Handlebars

I can stand alone, we both know it
We look past it everyday

If only you'd meet my eyes
I'd be breaking at the bridges

Sons are born to the wind
Daughters, to catch them
We all sour in these seasons

Why must they die
Before we can start living

Why don't you understand?
Hug someone.
I assure you, this does not last forever.

Silly me.
These walls don't build themselves.

Ink

I cannot speak until I really know what you are doing here
Vision narrows as you stroll in, and I barley keep my hands from shaking
Two lime-colored neon signs hang across my vision like someone took a knife to the dark walls and revealed a second world
Maybe that's where you came from

I pretend to navigate the room with my own intentions, but everyone knows
They know that you were like a tattoo for me, something that seemed undoubtedly right
And I ask myself why they hold their tongues
Leave me to find the words, alone

I am mapped in your choices
Scores of ink that read like bedtime stories
I think of days long gone
Will you read with me?

Rain Speaker

Ice chilled the sound right out of the walls
Like the eye of a midnight hurricane

I could hear your breathing as if you were hugging me
So far from it was reality

Every mind spins in thought, but you were not a speaker
The eyes told your stories just as a poem does
Short and slippery, like a post-rain railing
I would have killed with bare hands
To understand the looks you shot my way

I splashed through your currents for endless hours
Like listening to a symphony, you spoke in love-tinged prose
You wore my choices like war medals
Polished and shined to a glorified state

Why must I sit in the moment that passed,
Let me be free from these dim lights at last.

Tock goes the clock as I slip from your sight,
Gone is the shelter on this cold stormy night.

My Father's Gun

As soon as this is over we'll go home
To plant the seeds of justice in our bones
To watch the children growing and see the women sewing
There'll be laughter when the bells of freedom ring

-Sir Elton John

Fog

Seasons came and went like love-driven conflicts
Dirt path junkies picked the summer from their teeth
Light separated white from green and the day was born

Crossing the fields in the dead of night allowed me to live in your footsteps
You laughed and threw your head back like a movie star
Flashes of purple and dark warm covers

I had never been so flooded with reason
We danced like it was 1955
I climbed through the skylight that night

Halls of gold showed me the way in
Shadow wrapped me up and kept me out

Too many hidden fires in this city
So much smoke and mirrors, you can't see four feet in front of you