Your Purgatory

It was amiable in the end
as hope shook truth’s hand
and we left behind the lies.

My watch struck a fence and
like a clock tower in the dark
Clanged “get out now or die!”

Shadows chased themselves
into near-non-existence
when the first light rose.

A tunnelled enclosure’s
contrived freedom made
a mockery of the road you chose.

Vacillating in torment for years
as you grappled with what you
feared most in schizophrenic love.

Your fate falls within your
purgatory of divisive desires
as nobody will ever be enough.

And it all became so startlingly
clear in my one-track mind
at the third time of rejecting.

All those hours spent gazing
at my mirror in search of why
were simply self-neglecting.

We were incredible since
the start, the end and the aftermath
for reasons wrong and right.

We dug so many circles
into the ground, with all the
old phrases now too trite.

Even now it all slips away
into memory and anecdotes
as the essence of change is speed.

So we both look forward
to a forked future, to live out
our warring, idyllic creeds.

Barrier

I can see them all, friends old and new,
queuing up to dissuade you from any
temptation of falling back to that one
moment of weakness where you fell for me.
That glow in your eyes I felt in my heart
and even though when we moved so close
it felt so right, a barrier of sorts prevented
us from moving any closer than
a cheek kiss and a warm embrace,
so cold with the presence of prevention.
All we could do was sit and speak, and all
I could do was admire the way you spoke
so eloquently and freely, and revel in the lift
inside my heart that your contagious laugh
brought, a lift so genuine that I finally learned
the difference between reality and imagination.

And yet it is the reality of knowing
those whose opinion you value and trust most
will say “nay” to any inkling of lust
you may have felt in our fleeting meeting,
and that such meetings grow further apart
the more time goes by since the end of our
generation’s spell together on our hallowed campus.
“A crush, a fantasy, that was all,” they will insist;
“too soft, overbearing,” they will add,
using the context of history to remind you of
my personality’s fatalist flaws that I cannot escape.
So I left you at the bus stop with yet another hug
and a kiss, your cheek planted so squarely in my
face that your intention could not be misread -
and I left with hands shoved into my pockets,
wondering…where did I go so wrong?

James Blunt Gold

I hoped what we had was
James Blunt gold,
but that was a hope
irrational and bold.
Again you leave
to take your flight,
your boarding pass was
booked all night.

And even though again you flee,
here I stand and still believe
you and I were meant to be,
yet all the while you love and leave.

We are a drama
three years long,
the curtains drop
but the song sings on.
Before it was life,
this time it’s you,
if my love brings fear,
whose love will do?

And even though again you flee,
here I stand and still believe
you and I were meant to be,
yet all the while you love and leave.

Waves of friendship
steady as can be
rocked by the storm
of revelation’s sea.
Silence is golden,
or so I am told,
but my soundless phone
feels too cold.

Never again will we lock eyes,
so now we must say goodbye
as our love was never the lie -
just your will to see it through.

And even though again you flee,
here I stand and still believe
you and I were meant to be,
yet all the while you love and leave.

And even though again you flee,
here I stand and still believe
you and I were meant to be,
yet all the while you love and leave.

All I Want

I don’t want to revel in my own isolation by
sitting in the dark watching lovers falsify their pleasure.

I don’t want to help the poor by giving them change
and soup and my own time when it makes no difference.

I don’t want to earn millions and become lost
in the excess wealth always brings to the greedy.

I don’t want to earn nothing while losing forty hours
a week doing a job I hate for people who hate me.

I don’t want to start a project and cease a project
and continue in this futile vein because it’s expected of me.

I don’t want to perform before crowds of thousands
who only know my name and my face but not me.

I don’t want the adulation of millions of strangers,
nor their claims of undying love in blindness.

I don’t want the vented fury of those same millions
when it all goes wrong because I am human to their detriment.

I don’t want to travel the world alone in pursuit of
‘wisdom’ that will only make me bitter in the end.

I don’t want to be stuck in this dead, dull place
if it means my own existence has to die with it.

I don’t want to be known by name as the greatest
of my generation in whatever it is that I do.

All I want is to find one person and make them so
indescribably happy that it re-ingnites the life inside me…

Then I could die a happy man.