I want to be susceptible to the world's most anguishing heartbreak.

I want to know torture outside prisons
and inside the hidden doors in the soul-
the ones where you stash the secrets
the truth
the unadmittable.

Looking across a roomful of people
and only seeing one
only Ever seeing one
and wouldn't it be a fairytale
if he was looking right back.

Because before heartache comes heart great.

No more "do my eyes deceive me?"
No more fantasizing what happens when hands
accidentally graze

There's no mistaking his meaning.

Like Love poems in foreign languages-
you still understand every word
every sentiment
every intention.

And while the world keeps spinning
and the noise gets louder and louder

We will retreat into our own quietness.

Where we will stay for
a long
long

time.

The feeling of inadequacy
The feeling I vowed would not beat me
Now I find I’m a worthy candidate for surgery
Please, please, please, put me to sleep.

I did not know so I did not do
The last thing I needed was anything from you
What has been used can never again be new
What you have taken, you cannot keep.

I guess I can’t trust when you said you’d stay
You came for a bit just to have your way
You spoke in circles; you spoke in grey
For God’s sake say what you mean, not what you think

Waking up mornings, alone in bed
Heavy hands, heavy heart, heavy head
Recalling every comma in every phrase you ever said
Please, please, don’t let me sink

Nothing that began ever did grow
There was never a way I would have ever known
The time has come to end this show
Don’t forget to turn off the lights.


Picked up my bags, walked down the hall
You gotta get up after the fall
It’s glorious for once not feeling so small
Wish me goodbye, not good night.

Man in the long black coat
as ominous as the Dylan song.

Eyes with wild abandon
Hurricanes happenin’ in them eyes.
Flicking a half-smoked cigarette
into a ***** puddle.

Sizzle of extinguishment
the sound of his life.

The dark cobblestone streets quiet, for once.
His cowboy boots keeping him surprisingly warm,
despite the November cold.

He stands at the crossroads.
If the devil came to make a deal,
he wasn’t sure he could say no.

“Lead me not to temptation.”
too late.

Stories of stuff, not people filled his head.
He found people broke more than stuff.
Warranties.
A whole department there to pay you back.

He lit up again.
Surrender to addiction
Just let it take you.

The nicotine rushed to his head and he exhaled,
feeling a little bit better
than 30 seconds ago.

He thought of the girl at the bar.
God, she could have passed as her twin.
Thinking of her was like
being hit by a battering ram
over and over again.
Crushed chest,
Crushed soul.

Again, he flicked the half-smoked cigarette away.

The cold November night,
The only one joining him tonight.

She’s not coming.
She never was.

Oh baby –
We were doomed from day one.

Though we weren’t in the Jazz age,
and we weren’t in the modern age,
We were in the age of us.

Wings on my eyelashes,
A silky robe around my shoulders,
You wore a vest and a tee shirt—
Indulged in cowboy bohemia;
God, it was ****.

Oh baby, we thought we were unstoppable
We drank too much
Met new people by liquid courage
And found fearlessness suited us well.
We harnessed the trade winds
and went where we wanted.

Interest and innovation embedded in curiosity;
In art and newness and literature and truth.
Calling ******* like we saw it
We were entitled and young and free
No restraints
And hey, maybe that was the problem.

The problem with freeness
Is running and running and running
Until you forget what you’re running towards
And instead find
You’re actually running from.

Oh baby-
We were doomed from day one
We just didn’t know it yet.
I’m just too tired to run anymore.

I could have been like Zelda.
Tired from the facade,
Strong and petrified at the same time,
Finding distractions in every part of life
That made me forget we weren’t as free as we thought we were.

God, Baby—
Didn’t you know we were doomed
From the very first day we met?
I suppose I should thank you:
Thanks for breaking my heart;
You saved me from breaking my own.

I could have been like Zelda.

She knew.
Just as she always knew.
It was just a matter of
If her mind could hear
What her heart was saying.

He was avoiding her.
Because maybe he knew too.
And that scared the living **** out of him.

But those times they both stop knowing
And the ***** flowed
And the night brought mystery and possibilities
They let themselves know nothing
And they let themselves feel the fire
That both of them felt
For each other.
And the memory of that heat
Would stay with them
For weeks after
Like embers after the fire.

But at the end of the night
Through misty cognizance,
She remembered.
Her intuition kindly reminded her
What she already knew.

And she’d try to bring it up
And he’d pretend he had no idea what the hell she was talking about.
Embers always turn to ashes.

She’d shake her head
Walk away
And turn back
And he’d be looking too.
She’d think from across the room
“Just once,
I wish you’d surprise me.”

And as she walked out that door
He’d think to himself
“Me too”.

Love got drunk one day
And slipped away as quickly as it came.
Leaving impressions and marks and a ******* memory
Why did it have to do that?

He told me
Perhaps the brightest insight
To human history
Since Copernicus Said
Hey maybe
We’re not so important
That the world
(literally)
Revolves around us
But perhaps it is us
Who revolve around the world
(as it should be.)
What my Copernicus said was
Individualism
Is the single most sign
Of continual human progress.
That without it
We just become droids
Or peons
Or mindless beings
Without sentience
Without intelligence
Without the single most important vocabulary word
“Why?”

You can see why he intrigued me.

Ever-going quest to
Make love stay.
Slipping out of my suitcase
Man it was cramped in there
I looked up
And saw my name written in the sky.
*******.
Always finding new ways
To tell the world
What we are
And what we could be
If I cashed in my chips
And went all-in
For just one hand.

Tears came
Hanging ten on the edge of eyes
Refusing to fall
Uncertain of their plight
So they do what people do
When they are scared
And they freeze.

It crushed me to know
I’ve cashed in my chips
One too many times
He thought I’m incredible
When really
I’m un-credible.

Love didn’t stay.
It took the next flight to Vegas
To gamble some other poor soul’s life
Leaving me
To look up a nameless sky.