Echoing memories.
Singing along.
A sweet siren's song,
Beckoning in reverse.

A simple task,
Ignore the past.
Stay true to your course.

Coarse or fine,
Threaded divine;
Fascinating fasteners.

Dogs will bark,
The sun will rise
And, memories
still whisper.

Ain't need to say it,
I'll let my actions
Speak for themselves.

That's all that really matters anyway.

Tommy said
"everything changes"
when I tried to bring up
the good days spent drinking
up in Sheppton at Vince's bar.

Back when it was still Vince's
and I was still mourning a life
that I didn't even enjoy living.

It didn't matter though,
I would've mourned anything.
Any reason to drink
was reason enough for me.

I looked over at Tommy
and we shared a moment
of remembrance
for those ****** up nights.

"Everything changes, huh?"
I said, raising my eyebrows.
"It has to,"
he replied
"otherwise we'd all still be the same."

He finished his beer and stood up,
turning up his collar and pulling his paper boy hat down
he left without saying goodbye.
I turned back to face the TV, wondering.

Wondering what was going to change next.

Personally,
I'd rather my shirts
All have a hole
At the nape of the neck
Over having to
Deal with the feeling
Of a tag.

It's fun to fight
Fight with myself
Fight my compulsions and wants

I want to abolish my responsibility
But I'm going to work today
I want to hydrate with brandy or whiskey
But I'm having water instead
I want to get all my nutrition from eating *****
But I'll cook a little meal for myself
I want to get addicted to ******
But I'll just read this book on it

I want to rip a hole in the sky
I want to shoot cans off my desk
I want to light fires
I want to scream at people
I want to shatter my mirrors
I want to rip the curtains down
I want to kick my TV, right off the stand
I want to throw my money down the garbage disposal
I want to laugh at the smouldering ruins
That used to be my life

But I'll just make myself some tea tonight
I'll just smile and look at my thoughts
And examine them from my nice warm car

I'll just laugh and remember to love my life
I'll think of my brother, I'll think of that knife
That I gave him for his birthday last year
And about how grateful he was
As he added it to his fishing gear

I'll think of my friends and I'll think
Of my Mom
And I'll know that everyone
Is struggling along

I'll find solace in knowing that fact
Because I'm not alone
And I'm certain of that.

Turn all the lights off,
I want to read your skin
like braille.

I'm wearing a gun
And a **** ring,
I don't know which one
Feels better.

The sharpened edge of light
Cuts through lofty clouds,
Like a bite taken out of cotton candy,
And shines with a boding, ochre imminence
Of the day that's to come.

Breath comes out
In puffs of coiling steam,
Is this reality
Or is this just a dream?

Reach for a hand
Passing by in a stream,
Do they need help
Or are they at peace?

The blunted darkness of night
Bludgeons the solemn crowds,
Like a buffeting storm of sand,
And it washes away all innocence
To expose what's been done.

I'm in a state
Of constant disbelief,
As I look at your face
Peering out from under the sheets.

I'm comfy,
Let's stay
Right here
All **** day.

The door to honesty is ajar.

A breeze of truth is wafting through.

Isn't it always a sonuvabitch,
When someone takes the wind out of your sails?

My uncle hung himself in twenty-sixteen.
At that time I had been thinking about suicide
For maybe three or four years,
And when I had heard that he went and actually did it
I remember feeling so irritated.
I remember thinking that he stole my thunder,
He went and crowned himself the selfish King
And I was left being the Prince of ******* nothing.

Suicide had been my fall back for awhile,
It offered me a certainty that I couldn't find
In my day to day life.
It offered me a sense of control.
When I couldn't sleep at night
I could just remind myself that
No matter how bad things seemed,
Or how massively I ****** up my life,
That I always had a way out.
I always had that escape hatch.
It was calming imagining the cold circle of a barrel
Pressed into the roof of my mouth,
It soothed my existential dread and
It gave me a swaggering confidence
That I wore like a cloak of indifference.
Nothing mattered,
I didn't give a **** about anything.

When Mike hung himself I spent the following weeks
Living with my Aunt, and my two cousins.
A new widow, and her children.
I lived there and helped her make funeral plans,
I helped in any way that I could,
And I watched the aftermath unfold
Like an emotional tidal wave.

I used to think about commiting suicide
To help me fall asleep.
Now I just think about my family,
How much I love them and
How much they love me.
I sleep like a baby.

There's no real reason
That I never called my step father
'Dad.'
I came up with some throwaway line
When Mom asked me to call him that.
I was young, but I remember saying
Something along the lines of
"I respect my Dan more than I respect my Dad."
She must've thought that was adequate reasoning
Because she never brought it up again,
And I've called him Dan ever since.
I think now I may have missed out
On an opportunity, but there's no way to really know.
At the time I thought that
If he had been the one to come up to me
And ask me to call him Dad,
Then maybe my answer would've been different.

I can't decide whether
I never consider my biological father,
Or if I constantly think about him subconsciously.
I wish there had been a day when
He wasn't a kind and loving person to me.
I wish he would've been more obviously
Cruel,
Or sick.
People told me he was schizophrenic,
But that was never what I saw.
I only ever saw my Dad, y'know?
If he had been more obviously sick,
Or maybe if my memory wasn't clouded
By the idealistic, fuzzy veil of childhood,
Then maybe it would've been easier
To accept it when he told me he was leaving.
But when someone who only has ever loved you
Shows up one day just to
Say goodbye,
Well... I don't know.
I guess it makes it harder
To let go of hope.

I see a lot of him leaving,
In myself.
The idea of running away
Is appealing.
The prospect of chalking up my
Lack of responsibility
To something like a mental disorder,
Or wanting to be crazy,
Has always been so alluring.
I guess at the end of the day
Everyone wants to be like their Dad.

I'm not necessarily impressive.
I drive a truck for a living
And although it pays my bills,
I don't have much room here to move up.
But I made my own bed,
I half-assed my way through life
And this is just a result of those decisions.
Nothing more,
Nothing less.
I used to be okay with being unimpressive,
I used to think that it was something that I wanted.
Finding beauty in apathy,
Writing off effort as a waste of time.

I was naive.

Youthfulness blinded me to
What it actually means to be successful.
I strived for the bare minimum,
Idealizing wanting to be alone.
Taking refuse in lonesomeness.
I thought it was cool to not give a ****,
About anything, about myself.
When I admired that idea of being alone,
Of being a ****,
I had no qualms about not making money
Or having any meaningful skill sets.
No qualms about abandoning college,
Turning my nose up at every opportunity
That happened to come my way.

Now I see that it was never about buying a house,
It was about having a home.
Now I see it wasn't about bettering myself,
It was about being able to help the people I love.
To help the people who love me.

If there's anything I could take away
From making some terrible decisions,
It's that sometimes they come disguised
As the seemingly smartest moves
That I ever could take.

Generally
I've lived a very stress free life.
I've never wanted for much,
I've always had the privilege of working
And the privilege of having a loving family.
If ever I've had anxiety,
It's always been for a good reason.
It's always been because
Of conscious bad decisions,
Or not doing something that I know I should be.
But the one thing that has consistently
Given me a sense of irrational fear
And anxiety,
Is the prospect of fatherhood.

I've been in multiple
Long term relationships
Where I've ended up avoiding *** altogether,
Just because I would get so worked up
At the prospect of having a baby.
I would weigh the pleasure of intimacy
Against that irrational sense of dread.
The scales would shift too,
In the beginning it's fairly balanced
And I would find joy in making love, but..
Over time they teeter towards
Wanting to avoid that irrational fear,
And that always costs me the relationship
Because I end up associating ***
With bad feelings.
I end up doing stupid little things.
Doing paranoid little things like
Tracking my girlfriend's periods,
Or fantasizing running away.
Romanticizing suicide.
It's so dramatic and big in my mind.

A lot of my concerns could be alleviated
By using basic family planning measures,
Like condoms or spermicidal ****,
Or insisting that my significant other
Start taking the pill.

But condoms ****,
And I don't feel right imposing
A prescription upon someone.

At the end of the day
I don't think that those family planning measures
Would address the true nature of the problem.
They're just a bandaid for my conscience.
Maybe I need to talk to someone,
Someone professional.
It's hard to admit weakness,
Hard to not be prideful.
But after all is said and done
I gotta figure something out.
I used to relish in the image
Of being a guy that wants to be alone.
But I don't think life is worth living
Without someone to share it with.

Years of flipping through them,
Torn pages filled with photos
And things.

Must've thrown them away
At some point,
Maybe recently.

The book was in the cupboard,
The photos were in the book,
She was in the photos in the cupboard in the book.

It was there for years,
And years and years,
Every time I looked.

Now they're gone, and I'm not sure where
They may have ended up, but...
I don't really care.

Because sometimes it takes
A little letting go
To let the past fade out,
And to focus on tomorrow.

My bird returned home,
Only not in photo form.
Those photos may be gone
But now there's time for more.

It's as if those sleepless nights
Were dragons in my mind,
Soaring through my clear eyes,
Torching the darkened skies.

It's as if I've been chasing them down ever since, desperate for another gust of wind
To buffet my smiling face with
That same feeling it had back then.

I suppose the high is never as good
As it is the very first time it hits you,
And the naive overdose of emotion
Was just a piece of something bigger.

You'll look up one day
And be almost seventy,
I'll be eighty-eight.

Never wanted to cook before.
Never wanted to cook.

Ain't nothing quite like
Looking into a pristine blanket of snow
To really highlight
All the **** floating around in my eyes.

Guess you don't need
Drugs and alcohol
To hate yourself,

But boy they sure do
Make it a lot easier.

How does it feel to fly?

Tomorrow's tomorrow,
Another day.

Willows are weeping,
Fronds all asway.

Roots un-uprooted,
Burrowed and buried.

Tomorrow's tomorrow
Can never stay.

Forgetting forgotten
Pathological ways.

Tomorrow's tomorrow,
Is Another day.

She stretches.
On a lazy morning.
Under my covers,
In my bed.

Weight.
The emotional scales
Become a teeter totter,
And I can't find a balance.
I could never find my balance.

I'm over-dramatic.
I know it's all in my head,
But...

Thrown away,
Dug up.
I'm divided.

And, ****!
Ain't the good, just..
..so, ******* good.

Ain't it just..
..some kinda warmth..?
..some kinda... God?
Her, here again?

Ain't it just clutching me?
The dripping wet maw of lust,
The dire, clenching grip of lost love,
The light, whispered touch of fair skin?

Ain't it just ripping me to shreds?
The dichotomy of who I am,
Verses who it is that I want to be?

All I know is, she got legs for miles.
And man...
Don't you just know that
I'm gonna savor
Draping those legs upon myself.

I'm gonna wear her like a knit scarf.

I'm gonna savor her flavor.
I'm gonna savor her smell.

I'm gonna look at her
The way a ******
Looks at a loaded needle.

I'm all tied off,
I can feel my heartbeat in my ears.

A concrete island
Adrift upon the asphalt sea.

Come and sit with me
In drunken reverie.

Harmonic resonance,
I can feel it in my veins.

Vibrate with me.

Let's leave
Lovely little stains
All over the place.

Let's ruin
Some clothing,
With remnants
Of love.

Let's lie
On the verge
Of muddy sleep,
Let's dance
On the razor's edge
Of consciousness.

Let's,
Let's...

Just let's.

Let's do it
Again,
And again,
And again.

Every time
The trees sigh,
I feel
A slight wind blow.

The sky sings
With whistling birds,
Swooping
In the falling snow.

A taste of lime,
A sprig of mint
Floats
Atop a cold mojito.

Twinkling rings,
Headlights glint
Briefly,
In an ebb and flow.

Luminous lies
Shine light on
My mind,
My eyes are windows.

Simple things
Convolute, in the
Face of
My writhing ego.

The day flies
On the wings of
A black bird,
A single cawing crow.

Wallowing, no,
Relishing in
This feeling,
Like watching a plant grow.

Dawn brought a bruised sky with it,
A spattering of trundling snow clouds
Scattering the radiant light of the rising sun
Into nothing more than a blue and purple smudge
Peeking through the gap in my bathroom curtains.

It was just enough light to see a silhouette
Of myself in the mirror hung above the sink.
It's fun to imagine the reflection isn't a reflection,
But a window into another universe, another
Perspective on how I actually exist and persist.

I want to reach into the silvered glass,
Like it were a puddle of polished chrome,
And give the silhouette a squeeze on the shoulder.

I want to let him know that
He's doing a good job,
And that I'm proud of him
For everything he's done.
Even the little things
Like getting laundry washed
And waking up on time.

"You're doing alright man,"

Were the first words I spoke that day,
Smiling to myself.

A little more light was pouring in now,
Liquid day filling the room a bit,
And for a second I saw the silhouette
In the mirror a bit more clearly.

I could've sworn he mouthed the word:
"Thanks."

It's like a dream.

Only I'm not sure
If I'm fast asleep,

Or

If I just woke up.

A new house
In a new state,
She wants people
To come and stay.

It's tough
To justify a visit
When you moved
Four hours away.

I wanted to see
How it would be,
But maybe not during
A pandemic holiday.

Dreams still come true,
A place down by the beach
Is still a place down by the beach,
And I look forward to it every day.

The cabinets are all closed,
But I still don't know
Where the dishes go.

Sneaky little memories.

Anxiety and coughing.

Staying up late
To *******.

Flashcards.

Whiskey.

Life rolls on I suppose.

Better wait.
I tend not to
Hesitate.

It's big in my mind,
Meeting your daughter.
I'm sure it's fine.

Walls crumble
At your touch,
Regardless of how subtle.

Paint the sky
A different shade of blue,
Rip out a page or two.

Dip into a hidden pond,
Soak in the sound
Of falling leaves.

Float.

A face buried
In warm laundry,
Sigh into the linen.

Bits of dried ocean
Caught in the wind,
Taste the seasoned breeze.

Stretch.

The smell of comfort.
Home is more than an idea,
It's sensory overload.

Above the circling hawks,
Above the flattened cubes
Of corporate brick and mortar.
From here the people
All look like locust,
Swarming the asphalt
And coursing the concrete.
From here the sunlight
Glints off of a thousand
Cars, glass and paint.
It twinkles a bit,
And I'm reminded
Of the ocean.
Waves beneath us,
Silently crashing
Their way through life.
Stand with me
On this vista,
This precipice,
And let's just watch
For a little while.
Dressed in
The colors
Of the rising sun,
You're the perfect
Contrast up here
On the coal bank.

Dawn is here again,
But this time
make it a little different.

A simple, subtle change.

Sometimes, sometimes sometimes sometimes.

Sometimes it's hard
To not feel like a false man.
I work hard, I pay my bills.
But still,
It can feel like I
Don't believe myself.

When I put my boots on in the morning
I feel like a child trying on his father's boots,
I feel like I'm pretending.

I didn't do any of this on my own,
This apartment, this career,
Everything I've ever done.

I just got lucky.

Who am I
Living my
Life for?

Am I living my life for me?
Or for this imaginary person
That I think I aught to be?

Maybe it doesn't matter,
This over complication
Detracts from the simplicity
Of just doing. Just being.

I should give a **** less,
Lighten up.
Don't take it all
So
Seriously.

Don these earmuffs of positivity,
To better combat the whispers of apathy.
But don't let your guard down,
They aren't a passive form of protection.
Guarding your mind takes constant effort,
And conscious decisions.
Happiness is a choice. It is work.
It's the antithesis of the easy way out.
Those lazy and uncaring thoughts
Still come, no matter what,
But it's up to you, to me,
To armor our minds against them.

Giving up ****
Feels pretty good to me.

Think I'll stay awhile.

It's worth
The wait.

I'm hungry,
In a primal
Kind of way.

Come
and
Satiate.

Over thought,
Under done.

Undecided Decisiveness,
Choosing placidity
In place of catastrophe.

It's all in your head.

Hitting backspace too much lately.

Twelve, twenty nine, or ninety,
No matter how old I am,
I'll always enjoy
Writing my name in the snow.

Miles of art
All buried beneath
These mounds.

Mounds of dirt
Meant to drive away
Silent hill people.

Under the art,
Under the mounds,
The world's on fire
Under the ground.

This place feels like
A cemetery.

When I touch you
I'm nineteen again.

I'm on the bridge again,
Looking at the water beneath.

I'm making shadows in the moonlight,
I'm driving three hours to Williamsport
At 10 PM on a Sunday night.

I'm looking at our reflection
In every pane of glass,
I'm ******* in knots
And I'm driving a little too fast.

I'm playing hacky sack
In a big circle outside
Of the Limerick diner,
With all my friends by my side.

I'm staying up too late,
Because to sleep would be a waste
Of the seconds
And the hours
And the days.

I'm surrounded by orchids.

I'm watching fireworks
On a pier down Wildwood,
Where we jumped over
The banister
On the fourth of july.

I'm carrying wood over
To a blazing fire,
I'm playing pool and darts
And I'm not even tired.

I'm watching a couch burn
As Pat finishes his Bailey's.

I'm writing in that notebook
Behind me on the shelf.
I'm savoring a coffee
With a spoon in it.

I'm drawing on the back
Of every paper placemat.

When I touch you
I'm nineteen.

Or twenty nine.

I'm losing the meaning
Of time.