An Overwhelming Sadness

i'm afraid of what happens when my lights go out
when i lie in a hospital bed
and my eyes close one last time
and forever

when my blood stops pumping
when my heart seizes up
my lungs close up
and i am no more

i want to know
that when i wake up somewhere else
in another world
there is a smile, a wink
and open arms
speaking the overwhelming joy
that has been hidden from me my entire life

but i'm still frightened
and broken by the image of a woman
who i have loved and been loved by
weeping violently by the bed where we used to lay
and laugh and make love

death is cruel
and bound to devastate
and ruin
our joy

Oh, what an enemy you are
and how you have destroyed
everything i have ever loved

I Was Born a Liar

i grew up in a family of lies
where half truths
and little white things
were good enough
for saving

because that's what it was all about, you know
preserving things that might have been lost
transient things like love
and family, and regrets

spinning out non-truths
kills a lot
it goes before us
with a knife
cutting the arteries
of discomfort

i learned to lay waste as a small child
trapped somewhere between the back seats
of old buicks and chevy pickups
i learned to quip with tenacity

my falsehoods were not really anything
not to diminish the real life that dies
with a dishonest word, but i was protecting
or, i was saving my own things
but i was always killing them
or making things worse

i grew up in a town full of lies
"we're just small-town folk
with wild pack of values"
so, for a long time
i didn't cuss, drink
or fuck
though, to be fair,
everyone else was

i heard strange sounds at night
sometimes the sounds just resembled
crickets, but other times
it resembled a scream, a cry for help
i'd ask the only ones that new
they'd say "oh, that was not a sound."
i would absorb another lie

it was all practice, a breeding ground
for the lust and evil that would depart
from my blue and dying lips

like i said before
a lie does not merely exist
it goes before you
and kills everyone you love