1
The hopes of childhood,
hopes, someday,
everything will be okay.
All will be alright.
You’ll have all the things you need,
a quiet normal life.
Happy mornings, happy days,
and peaceful sleep at night.
Yet every day those dreams they fray,
dead colors on the seams.
You’re not looking at a page:
this silhouette of me.
The portrait fades to ash somehow,
and someday dies the dream.
A painting fragile, frail, and shaking,
Who takes the time to care?
What about behind the words,
the man with dirty hair?
Cynical, that’s what they say,
when one man has spent all his days,
to sing what can’t be heard.
Hopes they come, and hopes they go,
down the winding dusty roads.
we don’t know how, we don’t know why,
we mourn our dreams that silent die.
(In silence mourn our dreams that die.)
And all my life, the things I’ve seen
will pass me by as though dream.
This shopping spree,
don’t waste your days.
Don’t wander blind into the maze,
without a light to see.
II
Everybody in their lives,
looked to the sky with star filled eyes.
a glimpse into the future that,
on which the hopeful hang their hats,
And as the day approaches,
into the now out of the clouds,
the cloud that is the future
is amnesia’s fog-like shroud.
It has never been the same,
as you’ve imagined when it’s came
sometimes that face,
those eyes, that smile
you’ve watched approaching for a while,
They are not on time.
So like the others in the row
you fall back into line.
And when they stumble into view
nobody there just lonely you.
Everyone alive I’ve seen,
has their own unique tragedy,
from their hole they helpless call.
They beat their fists against the wall,
then the dirt slides terror-eyed,
trapped in the prison of the mind.
III
The wall between the world,
and you,
sometimes a glimpse, a peak into,
to see if all the dreams came true.
And if not,
the air is free.
Look to the sky, into the eyes,
of the ghostlike passersby.
The body is on loan,
I think,
and we surely cannot stay
at least we have the time to say,
that we are here alive today.
So write it down, that you may say,
a thousand years from now just, “Hey.”
A hundred years after the day,
you sat down with your pen-
turn the page, and then you may,
speak from the past again.
The words and portraits,
from the page,
do not fade or die with age.
Sometimes I don’t know what to do,
I just don’t know at all.
I’ve already prayed and written
help me on the walls.
Just for the chance
that you may glance,
this page and hear me call.
IV
With my dad, far in the past,
on a lake our lines were cast,
fishing in the sun.
Under a blue torn, ragged sky,
We watched a flock of cranes go by.
we felt the breeze of coming eve.
I looked up, to my surprise,
“Everything is beautiful,”
in the shape of clouds went by.
We left our lines in the lake
and fitted worms on hooks as bait,
and ebbed upon the lilting waves,
and felt the summer air.
I thought about the happy times,
not knowing they were there,
We watched our corks,
and sat to wait,
our faces shimmered in the lake.
And as the time walked silent by,
the lost sun wandered through the sky.
Above us as we waited, lone,
other than the fish below
we together were alone.
V
The deepest holes,
where scared fish go,
no sympathy for the birds.
Always looking, never finding,
a harder life than ours.
Origami hummingbirds,
so delicate and fine,
in the spring, the songs they sing
are rehearsed pantomimes.
and all the sing song verses, “Bye,”
and they sing themselves to sleep,
with haunting lullabies.
The birds whose dreams
dwell on the spring,
and all those lovely songs they’ll sing-
about the good, about the bad,
before the season of their love is gone,
turns into a coda for the sweet bird’s crying song.
I think back to my childhood, and,
see crumbling statues made of sand.
When I was young, I used to ride,
with father through the country side.
Looking for deer, and turkeys, too,
just me and him, nothing to do.
VI
Until we found our quarry, then
shot a picture with my lens.
Then we stopped, a bite to eat,
and at cafe took our seat.
He ordered what I wanted,
anything for me.
Yet on the best day of my life,
all I could do was dream.
About a future poorly seen,
the ghostlike shadows of my dreams,
the dream may never come—
and on my grave it just might say,
I wish I had just one more day,
here lay the bastard son.
I wasted all the happy times,
too busy looking down the line,
of coming days behind the sun.
Now that I’m grown,
The world, it’s tone,
has turned a static gray.
The dreams I had,
Though now long gone,
I still see that face.
Too busy looking to the future,
I forgot the day.
I wanted to be just like him,
Though now that he has long been gone,
I play Hank Williams while I ride
those old dirt roads alone.
VII
We walked between the raindrops
on the narrow winding streets.
The people under black umbrellas
walked on tired feet.
Bustling amidst the crowd,
We passed and said “Hello.”
No one stirred or said a word,
not even a “Goodbye.”
And blind in winding maze like streets
they pass each other by.
When we strangers saw each other,
we nod or shake our head.
Sometimes they don’t even look,
and watch their feet instead.
Never living in the moment,
always they look ahead.
They never talk with other ghosts,
instead they turn their head.
looking down as slow they walk.
so they will never have to talk.
They avert their eyes sometimes,
Families which once were tied
seem these days to cut the ties.
No more talking, face to face,
The portrait is an echo,
of what was its place.
Between the raindrops we had walked,
some faces looked but never talked,
they go back to their home alone,
and stay up all day all night long.
Locked in the room they only talk,
and whisper to themselves.
They toss and turn under the sheets,
until they cry themselves to sleep.
And in their dream again they see,
a flooded water covered street.
A Weird Little Dance
What can I say when words give way
to windows to the mind
where all the memories replay
chased by the beast of mine
To eat the happy memories
and write me only eulogies
and when I close my eyes, I see,
my own eyes look back at me
and the monster in the lens
crawls from my back and then gets in
Say what you’re thinking, you miserable fuck!
I’m not that sad, just out of luck
Who are you trying to fucking defend?
Why trust you when you’re pretend?
Another demon of the mind
drowned in liquid anodyne
falls over the table and into the floor
never to eat my mind anymore.
Then I hear an open door
through which came a thousand more
and I just let them feed.
They pick apart my mind and play
the same old routine every day
chain me down and, underground
descend upon me as their prey
I lay there in the stifling air
and dying never prayed.
After all what is the chance,
that we’ll survive this little dance?
And if we don’t where go our words?
Unheard in the wind like birds.’
brandon the writer | author & staff writer for sir swag 