One morning I'll wake and I won't feel it anymore

One morning
You'll wake early, 4am,
Rub the sleep out of your eyes
and see things a new way

You will then:
1. Shower
2. Make toast
3. Pack everything you can fit into your Mazda
4. Take the scenic route to 95 North
5. Head (anywhere)home?

   You almost hit him as you back out of your parking space
    He tells you that you are a light in the dark  
    It's taken 24 years but you finally let your guard down

By 10am he's in the midst of most of the unpacking while you play with his dog, Ringo

            One morning I'll know your not leaving the Sunshine State
             I'll wake a bit too early that morning and the feeling will be gone

Fear and Loathing in Ocean City

Everyday that goes by
Our bond becomes little more than a time of day,
Dust on a window sill,
A lightning bug in a mason jar

I know that nothing can be permanent
Change cannot scare a man that has no constant
But recently the thought occurred to me that you keep going about your business
When the clock strikes that hour,
That you brush the thought of me aside as if cleaning me out,
That you are glad that light in the jar has gone dim

So I find myself waiting on you like a train that will never come
And I ask about you now and again
How are you? Are you happy? Do you have a new light?
At this point I've realized I could say anything and you'd pay me no mind
People tell me that perhaps you can't deal with the thought of me emotionally
That I hurt you
Cut you and whenever I open my mouth I'm pouring salt into to a cavernous wound

The other day a close friend told me something different
She doesn't respond to you because she doesn't care about you. Move on

You've gone from crutch
to love
to desire
to memory

She doesn't care. Move on

That's a change that would put fear into even the most roving of nomads

If I never were to see you again
You'd join an ever- growing line of women
Who tell themselves they never heard my name before

Women I gave a piece of myself to
A kiss on the forehead and spine
A squeeze of the hand
A look that says "I only feel safe in my own skin, when yours is touching mine."

Maybe those looks are the problem
Maybe the kisses are smothering
I might be throwing up red flags to everyone

   Swap spit with him and he will be upside down in love with you
   Swap any other body-fluid and you might have to change your Locks
                            Phone number
                                    Point of view
But it's not that
I never set out to ruin anyone's day
Or scare them into thinking i'm Patrick Bateman

It's just when I share these looks, kisses, fluids
More often than not, even if it was some kind of
Mistake amongst random strangers/lovers
I'm giving a piece of me to have
Marked FRAGILE: THIS END UP

Label me transparent and then see right through me
When I find myself giving away chunks of my person
I can't seem to tell where love and blood
Begins
and
Ends.

Casey and I look out over water
Clear and black as oil

The beach is narrow and flooded
On one side by high- tide
On the other with happy people

The sky is alive with a swollen, blood-orange- for- a- moon
Ready to burst over the ocean
There are fireworks anywhere you turn
To the South, over the water, rogue firecrackers on beach
and bursts of them above Atlantic City
Which meld with the casinos to form a near- solid pulse of light

"How can things be any better than this?"  Casey asks

My memory wanders out onto the sable, rolling  surf



I Think of the taste of salt on your skin


The wave your hair would get
When dried in the sun after you swam



How you woke in a sweat, rambling about collecting sea shells
That night you came to care for me a year ago




A cherry bomb nearly explodes at my feet
A few snickers from some small kids wearing stars and stripes
I look at Casey's face
Contorted and animated
By the flashes of the fireworks

"It couldn't get better. You're right."

I strip down piece by piece to my shorts
I ask Alex to hold my valuables (gold watch, cellular matrix, gum)
                 Run in the water and think about the concept of value
                                                And about mistakes

I don't have it in me to be your friend
because losing a friend is worse than just someone in the back seat of a cab or sprawled out on a towel on the beach at night

besides, why wouldn't you leave? Go to London with her, with him, with her, with them

You and him and her and they and they tell me to have goals. You ask about dreams.
I seldom get asked questions
"Im paralyzed by everything that I touch or that touches me."
I tell everyone else I want to be in the "non-profit sector"

I think about renting  a small room.
Working a night shift or not working.
Watching sun pour in the window with a saffron glow
Watering the plants on my small sill(s) to help them grow.

I rarely think much at all

I wasn't wrong the other night, to say, that you always **** me over.

You weren't off-base to say I'll never be happy

"We work with the substantial,
but the emptiness is what we use."


If all things were equal it plays out like this:

A rainy day and we're at the Rose Garden
Your father bought the seats. He enjoys that I like sports so much,
Takes him back to a simpler time when he played in a gym similar to this
Where he met your mother
You're in black and it has nothing
to do with the team colors
You say it's a phase and I believe it

We scale Nanda Devi and you look the part of the mountain's name
You look the way you did on the afternoon I met you.
I wonder where the levee is this time
Above the clouds we are naked to the sun and the sky,
naked and raw to each other
and it feels whole and honest

Feverish night in a dive bar in La Paz
there are skulls on the wall
I think to what end
Men and women crowd the floor
The band is hitting its stride after a marathon set  
We dance until we are both in many different places
Some of which involve the person we are dancing with
Sometimes we are alone in front of a mirror
I've never had to help you stand at the end of the night
You never have to ask me to go outside

Intertwined tightly on a twin bed, maybe for the night
A train eats up track in the distance.
We remember now when we shared a room.
(Tops of two bunk-beds, as if lying on two different shores)
Arms around you and I forget the concept of possession

Steady rains come down today
It will make everything grow
They say
Inside I'm feeling shrunken and with thirst
Who is they anyway?

I want to get outside
Passed the school-girls playing footy
I wish I was knocking it around
In a driving rain somewhere

I don't leave because I'm afraid of the world
Afraid to see me this way

I'm no longer a cog
I'm a plant
I watch and I wait  
For what?
How can we ever know?
I take in just enough. I give out just as much.
When people I live with come back into our space
They are met with a hot meal

This much I can do

When I View myself
I'm not sure if I've changed  more in the fact that I'm like a child inside now
or that I'm starting to look like an older man
or both

I feel different but not quiet enough
Like dough not fully baked
Perhaps I've been in the oven too long though

I feel scared and scarred in a way I never thought possible even in dreams

And then I think of the tree in Brooklyn and how it stands
but stands alone

I know all of this is nothing
All of it esoteric and dramatic because
I breath air and eat,
Bask in the glow of the sun
And pollinate sometimes

Steady rains come down today
It will make everything grow they say