Not a day goes by that I don't forget to say goodbye
to a past so long ago but not long forgotten.
But when mere days turn to decades,
my comfort smothers my gratitude,
and so the cycle begins to begin again...

Like a falling spool of infinite thread,
I am at the loom plucking with blind fingers.
She burns with an explosion of warm light, growing and shrinking;
her soul is breathing before me--
her thoughts, her visions, her desires, her decisions,
attract attention as electric magnets--
spread flat atop metallic rooftops.

When she strays too far from my heart, an aching soul shivers
like naked shoulders under frozen nights.
But upon her return my sickness lifts--moist morning fog,
dripping up the face of a stained edifice.

Her ignorance to what she is, what she gives, what she defines
allows her to continue to innocently change my life.

She is the reason the seconds pull themselves around hours,
she is the cloth that dries my tears and the echoes of my laughter,
her face is within the piercing sticks of the sun's fingertips,
tapping onto the windows of my morning.
Her voice, a drifting flame, stings the sleeping icicles
as they slip from the eaves of my evenings.
Her eyes glisten with liquid, silver-kissed teardrops, trapping light;
mirrors against crunchy grounds of an afternoon blizzard.

My eyes need only see the secrets in her smile to be of use now,
my ears--to listen for her wants--to capture her wishes
like the swaying in a dandelion's rhythm;
its motions to the humming of the wind's lullaby .

To describe my everyday before the day we met as a life defined...
is like calling out upon a forest with no trees--
its mere name argues against itself.

So, to title a feeling, to put a name to the passion behind this love,
would be as simple as slipping the stars behind a satin pillow,
as bottling the bubbling current that swims under ocean eyes.

But, if I did find this feeling within a few letters,
my voice would weep when I spoke them.

A life beginning within the beginning of its middle
gets to exist upon its dreams until its ultimate end.
God indeed made my heart beat that night,
but she was the reason it asked to beat again...

Author Notes

I wrote this poem for my wife and it was just read at our wedding. We were engaged within 30 days of meeting. It truly is pure and unconditional love, impossible for words to explain, but I owed it to her to try...she is my gift from God, my personal proof of His love for me. I had a severe accident that almost took my life. He saved me for her, made my heart beat. So that line is quite literal. She is the reason my heart asked to beat again...

Lacking everything, craving nothing,
death is but a tease under the ice.

My artificial or dying skin is much too small now...
my arms are ripping through the shoulders,
flames breathe onto my back with a dragon's envy,
blue snow digs into my belly with metal cleats.

my toes break apart--
crunchy lettuce snaps so loud at night.
My scalp bites at every follicle--
fire ants feast on itchy flesh.

My legs beg to sprint but pray to get rest.
Vices lock onto each sweaty muscle--
skeleton fingers plucking strings...
lullaby of a maniac.

Sleep giggles eerily behind quivering eyelids;
diagonal thoughts warp my twisting vision--
lacking everything, craving nothing,
death is but a tease under the ice.

Author Notes

Feel free to please ask for the reason behind this piece. It is a personal subject but I'm happy to share if you're interested. Maybe you know what its about already...

Chapter 4
Paper Limbs

By GregoryCody

An avoided presence crowded my youth,
slapped backs to walls, unable to move,
slanted answers swung up onto fear's greedy ears
as an inhaled bubble of disappearing tears.

Trembling to a wobbling quiver, I took my first steps
up from a stagnant mud of complacency's depths.
The brown ooze grew, and stunted to cemented brims,
so I rose to my heights, and stomped atop paper limbs.

Alone I marched, through naked lips of distant winds,
sprinted towards spinning tornados--unlimited sins;
roofless, I shivered, under rivers of rain and frostbitten lies.
Solely it was I--reaching peace beneath unending skies.

His absence trapped my innocence--never to return;
I was a rose petal, running from the dirt.
From a boy to a man, sprouting quick dignity,
gradually blooming into what he would give to me.

He laughed, he mocked, he joked, and then he left--
the only action stolen was my own self-neglect.
Without him, and long with him, nonetheless,
my father is the reason I stand now on solid legs.

Chapter 5
A Midnight Mosaic

By GregoryCody

The rain seemed heaviest when the streetlights dimmed and doorways clapped shut, like pointed turtle beaks.

I was a child drowning within a sea of faded street signs and wind-pulled swing chains.

The tarred pebbles of the street, still damp from the shower's tease, gently clenched the tread of my sneaker; hot bubble gum nested into lips chapped.

Home is simply the close of a day and a distant enough destination for an idling mind to lock onto.

The seconds under the watch inhale time by the hours, twirling around days in a spinning eddy, slipping through the rusted grate of a kitchen basin.

The winner's tape hung taut across the finish line in the distance, its tassels tied into knots across the rattling bars of another starting gate.

Blind eagerness to arrive again to nowhere, abounded.

Sprinting to clench the blue ribbon of tissue with sweat-bathed palms, they prayed for the promised applause to echo back against their deaf ears.

Just as the next foot lowered to the road, as a thinly sewn bed linen would fall atop a waiting mattress, the baton dropped from my fist.

Life is only witnessed between the grumbles of a sleeping distraction.

High above the muddy table of our refusal to think lays a patchwork of ideas and questions, an ebony pregnancy of curiosity that gives breath to the first question for a better anything.

After the last wave of dizzy sunlight dripped down from the sky, like a wisp of creamy smoke pulled through a faceless vent, the sight above became a blanket of stars and moons that united its audience; faces of familiar strangers stepping out from our dreams.

Written within the glow of a permanent black evening, pop stark yellow splashes as they exploded onto the midnight mosaic.

Each touch of the brush slapping exactly different from the last, painted the same scene atop the same canvas until it reflected the same questions I had asked inside it as a boy.

As the paint started to set this evening, a beautiful awareness met questions across a thousand oceans and common grounds atop charcoal puffs of a cloudy haze.

Silence of the motivated "Everything at once" and "Everything is mine", slowed the decay of the ignorant runners, delayed the pause, and sprinkled down sands from a shattered hourglass to awaken the sleeping awe and beauty that slumbered under a roaring fire of confused ambition.

That night, we gazed upon a working masterpiece through the eyes of one family, as it was before He wet his brush and as it will be tomorrow when it is dry.

Chapter 6
Tears of a Rose

By GregoryCody

How do you raise your voice to a rose?

Rush to accusations as if blaming the blue for a setting sun.
Misery sleeps inside my eyes, only to focus when apex hits;
Anger under pain shoots from my gaze like flaming swords—
Poor passersby quickly get blisters like pregnant cherries;
Barks bounce through the air against pleads that fires would fade.

Fearfully, I shut my covers and speak blindly, sadly absent beauty.
Apologies are trivial, if repeated like the chorus of a forever looping song.
Feet bound with a band of thorns stabbing,
Her legs stumble to a wobble—dreams of fleeing feet left months ago.

Staple a bloated tongue to the dripping ceiling; falling acid;
Seal poison lips with caramel paste, trapped shut behind taste ever sweet.
Hammered nails in fingernails caked with mud; an ache pumps my crying heart—
Cursing commands, barking replies, thunder boom screams—a naked ambiance.

Laughter leaps far like a leaking balloon when the descent falls atop my breath.
Angry melancholy bellows arias constantly within our midnight concerts;
chalk cinderblocks chomp down upon complaints hours late;
mere moments drift into regret as softly as smoke to a breeze.

Soon, memories bounce back, like rubber orbing attacks against a metal wall—
Words pop, splay, shotgun voice; digging in skin as steel screws into butter plywood.
Regret absolute as I feel my way to appreciation once more;
Amused despair vies to paralyze my climb; lining my spine with boulders.
Typically defeated, invisible I, the ant, have battled a sleeping hawk.

Hope: a bug to heaven's Goliath, silenced pain will giggle with her again.
Lift patient arms from the swamp under my rain collection; built filth—
Rinse the face of my heart,
Scrub ugly from her mud-splashed chest,
Pluck barbs from delicate arms
And embrace my immaculate destiny.

I beg to Hold the wet railing of our commitment; my carry through—
I vow to sing to you everyday, once more and always again ,
Perfectly in love through the voice of my life's gratitude.

Whispered kiss unto my rose...

Author Notes

When in pain and angry to the world it can sometimes be the ones you love most that feel it. A true regret...

Chapter 7
Sewn Into the Sky

By GregoryCody

Never am I lower than when I met the night tonight on high
The soft hiss of humming tires carry on in the distance
as if some drawing waves are reaching for my balcony
Why are their beds empty at this hour?

A snapping crunch sneaks between the rosemary bushes--
quivering, deep and shaggy with their pointed barbs, so gentle
they resemble fat lavender bubbles from my window now

A dog howls within earshot--a deafening pitch,
like the pull of a bow across crusted violin strings
It continues to whine into my life unaware of me

None of these noises, these numb instances, are of anything here
Simple, familiar, boring, as the tattered throw upon my shoulders
No, no, it is not a sound that introduces us--quite different...
but the shout of a distant voice, breathless, which seals my senses
Her song is silence, an empty hollow, left where the wind runs

I creep onto damp blades of sleeping grass--green needled carpet--
looking up into a creamy soup of deep purple...perfectly endless,
left as a pebble before a coliseum forever growing, never finished
I listen, hold my heartbeat level, letting my head fall back to a tilt

We speak minutes on years, tip toes to fathoms, nothing into all...

A man with but a shadow lives in solitude, solely by willful choice,
for he who is truly alone looks into my eyes, content with his doubt

Those few words strike cold, twisted knots of agony, stretched--
I had unraveled from my father's heart--sewn into a memory
But soon a soft balm falls atop my wound, a heat kisses this icy ache
for due to this encounter under a faceless sky, I finally realize--
my family is together, everywhere, mine within everything inside

I meet the night tonight, at the loneliest time in my life...

never more.

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