without you all my pages would be abandoned
in barren desolation
and all my days would run into nights
and nights into desperation
and mornings would come and go without notice
except for the taste of ash in my mouth
staining everything your love didn't touch
as my world would lie in ruin
and I drift into the remainder of my life
knowing that I had once loved
when I was more than a shell of a man

she loved me best when I teetered on the edge of self destruction, bottle in hand, her addiction to the danger, the dead in my eyes

passed by the candles and flowers for the first time today, the first time since we lost our innocence

I'm driving along the San Bernardino highway
it's hot
the sky is translucent brown
below me speeding past
are the clapboard and stucco houses
the untended palm trees
trash on the side of the pavement
brown weeds choking the berm
a city of lost hope
and strangled dreams
my exit is coming up
and I expect to find a disheveled man or two
standing on the side of the road
under the street signal
when the old man is not there selling flowers from plastic buckets
they always hold cardboard signs
with words written in black marker
though I never read them
all cardboard signs say something about god
I see many faces here
there is the one armed man
wearing matching red shorts, shirt and ***** ball cap
he has a ******* on his forehead
sunken eyes, unkempt beard, *****
he looks just like Charles Manson
crazed and desperate;
there is the young man listening to headphones, his bike against the fence;
and the aging cowboy leering under the brim of his leather hat
sometimes I see true desperation in the eyes of the lost
but none speak to me
like the young man with the distant stare
witnessing some tragedy
in the mist
his olive drab bedroll lays next to his feet
tied with a worn leather belt
his sign simply says "Oklahoma"
there's a vibe about him that says hope has sold him a little more of the highway

as ink violates paper, scratching in jet, deep, the stygian stamp of iron through ribbon. paper and ink are innocent. the blood is mine

ground zero
i become aware of boundaries
i am a dog chasing cars
i sing your voicemail to sleep
there are no surgeon general warnings
to tell me that
the objects in the mirror
are more depressed than they appear
so how do i tell you
that there are parts of my life
that move slower
without you in them?
or that i look for you every day
in emails & unanswered calls
in the sunrises
i didn't choose to be awake to watch
that i sometimes still stare at doorways hoping you would walk through them
   *stage 1 you tell your new lover you've got a splinter and they pull the sound of your body falling asleep on mine out of your fingertip
   stage 2 your new lover says something at dinner that makes you choke so they call 911 & the paramedics do the hymleich not knowing you would ***** our promises all over the the restaurant
   stage 3 your new lover surprises you by cleaning the house & washes the shirt you kept next to the bed, not knowing it was the last thing you had that smelled like me
after
people always ask
what was loving her like?
after a really long silence
i just say
"it must be nice"
but i never say
it's watching paint dry
i never say
it's a window seat in hell
i don't tell anyone
about the dreams
where i am reading you
bedtime stories
each one is a different way you die
& every time i can never save you
dreams where what i think
are angels in my bedroom
are just homeless versions
of myself you never loved
i have dreams
where i pay someone to shoot me
just to see if you would cry
just to see
if you would cradle my body
i don't tell people
that loving you is like
playing piano
for someone who can't hear
that it's hitting repeat
on my favorite song
& forgetting the words
every time it starts over
that it's finding out
there's no milk after you already
poured yourself a bowl of cereal
it's getting locked in the dark
& being told to
look on the bright side
that loving you is like
being reminded of what it felt like
the first time
you accidentally let go
of a balloon as a child
it's drowning without the water
it's the feeling you get
when you start to dance
& the song ends