Deadlock darling  
if you lay down your arms
and lean into a promise made
I will wait for you
on the other side of
Badger Creek
but only for a while
only long enough to hear
a rustling of feathers
from the two crows
perched on my shoulders
one for the vows you spoke
and one for the silence that came after

And when you come closer
or if you never come at all
we will nonetheless turn our backs to
Badger Creek
and walk quietly away
swallowed by a damp november mist
rattling bones and molting leaves
Vows and Silence
gently cawing

I've been told to count my blessings as they come
***** dishes in the sink and a wish for a home
A permanent frown that says why bother
Never paint stars in the eyes of another
Ask the autumn winds about forever
The rustle in the trees reply whatever
And the way you reach for your jacket whispers never

It's as heavy as rain
this steely cold proclamation
that there's a path not taken
in the words I saved for later
The heavy gray clouds silently sinking
towards a world shrouded
in thoughts never declared
because we saved them
shivering and waiting
suspended in anticipation
for later

Black thursday
sunset mirrored in
hollow eyes
Painted in ultraviolet
the line is drawn
anywhere on this side of oblivion
on the inside of my eyelids
a spiderweb light

Black thursday
dusk drawn over a
bedridden world
Rested beneath the wavelengths
of white noise
a fragile little thing this steely place
fingers pressed against the temples
of the sleeping

I am adrift in perpetual night
A painted crown on my forehead
A signal to the skies
This is one I never claimed to own
Digging holes and throwing stones
I am adrift in perpetual night
A head full of thunderstorms
A free falling fight

She says nothing
waiting
hands on the table
luck just an inch away
from her trembling fingertips
she was never asking
and never demanding
only hoping to hold it

Thunderstorm darling
searching
for images of elation  
just barely seen
in the corner of her eyes
her vision blurred
when her head is turned
and bliss is left unrevealed

Heavy warm skies
an amplifier for
the smell of dust and waiting
Grasshoppers in the brittle grass
sing their praises to the yellowing leaves
fallen from the first shivering trees
And I sit
under the wilting climbing rose bush
catch glimpses of a quiet conversation
held by strangers on the other side of the hedge
just like fall is patiently whispering to me
from somewhere on the other side of september
the sun still warm but just a thin veil
for the cold winds nestling in my hair
these are the last silent sighs
of the dying dog days
And I become
unrelentingly aware
that all of my beginnings
started with the ending of this season

I don't feel better
watching 3 am come and go
sleepless nights
kept awake by blinding lights
of a thousand stars which I named
after all of my mistakes and transgressions

there's a picture of me painted in the sky
under eye circles and a look of infatuation
I call it a portrait of the artist as a reckless dreamer

Here
these fingers
on these scrawny hands
have felt a hundred other hands
have been bruised and cut and held
been cold and burned and broken
been scarred and ***** and reaching
waving middle fingers
peace signs
and fingers crossed
fingers crossed
fingers crossed
a thousands times over and now
once again
despite all they know
fingers crossed

Saturday night gathering
Of the two member club of bad moods
and contemplations
My friend with her hair tied back
Shuffling a deck of cards
I feel like I have done this
A thousand times
She says

She deals
We are playing shed
The only game we both know by heart
I know that she was always better than me
But I am trying to give her
A run for her money

Suddenly face up on the table
A jack of clubs with torn corners
The look of tired and impatient confusion
Drawn permanently on his face
My friend looks up at me
eyes gleaming with amusement
I laugh and say that I think
That's my mood of the day
She smiles
I was just going to tell you
That same thing

I know that look of fatigued detachment
The one you get when you realize
that the game you play has rules
And no one ever bothered
to tell you about them

Jack, it's going to be ok
This game is tough and tedious
But when it's all over
You will be shuffled right back
into a new one
And this time
it's going to feel
a lot like home

That feeling
you know
just before the roller coaster drops
just before you take the leap
just before you fall
is a constant in me
hesitatingly lingering
vague and unrelenting
somewhere in the middle of my body
a cold sinking
a heavy dullness
that I can't cure

But sometimes
you know
There's a smile because of something I said
There's a hand that traces my arm
There's a certain look
and I forget that feeling
tentatively hoping
cautious and optimistic
that something like this could be recurring
a sweet hesitation
a growing relief
and it's all your fault

I see you on the kitchen bench
soaking wet
drying your shoes on the radiator
feet bare and ice cold
you make a joke
I sip my coffee
to hide my smile

We opened the windows
flies dead on the window sills
lace curtains
fifty years old
at your grandparents house
the weeds outside
reach almost to my waist

The smell of the elder tree
by the front porch
sweet and overpowering
old yellowed books
and playing cards laid out
in solitaire
A game I never win

When it rains
it pours
I count the drops
A million millions
Soaking wet
like it's all I've ever been

What's done
is done
And I know the difference
between knowing and guessing
I've always hoped
for thunderstorms in june

I watched as the ceiling caved in above me
Got bored trying to find a lock or a key
Stood untouched by the dust and the rubble
Just leave me to wallow in the stains and the trouble

Got a space shaped like someone beside me
But I'm way too wasted to look for an ally
I've seen a million faces show up and disappear
These times will keep changing and I'll still be here

I got my eyes covered with my hands still
counting to ten or thirty or a hundred
Just don't hurt me like I think you will
There's no need to know because I never wondered

You're hiding but it's all in vain
Olly olly oxen free
if anyone looses in this game
it's going to be me

June is for finding things you didn't know could be true
But I looked far too long for things that got hidden
I just want to wallow in all that is you
And the games we play ought to be forbidden

Once again I hear that bell chime
Olly olly oxen free
If anyone gets burned this time
I think it's going to be me

I fell in love with the soothsayers daughter
Her smile like stars and eyes like a promise
She took the chariot and put it in my pocket
and told me that her father had foretold me

And now I see her with the eyes of a newborn
Her hands on my heart like she knows what I'm thinking
I loved that she saw the worlds in all their glory
Her hair between my fingers and her breath in my ears

The things that I felt for the soothsayers daughter
are things you only know once and only if you're lucky
And so I cradle the chariot in my cold hands and ask her
if her father knows where dreamers go when they wake

This city is a heartbreak
waiting to happen
I know it because I have seen it
in all the morning commuter eyes
how can anyone ever
make it out of here alive

We play our parts here
over a million
walking the streets like we're sleeping
but all of us looking to get out
how can anyone ever
be anything in this town

One week later
I come back to an empty apartment
Silent and lonely
There is nothing here that is my own because
Everything comes with a memory
A tiny little needle to remind me
That it is only stupid
To hope for beautiful things
Dreaming is for people
Without a sense of reality

Every time you fall
The fall will be longer
And the impact harder
Four years later I learned this
We say nothing is certain
But I feel like it will end like this
In an apartment filled with things
Yet utterly and devastatingly empty
And I will walk through the rooms looking for you
But finding only shadows

At night
I lie next to you
your body heavy under the covers
your breath slow and steady
eyes moving in their sockets
like marbles
I think you are dreaming
about one of the thousand things
I never knew about you
because you never told me

And me
I am restlessly awake
counting past regrets
on cracks in the ceiling
they loop trough my head over and over
When it dawns
I am tired and stretched thin
eyes and heart equally heavy
I want tell you all about it
but I can only bring myself to whisper your name

And you are fast asleep

You've got a hold on me
One thousand and five hundred days worth of hoping
We've built a home on the mountain
a home next to the big road
a home in the old house
a home next to the birch tree
you're the one thing constant
I try to see it for what it is
two clueless people in a hard world
but I think I'm tied to you
a million set of keys and a hundred boxes later
I want to go forward
and I want you to come with me

It's just a sign of the times
it's just a passing feeling
this sense of falling
I keep my hands buried in the soil
hoping they will root there
making me a part of something
I can understand
Making me a part of
something constant

The trees are my favorite beings
they are grounded in a way
I could never relate to
Sometimes I stop along my path
and press my back against the trunks
hoping they will absorb me
Making me a part of
something I can rely on
making me a part of
something lasting

Through all the fabrics of my being
there's this vague sense of searching
or maybe just of wandering
it's hard to know the difference
I try to keep my footing on the road forward
and suddenly there's this feeling of realization:
that in this life made of coincidences and longing
some of us grow up to be trees
and some of us grow up to be travelers

The palm trees
and the endless sky
this place built of concrete and plywood
it's not mine and
will never be mine

In the evenings
if you are lucky
you see the clouds roll in over the mountains
they look like memories
they'll soon be memories

The first day
felt like a daydream
we left the airport with our minds and hearts open
but things change
as they always change

I think I remember
someone saying that
the first time you leave California a piece of your heart stays
and if that has to be true
then let it be the broken one

When silence covers you
on the inside
looking for a way out
just some crack or hole in your skin
to pour out from
not like blood but sweet
like honey
a slow, sticky flow
of silence
finally

I can never rest from restlessness
there is no room
no space for questions here
just a lingering feeling
that I should try to say something
try to rip the secrets open
and spill their insides out for once
tell the truth like it was supposed to be told
with a smile
and a stare
doubtlessly

I remember when she told me
She would forget me
And everyone else
We were in the kitchen
I was clutching the white teapot
Like I was holding on to
A sliver of hope
And I said nothing
Nothing that meant something anyway
They gave me fourteen more years with her
Maybe less
And I started counting

It just happens by chance
The tear that forms slowly
But then grows steadily over so many years
And you can not mend it
Once it is broken it stays broken
And time passes like nothing

What if I only
Told it like I meant it  
With one hand on the covers and the other
Barely on my heart  
I never pictured myself
As someone so listless

This is the sound life makes
When it pushes me over
They told me the grass was greener
On the other side
I have been there
And I am coming back now

I was drifting somewhere
between awake and a dream state
I figured I was made of stone
to heavy to turn in my covers

And while trying to move my feet
my mother the dying but lovely
whispered in my ear like if I was a child again
words I once knew but forgot

About stories I barely can gather
even from the clearest of fragments of memories
like laying a million-piece puzzle or building a brick house
which I never did and never really I wanted to

I never knew what the thenar space was
until I cut it and saw as the blood trickle like tar if tar could trickle
much thicker than I ever thought it would be
from such a small wound in such a trivial place

They always get longer and wider
my thoughts about this life and it's meanings
and it all loops back to this one inescapable thing
maybe one day I'll gather love and rain and road dust in glass jars like souvenirs

At times like these,
your eyes flicker:
like candle lights,
your heart beats quicker

I grab your hand,
like a  life line,
ask what's up
and your smile meets mine

Darling
in this town
everything is always up
nothing ever gets down

But we will walk
trough stormy weather
and ride the waves
just closer together

I've been a long way
finally returning
to a place I remember
from a memory or a dream

In a different time
I would have been drifting
but this is now
that's all there is to it

I drag my feet in the road dust
it rises in cloud shapes
swirls around my ankles
like little tornados

I turn to see whats behind me
making sure that there's footprints
that there's some kind of trace
for somebody to find

They talk about chaos
but I notice nothing
it seems like ordinary things to me
snow and cars and people in queue to get nowhere
these are just ordinary things
just trivial things

My hands haven't
felt air for days
She told me the most beautiful moment was
when her saviour got snowflakes in her eyelashes
the most beautiful moment
just an ordinary moment

I call this winter
the coldest one for years
that's what we say every year
while we nod our heads to eachother like jack-in-the-boxes
these things happen every year
every ordinary year

I like to watch as he is
gathering up his cards around him
sorting them in little stacks like treasures

and I sit beside or behind him
waiting for a breath of relief or liberation
for him to close his eyes and reel me in

there's no greater treasury
than the one he graciously showed me
hidden and quiet in his winding mind

I lay down on the covers and listen
to the sound that wood makes when it moves
when it moves so slowly you can barely notice
as spiders crawl on the soles of my feet
they move unashamed like the
Lepisma saccharina
commonly known as the enemy
or silverfishes
under my floorboards

I have got no meter
it makes me write like a renegade dropout
smoking outside the doors of
junior high
but this is not poetry I write
it's testimonies
of how I looked further and never found
much of anything

I'd sweep quietness away with one sudden movement
like when smoke disperses
with a waving hand I can expel
all that is wrong like if I
broke the best china and saw the violets
in pieces of porcelain on the floor but
I know that silence is thick and
nothing ever breaks against linoleum

I've been watching elderflowers bloom and die
all summer
been living in the cupboards of this house
like a scavenger

The cats due to their immense independence
come and go
I try to convince them not to leave me alone
calling and bribing

If you sit on the bench by the door you'll hear carhorns
vaguely distant
I shut my eyes and pretend to live in a dream world as
reality hits me

And I bury myself in the grass and the blossoms
smelling dewdrops
as I pull my fingers trough the soil and the gravel
I wrap myself in solitude

Killing lilies
catching swallows
bursting dams
breakings traces

It takes more to leave this
It takes another wasted year

Consuming air
loosing sanity
wasting moments
wounding pride

It takes more to get this
It takes another turn of tides

I've been

Standing in corners
Talking to trees
Sketching grasping hands
Dreamt of dreaming

and I've been
Running further than legs could carry
Even ran in place
Gored head against walls

Now I
Hope it's enough

Silent
Can't you hear me breathing?
The rain will fall soon
Because you promised

Silent
I don't miss the conversations
content with a smoke under the stairs
this life is lawless
Because you said so

Shout
Someday someone will hear
the marks and traces we left in this world
but to feel the tip of your fingers
Is enough for now