Blinking back the bright,
arm as a shield against the light.
Lost in open spaces.
These free and empty places.
They shout it from rooftops
and bellow it at full stops,
"Run. Run and hide"
This is open forum, long form suicide.
Every verse a kind of hopeless rant,
from broken homes and men who can't.

Dreams are a curious thing...
Sheltered ears.
Scattered light.
Repressed fears.
Conquered might.
The ever present sting...

And y'know:
Goddamn my eyes,
and sweetest lies.
Goddamn these false starts,
and bitter hearts.
Goddamn this fractured life,
and this endless strife.
Goddamn my hell-bound pride,
and the day I'll have died.

Was it tough to live it all?
To build a cage and watch it fall?
Because, man, look at it...
Passionate anger and the waiting pit.
Look, it's all an excuse to grieve.
That said: How can we ever leave?

There is a darkness in you, Paul.
It races from the electric life
of your thoughts,
from your finger tips
and your deeds.
It pools on your heart,
like mercury.
It is a source of great,
terrifying,
strength,
and deeper sorrow.
Move with it,
but don't let it consume.
Keep this light,
that we've built from small
acts of kindness,
from the love that passes between
our eyes and our mouths.
Carry it,
like a torch,
and let it guide you
from that darkness.
But remember:
Light
doesn't expel dark, love,
it only pushes it away awhile.

The Sky: Swollen and angry,
forces today into tonight.
It's going to open up.
Any minute now,
you can smell it already,
rain.
She cries: "Facebook me!"
Can you believe it?
Data, streaming endless,
from network to network.
P2P, not a single point of failure,
except this.
Except us.
Find me on the street,
friend.
Find me there.
Now: Never been so angry at youth,
or so scared of old age.
So young still,
but how my hair thins.
These bags under my eyes,
they won't go away,
these tired lines...
I suppose they  mean to stay.
Soon: Covered over in cinema fog,
haze to bleed the line away.
And so they go,
covered in clouds,
with the last remaining light
of today.

There is a mirror image
but does it still
look like you?
Do you stand before
the altar of your bathroom
sink and whisper,
"нет,
but not yet"
There isn't time
to pause
to think
to wonder.
Is there a ghost in this machine?
Is there a need
to put a notion
behind the gears
of our universal,
cosmic meme?
And were we to drown,
weighed down by
hanging lines and
albatroses,
the thousand stupid ways
that we try to prove
our opinion matters,
goddamnit! Hear me!
Look my way!
We fade to nothing,
ashes in pots
on mantle places,
dry bones in wet dirt.
We are all good people,
bound for modest graves.
Undone by ambition.
"Да,
that is always the way"
We are small men,
good in our minutes a day.
We are Tolstoy in passing,
In a Gethsemane way.

Kept in small places.
Inhale: Breathing in rain.
Leave this place to the winners
the sinners
the last people standing
when the rest fall.
Remember: That crystallizing moment,
at the eye of a raging storm
when everything made sense
at long last.
Turn away, retreat if there is time.
So little time.
(Receding hairline)
We have so much to do,
so much left to say
and so much to make up for.
So very much.
Atone: Do not repent.
Make up for the things
you have done.
Wrought.
Smells like sidewalks,
after a storm.
The very storm we
run from and we
run to.
Exhale: Visible breath
like winter.
Frozen rainbows,
light trapped by the cold.
And we wait for all of
this to thaw.
Spring...
Summer...
Fall,
and those left standing.
Here in these lives,
these apartments
and homes.
These spaces
and people
where we are kept.
These small places.

Picture a room
without a view.
A world where we do
what we ought to do.
She paused, because
goddamn this was hard to explain.
We don't live there,
in that soulless place,
where no one sees
the hands in front of them.
Where no one cares
because it'll be fine in the end.

He moved his arm,
sore from the arm rest.
Irony?
He thought.
Perhaps it is,
but no.
It is not.
She spoke volumes
about very little,
on shaky ground
where she could not stand.
He listened,
she accused time and again,
but didn't hear.
Her conversation
didn't actually include him.
It was her's to steer.

There was a lightness
in the air.
When she got
around to her point,
the one she couldn't bare,
her weight shifted from
foot to foot,
floor to floor.
Like falling,
screaming out
and then
no more.

He stood before her,
an examined man.
She looked on her works,
as one does when
their works are short
and callow,
with a series of small crimes
and personality quirks.
She had said of him
that he was bright,
but no great sight
to look upon.
He had called her shallow,
trite
and not quiet right.
Both were, as we all are,
very young
and very
wrong.
Both were only a harmony,
not a verse,
in each other's
song.

What they didn't know,
couldn't really,
was there was such
a thing
as too much
said.
Words, as lovely as
they are
and can
be,
Do little more than
buffer the blow
or render it
dead
when the point is blunt.
Say enough,
which can be very little,
and watch as they
do not look,
yet somehow
see.

Locked away
in tiny clenching fists
are the stories.
The ones we always meant to tell.
Without these parts,
you know the pieces,
we cannot seem to build
the plot and your story...
I mean, look how it falls apart.

Could there be a moment
(take your time, think)
when all of this bullshit
falls away and only
you and I and the truth
of you and now
and me and then
remains.
Like coffee grounds.

How many cigarettes
does a day take?
I mean, what really gets you?
What sets you on fire?
My god,
how we need to be
on fire!
We need the light,
y'see,
because it is so fucking hard
to see in the dark
without it.

Color your language,
pepper it with purple prose
and profanity,
to tell the story that
sits like a stone
in your heart or your throat.
Because no one
(Seriously, believe me on this.)
can tell your story for you.
You have to take the pen,
look on your works,
and write it large
against the world.

Your story
(Beautiful as you are. Has to be.)
needs to be seen from the sky.
Open your mouth, love.
Tell.

But aren't they all just words?
Little fingers, smeared with
whatever lunch may have been.
Beady eyes and the judgement
that comes from knowing nothing.
It was hallways.
It was all hallways.

Because there is a kind
of silence
in the moments between
wake and sleep.
A still over
the keep.
There is a kind of noise,
if you tilt your head
just right,
in the moment between
your words.
Like a hiss.

These are sticks,
those there? Stones.
Your words have weight.
Deny it
as much as you want.
That's all it is.
This is rubber, I'm told.
Under here, glue.
Nothing sticks,
nothing wounds.

You give them the power,
if you really think about it.
Sure.
Tell me another lie.
Whatever gets
you through the day, friend.
Lies, justifications
for monsters that look
like a little you.
They make you feel better,
perhaps.
But aren't they all just words?

Eat your fill from
the fat of my land.
Shackle my bone
break my hand.
Leave this place to me,
when you go.
You weren't there,
but I don't know.

In a forest
we two meet.
Stars ad nauseum,
but no sleep.
And here and there
go our feet.
No words
compromise this greet.

Lose yourself
in the music of now.
Pull on the ribbons,
make me bow.
But don't forget me
when you leave.
Broken man,
his heart on his sleeve.

Could you catch
a wild thing?
Could you tug
it's heart string?
Could you keep
a wild queen or king?
On our fingers,
bound by this ring.

Goose bump flesh
will be our warning.
Keep my soul
trapped in this morning.
And find me waiting
as I always do,
hoping the next person
to come along is you.

Reach for me
when I'm not there.
Feel my fingers
in you hair.
Step by step,
side by side we ascend a stair.
All these things, and more,
I cannot bear.

Who couldn't see that coming?
Veiled venom
and a world that is succumbing.
For this you shatter my good time.
How does it matter?
So goddamn asinine.
You tell me how hard it is to get by.
Myriad reasons, I'm sure,
with infinite failures to try.

So, we're a material culture?
What a novel concept you've exposed.
Can you imagine?
How numb we'd be
if you hadn't disclosed?

Sell me a different song.
I know all the spots
you think we went wrong
Sing me a new pitch.
You've got options
but can't tell which is which.


Yes, living is hard.
We all come out a little beaten,
a little charred.
This I know, and a long while, too.
But that is why we do
all our living while we're alive.
Takes too much energy, otherwise.

Restless/awake they live
in separation.


On his night stand there is a ring.
Thick and black and full of a promise.
Next to him, as he moves in his fitful sleep
there is only an empty half of the bed.
In dreams she's there
(all freckled kisses and soft hair.)
next to him.

Miles away she turns the ring on her finger.
Small and gold and half of a whole.
She smiles at the dark night sky,
knowing that somewhen he went to sleep
without her.
She knows he'll toss and turn
(his smoker's mouth like an urn)
and reach for her.

Love/longing they know
in isolation.

One of these nights...

I will race through broken homes
and closed doors.
I will feel the driving rain
against cold momentum.
I will reach out into the darkness
and know that your hand
will meet my hand.

I will feel around in dust bins
and old insecurities.
I will climb over mountains
of stone and of doubt.
I will believe you when you tell me.
I will try to.
I swear I will.

One of these nights...

I will watch the tail lights fade
into memories we make.
I will force away the guilt
I will...

...One of these nights.

Stone me on your Altar of Lies.
I am not scattered light upon the stair!
You're all stuffed mouths and hollow eyes,
Spun from whole cloth but left bare.

The Virgin never stirred, but only watched me leave.
Where's the Watchmaker for his Meek?
Tell me, where's the freedom in your Mustard Seed?
How can this be the Love we're meant to seek?

I am no Lamb!
I won't have your Love!
I couldn't give a damn,
and you, sir, are no Dove!

All seen equal, except those You exclude.
Let's not tout the best of us?!
I can see the cunning, you are shrewd.
But that still just leaves the rest of us.

'Cause what're we but broken people?
Empty lives and Original Sin!
Gird your loins! Guard your Steeple!
This is a club I won't belong in.

Don't you preach to me
with dirty fucking hands
Holy love and His truancy.
You issue His commands.

Kicking out against the sheet,
trying hard to find sleep,
I wake and wonder why
when we fall we don't shy
our eyes against the sky.

The truth, if ever there was one,
is you find the ground when falling's done.
To feel the earth below your feet,
to wander empty city streets,
to keep from flying when complete.

But to reach out toward the sky and soar
imagine wanting that and nothing more.
When we are young we could trade it all to fly.
If asked the moon in return we would comply.
To see it all, our world, from on high.

Whatever happens to this urge?
Why dismiss it? Where is it's funeral dirge?
I think it comes back to us in dreams.
The little cracks in our lives between the seams.
(Maybe it returns in our winter.)
It lives on both ends of age's extremes.
(As our minds begin to splinter.)

I hope old age finds me thinking of flying.
Hoping to soar when I'm dying.
I have to try to find that place,
before I finish my solitary race,
where I can reach above and hope to touch space.

Staked to the ground we find ourselves at
the crossroads.
Though no deal is to be struck,
no bargain arranged
and no promises kept.
This is a place for looking
and, if we are all very lucky,
a place for seeing as well.

Stand here with me, in these chains,
and sing me the song that is
the night.
Breath this starlight and look out
on the expanse of our ever
expanding universe.

Do you see it yet?

Pinned though we are,
wondering though we might,
we have to find the single spark,
we have to see the light.

It is here, in the darkness that we revisit.
That we revise.
That we dig it all up and decide.
Because tomorrow, thankfully not today,
we grow toward the sunlight
more efficiently,
as the people we have to be.

We are staked here, at the crossroads,
but when these pins are drawn,
our chains lifted,
we will soar the skies above the crossroads.
We'll wonder, one has to hope,
as we look down on the trail that
had become our prison,
The path here is crooked,
so many obstructions
too many hazards.
The paths lead nowhere...
How did we ever get around?

Tripped on an errant root
in a tiled hall.
Took a dose of goddamned silence
and slipped from it all.

Remember when true was truth
and love was bold?
Can't reconcile these line with lies
Not still young, not yet old.

Don't know how to search inside and find
the mettle.
(Be a better man?)
Try to grip the flower, but tear out
the petal.
(Turn you to dust, to sand.)

Find her sat against a lower shelf
down on time and health.
Can't figure who to be from self,
hard to know coin from wealth.

How do you not see the things you can do?
How can you see your life,
this thing you've built
by yourself and with your own power,
and not see the triumph within?
Because who cares if you're not
what we all thought we would be?
Fortune and fame are such
trivial things when compared
to having nothing, which
(To let slip a small secret of the universe)
is all we are ever given,
and making from it something.
What you do?
How the fuck does that matter?
Why would it ever matter?
You are what you are,
my friend,
you are what you have become.
But, hold your breath this is a big one,
you have managed, somehow in spite
of all the shit this world has to offer,
all that is forced on you,
you became yourself.
How amazing an accomplishment is that?
You, sir/madam are an amazing,
an astounding,
a fantastic
accomplishment!
How do you not see the things you can do?

I have these pieces,
remnants of you,
scattered through my life.
A jacket, red flannel,
which I am afraid to wear.
How do I measure up to it?
A series of cloth belts.
The rise of a man who
had, in a long ago,
in a far away,
mastered this art already.
Tucked in a box, a note in your
wife's handwriting,
like a treasure map,
laying out the path to take
to find the things
that are all I have you.
Because the photos aren't you.
You did not smile that way
in my memories.
The photos are a fucking lie
that tell the story of man
who grew old an abandoned
me on this shit planet
with these monsters shaped like men.
They are not you.

I look at my things,
my random crap...
What will I leave?
What of this crap, that I treasure,
will be me one day?

I can't find your voice.
Everything is disposable
all of a sudden
and I've come to find out
that we are too.
All of us.
We become the trash
that our children are afraid to
throw away.
The measure of our lives
a series of fuzzy memories,
photographs and knick knacks.
Possessions, sir.
That is what we become?

We are so much more.
Aren't we?
Of course we are.
I remember your hand on the
seat of my bike.
I remember the way that you
could laugh with your nose,
smile at us with your eyes.
Blue. They were so blue...
I think back on the lessons.
You taught me to love, sir.
Did I ever thank you for that?
Of course I didn't.
Of course.

You're a little wooden box
on the night stand next to my bed.
An envelope with my name on it,
the last of your handwriting I have.
You're an episode of the Power Rangers,
I know, I can't believe it either.
You're in the way I love, now.
The way I feel it, the way I show it.
The Experience that you taught me.
You're in the presence of a flannel jacket,
that I haven't earned the right to wear.
You're not in the photos,
you're not in the jacket;
Neither am I.

In my wake are ruins
where wonderful flowers grow.
I will leave behind desolation,
but alive inside will be hope.
I will become Krishna,
if that's what it takes.
I will roll storm and fury,
across oceans, rivers. Across lakes.
Behind all my clouds,
to the observing eye,
you will find sunlight.
You will see the truth in the lie.

But kept in soft cages, where only grass grows,
the sounds of our heartbeats can deafen,
the plague can wind to a close.

And so it goes, where it goes.
Along mountains and inside homes.

We'll rise from the debris.
Singing songs as easy as leaning.
And terrible hope gives way
to wonderful damage and deep meaning.
In classrooms, where the calls are called,
we'll answer in ways too subtle to see.
Children, ostracized by accident of nature,
will finally not have to defend to just be.
I cannot say it'll be better.
I cannot say it'll be worse.
It will only have to be different.
Destruction as a cure for our curse.

Speak answer to riddle, at least as best you can.
Words can be poison, we learn much too young.
When we can't/won't help, can we call ourselves "man"?


And so it goes, where it goes.
A helping of heart with highs and lows.

And where it goes, when we find ourselves through,
is as much mystery to me,
as it's evident to you.

Push this weight from your shoulders,
my friend, I know that you can.
Do not make the mistake of wallowing
in this despair.
You are so much bigger than it.
So much better.
Yes, I hear you, I know that
we are human.
That we doubt.
Doubt so much.
They stopped making boot straps,
you say,
How then are we meant to pull
ourselves up?
Reach, my friend. Reach!
Inside of you there is so
much that you can do.
So much that you are,
if only you can find it in yourself
to know it like I do.
I know you, my oldest friend,
I know you so much better than
anyone else possibly could.
You are amazing.
You are great.
You are the only person that
can hold the light to guide the way.
Only you.
You have to see.
You have the know.
You have to believe me.
I know.
RISE!
Rise and be, old friend.
Rise and lead us through the dark.
In your presence, there is no dark.
There is only the way.
Your way.