I am mostly brown or black or reddish
An amalgamation
So when the May- sun magnifies off my sweat-beaded skin
It just makes my cheek- bones a bit pink

There are only so many ways one can be reminded they are still living
There are only so many phrases to let the audience (reader) know that I am wilting

To look to the future is more than just waiting on something speculative
If it is not a wasteland it is something so vague and sleek and mod that a person like me falls right off
Drifting between the fruitless present

And you walking down Nassau Street. The trees were blooming. I followed and snapped pictures with a camera.
Your hair was long and you were taller than most everyone else.

She Just didn't love the thought of hands felt on thoughts held old in time

And who knows the kind of feeling the heart wants

When the last words and last breath comes through heavy lungs

Eyes gathered up and to the left

They forget the world

But they are burning to talk and tell of what they saw
next

It's said if you get hit by a High -speed train
The body-bag needed to house your remains is no bigger than the one needed to fit your sandwich in at lunch

As I pass Brielle and South Amboy, Perth Amboy and Secaucus at 80 mph
I stare out into the swamps festering with industrial run-off
And the bombed- out buildings of once thriving towns
I get the feeling that I want to return to the earth

People tell me a lot of things
They don't ask much
They tell me I can be successful at anything I choose
They throw around words like charismatic and love and passionate
They tell me that I have the mark of Cain
They fail to realize
Charisma is for the talentless
Passion is blood on your hands at the end of the day
And love is blood and war and a dark place and feeling that keeps you in bed

Some call this depression
But to me it's  seeing my world as it is
Not as it might be

I tell anyone who will listen
I can't get over you
Guess I'm hoping for one final piece of sage advice
But the blind are the blind for some reason or other
And I can't look at myself in
The mirror these days

I've never made a habit of Walking on the tracks
It's not that I want to be in a zip-lock body-bag but I don't own a gun
I've smoked enough *** for five lifetimes
And I don't care that I have never seen the Pacific
Water is just water anyway Right?

Hope, at times for them
Is a once-great passenger ship
Breeched and sinking fast

This vessel is one that sees the Mississippi,
Floats on it for a brief period
But has no idea that it's being dominated
By the mighty, muddy beast

In these instances responsibility
Becomes government reports that are long,
Arduous and too thick to be stapled

"Many people will die." they say,
"200,000 people will be displaced."
This incites the mantra,
Home is where the water is not

The ship that was a home is made of steel
Neither black nor white
Its grey, so grey that it is without true color
It finds itself trapped in the womb of the dense, delta mud

The people;
The brave, the bold, the idiots, waiting for their ship to come
Sit on top of their roofs,
Now islands where they can soak up Indian Summer Sun
For the abandoned, perseverance is a suntan

"THE WATER IS RISING PLEAS…"

Words spray-painted white on black shingles
The rescuers, government, American people
Are suddenly illiterate

Federal law states:
Energy (money) cannot be created
Nor destroyed
But the ship is gone,
The people are in watery graves
The City is a large crescent with greedy bites taken out of it

6 years later the laws of the universe are disbanded
Ferrel dogs rule the day
And love is never having to say you care

I woke up to you buzzing about the flowers today
I guess I won't see you again till' April or even May

I hope you make it
I hope you'll know
To show up again
When the flowers start to grow

Maybe when the lilacs bloom again
You'll be working in the garden by the gate
Maybe not you,
Something like you, reincarnate

All this worry and indecision
Must show you that I don't know
up from down
Nor the changing of seasons

People tell me  
I came pretty close to dying

Now I just sit and think about why I'm
alive anyway

I can't think of a thing to do during the day
but then again maybe I'm not trying

I've been seeing time as
A strange, madras garment
Memories, strewn together in a sloppy, random, make-shift way

At their most detailed
They are incidents given a slot on the
nightly news
But we can never be there again
whether we are the ones falling from the burning building,
being interviewed about it
or glued to the couch watching

Everything, just snippets on the cutting- room floor,
Melting frost on a window
"I love you" written in the middle
Something overheard in a smokers' annex
A person you bump into on the L
That sweater you had to have but lost at the 92nd Street Y
A flash in a pan
A view from the top

Our lives are abridged versions of some greater path, that only those who walk truly upright are unlucky enough to perceive

She* only calls because we are both night owls

S h e only calls when she's alone and feeling shallow

She never calls
Writes me every once in a while
"I'm gonna wander
I'm asking you to follow…"