People will try to make you feel small,
and you can let ’em,
as long as you will be a little lion –
ferocious, hungry and insane –
on your comeback trail.
Disregard all care for your mind
and toss aside all small barriers to
success and love and living true
and roar and burst out into the jungle,
for the jungle is yours to command
and yours alone,
and you can watch all the little cowards –
the ant people –
pat your back and smile at you as your teeth grow.
There’s a king for every castle,
and a degenerate for every gutter,
but the world is filled with gutters and so few castles.
Man jumps at a passing star,
his own shot,
and falls through the sewers
much more often than catching it.
The history of human excellence is the story
of climbing out of the shit to build an empire
when everybody refused to pick you up.
Scars across an aging heart
never seem to heal
and the wind stings just
a little less
across my pricked face amid the
trees of white and brown and blonde.
Hair sits atop my head
a messy crown of brown and ash
and the memories weave their way
among the lockets and whiskers and strands
with every breath I take in.
A heavy heart is made heavier still
by the endless gravity and march of time.
Concrete, endless concrete,
white and complacent
no provocation coming.
An idea slowly suffocates,
followed by the death of millions
like dissatisfying sex.
Smoke drifts through
A corner of a mirror,
And you were less than a fifth century
And I beyond my fourth.
Youth is shamed by the
Unyoung,
Those who once had it
And now mourn it,
But never by those who don’t miss it.
Youth was beauty
Youth was hope,
But age can still be so.
I stir awake for you,
A slumbering once-nocturnal beast,
Now, maybe, a midnight owl,
No longer with the claws of dawn,
But not far removed from that.
I shake awake for you,
I am something wanted and on
Cold
Hard
Nights
I am all that is.
I saw you and I felt your face
Your curves
Your life,
Just in front of me.
You smiled at me,
A smile I had almost forgotten,
And the past melted.
I forgot the fights,
The hatred
And the ending,
Left only with the good times.
We said we were sorry and
We were playful, composed and in love.
You were never more you than these moments,
And then I woke up.
Light shines through the cracks in my glorified castle,
The place where I’ve built up defenses against love
In an attempt to keep my heart safe once more.
There is no describing the fortress we erect to save ourselves,
And the architecture is always flawed and impotent.
Love always finds a way.
It might not be good love or the mythical ‘true’ love,
But something always sneaks into my heart,
Whether it scales the walls or swims the most.
Love isn’t clean, or just or pure,
But nothing worth having is.
Your unsteady steps on
The surest of floors
And you were never certain or
Balanced.
Layers of makeup used to mask
The heavy doubt wrought by social judgment
And disguise the years lived.
The disguises fell apart in the face of
my megaphone self
Leaving us both vulnerable but wanting.
We sit frozen in time
– An impasse of a higher order –
And await the final, frail decision.
Twelve rounds,
Overtime,
For nothing.
A fire fed and
Still
Hungry.
Desire sitting,
A caged bird.
It broke,
It’s rotten
Or it died.
The words don’t come,
At least not like they used to.
All that is left are the hollow,
Scattered fragments of language
No longer forming sentences.
Writing was easy and safe and something,
But now sits rejected and empty for me.
It is either the absence of love or the echoes of all the pain,
But something about my words is no longer right or just.
Andy Veilleux 