Nothing so easily dreamt.

Remains of memories and dreams. I guess I made you warm again. But now the blizzard is in my eyes.

[2am-jasper]

This is a safe space. You are loved and worth the effort. Take it one day at a time. You will live and surpass this.

Remind yourself that it’s okay and you will be kind.

I hope you know that I will keep you in my mind.

[2am-jasper]

What a terrible waste: Time. 

Spent obsessing over raindrops in a storm. 

Do you realize there’s still sunlight? 

Peeking from the clouds. Just behind. 

What does this have to do with enjoying life? 

Can I not be amused with rainbows forgetting the downpour had to arrive? 

Were you not the one holding the umbrella over my head, a towel in hand. 

Am I an offering of comforts you thought would end? 

Soaked to the bone and shivering, led you from the cold and into my waiting arms. 

Is that not enough? 

The tide moves slow, retreating to farther depths, let us search the sand for the remnants of shells and starfish and find our missing gentleness. 

[2am-jasper]

A hairline fracture. 

A cracked tooth. 

Aching and misremembered. 

How I had romanticized my youth. 

Faded experiences, fantasy expectations, false existence. 

Wallflower wilted. 

Have I spent an age in reminisce? 

Can I break these patterns that persist? 

The pulpit echos, a hand on my nape, soothing the exhaustion, the verses take shape. 

An escape, lullaby my nightmares with this careful grasp upon my curls. 

[2am-jasper]

The offering 

The rhetoric. 

The pursuant pleading to the point of pathetic. 

It itches. This need. This ache. This want. The overwhelming greed. 

Digs like an ice pick through the soft flesh of me. 

How hunger takes over, how I can’t escape me. 

Each piece, each word. 

Watching how my mind works. 

Dismantle, decay, thorny prose, this self destructive way. 

The pulpit empty, the confession abound, how I reflect each action even now. 

Saying nothing, only suggestions, how little I’ve felt for the past few seasons. 

Take this pain, give it a name, place it in the garden I left forsaken. 

Bury my shame.

[2am-jasper]

Shouting, aching.  Dying for that call. 

Wars broken over glades.  Betrayal. The arson of cities made in the name of no saint. 

A cold fury over a primitive thing.  For no other sake: Love. 

And it’s hesitant hue.  A blemish.  A bruise. 

People, while imperfect, love in a way I have never touched.  A blight upon my aching memory and its garden gates. And in witnessing their imperfect love, I find solace in the half light of their souls. 

Finding daisies where nothing grows. 

[2am-jasper]

The hunger of a thorn.

Twice I dared to love too much. To yearn for something more than a gnarled touch.  Fed upon a gentle smile, a hand not lifted to strike.

Greed grew too strong.  You soulless child. 

You heartless fledgling Honeyguide.  Leading others for sacrifice.

And if greed had been restrained and left to waste, then solitude, abundant, took its place.

The lonely outweighed the price of indulgence. The nest too small upon the limb.  In the same breath, lacking oxygen.  It aches, starved and bloated. 

Laid upon the needle of Shrikes thorns, its larder empty and spring is coming. 

[2am-jasper]

A Riot In Verse.

The problem is you think. 

They don’t pay you to. 

The issue we have is “___”

But that’s not what they will tell you. 

The answer to the riots. 

To the root of the cause. 

Is to feed you the bare minimum.

Yes, you’ll get your coin for your grubby paws. 

The simple solution to the game. 

The answers to the bricks kissed. 

Is that you’ll clutch every penny, screaming for another with your hands too full to raise a fist. 

[2am-jasper]

I’m out here, I’m waiting.  Waiting for you.  I’m out here shaking.  Anger chasing the blue. 

I’m out here waiting. Used to sit side by side.  A ritual no more partaking. 

Did it mean anything, a shallow declaration of Mine? And I hate this town and the blood built upon it. 

Am I not worth the mess?  Does this devotion die when there’s nothing more than this?  Does knowing me more mean loving me less? 

[2am-jasper]

Denied the relief of punishment you keep.  Left to wonder, obsess, dread.  Tortured by thoughts left rampant, overfed. 

No need for hand to strike, no sense in wasting that time.  Unbidden, unwelcome, unkind they march. Brought upon this stagnant state, the decay already started.

Have to wait for this kick to come. 

“Someone will come,” the paranoia speaks.  But it’s only my voice in my ears when that siren sings.  Unfounded and yet proven time again. Veins threaded with the lack impunity.  No fortune teller, just a missing friend. 

I cannot lie and pretend, say didn’t affect me in the end. 

[2am-jasper]

Trust. As solid as sand.  Torn between grief and guardness, here I stand.

Will the convince end?  I wonder if it will hurt again.  Where has your conscience been? 

I’m clinging to the false hope of reconciliation while fearing repetition.  You can’t rewrite what has happened. 

Holding a sword I never believed to fall.  Am I Damocles after all? 

[2am-jasper]

I harvested hemlock.  Young child, bitten with wind and snow.  The brittle dead in my hands, an offering of love. 

Unknowing in its tainted touch.  Just wanted to bring life to the house.  The irony. 

Here it smells nice, even dried and breaking.  It grows near the horses trough.  I picked it for you, isn’t it pretty?  Tangled and frosted, the brown a memory of fall long past.  I have harvested hemlock, unknowing the flower’s past. 

[2am-jasper]

Have you found stable ground now that I am not around? Focused yet?  Since we last met. 

Do wish to turn back time, erase what was said, chose another line?  Would it fix this broken mess?  Secrets still kept. 

I had cradled this.  Cherished it. 

Only to wake and find the decision made.  No shouting, no grand fall.  No Battle to wage, no saying ‘This is mine’. Just a message saying that forever had passed. 

That I was not something meant to last.  So gentle, tripping over apologies.  Here I was, down on my knees. 

I can function. I can breathe.  Wish you had faded, left to bright happy memories.  Tinged with anger. Annoyance. Frustration. Soaked in confusion, pained. 

Was I mistaken?   A friend I knew, a gaze I craved.  Left to dwell, angry. Afraid. What makes me so hard to love, is it my youth? 

My passion for art? To be something more than abused?  Speak, watcher, voyeur, vagrant.  Tell me empty promises, the only constant. 

[2am-jasper]

Do you think this is about you?  You who stalks with every other move.  You who haunts the whistles and the grins. 

You, who left me like another lost friend.  Do you believe I’ve stayed here?  Waiting patiently to come to a heel. 

Is it a dream? One that I may forget.  One where you say “I’ve come back again.” 

Smiling sweet and warm and kind.  Do you think you’ve left my mind?  Are you stuck in reminisce? 

How does it feel to loose that reverence?  The garden is gone, now open sea. 

Gallows is all that greets me.  Backwards still, backslid to this. I guess you were right. 

You are someone I miss. 

[2am-jasper]

It’s a slow suicide.  Too little sleep, little too less to eat. Like cold molasses.  Habit like brushing your teeth.

It’s a time bomb ticking out on the street, others passing by.  Passing through.  Passing like they don’t have anything to do.  It’s an ache in your thigh, burning bright, hidden from sight. 

Ashamed of all the ways you hide your pain. Smoldering cigarette, though you hate the taste. Cancer stick you can’t release.  It’s a way you can’t ease into softer dreams. 

It’s a slow substitute, counting down the hours, days a blur, no emotions come through…

Life is passing you.  Ash on the tongue. It’s a hidden wanted bruise.

It’s something you think you deserve to loose. 

[2am-jasper]

Why tease such relief? Why not forget under the haze of drunken reverie? Why stay haunting me? 

Do you not tire of my heartbeat? A drilled reaction. Incomplete. Fleeting moment in dusty memories. 

I am a mayfly. I see only one sunrise. You are concrete. 

Stuck where you poured out words. Come, speak. 

Tell me why the hope has breath, tell me why I’m stuck even with your little death. A fleeting glimpse, a year or two.  A friend I needed.  A friend to loose. 

Eternity was told, ink on skin if one never grew old.  Now lost with distance. I gave you your wishes. Now I am back out in the cold, watching from windows, heart to stone. 

[2am-jasper]

Don’t count on me. I am someone else.  Despite the way the light in my eyes burn the same hue. 

Passing by, passing through, memories of all we used to do.  Habits fade, habits I made sure to break.  Digging still, the shovel split, my hands will do. 

Burrowed deep, I was unearthed once.  Running free.  Something new and old, pieces changed but the body still whole. 

Buried you.  Don’t count on me.  Don’t make me cope on hopeless dreams. 

[2am-jasper]

Birds Eye view. 

Looking down at the rot of you. Tell me the words the worms speak so sweetly. Tell me the calls the crows sing greedy.  I’ve got my sight on you. 

Bones bleached a brighter hue.  Whisper your raving words.  The dead can’t spin lies anymore.  Twisted like the roots you lay.  Speak, I’ll sit and stay.  Left to fester, left to stain. Did you want to end this way?

A grave that crumbled, cracked with time.  You were once something precious of mine. 

Buried with such respect. Reverence on my every breath.  Abandoned now as truth came out. Now you rot, I watch, no more tears left.