Shadow of Cold Rain

I have nothing left to give
Hollowness like a red abyss
I'll just die the way I live
In the shadow of a cold rain

The curtain of this stage
Is the rain falling like shards of glass
The script is written--just a blank page
I am lost inside this shadow's mass

I am cold

I've been down this road before
You're not the first to want this
Another of a few or more
Here in the shadow of a cold rain

The curtain of this stage
Is the rain falling like shards of glass
The script has been read--just a blank page
I am writhing in this shadow's mass

I am cold

But you can try, I guess
To clean up the mess
Everyone left inside of me
No one else has cared enough
But i wonder if you dare to be
The one to teach me love

The curtain of this stage
Has risen to a new dialogue
A song has filled this empty whit page
I am dancing now out of the fog

I am here

Introspection

So many people trapped in one body
So many faces singing and weeping
Like an awful schizophrenic parody
They're all saying my sanity's not worth keeping

Ten thousand people dancing
In a room too small for me
Ten thousand people laughing
They say this is all there is to be

No longer just me myself and I
Now there's ten thousand people inside of me
All they do is laugh at me
She's such a fool
And in my head without the rules they all run free

Ten thousand people dancing
In a room too small for me
Ten thousand people laughing
They say this is all there is to be
Ten thousand people's eyes
All watching what i do
Ten thousand people's voices
Which one gets through to you?

Is this everything there is?
Of course it is
Can there be any more?
Oh, no! Never!
Was there ever anything for me?
Oh, dear child, you know there never was
Does everyone always laugh at me?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..............

Ten thousand people dancing
In a room too small for me
Ten thousand people laughing
They know this is all there is to be

muse

i don't really know why i keep writing this same story over and over. i suppose it seems narcissistic, writing the same woman's death over and over from different points of view.

it's not. honestly, it's just an exercise in character creation. each iteration, you see another person, get to know him, understand little bits of his personality and life, until for a moment, you know him.

what i suppose is ironic is that this woman will never know these men. she's just not that kind of girl. sure, she cares about people, suicidal people distance themselves from others. they don't want you to know them or miss them. they just want to disappear and let the world breathe easier without them.

returning to the void.

do you think that would really be so bad?

why is it that every time evil shows up in art, it is represented and foreshadowed and wrapped up in darkness?

who decided that the light was benevolent?

i'm not saying i'm out to change that meme, don't misunderstand. all i am doing is painting realistic pictures in monochrome. shades of gray, representing the universe.

shade.

shade --n. 1. the comparative darkness caused by the interception or screening of rays of light from an object, place, or area. --n. 2. a place or an area of comparative darkness, as one sheltered from the sun. --n. 3. a shadow. shades -- n. 1. a reminder of something: shades of the Inquisition. --n. 2. a secluded or obscure place: He was living in the shades.

kinda funny, i totally screwed up this idea once. i wrote a cycle of poems i called Shade, but each poem was another color, and a commentary on life.

shade, tint, saturation, gamma, f-stop.

ways to represent reality with subtle lies.

isn't that what art is? in all its forms?

"for now we see, but in a crappy, fragmented mirror, obscurely."

Angel II

You know, I never really thought about her until that night. She was just ordinary. Yeah, she was a little dark, maybe a little moody, but nothing really that weird.

I don’t even really remember her walking up the stairs that night. She was always careful to be quiet above my head, I mean, to this day, I don’t even know if she and her boyfriend did it, you know? I guess that’s why the noise caught my attention that night.

I had watched her come home late pretty often, though, so I can guess what it looked like. But I guess it doesn’t matter, you know?

You see, I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’m not gay or anything, but I’m 24 and never had a girlfriend. I just figured I’ll meet her when I meet her.

Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had my hopes. She had this quietness around her, just quiet, like she was always listening for something, but she knew somehow she’d never really hear it.

Alright, I admit it, sometimes I would listen to her soft footsteps above me and try to piece together what she was doing.

Even then, she always seemed a little surreal. She seemed untouchable. Maybe that was why she was so attractive. It didn’t even seem like her boyfriend was worthy to look at her. She seemed like she was above everything, looking down, but not proud, just lonely. Like an angel, but neither holy nor fallen, but standing in between, where no one really notices her.

But I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.

You know, she did it very elegantly, like she had planned it all along. I don’t know. Maybe she had. I’d rather not think about it now.

That’s the trouble with ADD, it’s just as easy to forget something or someone as it is difficult to get them out of your head.

This is going to sound crazy, but I actually remember the day I realized I loved her. It was about six months after the night I found her laying there in her apartment. A new girl was moving into the apartment above me, a dark haired beauty who wasn’t nearly as quiet, but wasn’t exactly loud either. I just realized when I saw her that the memory I had of the little quiet redhead who had turned that apartment into her grave, that memory was fading rapidly.

At that moment, I cracked open a very large bottle of whiskey and drowned my brain in it. By four in the afternoon, I had finished the bottle and lay there on the couch with the window fan, the radio, the TV, and my own head running ninety miles a second. God, I missed her.

I know that drinking that much that early is terrible, but really, wouldn’t you? I woke up that night horribly sober and vividly remembering the first time I met her. The complex manager had thrown a Christmas party, and she showed up late and apologetic, but with a bottle of wine I had never heard of. I was a little buzzed, and she seemed a little shy, so I gulped a little and tried to make her feel at home. We joked a little, talked a little, mingled a little. I remember watching her drink, very carefully, like she was afraid of something, but no matter how much she had, no matter what she had, she never ever got drunk, didn’t even seem to buzz. Yeah, she loosened up by the end of the night, but that’s really just her getting used to us.

Funny thing is, to this day, I can’t remember actually paying that much attention to her that night. That party was three years ago now, and from then to the day she died, I don’t think we spoke more than fifteen words to each other.

Maybe this is why I’ve never had a girlfriend. I don’t think there is a woman on this planet patient enough to put up with me.

Well, not anymore.

two nights ago

driving like you're running away
but what did you leave behind?
or could you even say?
is it too much to bear?

streetlights blazing and you don't even see
static from the tires screaming
yes, everything you wanted it to be
but what have you lost?

the flood is over your head now
drowning in your own silence
consuming need pulling you down
now you can't even see the surface


what were you looking for?
did you find it?
would you even know?
do you even care?

this is not mine

Transatlanticism

The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on

Whitby Psychiatric Hospital

“Chair By Window”

Have you ever opened a door and seen someone in the room, alone, gazing off into oblivion, unresponsive and unaware of the universe? Have you ever seen a person so tired or so depressed or so diseased or so deeply lost in thought or even so deeply lost in the absence of thought that they didn’t even twitch when you walked by? We see this all the time in this age, where cell phones gather up all the bits of attention a young teenager has to offer, and they mumble into the phone and no one can pry it off their ear. In this age, when we see someone staring off into space, we are miffed that they are not paying attention to us.

But have you ever opened a door and seen no one in the room, and the room is empty and cold and lifeless, and you can’t bring yourself to walk into the room, lest you desecrate the silence that has nested there? Have you ever seen a chair, empty, a void, waiting for the person who never comes to sit? Have you ever considered the patience that chair would have, watching the paint peeling off the walls, listening to the wind whisper through the broken window, stirring the debris on the floor around it? What would it feel like, to watch the table before you being overturned and smashed and twisted and violated by young, bored brutes? And even so, the chair never moves. It is never touched. It remembers when it was useful, calmly supporting the weight of a young man fighting his own demons, fearing sleep. It remembers when the door was closed that last time, before the window broke. It recalls when its members flexed and relaxed as the furnace rumbled to life now and again.

Now all it knows is cold.
Now all it knows is emptiness.
Now all it knows is loneliness.

And yet, if you look at it, you can still see the young man, sitting there, his eyes glancing furtively here and there. You can still hear the voice of the good doctor, asking gentle questions, soothing him, preparing him for sleep as the sun falls behind the horizon.

When you look at the chair, you understand loneliness. You understand the fingernails dug into your skin were harsh, painful. You understand the fear that you could be thrown across the room by a frightened schizophrenic. You understand what it is to be without those things. You miss the clutching hands. You miss the yelling and the cursing. You miss feeling the tension in the room as a young man recounts his nightmares. What would you give to have it back?

And then the paint peels off the walls and scatters in pieces on the floor. Little flecks of color, a pale blue, flung sprawling across the cold brown tile, children watching the sky. The shattered window lies asunder, it made such a beautiful sound as it fell, shedding splinters and rainbows and singing like wind chimes. The door opened, admitting with a sighing squeak three teenagers with bottles of cheap wine. Now you can read the little knife scratches in the table’s belly.

The room has been destroyed. The walls are a tangled map of Norway’s fjords. The floor desperately calls out for a broom. The table lies surrendered, broken legs in the air, accepting its humiliating posture.

Would you feel guilty, being the only member of your friends left alive after a mass murder? Would you feel guilty, getting by without a scratch, watching all your friends torn and broken as you didn’t even have the will to move, to help? Would you go mad, doomed to stand forever beside those rotting carcasses with no one to confess to but the wind? Even the window curtains reach their vindictive fronds towards the chair, incited by the wind’s mocking voice.

Maybe the chair has asked the door to close, to hide its shame from the rest of the world.

And you take your photograph and you walk away and you are not even aware that the man sitting in the chair was not aware of you. A chair is a chair. A door is a door. A wall will always remain a wall, until it falls and becomes the ground. You leave the door clinging to its hinges and walk away.