Act III, Scene I

5 A.M. and the birds song's on repeat,
Deep red rouge drawn on the horizon,
Stuck in time between moon-set and sunrise,
already questioning my lies, searching for why I'm alive.

Answers amongst the puckered blossoms waiting for
the kiss of morning mist,
Rebuttals by geese overhead following the
wrong star North.

Crickets chirping to a crescendo, branches and leaves
conducting the symphony of my life,
bats and bugs swarm and dive around the halogen lights -
I take another lap around the corpses of campus summer life.

No one else can be a champion of mine,
I survived the dusk of your leaving,
I'll survive till the arrival of your dawn.

5:30 confessions to a stone sculpture,
hates and loves,
fears and dreams,
things understood and things not as they seem -

Texts to Mom, texts to Dad,
funny photos to brother, to the girlfriend - fantasies I've had.
I'm here and they're there - someday soon we'll be together
in real life and not just over a screen.

Getting used to being alone, no longer green,
trying to say, "I fucking miss you!" without being obscene,
take another lap, of the school or my head,
watch the sunrise, realize why I'm alive,
better than the unfilled silence when I'm dead.

Catharsis

nightmares
strangers with guns
bodies of friends and family
a safe space no more
community wounded
patches fill holes made

sitting up in bed
sweat coating my body
my heart beating
what if it was me
my friends and family
why is there pain in life
49 names on my lips

staring out the window
painted blue and white sky
soft robin songs
breeze shimmering sun-soaked leaves
slow deep unsteady breath
will there be a tomorrow?

Mother's Kitchen

Long days of playing out in the snow
and sun -
doors opening into a fresh realm of comfort
and warmth.

Wrap around counters,
beaches and ports of comfort for
homeward bound & mead-needing
sailors and precarious young boys.

The island, holding the chairs,
the lighthouses directing young players towards pb&j's and fresh hot hot dogs -
the kitchen island,
a Mont St. Michel when the floors are
scrubbed & mopped -
only to let bridges made of
mud & sand & snow
retreat the waves away,
till fellow travelers & pilgrims move
into Franciscan barefoot pilgrimages
along the high holy Santa Maria de Compostela
paths -
from small islands to
Lang Island,
from Spain & France
to little Italy
and German towns.

Mom's kitchen beckons on the warm sunny day
with tarragon and cinnamon -
warm wood floors worn by bustling babies
and slipper-plodden husbands
making breakfast in bed quietly
for Valentine's Day,
Mother's Day,
Anniversary
morning love-making.

Cabinets full of stacks of Asian countries -
China
will bowls and steins humming with a new age
grandmother-fine-crystal china ring.

Oh how calm & peaceful
the kitchen is -
oh how magical and perfect
it is.

Happy Mother's Day

Aware of Mortality

An inner barbed cage of per diem sleeplessness,
surrounded by crackling and snarling electrical currents of stress,
compressed by lifetimes of hopeful meditations & prayers,
all whilst the angelic madness of Schubert's Ave Maria
bleeds into the atmosphere between the realms of
my soul, my mind, and my being.

The curtains are drawn at the determined nocturnal hour,
ripped open at the painting of terror created,
screams running down the halls and jumping out the windows,
heart beats and headaches  vibrating and reverberating incessantly
while once cold feather is turned over so the rock awaiting
provides unconditional support and embrace.

The distant thundering through the forest of timber;
silvered ash and darkened pine ringed 'round the
numinous glade which with neither beast nor man
marred by their sacrilegious breath and heretical thought -
here, this place bespot with natural bounty and grace sang forth
among the choir of unimaginable realities & phantasmagorical beauties.

"Here lies a man," the stone will read,
"a man whose madness made his life
a gallery of colors which no kingdom nor community-forged
god could contest. Here's a man whose love for that
which will destroy him, outweighs even his love for himself.
Here lies a man, certain of uncertainties, finally aware
of his own mortality."

Ecce Homo

I am the architect of my destruction,
I am the sculptor of my own destiny,

I no longer fear death,
I go to sleep knowing my demons may pull me to Hell,
I wake up finding salvation in your eyes,
No longer do I fall on my knees to pray,
My voice echoes from the Divine within,
I am my own God today.

I am the writer of fulfilled dreams,
I am the patron of my fortune,

Stone halls and stone walls,
cold from hypocrite repentance,
Religious discrimination, freedom, martyrdom
queer bedfellows - unable to share a social bedsheet.

I am the painter of stained-glass truths,
I am the creator of my own reality.

Nebulaen Mystic

There is something not human in your bones,
You feel more at home staring at the stars,
The darkness and helplessness of your depression
erodes your sanity and roots you in a world of
bland scenery.

You bite the insides of your lips to feel mercurial pain,
You box your own ears to hear the ring of the bells of reality.

You are a nebula,
a birthplace of wishes & dreams -
You are a gypsy soul,
staring at bedroom walls dreaming
of someplace else.

Do not fear resting in the sands of uncertainty,
Do not fear the uncharted journey through this life,
regardless of the number of steps taken
or of the hours spent worrying
or the people who have come & gone in you life -

Regardless of all that is done or not -

Keep going.

Nephilim Girl

She was an angel who wanted to paint her wings
dark and black like the night.

She never heard me when I would say
the stars and universes were made for her
wondering eyes.

Sadness collected in the strands of hair in her face -
shutters to the details of the outside world.

Over time she died to the outside,
curling in,
finding solace within her own embrace.

She was an angel who broker her own wings
and ripped out her own feathers.

She denied her cosmic being & universal soul
just to hide her extra amongst us mere
terrestrials.