So much more excited about life than he was.
So much more finesse free *******.
So many more smiles.
So little love.
I still hope for you
          when it gets cold.

so that summer
we fell in love
all of us and none of us were ever the same
and how the music filled us better than any
meal we had ever eaten
and how the smile of a friend was the
only success we'd ever needed
and how the first kiss was the best
but every one after was as soft or hard as
the love we thought we'd lost when the
lies they told us lowered our eyes
and how I thought I knew it would never end
and how I knew it would
and how the music filled us better
than any God

everything is still
somehow I am alive
I go outside and see the stars
they crack
                  and spill their light
   down down down
        the light reaches lovers
          friends widows...
it reaches me
               I am alone
          I am finally alone.

Gravitating toward home
with its star stained skyline
a latch on every door
torn over coffee
the smell of peppermint
a tear here where tears have been
the hope of a stranger
helping to embolden
an empty cup
pouring.

I live in an age where you can find a man online and delete him from your life before he becomes annoying.
I come from an age where you can dump someone via text message whilst taking a ****.
I am of an era with many pros and even more ex-cons.
I know, I've dated them.

I used to bow my head
and fold my hands
and close my eyes
the rules were very important
                 the game was to play by the rules
to watch your mouth
                       wear shorts under your dress

never lie
                never yell
                        
        in dreams
                             that bearded menace
sat on the Golden skyline
                               and wrote down
what I had done wrong
                 the rules I had broken
and screamed my sinners song
into small ears
    that night, I climbed the staircase,
        I would fly,
                         I had planned to fly.
        every cell lifted me to the top of the
       staircase with the eagerness of the adventure
I got to the top
            stood on the rail
    balanced like a swan
                          and as my young knees bent
to leap to the sky
                             above the black lit dark,
  I heard that law mans
                                    booming dissent
Jillian, don't play God
                                         and I didn't.

I am the weird wan wandering thought taker,
whispering in your inner ear
I am the dark daunting dancer
who snatches your lost dream in the morning.

Here it is, in my palm,
Aha!

It's Friday night,
a still blue dark eyed sky
a band plays

It's years removed from the time I wrote about
the bells and how they swing
in the tower to my left
I still hear them
how they cling cling BANG
and I am with you
and I am alone
                          tomorrow is coming
and in two years I'll be here with the bells

cling cling BOOM

and there will be a woman or a man
sipping on coffee
or speaking
                    softly,    and the bells
                                                        
cl­­ing cling BANG

Sometimes,
when the weather
is just right
I swim in the pools of your eyes,
                   those umbrellas
                              of mine
                               that wait on a
                                                  summer shower;
                               That blow
                               their breezes
                                           dropping
                                                   their leaves
                                                          ­          raising them
                                                                ­                    up up up
                                                when spring comes.

They are blue, my eyes.

They are blue
like my father's
like my grandfather's before him
They are blue.

They are blue
like my mood every January
like an unused pool in Fall
They are blue.

They are blue
like a brand new bicycle
like a tear in the shower
They are blue.

They are blue
like a berry
like the last view I had of your body
They are blue.

They are blue, my eyes.

It's Thursday
If it were Wednesday
It would be the same
again, you are not here
So,
     I think to call someone else
and have regrettable ***
and forget you for a night
but I don't
I'm tired of it
I'll be alone
So,
I think I'll sit by myself
drink
    and talk to the gods
they don't exist
but they are nearer than you

I walked into a sandwich shop with a woman who believed in meditation and growling at the dirt in the desert. We saw a well dressed black man and we were 5,280 miles away from him, but he had a nice suit, so I said so.

I perch here
idle hands,
administer the dregs
of my coffee, to
a flagging, dull head
agonizing over
every flimsy word
I might utter
to make my dull life
bright

grasping at a flatlining pulse
a woody smile
     from the wreckage of my past.

Look!
          Look at this earnest celebration of chaos
                                                 that drives away oblivion.

solitude marks the height of my contentment
no agreements to make
I don't have to see faces
nods smiles masked aggression
I don't have to act
I don't have to trade facade for facade
with my peers
do I even have peers?

at night, I feel a stillness
so deep, so harsh, so honest
I don't have to live this lie
explain why I'm fine
why everything is fine
because, it's not
nothing's fine

I am a million clashing universes
filled with endless dying stars
and I reach out
to the other universes
and shrink back
  back
          and at night
I fill the stillness
  the stars collapsing
every synapse bending
toward destruction

no want
               no need
                             no crying out for more

at night there is no other
no one to say my name falsely
and when I sleep
the ocean of my subconscious
carries me to sleeping cures
takes me away for years
to great expanses of colorful
living worlds
where I feel
where my emotions are tangible
solid
and
       they keep me company for
a millennia
         I wake to this doll world
where a friend asks
how are you doing
and she's doing it out of obligation
                                                and there's no color
and I have no emotion
and I feel nothing

Life is the waiting room for the exploration of that dream world

and every night
I taste it
I touch it
I breathe in its vibrance
and the only want
is to never wake
to this grey world
to never have to answer

"fine"

again

I'm going to tell you
how you were so bright
we didn't need the moon.
Throw it out
start over.
With you, me
and a light song
playing low.
Starting over
isn't so hard is it?
I am sitting here
with my coffee
the lamp's light,
playing shadows over my face.
Me,
playing with your cool smile.
We are not far from space
let's go there
put the stars
back in the sky.
The lightning hits
some lake,
and a wind
shakes my heart.
I am alone
with you.

Happy Valentine's Day
Everything hurts
the nightstand's a pallbearer
the dresser's a curse
the apples are browning
the skies have gone black
and monsters are creeping
at your very back!

the wind whispers boo
and the sun doesn't shine
the birds are all dead
and the hamsters all cry

Oh Dear Valentine!

Where will we go?
Where to be being,
When the moon's made of snow?

below
below
below

At night in the dark
where no one sees
a place for two
just you and me
a spider there
and there a bat
a creeper
a crawler
and here a gnat!

Well now you've seen a ghoulish thing!
Here in the mirror, "Is it I?", you think.

And here you stand aghast, agape!
A vampire king?
And I?
His mate?

I walked along further still
out my door
and up a hill
found a rose
though a web was there

And on my brow not a sweat bead
was clear
until I saw myself again

My eyes they were
a perilous red
and hair as raven as a monsters bed

Near a willow tree I heard a tune
a song to fill my heart with gloom
started low
ended high
summer is here
but winter is nigh.

In your best midnight voice you said, "Shall we?"
I nodded, leaving my heart
somewhere in orange county
next to his ***** dishes
and overflowed ash tray.

When I last saw you,
your eyes were golden.
Puzzles I couldn't piece together,
a lake that shot back my own reflection,
not letting me see the deepness of you.

When I last saw you,
your hands were oak trees
hiding roots that dropped to the pit of the earth,
holding your meditations delicately close to you,
careful not to show
your great glimmering ships
carrying blue and low songs,
weeping dirges for a winter Sunday,
a red Grief that wakes you in your sleep,
adding the slight storm I see in your smile.

When I last saw you,
your eyes were golden.

here we are again
walls, white
cotton sheets
teal socks with the tread

we share small talk
i ask about home
things are the same there

i tell you about my bedmate
she thinks she's satan
it's all up from here

when you leave
i sit down to dinner
a jail meal

it drips from the mute's lips
who sits staring
at the table diagonal from me

she is afraid of dogs
i, a dog
bite a dry piece of bread
and cough

in this lowland we halt and look up to the sun
but see only a black sky

and when you ask
are you getting better
the response
yes

is for you

I woke up to screams from a stolen razor.   
Where is it?  
It was a loud scream.          
The end comes swiftly,
anyway,
and,
if there are no razors around,
it comes even faster.                        
 
At the top of the mountain,
the anger flows to the valley,
and there is no scream.                                  
In the valley, we wait.                
There is a pull from a cigarette.                               
Small talk that is not small talk.                                        
A man wheezes   
A woman wonders where she'll go tomorrow                                          
it comes out as a laugh
                  and lightly in the background plays a song that can only be called the disease of the 80's.                                       
 
We didn't need another.                                     

But, thank you.