relationship – The Works of Mitch Worden

The Young Man Judges Paris and Paris Judges Back

You were always the best at convincing me of my best,

confining me to the dictionary definition of “naïve,”

putting my picture to be read by the watchers.

The wind carries their words on and about

until the bricks in the alleyways are singing the gossip.

It took a while to realize the funny trick you had;

their lips move but it’s your voice they sing out,

reverberating off the architecture you pinned me down in,

so systematically inclining me to lose to your march,

devoted to the steady beat of your footsteps.

It took a while to realize what you could inflict upon

when I gave you the power to inflict it all on me.

I found it poetry when you met our mouths in misdirection

and flooded my lungs with your ocean.

I spent too long inhaling,

turning drowning water into your sweet wine.

( ❤ Mitch)

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Destroy Me

Often it is in hereafter,

following the expulsion of thought

splattered across a face unwelcoming,

yearning reaches a standstill;

pivot against the friction of feeling

or indulge in a pursuit ever deeper in its shortcomings.

Henceforth it comes to light

when desperate rungs take flight,

desire possessed and lacked its direction

encoded into the machinations of being,

where the individual is never spared a thought,

but the outside world is provided ceaseless consideration.

Solely by the talent of losing

in cracked-soul prose and late-night episodes,

the all that could be given is given rashly

before the extent of the exodus is recognized.

In a short span between breathing and waking,

love escapes, half willing, half unwilling.

Doing the Long Jump with Ankle Weights

Reached out too far,

now unbalanced on a beam

looking over into the abyss of cityscape visions.

Empty skeletons

of hollow infrastructure,

naught but a patchwork idea of how it could’ve been.

Iron and fire

molded to structural grace

are bound only by the thin glue of blood.

A touch of rust and a palette’s drained.

A receding figure and schematics shudder.

A flaw is made fatal

in what will have been.

In what never should have been.

In what failed to exist without you.

Dared on chance,

and lost trace of tempo,

drumming clattering to halt at rushing beyond bounds.

Empty skeletons

of vanished imaginings,

disappearing behind the curtain tugged back to reveal what never is.

In what will have been.

In what never should have been.

In what failed to exist without you.

Through a lens from faraway if you’d explain it so,

shoot a message across the distance with an arrow’s precision.

Cut it down where the body hangs from the balcony,

straddling the divide between the perserverance and the deliverance.

Toppling to one side to the wayside equates a familiar loss.

Dead and dying on either path of the question’s mark.

If I’d known better I would’ve manufactured dire weather

and remain ingrained in grains of atomized ideas.

A concept finds demise in writing when handcuffed to drawing.

Quiet motions dictate what words would never provide on their own.

Closed lips are shells that resonate over desolate,

echoing in the corridors of ghost town architecture.

A concept finds demise in writing when its meaning is limited to paper.

If we never act it was it ever really there?

Was it there?

Were we there?

In nights where vulnerability is inevitability,

I wonder if it’s possible if thoughts are spent on me.

If insecurity comes to plague stability,

are you visited by our doomed ventures to reinvent gravity?

Torched in a metropolitan’s dead skin,

littering the scarred pavement,

airplane debris is arranged into an obelisk,

taken as the prize of a futile empire,

stood tall in the town square

where all my shards are laid bare.

Art testifies to the tests of psychology,

dotting droplets of paint into the gaps of anthology.

In experience it has been seen why the act of releasing a grasp causes pause.

Reaching out too far risks imbalance.

If not concrete, visions are but imperfections of eyesight

for arching past the scope of melancholia’s inhibitions.

Ruins are that which exist in mind,

in sight,

yet out of both,

unattainable,

but close enough to cling to believing.

( ❤ Mitch)

What it Means When You’ve Globalized Yourself

She said we arrived too late to try.

Roads have been lined,

their pavement engrained into pictures.

All seas are seen,

the sights have been discovered,

each isle dotted in history.

Wires describe all that was once secluded in far corners,

now adorning every page in a swift stroke.

Flags drilled into the lunar realm.

Aspirations climb to broader heights.

Down without the hope or the green to realize,

the closest to the moon our bodies reach is a fire escape.

To navigate feeble desires rests deep in my bleakness,

hardened by replaying choreography where I sit by the curb,

and quick strikes from marching boots embrace.

Muffled by the debris of demolished imagination,

I see mobile futures beckoning,

be them illusory or potential reality.

Traced across the globe,

voyages marked empires,

crossing waves and continents,

not a stone unturned.

Mapped out so thoroughly do you now see,

yet the illusive dream is untested by conquerors.

No domain has planted itself in consciousness.

Roving eyes defined that which stands before us,

but we ourselves have yet to feel it.

Mountains and canyons are a finger’s reach away,

but we have yet to understand their meaning.

Too late are we now to lay claim to names.

Take a dare on psychology’s shortcomings,

venture boldly into the unknown that’s already known,

though open to the terminology applied through memory.

Tucked in a grove of trees,

a rising hill has always been present.

Upon it as we could be,

dragging an idea into practice,

we create new meaning in old places.

Pestered by lingering ghosts,

allow a dare to flourish.

I can create new meaning

if you let me hold your hand.

( ❤ Mitch)

Dagger Types

Tracing photographs,

armed to the teeth

with colored pencils,

pretending bronze plates

can be overwritten

beyond the black and white.

Outside the veil, it’s plainly seen

the face has yet to change.

Toying with the features recreates the same,

for in an eyesight’s unwavering light,

imperfections expand in view.

With words swinging from tired verse,

I attack the breaks in doctored romance.

Somewhere beneath is the lurking similarity.

( ❤ Mitch)

Hunker Down in Bunker Town

Talking through but words come silently.

Everything is laid out yet still made opaque.

Rafters hang heavy on shoulders sagging from carrying the weight

of a place called home that feels less so when said,

even less when reflecting alone at chronology,

with artifacts of ardor reduced as love letters to dust.

Amassed into a cave of motives sharpened against its host,

you regress into recesses where dried remnants of anguish,

engulfing pale skin as if ice were breaking water free,

now deposited into spires clung to as allies,

scratches on shoulder blades a deserved brush with failures.

The sun is a critical eye.

Stars are camera lenses.

You travel further down to hide.

I match trajectories on paper where we seem to be beside,

tangled and dismantled as circumstance has declared,

strung chaotically together in something that bears fate’s name.

They’ve tossed shattered youth into a desert to teach them how to swim.

Stride or succumb matters not;

it will appear as if nothing was ever done,

and nothing was ever meant.

Sharing findings with a collection of colored shards,

I drew a treasure at the end of a spectrum of chances.

You reached for white and drew a chalk outline.

No company to keep except the thoughts you hate,

yet a part wonders if their presence is key to survival:

Shunning out the world to secure safety.

Evaporating with the ice as what once was greets a clouded horizon,

I’m not protected behind this shield.

I can’t see beyond the edges.

I can’t see where you’ve gone.

( ❤ Mitch)

There Were Several Apologies

Have I interrupted?

Did I dare to intrude without knowing

despite the writing on the floor?

I thought I was meant to explore.

I thought there was something more.

But I entered as if my page was unintended.

Have I disrupted?

Should I have known the pieces to play?

You’re shouting “checkmate,”

but I wasn’t aware of my place on the board.

A bleeding heart seems to make you bored

as if my aching was only a distraction.

Am I the martyr?

Did I become the cause to nail up?

The practice in archery dressed as an apple,

and your tells are firing imperfectly perfect.

Whatever disaster I witness in my chest,

you’d rather blame on me and I don’t fight it.

( ❤ Mitch)

Austrian Love Story

Tell me that it takes the clock’s hands.

Tell me that it needs days to grow.

Pouring decaying thoughts to flowers as they morph into weeds,

could it bring to life what was said to not begin?

And I think I might have failed as I reached,

but a stray sway of mind sent my heart reeling.

Separated from reality in the synecdoche of imagination,

skyscrapers rise taller to be the walls of isolation,

since I knew I stumbled when I struggled with my throat

and out came phrases that should have stayed voiceless.

Is it you I see?

Is it you I place into nonexistent photographs?

Am I losing time sorting through imagery

when the actors have stormed off the stage?

Is it you or is it a passing phantom?

Have I gone to replace in order to repeat?

Struck silent in lessons that were never connected to life,

yet the blurring dimension of fiction spills over from its art,

damning ourselves to parallels that ever will describe shortcomings.

Tearing through notebooks,

digging through the pages,

mining the handwriting dry for relief,

and I see us standing there in between the curving pen lines

where Klimt laid us down in golden robes,

and it was sworn to be elegance.

Was he wondering about what he saw and did he know when it’d arrive?

The most empty hope hangs itself on a wire hoping for response,

but the air runs thin higher up in the atmosphere of sinking dreams.

Did he doll us up in grace?

Did he know what he had made?

Or am I picturing you again where we never could begin?

Ours is a history of mistrust.

Ours is the dried ink rubbed off on a wrist.

Washed dry at the end of a night.

It may not have ever been there.

( ❤ Mitch)

Mental Geography

There’s a house by a lake

only in a private head.

Could I let you in by the side?

There’s a life inside.

Rooms to furnish and paint.

Could I see you there?

There’s a place to stay

carved into my hollows.

Could you fit the crater?

There’s a hope to cultivate

somewhere in the fields.

could you feed the light?

There’s a house by a lake

tucked in my own head.

Will I be joined here

or will the waters rise?

( ❤ Mitch)

Have You Tried Turning It Off and On Again?

To any length shall it go to validate abuse.

Deluded as it’s come to wed one to misuse.

Tired of apathy but seeing only empathy

when rehearsed phrases hurry from Hollywood mouths.

An award to give for the perfect showing.

Never could find out beyond the façade’s displaying.

Tired of mimicry but knowing only authenticity

when you’re the star of my least favorite twilight dramas.

To any length I’ll go to rationalize excuses;

that the best of me deserves acquired bruises.

Weary of all the things said and never done,

but seeing clearly how it’s all I’ve ever known.

( ❤ Mitch)