Answers in the Search (4): No Escape

Answers in the Search (4):  No Escape

You don't see it coming:
The flood.
Not with your eyes flooding,
Tears flowing,
As if they may never stop.

We know these salty drops
By their names:
Pain, sadness, tragedy, happiness, and mystery.
An infinite abstraction
For a single drop made of a mere dozen ingredients:

Water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme,
Lactoferin, lipocalin, immunoglobulins,
Glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium.
Tears should be nothing more than this,
An easily synthesized compound.

And yet

When they pour from our eyes,
They do so in response
To what could never be synthesized.

This is the reality
That closes your eyes
The same reality
That opens them again.

This is the same reality
That is both the darkness
And the light.

So, where's the escape?

Answers in the Search (3): Tiptoe the Precipice

Answers in the Search (3):  Tiptoe the Precipice

Crossing lines
In both positive
And negative
Directions

Directions
Drawn as lines
Written as lines
That curve and cross
Forming guides
Forming commands

So you tell yourself
To go one way
Sometimes you follow that line
Walking backwards along your edge

Your limit

Just as you begin to believe
That old lines fade
As new lines are etched
At the edge of the light
Pushing back the darkness

You are shown the truth
In the blindness

The old lines
Never fade
They wait in the falsified light
Made deceptively real
By the encroaching darkness

Answers in the Search (2): Thin Gray Line

Answers in the Search (2):  Thin Gray Line

I should have known
Even in the darkness
I am alone

It is blinding
It is deafening
It is numbing

If there is anyone here
I'll never find them

There is no escaping loneliness

In the end you
Are all of you

No one else resides within

You are
At all times
A singular being

Alone and loneliness
Are not the same

But even within this darkness
I can see the thin gray line
Between the two

Answers in the Search

Answers in the Search

You come at me
With your alibis
But you and I both know
It's just a bunch of lies

I grew close to you
Grew to trust you
To want you
Love you

And for what?
So you could show me
What it means to hurt alone?
Cry alone?
Feel useless alone?

So alone
That I'd rather be
Anything
But alone

It seems crowded
In the dark

Maybe I'll go there...

Under the Oak Tree

Under the Oak Tree

You can find me
Beneath the oak tree
Its shade provides
For me, a place to hide

A place to remain cool
While looking out at the school
Of sunlight goldfish swimming
Bright hope's future shining

From under the oak tree
I believe
Looking up into its full branches
With the leaves, exchanging glances

Trading secrets, we smile green and white
Fearing, for not a moment, the coming night
The darkness is not our enemy
It provides a balancing serenity

This oak and I
We both grow high
Bathed in sunlight
Wrapped in moonlight

You can find me
Under the oak tree

My Parents: The Soulmates

My Parents: The Soulmates

My father once told me
The key to a forever kind of love
Is to find the kind of love
That doesn't take so much work

Your job
Your finances
Your failures
Your demons

These are the kinds of things
That require work

Your love
For your forever someone

That should be
The solution to all these problems

A forever love
Is forever capable
Forever true
Forever stronger

There is power in eternity
A power forever greater
Than any problem

Sensational

Sensational

Speak those beautiful words to me
She says

What could be more beautiful than
To hear those words
To see them pass from lover's lips
To feel them course through your body
To catch the scent of purpose in them
To taste those same lips that say

I love you

Fear's Greatest Fear

Fear's Greatest Fear

The icy grip of fear
Tightens all the more
On the hearts that beat the fastest

It would clutch forever
In determined agony
It would squeeze even a heart frozen

And so, through the seasons
Fear persists

With new life
A heart beats to keep this gift
And, in fear, the world is new

With kindness and compassion
A heart begins to beat for others
And, in fear of loss, the grip tightens

With a look
A heart stops, having to remember how to beat
Even though it will never beat the same way again

This is fear's storm

At this time
More so than ever before
You are afraid

You've discovered the heart
That yours beats for
And you could lose them

This is fear's winter

But what's this now?
A grip so warm, calming
Freeing

This is fear's thaw

This is love.

Choices

Choices

There's a delicate deliciousness
To the sweet things in life
It's the kind of fleeting sensation
That almost always leaves you wanting more

Almost

You see, there's a hidden bitterness
At the center of the deceptive delicacy
A certainty proven false
A chance proven to truly be merely that

A chance

And what is a chance?
It's everything
You can take it, make the most of it,
And the consequences follow

They always follow

The thing is you can't follow thereafter.
Once the consequences start leading
You miss all the chances
And you can no longer tell the difference

Between bitter and sweet

It all just tastes the same
Because, in a way, it always did
But you made the choice
To believe otherwise

The choice for faith

Faith in your self
Faith in your future

Each day may feel the same
But you could choose to treat each

Like something new

No Place For Kindness

No Place For Kindness

The sight is darkened
The sound is silenced

As the world claims one more

The smell is rotting
The taste is nauseating

As the world claims one more

The touch goes numb

As the world claims one more

The heartbeat stiffens
Pumped full of the world's poison
A poison spread by those in pain
People who choose only one way
To process pain:

Unleash it upon others

So, the world claims another
Having been the first one claimed
Unable to stop this spread, this epidemic

Another is claimed until

Another is claimed for the last time

Venomous

Venomous

Let me carve out my heart
So I can hold it out to you

That you might sink in with the daggers
You call teeth

Cut me deep
With the things you say
These words of truth
True, vindictive venom

You dig in
Cutting off my pulse
To body and mind

You leave me numb
You leave me without dreams

As I trudge through your injected nightmares
It's clear that finishing me off
Would be mercy

So you don't