a cheering, adoring crowd,
cheers so god-damned loud;
they could thank you later
but they thank you now.

say you should be
“so damned proud,”
but this here is not now;
they weren’t there
when quiet got quite profound.

when your pain
was under plow,
when brokenness
wasn’t allowed,
when your firewall
screamed “burn it down!”

you are lost but found,
now bound in crowd;
they’ve never seen you
under surreptitious shroud,
a prisoner to every vow;
but what the hell,
they cheer for you now.

vacation
in a vacant
space, relate
to an empty hollow.

take up space
where loss
appreciates,
live by a motto.

no power
can reinstate
the replaced,
a take away that
waits to be followed.

outside
pearly gates,
time is a
born on date,
fill it up with
emptiness swallowed.

goblin in me,
gobbling internally;
gettin too large to see,
gobbling up fataly;
fueling nervous
frailties, severing
never nerve indices;
pain reigns to please,
goblin gobblin up defeat;
out takes taste savory,
plain to see,
night lost without
brave brevity;
gobble goblin frees
human debris.

insincere
disappear,
gone but
not forgotten
souvenir.

hold on dear,
held on too long;
her presence
perseveres.

a lottery won
via shear
atmosphere,
an apparition
apt to interfere.

our falling out
so cavalier,
a loss so severe;
her ghost haunts,
perpetually revered.

sacrificial
souvenir,
it’s hold is clear;
she appears
to always be here.

dead to me,
dead set to see;
dead realities.

dead evokes,
dead maladies;
dead awoke,
dead formalities.

dead to me,
dead in belief;
dead actualities.

dead desire,
dead capacity;
dead fires,
dead moralities.

dead to me,
dead mirrors see;
dead dualities,
deadly dead in me.

crossroads
delta dealt
death in Devil’s
cradled grave,
high water
rising where
wayward souls
had music made;
storm torn blues,
long night running;
stunning the
lightning strum
& thunder drumming;
strikes from
heartache felt,
she sings for
all men killed;
strung up by
the Devil’s
Bible belt.

raise the ghost sail,
death’s come ashore;
plague of bodies,
permeate the
devil’s morgue.

deck hands hail,
let down skeletal oars;
lethal lobotomies,
inseminate the
blackened bourg.

fiendish farewell,
from the corpses’ corps;
ruinous abnormalities,
ruminate the
forsaken shore.

I ponder to
relate —
satiated in
wait,
with my
provider of
secret shade;
as shadows
escape,
at the rate
that troubles
abate —
aways away
from first place
fates,
that stop on
intake;
once I enter
my third place.