Elucidating Questions

The trench may be a metaphor for the lines and wrinkles in the earth that push and pull

It may be the feeling that always comes up when something bigger is coming,

Perhaps as the wakening of an epoch the earth screams louder than we thought.

Euphoric nights of hope of tomorrow.

Whose line is which? And which line is which?

The moon is the one we turn to, hanging in the sky, watching the sunset from behind metal and glass.

I got the only thing I wanted in life,

And when I landed I wanted to know where my next dream was.

Three years ago, four years ago.

If I could return to those streets I would have it, I suppose.

Isn’t it backwards? Always falling in love backwards.

Do you fall in love with drawings of ideas and paint what you hear in the voices of others?

Desire is something given into only accidentally, usually the wanting of something simple like a strawberry,

Usually the wanting of human connectivity, before the want of anything else.

Fake bravado of words written not spoken,

Hadn’t heard the sound of silence,

Scenes already written, someone else’s dream.

I wonder, I wonder,

After tomorrow will I have words to write?

For twenty days and twenty nights.

Writing these words, undisturbed,

The fear of living in a land that is on silent fire,

Doesn’t scare me nearly as much as silence does.

I did not make the sun.

Someday I will find a shard of you that doesn’t turn away when I show up.

That I will tumble into and why is he you when he isn’t?

Or will I?

Loved me from the first second, you swear,

But the joke is that when we first met I still walked in the secret of the wrong body in my heart.

So the joke may be that you won’t see me.

I ruined it by being me.

How could I have known that they would all turn to run

When all I needed was friends and support?

Did you stop loving me, without me, knowing when I changed?

Just like everyone else?

Being true to myself within myself

Did you hate me for being me?

Do I apologise for feeling like I fit, finally,

In a world I made just for me,

To hide away from reality long enough to put the heart where it wanted to be

And then learn all I miss is human company.

But nothing is real.

Nothing has ever been real.

I just wanted to touch you finally, you were always so far away.

The truth, that you broke apart.

Do I just find shards?

You’re impossible to find.

I lost the game.

I always wanted to see other people’s fairytales. I break my heart well enough alone.

Alone, alone, alone.

In the silence you can watch, the building up and breaking down.

My love is true

But,

But,

But,

And the list goes on.

I see this darker side, these words of the wishes,

This is not me. A consolation prize for the loser of the game.

That is not what I am.

The lines on the face get deeper, the age of exhaustion.

Manipulation

How to make people do what you want.

I don’t. If silence is manipulation, if the words never spoken,

If choking on every memory that ever stung and never saying anything…

Someone should have said,

Acceptance leads to loneliness and nothing.

I didn’t want them to walk away, I wanted them to stay.

In accepting everyone for what they say, who they are, how they play, their feelings always valid,

At my own expense,

I realise they all just walk away.

Things look up, I look at the sky.

We don’t talk for years, it continues in grey without you.

It doesn’t matter if you are here or not.

It matters if you are there or not.

Silent lifeline,

As long as you are there to remind me I’m fine with being the losing side of your coin.

Everything is fine.

The sleep is backwards, hiding in the night, trying to sleep just brings dawn’s light.

The exhaustion of a day slept through with fleeting thoughts,

Is it a day wasted or saved when the daylight is soon to be gone?

The insomniac wedding of awake and forgotten.

The waiting for someone or something again who, silent confirmation even though I can’t stop,

Has no intention of seeing me.

A hollow feeling, staring out into nothing with blank eyes and poker face.

Disassociation from the pain, or tears, is what I get.

Slowly climbing the ranks, slowly getting closer to first,

Perhaps it will stop at third, and then drop back,

Or it will climb to first in exchange for what I lack.

I want to hear it, the words of the songs,

At least now I have clarity enough to know coincidences, many, many, many,

Mean nothing. There is no sign, even though I see them daily, like and uncontrollable invasive thought from the outside

Over and over and over again.

Why is this happening to me?

I still don’t know if this is punishment for touching the door,

Or the ultimate punchline.

Time will tell someday,

If I don’t fade away first.

As the two lovers approach and the falling moon of the night pulls back his mask,

The tired one, the exhausted, the beat down,

Arrows and guns pointed at the ground just one more time,

That’s all it takes, right?

And the hand on the face as the hands clasped gently,

The music never far away from it, dangling around his neck as tears silently shed fall,

The sword the fortune, the signal of the end of the story,

Night is always followed by day.

The longest hours, climbing the towers to catch the moon,

The machines that stood to the side.

We met at the beginning too, I always loved you.

Can’t I catch you before the moon falls and save everything?

Including you?

The shards of the bullet and the arrow become flowers, plants, and shadows,

Misfired.

The moment frozen just before the words can be said, the solid figures of two just out of reach of ever having,

And the old man in the room, whose molded stories seem to guide,

The holder of the universe, the never ending teller that keeps every story together who knows all the answers if asked the right questions

That man who exists in every one, but is merely a whisper in the gaze of two who desire each other so terribly

And can’t quite reach the touch never quite grasping the hold never quite taking

One who would do anything, one who would do anything to make him see.

To wake and feel something besides nothing that the spiralling stairs and the masks and the blasts and the cards,

Behind the speech, behind the doors that open and make you speak.

So very tired, but so very much wanting to see,

To be in the same space to feel the same air, to look up and see the same skies

To feel you there,

Face to face, within arm’s reach.

If only I could hold on to you, and explain everything with nothing,

But the looks on our faces frozen in time,

When your gaze finally finds mine.

The balloon is long gone, did it whither or fly away?

Into the sky farther away, until the ground seemed so tiny that it would never come back,

Until the shards of it fell down, under Gravity’s thumbs.

Stepping back far enough the moon is always full,

After all it always is,

The Sun always shines, after all it does.

A smile in the skies, didn’t even see the crash as the memories of how beautiful life can be, and how sharp it can be,

The song of the lover who wanted nothing more than to protect him,

But her parting words were that he could return in any state.

Perhaps the worst was that he never did.

A love screamed into the end she never heard.

And the silent fingers of them in every story from back then and today.

The face of a woman told she would never be more than that, when women are so much more than that,

When they become so many lights

In crowds of faces searching and collecting

The data of the face the eyes that complexion

Of who you want to see most and least,

In every face,

Something.