No one to hold my fears.
No sanctity for my tears.
When I cry, it goes deep
into my system, lays down
beside my visions; oils my dreams, powers the machine
of my body.

God
allow me the strength to survive,
to strive,
to struggle,
to climb, to love,
to live a breathless life.

Even though I feel
sadness, I know
it wells from a good place
in my soul.

Uncomfortable without my tears.

So,
I may not be a blaster,
or a boxer,
or a firefighter,
but I've learned
to control my explosions,
take my punches when they come,
and let my eyes fall
to water the fires
that lick on all sides.

Little lady,
your comforts are poison,
you never return my love
and I am constantly hurt,
wishing you were here
in the birth of my confusion.

In the midst of a moonlight ****,
I lied to myself,
and said we were making love.

The universe unfurled,
and your body liquified
in the heat of the moment.

Just let me kiss you,
because you said hello
in the first place,
in those plaid leggings
and beautiful greens.

I didn't tell you intimate secrets,
and you didn't shed yours.

But I touched your naked skin,
and shared the same leather,
as our bodies meshed,
and the universe unfolded.

A flower grows through reeds and thickets,
and reaches for the sun,
while being eaten away by fungus.

The sun drops its dress,
and undresses until the flower is wet.

And even in their unknowing of the season,
the flower and the sun share pleasure
and reason.

And even though your mother didn't like it,
I made you wet,
and in the basement,
I regret not kissing every part of your body,
because the moonlight won't let me forget.

The candle,
That burning dispersion.
The wick prespires.
The nitro-oxygen air
eaten up with every breath,
in such commonstance as to be ordinary,
and unrevealing.
But how much do you know
about yourself,
about it?
Can you blame a flame?
Can you truly hurt a fly?
Where are you now?

In some place so stuffy,
that you can only wish
that you were something more,
something stupid enough to live,
and not feel the pangs of your billion needles,
cascading down like a waterfall
of death, disappointment, and disorder.

Driving down the street,
asphalt littered with patches of scattered sunlight,
breeze blowing down my drunk,
sobering up from last night.

I'm
remembering a slurred argument I had with this woman about compassion
I was just yelling over and over:
"How can you know a thing about compassion?
How can you call me brave and noble,
and call me a killer in the same breath?
do you even know what you're saying?
Do you know the real meaning,
behind the words on the veil?"

I'm drunk ****, trying to pick up the peices
of my sanity
as I hurl them across my dashboard
with every chunk of cigarette ash I tap away,
trying to forget and remember last night,
because it's always a dark, damp place inside my soul.

Two long island iced teas, a thousand more coronas,
a couple more useless people blabbering about
their truths and their ideas, and how their right,
and their is no such thing as w r o n g.

Holy ****, this place makes me sick.

So, I get into my car,
angry at the woman I was yelling at,
because she is so happy with herself,
happy with her ideas, how small they've made me feel.

How big she is now.

How insignificant her ideas are as I drive away,
her sweatshirt looks like the inside of an old man's crotch,
a long stain of beer
that she doesn't know about, and I'm just the same.

Somewhere on me there is something I don't know about,
and yet I feel better than you.

Back to this.

And SHE is in my mind,
(not her)
all the time, wherever I go,
wherever I am pretending to be
when I am really not there
at
all. Someplace else.

Pictures of her life
without me,
**** me.

Memories of her disappointment. I was always bad,
or uncontrollable. Too drunk. Too, too, too drunk. And too, too, too, stupid to realize,
that I was hugging her with that stain. Drowning her in my stain.

Flashes of her body and the fever it got going inside of me,
the hot, uncontrollable, ecstasy that poured into my being
with the mere lick of thinking about the stain in her crotch
that I had caused. A yellow, polka dotted sundress stopping just above her
buttermilk kneecaps. I could slip ******* on both sides of the dressstraps,
and slide it down her shoulders--as easy as silk--all the way to her ankles.  God gave me heaven.

And how much grief I get over too much to drink.

Then I met a friend at a pizza bar.
And I'm hammered, slurring, and he sits with me as I find another person,
I'm a magnet for you all. I hate and love what you make me say about myself.
How I reveal and demean.

And we yammer, my friend drinks his beer, the person leaves, we have our pizza.

And SHE is there. In my mind, all the time.

My mind is an imagination zone, and I am guessing that she's with her boyfriend at the beach.

the pain of my imagination is a knife when she's messing around in my heart. always.

And so, now, at this stoplight I'm trying to stop myself from the things that make me forget myself.

I'm back here now. In the present. And I'm ashamed, humbled, content, and I don't want to drink or smoke
anymore.

I want to be a businessman with a wife.

I am
a memory,
like the sweet sugar
of justice.

The tiniest droplets of my presence,
raining down from this frozen sky,
are so insignificant to your tongue,
as to make me important.

And I wish I  was.

Wishing like
a flower,
a seedling underneath the permafrost,
hardened against winter,
harder for summer.

Today is a day,
for nostalgia;

For the reaper to finally and momentarily be
beaten.

Even in all of his infinite wisdom,
in which the past becomes just a laugh,
and the lurid poisons of our love,
have the shallow touch of a feather.

When the snow begins,
we relive all those duldroms,
all those meaningless nothings
seemingly so meaningful and wrong,
long ago.

We retell our stories,
silently,
to ourselves,
feeling less bitter as the words
litter our minds,
powdering the pain,
and covering with joy,
our sorrow.

In dementia,
they say,
our love goes stronger every day.

Grows newer
in old ways.

I hope to be like you someday.

Today,
we will beat the bitter sandpaper of tomorrow,
that which rubs away our definition with every brutal blow,
with the soft tapping of our fingers
against our skulls.

Puzzling over what made us beautiful and purposeful,
instead of what crowds against us like a box,
instead of what destroys us like a skipping cd,
instead of what sings against our mind like a harpy
with it's constant verses of regretfulness
that grow stronger with every fatal flaw
we rehash in ourselves.

once more,
you will be as beautiful to me today,
as that swirling suffocation.

I watch you fall outside my window,
covering each and every lichened rock,
in a linen of newness.

In silence,
I stop listening for the return of your love,
and instead marvel in the present satisfaction,
that you are,
and were.

I revel in your presentness,
in the swiftness of your presentation.

In the delicacy of your touch,
and the humility you drive me too,
as you take me too my knees with
each
quiet
drop.

And yes,
you will melt.

And yes,
I will remember.

And yes,
I will see the snow melt,
driven away by the erosion of the sun.