this day was not like any other.
hot air from her lungs
swirled steam in the death
of November.

I felt trust for the first time.
I trusted her to leave.

I crack a corny joke out of sheer anxiety,
I say: "Well, it is the fall."

She doesn't smile, or speak, of course.

She does the talking with her eyes,
and all I hear is goodbye.

mostly it is the darker days,
   povoking thought.
tracing memories from
   forgotten fingertips.

words silenced.
voices forgotten.
perfect mornings.
  always changing.

    mostly it's the same.

feeling reality,
    fleeing god.

tonight, it's perfectly
clear to me.
i'm sorry.

my sister thought my mother
had died on her lap;
she walked to the bathroom
inside that depthless hospital hotel.

the putrid smell of life and death
all through-out this concrete heaven
and hell.

at the age of fifty-four
my mother's bones would
carry no more weight.

her gentle heart
her forgiving mind
her words so strong

but mine,
they are forced out
by constricted wind-pipes
and angry words

i glanced down at the cot, where my mother died
as I made contact with my mother's pale-blue eyes
she looked at me with the most helpless,
childish face I've ever seen.
as if to say:
"he isn't here.. where is he...
where could he be?"

she lived thirty more minutes.

he arrived a few hours later, asking:
"how's she doin'?"

never take for granted,
someone's borrowed time.

sometimes you will
be absolute in your resolve

and sometimes you will
be the issue needing solved

a question unanswered
is the vessel to affliction
it's synonymous with
all of your uncertainty  

sometimes you must
accept that you may never
find the answers

and I know that's hard to swallow.

"listen to me!" his mother said
"If I see one more tear, you'll never see her again!"

the five year old boy's cheeks
still flushed
his eyes swelling like
a pop-knot
they are ****** red
his chest will surely
explode from the tension
any moment now

he clenches the tube of
ointment in his front pocket
of the new pair of jeans
his grandma bought him
on the way back from
North Carolina

the young boy wipes his eyes,
rubs the bald spots on his head,
noticing his last eyelash has fallen on
the last tear running down his
face

his grandma holds him tight, she says:
"I love you. I'll be back soon."

he can feel his mother's
needle-worn arms pulling him away.
he can smell her morphine sweat.
he can taste her oxycontin breath.

despite watching his grandmother
close the door of her 1990
green Beretta and drive
off Walnut Street and
down Oakford Ave--
the little boy
never cried
again.

From experience,
I've realised that a
poem never changed anything.

the soft light from
across
the room
casted a shadow
on half of you
and i thought to myself,
i am in love.
her ******* were
still swollen
from the child we lost,
she smiled her sleepy
smile and said, "i want
this moment to last forever."
and i thought to myself,
i will be okay.
i said this with more
hope than honesty.
and honestly, i gave
up on hope the day
you aborted our child.
I lost myself in
the pain of that loss
i still wish you
the best with this war
you're fighting within.
the only glimpse of happiness,
is to be without reasons
to miss you anymore.

on my better days,
I sit in half-circles
with new acquaintances,
spilling half-truths,
smiling half-smiles,
wondering what I'll
wake up to tomorrow
and not remember.

on my worst days,
I remember everything.

from time to time, I still think of you.

how we used to get by...

how I fell beneath one-thousand shades;
sunrise orange, and dainty red.            
learning we were both
capable of the          
                         tilt,
                               turn,
                                       twist,
                                                 and
                                                             ­    verge.                           

I used to thank you
for spending the nights
in the living-room.
Instead of his room.

You would say,
"I like falling asleep with you,
but waking up next to him."

Yes, the bitterness is
mostly gone.
                                                           ­    
                                                            ­        
I still think of you
every now and then

it was much heavier than I expected
the cherry-wood box
all that's left of you
it was heavier than the news of your death
but not nearly as heavy as the loss of you
every moment you weren't there when I was a child.
you taught me a lot,
not directly,
but your absence taught me everything
about loneliness
about pretending to be strong
during my weakest times
it taught me how to do time
without expecting anyone to be there
and no one ever was
but you're finally with me,
now that you're gone.
the news of losin' you wasn't
what I expected it to be
that cherry-wood box was a lot
heavier than I thought it'd be
I wish I had a softer past
so I could cry for you
like I ought to be
but my baby, she cries for you, for me
and it helps
I miss you like I always have
it's just different now

you kept me strung up
like a memory
of the death of someone
you used to love
you used me up
you gave me just
barely enough
to keep me there
as a ghost melting
into the memory of
someone I used to know

today,
I awoke
as if we were
still the past.
constantly, and
ineffectually
hounding after
the future.
only to be forever
preserved in the present.
we are the
exact moment
when you have forgotten
a fading dream.
an entire world,
lost in your sleep.

we lie, tangled.
her body and mine.
motionless, fingertips
to skin.

the voice inside my head
no longer speaks

weary of missing just one word.
or worse, breaking the silence.

it's truly perfect.

flashback

she called for the first time in a few months.

"Hi." She said.
"Hey, what's up?" I ask.
"Just got off work, wanna come over?"
"Sure."

flash-forward

she knew exactly what I would say
and it always ends the same.

the thought of her, replacing what
some call sleep, had almost rested.
now, here i am.. too late or too
early into the morning,
thinking of her and writing
to ease my trembling hand.

beneath the star-struck, eternal vast,
    painted black, blue-grey black -
voices blister of the past.

haven't felt this way in quite some time.
    the restless nights. this cold, empty bed.
unrhythmic breaths flood my chest
    as I watch my mother die
                         for the second time.

it's moments like these you never forget.
    find yourself waking in a cold, hot sweat.
mind tracing every syllable, every breath;
    remembering every word you should have said.

with eyes like a beating heart;
   smells of daisy wanderlust.
soul-fire like passion's spark;
   worn-out smiles like last night's luck.

"there isn't anything out there for me," he thought.

a rather less-than detailed description of what some may say, a contemptuous observation.

erasing sentences that weren't worded properly,
or didn't make much sense.

"I value the life I consume," he lied.

in other words, I've run out of ambition
no longer am I able to lie to others to make my life meaningful to them.

It's that lack of that melts flesh from bone.

"Shang, I miss you," he read.

as if the **** drawing
were her.
skin flushed,
an inconceivable silence
only for my mind to take in.

the silence is now nothing short of uninviting.

all the while,
I continue searching
for something..
something not all too satisfying.

up-close in the paved
walkway boneyard

this is where it will begin,
   so bring your questions.
glimpse into the future.
  standing face to face,
one moment you'll never forget.

immerse yourself

fulfill these dreams, without
leaving a single breath.
                          
           breathtaking.

the same old sense of awe is still
of the most complex nature.

if God is in the details,
I must have forgotten
my prayers

her smile was the truth,
and her eyes were the door.

in seven days,
goodbye, tiny hands..
mon amour

they don't make
promises like
you anymore

without a smile,
goodbye, gabrielle..
mon amour

the way life used to be
isn't what i miss,
it's each individual moment-
lapsing over and over one another
creating an inconceivable picture
of everything i love,
now lost

how absolutely
unassuming one will be
blind-sided by love

i am afraid we have begun to dissociate,
unable to dissolve, I dissipate

we lavish emotion, laugh laudably
and cry with our larynx ripped out of our throats

i just need a little attention

'cause it's midday
and the midwife has a migraine,
with spoiled milk and clogged drains,
laundry a mile-long with tenuous children
tense with grimace and gray

we believe uncertainty for the hopeless and expectations for the great

the subtle hum
followed by slithering smirks
followed by snarls and sneers and weird sober
social experiments,
followed by small town dramas
and big time hypocrites.