Valiant Blush

Touched by dreams or not
Hitherto I've never been shot
Except with bullet shaped remarks
Peppering me like red hot sparks

Understand that I'm not for you
Rather like the color blue -
Perhaps you like it, but that doesn't make it yours
Only if we're both shot through our cores

Softly tread - I'm on eggshells now
Earnest words are all that I'll allow
Offer them to me with a smile
Forever and always, or just for a while

Likened to paint on a wall
It will fade, or chip away and fall
Forgetting that, I'll develop a blush
Enthralled by this silly rush

I know the risk - the inevitable end
Still, my heart to you I lend
Tender as it may be, I know
One hole still bleeding from cupid's bow

Love shot me through the core
Insisting I want you evermore
Valiantly, to you my all I'll give
Every day, for as long as I live

Eden

Reaching outward for
What lacks within
Old dreams smothering me
My head starts to spin
Speaking softly
Though I want to scream
Escape isn't possible
Outside of a dream

Creating problems
Where there were none
Outwardly reaching
Inside I run
Laughing though it
Brings me no joy
Onward march
Like a windup toy

Recent or not
The pain is still fresh
Echos of tears
Watch me as I thresh
Delicate beatings
Slight words of regret
Goodness didn't win
The challenge never met

Love never hurt me
For it never came at all
Always lacking something
I'm bound to always fall
Sensibility has shown itself
Not once since I was born
So between two fantasies
I am stretched and torn

Pulled apart over nothing
I cannot pull myself free
In a conscious state
Paradise eluded me
Incapable of finding Eden
I settled for a dream
Still speaking softly
Inside I scream

Addicted To Words

Allow me to
Deviate from the truth
Devoted yet -
Indeed, since my youth

Careful now
True colors shining through
Enter at your own risk
Doubting everyone like you

Together we'll make it
Or perhaps not
Wonder if we'll ever make sense
Out of someone else's thought

Real in a way - like
Dissimulation
Swallow it up -
      It's my fix[ation]

Fragment

Keep still - keep your heart
Insisting I've ripped it apart
Calloused hands do it well
Knowing all along I never fell

Instead ask me this -
Not without a foul tasting kiss
Go on - it spills from your lips
Take not away the tear as it drips

"Have you ever loved me at all?"
Everlasting words, they fall
Crashing to the floor
Abiding, alas, no more

"Never - never!" I cry
Dripping words that I lie
Over our broken hearts -
Wounded, no - shattered into parts

"Never" you agree
Twisting the knife you've stuck in me
How many years ago?
Everlasting love - no

Renouncing me, you leave
Only pieces of your heart stuck on your sleeve
All the rest remain with me
Damned to live forever in your memory

Criterion

Writing for the sake of writing
Rhyming for the hell of it
Posting for its routine
Continuing lest I forget

That I'm a writer - see?
Here is the everlasting proof
Years and pages and stacks of it -
Couldn't possibly be a goof

Couldn't be a one time thing -
Couldn't be a phase -
Has to be who I am
For how else could I amaze?

The one thing I'm good at -
Well, that's a slight lie
The one thing I was always sure of -
Sure it'd be here until I die

But, look - life's longer than I thought
Time drags on so slow
While falling away so fast
How was I to know?

That finding Time for writing -
This Time that drags and speeds -
Gets harder the more you try -
Tending to other needs

But still I try to force it
Because if not a writer, who am I?
With all my stories and fictions
Is my persona my biggest lie?

But the years and pages and stacks -
So much proof could never cling
To a truthless fiction
Well, that's just the thing -

For with so much proof
How could I ever have a second thought
Unless the truth was flimsy -
And in a circle I am caught

Round and round my mind goes -
Truths and lies mixing, darker and brighter
Until one sure thing breaks the surface -
Shaking a fist at me, yelling - "I am a writer!"