Books on shelves,
Knowledge from someone’s mind,
Ideas, purpose, or reason,
Words from A moment in time,

Many read,
Everywhere, every day,
Very few remembered,
Future generations far away.

Lie’s, fibs, and tale’s,
Leave’s on A windy day,
Truthful visions in words,
Guidance during this earthly stay.












                   Tom Maxwell 11/09/06

You can be anything you want to be; a clown, a lover, a serial killer, a tarot card reader, a musician who likes to eat pickles. You can be a prized fighter who falls in love with love itself. When you read you can be anything, and I do mean anything. But when you write.....you can see what's happening in front of you, you can be the night sky, in the twinkling eye of the child when she is being read your bedtime story. Put yourself in my place, when I am writing I close my eyes and the story that wants to come out is vividly clear in front of me. It's amazing what words can do when the right ones are put together: time stood still when you looked at me. I felt what you didn't say, I felt what you were gonna say. You smell so good, I can't wait for you to.....You know....It's all good, I know you feel it too, if this is just my imagination, I need to stop drinking so much coffee, the caffeine is starting to get to me.

When you write your broken so well it breaks me, what should I say?
Tell me, you’re good with words.

Or do I turn away, drop one of those hearts we all keep in our pocket,
aware of how small it is, worse still - how hollow?

However delicate, translucent - they'll keep.
Precious lines neatly pressed, jagged inspiration rolled.
Conversation folded, folded, tucked away.
Ideas will slip to place or fall. Either way - still there.
Still there. Still there. Your words: They’ll sleep until tomorrow.

Wakeful and aware of my feet against the floor,
Alive in a vast labyrinth of precious tomes,
their pages soft beneath my fingertips,
Their covers defensively misleading.

How beautiful, really, to be able to read them,
Be it a chapter, a page, or even a few lines.
Reading deep into precious texts
that don’t know they’re being read.

Unaware of the stories, written out in neurons, told through fluttered lashes,
And the twitch of a nose,
Pictures painted by the wide sweeping motions of searching irises,
blind to their own vibrant illustrations.

Each story searches for its conclusion
within the pages of another,
Trying to navigate itself through an index
That is not its own.

Perhaps someday I’ll find such beauty in my own weathered pages,
when my spine has split and my text has faded,
When I am a complete person built of indented paragraphs,
an entire soul typed out in times new roman.

Last night I slept in a white-walled room, surrounded by pinned butterflies framed with old love. They were so beautiful I wanted them as mine. Sheets fell as I stood and looked at each in turn, watched my own reflection ghost over their glass. I unpacked them. Held Lost to my heart ‘til its wings moved with my pulse. Took Lonely in my mouth ‘til it was whole. Peace settled in my hair. Regret hid. Lust danced in circles on my hand.

I’ll walk clifftop.

Watch the sunrise fractured by a hundred different puddles, made whole again by the sea.

I’ll bleed peace and spill calm over ground that should’ve been cared for by now, and I’ll draw maps of the old season in battleship blue and a half-healed ****** crimson.

I’ll love them: Today they are mine.
Tonight I’ll give them away, and I’ll love them more.

I’ll walk clifftop.

I’ll pause. Watch the sunset rain copper-coins into a rolling-smoke sea, and I’ll miss him.