Your voice is ragged from all the singing
Screaming empty prayers at the ceiling
Its a raspy thing thats course and thick
But flows like water over me
Like your hands
Who have done too much hitting
Too much running
Too much bouncing off walls
To ever be innocent

Your voice holds a note of constant misery in it
Like the eyes of bereaved parents
Or the voice of people suffering from chronic back pain
Neck pain
Leg pain

Its the sound of a thousand setting suns
All at once
Different colors
You’ve done too much singing boy
Too much running, partying, working playing
Too much living boy
Too much livin’

Your voice has a hint of irritability in it
Something dark in colour
thick like syrup
sour like lemons
Your voice has a taste of bitterness in it
Man-child boy, farmer kid
A sense of stability
Certainty about it
Its a statement to all of the things you have lost

And hey you're still livin'

July 29, 1976*

Eighteen, skinny
as a whip, all curving bones
and freckled knees
Your curled hair, that timid
smile balanced above the
pearls of your jaw

The city is dark at night,
you were never afraid but the stars
were diamond-sharp that night
and you stopped, shivering in the cold

I can hear your last words
frozen on your tongue,
"Now, who the hell is this" -
your hand on your hip
voice a knife

A bullet to your chest
breaks the silence, folding
yourself in half, a paper crane
crumpled on the pavement

The papers said you were killed
instantly; I don't think you were
I think you knew, a bullet buried
in your best friend's thigh -
did she watch you die?

The petals in your hair,
they've fallen, years ago
This woman lying here,
the scarred pavement of a
New York City street -

She is someone else, not
the starling you were
in your father's eyes
Wings outstretched on
a fire escape, waiting
for a breeze to pull you
over the edge

That quiet contentment of knowing you're going somewhere,
Sitting, waiting, watching, wondering.
Traveling fulfills that rambling desire
Needing to leave and wanting to go
Just to be somewhere else and away
Free.
Others sit idle counting the minutes
I sit happy counting the miles
Going, Going, Going,
The In-between – the Non-places
Thats home to me
Wanderlust – traveling free
Going to where you're supposed to be.
Strange faces in new places
This is home to me.
Miles away with a bag on my back,
Anything to wander free
Far from the mundane every day
The waiting, the journey, the getting there,
Its what makes it worth it to me.

I could never paint
your eyes right,
sticky drops of green
plastered among
the warmest browns
Your river's light lost
in the reeds

The walls of our house
stir and shake, children's
fingers poking in between
window frames, pushing
skeletons through spaces
in the screen -

They pulse there, hot
and wet like grass outside
on the lawn, my breath
catches when I think of them,
lungs trampled into the carpet
Our youth this yellow honeyed
liquid decomposing in the sun

Someday we'll sit, together,
and remember them
as they pass - today is not that day
Winds bluster through the cracks
and my highest clouds melt
with the fog

Deep love shoved
as food into the garbage,
moving bright under the grime

Yearning to be seen for
what it was,
kaleidoscope heart
shifting
until it found
what you were looking for

Today I realised my purpose of being -
I'm aging and waiting for the end of my living.
As each second passes another is lost,
for losing our seconds is our lives given cost.
You'll never feel, never see, never know this again;
this being now - and now - also then:
This is something we know, but ignored for it hurts.
But we can not forget - in memory it lurks.

Wait, no.
If the seconds are cost then what are we buying?
Is there no return that's not hurting or crying?
Have I forgotten the love, the joy in-between?
For each second pain is there not second dream?
I beg for a new eye, a new world to re-live in,
a new place with new laws and new people to believe in.
In this new world I'd be happy and free,
I'd be loved and love, I'd be lucky... not me.

No, I wouldn't be me, not in this world, anyway.
I'd be banished and gone, no new people, no betray.
I've ruined a world, but only the one,
or I've ruined my world, destroyed all the fun.
There's no more sins for me to adore,
they've all been spent leaving brilliant sore.
See I'm aging and waiting, and hurting and crying,
with the seconds I'm spending it must be this that I'm buying.
A blessèd reality, a trap painted gold,
manufactured promises with chances we've sold.
Sold for the seconds that I mentioned before,
the seconds we're spending on that brilliant sore.

*(Oh I really shouldn't think, I think way too much,
I see what this is, the world and the such.
Some people label it, call it depression,
I call it truth, just a big painful lesson.)

The peaks in your voice crumble and shake
as you laugh
Rocks tumbling down the cliff,
boulders crash into the sea

This mountain life is tracked in your veins,
the cracks and breaks
shattering against me
in the rough hold of your arms

I never knew someone so holy
Your eyes held up to the sky, watching
the snow on the mountaintops,
whispering their names in the sunrise

And when morning comes, your lips
crack open, that precious smile
breaking free
from the traps you've held it under

I breathe in the years, wish
my mountain veins would peak like yours
Swallowing bruises under layers of skin
rocks settling in my blood, magma melting hot

Your dusty eyes my compass, I've come home.

Pay attention,
she said, to these good hands
you're inside.
To the air outside, as it freezes
through your bones.
Pay attention to the names
of everyone you've ever loved, and
pay attention to the way they sound today,
the way they never will again.
Pay attention when you speak.
Your words are muted, stilted, muddy,
your clarity is gone. Pay attention
to this paper cup, the champagne bubbling
within. The sparkles in your eyes are spots,
there's a surgery for that. Pay attention to me,
pay attention to my lips, these unholy things
you love. Know what you love, love what you love.
Pay attention to the clock, remember to wake up
when you have to. Get to work on time. Then come back
home, and I'll make you dinner, and we can watch television
like we used to. Pay attention, and maybe we can fix these spaces
in your bones. Pay attention, and maybe you'll let me hold you
on this windowsill in the dark, the rooftops shining with moonlight.
Maybe this time, you'll look at me when I speak. Pay attention.
And maybe things will go back to the way they were.

Staring into the puddle
like it might open up, a portal,
and let him in,
falling through the sky.

My tongue is cold against my teeth
and I tell him not to think too deep,
not to feel so much, just for a second.

He is the ivy crawling up the bricks.
He is the patterns in the dust, outlining
stories against the pavement, scattering in the breeze.
He is too much a man for me, and still never quite enough.

The sawdust in his hair clings too tight,
and when I get the call someday --
the one that will tell me if I should have believed him,
the one that will fix everything and tear it all apart,

I will remember his mouth.
The parting of lips and then the teeth,
stark white against the black.