Forward

I once stepped beyond the pale
To find out what I missed;
It only was a different veil
Of the same hellish mist.

Missteps made half purposefully
Brought horror to them all;
Yet still the only path I see
Going forward, is to fall.

Impossibylity

There is no certainty
That can’t succumb to taint
No forgiveness
Truly given but too late
No solemnity
But in pursuit of what we hate
And no happiness
While what we pine for is a hand in fate.

Paths

All paths will this traveler meet
They pass by woods and roses sweet
They pass through town and rising city
Never more the stars to pity
For their loneliness has given way
To obscurity in night and day
And paths that lead not to the sky
Can only move on with a sigh
And worm past tilled and untilled dirt
And along the sea and ocean skirt
Until they come to where all do
As eventually, they meet Death — you.

The Painter’s Dilemma

Too many self portraits deface a soul
And I’m but a painter with too few to paint
All I see is the same in all of my models
The same variations on different taints

I once was a painter who looked up at great heroes
And secretly hoped that one day I would be
A sculpter of clay such that conquers all battles
And somehow of that clay I could recreate me

But now all I see are the base imperfections
That block out my way to what could never be
I can paint over, but always corrections
Can never be true when truth is just me

Downward

Noises take on crueller life;
A fall becomes a crash,
And every word becomes a knife
As your downward drift becomes a dash.

Recurring Regret

I’ve been dreaming of you again:
My bloodless sister, my long-lost friend.
We used to be as thick as thieves,
Until stealing away became my trend.

I’d caught anger and fallen ill;
And thinking quarantine was best,
I shut you out until you caught a chill
And decided to leave me to my rest.

But now I see you in my dreams
And in them, we are friends again;
But in waking up, I recall the years,
And I only want to sleep again.

I Am My Own Responsibility

It’ll change when I change it
It won’t change before
I can blame them forever
But it’ll only hurt more

I can watch and can wait
And can slip in that way
Where the harder you grip
You fall further away

I can call out the kettle
Or I can be my own pot
But in the end I must choose,
Whether I want to or not.

Naturalization

I feel like I’m perpetually living
On the wrong side of the world
On the dark side of the moon
On the inside of a cave
Shared with blind things blinking,
Straining for a light that won’t come soon.
And even if it came, how would we all handle
The world of light colliding with our world of gloom?

I feel like I’m an outsider
A strange creature of the dark
A forgotten exile who in turn forgot
There was such a thing as home
And if I saw now a hearth fire
Would it still be what I sought
Or is that other world now the foreign thing
And darkness, more my home than not?

I feel like there’s a question
One I haven’t asked just yet
One I’m thinking that I might
Because the answer might be worth it.
So at last I’ll ask myself this one:
If time can teach me even to be a thing of night,
Then what the devil is to stop me
From relearning to walk in the light?

Of a Coin

You’re two sides of the same coin:
If you could only see,
If you could only know,
Would this tale then have a happy ending?
Or does it take more than that to go
Beyond just being the other side?

The Choice to Choose

Every decision is repealable;
Nothing ever stays.
Sometimes I think it’s for the best;
Sometimes I choose to change my ways.

But that choice is repealable;
That decision never stays.
I find I don’t know how to make the choice
To choose to change my ways.