gravity

drugged with heat and anxiety

two days with no sleep, this is how we always meet

tired old routine seems I'm always trying to

catch time escaping like a thousand worries fireflies

tell me, what could satisfy us?

us-now tall with silence

bottle of whiskey

crown of leather

chains of wasps and feathers

this stopped being light the second

you whispered to me low after

hours of traffic jams and phone calls

that only led to disappointment

answer the phone.

teeth born to talk but they chatter

as i try to let things

slide easy off my tongue

guilt has been weighing down on me, see

i killed a bear.

you laughed at me and changed the subject to misanthropy

you said, "sometimes i still believe the only good

reason for poetry is sadness,

then i realized i can no longer get angry

unless i'm shaking my fake fists on stage

at some invisible murderer,

false tongue of rage blaming the circumstances -

if only you'd been there to see me fall,

the glory of retrospect and spoken word.

you said "oh god, i used to wrap my arms up in tangled oak

no room to move,

lungs filled with smoke,

tossing out words like rescue rope,

blinded by the dark nights sky,

gravity is not on our side,

the only pull that holds me back

from grabbing at the past."

i said, yeah i know, those flickering lights can draw you in

seems sometimes there is a city up there, but i can promise you

there is nothing to find by looking up into that dark pit of sky

misery is grounded and so it becomes difficult to stop floating

but once your feet touch the dirt, feet born to walk,

remember we are here to move forward!

regret can be a slippery slope i said in a voice

fragmented over the telephone

i regret nothing.

except that time i feel out of a tree,

i wouldn't take back anything,

unless you count the times i lied-

and i never believed in fate,

but i know coincidences can pile up

and i didn't mean to compare you slithering snakes,

we all make mistakes

but i never should have

listened to your false advertisements and no-

i wouldn't paint the highway traffic lines to send

cars streaming in the wrong direction

with you one more time.

and if i could, i'd have never jumped

naked and drunk into that

frozen lake -

because of these things i nearly drowned

and i'm scared of heights

i regret it all, yes all of it

if it means that picking up a pen and putting

honesty down in ink takes a second thought.

regret, is a slippery slope.

what i mean to say is that momentum gathers,

and gravity is the only thing

that keeps you from grabbing at the past

hang up the phone.

teeth born to talk but they chatter

as i try to let things

slide easy off my tongue,

guilt has been weighing down on me,

see,

i killed a bear with my grisly bare hands

i lured him with honey and glimpsed his kind eye

i don't feel bad

he could have done something

he was bigger than me

but there is something heavy

about taking so much beauty out of the world

to satisfy one unreasonable appetite

eyes shut tight with glue

if only you knew

if only you'd been there to see me fall

from glory

humbled by Saviour and time.