I sometimes think of growing up
Waking early and brewing cheap coffee
Pouring it in the same old half washed cup
Exchange a cold shower for a couple bucks
Trade happiness for a crooked smile
I could walk to work, but I think I will drive instead
Traffic is soothing
Job security
Misery becomes my amusement
Local radio 8am
Woman won a thousand medallions
Two burnt down houses
Stop short, *******
Now the coffee is on my trousers
Half past nine
Parking lot is packed
Six block walk and twenty minutes of life I will never get back
Hey look its Tim
Tim is divorced with two kids
Grown up stuff I guess
I’ll just follow him in

this morning
as i collect the thoughts
we scattered late last night,
i wonder, or perhaps i start to doubt:
why do we always fight?
when did our light—
go out.

the house sits quiet as you sleep,
these days, we're silent even when we shout,
but we had times
of such uncommon clarity—

i weep,
upward following the sweep
of steam rising from my cup of tea,
our love dispersing

childhood ends not with a celebration
but by the sound of an alarm clock,
with clothes laid out for you
not by your mother on your bed but on the sidewalk
by the governor / engines idling at red lights,
they never change, we never doubt,
we've been dying here for years,
isn't it strange that nobody ever gets out?
we remain in obedient slow pursuit,
we zombies of the morning commute,
we wageheads, we employable undead,
we were people once,
we listened to what the grown-ups said

My natural instinct in
this flesh wrapped soul,
is to anestasize the
pain and ugliness of life.
Blackout the brutality and
cruelty in the world.
Close my eyes with *****,
drugs, ***, anything to
stop the oozing pain.

And then it dawned on me,
like the dew soaked morning,
opposite action is required.
Walk through the
pain with eyes wide open.
Let love and YHWH hold my
hand.
Sober, head held high.
Call me sentimental and foolish,
but I'm a real *******.

I'm going to embrace the beauty.
It is all around me.
It's painted in the
sunset of the robin's breast.
It's in the
sublime melody of
the starry night.
It's written in the
faces of all my brothers and
sisters in their pain and
struggles.

Love is the answer to
every question;
I have to die to grow;
like a seed, a cell,
a fractured heart.
Bring it On Life!
If you knock me down,
I'm getting back up.
I'm resilient, and
no longer afraid.
Yes, this world can be
brutal, and we often
lose the ones we love,
but I'm choosing
today, at this moment, to
take this wild ride called
life, and live it, and
love every second I have
left.

Then, I can leave victorious.
What the ****?
Everybody wants to win.

The conversation lasted into the
long tooth hours of the night.
She read her textbooks and then heard a mouse with its tail barely caught in a glue trap. It squealed as if it were dying. In my heart I believed it was savable. In the agony I imagined him dreaming of fields and insects and seeds.
She had these cold gray eyes.
In one quick movement, she took off
one of her clodhoppers and smashed its brains out. She cleaned her shoe with a tissue, she said, I neither hate the mouse nor love it, it's just a thing.  At that moment I was pretty sure she was psychotic.
We're both drunk, I kept watching her *** in that tight  black dress.
She said in a very automated voice, I suppose you want to **** me now and then slithered out of the dress.
***** is *****
But I couldn't do it. I told her to put her clothes back on and not **** anything on the way out.