Their Skins

I have seen these boys
with many skins, they
wear them out, but do
not let them go. Snakes
know to slither away,
these boys stay sad and
hide within their husks.
Even if they are wearing
masks they are not telling
the truth, they’ve learned
to lie even with them on.
These boys with many
skins and disguises I lie
to keep them happy,
I cannot tell them they
are kindred of mine,
this self-preservation
device I have inside
to read the signs and the
symptoms of my kind has
told me everything I need
to know about the bend
of your wrist, the fold of
your legs, the look in
your eyes when I reveal
everything in a way you
have always wanted to.

Something Only Human

Suppressing old sighs, and emotions
that intensity suggests are not all mine.
I once believed in loneliness, but now
with all that time has created within me
I can only see that I am the only company
to keep (and slow emptiness is the cold
creeping doubt that plagues us). Pandora
only some little bit of the last curse
was let out. We few beings, the mud of
the Earth, newly formed to seek love
have you ever seen the comets far
above where we have landed?
I can only hope that this still loneliness
is something only humans feel,
I would not curse the stars or moons
with this creeping death.

A Heaven is For

When you have stared so long
that colors have changed and
your broken heart has become
the foam-crest of the waves, I
shall still find some love in my
heart to bear for you.  Where
not to love is the only great sin,
there I shall repeat the words
I so often whispered in your ears.
Strange emotion will overcome
in the otherworld, I believe, even
our greatest fears of our selves.
I believe that is all a heaven is for.

Before Words

Long before I spoke
(perhaps before words)
and things did not have
consequences
like hospitals
like needing needles
and an army of pharmacists
(and people in scrubs
all the same color)
there were still demons
and the Sun still shown
at odd angles and didn’t
keep away some kinds
of darkness or sadness
or lostness or the hardness
of making yourself a stone.

Rooms of My Chest

I once painted the rooms of my chest
the colour of you, and in them I dreamed.
And, knowing dreams are real I told them
to you in the morning on your bed.

With you so intimately within me,
how could I expect you would be
so easy to remove from these deep
places and deep thoughts?

I have painted over you a thousand
times, but that did not remove you,
it only cemented your memory in.

So, perhaps rooms and walls are
the wrong thing to have.  I should
have an open field, somewhere to
be a hermit, but in the Sun.

When They See Through Mountains

I wonder what he sees looking through that window
at me, I am on the other side of it, but it only goes
the one way, he must see his reflection, if the laws
of physics and optics are to be believed at all.

But, some part of me hopes that he can see me
through that glass and more then see me, perhaps
he will look through my skin and this mortal shell.
Perhaps he will know something about me intimately

without an explanation, or the sort of knowing that
comes from reading someone's writing. I think, though,
that that may be the sort of knowing that only gods
are prone to when they see through mountains.

If I'm to be seen by anyone today I must brush my hair
(and by that I mean nothing physical, I think you know.)

Starlight then is Lonely

Of the state of Silence
(that which you hear in Deep Space)
I know little, but what I am told
by distant starlight and
the feel of dark matter against my skin.
A caress, ears craving something in
their frequency to hold, not hallucinate.
To set those electrical patterns
pumping, pumping, pumping
vibration and nerve signals
deeply into the mind.
Starlight then is lonely.