[bones-and-mortar]

String Theory

I can see through your eyes

And what haunts them from behind

Afflicted by your irrational fears

And the concept of fleeting time

How many pages are left in your story,

And if you ever amounted to anything,

Questioning the fundamentals of reality

And if everything reroutes back to nothing

But what you can’t seem to grasp

Is the true insignificance of it all

Life is woven into the most complex pattern

Made by a string from the simplest ball of yarn

Humanity, and all of our little worries

Are just a thread fraying off the blanket

Try your best to ignore the monsters in the fold

And find the reasons why to be thankful for it

[bones-and-mortar]

Shell Games

Paraffin wax flash floods Pushing black, crashing swell waves From my past's distant storms Of poorly played shell games.

How I would have loved to change my ways So I could bury all of my hardening guilt. The least I can do is take this surge damage head-on That's trying to tear down the home we built.

It's so far beyond repair; The framework is slowly giving way. I've been trying to bend it back into place, But I can't stop the roof from collapsing under the weight.

[bones-and-mortar]

RBG

I can still make you out

Through this matrix of ones and zeros

With memories that taste like Vanilla GAN

For my heroic grapheme-colour synesthesia

Saved you via RBG columns and rows

But lately, you’ve been so pixelated

In these miniature worlds that I’ve simulated

For my bug bountied heart

Refuses to be capitulated

Now I just can’t seem to find the thread

That leads me back to you in my head

Now just the mere thought of you

Throws errors in my dreams

That stream above my bed

They scream:

[DON’T LEAVE ME…]

[DON’T LEAVE ME…]

[DON’T GO…]

[bones-and-mortar]

Evolution

The primal yearning To gaze into the sky Burns like the first flame Cradled by the question of 'why?'

The delicate azure tapestry Ripples before biblical winds Parting the cirrostratus clouds Veiling their potential within

Between the rocky pillars of creation Tribesmen watch with fear and fascination As the observer graciously falls Raining down tears of innovation

Through its glorious whispers It cave-paints the walls of their minds Etched with symbols they knew, Their archaic methods refined

Bestowed with new teachings From the great descending eye Allowed to break this old ground With their clubs held high

[bones-and-mortar]

Our Drums

The knives are hot,

and the breaths are sharp

We’re smoking out the bees,

between the stream of our hearts

We followed it’s calming rush,

where honey flowed like fire and art

Slowly pouring into a thudding jar;

we stuck our hands deep in that pot —

So sticky and sweet, we will never pull apart

We can dance away the night

In its bubbled, amber glow

To the rhythm of our pottery toms

Beating at the encore to our show

Because to kick our love —

I’d rather die than to ride that crash

So let our drums roll the papers

and I’ll pack away the hash

[bones-and-mortar]

Eternal Staircase

The sky’s a bandless gradient

Fashioned in a soft linear swipe

The oily black’s overtaken by Prussian blue

With gossamer-like clouds twisting left to right

There’s a novel of beauty written above

And so below in the hazy understory

Where a spiral staircase weaves

Up through the forest canopy

And it’s in our soul’s design

to climb this allegory

It’s our eternal journey

to infinitely ascend

With new discoveries

upon each moonstone step

Found to be good or bad;

they’re equally valuable

Our growth is beyond aleph-null,

and is crafted in Escheresque

[bones-and-mortar]

Every Flower Dies

Purple peonies pop And chrysanthemum cracks Willows whistle in the wind And girandolas spiral into black

They're shooting fireworks for sedatives, Like a Roman candlelight vigil for two Their pyrotechnic hearts explode brightly Fading away above a love that once rang true

[bones-and-mortar]

To Haunt a Timeline

I’ve been hugging an empty coast Lapping tracks with the ghost of time My head is fixed and spun backwards To observe a life I have left behind

“Why must you always look back?”, The spectre painfully asked As violent winds blow the beach’s sand

Into the footprints of my tragic past Lightning arcs a response in crackled cursive Underlined by stars sparkling in pretty clusters “It’s what I deserve, and what is best.” As a westward wave follows suit of the bluster

The dead night allowed the sunrise once more Sideways sun-showers birthed a little rainbow It’s a beautiful setting to a bitter ending As the ocean eats the shore

[bones-and-mortar]

Tangled Tapes Ablaze

Introverts playing socialites Memories flying by my eyes In the darkroom of my mind A place where you're still mine

And like a trigger finger shutterbug, They tell me who I really love But she's doused in kerosene Burning on the centerfold Of Heartbreak Magazine

-- And in this fading, sooty daydream Belies the colour of her beauty wrapped in smoke -- And as she melts away into the popcorn ceiling As does the dreary cloud blown out my nose

My wanderlust lead me off the desire path Into these thorny stalks down memory lane And she is now but ash to the wind Cast away by nothing but my careless flames

[bones-and-mortar]

A Throne

Look at my throne; The relic of a loss How you wanted it so bad -- Better suits the crown of chaos

Nothing but endless, empty plains Crumbling, shifting and breaking What appeared to be lovely and mine In your desirous eyes, was there for the taking

But, I found my greatest victory Was within my gracious defeat I can rebuild myself in repose As you realize what I had was incomplete

[bones-and-mortar]

Terrarium(s)

A recluse hangs Upon a blade of grass Tries to sleep away A day that won't pass

So, it stumbles off Into baby tooth moss A heath star patch And conglomerate rocks

Making its way To some sycamore twigs Twining in between A blooming beggar's ticks

So, it crawls to the top Nestled into the thorns Waiting for the rain From red nozzle storms

By the same hand Which controls the sun That abruptly sets Where the moon is hung

So, he flips the switch off Rolls into the spread Just like a recluse Sleeping in a bigger bed

[bones-and-mortar]

Love Longing Ghost

I tried so hard But I only changed for the worse I point my telescope to the sky To watch our wreckage in reverse

Refracting into my heart-shaped eyepiece Is the floating image of our love as a star And as time passes on and the distance grows I will eventually relive the death of us from afar

But before I see that star explode again And the lens gets blood smothered I'll deny my developing estrangement As if what you've found was never discovered

Like your want for me never faded And the debris from your incendiary heart Came back together like our colliding lips Even though they've actually been separated For so long; this cemetery has been haunted by your kiss

And my ghost tirelessly tends to the flowers With weakening knees and hardened hands I'm finally vulnerable and transparent now Although so meaningless as you roam better lands

I don't want you take me for a sour and sulking phantom All ghastly and bleary-eyed; I'll break this telescope For you are deserving to live happily beyond this wretched gate I'll mark my own grave -- and I'll bury all my love and my hope

[bones-and-mortar]

Bright Side

Warm light leaks through the blinds Painting the room canary and daffodil Golden Winsor & Newton acrylic lines Act as sutures on the heart you've killed

But the sun still shines in emptiness I found it on the bright side of loneliness And those two monster living inside my head Are packing up and moving to another's bed

They couldn't bare the taste of yellow light As I lean out the window for a second bite With an appetite for an ending so bittersweet But I am better, and I am breaking out of defeat

These sepia clouds are about to cry I'm now laying in the tall grass; it's sharp and dry The falling blue may nourish this dying field And I needed to witness death firsthand To see if it could be healed -- It can, it will, I will

[bones-and-mortar]

Our Album

This vinyl's an old memory Pressed upon a cul-de-sac With cracks fraying like lightning and snowfall covering the tracks

Four songs for the seasons But only one is left intact The rest has ice in the grooves and it's our winter that's scratched

Yet I can remember exactly how it looked The darkened sky, and the blustery storm From the dead end road to the hands that kept me warm

The frosted, flickering streetlights Competing with a shrouded moon Orion displayed in a clear pocket and our hands letting go too soon

It's all so nostalgic and macabre Is it me, or the wind that keeps us spinning? Or is it the viscum album hanging upon the needle That makes this EP keep on skipping?

[bones-and-mortar]

Fallalery

A decorated needle Shining, sharp and pristine Laying in a heap of hay Bleeding in a pool green

Fallalery at its finest True colours inevitably show Adorned to be adored; But all that glitters is not gold

[bones-and-mortar]

Brody

Each time I drive over the train tracks Carving through lonesome Stroud I look up and become relieved; Pleased to see your face in the clouds

But whenever I recognize you above The wind grows from a gust to a gale Your scenery begins fleeting from me The further I drive away from the rails

Yet I still find hope in your dissipating image As this isn’t nature’s wind careening upward  — But the power in your bounding wings in flight Your exit left a hole in the sky; sun aligned As much as I’d like to spin the time backwards I believe you’ve found solace under new light

[bones-and-mortar]

Fire Agate

Desolate forest Swatch of grey Ever expanding Branching away

Enduring night All has gone rotten Time is lost I’m forgotten

Eternal gloom Always longing For a drop of colour I remember drawing

But memory fades Just as this punky wood Among the petrified trees Atrophied and still I stood

As I become aghast I’m frozen in fear Agoraphobic and withered As the end comes near

In the final moments A saviour breached my mind With a palette so brilliant She begins painting my sky

Her effortless strokes of vibrancy Leaves my mouth agape Restoring life in this pallid prison With eyes so bright of fire agate