Dialing

I have questions
I need to ask
I can look back, Dad
but they're not buried in the past

So I look up
and make a phone call
is there an operator
beyond the pearly gates and heaven's walls?

Because your questions to your father
fell on deaf ears
and I know mine would be answered
with a pat on the back and great cheer

but when my own son
won't listen to my knocks at the door
how much harder do I dial
before I can't do it any more?

3 degrees of seperation
different breaks in the same connection
Goddamn it, Dad, it's your help I now need
Which way one good father has to turn
to make his only son see?

The Indifference of "good" men....

I guess I never really had a problem with what I'll call mild vigilantism. In so many brightly lit areas of the world there is true darkness. People who have done awful things.

Terrible things.

It is bad they are still walking among us unpunished and unincarcerated for more than one reason.

The one that seems to bite the lesser of the two is that the victims are unvindicated from top to bottom. This is a no-brainer. The one that really hurts, really irks, and causes nausea at times, is that they walk around, grins firmly implanted on their face, believing they have done no wrong.

I have a problem with that.

Or worse, they know what they've done may not be exactly right, but it was okay that THEY did it.

Those brightly lit areas grow a little darker everyday for there are so many people scuttling about thinking they have committed the equivalent of some little white lie, when they have unequivocally partially ruined some pure soul's life....

I can't let that go....It keeps me awake at night sometimes.....Justice is too often a near miss....

Think

When you've accepted who you are today
and you've settled with how the shadows loom
you rise from your bed every day
hearing ghosts from the other room

When you realize you've reached your potential and it fell short of the goal you've set
smiles achieved by others beside you
sometimes throw balm on the burns you get

It is a fucking sad day
when you find out you have so much love to give
indeed a powerfully sad day
because, wasted, it leaked out like a sieve

register your smile with the kid
register your apathy with the wife
turn your head, ignore your reflections
for the rest of your goddamn life

There's a quiet place in my head
blackened reflections on shiny surfaces
voices of the dead, and shadows of dread
This walks the halls of my home.

Thin

Sometimes I feel things so sharply/ they bring a tear to my eye/ Every time someone says hello/ It means there will be a goodbye/ and it's no lie I have a tough time letting go/ and it's so fucking easy to cry/ the wrong things are the ones people know/ No one knew I was trying to die/ and I feel like there's an open wound somewhere/ under a rain of salt/ I can't seem to locate it anyplace or anywhere/ and that is no one's fault/ 30 years ago, I had my ass kicked/ and no tear has been falling/ but light melancholy or a harsh word/ can have me crawling/ My skins so thin, I bet you can see through it/ but someone now is trying to find a way/ I believe in her, she wants to do it/ I feel less burn, my flesh much less frayed/ Because I don't want the hurt anymore/ I no longer have the strength to carry it/ She wants to take it off, hand it to me/ and watch me as I bury it.....

He's there, all right.

Suspended animation
when he comes
out of the shadows
oh, he knows
he makes me sick
inhabits me
uses others
and their actions
and images of them
to make me bleed
and he's aware
that he scares
the shit out of me
his name is doubt
he smiles death
he smiles clout
when he comes
he overcomes
everything
and i bleed
in my sleep
until I cry
and he still won't let me be.....

Dandelion

lying in the grass
on my stomach
elbows down, chin in hands

talking to a dandelion

It wants to know
why that bright popping yellow
is an eyesore, to the world

I don't know, I said

Maybe because dandelions
aren't hard work
you're just there, eternal

the dandelion cried

I understood this.

Is the world we live in
set to see beauty
only in things that cost
or come from indelible effort?

Are we not allowed
to be awed
by something that the planet
just gives us

or asks little from us for?

I left the dandelion there
in the corner of my yard
and never cut him down

and when he turned gray
as all things eventually do
and his seeds were cast to the wind

I smiled a little
knowing there would be hundreds more because of him

Too Late For Redemption

I've never understood the acceptance of a bricklayer
and I have always been suspicious of guitar players
I've spent too many years as a nightmare slayer
I've long believed I have never had a prayer

I'm buried somewhere beneath these all these layers

I guess I never thought to put my hand out at the dance
The thievery of others made me believe I had no chance
Never saw a painting of love I thought I could enhance
It's hard to focus your walk when you're in a trance

I'm lost somewhere in with the dirt and the ants

So who do I think the man in the mirror is now
The one who expects a warning shot across his bow
Drives to work augmented with suicidal know-how
The man who had fantasies he will no longer allow

I'm lost somewhere without love endowed

Haven't had a day where I didn't have hate
for those that take for granted what I never could create
cracking bones, sore feet, reheated food on my plate
ice cold sheets, pillows, and blankets await

I'm too exhausted, too lonely, too cried out to be irate

wanting to lay in bloodstains on the floor
wandering aimlessly out on the moors
waiting for the claws and teeth that won't be ignored
and that pop and smoke that closes the door

I don't want to be lost here anymore
surrounded but ignored.