The bent howl of a note blurs my vision, eye turns inward, soul splits open like parched earth.

Frustrated and impotent. Your tide ebbs, my faded crust crumbles, is ground into common dirt. Stuff of the earth.

**

I remember reaching, the familiar pinch of swollen dreams straining against imagined walls.

I could feel it then, in my fingers, my throat tightening as the intangible realness of sound filled me. Leaden arms, dull with potential, tingling with unrealized action.

Real life isn’t this way. I grasp and find only the sticky sickness of fermented delusion. The putrid remains of untended wants. The maddening dullness of paper.

Paper. Of all things to build ones life on — bleached, obsolescing paper. Thousands of years of ideas, used and reused, marrow sucked out and body discarded.

**

All I ever wanted was to be part of something beautiful.

I’ve been here so long I’ve forgot
The place I had called home
The faces
And friends
I thought maybe you were one of them
Our parallel souls crossing paths

But I find myself here again
Always haunting doorways
Hoping
Dreading
I might open one and find myself
Just as I remembered I was

The same immutable contents
That soul-deafening reach
Both proud
And distant
Unlived life spilling ever over
Into my own sterile cup