I can taste the warmth leaving your lips, I can hear the passion leaving your voice, and I know it'll be a long time before I find a love like this again. And I can feel your love slipping away. A love once had, now lost, is the most bittersweet of fortunes but I'll find solace in the bottom of an endless bottle, spinning records in a pitch black room and writing a thousand new songs all about you.

With weathered veins and brittle bones it's a wonder my body doesn't fall apart. The heart can only put out as much as it gets in and right now mine is running dry. Bite the bullet, suture the wound. My body has been built on fallacies and my only question is why has men been left to his own faculties? We're pure at heart before it begins to beat, we're honest men before we speak, and we're set for heaven but we'll damn ourselves to hell. Bite the bullet, suture the wound. If you don't straighten yourself out you'll be food for the hounds. Those who prey on sick men like me who forgot to pray to a god whose love seems spent on nickel plated men and dime a dozen girls.

It's sad to say I'm alone again, it's that same damn wishful thinking that has me stranded in this bed without a touch of comfort and I'll lay here for what feels like a million years and it's too long, it's too long, it's too long to turn back now and revive what's left of my fleeting view of romance. And how the hell does your ghost even haunt me when you're still alive and well? It's time for me to come clean; to come clean to myself, but how the hell am I to move on when my ambitions weigh me down? Where is there to go when all that's here is this mattress in which to drown? But I'm nothing at all without love in my heart. I've tried to fill that gap you left in me but all I've accomplished is no vacancy for the same spot in my bed some nights. When it came to their love I was never sure if I was the user or the used. I just have to make it through the night so this longing for you subsides as the sun rises. Then I can be nothing, I can be nothing at all.

Solitude is a lonely word Dim lights and words too small plague my nights, leaving room for those thoughts to filter in Our love is a city besieged Solitude is a damning word Eyes like cameras steal my soul; words like thieves rob my body of the heart I used your heart because I knew mine wouldn't make it, This is it, this is it, the path less sought, the road less traveled Throw down your fears, look towards the sky, has the sun yet to rise? My existence is a message; my life is a lonely cause My life is a lonely cause

It's in these waking hours, when the mind is caught between the realms where my dreams have been haunted by the blue bird and that same poem speaks to me in volumes unimaginable: How surely gravity's law, Strong as an ocean current, Takes hold of the smallest thing And pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing--- Each stone, blossom, child--- Is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, Push out beyond what we each belong to For some empty freedom. If we surrendered To earth's intelligence We could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves In knots of our own making And struggle, lonely and confused. So like children, we begin again To learn from the things, Because they are in God's heart; They have never left him. This is what the things can teach us: To fall, Patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that Before he can fly.

Home and in bed, desperate for a goodnight kiss from lips I'll never touch again. My skin as coarse as sand, your hands haven't smoothed it in so long and I can't help but think about the sentimentality of a life we no longer have. And if they say you are only as strong as your weakest link, then dear, place this on my shoulders and let it sink me to my grave. Take these fears from my ever failing body and restore me with your ever calming touch, let us return to the sanctuary of each other's arms. We lie skin to skin never questioning when this will end. Eyes locked and our hearts stuck in a daze, we dance with our words to this song sung out of key. My heart is a canvas and I've given you the brush. You've painted compassion within my chest, you occupy the space in between my lungs, an organ well past its prime and if you should hope to repair it, in time, then lover put your hand in mine. Let us lay together singing lines with an uncertain rhyme. We are alive together; the reason is in these words. But I lay here passed out in the stall of a run-down bar with this poison elixir weighing me down listening to the musings of drunk philosophers and tales of karaoke bards.

[Blue Jay!] Oh how you've been missed in my dreams [Blue Jay!] Return to me; lead me from my waking life [Show me!] What it means to be pure of heart [Give me clarity!] On what it means to live [a life without regrets] I want to live each day [as if under the shade of a great tree] Safe from the piercing gaze [of the sun and the terrors] of the moonlit night [Guide me to a realm] in which I can recover [from my faults, these mistakes] that have defined me [For so long] For so long. Each night I dream of the lives of others who have it all and sometimes wonder if they dream of me when they close their eyes, do they see the hopeless man who drowns his demons in cheap liquor and barely scrapes on by, haunted by living ghosts. I may have veins of ink and though it seems they pen a life full of grief I swear there are times that I'm happy no matter how brief. Blue on blue we start anew and tomorrow's not just another day, speak the truth, open your eyes to a brand new way don't love the life you'll never live, blue on blue I always say I never meant to do the things I did, I'll blame it each day on being a stupid kid but I know somewhere deep down I did it all for selfish reasons, my moods and desires changing as frequent as the seasons and now all I have to show for it is a broken life and a trust in myself thin enough it might as well be transparent. In this state I was not sleeping nor was I fully awake. I had retreated to the far corners of my mind. My imagination drafting up plots and characters then quickly tossing the narrative away. Honestly I was never sure where it was my mind ventured to in order to tell me these stories, or rather they were works of fiction or actual accounts of humanity being played out elsewhere in the past, present, and sometimes even the future. Perhaps each dream, each story was about me in a different reality, or in the most likely case it was my subconscious drowning the waking mind in fantastic accounts of moments that had halfway happened or never occurred at all. But if there's one thing I've learned it's that apathy will lead you to an early grave I may have veins of ink and though it seems they pen a life full of grief I swear there are times that I'm happy no matter how brief. Awakening to the sound of my own barren thoughts is getting old; will I awake to that great peace I have sought for so long? Will this clarity I have reached in the here and now transfer when my eyes are open? It is in this state where I am blissfully unaware of the life around me that I have found salvation and when the dawn comes I will be tormented by my own hell again. Can I ever truly be free of my own self?