I am far away inside.
Tucked away far away
down corridors,
with closed and open doors.
Safe.
Home.

And when I am alone,
I can explore,
I can open up the doors,
careful with the things I love
and the things I don't.
I can let things out, or not.
Put everything back in place or
talk about them, messy.
Safe.
Myself.
Normal.

But when I am not alone.
When I am not alone,
I am so alone.
Doors slam,
good and bad.
Corridors stretch and bend.
I am in the middle.
Far from myself.
Alone.
I don't know where or what
or how to move or
talk or
think.
I am lost.

And all I want is to come alive again,
be normal,
at home,
laugh easy,
find words
that will mean something.
But all the doors are locked.

Sometimes,
I stare at the smudge where the sun leaps through blinds and spills a shadow,
across the room,
behind the blank dark empty of the dead television, staring.
I stare and I think and my emotions are gone
and I am gone gone gone gone gone.
I stare until
it is not a shadow,
in my mind,
alive.
But
I know it is a shadow, flat,
and the sun will forget and let the dark swallow us both.
I know, even when I think it is something it is not,
it is not.
I know, if I shift my eyes a subtle glance
the lines will blur and smooth and fall flat again,
a shadow.
I know, I know, I know.
But I am holding something together.
I hope somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone is looking at me, too, maybe,
and
unlike me,
will not look away.

Alone,
I race the storm.
Air thick with promise.
Trembling clouds.
Possibility is brighter than rationality.
The radio sings and the wind
dances through the window
and across the back of my neck.
Every flash shows the ordinary.
I expect anything.
Everything.
Nothing.

Alone,
ideas come,
swept in with the first drops
of cold rain.
Loud company of bright possibility.
A shiver runs down my neck
and I shut the window
before the flash dims.
In the shapes in the dark
I can feel space.
Time.
Everything.

Alone,
but not alone:
An idea slips in
shivering with potential.
Not brilliant but possibly mad.
The floral-sweet scent of tea
curls from my mug
and mingles with my thoughts.
Nothing will come from this.
Or everything.
Anything.

Hope in all its forms is false,

the memory determines, but

the more you think, the less

you really know.

Hope is such a tricky thing

to hope to understand and if

you think you’ve got it right

then you should go.

But the path is always empty

and it leads into the sun.

Hope in all its forms determines

what you will remember and

the more I think about it,

you should know

that it burns you from the inside

out into the loss of air. You know,

nostalgia’s got a

futuristic glow.

But the path is always empty

and it leads into the sun.

Tell me something true about myself. Seek me out where I hide. I have slipped silent, climbing to cornerless rooms, echoes chasing and laughing through the shadow, the only thing to reach me. Reflections of sound and life in a dim glass. There I stay, convinced of contentment by a fear so deep it curls up and rests in my soul. There I stay, blind in my tower of glass, weaving shadows and shades pale and flat. The curl of the strings Those Three hold remind me why I musn't turn my head. And all I have is the steady rhythm, the back and forth, the beating heart. My hands fly and back again, moving on the steady rhythm, and through the day and through the night I know the steady truth. I musn't turn my head. The glass is dim and dimmer still and still I hear the echoes. Seek me out where I hide; Those Three are are scrict yet blind. The mirror dims and echoes fade, my eyes are straining for a glimpse, and I am granted distant sound of sunlight shining as he rides. He will never know me. I have waited so long in this cornerless room to slip silent from the strings of Three and chase echoes through the shadow. I musn't turn my head. But I do. Though you never knew me, tell me something true about myself.

Clutter doesn't always mean those week old dishes and scraps of paper collecting dust where they fell and dollar store cow figurines on the bedside table. A mind can be cluttered too.

It usually starts with just one idea, one harmless idea you picked up somewhere. Maybe it's something that worries you, and you worry the edges smooth and dull the shine. You may toss this idea in a corner for later, where it sits almost forgotten. Pretty soon, you come across a new idea. Maybe it is a quirky looking philosophy you learned in class, and it has invitingly colorful buttons and knobs. You know you don't need it... but then you think of that old, knobby, worn down idea sitting lonely in the corner and you think it couldn't hurt to have something new. And before you know it, any shiny ideas you may have left are buried in the hubbub: a loud mish mashed mess of crazy moth eaten thoughts, piled haphazardly in corners and occasionally tumbling from your mouth.

This unpredictability makes you popular with children, of course, while adults may look at you askance.

It crawls around, soft prick of claws, a raindrop scatter of cold despair. It crawls around heavy, weighing down the air, intrinsic pressure, heartbeat quickens. When it finds you, you accept it; yes, you should feel this, it's only right. When it finds you, it finds you at the core, fills the void in the eye, between images of the thing you don't understand. Images flash and fade and falter, filling vacancy... so you accept it; yes, you should feel this, it's only right. Because you feel nothing else. It crawls a raindrop scatter through you until it finds you and the heartbeat quickens. Dull pain, cold pain. Sharp at your core, and it spreads. The thing you don't understand spins around and you see it at all sides and it makes you dizzy. It fades and drops but lingers still, still and cold in your core where it found you, spinning lazy dizzy circles, flashing and flaring because you still don't understand. Until you know and see, worry crawls with a soft prick of claws.

When I was a child, I was often confused about what was not to be done, and why. My older sister just told me these things were the unspoken rules of society, and I would figure them out.

I used to think that the Unspoken Rules were probably written down somewhere, on a big plaque with a gilded frame, maybe on a wall in city hall, which was an impressive building. Or maybe there was only one copy of the Unspoken Rules, and it was at the White House, or etched into the wall of the Grand Canyon. When I had learned to read, I would be sent there. “The Unspoken Rules, please,” I would whisper to a security guard, and he would point at the wall, silently. There would be all the things I ever wanted to know, and I would finally feel like I know how to be a person.

Well. I learned to read. I politely reminded my mother of the fact several times, but she just told me she was proud of me, but no, I still could not have a pet pony. I didn’t want a pet pony; all I ever wanted was to be sent to where the Rules were.

Some time after learning to read, I had given up on the Unspoken Rules. Maybe only certain people were allowed to see them, like the president and talk show hosts. I watched TV with a careful and jealous eye. “Those people know what they’re doing,” I would observe, “They don’t stumble or say the wrong thing, they are gorgeous, they have people who like them… yes, those people have seen the Rules.”

One day I asked my sister a question. “It’s just one of the Unspoken Rules of Life,” she dropped casually, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Maybe that was it, then. Maybe the Unspoken Rules were innate, and came to you slowly as you grew. Maybe they weren’t written down at all. Maybe I was just supposed to figure them out.

I figured that once I was into my teenage years, I would wake up one day with a list in my head, telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing, and I would finally be good at being human. I would no longer feel like an inept puppet master, trying to pull the strings and make my body do and say the right thing, with no idea which string goes where or how hard to pull, and handicapped in the process by a blindfold and a broken finger.

I was still waiting until yesterday, when I stopped.

Every year the bells tolled. Every year on the same day, the height of summer, when crops were just beginning to ripen under waves of heat that rolled across the fields. Through the tiny villages and hamlets, through the thatched roofs of cottages, the sound curling around the bedposts of children as they dreamt of what the booming toll could portend. The hollow tolling reached the town, echoing off stone walls and illuminating quiet corners of courtyard and castle. It was invasive. It took hold of the mind. Every dream of every dreamer was the sound of bells, calling out, reaching, seeking the one who could end the curse. The knights tossed and turned in their bunks as the sound of the bells posed an uncomfortable question. It pulled at their courage with every note, ebbing and flowing like a current of sound in the sea of dark. Every prince in every tiny kingdom was overwhelmed by the feeling. And, as always, a group of deep-hooded scholars sat awake in the citadel, wondering. What does it mean? What sorcery controls this madness and to what end? And, most importantly, who can make the bells stop?

The room is broken but I can't get out.
My head won't tell the time about
the story I'm supposed to live,
the meaning I'm supposed to give.
I am here and I am there
but I don't think I'm anywhere.
I sink my eyes beneath the sound--
a song of empty all around.

And I am not haunted.

My words are whispers when I shout.
I am broken but I can't get out.
My past does not exist in books.
I wonder how my future looks.
I tread a path into the air.
Climbing stairs no longer there.
Humming with a hint of breath
the song that carried me to death.

And I am not haunted.

Time holds tight but cannot love
the flimsy hope my form is of.
And the thing that haunts me most
is that I am the ghost.

The light is thin where it drifts through the air and softly sweeps over and leaves shadow smudges in the folds of a soft white blanket. The seconds tap their monotone melody while time, indifferent, flows and falls and flies apart by the tick tick tick tick. Words crowd and jostle in limited space and speak of love and hate and hubris, of a boy who falls and a bird that flies and the sun they long for or come from. The light burns and gives life and drifts lazy through green curtains and kisses shoulders in the summer. Words fill the space, crowd and jostle, leave time behind. Words of feathers and ashes.

Some days I feel like a reflective essay churned out by an overworked coffee-addled brain just before the due date, and some days I feel like poetry itself is whispering lines of rich silver through my life, but today I feel like a novel with a smooth cover and worn pages as someone is just sinking the covers closed with a sigh of recognition at the warmth of the end.