today you would've been 65
how much you've missed

you liked to joke that your birthday was on the longest day of the year so that you'd have more time to enjoy it and i wish that we'd had more time to enjoy you, too

took out the trash this morning
sandals on the red, dusty driveway
the scent of wildfire smoke somewhere in the air
as summer sets a shattering scene

a small raccoon dead at the bottom of the can
as i drop the bag aside and gently tilt the can to let it slide
onto the driveway

what did it know in its life?
what did it think as the cover closed?
what did its mother think when it set off for the last time

later on in my own home
roof over my head and curtains drawn
i think of it again and i wonder
does it all end just like that?

la luna
once nothing but a child's dream
staring at the stars
third-hand telescope on the front walk
hoping and praying
that the city lights won't be
too bright to block out the constellations

so it was
a romance with weightlessness
on the Cyclone at Coney Island
to learn to love the feeling
of hearts in throats
and the racing pulse
and the butterflies in the stomach

dream of love
a wife lost young to cancer
and belief brought no clear answers
but still resolution and commitment
with hearts in throats
and the rasping choke
of losing everything he loved

to seek heaven
a boy born to fly learned to be
in command and learned to be
in control as the thrusters push and learned to be
cool under pressure as the world below
gets further and further away
if he stayed up here would that be alright

where have i gone?

i wasn't here yesterday
or at least not the same me
i've been exchanging
glances for limerence and
*** for pleasure and
dreams for the hollow
vacuous entombment that is
what we become -

i'd never been that close
to anything before

did i tell you i loved you enough?

the door at the edge of the kitchen where he came back because he forgot his glasses after spending the night on the floor of what used to be our room

i know

terse words exchanged from opposite sides of the dinner table as you look flummoxed that i'm the one answering the call and i tell you to get lost

i lost

the laughter of others when the boxes were packed and the keys left behind and those godawful words "now you can move in"

i cried

a satellite dish on the roof
of my grandfather's shed
sings to the stars

who will provide the countermelody?

i took you to a place on the beach
that my dad took me as a boy
to share these sweet things with you

it all means something.

there is a waterfall in the woods
in northwest indiana
where once the river ran so dry
you could look down into the riverbed
and see the roots of trees
gasping, begging for the water's return

we stood in the rain the next day
as the wind whipped petals
off the branches of the maple trees
and in the downburst
i fell so deeply love with you

will you sing with me?

there is no use in weeping
over things left unsaid
if they were better off
on the radio waves
bouncing down to the satellite
into the screen inside your head
to replay the crescendo to failure
in the moments before collapse

it was
a light so bright
that i missed everything

the flames were too high
the emotions were too strong
the world was ripped asunder
in the blink of an eye

awake
and holding on
to fragments of you

the words were too sharp
the paths we blazed too far apart
the reckoning now absolute
i live with the ghost of you

Two years on, the bank bought the house
Your mother tried but couldn't make the payments
I tried as I could but couldn't keep it going
So many memories just left to fade

No trace of life, no trace of a body
You just went clear off the edge of the earth
Didn't bring a map, didn't plan to come back
Did you suffer, Gillian?

There'll always be part of me that remembers
But I know that there's always something missing
I'll try to move forward from this loss
But how could I make sense of it all?

I've been holding it all together for too long now
So much so I've forgotten myself
Been trying to be stronger than I used to be
Rebuilding to learn to love someone else

Where does love go?
Where does it bleed out?
What can be done to stem the flow
What can quell the hurt, what can ebb the tide?

Where does love go?
Where does love lost get found again
When does it stop hurting so much?
Oh, does it ever really stop?

Can I try to make connections new
With the ghost of you
Still lingering 'round all I know?
Can I try to keep my heart aligned
And try to pretend I'm alright
With you still missing from my life?

the right person
at the wrong time
to cause a chain reaction

synapse flare
breathing change
hands hiding
grow closer

endless joyful days
with everything in the way
everything
on the line

the right person
at the wrong time
agony on the horizon

a fire left untended
a forest with unquenchable thirst
a single spark

the wrong thing to say
the last words we spoke

i don't want to lose you as a friend
a fire dies
cannot undo

the right person
at the wrong time
indelible memories

even if i'd
met you a decade before
i was always
ten steps behind

has it really been thirteen years
since we dreamed of the city surrounded by cornfields

19 was a different lens
hot august evenings staring at the stars
on the rockslide in the quarry by your father's house
where we drifted deeper into love and ardor

in the heat of an endless summer,
the unflinching drift towards new romance and dreams of
marriages and sacred vows and well,
where did it all lead us, and where are we now?

in interceding years came new flames and hurricanes
and always those roads turned back towards you, didn't they
i sat for you for your paintings and i fell more and more
in love with someone whose heart could never let me stay

now, what have we come to, and what have we learned?

32 a new lens with clearer eyes and
i surmise now that i knew not where that road would go
i kept the promise that i'd made, just in a different way
past the barns and the long highways i'd dreamed of with you

glacial, time continues on
and memories are fleeting but fond

has it really been thirteen years
since i knew the joy of you

i bleed
in shades of green
and yellow and orange too

i hemorrhage
from chameleon wounds

i see you in
brand new color
i burn

you feign innocence
when the blood is on your hands

beat myself up til i break something
and try to replace what i’ve broken
with pieces of someone else.
torpedo what works til it sinks
and try to salvage a heart from the
wreckage of what once was.

beat myself up til something bleeds
patch up the wounds with masking tape
and hope that the dams don’t burst free.
crash the party you threw til someone
calls the cops and it’s all broken up
and i’m swinging from the chandelier

yelling ‘someone make sense of this!’

flames in the treetops
autumn has overstayed
and in the rain swept away,
insurmountable.

the leaves on the streets
slippery still,
and my heartbeat still
and i can't leave you here like this

yet insurmountable
the distance completes the arc
we cannot seem to make the ends meet

green, yellow, in bloom again
spring has returned
and in its warming light
we've been carried home

and with a crash of thunder
summer came pouring in
and i lose you to the floods and the wind

and insurmountable
the seasons constant shift
and i'm left high and dry
to uncoil and twist

black, red, bruised and broken
bury me in the early autumn's leaves
oh, nashua
the morning fog
insurmountable

for all the words we should've said
for all the apologies i never heard
why do we leave it this way
why do we end things at hate,
i don't know

orange, red, turn your clock back again
oh autumn has overstayed her hesitant welcome

and if the sun goes a little sooner each day
and your heart just wants to pour down rain
i say let it rain

if in time we find that the words we said still ring true,
where will your hand be? in the entwine of some other?

when do we give up the ghost to the sea
when do we just let it vanish into the horizon
and drain down over the edge of the world?

what could we have been? do you ever wonder?
there’s no solace in questions. there’s no closure
in the words we won’t ever say again.

and i sleep on this floor alone. head on the cold stone
buried in my hands. where would i be now
if i had just given a little more of a try?

and new sunrises don’t seem to shine
quite as bright anymore. there’s no reason
for me to stay awake when all i see is shade.

she could be something amazing. she could be
all i’d ever need. if she’d just come back from the brink.
if she’d just breathe here with me. just to be.

it’s not the problem of not knowing what i want
it’s the problem of knowing what i want.

and the problem of waiting, on the widow’s ledge,
over the wild ocean. a promontory over the evening tide
and where i will hold my vigil.

i can’t do this forever.

come escape these pictures with me, these photographs
sinuous and sinful, tenuous and tendrils creeping
i feel you slipping slow away

i wish i remembered the taste of your lips,
the crackle of sparks between us that first time
like the crunch of dried leaves underfoot that september

losing time
losing my summer spent
under telephone poles
and high voltage wires
loving you

losing light
daybreak won’t come tonight
and if i shout out loud
nobody will be listening
missing you

and if in our short embrace
we find hearts of gold enmeshed as one
we take the time and celebrate
sweaty, entangled in your bed

your mother in the room upstairs
try to be quiet, we cannot shout
this magic we’re creating
could not hold itself together

losing time,
losing my summer spent under
telephone poles, high voltage wires
loving you

losing light,
daybreak won’t come tonight
and if i shout out loud
no one will and no one can
be listening,
please be listening…

we’re comparing what we could have
to a dream that we have lost
frosted over outside like
dead
dead water in your swimming pool
in the dead of winter
dead and buried, dead and gone,
dead so long the worms have taken you
home

like the leaves that embraced you
the night it was all stolen away.

…

losing time,
losing my summer spent under
telephone poles
high voltage wires
loving you

losing light,
daybreak won’t come tonight,
no it won’t

and if i shout out loud
it won’t bring it back

…whatever we may
come to find
let it be right

if you're here
why can't you stay

the light in you at its brightest:
i wish i remembered how to bring it out

but in time you've just become a visitor
like an endless night turned midnight sun
and back again

who will sing for the dead?

am i lost at sea
will the waves rise
to swallow me?

who will embrace me?

have i gone too deep
too far this time
too long and away
from what i used to be?

everything has its right place
and in my heart i know i’ve lost mine

when we first met you had little to say
the evening hadn't quite captured you
the moment hadn't quite managed to
keep you engaged but

i noticed within the brambles that surrounded you
something truly astounding to
behold

are you in there? it's still me
i've come unglued, can you rebind me
never seen anything damaged like this before,
is it beyond all repair?

when do we move from

the words to the kissing to the ******* to the i won't call you til you call me to the
i wanna see you again i never wanna ******* see your face again please let me come home
do we drive into the sunset or mire into mediocrity's grip

where do we hail from

the sky open above us as the waves crash around us and the stars shine as if just for us
and the city lights bright as you say sweet goodnights -

when we first met you faded into the ether
a silent observer of situation
pretense of hesitation you

sort of caught me up in the thicket of thorns
tripped over words as you caught my eye
never knew before that

an amalgam of all that's been
would sweep me from my feet again

but the past i cannot relive and the hurt i will not forgive

when do we remove ourselves from equations that equal altercations
and when do we dub ourselves dead - is it before we dissolve into
she
or
i
or
we're over
because

when do we know it's

over

where do we run to

the arms of the ones that used to hold us? no way in the world could i
ever go back in time to say backwards goodbyes and it'd be a crime to
lock eyes with the one i used to

say goodbye
say it now or hold your peace

is there anything else in here besides
broken doors and smashed up screens and
windows that no longer see it fit to open and
is there anyone in here besides
me cut by all that remains from love loved in vain

do you remember?

it all floods back in the end,
like a cliche montage of things that flash before your eyes
a spiral down the drain of love and lies and truths and
when i die -

it won't be now
it won't be today
it may never be if i had my way:

if only i hadn't pushed you away