I saw you today or maybe it was just a picture or your name in a mirror and I fell again over my head and to the bottom of it all and nostalgia forgot to worry about the pain of longing just long enough to feel bliss and joy and all the little things that count the way towards love and I felt like a school boy with a crush on the most beautiful girl in the world that he would never be brave enough to talk to but still walked home with his feet never touching the ground and I day dreamed of dark swirling Vincent skys and stars and sailing across the endless ocean trapped in your eyes and it was a brief passing moment that lasted an eternity and then you were gone and all I could see was your name in a mirror that held onto your picture I found at the bottom of a dream where I was sleeping still falling into the madness of it all

Maybe I just don't know or maybe I just don't got nothing new to say and I know its not my place to worry about people I don't really know and maybe I'll take a train to Tennessee and take a shot of whiskey and mend something thats been broken just so I can watch it fly away and maybe I'll go somewhere north and lay down in the snow and talk to the devil about cold weather and dead souls and maybe he'll send me to Nebraska to fetch a golden truth for a pound of lies and a bridge to London that won't fall down if I walk across it and maybe I'll get tired halfway across and find a talking shark that promises not to bite if I jump into the ocean and have a little swim and maybe I'll dream of drowning as my bones get stuck between its teeth and somewhere in that dream I'll find you waiting and sitting on the branch of a tree at the bottom of the sea and it might not look like much but I'll believe you when you say I finally found a house to call a home if all I do is stay...

It wasn't the colors of her eyes
Or their shape
Or how they were perfectly framed on a face that was too beautiful for anywhere else but a dream
It was the wild soul inside that swam an endless ocean beneath a dark sky with Vincent stars
It was the way of finding and falling and keeping and being in love all happened at the same time
It was how the longing and ache just felt right
Even if there hands would never touch or their lips would never embrace
And it was all there
All of it
Just spinning madly in her eyes

My heart overflows with pain and wonder and the beauty of remorse and the remorse of beauty and wouldn't it be nice if we could just as easily rearrange our memories so that the lives we have lived could be the lives we want to live and I've fallen in love over and over again and it seems maybe unfair to have experienced so much in one life that hasn't seen its end and I worry less about the next time or if there will ever be another such time as much as I worry that there maybe a time that won't be better than the last and whose mouth will haunt my dreams as the kiss I can't forget  and I can only hope that it will be the same pair of lips that gave me my last first kiss right after I fell off the edge of eternity and plummeted madly into love for the last time that felt like the first time I found myself in the pain and wonder of the beauty of a forever without the fear of remorse of a life a had only dreamt I could live

Thin black silk veil covers transparent porcelain white skin and an illuminated red heart flutters wildly within
A mouth with the shape and shine of the moon echos with melancholy tears and laughter lost and a touch of lunacy for the dark side of things
She would fake a smile and say she was okay just to comfort her family and friends and it was easier than trying to explain the things they would never understand
She could handle the weight and the darkness and the monsters didn't scare her as much as she scared them and there was pain in every breath on the worse days and numb on the bad days and the good days seemed to pass in mere minutes and it never slowed down the wild red illuminated heart fluttering madly within her chest

If only I were him and you were her and she didn't live so far away and we were all too busy to write about and long for love because we were all too busy enjoying its beauty and living in the center of its deepest depths and our thirst never came from a lack of desire and it all turns cliché as I point out that we are only who we are and knowing that still isn't enough to answer the question of who are you but an endless dream of a kiss that I will never receive and I find myself sleeping and napping just to watch it repeat on the walls inside my marrow over and over again and again...

The HEART of
         My ENEMY
      For the BLOOD of
        My BROTHER
will bring the
  BROTHER of
          My ENEMY for
        The BLOOD of
           My HEART and
             so on and
              so on and
               so on
           until we are
             knee-deep in
                DEATH
                  and all the
                     OCEANS
                           turn
                              **RED

F' this planet...
   I'm going home...

And my heart broke a little more
and sank deep down to the
bottom of misery
And beyond temptation hate tried
to force its way above my skin
And throat foamed and the chance
to yell obscenities
And how my blood did howl with
angers force
And my unclenched fist wanted to grasp
liers throat
And better sense of temperament reminded me....
     just breath
       just breath
         just breath

All this noise in the world
And no one is listening
No one is noticing all the wrong
All the ugly words to the song
Children sitting gathered at tables
Laughing as they should
Laughing while they can
Life fast at their heels
Horror awaiting to replace their innocent
   days
And whose daughter will go first
Whose little girl will lose her will
      To smile
       To trust
        To love
Whose precious ray of sunshine
  Will be dragged
     To
        Dark alleys
         Dark couches
           Dark beds
Whose little flower will be
         Stomped on
         And crushed
         And dismembered
      And left living a life
      Constantly wishing for death
And who would do such a thing
   To such a sweet little smile
  Will it be by
    Monster or cousin
    Or uncle or father
    Or neighbor or stranger
    Or husband or friend
And whose little boy will lose his way
   Lose his way from patience
   And kindness and love
   And respect
Whose little boy will grow into brother
  Of brother of father of wealth
    And of name
Whose little boy will be taught by
  ignorance and ***** that he must be like
  the father of his brother of his brother
  of name and of wealth
Whose little son will grow into the monster
    of the illusion of being a man
Means taking whatever he wants
   whenever he can
Whose little monster will be left to wander
  and stray
    So far far away
     From the days of being
      A monster was only
        pretending and play
I sit and I sip coffee of sugar and cream
  And I wish and I pray that this was all
   A bad dream
But I cannot refuse or deny it
All this horrible horrible noise
Among the children laughing
With naive painted grins
I shudder inside of thoughts of their
                                       innocence gone
I tremble to know of futures of
                                        terrible wrongs
Whose will grow into murders of racism
  and hate
Whose will find themselves victims of ****
Whose will find themselves innocent
  locked behind bars awaiting death row
Who will turn into monster and beast
Who will turn into hero and friend
Whose little boy
Whose little girl
Will brave the road and pave the way
  To a future of endless
               Innocent days
It cannot be a day too soon
Let us hope it is not a day
                  Too late...

We fall in love
Deep mad love
And everything
Everything about life
seems better
We hold hands
Kiss tightly and long
We get lost between
Slow *** and hard
reckless *******
We stay up late
with the stars
and catch the sunrise
We phone and talk
about nothing
and anything
and lose ourselves
in laughter and
forget to care about
what time it is
And time passes
and we get comfortable
We get so ******
comfortable
that we forget about
the fire
the madness
and slowly we take
love for granted
We laze around it
We wander from it
in the grocery store
the long car rides
we carelessly ignore it
during what was once
love making and not
just killing time or
just ******* to ****
And the fire dies down
And madness packs up
And soon enough
mouths no longer kiss
and hands dont hold
and then
theres yelling
and finger pointing
and blame tossed around
And we forget about love
We forget how it all happened
How we got so
****** comfortable
and we lose it
and we find misery
and then misery gets
so ****** comfortable
and we enjoy it
We enjoy being miserable
and we just gotta laugh
about how stupid we
can be

A page entry from A.Z.H.'s "Thought Book"

  "Through the pages of this journal is the paper that contains the ink made from the cloudy gas called dream.  The dream is from me.  My thoughts are written inside this journal.  But I must warn you that it won't always carry good thoughts.  Some can be scary or sad, exciting or angering.  But it all depends on how you read it."

A.Z.H.

It's cold in my living room and the kitchen and the bedroom and the grocery store aisles
It's cold during hot showers and long hours and morning coffee and humid afternoons
It's cold under blankets and sheets and stars and in bed
It's cold in my bones and my lungs and my skin and my blood
It's cold wherever you aren't
And its coldest in the place you left your fires burning in my heart

This is a poem my son wrote...

What if you could go to the other side of the universe, the world, the sky... What if you could fly, float, glide... What if you could teleport, transport, appear... What if you could do anything you only could do... but you have to do one thing before you can do any of that.  Before you could go to the other side, before you could fly, before you could teleport... and that thing is to find your story.

The moon smiled and laughed
as it hung in a dark magenta sky over a blood red sea
burning with black flames
Dead mermaids brought the dreams of starfish
to the surface of the ocean
Hoping to pay their way out of their debt to love
The last and only thing keeping them chained
to the cold tides of fate
Their bones tired and weary
Their scales fallen off a fairy tale ago
and their hearts still faintly beating
No matter how hard they tried
and no matter how many dreams they collected
or how far they swam
They never could find their way to death
or a map to oceans end

I fell asleep but couldn't dream
so I walked through the mist
and echo of a black blanket
under a starless night
I came across a nightmare
crying under a leafless tree
naked and exposed with
soft skin and milky breast
Her lips were the color of poison
but her voice carried
no trace of a lie
As she said all she had wanted
was to kiss the moom
under a dark magenta sky
She promised me she could lead me back to dreams
If I would just take her hand
and let her walk with me
So our fingers entwined
and we walked miles
of soft footsteps
and shy glances
She would giggle and blush
from time to time
It had begun to feel
as if she had lost her way
and our journey would never end
When she suddenly stopped
and motioned she had
something to whisper in my ear
I leaned in close and she laughed lightly and said
"Your clothes fell off sometime ago... we are both naked now, so this must be your dream... before you go may I ask of you one more thing?"
She stopped whispering and
moved her mouth in front of mine and said the last part with
her eyes...
I didn't know it then
but that would be
my last first kiss
and now I am the moon
hanging dreamless
in a dark magenta sky

Fly away little bird
My love is not a burden for you to share
It is heavy and dark and made of broken pieces of hearts and dreams
You have a much better life to live
adventures waiting
My life belongs to the desk and pen
The brush and the haunting blank surface
Grey colors and falls embrace
I know it would be eternal paradise
To spend time with you under both sheets and dreams
To breath in your scent hidden between thighs and breast
To wander hand in hand
Through the halls of your heart and soul
To feel your beauty flow endlessly throughout my blood and control my pulse
... sometimes fast... sometimes slow...
breathing easy through sleep
panting heavy inbetween dreams
kisses soft with hard teeth
bleeding slow
where fingers traced words of love
during torrent moments of lust
nirvana found under the razor tip of your tounge pressed against
the life seeping out of my skin
only fools would mistake this as sin
but its not the place for me to find or spend my autumn years
Your love has better days and things to do
I am only a dream away from death
Sitting at a cold desk
Watching lost colors drown out the corners of the surface once blank
Painting the last words of a dying dream

what is she but a hope or a wish
a dream or a penny full of bad luck
a butterfly wing or a switchblade knife
placed with precision between two ribs
delirium and delusion as bride and groom
but not girl and boy
just bones and bones
husband and wife
without any parts to tell who's who
just a spark and a flash
of lives lived and loved
loves loved and died
death dreamt and slept
dreams slept and cried
tears flooded and drowned
flowers drenched
whiskey drank
porcelain chipped and cracked
last kiss of the first
death of reason
birth of madness
suffering murdered
pain given black wings
a heart stiched with the vane of a lost feather
once used by a god to write a letter and draw a map
while spending a life wandering a road under the shade of a tree
or was she sitting beneath the mist of a wave waiting for a bus to stop somewhere between eternity and oceans end
she was so long ago and sometime soon
that I can only hope and wish
that she will be the dreams of a penny that is all out of luck
just sleeping in the sun
waiting to be loved

Fathers won't always remember the last time their sons give them their last soft kiss on the cheek followed by a small squeaky voice saying, "i love you daddy"
And that's ok...
I suppose...
Its the kind of thing little boys outgrow so slowly and suddenly that it goes unnoticed until it is completely gone some years ago
It will be replaced by long warm hugs and little arms wrapped around necks and legs and waists and a voice not as tiny or squeaky saying "I love you dad"
And that's ok...
I suppose...
And often with an unknown tragedy these hugs become shorter as arms grow longer
Not always... but sometimes
Some will stay close
Some will drift
And some will drift and then become even closer for their time apart
And that's ok...
I suppose...
The wonders of life are not always kind
But they are not of cruel intentions
It will seem unfair at times
True
But life itself cannot be blamed
It has no guidelines
No safety net
No rule book
It is of whimsy and irony and grace and downfall and magic and fear and beauty
Time will shuffle the deck and fate will cut and deal the cards
And maybe hugs will be replaced by pats on the back or handshakes or shrugs of the shoulders as an older voice that has lost all of its squeak says, "...hey..." as sons and fathers pass in the hall
And that's ok...
I suppose...
Fathers have to let their sons grow
Have to let go of thier hands...
To let them...
discover mistakes and learn failure and invent secrets and build mystery and paint dreams
To live through the wonders of life that will sometimes seem cruel and unfair
And find in their fathers voice that they they only let go of their hands so they could hold more tightly to their hearts which they can never let go

A man with dragonfly wings and a ravens head interrupted a dream where the moon was dying and the sun was burning its last match
He spoke in clicks and clacks and had hooves for feet and told a story of the birth of the first star who had no father or mother
Lost and alone in an infinite darkness the star had little to do but ponder if there was any difference between reality and fiction and which one it belonged to
Did it belong to a dream or a wish or was it an illusion or a trick or was it just imagining itself and maybe it wasn't even a star
Maybe it wasn't anything at all
Maybe it was nothing more than a feverish thought of a mad god with dragonfly wings and a ravens head and hooves for feet who had murdered his mother and father
He made a noise that sounded something like a cackle and a snarl and then hovered for a moment before flying off into a blood red sky
The dream flickered back into focus and the sun had no flame or fire and the moons corpse floated out in a burning boat towards oceans end
Its last dream wrapped in velvet bandages dangled in a starless sky humming a silent song only the first star ever born could hear