Presence

I was alive once,
filled to the rim with ambition;
social cognition was a fallacy
to be proven innate.
Three years at University

and I was becoming transparent;
I was going to change the world,
instead I ended up at Psych services.
I am part of a lost generation
beyond Hemingway's realization

of the concept, like many before me;
like the young adults I see today.
This is fact not fiction—one day
they'll be out creating ultra-violence,
listening to Beethoven's ninth,

and calling each other 'droogies'.
Or maybe that was my generation,
lost in transition, bred
for recognition of failed architecture.
We are the Zoloft era,

and age is unrestrictive at this point;
fed pills and coerced onto couches
to be treated by doctors
with more problems than our own.
It's nothing that can't be learned

by looking to the night sky.
While the stars may seem to move
in relation to one another,
they end up in the same place,
as we claim presence to our dawn.

Infinite Song

Imagine being in a dark place
a thousand years of constant disgrace
an absorbed toxin may last an hour
granting its ephemeral power

but in this nightly solace you breed
there entails a sacrament you heed
a golden chalice of right and wrong
tormenting with an infinite song

a haunting presence you must ingest
to endow a heart such needed rest
and upon the waking hour you seek
the disease in question may seem bleak

though beyond guise of good and evil
I assure there will be upheaval
for inside the time of greatest need
there must be something that will precede

the brightest splinter of hidden grace
will finally show its truest face

Unrequited

I started at seven days,
when umbilical meets embryo.
Seven days for seven sins;
nine months to ponder the ways

society will cast me out.
Abandoned before I crowned
the first thing I did was spit
on the nurse's shirt. Passed on

to Mother, I gleamed the elusion
of love, or hate - I can't remember;
I was one minute old, but the cord
had been cut, and I was set free.

Or so I thought, until my mind
began to wander. Oh, the insanity;
it had taken over me. No thought
left unrelinquished, nor action

was predestined until
the age of seven, when my mind
split, and half went on to heaven.
So I am stuck with the greater

of two evils, a puppet for the play,
trying to do what's right
and keep the puppeteer at bay.
But if I'm to die, do not delay,

or kill me in any conventional way.
Burn me at the stake and pray—
I do not make it back someday.

Emptied

I sense you here, in my secret place,
feet dangling from the breakwall,
your red tossled hair lost in reflections
of the sun dawning onto the lake.

I bring you with me to release you
into mist—for you to be free,
at least until I return and breathe
you in again to be reminded.

I wonder if you have a place too,
where you forget, like in the picture
of you gripping the rails of a fence
in a far off land, eyes emptied,

buried in thought. I wonder then
what you were thinking,
while I stroll down to the mist
to exhume the remnants,
and exhale my latest sadness.

Up the Stairway

He lies there in fixed position,

blue footy pajamas,

grasping his green glow-worm—

it lights when you squeeze it.

But these were not his thoughts

this evening, as he slowly

heard the footsteps creaking,

from where he thought

no man surely should be creeping.

His eyes soddenly archaic,

tugging at the firm snugged

blanket, in hopes he was sensing

something false. So to alleviate

the trauma, that for certain

must be fixed, he reached his head

below the curtain

only to be affixed. The blood red

eyes staring from beneath hastened

his heart and gritted his teeth.

Upon present premonition

he darted from his post,

sprinted down the hallway and away

from a treacherous hoax.

Up into Grandma's bed

he sprang, in the middle to be safe,

and as he awoke, he felt a poke,

and saw Grandma's candid face—

Solace in Structure

She called me her ultimatum

as I took on the role of demiurge,

ignoring law and the heavens.

I was baited

for our American dream, an ideal

passed down and lost or ignored each generation.

For there is no dignity in death

in the here-and-now—honor

has tucked itself away in a cabinet on Ellis Isle.

Still, the heart of this machine forces blood

through placid eyes of youth

condeming them to write the future

with that dusty feather pen

who has long since lost its identity.

Past and Present

She held me up,

mirror to face,

goddess to god.

And I stammered,

not out of reflex,

but curiosity.

How the smoke filled the room,

mirror to mirror,

untied sneakers to red stiletto heels.

Our histories swirled

around darkened corners

reflecting back what once was

one night stands,

trips to the women's health clinic,

and roses on doorsteps.

Mirrors fracturing,

shards collecting on cold pavement floor

reforming into something,

something that was not meant to be,

not meant to become,

but did.

She shoved the mirror closer to my face,

transparent, I saw the goddess behind the frame,

yet it was not her, it was me,

and I reciprocated,

the white fog dancing around us

like freshly lit cigarettes.

My only thought was the dismay I saw

in the reflection staring back at me.

Unlike my own, her past and future

traveling down into my lungs.

I reached out but felt only cold glass,

tracing the lips of the angel

from my contemplations.

And as we both closed our eyes

it all disappeared.