Tides

Tides of time washed over her,
Corrosive as coarse acid,
And there she stood, like pale shards of rock
Jutting out of the ocean
Which once made up a great silver arch,
Rising majestically
Above the waters beneath,
And now they were no longer an arch
Instead, standing still
They did not quite know
What they were,
What they were supposed to be,
Or how to draw a line
Between the two.

Sense

I am not going to pretend
I see any sense in living
But I can only try to live
As if time will be forgiving
And someday I will

Ecclesiastes 3:11

Eternity set in our hearts -
Within our very beings -
Yet we cannot see
Beauty in its infinite form;
But only a negligible fraction
Of what is to be
And what is to come.

Belated

I go through old photographs
To try and see into the emptiness you were
Hiding behind those eyes

I did not see the tears.

The warmth of the sun
Reminds me of that smile so long ago
Of a girl who once gave light to the world
But kept none for herself.

Marionettes

Watch the marionette show -
See the broken-down beings
And their loosened strings
Beneath their painted poster faces

Disjointed wooden limbs
Stumble across the stage
Falling into one another's
Empty, careless rage

Watch them stumble,
Cry and crumble,
As they try
To stand on their own.

She spoke of magic things and miracles;
The stretch of the sky,
And talked as if she was on her way
To something
Extraordinary,
Beyond the imagination
Of human hearts.

More

The feeling that
There is more than this
Comes from the knowing
That this will never be enough

Heartache

Who would steal it, unless she put it on display?
And who would ever want it,
Unless she gave it away?

Anyway,
She was certain if anyone
Broke her heart
They wouldn't find anything inside
For it was only empty

Survival of the fittest

Glossy pages of photographs,
Thousands of words,
Drawn from the lengths of glossy lips
And their lipstick smiles.
Your features adapted
To the shape of
Skinny jeans and
The slant of stilettos,
Man-made pedestals
On which you perch precariously.
Your fragile body,
Contorted into angles
To fill the space between
You and them.

No Words

I have no words to express
The complexity of what I do not feel
And that of what I cannot see
All I know for certain
Is the extent of what
I know nothing of

Directions

They are given a box of faded crayons,
An outline of a picture;
Given all the freedom within a stencil,
Told not to colour out of the lines

They are up before the sun;
A weight upon their slumped shoulders,
As they learn to think inside a concrete box,
And trained to look forward

They hang their heads low,
Bowed towards open books;
Their eyes, underlined with shadows,
Look towards a brighter future

They stare up at the metal-scraped sky
And begin to climb upwards,
In search of a convenient deity,
A higher being than themselves

They reach the lonely peak,
Where their childhood dreams converged,
See nothing but a pretty view
And nowhere to go but down.

This is the age of poetry

This is the age of poetry
Which doesn't make sense
Where people of the imperfect present
Speak in future perfect tense
Where people sing of world peace
And shout for worldly war
Where people spit on stone
Hold up paper, and call it law
Where people scream so loudly
They can't hear what they're saying
Where people sleep, with closed eyes
And dream instead of praying

Safekeeping

She stores her heart for safekeeping
Stifles it with styrofoam
Deep down, where it is darkest

Where nobody likes to roam

Perimeters

We live in a stencil,
Products of a graphite pencil
With which the perimeters
Of our souls are drawn

Pretty World

Pretty girl
This pretty world
Is not big enough for your
Big world dreams

Pretty girl
This pretty world
Is not as pretty
As it seems