everyone is just a trophy
a ribbon with gold lettering
paraded and pinned on
trafficked without knowing
but I don't want to be someone's
harp, the goose that lays gold
eggs for show, i am not the
prize that follows your glory
days stuck in a stadium
i am desperate to
shake this off, the
bragging rights
scrawled over
my shoulders
i do not want
to be spun on
a pedestal before
your family--what
kind of infamy
gently unwrap me
and hold me in your
palms, i am more
injured bird than
vince lobardi trophy.

breathe a little
with me,
open up that chest
a bit, you have time
but not for this,
i can see you coming
back, a ways out
around the bend
with that pretty smile
I've missed,
an' no one out there
as happy to see you
as me, your arms
are leanin' up
a few weeks
done you real good,
so keep walking
keeping on coming
i've been scared to
have you back under
this roof but you never
did care much for theatrics
come home brooke,
come home.

the problem is i know
you so much better,
you've got a lot of
that real hurt, with a
ghost swimming around
in a shell,

with a mama you love
'cause she gave you that life
and played in the mud, gave
you the ol' one-two when it
called for it, (or when you didn't)
and a daddy who never had to
say much which is where you
got that hint of altruism,

but you still found yourself
raising a brother, lookin' out
protecting the property,
growing up too fast with
no one understanding,
taught to rely on a good
team member or a good
fight, the good fight,

but you've got more than
a pass waiting on you, more
than pretty girls at bars, crashes
on bikes, nights full of stars,
all those ways your mom didn't
pull through or pull in, and i hope
you find them, i hope you find all of them
every good and pure thing out in the day
and i hope whatever's in your heart gets a
good chance to breathe and that  no
one find you in your time of change,
just after when you're healed up
and pretty,
not that you haven't been

'cause you are kinda pretty.

oh well he's
still looking for his Mary
dressed in black, a vice
for him (or a grip)
with smoke curling
out of her ears, ready
to take him away, he ain't
no devil but he sure as hell
looking for the woman herself
with hips swinging always loaded
made fresh in the Rye factories
a tall glass but she always empty
he's lookin' for them girls to fill,
that have followed him 'round
since 2010--least that's what she said
the ground is hard, packed and trodden
but that's where she is, curled up in
florals and denim, she still
burnt as the core of a fire
and they always go out
you've seen it, woken
up in the morning
with crumpled tin
buried in white ash
and wood so black
it just crumbles.

how can
they call
it special

when just any
girl will do?

i see now how
people are drugs,
but not quite how they
bring out the worst--

and i only have so much
to say about my own choices
just that you can board the
wrong boat and it will take
you, will
take you.

if I could pin point the exact moment
it would be at Louies, the night I chased
your headlights up Frazier, before it turns
into a county road, blinking rapidly
as if that could clear the fuzz,
and you passed a little suburban
going 70 past high meadows--
these are the secrets I hide
the first time being so
drunk the juke box
was kaleidscoping
in and out, and all
I could focus on was
your thin frame across
the room, pool cue in hand
mouthing I love you

oh, but did you?
I think i associated
a few too many with
you coming back, or
having you, but you
were no object, and
I was only confusing--
washing you up on
shore and pulling you
back down deep,

oh, but did you?
I was not doing the opposite, but
the wrong crowd found me in
my weakness, and took me in
as miserable people do--
but if it amounts to
anything I have found
my way to the door
and opened it the
way i do best,

for leaving.