of myself
And the world won't bend; it breaks
And it doesn't stay away; it flies with me

Sleep, dream, wake, weep
We go about our days with broken faces
And we'll never know the color of the sky
Or the colors inherent in an apple, a tree, a goodbye
If you cry for me, because I'm a fool
I'll pray for you, because I'll always be a fool
Thinking that I think, believing I believe
I pull life tight, but it always snaps back to sting me

On Valentine's Day And Some Other Things

Well, this year's V-Day has come and gone. And yet again, it's left a strange aftertaste in it's wake. Like eating chocolate right after brushing your teeth. For some people, Valentine's Day is about chocolate. Having it given to you, and eating it. For those people, V-Day is great. For others, V-Day is about arguing with your lover over what to wear and if you'll make the reservation, and who's fault it will be if you don't, and etc. For some lucky couples, it's about a perfect day together. And for many people, it's about being alone. The whole mystique that has sprung up around it makes it something it's not. Valentine's Day is not the day when every one's romances go right. Or even go. For many, it just shows them what they don't have. They don't have someone who will take off their coat in frigid air and let them wear it. They don't have someone who will pay for lunch without being asked. They don't have someone to sit next to, someone who will warm their hands underneath the table. A person who will do all the driving, a person who cares enough to pick each flower individually. Someone who is willing to slow dance to whatever music his or her love likes, be it classical, rap, punk, alternative, pop or anything else. They don't have someone. However, Valentine's Day need not be miserable. You can go eat lunch with a friend, to celebrate being "single and loving it". Those can lead pretty quickly to something no one was expecting. <;) But really, Valentine's Day isn't what most people think it is. It isn't about being a lovestruck fool for a day. Or a lonely possible-lover forever. It's about becoming a lovestruck fool. It's about changing your mood, and making every day sunny. It's about becoming a lovestruck fool, and simply maintaining it if you already are one. It's not about the chocolate, or the fancy dinners, or making out with your girlfriend. It's about the love. The LOVE. The L-O-V-E! It's about falling in love all over again, and doing it every moment of every day. It's about making it past the commercialization, and just feeling the... Well, you know what it's about. <;)

Blue-Blood Blues

A quiet room, a quiet time
Soft music playing, drinks all around and couples on the floor
When you came up and sat next to me
The quiet words you spoke seemed to fit right in
Then I listened as you said them a second time
And they hit me like a rock-filled slipper

Smooth, and maybe sensual
But oh so very comfortable
Still, it packs a punch
And you didn't pull it when it came to me
I wasn't wounded; it was too nice an evening for that
I was more just a little hurt

When I woke up home alone, by myself
With a headache and no one beside me
I comprehended what you had said
"You used to be a good rich boy
But now you've went and gone to your head"

I can ask you to come back to me
But that'd just be asking you to leave again
The muffled music playing downstairs reminds me
I'm a bachelor, I'm well off
There are other fish in the sea
I'll catch one that'll look good swimming in the tank next to me
But still...
The way your hair fell in the light
And the way you did nothing, but made everything feel right

When you have as much as I do
Sometimes it's hard to tell what you've lost
Or what you ever had
You showed me Autumn
You showed me Summer and Spring
You took me away and kissed me with cold Winter
Girl, until you take up lying again
You don't realize how much you can miss the truth

I miss you, and that's finally the truth...

Changing Seasons And Changing Looks

I'm the most successful failure
That parents ever took their children to see
What would I do
If I saw myself on video, waking up next to you?
We all try to make it through
With hearts, mind and morals intact
But breaking is so much fun (we're attracted to the dark)
Don't say there isn't a tempter
He lives inside us all
Like a virus, invading and changing
Whenever he gets a chance

Don't cry
Never cry for your best ex-friend
Wow, that's one heck of a sunset
Dancing through the city of sin....
You + me = turning it all upside down
And my heart is laughing at the notion of breaking apart
And my mind is already sewing itself back together
Guilt is a funny thing
It tastes so bad, but it's so good
I'm dedicating this poem to each and every one of us people
Trying to do the right thing
But it only gets harder from here on out
'Cause I'd be lying if I told you we've left the dark behind
It waits in the gutters and ditches
Of this straight and narrow road

The only thing I have done is being what I shouldn't
All hearts beat for pumping God's blood
All minds speak for the love of light
And all us sinners let the good/bad times roll
Because sometimes the bad feels like good
And vice versa
You & me & the rest of them all
Let's make some memories, short term or not
Forgetting is what we hate, like it or not....

Still Living, Not Dying

Dusty breeze whips my face
Knocks me over, gets me out of place
The sun is cold but the air is hot
Can't it all go away? the future is bleak
For an old worn out man
A former musician, now a freak
With glory days and golden youth
All passed by, without even staying behind
To love one more time. just gone like that
The wind picks up, takes off with my hat

A joke. that's all I am
Running willy nilly
Chasing after dust memories
Record labels, rock 'n' roll
All gone from me now
I can't even make it a little bit
Even though I try 'n' try 'n' try
Visions and dreams of yesterday's hopes
Is all I can accomplish

Is there any hope for me?
A trodden on bit of glory
That I could scrounge up somehow?
The mist rolling in from the sea
Blends with the dust in the air
Dirty's the pavement
And clings to my hair
I can't retire from life
I still have a lot left in me
But making it after falling down seems too hard
Who do they think they are?
I'm just like them, only better

I'd Pay For A Movie Star Who Knows What The Word Bibliophile Means (Poor Kids Play Kick The Car)

Find a safe place
Shiver when the earth shakes
I'll tell your family you'll never return
I'm fairly sure you'll be missed

You've doused yourself in our mood
Dyed red, always untrue
This life is the cure to growing older
Because you'll just live as a curio in a tourist-shop
Window

Practice your lines
And try to stop your voice cracking
With the emotion you have no right to feel
A poet broke his heart and his pen writing those words
He felt so tragic....
And you, you highly paid actor
You've been brought in to make them live

You vampire
I put all my life into those lines
And with your rendition
You suck out the life, and lock them in a casket
I know I'm crazy, I broke everything I had
With that masterpiece. You give it your own flavor
The taste of failure

Hide while the earth is shaking
Hide from your gaping coffin
With our friends, angels and ancestors
We want to bury you so badly
How can we make you comprehend?
You turned this poor boy's life
Into a second-rate B-movie

Living this life, you just know sooner or later
You'll catch it (and isn't that tragic)

Write Me Off, Because All I Have Is A Headache And Absence Of Writer's Block

I have a crazy headache
Left over from when I woke up next to you
(Did I really wake up next to you?!?)
Maybe I woke up an hour too soon
I can't stand being alone
And thinking no one else knows I exist
But back to the headache
Headache, hot shakes, and a honeymoon
And I swear, to keep you safe...

Nothing is as it seems
Just shadows in my dreams
Except for headaches, those are real
Besides hugs and kisses, those are all I feel
Lemme hear another melodic sigh
Perhaps maybe you could give me a tuneful cry
It's not right to get so much pleasure out of disaster
But I never wanted you to change for me
And I ask you to return the favor
(But every time the day changes into night
I can still recall that flavor...)

These lights, in houses, apartments, bedrooms...
The effect they have on me...
Excuse me, I have to catch my tears as they fall
And hide them where no one can see
Because I'm prideful, and weak
Sometimes a poet, always a freak
Actually, that's a lie
I don't think of myself as a freak
Just someone trying his best to ignore who
The world suggests he is

Looking out my bedroom window
All alone, except for my headache
And a shade of you on my wall
Angels cry in the reflection of my eyes
In the medium of the mirror
Why do you all stay away from me?
Why are there lights on outside
But none turned on inside of me
Pencil scratches on paper, late into the night
Because the lights of the city are too much
For my headache and me...

Dust

Try to get a feel for the rhythm
Of living life on your own
My arms are so full of nothing
There's nothing I can possibly hold

Everyone lives until they die
Everyone can laugh, or they can cry
Well, tears can be nice
But I'll cast my vote with laughter
Because I'm too busy to go chasing after
All the things I can't have

How stupid could I be
To make you the only one I see
The world is full of everything imaginable
Or at least it should be
While I believe my fantasies
Everything else is just dust and fairies

(Chasing after dust and fairies....)

From The Storm

I can hear the groans of the Earth
Feel the wind and water on my face
The wet grass grabbing my bare feet
The sky is turning grey with clouds
And I can feel my wanting
Like I've never felt it before
I begin to walk down the hill
Watch the city grow nearer
It seeks wilderness to kill
Everything I'm wanting of
Feels like I've never needed it before
The sour wind blows gusts into my face
Pushes me back up the hill
I have nowhere to retreat to
When the world is all around
and only the wind is at my back

I can feel tears wrenching their way away
Walking along the roof of the world
The rain freezes on the trees; the grass; my skin
My hair, my clothes. Something
Tells me loudly, that this was a mistake
Mother Nature is someone else's mother
And she is wounded and angry
And we will bear the brunt of her anger

The wind loses me in the trees
But they trip me up, bloody my knees
I find my way out, back to the city
And make my way back to my home
The storm makes her way to the tall buildings and low houses
This night shall be a long one, looking at the green sky...

Dream Girl

She's a dream girl
My dream girl
But only in my dreams
She visits me each night
(but only in my dreams)
Last night she spoke to me

And we talked and talked and talked

But it was all a dream

How can a dream have so much meaning?
How can a dream have this effect?
Why can I still feel her touch
Upon my arm? her hot breath upon my neck?
How can dreams mean so much?
Can dreams pull you in and never let go?
I look out my window, and watch the falling snow
And reflected in the cold window panes
Is the memory of her touch on one shoulder
And the weight of her head on the other
How can a dream affect me so deeply?
How can a dream have this effect?
(I know that's it's nothing but a dream
And yet.....and yet....I can't stop dreaming
Not now, not yet
Not until I've drank my fill
Of that otherworldly love, and I will)

Poet Musing

It's all just a stranger passing in the night
It's all just something grey, not black or white
People love and people live
People hate their luck
When they're told it's their life they'll have to give
Hopefully, the years will bless me
And I'll make it through it all
Living like life is the only way to be
Or free
Can't we just let go of what we hold onto?

And be free

Why do you cry every night?
Why are you not happy?
I'd give up a life that'd bring me joy
If only, if only
You said it'd please you
Happiness is a loaded gun
Hot and heavy in your hand
And knowing that there's no one
In all the world, in all the land
That can make you pull the trigger

I'll not pull this trigger