Social Network, droll and at times informative: keeping me in tune with out of tune people. Except, this time you did something different. This time you took a life from my web of friends a trend of late: One loss to cancer, one to a fatal accident, another to pneumonia, and the rest deceased from overdoses. It’s been so many that the track marks are beginning to show across my veiny webs, long black thin trails leading to round puncture wounds where the touch of cold steel kissed your skin, stroked your hair back, and slowly laid you to bed exactly where you sat. This network doesn't show me the nights you cry curled in the corner, it doesn't reveal the moment when the ocean came crashing into the Steel Pier you are, tearing away lumps of mangled frame work from beneath, soaking brine and rattling support beams that you depend on. A smile instead manages to froth along the pages scrolled like white curled lapping shorelines pushing foam further up the sandy coast with each eroding wave.  Now I stand in the wave of your wake; among seagulls flapping their dense thoughts and cretinous like minds and memories each vouching for the validity of their affirmations about the soul whose body is now center stage like a porcelain doll on a shelf to be displayed and examined exposed to all with each and every flaw highlighted so that they can have a chance at reciting her history, origins, funny moments, and fatal mistakes. The difference here is that there is no makers mark; there is no branded tag, no little black book of logs from which we can pull and decipher or recall every waking moment of your life. The reality is that for those of us who lost touch with you all that we know now is only history or what we thought we knew. It’s such *******, I’m not a historian, I really was your friend back then, but because of that I don’t remember ****, just the frame of the picture within, the shell of who you were, of what we did. I can tell you it was fun: the Bacardi filled Gatorade bottles, the sound of your laughter diluted in an intoxicating environment of rollerblades on the rink-floor, contemporary music and house beats reverberating against the circling congregation of equally happy and inebriated teenage youths. But how could I ever describe you today, who you were when you passed. That is not something I can claim as some of these birds squawk. Your social posts were a false facade. Obviously there was something I missed, what was it. Was it so subtle? So much like a light breeze fluttering at the thin frayed thread of a seam that I could have seen but didn't care enough to realize it was there. Were you just a tumbling leaf among a forest of fresh autumn arrivals lost in the vastness, one among millions? It pains me to admit that as much as I would have liked to have been a friend to you during your dark times, I too was in a dark place of my own and in turn was deaf and blind to the billowing smoke signals that tried to underline and emphasize the sorry plights of others. I wish you could have told your story yourself, could have left a memoir of the ****** up thoughts that zipped through behind your eyes while you filtered the layers of **** served in white paper bags that this world seems to dish up like a fast food chain of heartbreak and deep ruts, while every so often rewarding us with a mistakenly placed toy or salad to “make up” for the rest of the empty calories served. I've tried so long to be an optimist, to look at the glass half full, but that glass is shattered on the floor right now, I broke it. My life hasn't been easy, not many people’s lives are and that’s life, I understand that much. If it isn't raining it’s snowing, if it isn't snowing it’s hailing, and if there isn't any precipitation it’s either hot or cold as hell and you have to fight through it to make it to the next day. I’m taking the shoes I wear now off so I can step on that pile of excrement they call a glass half full, half empty. Give me the pain, it hurts and the tears burn as they roll down my cheeks while I stare at this half a cent card with your face on it and some mass produced poem on the back listening to the ******* eulogy mutterings of everyone around me, but I want that. I would take this shuttering pain, this volcano of discharged emotions erupting from the shaking core of my body. I would take it any day over the numbness that is ******. Wasn't your child a life raft? Wasn't he the duck it or **** it of your life? Had you not a fiancé to whom which you could have rested your beaten structure on? Did you not have an array of support, a field of pile driven beams to share the weight in it all? Or was it a mistake? Was it a fault of somebody else that provided you with the birthday batch of ******? When you blew out the candles and smiled behind the thin line of adumbrating smoke that sketched out the soul behind your eyes did you think to yourself, today will be the celebration and cessation of my birthday; a bitter sweet memory for all who know me: on this day she was both born and deceased. Today she began to live and learned of death. I will never have the answers for the many who continue to fade into the credits of their dismal painful lives, but I will never stop trying to understand and I will never learn to forget or let go. This blood in my veins detest the cold steel rush that so many of you have tasted, that so many of you ran to when no one was listening, when no one was looking, when no one could comprehend you anymore and the only languages you spoke were procured from endless nights on the cushioned wooden floor as you drifted off among the silver linen clouds, as you left this body on earth and spoke with angels perched over the smoke stack that overlooked the back-lit-keyboard of lights that was your city, your town, your home while the strand of rubber slowly fell from your arm. We couldn't hear you, and those **** angels seem to weave such a pretty tale sometimes when you forget that you are speaking to your own deceitful mind. I will learn that language, I will look for those signs, I will place a candle on the sill beckoning every friend of mine to come and share with me in person. Let me reach into that white bag and see what is inside, I’ll eat whatever you pull out whether they are empty calories or not, preservative filled fries cold or hot. You are my friends and Social Networks are a lie, just a wall to hide behind, an occasionally droll and informative medium, until you die and then there is nothing left to pretend to say or be.

I am angry, but am not sure if I have a right to be. Between all or rather among all the other emotions I am feeling it is hard to discern and clarify the balance and reasons for my anger. Naturally I want what is best for you, that in itself is a conundrum. Is having what you want best? Or do I actually believe that what I have to offer can ultimately elate you to a higher level of happiness than that of your current situation? Another question comes to light now and that is, is what you currently want what you actually want, or is it merely that it was something which at first appeared to be and has over time slowly dissolved into something far less, into something you thought you had wanted but now see that in it's current form, really is not?
        Suppose one of these speculations takes a solid form and settles as the true idea, then in what way could any of this upset me enough to reveal itself as anger in my mind? Primarily, it would seem my own jealousy or want of you could be a proprietary perpetrator in this matter, but I am sure that the true identity of this perplexed feeling runs much wilder and entangled with a slue of uprooted inner conflicts. So then, what are they? As I reflect on the many faces of this anger, the feeling of pain surfaces, but not the kind you feel for yourself, rather it's more of the selfless type. I am, by all means, a bystander on looking the trials and troubles that lay ridden in your path. I see you struggle to hold on and in turn attempt to stay as composed as a rigid coastline baring the constant battery of each careless and possibly calculated undulation of every crashing wave which from where I stand rises more often than not than the natural course of a waxing and waning tide. And it's as if from a distance I can see and hear bits and pieces of you crumble and crash, slowly receding into the horizon with each unrelenting wave.      
        At times finding myself diving into the chaotic and churning crush of waves to gather and salvage whatever I can mange to and still keep myself afloat so that when the tides recede I, with safe passage, climb ashore to safely return to you whatever it is I managed to cradle from the depths. As I take those sandy steps I now understand the reason for my anger, if but only for a portion of it. Watching as I do from my ship, it hurts to see the waves crash, to see something so paramount in beauty, in life be so carelessly attended to. Yet, the fault is not but of one, but of two. It can hardly be helped, you are who you are, and the beauty in you is as with most, your flaw. The core of you, revealed more and more with each crashing wave, smells damp and sweet of hope. Such a hopeful being, that even after the tempest has risen a tsunami to thunder coldly on your very shores, you merely wince and hope that just maybe a windless day will break through to passing clouds to ease each tide to a lapping kiss upon your now jagged shores that in time, piece by piece, return to you what is rightfully yours.
        Throughout all this though I bare a different caliber of weather, one which strikes at my splintered ship with jagged volts of lightening, searing all aboard until your gentle rain turns its pulsing red embers into a faded glow slowly giving way to smoke and ashes. I watch from this distance angry at everything on this side of the world. Anger towards the carelessness, towards the helplessness, at the one flaw that you and I share, at knowing my selfishness in it all, toward the thought of walking on your shores but only quietly as not to summon another unwelcome tide, and finally and most perplexing of all...for being angry at all. It's what upsets me the most, that I'm even angry. Yet, I am as helpless against it as we are with the sunset of hope we both hold so close to sight and mind, for you, hope of a sleeping tempest and in return a more attentive life by the ocean, and for me, the hope of one day being able to cast my anchor down into the depths so that I may enjoy the warmth of your sand, cool nights against your moonlit caves heated by the warmth of your heart, your hope, and to above all tenderly enjoy and return to your ever-reaching shores of love all that it gives and deserves.
        But at times I see that this endless commotion disorients even the strongest of shores and that in it all , there is no surprise that a mere ship in an open sea can seem to be anything more than a flick of candlelight alongside the heat of a chaotic wild fire. Despite this pulsing surge of discouragement,I angrily, hopefully, caringly, and thoughtfully will continue to cast my net to show you that though right now I quietly wisp each flickering dance of summer light, that I too am relentless in my will, but for a different reason. I see now, that my anger is acceptable because above all else,I am your friend and wish for you only the best, for what would make you happiest. And that despite my wants, yours will always come first, whatever they be or you may think they be. My ship will sail alongside you no matter your choice, and if ever the day comes when I walk up on your shores with candle in hand, you need but kiss the tender tendrilous flame I carry to awaken its unconditional and fervent inferno that lies patiently inside, waiting.
Angrily, your loving friend

The night was comfortable,
branches lightly choreographed a dramatic reaction
to the conversation beneath…
spoken words breach the midnight hour by 2,
and words are in place of sleep.
They speak,
but still pretend to have something worth to keep
In silence now, no reaction.
Walls and thoughts collide
and they see the infraction.
In a quick succession of contact,
blood boils
intuition becomes submissive.
With the steam of these midnight hours
rises away
the taboos of love and loyalty,
as intoxication devours
any human decency.
Breathing softly now;
with eyes that berate the truth
hiding behind the midnight-hour lies,
they instigate innocent massage wars
desperately wanting
neither knowing
how they plunge underneath
these unbreakable ties.
Now speechless
they grasp one another
speaking devilishly with eyes
and even louder
with the toils of their hands.
Why do you run from surreptitious lies
and hide behind your eyes?
Say this is how you feel for one thing
then when it’s around
wear a disguise?
Helpless you act
toward desires that you conspire to
You lit the match
and now you must put out the fire.

The soft whirling hum of a fan works its way from one corner of the room to the next. I succumb, defeated, deflated, shoulders slouched over, to passing wafts of air that briefly foam over the drooped skin of my emotionless face. Its touch invigorates the senses, momentarily reminding me to take in a breath of the foul and arid air that lingers lifelessly in this second story bedroom. As a sliver of light makes its way slowly up my chest and falls back to its original place, a muffled sound of pain boils over slowly softly searing through my torpid ears. Meanwhile, transparent tendrilous hands of memories begin to curl through my mind appearing and quickly vanishing like steam before I can grasp the true gravity of their presence.
        It must be ninety seven degrees in here. A drop falls from my face onto the back of my clenched hand and for a moment the fan is at it again pulling my head with it from side to side. Oscillating, it dictates a hypnotic lullaby, an ***** riddled rhythm sanding away at my rigid thoughts. Another drop falls toward my wrists driving me away from the blissful moment. Then losing its grip a metallic clang reverberates throughout the room as the object leaves my hand and finds the old wooden floor. Looking back at my hand I see where the two drops had fallen, now glistening in the dimly lit room. Were those tears? When I direct my sight down to meet with whatever had fallen a rush of blinding pain jaggedly inhibits my vision with a flaming wall of white instinctively calling my eyelashes into the backs of my eyelids painfully. My voice cracks and I hear the same singe of grief from earlier reflect ballistically throughout the room and into the hallway where ghosts gargle back an echo of my anguished voice. Am I hurt?
        Afraid now of what I may have done,I cautiously work my foot away from the chair and navigate it across the floor until it hits the handle of something sending it spinning around. Reaching down, the once trance like hum of the fan falls deaf and gives way to a steady beat of drips that are accompanied by an ever increasing tightening of my chest. When I reunite with the object I had dropped the image of blood and steel mesh a murderous hue onto my fingers as I fumble to recover it. Realizing what has happened my mind fizzles and pops with panic and I begin to beg for respite, for a chance to revisit the moment before I had slit open both wrists. Cold anguish flushes the heat from the room and out into the hall as the dam of reality breaks and in with it a torrent of emotions and images of the blood peppered hardwood floor that now seeps dauntingly with the new life it is drinking. In desperation my eyes fire off in every direction, finding an open journal perched on a coffee table. The pages are in a fretful fury revealing pages dotted with smudges and smears of bloodied ink and teary paragraphs. Confused, I begin to search the room again and there beneath the window blinds lies the woman I have loved for eleven years lifeless in a pool of blood. Lorraine.
        My head lashes violently backward as if to howl toward the moon of time in an attempt to beckon the falling grains of sand to return to me what had once been mine. A sobering clarity strikes me and I begin to recall the events that led up to this moment. Beginning with a distressed phone call from Lorraine. I came,I told you I would come. And then I recall the strange feeling that scaled through my body slithering down my arm until it coiled its nervous grip around my fingertips as they bit into the **** of our bedroom door. As it creaked open, I had thought, I'm here baby, but you were already gone. Lorraine. It took what felt like hours to reach the part of the journal where you had confessed your infidelity that resulted from the tangles of promises I never kept, from the things I hadn't done, and should have said. Oh Lorraine why didn't you tell me. I would have changed, would have done anything for you. I'm so sorry,I forgot, I hadn't noticed. After seven years I thought you knew, but I will show you now. I will give you my life as you had given yours. I would have forgiven you ******, they were only kisses that meant nothing. Lorraine...and then nothingness.
        A grey shadow in a once enraged Congo of colors and emotions in an otherwise empty room now fill my eyes until I'm choking on its thick smoke and drowning in tears. When one of those tears fall, this time on my bloodied wrists I'm called back to the present moment. Once more the fan catches my sight directing me toward your lifeless body, and then a warm hand from the deepest recesses of my mind begins to cradle my shoulder. Lorraine. My eyes flutter open and find you placing a kiss on my forehead as you say something sweetly into the soft embrace of night. The scent of your hair bristles around my cheek and ears while you caress the short hairs along the ridges of my neck. All I can manage in the moment is to pull you in closer as I whisper "I'm sorry Lorraine. I love you. I can show you." A tear catches a lock of your hair as you kiss my lips and with your love I am drawn back into our bed and out away into sleep.

There is this idea, this feeling you say:
A revelation of profound compassion
Riddled with crippling paramount tribulation
Dribbling with drops of pontification.
Thoughtfully and yet aimlessly kicking
Unctuously vacuous presumptions. Promising,
Eventually, to unveil brick by brick
This facade someday and assure me
The imprisoning edifice, with which you keep
Under lock and key, will be effaced
And naked, soon, someday in front of me.
Yet, here another day passes.
From curbside to manhole, up sidewalks and across gravel grit.
Then a squib toward onlookers window shopping
Glaring down at me as both they and you listen
To my dissonant and hollow caterwaul.
CLING, CLANG, BANG! Look at me I'm just a can!
Crumpled and malleable, a thin sheet of five cent aluminum;
Recyclable, reusable, just a means to a mans end.
Ah! But I am not what you think I am:
Within, a bountiful boisterous bloom, unravels
The arid breath of lies and procrastination you exhume.
Your insipid words fall vapidly in my mind like corroded rust
Gently drifting onto a lapping lake.
They are an erroneous ear infection boring my wits
And dulling my thoughts, a waste of time.
All of it bottled, canned, and manufactured
From within your ******* emporium.
Keep your bricks and mortar, think they retain your unctuous pride
While this time, for once, I kick the can curbside.

I light a cigarette
and take a seat onto a damp lawn chair;
the smoke rises and billows
against the crimson colored shadows
like milk in water
and I watch as it goes up to the sky,
over my house where it leaves me to stare.
My mind is clear, eyes wide open,
ears dilate as cool droplets of water trickle down
with pitter patters through the leafy green stairs.
Some even skip from step to leaf top
as if to jump in a quick hurry toward its destination;
others fall in groups behind me
and morph into four legged creatures
that scatter across the moist ruffles
of old and weathered leaves.
Still, my focus is above.
This silent noise abounds from all directions:
a chirped song of a baby bird to my right,
the concerto soloist of a cricket in hiding below,
the bell whistle croak of a frog somewhere near by.
If my senses were a cup it would surely be full now:
Musky odors from a previous storm
that lie softly on the rich brownish-red soil
would rise like steam from its glass rim.
Inside, shavings of silver would gleam like diamonds in light,
and a cotton soft red wine would fill it
like the night does the sky.
And now as I sip from this natural perfection
I am reminded of your lips sweet interjection.
And as softly as the smoke had risen
toward the shadows of red light,
a kiss was lit and we both began to dance;
around your mouth mine had began to waltz,
slowly to and fro on tip toes being careful not to fall,
but you held me close and grasped me tight
like the red sky does the stars,
and like it and the wine that now fills my cup,
with you in that moment I was awe struck.

Dim the lights
Now light a candle
Walk slowly
The perfect angle
Come close now
Stop and bite your lip
Take your hand
Trace lines by your hip
Yes that's it
In by your navel
Further down
Beneath see-through lace
Touch the crown
Quicken up the pace
Excitement
Come here let me taste
Near the bed
Blankets pushed aside
Sit on top
Put your lips on mine
Push me down
Not yet, take your time
Hands in hair
Love bites on the neck
A whisper
Baby, kiss my back
Flushed cheeks
No moment wasted
Hands grip tight
A thrill untasted
Pull them down
Tell me what to do
Lay back there
So I can taste you
Do not rush
Face pressed against thigh
Go real slow
I want you inside
Hearts beat fast
Quicker, almost wet
Got it right
The first of many sets
Kiss my lips
Anything you say
Can and will
Be used in foreplay

I sometimes wonder how a home can at one moment feel like one and then at the next be completely devoid and decrepit of any homeliness. Is it the emptiness within myself that does this or is it simply just a broken home?
      The window beside me provides my eyes with a somewhat bittersweet beauty that in many ways, reflects what I feel inside: the trees are traced with white linens and shades of red-browns and greens, they seem to mingle well with the thin layers of snow that cover their branches.
       This window, this scenery is my only solace now; my one and only confidant. No one else seems to be around, it’s just me and the few flurries that linger in it’s transparent frame. To the touch, the window is cold, much like the way I feel, with the exception of my hunger. Though, my hunger, a physical matter, a need, I find it’s insatiable appetite extend out to regions far removed from food or water, it begs for mercy, for company, for a quality of care that only a mother or lover could provide, but my life has been bare of all these things just as the trees outside are now without compassion.
      A new beginning is coming and I am leaving what I know behind in hope to find something other than the fruitless views of my second-story solitary. I've heard from writers and actors alike that some people are meant to just live their lives riverside with just their thoughts and land to look after, and that some are meant to be artists…there are others who hear music all their lives and live by it, I on the other hand am one of those people who pray they have the strength to start all over again.
      It’s hard to accept that all I've ever done has not and will not come back around to serve me, if anything at all, my actions have been degenerative. I've seen my life go from light to pitch black darkness. I've walked along righteous paths before and without ever really understanding what kind of mistake I’d be making, have walked right off into the wild brush with no sense of where I was going or how I was getting there. My needs then were simple and selfish. For years drugs, *****, "good times" and women, bars and nightclubs all became more of concern than they should have been; they ****** the life right out of me and to this day those mistakes trail behind me. Even as I look into the mirror they work themselves into my frame of mind as I see my own two eyes glaring back not truly understanding what is standing before it.
     It is a sad and cold story just like this window frame and the frozen rain behind its seemingly placid transparency. Soon though, spring will present a fortuitous rebirth and maybe then, just maybe the view from this window will be more vibrant, fervent, and abounding with both warmth and life.

If I had a chance to see your face, would you disappear without a trace
and turn around and walk away and forget the day we met.
Or would I hold your hand and kiss your lips, would we sit and watch as the sun sets,
and keep you as a memory and live with no regrets.

So if you had a chance to push rewind, would you swear to keep me on your mind
or would you change the course of nights long past, those wishes and midnight kisses.

If you want to be with me tonight, just reach out like the morning light.
And wake me up from this nightmare, so we can live that dream again.

I'm afraid that if I leave you now, then we'll never know how this works out.
And if the sun should rise before this dream ends, we'll never get this chance again.

For midnight kisses.....