My Best Lines

I remember
Drives through asphalt jungles,
Strolls down metro-sidewalks
Crowded with mid-day people
Who sang the blues.

It was more of a plunge
Less of a fall
Stumbling, tumbling
Head first into a wall,

The intensity of thought,
the idea that love can be bought
with sweet affirmations

Come and read me
like a book,

Veiled beauty sleeping
beyond the curtain
I can see you breathing,

that’s a smile with an edge
    cuts into me
like warm butter
I'm not sure now,
    whether to
bleed
  or melt.

Heat engulfs,
fire consumes,
flames extinguished.
Love blooms.

I didn't know how bitter that sweet taste would be,
how quick to sour on my tongue.

We are delicate writings
On a beautiful page,

We are cardboard figures,
One-sided and flat,

I’ve watched the world
From three stories up,
Through barred windows
And seen
The zebra-striped shadow
Of my  soul.

When all else is failing
I find healing in the earth,
In the fragrance and the beauty,
In the rainfall and the dirt

There are only echoes of
what used to be before
the ending of the song,
he closing of the door.

surrounded by thorns
leaving hearts forever altered
scarred and torn,

It's a pattern repeated over time
as the generations bleed into each other.

A toll on this road to perdition.
Yes, true charity is pure fiction,
'Cause we pay for our own addictions.

Senselessly,
  it makes sense to me.

like a sun-parched desert
where it can’t rain enough.
It’s just an empty feeling
that there’s never enough

Tears provide sweet drink,
a kind of liquid gold
The anguish and the grief
just fertilize the soul.


A white glove on the platform,
A glass of sherry left untouched

Raw, you wanted raw
I'll give you raw
Have this to toast
your nightmares,

and I could feel my stomach
turning somersaults.
I could feel the tears fall,
I could taste the salt.


And so our parting didn’t fit
Into a pattern of goodbye,
With words appropriate to leaving.
You packed your bags, and I
Made up the bed.
And when we crossed the street
We each went separate ways.

but in the end we are all defined
      by fine lines.