the spirit in my bedroom

the spirit in my bedroom
likes to watch me as I sleep
she watches my chest fall and rise
and catches all my dreamy sighs
in mason jars to keep

by now she has a roomfull
if not two or three or four
she'll reach for one and hold it close
and dwell on what she thinks she knows
of dreams she had before

the spirit in my bedroom
likes to shut her lifeless eyes
and make-believe she's fast asleep
'til silently she starts to weep
and heave those pseudo sighs

she's tried
              and tried
                             and tried
and tried

as if a soul could perish twice
and death could ask so steep a price
I dreamt, I dreamt, I dreamt
she died.

Insomniac

And maybe she sees everything
That insomniac, that nocturnal miss -

Catches it in her crater eyes
and spills it back out in the night

Endlessly, she tends to this
to fill her ever-darker skies
with speckled bits of captured light.

I Wrote a Poem

I wrote a poem
           yesterday -
it wrote itself
           the day before.

heaven in her eyes

i can see her collarbones
they stick out when she laughs
and her shoulder blades -
little white stubs
where her wings used to be

she cut them off so long ago
the scars are barely visible
they didn't always look that way
just little white dashes in the curves of her ribs
they used to be much more difficult
to look at

all desperation and awkward angles
she won't tell me what she used
how blasphemous, that something so crude
something fired by human hands
could undo such
intangible purity

tell me she isn't an angel
or, if she isn't,
then tell me why i still see heaven
in her eyes

I turn the page and the page turns me.

I turn the page and the page turns me.
Shhh, says it. Shhh and then silence.
The page is quiet,
the pen speaks
-- muffled words.
I feel as if I'm going deaf,
like I stood too near a firing gun.
Thankfully, I can read lips
and the pen's lips can read me.
Shhh, says the page,
and all is quiet.
I turn the page and the page turns me.

Open-Heart Poetry

like open-heart surgery with no anesthetic
replacing my real one with something synthetic
it doesn't unnerve me, it's almost poetic

i might be sane, i might be sane
                     it might be civil and humane

there's one little catch, though it's only cosmetic
the man with the scalpel, he isn't a medic
it doesn't unnerve me, it's almost poetic

i can't complain, i can't complain
                     - at least, not about the pain

like open-heart surgery
something synthetic
it's almost poetic
it's almost poetic

I sailed across the River Styx.

I sailed across the River Styx
and found it very plain.
Thrice more I braved its shallow wave
its gentle tide which weakly gave
and thrice more back again.

My living soul it did not drain,
nor did it cause me any pain.
It did not drag me to my grave,
as legend so depicts:

That River Styx, which quite conflicts,
is really something grand;
whose waters swell with deathly smell
to claim those specters bound for hell
with unforgiving hand.

But all I found was silt and sand,
a bare and blackened chunk of land,
more sticks, I think, than Styx.

O, Death

O, Death -
O spindled fingers, empty eyes
lie down beside me, O demise
                  O, icy breath -

O heavy shroud, O fleeting I
erode my ego, O good bye
O, Death
              O, Death,
                              O,

death.