A puzzle on the table
By the fireplace.
The day is spent warm
Filling empty space.
Pieces go here, pieces
Go there; it is no race.

A boy takes his seat
In a plaid arm chair.
Winter whispers in his ear
Place the puzzle piece there, yes there.
He fills the picture with his time
Searching for pieces with a sharp, sharp stare.

A knock on the door, “Hello!”
A girl he greets in grinning gusto
She joins him at the puzzle. Two pieces
Put together, the flame brightly aglow
The puzzle finished, a kiss goodbye
His past out the chimney like smoke goes

Smoke that billows and twist and moves
He disappeared in a magician’s trick
Tie pin lost on may 15th. New pieces are
Found to fill holes not there before. He’s Sick.
Time moves on like a train, with much more
pain. A candle burns down, down its wick.

A late landing in Georgia
A late pickup in Mesa
He learned that to everyone
He was
He, the leftover puzzle piece
that didn’t quite fit.

I try to depress and
repress
my depressing
tendencies
They are tendrils in seas
and stormy in skies
lies about guys, and
grandmas who die.

Sometimes when we
Kiss
People we aren't supposed
To
Feel fireworks but the
Fall
Of a siren alerting nuclear disaster
In
The  near future. It's not
Love
It's catastrophe.

List fully, lie. lying in misery
Most mysteries missed by me
Must muster mist deceitfully

Mister, mister, can you die?
Dyed blue from rhythm and tunes
Tuning to thoughts
Becoming robots
We fight to make men free.

Machine made men
Stamped from a die
Born Barren of Blemish
Passed over to sacrifice
They alter Altar altercations

Killing to show their true devotion
What world is this? And what man am I?
Might it mightily reveal itself
To a boat in the harbor
Harboring fictitiousness
Figuratively fighting for
Fewer than them.

Charred Chicken and broth
steamed in a ***
                           Pies are for dessert.
Sweet no savor to save her
                        Lustful froth.


Papered Pastries and jam
cooked together in al/
                                 Dente is for pasta.
Crunch no chew a choice of his
                        friendly madams


Sweetened Sodas and pork
grilled on char
                       coal is for trains.
Thinned out thoughts lost
       in transit to New York

The crisped air shuddered soundly through my cracked window
Carefully weaving wistful wanderings into my mind
lacking of self pity and doubt
Im taken back to a time about
a year or so ago
when money didn’t matter
and I still had a home

Now I’m sitting in a tahoe
shootin arrows at apollo
wondering if Ill ever find
where all my wasted wishes go
cuz the timer reads 11:12
just a minute past those dreams are shelved
and I’m lost in october
finding out my mental states desolved
resolving resolutions made at 11:59
287 days ago
not quite sure if can make it 68 more
and still be fine.

My thoughts are the slots
Put a coin in to play
Two pennies for some sense
Since the banks recompense
the poor sitting on a lower shelf
The rich are empty, lost themselves
Attached to puppet strings
Pulled up by faceless masters
faster full of things
Stop. Cut your strings.
Sell the loans and mortgage debts
Escape the ensnaring nets
Look. Now you’re free.

Fear is free just look at me
Im stuck inside with my soul to hide
a sinful slip up ups my chance
My tongue is doing the liars dance
Two toes on point, or into finger guns?
That’s the one that I still fear
the freedom to do, drive the car, yes steer.
Drive away or drive by
to these feeling on the sidelines
second string emotions turn
with stinging motions. Burn
my offing notions with a note
not a hundred grand but a modicum
I lay in my bed try to sleep, feeling none.


The slots spun a short win
when I put my two cents in.
Now the lump sum is sitting dumb
My thoughts are dimmer
I’m the loss when I’m the winner.

There was never a story so happy or so
Sad
as the one written the day She
Left.
Our coffee kisses tasted like hot chocolate;
Bitterly
sweet because She always added a double shot of
Espresso
and never told me. Her hair was a frazzled
Mess
because we had stayed up too late and slept for far too
Long.
She smelled like my favorite book and her
spine
was just as familiar. The day
Previous
She hugged me until I shook. I think I
Cried
too. That morning her October eyes looked
deadened
by winter. Our season had passed, and now She's
happy.
I wish her well. I always have, but the espresso
stained
my teeth. Her words stained my mind, and She stained my
Soul.

You remind me of lemon water on a Wednesday morning.
Bright and vibrant when the surrounding world is a drone of grey mundanity.
You will be a heart surgeon.
Because fixing people's hearts it's the closest
you can come to mending their fragmented souls.
You see a piece of yourself in the broken and the hurting,
their bitterness masks sour decisions wrought by bad timing.
You remind me of lemon water on a Wednesday morning.
The succor for a halfway dance.

Soft s
Hard z
Warring names
Like warring nations
Soldiers in and out of filled
Train stations.

Letters March
Up and down
Filling pages of
Notebooks bought brown
Math was a bite and a bore
English is her light and her lore

She never wrote love stories out loud
Because a twice uttered spell could cause her to drown
Deep in a sea of serpentine slopes
That the people called  loves, dreams and hopes

But she did color with her mind
A clouded sky
Steeped full of orange and pink painted chai
The cup was bitter but sweet
A chance for two lovers to meet
Select all; delete
Now he is gone before she could sleep

Slumber is simple
Unless you are on watch
Watching your watch for another
To stand notching his clock
Never Relieved of duty
her names never ceased fire
The letters are looting
Abased of greed they get their fill
Filled full of slumber and pills

Dear Estranger,

the only boy who has called you father
is your buried best friends son;
Sorry but Secretly, sir I don’t think I would have wanted
you as my dad.
I was never the athletic athen or the sporty spartan
I was the kid who could create.
Create a world with words and word those worlds
into a willed waistband that held my reality up on the hips
of hypocrisy.
Although, I never could see
what you expected from me
because I tried to wrestle,
wrestle the writhing rapids
of emotion I now choose to hide.

Dear Estranger,

You choose to stay out late
Keeping the company of neatly lined papers
and that was a stab to our hearts, a ****** with a rapier.
I garishly grinned
grabbing at a grasp.
grasping your grip
a grip with a twist
or rather your twisted grip on reality.
I never could see
what you expected from me
because the lawn grew overnight
overtly obfuscating all the golf green
grass grinding I had completed
just to please you.

Dear Estranger

Your television shows are
brimming with bottles
sans ships, but full of ****
just like you I guess.
“We are what we eat”
but
“You are what you See”
and I hope that that mirrored mirage minimizes
revealing the rottenness
wrought on our innocence
I never could see
what you expected from me
because I tried to make a movie
filled full of wounded warriors, you collected my camera
and gave me **** sans soldier.

Dear Estranger,

When I was 7 years old you
chucked a block of cheese at my mother
when we should have been at chucky cheeses
enjoying the recess
of the life afforded to youth.
Where are the kids? 'Who cares” he carelessly
croaks
I never could see
what you expected from me
because i grew grumpy and grim
from despairing disapproval and
maybe just maybe thats why my sisters cite
superficial substantiation
on their lack of physical attraction

Dear Estranger,

the life of a rockstar
is the life of a shiny silver stone
set in a slimming silver ring.
Pretty to look at. Not much else.
Beauty is what you seek
but the shriek of your ugly soul
seeps through into our toxic home
Lullabied loathing lasts longer than you think
and is heard louder than they speak
I never could see
what you expected from me
because I spent time with celebrity
and celebrated there celibacy
of a live lived fully
and quite frankly
that life just doesn’t seem very fulfilling

Dear Estranger,

I can now understand
who’d stick around
when there is people to please
saying pleased to meet you
words filled with friendship
a necessary work trip
well let me tell you our ship has sailed
I am lost at sea and no one is out
looking for me and I wish I could just drown
but I still can’t see
what you expected from me
because the other boys built boats in boy scouts
with their dads,
While I stayed home building lego dreams
stuck in the fad of boys with a too busy dad

Dear Estranger,

Pictures this, framed photos floating
on the sides of white walls.
Full of a fake family that
feared their father
Strangers are dangers
and nothing is stranger
than an estranger
in this the mormon Mecca called mesa.
Yes I called you a danger
so would the slits on your daughters wrists
and the poems pouring out of your poor
sons lips.
I never could see
what you expected from me
because you never told me.
Christmas came and you left
my eyes were left bereft of tears and
my journal was stained red from the dead
I felt when my shoes wore out and your
feet dated dockers new from the box store
Mom sold her ring to a rock store
to pay the studios electric in may
may I suggest you man up
or get the hell out.

Sincerely, a ******* who found his father ******* around