Dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction plagues my life:
It slips in like a knife,
And to a grazed and broken heart,
Whispers all the things that drive it more apart.

Beauty of the Beast

We are warned away from love
For the broken and the damned
For though we offer all we ought
They can only bite our hand

And we never should be caught
By the beauty of a beast
For there is no such thing as fairy tales
Only the diner and the feast.

Shapeshifter Rehab

“It’ll take time,” they tell me,
“To be yourself again.
Spending lifetimes shifting skins
Can take lifetimes to undo again.”
“You’ll be fine,” they tell me,
“You just don’t know it yet.”
But I’m still waiting for the day
They understand the pain
Of being who I’m asked to be:
A person who is no one yet.

Some Scars

I’ve watched you leave so often
My heart’s become like steel
Yet underneath, the wound still bleeds;
Some scars never heal.

Damaged

I told myself that I was more together
But all this time I’ve just been damaged
And every time I pulled away
I claimed was so as not to end up bandaged,
Not realizing that only pain
Could be the reason that I sit here ravaged
By a fear that will not go away
Of the loneliness I’ve barely managed.

Phantom Pain

I wonder if I have a soul —
You tell me that I must;
For who would care to question
If they did not care first?

But the more I try to think of it,
The more it hurts my brain;
For what if all the things I feel
Amount to only phantom pain?

Weak Links

So many broken links
In one long endless chain;
Everybody points, but nobody thinks
That they might share the blame.
They want to dub a “weakest”
So that it will be okay
And the chain at last will be the best
With one link thrown away.
But such chains aren’t made of people,
So easily dismissed:
They’re linked by actions and their ripples;
Made brittle by our emptiness.

Brush

I wonder all the time
If I might be for you
What I always wanted there for me:
The understanding ear, the equal player;
A soul to brush yours, and paint it green.

To be a ship passing in the night
And the lighthouse that guides yours home;
I wonder all the time
If I might make a better you,
If I could only make you feel you’re not alone.

Bridges Never Built

You poor little girl,
Caught between two worlds;
Lost among the pieces
Of a bridge you dare not build.

You silly little fool,
So sure that something’s wrong;
But you won’t pick up the pieces,
Because you think you’re too far gone.

Styx

Dressed in the tatters
Only life can know;
Waiting on a ferry
Only death can row.
The water’s still,
But creeping laughter;
Black eyes look up
Drinking disaster,
Gauging lives:
“What chances passed her?”
“Was she awful? Kind?”
“Does it matter?
All find their way
To our master.”
Unspoken words
Whisper, clamor
Find their way
To unease the manner;
Broken souls
Of broken lives,
Haunted by
Unbroken ties
Never severed,
Just left behind;
Abandoned to
The reckless tide
Of a river kept
For broken souls
To cross, or to
Beneath be pulled.