Here you are, Mr. Hagler. Peruse at your leisure. These were all written at the least a year ago. Hell, some are about three years old. I just found this notebook stuck in one of my bookshelves and remembered your request back in San Diego. And if you don't like them, just remember that hey, you asked for 'em.

Apollo's Riders

With the mist they come and go
Haunting that which they used to know
The fire in their eyes has long since burn out
They whisper words they used to shout
Like "Innocence" and "Peace" and "Wisdom"
Lords, are they, without a kingdom

Such mighty shadows they had once cast
That none dared oppose e'er the sun did last
As dusk approached so did they wane
Till morning made them great again

Then they amongst themselves decided
Such weakness could not be abided
Resolved to maintain the power lost
And all drew deep to pay the cost

And indeed! No longer do they lose strength
For in the years and years that have followed hence
Their power never decreased fell night
Nor did it ever again grow by morning's light

That one was an attempt to tell a story, although I'm not sure what the moral is.

Peal

Grandfather Clock in the hollow
Singing of your minutes and hours
Voice no longer ticks and tocks
With all the mechanical breath of your being
Cry "Gone, gone, gone."

Just about losing time. Er, lost time.

Misunderstood

Art lost to my eyes
Music falling on ears deaf
Attuned to a noise nonsensical
Dischordant and jangled
Art rendered from life's deceptions
Emotions Oil swirled

I think this one was about not really liking something that someone else loves. I'm not sure though, I sort of lose myself halfway through.

Awakened

How base am I
Who thought you once so fair and good
Who thought you once so pure
And thought, nay, believed
That this one's sins could be bathed
In Holiest light forgiving
But mine eyes are opened
To the searing light
Of a Nature despoiled
Twisted by it's own design

Bitter? Who's bitter? (cough)

Losing My

This morning when I woke from the dead
You were already there
With the pages you'd read

You wanted the world that was trapped in those words
As if they were already true
And just had to be said

My eyes were blinded from the light overhead
I asked if you would please turn it off
You said you already did
I don't think I ever believed you before so this time I did

Tell me How you had gotten hold
Of the Thoughts I never wrote down
Tell me How you became so bold
To think that you would bring Me around

This morning your voice tore through my head
You were on your out
Perhaps you'd already fled
It echoed stanzas from the pages you'd dropped
Except for small spots
Where the ink still bled and couldn't be read

This morning I got back into bed
You were already there
I pulled up the sheets Tried to cover my head

Tell me How you keep going on
While I fight to stay
Tell me Just what keeps me from
Throwing You away

I used to have this apartment and I used to go out with this girl Kate who would stay the night sometimes. She would constantly steal my notebooks and run off and read them. I would attempt to hide them but it was a pretty damn small apartment. And if it maybe reminds you of the song "T.B.D". by Live from the album "Throwing Copper" it's because I had the track on Repeat the entire time I wrote this. I just now looked it up and T.B.D. stands for "Tibetan Book of the Dead." Creepy. Maybe if I had just written that on my notebooks Kate would have been scared off. After all, I could pass for Tibetan. And yes, I drank way too much even then, as the first line implies.

From Up Here

To behold the actions of ourselves as we were
As we grow old and peer below us

Watch ouselves as we become
So far away

That we appears as Ants
So small and scurrying
So distant

Oblivious of our desire to Return
to where Life was so large
We would get lost in it

People will tell you that getting old doesn't suck, but it does. No, really it's about that time, maybe New Years, or your birthday, that you look back and just can't believe you got through it all then not knowing what you know now.

Annabelle's Lead

I was walking next to Annie
She is pretty and always seems kind of far away
I'm not sure anymore of where we were going
I think she was going somewhere
I wasn't
I was just walking with her watching the world
I was watching her and the world
They were shaping my memories
Her and the world
It was late and the light rain falling was early
I didn't mind
Annie was walking next to me
I thought about singing to her and decided against it
I always decide against it
The sun was warm but the breeze was getting cooler
Shorter the days grew shorter
Grow short? Yes, many things grow short like
Days and Nights and Time and Tempers and Sight and Breath
The days grow short as The Nights grow long as our time grows short
Short-er (it was nowhere near long enough to start with, long enough to finish with maybe, but an end is a forever that takes no time at all.)
If something never happened that takes no time either
but it's a forever as well
This never happened
No, wait
The night was short The breeze was cool She is pretty and I
I was walking next to Annie

Annie is great, I love her, and you will too. Very much train-of-thought as I walked. I was going for a playful seriousness, like a puppy with a handgun (not loaded, of course.) The lines about never singing to her and then the lines about something that never happened being forever go together because during my senior year of high school I wanted to ask her to prom by singing over the school intercom like in "Ten Things I Hate About You," a movie she really liked at the time. I knew people who did the announcements and I even knew most of the song. I didn't go through with it, of course. I wish I could say it was only because I can't sing. But I was just afraid that she would say No, or worse, say Yes because I had put her on the spot. I feel like I underestimated her integrity by thinking the latter. I'm trying to remember, but I can't think of anyone else that asked her. I could see her as being one of those people that are ironically so attractive that others don't even attempt to ask them out. I did go to prom, though, also with a friend. I think her name was Kate. There may be a moral somewhere in that one, too.

Moonlit

The moon does not change her face when you are near
Hidden by her emotion, Hidden by her light
At the first whisper of your breath
She guides her beams around your path
She hopes to lead you not to me
I love her even as I edge towards you
Forgive me, Love, that I am blinded

Indecisions, indecisions, indecisions. The deliberate use of pronouns is supposed to make this almost irritatingly ambiguous. Even I forget which one the speaker is referring to as "Love" sometimes.

Caught

Aha! I have you, you pesky thought
Buzzing about as a gnat in my brain
A rat gnawing the cord that keeps me this sane
Plucked from a myriad of color and plot
And slapped down smack! onto paper in ink
Out of all of those things that I happened to think
Resisted mightily you, but stubborn so I!
Pinned by the very wings which helped you to fly
Blast you, thought, for eluding me for so long
But now I have-What?! Where have you gone?!

I doubt I am the only one who feels that way sometimes.

Love's Nest

Love built itself a nest
In the branches of Her heart
Built it twig by trembling twig
For Him since the start

Sorrow built a funeral pyre
From bits of broken dreams and trash
The nest was swallowed up by fire
Reduced to cold unfeeling ash

The Phoenix was of fire born
And then, perhaps it's true
A nest that's from it's branches torn
Can be built anew

Aww...how sweet! Wook at da widdle poem Memo wote! I think this is a good time to point out that I own a gun.

(Sweet)

Delicious
I scream
Eat tin
Won mourning

Get it, 'cause it looks weird when you read it but when you say it out loud it like totally...um...yeah. (Cough)

And for those of you who are still with me, here is one of my favorites. It's inspired by Garrett Sirota, but I think we all have a friend like this.

Ode to the Bumbler

Lo! Behold the Bumbler!
His tripping triapsing course
Leads this lush to trouble true
That hind-end of a horse!

His grace is marked by stumbling
Such elegance in his tumbling
Hark! Hear his stomach rumbling?
Only deep-fried food will do

Indeed! Behold the Bumbler
The blood-shot of his eye
Gives emphasis to his problem
(That being, too much pie!)

And when his mouth does open
(But is not met with drink)
His slurred and silly ramblings
Show how little he does think

What luck to know a Bumbler!
The antics that ensue
The destruction of your furniture!
The vomit on your shoe!

So if you chance upon a Bumbler
With liquor, bid him stay
And your reward will be to laugh
A thousand times a day

In case you just skipped to the end, I said that last one was about you.