Success is the best
Form of revenge and so I
Keep you in my mind
The clouds shift and move
In the whispers of silence;
I wish you could too
My head fell off my
Shoulders so strong, heart swollen;
You should have warned me
She floats in and out of the breeze like an opulent heartbeat…She just needs to be free…”
These days.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot teach it how to drink. If you’re unwilling to throw caution to the wind, you may as well watch as you let your horses sink.
Grand Rapids has my body; the road has my heart.
Spread my wings just to see what becomes of me.
How is it that my hands can feel the clouds
When my feet still drag on the ground?
Kicking up soil of sweet nostalgia,
Reaching to my lips, a confectionery’s bitterness.
The truth is, I’m not sure how I’ve come to this.
When your head can feel the breeze that
The soles of your feet cannot,
The mid-space; the commonplace
Becomes shallow and vast. Too difficult to get past.
It’s where our bodies get stuck when our
Souls refuse to meet our hearts-
Or the other way around-
We cannot commit to the skies or
The sturdiness of solid ground.
So we float in this Mid-space; commonplace.
For eternity, we may never leave
When our dreams are misplaced in a world too colossal for our
eyes to seek.
The truth is… The truth is…
Some do exist who fly beyond this midway abyss.
And if you can catch them in flight
And pay attention to the astonishing sight,
You’ll see their struggle to lift above is not
Robust enough to crush their undying love for
The skies,
And their wings only pulse harder with
Fervent drive
In attempts to see their dreams materialize.
The truth is
(And I’ll whisper softly, this)
If you learn of these rarities,
You must latch tight and listen closely.
For these song birds sing to share melodies
Of hope and major chords so bright
To strengthen your own wings and
Prepare to lift you in your own flight.
Grand Rapids has my body;
The road has my heart.
Grand Rapids has my body;
The road has my heart.
The mid-space has my body;
The clouds have my heart.
Spread my wings and watch
As my world falls apart.
I touched the clouds that day. They sank down deep and weaved themselves within me. In, around and throughout my arms, circling my neck and cradling my head, and for a second, I could have sworn that I was floating. Securely wrapped in a blanket of dreariness, I closed my eyes and felt the pain seep out of my pores and into the thick fog that encompassed my body. I knew the clouds would leave me soon - weightless and vulnerable to a world ungracious, but I was fine. Because as soon as they lifted back up into the sky, they’d leak, like one hundred faucets, all of the grief that I had lent them.
And so they did. As I raised my hands back up to meet them, they wept all of the tears that my heart had buried inside. In fact, it poured for weeks as I stood there and all around me, the buds on the trees bloomed fervently. My eyes grew wide as the weeds that we sowed sprouted into Titan Arums, giant in size.
Then I remembered, as I stared in wonder at the beauty that surrounded my blundering feet, the simple phrase that the clouds gently whispered to me that day they came down to meet my face:
“She who embraces sadness and pain will someday appreciate the healing of spring rain.”
You could watch her skin turn translucent
and her eyes sink further in
each time she made excuses
for the life she hadn’t lived.
Rehearsing phrases that reek of poison-
She melted sunshine through her lips
But what destroyed the life inside of her
was the monster inside of him.
She carried the shovel and he lead the way-
Every battle she fought in his name
dug another hole for her grave.
His sickness seeped into her bones,
She felt a numbness creeping in.
What of him that once made her feel alive
now plagued her heart with ignorance.
Between the sheets, he watched her sleep,
She knowing nothing of his crimes.
Blinded by innocence, she could not have seen
the destruction of the monster’s pride.
She carried the shovel as he lead the way
With every kiss and promise made
that girl dug out her own grave.
Well you cannot haunt her-
You cannot haunt her any longer.
You cannot resurrect the fear that you once ignited in her.
Lyric video for ‘aCross Discord’ off of my band’s (Fine Fine Titans) debut EP ‘Arms’.
Get the album:
Bandcamp - http://finefinetitans.bandcamp.com
Connect with us:
Website - http://www.finefinetitans.com
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/finefinetitans
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/finefinetitans
Lyrics ====================================
These nightmares drive me crazy
They keep my heart a fuming high
I feed the devil caffeine while he
While he bleeds my ears dry
He speaks to me of lust and love
Confuses me when he says
“Your lust will never be warm enough
To breathe your love bright red.”
Forgive me, God,
But did you hear what he just said?
He’s backing your words of virtue but
You still hold that gun to his head.
“You’ve got it all wrong…”
Spoke the preacher of my song,
“…the devil only speaks these lies
To keep a razor tongue.
To slice open the seams of your brain,
Implant frozen embryos,
So by the time they thaw and you recall,
The devil already has control.”
Well I can’t count the times that
That I let him direct my eyes
To the same obscurity that you
You harbor in your heart
It takes one to know one and so I’ve
I’ve spent my days apart
From the lord because the devil said,
“It takes light to know the dark.”
My favorite track from the EP…we don’t perform this live but I really wish we would.
When the temperature dips thirty degrees
And the sun begins her threat of hibernating…
When the trees have dropped each hand,
be them yellow, red, orange or green…
When the piles of leaves keep covered
Your quietly hiding sanity…
They may call it “Seasonal Depression”
But I’ve been stuck to bad decisions.
Then I’m left
Wondering
If all that I’ve lost
Is because of me.
It’s always been this way-
As if the warmth of a Michigan August sun
Blurs my vision to the truth.
Drown ourselves in pints of booze
To cover up our summer blues.
Then autumn creeps in
Promising winds of change
And suddenly,
So abruptly,
Your head-space is rearranged.
And we’re back to these old clouds-
The grey streets dusty with scattered salt.
Our limbs exposed; the winds stripped our tinted skin
And once again, our eyes remind us of
The filthy sin we’ve been living in.
Seasonal depression?
Nah, not in Michigan.
Our flaws are just as vibrant
As our season’s changes.
I lost my faith in humanity
The moment you fell to your knees.
I believed in you.
I believed in your reasoning
and thought you’d see through the disease.
You wouldn’t know brainwashed
If you scrubbed that head of your’s, yourself.
Feed it with bullshit, keep
Filling the voids with emptiness.
I thought you cared for me.
Hell, you thought you believed in me,
but we’re impregnated with disease
And the moment my voice fluttered with disdain
For the bad taste, suddenly,
I became dead to you.
Just another lost soul in a secular swirl.
Just another sinner in your Christian world.
Quiets busy minds.
Kills creativity. Banishes reality.
Promotes laziness and excessive food consumption.
Slays the freethinkers
and makes room
for ignorance.
Replaces fact with the factless
and shows nothing of great fiction.
The television kills
the creative.
It came down like autumn leaves
Burnt orange and yellow musk
It came down and singed
Like shattered trust
The embers of tonight, today
And every moment passed,
Glowing specks
Blushing has-beens
We faded to dust that night
Momentarily, the memories glistened
And then turned ashen; the words written
Fell like feather-light snowflakes
And every word of you brushed my cheeks
Then disappeared into thin air
Those glaring embers
Of brilliant tangerine
Sunk to the ground
Just like the intensity
Of your love for me.
We faded into dust that night.
We always fade.
You would never know that
Under that long black jacket
He held his secrets
Close to his abdomen
Harboring the scandals
Festering with deceit
He pays his mistress nightly.
You could never know
What happens behind closed doors, she
Goes by the name of “Sandy”
Removes body hair and no one wonders where
The money is generated from.
No one could have guessed
That when she has him undress
It’s not for sticks and strips and body wax-
But instead, to remove themselves from reality
Of bitter spouses and fucked up families
To remove the grime of
Promises broken, hearts broken;
Plates smashed, bottles thrown;
Eleven years of marriage stone cold.
No one knows and no one wonders
Of his and her’s belt buckle blunders.
She could never had known
What would become of this mess
She could lose her job, her pride
Lose her dignity at best
But the tale seeps much deeper than that…
For these secrets she kept behind closed doors
These transgressions that kept her bruised on hard floor-
Didn’t cost her her children, her husband,
Her family of four-
The costs were buried in the dirt and smashed in the mortar
The costs were scattered between
Twigs and trees,
Stones and weeds,
Poor Sandy
Her misbehavior would cost her more than we would ever see.
Because no one could have ever known, no
No one could have ever seen
The thirst for blood hidden in his long black jacket
Or the rusted knives that sank deep in his black hole pockets.
Poor Sandy
Poor blundering Sandy.
They say looks can kill
If it is true, read my eyes
I am nearly blind.
Robots don’t have hearts
Money does not grow on trees
Possibilities
Politicians know
You’ll believe in anything
They forgot Google
This is a poem that I wrote a year ago. Even more true now than it was yesterday.
Faithless; Not Fearless
tion. It’s not quiet enough out here.
There is beauty in the trees but
I can’t seem to find peace
in my soul.
The music sings, but does she?
Everything breathes life around me:
a gentle breeze whispering serenity,
leaves dancing while birds chant their melodies
ever so softly.
Blades of grass trembling while
the sun speaks to a trickling creek, glistening.
If I sit still enough, for just a few moments as least,
through the wood of the park bench,
I can even feel a subtle throbbing of a heart beat.
The flow of electrons surrounding my body
should force me to feel instinctively alive;
but I’m stone inside.
Paralyzed by fear of losing everything.
Stiffened by self-doubt; silenced by worry.
It’s not that I feel I’ve worked so hard to get to
where I need to be; quite the contrary.
In fact, it’s the fear that I haven’t given everything in me
to make this work.
It’s being on the brink of something beautiful,
something achievable,
and losing the race of that swinging pendulum.
I’m terrified that I’ll let go.
That everything I’ve dreamt up
will sink and fade and bury my hope.
I love too strongly.
My infatuation: debilitating.
My passion is a weapon that will
ultimately end me.
But if I can’t make use of my time the way
I was designed to do so,
what’s the point in living?
what is my purpose for breathing?
I don’t want to feel emptiness.
I don’t want to yield resistance.
I can’t let the world kill me this way.
She’s afraid of public speaking.
He’s afraid of rejection.
She’s scared of insanity
and it’s not perfection he seeks,
but the chance of things never
getting better that he’s afraid to see.
So how do we improve things?
How do we think differently
to divert our minds from absurdity?
If we reject our fears and
take back the steering wheel,
will we be able to sing to our family
from the passenger seat?
will we be proud to speak our thoughts
and communicate effectively?
or will we break?
will we lose faith in everything
we were bound to create?
My worst fear is falling.
Falling from heights so high
that my heart collapses and I
lose sight of everything
I set myself up to be.
I’m petrified to the core-
freezing the marrow of my bones-
that I’ll always be just two
steps out of reach.
My dreams of flying are reoccurring
in my conscious and in my sleep.
I’m terrified to lose those wings.
But, I guess when you’ve reached the bottom
there is nowhere to go but up?
At least, that’s what they tell us.
But I was taught differently.
I was told to question everything.
But it seems that maybe my questioning
is becoming a mere disability,
because I have found no greater contradiction
than faithfulness and intimidation.
I definitely have not been kind to my scribbling spirit lately. My head is either deep in a book or drawn across the internet…it’s easier to avoid your own battles that way. It seems that no matter how many blessings I can count, there will always be a troubling underneath the gleam of my smile.
Why?
Because that’s the way a writer lives…or maybe that’s how we become writers-I haven’t quite figured that out yet. And maybe there is no line to distinguish between what a writer makes and what makes a writer…because tangible realities are mere fantasies to a poet, an author, a pencil pusher…
We (the sixteen writers in me; i cannot speak for others) see several shapes and brilliant, sparkling shades in a single facet. Seeing too much, knowing too much, and feeling too much can be overwhelming. For in the simple joy of a sailor’s sky, we know there is more sadness and grief in such an astonishing sight. We know that amongst those tangerine and grapefruit clouds is a depth that is too complex for our feeble minds to fathom how and when this ends. We realize that as mortals, we will only grasp a handful of such dawns and dusks until our bodies waste away. So while one may smile and sing of the painted skies pink, we will weep of it’s enormity. We will weep for never understanding why diseases and murderers exist to prematurely strip a human from enjoying just one more sunset.
Sometimes…
and I’ll whisper this…
sometimes us writers wish that instead of analyzing every how and why, we could just simply live.
