The Power of Speech

All too often I feel that speech
is a dead language.

People hear what they want,
regardless of words.

And this self-imposed,
expressionless boundary
widens its gap, separating us,
without our knowledge,
as we try our hardest
to make ourselves understood
across the distance.

.cut me down//

so deliberate
your callous words serrate me
don’t run with knives.

1/2 life

we dream
in nightshades

until we’re forced
to fall away from paradise

and all who have tasted the lingering
sweetness of darkness know

that mornings are a bitter-
sweet tonic, swallowed

grudgingly.

Kindred Spirits

You weren’t so very different from us, you know,
and it’s funny how we (myself included)
travel half-way around the world now
to see you
And we stand in lines for hours,
wearing comfortably dorky clothes,
grinning for cheesy pictures
as we pay top dollar for over-priced water
and reprinted one-of-a-kind replicas--
All for the chance to gawk at incredible displays
of “archaic” excess,
for the chance to marvel at worlds gone by,
overcome with awe and reverence,
and a slight sense of superiority
at the smug notion of how far we’ve retreated
from that edge of barbarianism
on which you loved to teeter.
Yet really, if you think about it,
the years haven’t changed all that much
and we’re more brothers than descendents
when you get down to it.
If anything, these ancient monuments should stand
as warnings--lingering lessons
that should’ve already been learned
and filtered down to us through the ages.
So, excuse my cynicism,
but I guess I just find it rather amusing,
that people (yes, myself included)
clamor and scramble
to visit the remnants of a society
so strikingly similar to our own.

Untitled

I’m so afraid
To walk this line
And I can’t decide
If my fear of falling
Will pull me down
Or propel me forward.
I’m so afraid
Of being strong
That I often find it easier
To be weak
No matter what
the consequences.
I’m so afraid
I can’t look at myself
I can't even meet
my own gaze
Because my eyes lie

Even to me.

Unfamiliar Circumstances

Weird was i
And you were me
And all I was
Was you

Weird were we
And us was i
When there was you
And me

Weird we were
When you and i
And we and us
Was me

Weird we are
When you and i
Are again just me
And you