How do you think
it feels to be
poor and insane,
looking for
doorways to sleep
in, to creep in out
from the rain?

As a little boy,
I used to fish in
a small quiet
pond on the west
side of town,
catching bluegills in
the young afternoon sun;
sleepy neighborhood,
low crime, safe and serene.
I owned those
autumn days long
ago, bought cheap; the price
of a dozen night crawlers,
and a bobber.

At thirty nine years old,
one October
afternoon, I stumbled
back to my own little
Walden.
Not much had
changed, the old
wooden steps on the
east side of the
pond were still
there. I crawled
under them, ******
myself and passed out,
dreaming of
bluegills, cattails
and young easy autumn
days.

That first morning swig washes
away the stain on the inside;
the parade of hearses and the
lovers lost to the carnival of life.
A few more swallows and
memory becomes nebulous.
Cumulus clouds form in
the brain, and the thoughts
float by, all fluffy, like cotton candy,
and fun-house safe.
In this twisted mirror
I see the tired eyes of
a clown who's not funny anymore;
just a ragged costume and a
jagged soul that is hungry for
sleep and dreams, a moments reprieve.

The feet are the
soul of the shoes.
And without the
feet, the shoes are
an empty body,
vacant vessels that
sit in the corner,
quiet as a tombstone,
forgotten, and curled at
the toes, flowers and
grass smashed into
the tread.
The tan leather is
baked brown from the
sun, tired and cracked from
the long lonely
miles of wandering.
Finally, the journey
is done.

Deliciously loving you,
yet, I'm the
one that got ate up
and spit out.
So I lie on
an empty beach
like a broken sea shell,
while the lonely rain
pounds the sand.

I fell in love with a dream,
and then I woke up.
It felt like a gut punch.
I wanted so badly for
the dream to be real,
but it wasn't.

The antonym for
dream is
reality.
And the reality
was
that she could
never love me
like I loved her.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.