I felt large standing next to your tree
and your hands
and knees felt wet
beneath the leaves
and green from the grass
and this sun is diving
back down slowly
under earth and you're still here
in a backyard and the rays bear shining gold
reflections from your eyes
and hair and I wish this could last
longer but it is now and it's still and stopped
and the same. Because time is sometimes weird,
like this, and sometimes
subjective, like this,
and right now
I feel healthy
and I feel whole
and the skinny brown watch
wrapped around your wrist
hasn't ticked its hands,
in my eyes.

There's an eight wheeler,
with ice cold vapor
wisping upward and out toward
St. Mark's street walkers,
crust punks, do they think
of the frozen fish
and chilled shrimps
un-delicately
unloaded
delivered
to the subterranean
Japanese market
I purchase tempura from,
probably not. This scene
is written, it seems,
for me,
my glassy eyes,
a wandering stare
toward a banal
spectacle
displayed and private.

You kind of remind me of her, when you laugh,
and your brown crow's feet
lines smile, and I can't help but wonder
what you're doing here
at a place like this
dark and empty and stained
with beer so I'll order you another drink
from the bartender and pay in cash
and conversate and stare
(and by the way, that's a cute hat)
because you remind me
so much of her.

I'll call on you.
Thinking about you. About kissing you.
Touching you.
And I might be reacting. To the little waves rolling in.
By my ankles. I feel constant.
Unfinished. A little lost.
Is there someone. Now.
In your life. Not like me.
Still hold on.
Until I stop. Thinking about you.

Droplets of rain mark the end
and I can sit and sink within the softness
of the reading couch we bought and count
the drops descending slowly as a bunch,
then separating from wet globs
mimicking July 3rd when you
left cardboard boxes of forgotten sweatshirts
and polaroids on the porch
of my mom's brick paneled apartment.

So what
if I feel less emotional,
the guilt,
anxiety
was getting to be too much anyway.
I'm happier now
but maybe less expressive,
the thoughts I have range
mostly towards the positive.
Light clearing up
depression, desperately
trying to come out
of the covers
and see you still there.

I had not forgotten them,
those graceful
past-life girlfriends,
adamant brothers
and all others
who drift everyplace
and throughout
squalid brown apartment
complexes and the green-neon
hotel bar illuminations
'cross the street.
When I come back
tomorrow these bold avenues
should diverge away,
be different, memorial
ghosts, however, will remain
waving, walking hand in hand
still into my futures.

What's success but a bubble of lies.
Be a failure
and burst these toxic
green mists
and let the ooze run down your forehead
and into your spine
and feel failure
and feel lost.
Then you'll know of my progress.

Gassing the esoteric
with toxins
and drugs
while attempting to keep grounded
but this thing in my soul
keeps puncturing nerves
and my brain may not be the same
since I saw you last
and these words seem empty
on an online forum
but I'm trying.

Feeling a little empty and lost
because I decided it was time
to break, rip free and pretend
I was stronger than I know
I am. So I stopped talking,
and we don't have ***
and I hope she misses me,
and more than my body,
because I long for her
and regret those mistakes
I hope she know's I have not forgotten
my fouls, or her's.

And I'm looking
through the other-side
now of a cafe window
at a collection of asian tourists
joyfully wandering
up and down 18th street.
Do they know
I don't belong here,
ordering a 12 dollar cocktail
pretending to type behind
a laptop glow. Do they know
I don't belong here
and I am not scenery
and not a local,
in this country
I feel someplace else.

I can see the pale white wall
With nothing painted or pinned
And I reel through memory
And come to you
And back to this bed
And the comforters are warm
And I feel at peace
But moreso
If you were beside me
Holding my heart in one hand
The other arm around my chest
Pinning me down
To what matters
To lovely summer days
And fresh air
And the bamboo forest
That sprung out
From around your home
And the days we'd spend
Brown from the sun
And muscles sore
From doing nothing
Floating on my father's
14 footer,
Sailboat and knowing
That the summer would be out last
And that the pale wall now
Is as empty as my bed.

Love you
more than
I know
you can, so
I step outside
my fears
and these lives
past doubts.
And this town
never felt so cold
underneath these boots
even during Fall
leaves crushing
and New York
air brushing a could be
perfect would be
evening.

If it wasn’t for darkness,
I don’t know if I could see.
Eternal night and black air
and sharp streaks of blue lightning
brought me closer to noticing
a convenient life ignored way back.

These shockwaves
and the pleasures of you
are not going unnoticed.

And I promise
these fleeting things,
these peaceful chemicals,
dripping between crevices
and cracks in my brain
aren’t going away.

This time might be short
the end of us might be rearing in
and I want you to know
I won’t ever want
to forget us.

An emptiness deep
in the cracks of my heart
where I could feel  you
still with me beating hard
and I took you to my uncle's
grandparent's and mother's
but it doesn't feel the same
not falling in love with you
and is it wrong  I feel
so guilty forgetting
about you every so often
even when you refuse to call,
acknowledge I'm still here,
but far, and I miss you
more so but it's fading
and I how do I move on
when this won't
really turn to dust
float away.

What do I do
with this bliss
I feel like an echo
reflective voices
wise earthed
memories
and an experience
untouched telling me
it's all ok.

Windows are down and gusts
blow back my hair.
An ancient breeze and Josh's cigarette is lit
and swells deep into my lungs.

So this is what it is like to come back home,
to a place we grew up
and spent days,
and hasty afternoons under trickling sunlight.
The old bench still stares
longingly at the Bay,
the seat where I first kissed Sarah
and felt the warmth of her skin
in November,
it was thanksgiving break.  

I dart my eyes from the ghost,
and back at the road.
And keep my ears sharp and alert,
hunting for another past
and a different memory.

Alone with other people.
proximity killing heros.
I needed help but couldn't call you.
these people don't seem exciting.
how do I find someone more
like you.
writing poems didn't do much.
"socialize, get out more"
you say your mother doesn't like this
I say broken dreams reflect guilt
and loneliness needs an empty room.
Stop
when I make a point.
These things take time
but I wish wish they didn't

We were thinkin'
how fast the years fly
"two gone by quick"
but what's to come
and go
with speed
hopefully not
the next few
with you.

Your "no reply"
in small text
pierces the summer night's
darkness through,
and that dim light
under my nose
might be what
emptiness truly looks like
in its most physical form.

No more
love for this world
make me forget
myself. I know
my heart is good.
Understand how
I feel like
I can barely speak

These words have no meaning just opened ended feeling.

I went to a club today
and didn't feel like dancing.
I went to a bar and didn't feel like a drink.
I went to a girls fourth floor apartment
across from a 7-11, her underwear salmon pink,
and I was nervous.

A head so clouded
by heavy darkened thought
and fake instilled meanings
and cannabis.

Hopefully there's more than this

Standing up straight
but like falling through door
after door after open
cellar door,
bodega cashier
men who know me only
as the sad and lonely two
AM bacon egg cheese
two bud light  
guy who seems off
but leaves a tip,
this trip through new york
can't be more than delirium
wrapped in tin foil
and forgotten dreamscapes.
Where are the mountain vistas.

You'd be the one
to wait for
and I cant tell
if home is still a place
I want to be,
it feels so alone
without you
and maybe this a phase
or maybe I'm right
in thinking this is it
and you are it
and that you might
one day be here
with me.

Like delicate floating
wafts of incense puffs,
this place is ephemeral,
temporary, a minute
waiting for the 6 train
downtown warmed
under wool sweater,
wintered hat, patched
jacket and stranger bodies
pressed, confine, familiar
a city this may seem
is imparted rare
impressed reflections
once and only
through the me
of now, the 6:30 am
no coffee, cold
as bone new york city
person I am
this only morning.

A favor I didn't ask for.
But you did it anyway.
You made me feel
like a different person
and when our connection
pulls apart
and love fades away
who will we be then.

Loved you now
for a long long
long time.
If those brown
curls brought me nothing
but lavender shampoo
clean smell of sweat too
I'd be brought to two
knees wondering only
if these years mean't
something
to me other than seeing
you through myself
a glass mirror reflection
a past projected
and illuminating
a life correction
and pedaling,
moving quickly
forward.

Barstool, three legged,
wobbling, desperate, clinging
to gummy hardwood floors
and you're a good friend,
and here, eyes down unlocked
lips whispering reminding me
for a day "don't withdraw."
Thanks again for the drinks,
gloom only shows face
under sunlight, without you
offering me
confidence. "This will get better."

And
I feel a bit empty a
nd lost not like in the way I was
with you, but different...
maybe I need a change. Mountains
seem large enough to draw back
deep into. Be one with
earth dust and the non-ceasing land
before this. Take enough drugs
and be there. Or find someone
like you. I don't know
if I'm depressed or just alone.
Maybe both. Either way I can sense this is
just beginning.

I'd give the world
to know if she means to let me go
and it means as much to me
as a mountain
or a screeching blue jay
asking me to go
to ignore it
like a king,
a monarch rules over everything
but I'm not the same
and she's making me do as I should
among the wicked.