Empire Nothing

© 2010 William Smith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 1/15/2 010

ISBN: 978-1-4490-6178-4 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-6176-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-6177-7 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010900043

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2010 William Smith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 1/15/2 010

ISBN: 978-1-4490-6178-4 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-6176-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-6177-7 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010900043

Contents

A Voice Without

A Year Between

Anarchy, It Worked For Me

Before It Turns

Before The Wind Dies

Blessed Was Future

Blind But Touched

Blink And Crave

Butterfly Pond

Cherub Blossom

Collapse

Counterwise

Difference Without Any Change

Distance Kills Nothing

Eingefallen

Fantasy In The Orange Grove

Fingers Fighting Hands

Flame Meant For Freedom

Flowerbed Grave

Forever, The Word

Glimpses Of Fodder

Guild Of Soul

Hearing God Pray

Heavens Kill

If The World Can’t Wait

In My Arms

It Was For Me

It’s Better If We’re Alone Together In The End

Kill. Feed. Breed. Repeat

Laughter For The Sin

Left, A Day That Wasn’t Mine

Make Me Free

Night Left, But Came Back Morning

Of Heart No Wrong

Peggy Roe

Petal Touched By Fire

Pieces of Pleasant

Promise Waiting

Pulp Fiction: Walkway In The Sand

Reading Goodnight

Red Rock

Reflection Shadow

Relics Of Sin

Sleeping Where They Die

The Lifeless

The Living Shade

The Remaining Peace

To That We See

Trace

What Flowers See When They Bloom

When A Secret Ends

Wishing Lips

Sobornost

To My Mother, Martha Jean Smith Peace Be With You Always

A Voice Without

Has something ever happened that makes you leave the place your at and just escape to a place you remember well? Forgotten is it not, even throughout the time and distance that separates our thoughts, memories of leaves blooming, purple and pink hiding in clear skies puffed with shapes, and laughter of friends close to our life seem as easy as the opening of our palms and the sense before we kiss.

My shore and sea are from this living dream, sometimes the escape forms along these shelled shores. Other times the rivers with the valley surrounded by mountains or a place that seems like home, even though it’s not, replace my interchanging heart of love with the sorrow of regret. Pretty is the emotion of living in despair. But life like this should be refused before it’s too late to stop.

Tomorrow for me is seeing your face

Nothing explains how I feel

Dreams happen, but I prefer them when I’m awake;

To live with you for the moments trapped within my thoughts

Trim my heart before it grows much more

Listening for the words that I expect

To say hello again or goodbye for now

A voice without mistakes

There are no answers to erase

Only crowns of thorns left without a rose

To blossom on their own

Today was beautiful because it did not rain. I sometimes wish I could have one in the same. Sunshine with showers on a day that

lives without words to describe it.

Look away with arms protecting you

Let lips kiss the sides of your neck

Hold on to me now

But don’t be afraid to let go

As we look at a journey

Created with your beauty

With a walk in flowers laced around sidewalks

Next time we meet

Or something that will never come again.

A Year Between

This is what they left me. Escape. Escape is what finds my time. Precious it is. Picking this over that. Choice. What choice? I know it. I can’t help but find it. Every now and then the moment blinks. I’m let out. I see what’s me. I look back. But I’m not there. Not anymore. Just a glimpse. Living inside my eyes. Seen was it all. Death taking its time. People noticed, but why look when they can look at themselves. Dead are the only gardens. Need something I found. Move. I can’t make that decision. I find where I am. Nowhere. But staying over there. Moment: nothing happens. It’s what I like. The mind who doesn’t do its job is what I want to be. Nothing. Nothing that can still be something. Whatever it is, I know it well. The voice inside that speaks through my eyes subsides. Left blank for now. Canvas shed of paint. Pretty. Because there’s nothing beautiful.

I grew up watching this girl take care of old, sick people. Their faces never changed. They sat in chairs with wheels that go nowhere. Controlled by days. A hue of distance is their morning. Windows make them silent as stone inside these little pocket of lights. Sometimes people wake up. Sometimes they die. People here didn’t because they wanted to. The girl killed them. A missed count, so I stopped. I saw her though. Some she would cut. Some she would bleed with acid. Creative she always got. Bored with authority, she got away with a lot. No one cared. Everyone watched. Beds lay empty. Responsibility left alone. Sometimes I remember them. Walking with her, the dead. She didn’t know. How? More killing. More malice in the way she act. Hope she gave each one. A smile. Listen to this conversation. Tell me a little to borrow your youth. End. A word they met. No one finds them. No ever knew them. She noticed me one day. But she didn’t smile.

I can be this. I can be this. I can be this. A year between.

Hands. I haven’t felt them. A cigarette dies between. I like to smoke after doing a line. Every time I put the needle in at sunrise. I’ve never seen red mountains. Today the leaves are orange. Wonder. What color is tomorrow? People are the reason I question why there are others beside me. Lie. I find her face attractive because it looks damaged. Something that survived. Trim a tree of all its branches and the roots still stay. Only then does the tree find its friends. Just wish. It won’t come true. When someone must do something for you, what do you expect? Shame this drug is. Feeling her cum is something I miss. Happiness can’t remain past an instant. Living in the back. Recollected as memory.

Picked. Watch. Crime. No law says it is. Freedom. Empty because life left me. Falling hard from without a sky, clouds hold me together. Puddles. All that came. Storm from a road witnessing fate. All day long wind listens. Changing. Yes. Changing . Because you can be me. Doubt gone. I’m fond of doing what I’m supposed to do. The fool for sadness. The drug of her choice. Walk followed by a run. A night calling it quits. Hold, but only waiting to let go. Bye. That’s what the colors said. I need to stop moving, even though I’m not. I just sit with the life in my arm; killing from the inside. What’s life without a little death called creation?

March I saw day I left. Death in a distance. Bombs came, but didn’t kill. Slowly we burned. Danced were our ashes. Together, we suffered not alone. Time healed then returned to take back what we took. Never were we safe. Our bodies became metal melting on flowers, seeding our fame. We were the remaining. The remaining to wait. The Collective used us. Used no more. This life I want back. This I remember in between slavery I call freedom. No more dragging the damned under gray skies of damnation. No more. Alas. The saints of bringing the dead to the death waiting with patience, it’s only friend.

I know not this now. Before I was an empire. Now, I am nothing. A year between, we shall see, the dead living their dream.

Destruction be blessed. Martyrs they fall. Saints be blessed. Answers are free because they’re not true. I believe it. Day can be for me.

Letting the time escape from me. The making of one and another, child grew to become me. Man then. Drugs now. Her. A face I kiss but lips forget. In this not, she follows before loving herself. Get up. But she doesn’t move. Not … not what I wanted. I didn’t love her. She was something more to me. A word no one else knows. I what happens to her. We, the poor, are fed the dead by The Collective. A diet hoped to cause the same in return. We eat with it known. Spirits our flesh. Trapped within. Not her. I keep her in her favorite bath. Sit by her. Door open. Light staying with the shadows. I look at our reflection. Crying at us.

Doesn’t last long does it? All I can look at is her. She was my beauty. My reason. Anything worth refusing to answer: The question death gives me. Chaos now. Chaos without rules. Rules are, after all, created from the very things they’re created to enforce. No more. Not with her face with me. Her lips half in half under the water. I’m sorry. Now you get to leave. Now I get to be a year between.

I make the windows doors now. A blanket of white around me. Light I’ve never known. Eyes can’t adjust. Burn purple caught with gray, in that doesn’t last, sight falling through. Gone is everything. Near that which grabs future. I see the heart left in waste. Love, what have you become?

I want it to be right. Comfort to find her while she waits for Christ’s coming that ends. Move the earth. Soil stuck to my tears. A grave a gift I kiss but not before I make peace with my lips. Hold me now do my arms. We walk. You in my arms. Light all around us. Lay my friend. My love. My reason lost before I found it. You first. Guide me next. Goodbye. Until I say. Hello again.

I don’t want this sickness anymore. Peace cannot be my blood. Go away, but come closer. Fuck me. You’re not her. No one ever will. Which means more victory to inject, prayers to sniff, and reasons to lose in drinks. I cannot hide anarchy that rejects rules. Past. Past. More past. Grab skin and hide it underneath the rest. I, vanquished. I, the latter. I, distance mourning closeness. Before I am a page I want to burn the fucking book. Read with the power to erase, come as ice in the desert, melted to gone. Realize. There was never any form. My eyes are tired. Fingers don’t even feel connected. Maybe if I was created man instead of woman I’d not feel diseased. Comfort, I would have. In not knowing power. Pain, I would remember. In not killing the dying.

I start to feel. Drugs come in time. But I move this time. Watching the horizon. The sun rises to erase the shadow. The damned are fallen but now the risen. Sadness becomes glass, a mirror believing in me. Then, only then, the distance comes.

The killing starts. The Collective comes. Innocence of truth. We fall where we stand. Victims of difference. Never knowing each other.

Drought. Am I to be fed? Alive I must. Kept for example. Killed is not my sin. Watch do the many. Taken to them I am. I look at nothing. And nothing looks back at me. Crowds gather as I am bound to a tree of birch. Death shall the fire give me. Speech tis thou said beside me:

We are One. One are we. Is it