A moment/A lifetime

Something askew,
Whether heart or brain,
It, of course, is nothing new.
Ages have passed, I do know that when I have gone time does still move on,
Though I, somehow, stay stuck here, 
Alone on your lawn.
I gaze in through the smallest curtains crack and if I stray, pieces of hardened, fuzzy, green breadcrumb lead me right back.
I don’t think you’ve ever seen me,
I don’t think I’ve ever spoken,
But I watch clearly, night after night,
As the unseen transpires once again unspoken.
As Sparks sputter from the flower pots,
And soft notes caress the air,
Fire and flowers and smooth, rain kissed rocks that simply lay near.
I am grasping at your colors, gasping for your air.
It grows too warm to bare.
Soon I sizzle, oh so close to your unwitting fingertips, 
A pale yellow light, nothing more than a glow.
Then, just outside your door, white, with a blue inner core,
Too bright, invading. 
And I think now,
I’ve engulfed everything.
And you’re gone, never to be seen.
Though, the birds confide through holes in singed trees, 
They say you’re aflame, aflutter when they sing,
And that is nice, 
that has meaning.
So, again goodnight to the sputtering flames,
For all must rest;
All must, at times, be tame.
We’ll meet again tomorrow all the same.

-E.B.

Woman’s Right.

What’s yours is mine,
But only on one side;
The side of Conquer,
Of Divide,
That forces all outside to scatter and hide.
Only, we outside are unwilling to break.
We will not resign.
What’s mine,
Is mine.
The fruit of body, 
The give,
The take;
It is not always love,
Not always a gift, a miracle, a blessing,
Or even a choice.
What’s mine is mine, 
And where my blood flows and my lungs fill with air, 
Where my mouth swallows and my intestines digest,
Where my eggs flow and my uterine lining is disposed,
Inside of there,
Is certainly mine.
Following only leads down so many paths,
All roads already beaten to submission,
Some a cross and crucifixión,
Some a narcissistic delusion,
Some simply ignorant of any other way,
All the same.
A choice forced, is not a choice at all.
It is an option wholly not given.
This is my body, my mind,
My life at stake,
My right, 
My rules to obey;
I will make the choice I need to make. 

-E.B.

Revival

The world is death and judgement.
Reveling in such horror,
One is forced to face the insufficiency,
Of mundane, time consuming, torment and complacency. 
And upon being confronted with this most grave, and ungraspable tendency,
The mind goes blank.
Just writhes and squirms -
An unearthed worm,
Caught between the meaty, 
And indelicate fingers of fate.

The world is pain and decay.
Such that every so often, 
An unforgiving ray of sunlight 
Sets flame to ants.
Looking ever closely, 
Blindly,
Scorching eyes ablaze,
Lit by unseen hands
hovering a million miles away.
The ants are seen. 
Scoured,
Scorned;
Cinders in sidewalk cracks, 
stains silently mourned.
Though, everyone cries when they’re born,
And through ash a Phoenix forms.

So the world is chaos and inconsistency,
Revere the mess!
Create new incoherency, 
Maybe even some makes sense.
Whatever is broken can be built again,
and there is always another safe haven.
And so if the world is death,
If it is judgement, pain, and decay, 
Let it be known that room does still remain For better days, 
For the feeling of a loving gaze,
For a chance to heal, to change.
So spite the fear of existence,
and bind with tight embrace,
Those crushing hands of fate.
Show that the world contains
At least one friendly face,
And begin to make space, 
To ease the ache.

– E.B.

I have been working on this piece for two years now, maybe longer. I will continue to edit it, I’m sure, but I finally feel like it conveys almost exactly what I intend and that’s an exciting feeling. So, in light of that, I’m obliged to post it now. Thank you for reading!

Dead End

Freedom is 
A fickle thing;
The sequences 
Leading up to
Actions yet known.
Hearing that familiar voice 
In 
Message,
After 
Message 
On the phone. 
The bell’s ringing,
So hurry now, 
Hide,
Pretend no one’s home.

Walking now,
All seeing, 
Past the same old address, 
Though it wears a fancy new dress - 
Isn’t that some kind of joke?
Pushing aside the same mess, 
Pretending all the time going past 
Is a way to relax: 
“Freedom at last!”
To reckon with the past 
Or turn down new paths,
But new melodies ring out loud,
And dead ends circle back fast.

– E.B.

Nothing Left

Put me out to pasture,
Lay me to rest.
May my bones confess,
As they’re polished, picked, 
Turned to toys for rowdy dogs to gnaw and dark little homes of insects, 
That there is nothing left:
There never was to begin with.
Completely hollow,
Bones of a bird; 
Not for flight, 
But in spite of growing wings,
Of forgiving breeze,
And taller trees.

– E.B.

A Cracked Spine Down The Middle

Stories are often told 
Riddled with what’s unwritten disguised;
Hidden beneath delicate, lacy layers 
Of lovers in lion dens, 
Lonely mages, 
And iron sword men.
Somewhere there deep within,
Past the missing pages of a subtle smile,
Beats the heart of what’s unseen.
But flash does capture such essence,
Such beguile;
Who’s to miss the pieces
Lost to wind blown leaves
When following these placid paths
Of birdsong memory?

-E.B.

Joyous Noise

Silence into laughter;
A thunderous boom,
A comfortable bloom,
That does transform a room.

Saturnine into giggling;
A slow, yet uncontrollable retreat,
A sweet, incomparable relief,
That does soothe everything so. 

– E.B.

Good/Bad

In love and loathing 
With the endless elapse of time
Each day bursting,
And “best face forward”!
Each day an opportunity dismissed;
A problematic delay in the filling of an abyss.
Insipidly, yet incessantly hoping,
Searching for silver linings,
Or greener grass.
Thoughts tied up in aftermath, 
In summary.
Always walking the eyes path,
Always lost in the rudimentary;
So many days begin to bundle neatly,
Seamlessly together, 
To form such marvelously terrifying 
Inevitable forever.

-E.B.

Momento Vivere

Wait and wait
Until it’s too late.
I think you used to think of me,
Maybe, in a different way.
There was a connection to fight;
An eager urge, a primal surge 
always caught in a bottom lip bite.
Was that in your line of sight?
I think we used to be at ease in a way we aren’t now that freedoms seize. 
Mellow to bright,
Blinding as first opening eyes to light;
I see and I’d like to hide.
I think of times that never were,
But could have been;
Things I’ve never said, 
But could still mean.
I think often of things that mean nothing:
The soft second of skin against skin,
The scent of cologne subtly swaying through the den,
A warm and relentless strum played by hands I’ll never know,
A self proclaimed throne inside layers upon layers of walls made of stone. 
I’d like to let it all go:
The solid sound of the same things on tv,
The way I laugh twice as loud at all the same jokes,
The absolute awareness of being almost a little too close,
The way you don’t seem to think very obviously of any of it,
And the desire to know if you’d dare be aware at all.

– E.B.

Thank goodness for words.

I used to fill books with words,
Uncensored, 
Unrefined,
Hardly legible most of the time. 
I held pen to paper till the pages wore thin,
Till the ink ran dry, 
Scribbling until day turned to night.
Riveting in solitary delight. 
I had nothing to say, 
No one to hear.
Yet, 
So much I thought, 
And into the pages went 
Every T’s line and every I’s dot,
Until I felt 
Less distraught.