the world is all in this cold coffee cup
bathed in the light of an artificial sun
surrounded by dust-fleck stars.

and i could sit and watch this universe tilt for days
oblivious to the wider world,

but i am starting to think we are all oblivious to a wider world,

we're all so caught up
flecks of dust in a coffee cup.

Sticky, sweet air clings all around me
Oppressive silence and overly chilled air
Whispers run across my ears
While I shed constant tears--
Not yet for you, but for my little sister, who so hopelessly cries.

This is not a song, either.
This, scribbles on a page,
is nothing of consequence.

It is but an exercise for my hand
[an effort to maintain my penmanship],
and perhaps for my mind
[my sanity].

An attempt to loosen the bolts,
which keep everything locked tight.
A mere effort to coerce the tumult of my mind,
to spill out onto the page, and arrange itself neatly.

This is not a poem, like everything else I write,
but it has brought some organization
to my scattered mind, this night.

Moments ago,
Summer gave way to fall as it eternally does.

Moments with you seem lost yet immediate.
A day spent carefree, surrounded by water, isolated from the world.

Recent experiences are elapsed into a fraction of a second, bringing me back.

Back to days without an end, or time to tell age.
We are who we really are in the light of the sun.

We lie straight as pins in our graves.

Drifting through nights without life,
Listening to the sounds of other people's silence.

Does your gray empty reverberate the same as mine?
Does the ticking of the clock and the hum of a dimly lit lamp echo through your mind?

In the night I hear your soundless lonesome.  
I am a collector of fatigued expressions and once inhabited places.

We all lie as straight as pins in our graves, drifting through.

If I gave it all to you, would it matter?
And say I did, do you think you would notice?

Because I’m climbing mountains you make look like hills,
I’m crossing borders I thought were impassable,
And saying things I swore against.

It’s so easy to do these things for you,
You never even asked me to.

But you, the only one I ever wanted to hear those praises from,
You never find the words.

Please tell me it’s there.
Tell me plainly that I mean as much to you as you do to me.

And please someone reassure me,
Pray I don’t care for you so much, for your inability to care.

Sometimes I just can’t hide my disappointment
When slowly the color trickles out of my day
The patina is scrubbed off, and all is said and done
I look back and am overwhelmed with all that I’ve lost.

Days like these I can hardly get out of bed
I am weak and easily convinced, if you just hold me up
Because I’m here trying so hard to stand, with the weight of my memories tight to my chest, but it’s all too heavy.

All these memories like stones
People like ropes
Holding me fast.

It is so easy then, to dwell on all the hardships,
The relationships that have been taken from me
And others ended in negligence.

I really wish I could say I’ve grown in your absence
But most days I feel like the child you left me as.
Wide-eyed and blinking in the face of it all.

There will be days
Like holidays and Tuesdays
When you creep into my mind to occupy the place I’ve tried to hide

No one gets out of love alive
And promises years in the making
Don’t break apart over night, or in a finite number of tears

And I am happy
To feel so much, to feel alive
The long winter made me sad, and the promise of sun makes me wish we had

More time
But the promise of days eventually gives way
To the realization that some things will never change

Time may heal all wounds
But time doesn’t create
And love can’t grow in places too desolate to sow

What can we make of this-
the brokenness in all of us,

I crave your arms and your armor,
your willingness to reach for and reject me.
My God, how have I come to this?

What have we done,
Once when we were young
somebody taught us love was a prize to be won.

That notion that carved us will see us undone.

Could I possibly continue this?
Madness in the aftermath
Never learned
Never did learn
To learn from my mistakes

To repeat them is insane
But I'll go happily away
Looking over one shoulder all the way

A sucker for the past
With a knack for creative extrapolation
Cobbling together old nails and tacks
To make a band for someday.