In the past three years
I have lived and relived
My greatest pleasures
And my greatest fears

I wake up every morning bored and lonely
It’s boredom mostly
The monster under the bed.

If I don’t see it, can it see me?
Indubitably.

Compulsive eater with a compulsive lack of passion.
Rounder in my face and middle is going out of fashion

The commitment to a bachelor’s degree
Is taking more than they think out of me.
On a tightrope with more debt and less stability.

More freedom plus less curfew
Just keeps on adding up to

Plenty-more-where-that-came-from *****
And the In-debt-till-I’m-forty, blues

I still have my house key in my right coat pocket
Where it won’t get lost
Where I’ll always find it.

This town is getting smaller and more rotten
Everybody remembers me for the times that I’ve forgotten

I tell myself all the time
That it’s just the warning sign
And I’ll learn
And I’ll be fine

In the first few weeks, just like every other time
Life has become a delayed train ride

Someday I believe that I’ll get where I’m going
Without anyone watching
Without anyone knowing

But It’s going to take a long silent wait
Accepting all of my moral exceptions
That have come to be my mistakes

I can’t clean them up but I’ll wash them away

Stop living in the middle.
Making up my mind.

Instead fighting sleep
Worried that I’ll be a sheep.

But I’ll count them anyway.
I’ll keep counting them anyway.

I’ve been letting the weather be my liaison.
I can’t look at you,
That’s my reason.

Windy autumn guard-dogs my fears
Whistles and whips words
Right past your cold ears.

We harvest our regrets before the midnight frost.
They thicken with the air
to freeze the pieces that we lost.

Frozen long enough to forget the trouble.
Choreographed in time
Cut into double.

Her hardest hue remembers the rest.
Ice thaws and so do we.
Subside, and try to do what’s best.

A new spring-clean
forgives the light that we’ve missed.
Even beige walls gleam.

Cicadas and stillness, and summer rain
harmonize with the crackling fires
and night train.

Stronger I’ve called it
to let the tides of change
drown what’s around it

and let “the way things are” surround it
but there’s nothing cookie-cutter
about it.

Like dust left in a corner just to settle there
a dear friend left unswept
flavors stagnant air.