One Day
We're going to stand
Under that one bright red arch
In the desert.
When the sun sets, we
Will roar away into the night.
You will take pictures of stars.
One day
We're going to drive
To the coast
And fight over food and the radio.
We're going to take our clothes off,
Run through the surf,
Because they told us not to.
One day
We're going to save up and fly
To an old green island
Where you'll show me art and alcohol.
Maybe I'm "settled,"
Maybe you aren't sad anymore.
Come on, let's be tourists.
One day
We're going to stand
Together at the altar as
You marry the loveliest girl.
I, your best man who isn't one,
Will hand you the ring
And remind myself that it's not the end.
One day
We're going to rise
Above that American Dream
Because we're the better ones.
May 2, 2012
May 2, 2012 at 5:50 PM UTC
I shan’t be yours to keep for all the days,
Yet we will not allow this fact to hold
Us back from nights of dang’rous run-aways
To rivers making feeble young feel bold.
None knows these moments though they are our best,
For journals are for those with shameless lives;
I tire of passing-halfway wicked tests
That won’t allow mistakes like love to thrive.
Now I begin to question all I’ve heard
About your kind and how we’re not the same,
To disregard the tales of hearts like birds
Caged under books of ancient writ and shame.
So time still has to tell who remains free
And who is here in youth’s captivity.
Oct 11, 2011
Oct 11, 2011 at 9:47 PM UTC
Wednesday’s child is full of woe;
Poised on the week’s ****
Am I stop or go?
Sky and seas and ice
And wind and heartache;
Blue soothes, tingles, and bites.
For a time associated with dying and death,
Fall is a brilliant swan song
Of deep blue sky and blazing red.
The National’s “England” keeps me sane:
“You must be somewhere in London;
You must be loving your life in the rain.”
No useful information or parables
Holds the coffee table, but instead
Decoration and stories that make life more bearable.
May 11, 2011
May 11, 2011 at 4:50 PM UTC
My laptop, iPod
Lie flat against the bottom
So conveniently
Like any other
Modern obsession we can’t
Treat with disregard.
Photographs will not
Surround the case, because I
Don’t have that many,
But even a past,
Abandoned lifetime deserves
A few muttered prayers.
The books occupy
The most space, as they always
Have, wordy giants:
Trilogy of elves,
Halflings and wizards warring
For the fate of men;
Two men discover
English magic on stormy
Moors, under gas lamps;
And a genius’s
Soul mate writes their adventures,
Hands steepled in thought;
And not forgetting
The others that have carried
Me down the road.
May 11, 2011
May 11, 2011 at 8:25 AM UTC
This is my decoration.
No seriously.
A picture in paper,
Ink, graphite, rubber--
This is me
An introvert
With compelling words
Becomes an open book
The ruler-rigid lines
Do not hinder or confine
But support
That mere scratches upon a page
Can create a new galaxy of understanding
Is a neverending wonder
Over the vast horizon
of a blank page,
One can watch a universe unfold
With a blank page,
One receives the ultimate gift
Of a liberated mind
These are my words
This is my passion
This is me
Taking flight
May 10, 2011
May 10, 2011 at 6:30 PM UTC
I am from cool sheets,
blue stripes and white paint.
I am from mosquitoes
and long weeds
slapping my feet
under the swing set.
I am from gray shelves
that smell metallic
and dusty
and old.
I’m from popcorn and apples,
From tape players
And slide guitars.
I’m from John 3:16,
Not to mention Romans 3:23.
I’m from spending-the-night,
Brownie batter,
And pages and pages and pages
Of the books I dream in.
I’m from violent seasons,
From chilly love
And murderous spring.
I’m from a tentative breakfast
At a wooden table
With all the wrong guests.
I’m from a soulless piano
Marching past
The grounding bass,
The healing cello,
The intelligent viola,
And the celestial violin.
May 10, 2011
May 10, 2011 at 8:38 AM UTC
If you raise a knuckle to your eye
And draw away one salty circle,
Perfectly symmetrical,
Then why have a tear at all?
If crying inconveniences you
No more than a sniffly nose,
No make-up smears,
Then your tears did not water the world.
If you can sob an ocean into your pillow
But pull away when thinking of the mess you made
Instead of just crying harder,
Then I hope for you to be forever cursed
By that one person who holds a mirror
In front of your unrecognizable face.
Apr 29, 2011
Apr 29, 2011 at 4:58 AM UTC
The bareness of Winter,
Skeletal branches,
Black and silver,
Chimes like a music box,
Like a melody stripped
Of frivolities, so the weightless
Chill in the air is life
At her most pure.
Summer's tension mounts,
Cacophonous nature
Or threatening silence,
And shanghais children,
The truly perceptive ones,
Into a game of tag,
Running like dervishes till lungs
Feel like burning.
Apr 29, 2011
Apr 29, 2011 at 4:56 AM UTC
When one walks in the night
As I do,
There is nothing for it
But to switch on your torch
And pray that the batteries don’t quit on you.
If anyone tells you they know this town,
Well, that is a cocksure lie.
If anyone tells you that the alleyways call to him
Then he is simply running from the bridge
Stretched over the river;
It’s that long drop into black that’s inviting him.
I had a friend once,
Claimed nothing was alive
Till that one clanging clock,
But he saw the dawn too early
And stepped out like it was daytime already but—
Let’s not talk about him.
No, I’m not saying
No one has business on the night streets.
That’s my own call out there,
Business.
I like thinking I protect the town,
Like any other man on the force,
But I know what the real danger is.
No man should step outside his house at night
Dressed up and looking out like the sun’s high in the sky.
Fun, yeah, sure,
But the potholes will rob you
And the little rats will trip you up as well,
So it’s really for the best that when I see you
Rambling the dark
And not skulking like any proper man would
I shake my truncheon at you
And point your drunk **** back home.
Apr 26, 2011
Apr 26, 2011 at 6:58 AM UTC
Smog at this hour?
The rising sun alone
Can turn the heavy mass
Into something visceral,
The veil that lies
Between two Irish-American hearts.
Train tracks and wooden shacks.
Houses.
The smoke is there,
Too,
Rolling off the ends of our fathers’ cigars.
I swam through it last night at the jazz bar
As it rose higher and higher,
Turning the lights as blue
As the singer’s voice.
My brother’s piano sounded the real melody,
Driving,
Like trains waking up in the morning
And chugging through back courts,
Under windows,
And out into the country.
Mar 24, 2011
Mar 24, 2011 at 4:55 AM UTC