music – The Works of Mitch Worden

Putting Blanks in Blank Spaces

Emptiness is a kiss on the cheek,

barely brushing the bone behind skin,

needling at structure too slightly to ever see

until deep in the white is an irreversible knife.

Aching comes as the thought of an embrace;

the gesture unspoken, unwanted,

unknown when confined to literature and portraiture;

alien if never seen or felt.

I remembered it in songs written about anyone but us,

never heard by us,

never known by us.

I remembered playing pretend in the twilight as our sun set,

tracing makeshift constellations with my fingers,

the surface of the sky bending to the will of fable.

It only needs sustenance at the assurance of shared words.

Bled from supposed coping,

now the palette of the storyteller,

let the Greeks romance what I demonstrate miles above our heads.

Codified into the study of condition and fitness,

the character I step into can enter in the alphabet of stars.

Ask a question to challenge it as I find the will to create it:

What if eyes are only as good as our minds,

and fear holds the reins when loosened by consciousness?

These reservations are furniture stains,

stubborn against the methods that work to wipe the woe.

What if a cluster’s lines are not the meeting of intersection,

and parallel lines are what we come to be defined by?

These limitations are the imaginary numbers,

understood as existent but their purpose disputed.

Coy penmanship can replace the blanks of ripped-out pages with equations,

measure distances and trick the answer to zero.

I could see the geometry of you and me in songs we didn’t make,

we never wrote,

we never heard.

You replied without an inquiry to spare,

but the answer to that which was lodged in my chest,

cracked by an emptiness biding its time with an irreversible knife:

It wasn’t that it wasn’t there,

but what was there wasn’t shared,

and it wasn’t wanted.

( ❤ Mitch)

Observations in a Sea of Dead Saplings

Fighting to let your trunk grow tall.

Carving a place in the deep dark light.

Suckling on the touch of gin won’t offer purchase in the soil,

yet a fleeting vagrant took the role of the sun.

Drips from his bottle leave behind a garden of graves.

There’s no shovel big enough to unearth a semblance of solace.

I’ve got the warning signs of history etched into,

and I weave it into parchment as a message for your heart.

My body is the map of dead-end dilemmas,

the conduit for a misguided rage,

cutting holes and folding over creases to invent nonexistent escapes.

My body is the map to follow as I unravel.

The canyons of handheld glaciers are a lesson in twisted geography.

There won’t be profit earned from willing flaws into existence.

Sitting in depths where arms cannot reach down,

you’ve penned the story prematurely,

using words to paint a self-portrait of a target:

The Kezia of a rampant apathy that drains its passengers,

dropping off the remnants in a junkyard.

Are you proud to lay in a garden of graves?

Is it a pleasing fate to let another feast on your rays?

Has it been wasted time to stretch out surgically for a gaze

that saw nothing but a passing billboard sign,

driven by and never noticed?

Starring over scarification that endures through cycling years,

I wonder if it lasts forever as an artillery shell’s cave.

How far and long the struggle has gone,

and it doesn’t mean a single thing yet.

How far and long you’ve started to slip,

and I find no solace in any of it.

( ❤ Mitch)

Graves Line the Bedroom

Spiraling along the edge;

the B-side of a friend.

Isaac Brock confesses in parting

that which is close is fake.

Plucked off the rim by the retreating needle,

thoughts are tossed into the air,

intermingling with the particles,

obscured by dust, dead skin and doomed intuition.

Naked now with words disrobed,

a scratched silence is begged to cease,

tugging versus the departing soundscape

where nocturnal dwellings greet familiar forms,

shaking hands with make-believe

to shift out the cardboard cast.

Any face in the row was a liar.

Any face in the row spoke two ways.

Two throats uttering two sentences,

two meanings in one sequence

with one truth and one unkind truth

never said correctly.

I deem it fate:

A miniature Icarus is snagged in a butterfly net

away from waves of notes

where songs carry a sense of ease.

Tousled in a snare,

put before the crowd bare,

declared empty at auction,

gaveled out to under known geography

but off mental grids,

detached from cardboard wiring.

And it never comes about

and it never comes out

until shoulders begin to sway

where once sat a mountain,

foliage now drawn asunder

and an emptiness says nothing.

It never comes clear.

It never comes out

until no call is ever met

and no names are left to check.

Spin as you were

and spin as you will

In a hollow grip that stings true

yet without a force behind;

only an actor’s grin

as they shuffle to memory

with the pain of their stay never hanging on their day

though forever imprinted on bumps and scrapes

when trying to claw the sight of them out.

Ringing voices

whispering that these choices

are vested to self-destruct,

manifested into bumps and scrapes

when trying to claw the presence out;

to forget the friend you weren’t;

to blame a perceived weakness in myself;

to die in a cocoon in vaguest desires

I never am haunted by this repeating loss.

( ❤ Mitch)

Cause & Effect Syndrome

You were awakening.

You were opening.

In the morning I saw you and you were shining.

Through the beads of sweat caressing every blade,

you progressed every test that was placed squarely in the way.

I was caught trembling,

left empty, thinking:

God damn, is this life?

And the kiss of every razor’s edge grew a rose,

painted over,

said you already settled the score against yourself.

Truth is I can’t dictate the heart or mind to concede to changing tides—

unprepared and unable to satisfy this demand:

To be happily pushed and set all aside so that smile can glow.

This is different.

This is insanity.

Torn between joy within those eyes and selfishness—

to be kept in the pocket atop of your chest

so every breath in, I’m burrowing in.

Don’t forget me.

I’m forgetting myself.

The smell is the same—

clothes haven’t changed since the day we first met.

But you laid down a map, traced diagonals in red,

marked an ‘X’ with a swear you’d find yourself there

buried in rebirth.

A retribution,

a return,

to times that once were always settled and at peace.

The mold beckons out for only so many limbs,

so you’re cutting out the useless parts—

and you threw me in.

Am I blessed to attest to the soaring of your spirit?

Or reserved and defeated to be stones at your behest?—

Trampled over to realize this is the best way to see you fully become.

Every force has reaction—

The suitcase leaves me crying.

I see in a mirror years spent burdened with fear

and it’s building a fortress on my cheeks.

You embrace such a crippled, broken frame,

and I recoil in disgust of myself for falling every time.

Yet in case of this love, if science holds weight,

we’re as guilty as gravity.

Take this wordless confession, unspoken in all manners.

Let it go unheard—

in the end, our matter matters only to drip—

decompose—

replenish this hollow soil.

And in that perhaps I am content.

There’s no purpose to writing,

rambling on and on for a sign of approval.

My shoulders are broken.

They sag in the recess of every lurking failure,

so I won’t let this be another.

Here’s a page from the book you taught me on the oceans:

Underneath all the skin we’re begging “let us in.”

This is pointless—

so motions direct us all away,

protecting the self through isolation.

The Earth always moves and shoves at every corner.

So should we, as you said, discard all looming anchors.

Am I baggage?

Are you free now?

Tell me how do I figure this out

when my only clue is looking in doors you exited through and gauging every footstep.

I’ll assume for the worst that to win I have to lose.

At least then one of us works a way out of hell.

So don’t look back.

Forget me.

I’m forgetting myself.

Don’t look back, forget this.

It’s better without.

( ❤ Mitch)