it always smelled like beer.
like beer and **** and sweat and mold.
palpable smells spread liberally onto the air
          and breathed in through our laughter
          and out through our shameless belting of the songs
that played again and again and again...

we all knew all the words, even if we didn't
          know what the song was called,
which we could laugh about
gathered around the sink to catch a drink
          and ride out the pounding in our head.
the floor was sticky. audible smacks plinked out
to the beat in the background as strangers
           with familiar faces wove in and out
of the tapestry of the night again and again and again....

and we were happy here,
made artificially warm by the concoctions
we spooned out of buckets or serving bowls.

          and that's how we expected it to be.
again and again and again...

when the lights came on and
the pale carpet showed its spots and
the cups and crumbs and twisted nails bore themselves again,
          we smiled at them again anyway.
something charming in the musty sincerity of the walls
          slick with the condensed moisture of our sweat and saliva.
our breath bringing the surfaces to life
with our light.

all in one place.

again for the the last time

07.29.12
a hero is born
always in the face
of humanity's darkness

who was the hero tonight?
was it the man
           who crawled across a row of seats
           to shield a child with his body
or is it the dozens
           who lost their lives in sacrifice
or is the hero
in the end
the one who won what he came to win

           the chaos of a knight
           a place in infamy untouchable
           a name without a person's face
who made us lose as much as he had to gain
before successfully vanishing into the dark

singing a lullaby we
are rocking in a cradle spun
of liquid white straight
from the bottle wrapped up
in the darkness of the night until

we find ourselves in stillness

laid out on the damp shingles
                laughing
                at the clouded sky
because we know
that somewhere behind the blackened grey

the moon shines bigger and brighter
than it ever has before

do you change color
so we do not mourn your fall?
too bright your yellow

high along the timber line
in everlasting green expanse
there is a colony of brave young shoots
that dare to change their dress
          to yellow
preparing to face the winter naked-bare
their fair white skin
          vulnerable as they are like the snow
but they stand together unafraid
because beneath the ground
the golden aspens hold each others' hands
though on the surface
          they are quaking

pineapples.
why do we like them?
i don't know.
they are prickly
and pokey.
and kind of ugly.
and man, are those things ******* hard to peel.

apples.
why do we eat them?
i don't know.
they are shiny.
and kind of boring.
and you can't eat half of it anyway,
because it's too close to the seeds.

strawberries.
what kind of fruit are they?
their seeds are on the outside.
and their flavor of starburst doesn't taste anything like them.
and sometimes they get really squishy and covered in mold.

bananas.
why do we eat them?
i don't know.
maybe because they are yellow.

in smoke and ashes, we keen
at the feet of the largest funeral pyre
that we have ever seen
counting the bodies in
the number of limbs fallen in between
charred, scarred
as if to remind us
of how alive they have always been

and until then, we had complained
the loss of something we have always felt
was in our right to contain
but sitting a midst our "domain"
counting acre by acre
and then mile by mile
as the flames reclaimed
what has always been theirs to take

and in a fortnight we awoke
and it was silence like it had never broke
and the mountains, as far as we could see
wrapped in black cloak
but it was us
who felt like we'd been choked
and not for smoke
because we could finally see what we had done

so in our grief, we gathered in the street
to greet our proclaimed heroes
and make a victory of our defeat
thankful for salvation from the heat
that blazed up in our face
a uncomfortable reminder
our of dominion incomplete