"Speak" - 9/24/05

made for tv movie the girl
who played the victim
was good

her performance was powerful
watching in a hotel room I believed her
somewhere in Pennsylvania
she has a new fan

what is it when the story
someone else tells for a living
is the same as the one
you can't tell to save
your own life

I want to find her upstart leading-girl
thank her personally
send her a letters
catharsis is deeply
underestimated

I don't have tv at home
but out here on the road
arrows come from left field
stabbing moments of awe

where the memory
of something unjustifiable
haunts unrelenting
nightmarish a claw

"speak" that's what it was called
some made for tv movie
why didn't I have the guts
at her humble age

I remember being as sullen as this girl
I remember being as scared as this girl
in the movie I remember
being as secretive and swearing
people off

like it was yesterday
when we're running out
of meaning pausing
comes at such

a cost

"Vision" - 9/11/05

i am afraid of your sarcasm
(even though i am sarcastic to a fault)
i am afraid of your ambition
(though i am driven toward a mission with no peace in sight)
i am embarrassed by your arrogance
(though i've long clutched my own confidence as proudly as a jewel)
i suppose i have a crush on where clouds overlap

i am put off by your tendency
to call me when i'm busiest
(though were you not to i'd be mysteriously disappointed)
laugh away, blind witness to history repeating itself
in my willingness to succumb
(though charming is not exactly what i'd call you)
i suppose i have a need to feel understood by gypsies and strangers, even after years of learning and relearning they are bound to let me down

i'm admittedly excited by the prospect of collaboration
yet keenly aware that I hate to share pastels
(why would it be different, this time than in the past)
haunted, i envy in you what i'd be better off admiring
from a distance - which is _____
(oh how to frame something you merely wish you felt, saw, were)
i suppose i have a weakness for beauty
so in-focus i can see its blood pumping

through sapphire veins, shameless, hypnotic
I see it in you and they told me
vision would be a curse
(to say the least)
sometimes canopies resemble skeletons

lying down - curtainless - i count ceiling stars