27 Reasons

There are twenty seven reasons why

A collection in Short Spaces

Moonlight
Is only second-hand sun
But it beats a world
Where the light gives up
Before it finds your eyes










If you live your dreams
YOu will forget to live your life.









Smiles are only heavy
When they aren't worn
On the inside









Loss
Is the privilege
Of those who have something

Love
Is the price you pay
For giving something up

Thoughts
Are cruel company
To the unsilent mind

Mocking the wind
That bears them
Like a child

With the cruelty
Of an honest lie

They lurk in bedroom closets
Behind suits hanging at their best
And pour moth-dust in the creases.

Yeh...

The Map

In a pocket of time
I found a map to you
I wonder if
The path still lies true
When I've lost all trace of North

Some things can't be frozen
In a cage of pen and paper
Some times the blood in my head
Is the only ink at hand
That can write trust into my bones

I'll stay up all night
And plot my course into forever
Hunched like a starving bear
Over the season's last salmon
Doom rolling in with the snow clouds.

I'll tread the path
Till my footsteps are as natural
As the wild earth they cut,
Warmed against the winter scorn
Wrapped in thick determination

And
Never once pause to think
If you've somehow
Moved on from there

Are there ways of being human
That don't get lost in the fog
Of time's sticky fingers?

Are there questions
Whose answers are so large
They'd squash me into a new shape?

Will I move fast enough
Next time I open my mouth
To catch my foot before it gets there?

Pins and needles
Like it was before
Dead limbs coming to life
Crawling up inside
That shape I'll always remember
I lost you between the aisles
When the crowd pulled away
I was all pins and needles
Coming back to life
Phantom pain for phantom limbs
When standing is being lost.

Fold yourself
Sticks and glue
And paper moulds
Shape yourself
Into that thing
You wanted to be
Deep down
Where you lose
All your surface.

Not another wounded street
Or an end that cannot meet
Just the passing of time
In the other lane
Just the fractures of mine
Lying in the way.

The Crusade they called me to,
Bootless and weary,
Had forgotten its enemy
But we'd fight on so long
As morale held itself aloft.

The flag we raised,
Hacked and torn,
Was too heavy
With trust and ashes
And the wind too feeble for
The pennant to hold itself high.

The guns we cradled,
Were not our own,
Caked in purchasing blood
And with the same betraying barrels
That sent them down
We held us out of death's clinging mud

The things we lost,
Youth and light and peace
We never missed
As we chambered them
And set them off in clouds of thunder.

Don't wrap yourself so tight
You aren't a birthday present
When your outer layers peel away
It's not going to be pleasant.