You make me smile when I’m happy,
You make me cry when I’m sad,
You’re that little piece of me
That makes me exactly what I am.

You’re the grain of pure truth
In my puffy, swollen soul,
Within my cruelest of worlds,
‘Tis for you the bell doth toll.

You enhance every emotion
That I have ever known,
You make up the world around me;
Only for you am I not alone.

	I was born to love you

Fade to Death

Imagine me intangible,
Like some swarming mass of hurt,
That you can own someday...
Without even asking,
If that’s how you want it.

Imagine my darkest pain
As your pain,
That you can view at your leisure,
Through your pretty, sunny distortion.

Imagine all of the wonderful things
You have given me,
Filling up that void in my life,
That you gave me too.
(Say the word and they’re gone.)

Imagine us laughing at this in 15 years,
Meeting in some bleak coffee shop:
You with your nostalgia,
And me with my heartbreak.

The sun rises and sets
Each day
Alone.

The solitary wind 
blows through the trees.
Creating a stir
Forgotten
In a second.

Each single wave graces the ocean
One of millions,
But still one.

Yet, how does that prepare 
the single man
To lead his lonely life?

One of everything:
One heart; one life;
One tear; one constant, 
open wound.
One grain of salt rubbing his
dreams away, 
cell by cell.

Until the end.

Single men were born to die.

Accept a kiss from this deep well,
From my lips, to your brow fell,
Or decline-- As time shall tell.
But leave not my tempestuous soul to fare
Alone-- If you did truly care.
Leave me not in pain undecided,
When so much of myself has been confided..
But alas, you’ve run, and I am not whole,
For you’ve taken my love and immortal soul.
And so is all we ever find,
Simple purgatory of the mind?

A flower grew once in a churchyard;
Its lifelong struggle growing hard,
Until the world refused to hear it,
Broke its soul and crushed its spirit;
We can’t trust beauty until we can mirror it.
If you try to hold someone tight, soon they run away,
But I have your memory stored for another day.
There was once beauty, but it is lost,
Though I would retreive it at any cost.
At least I know inside of my head,
You were quite real; your memory not dead.
But no, not all we chance to find,
Can be purgatory of the mind.

I wanted to write you a love song,
To make a gift of my passion,
In words that jumped off of the page
And rested on  your shoulder;
Burrowing in the folds of your brain,
Sheltered by your thoughts.
But it was rainy out,
So I spent the day practicing my smile,
And playing solitaire.

I wanted to write you a song you'd remember,
As I woke from a dream of you,
Intent on writing a reverie,
With words from the depths of my heart.
But I passed up painting you with my mind
For a preassembled and better you
That would disappear with the moon.

I wanted to write you and tell you
Everything there ever was to know,
About you, about me, about love,
With words that threw themselves at me,
Itching at my fingertips,
Eagerly awaiting admission to the page.
And all I had to do,
Was take them from my heart,
And write them as they came.

Not so easy:
By the time the words left me,
Left the page,
And entered you,
They had lost their sparkle.
The stars left your eyes,
The moonbeams left your lips,
And you left my life.

i know it's illegal,
but even still,
what does that change?

especially in nevada,
the land of sin,
and 99˘ shrimp cocktails.

so where's the harm
in exercising imagination?
death must be nice.

but even though the fantasy
of suicide is fun on occasion,
i think i may have a problem...

is it right that all i do is think, 
"geez, i'd love to be dead"?
instead of enjoying life?

everything i do becomes justification,
everything i tie, my hands work
invariably into a noose.

is it a hint?  from god?
or myself?  that, really
i'd be better off gone?

maybe i'll try it sometime,
and see, if not anything else,
where the attraction falls.

but, when the knife hits its mark
maybe i'll discover it's not what i want,
and wind up in purgatory...
					again.

There’s an art to sleeping.
One that’s hard to master,
But impossible to live without.

Sleeping is fantastically dangerous,
You must understand,
Filled with countless little terrors.

You’re compelled to trust yourself too much,
When you’re too vulnerable 
For that kind of commitment.

You breathe, you dream,
You trust your nerves not to paralyze;
Your mind not to dredge up the grotesque.

And even then, there’s still the thrill
Of a cheap horror flick...
What awful things await?

Every night, I wrap myself in blankets
To lock out the cold
And assorted other frights.

Yet, come morning every day,
The ultimate terror awaits me still...
I wake to find they’re just blankets;
					Not your arms.

The torches burn nightly,
As if by some lilting coincidence,
They know not who protects their flame.
The man who arranges their dying gold
While keeping his silver soul clear,
In the burning sapphire that is his night.

He brings the flowers forth in spring,
Drawing out the sweet red petals,
Glittering with love and dew.
When the melancholia sets like fog,
And the world is painted a shade of bleak,
He calls the sun to imitate his light.

And who else throws up the mushroom clouds?
For his very enjoyment,
And my sparkling pleasure/pain.
Bringing the little lines of destruction,
His little heartbreaks of the dawn,
That sear the sadness into my soul.