There is a place between a relationship
and just friends

A place just past friends with benefits, but
still a few blocks from a relationship

Its saying cute and silly things
with only a hint of actual meaning

Its smiling at your message
but knowing you only half way mean it

Its staying up until 2 am to talk,
and not regretting it in the morning

Its unspoken I Love Yous
replaced by
I like you,
but not enough.

Of course I'm okay.
Fine actually,
I love metal music

What ****** me off
is the notion that because the musics loud
and the lyrics are different
something must be wrong

Metal music is a family.
its riff laden roots are dug deep into the roots of my family tree
when I crossed that muddy bank I brought all of me I could.
Except,
I forgot my family.

I couldn't bring them through the mud.
I couldn't bring them desert mountain air

So when I miss them just a little too much,
You can bet I'm gonna put on
Slayer or Megadeth
to drown out the pain of an empty house

That heavy emotion
resonates deep in my chest and it fills my lungs
drowning out the words I cannot say.

Words like I love you,
Words like I wish you were here
Words like I miss you.

I never quite understood the meaning of the word lonely.

the quiet of the word ghosting through my lungs
creating a safehouse in my skull
comforted by the spirit of liquor in these dry riverbeds for veins

This plastic sky is viewed from a colorblind childhood
sometimes there are no villains
the side walk chalk is a living outline,
decorated in ferocious shades of grey.

Loneliness isn't romantic,
there is no pride in being proud of your ghosts.
how ever friendly they may be
I am fluent in apologies

I am a crumpled paper pipe bomb,
Loneliness is a mother tongue
its salty words burn my jawbone,
its jaded point dug deep into my teeth

We can only tread water for so long
until we are swept under the tide
where the silence will break
the crown of our collarbones

The joke’s over,
we live to look regret in the face
loneliness, is a jagged edge of a word
its barbed wire cuts deeper than people ever could.

There is a difference between loving someone,
and feeling bad for someone

There is a difference between long distance
and just space between strangers

You can love someone fully
and receive nothing in return

I loved you like I loved my first record
with a sweet, innocent joy

a fearless abandon soaring through cracked vessels
and filling broken chambers

You loved me like a student loves a vocabulary test
with hesitation and fear

You were a horizon to me something I could never reach on foot
but could reach though heart

To you, I was dust on a shelf
wiped away and forgotten

A jealous mind can turn away a heart
but you, a puzzle piece in my life
an unreachable person

That distance,
between the sky and the sea
Is too great for either of us to cross.

The heart is a ****** metaphor for love
it is not a muscle
love,
cannot atrophy from lack of use

We collect bruises like badges
staying under water until
we become buried treasure
that someone, anyone will
want to find

When your teeth touch metal
and the bullet dissolves on your tongue,
standing on your own becomes a task
pushed off like last night’s ***** dishes

when the circus poster falls off the post
we rip it off, it becomes strips of a blank page,

I know puppets when I see them
I know when I’m the right shade of numb

I met you at 12
You were a good ole boy
You watched me become
a drugged out, alcoholic punk
We became best friends anyways
Sharing secrets at 3AM over the phone
We were a giant ******* to everyone else
We didn't stand for these stupid cliques
We didn’t care about what our friends thought
We remained close, after I moved 1500 miles away,
I remember drinking and dancing on the
Hood of your mom’s truck
While blaring Born In The USA
Both of us shouting the words
and I can’t remember having ever been
as happy.
and somewhere along that line
falling for each other like only best friends could.

I am New England cold
a snowstorm covered in the red dirt of the american southwest
a lurking cold tugs at the corners of showing and telling.

Expression is the enemy

I am broken parts
fastened with unkept promises,
damaged by addiction
and frayed strings of a family

To others concealed,  
a cement mask of apathy
affixed to the flushed cheeks
of a child betrayed

Privately I drown
in the quiet
of a hollow home,
these phrases with no meaning
not enough to
fill the space

Deafening silence between people
words ejected from spitting mouths
words falling on indifferent ears

I am the New England cold
a searing heat  burning through
the black coal of veiled eyes and padlocked mouths  
a jaded pulse seeping through
the cracks in my armour

June 29,2011

I remember 9 A.M
you’re asleep peacefully
I stop on my way out watching your hair flutter

12 PM
your only son
knocks frantically
calling for me.
No one can find you.
we can’t leave notes on the door and tape on the doorway.
to find you

12:15 PM
your son and I are home.
all search through your bureau
searching for, looking for, an answer
until my sister finds it.
A typed 2 page letter, 12PT times new roman font
you meticulously typed it out, fingers on home keys,
back straight in chair, thumbs on space bar
“You’re all better off without me.”
my mother reads us your final words
for what seems like an eternity
pain rips through the surface as my mother, your wife
sends shards of sharp searing pain in the form of screams
drowning out my sister, your older daughters shackled breathing.
I try not to shatter the wall I’m sitting against
the boiling red hot anger burns through my veins and lodges
into my eyes, all I can see is red.

6PM
they found you at the hospital,
going into renal failure from the Tylenol
your wife doesn’t let us see you for the first few days
she lets your 16 year old daughter take care of us,
she herself struggling to comprehend the situation we were all in
makes dinner while I do laundry and dishes to give her a break
your son confides that he is afraid to cry because he feels he won’t be able to stop.

July 4th 2011
we visit you  it is an awkward,
elephant in the room Miles between all of us and yet no space at all
I can’t breathe
When we leave I hold my brothers hand telling him words my mother had said to me “Everything will be okay.”

August 23, 2014
Its 4 am
I had a dream about it again,
I felt my heart break and re-break
Into a million little sharp pieces
I wake up,
Breath caught
My chest a vice refusing to unclench
And I remember those words.

“Everything will be okay.”
Everything will be okay.”
Everything will be okay.”

Now I know,
It was a lie.

I wanted to write down exactly how I felt
I wanted to forget your name and after 7 shots,
yours is all I can remember
these broken syllables reflecting off my thickened tongue

Sometimes you need someone
to tell you that you're not as terrible as you think you are
and sometimes the darkness is your bestfriend
and sometimes before it gets better the darkness gets bigger

sometimes we build walls around our hearts
then question why no one loves us
and sometimes we need to remember that even broken crayons still color
that people are like clocks, no one can tell when they stopped ticking
Sometimes we need to be told that
where we see flaws as weeds someone else sees roses

So I wanted to write down exactly how I felt,
but somehow the paper stayed empty
and i couldn't of described it any better.

Yeah, I see you
girl at the back of the class
hoping that if she keeps quiet
no one will ask her to speak
Hoping that if she wills her lips sewn shut
no one will see her

Yeah I see you,
boy melting into the back wall
wearing the chains of camouflaged silence
to cover up voices that scream insecurity
hoping that if he stays quiet
no one will see him

Yeah I see you,
Youre not invisible to me
girl afraid to speak because everytime
she did she was struck,

Yeah I see you.
youre not invisible to me
boy afraid to speak his mind because
hes been told hes stupid one too many times.
I see you
God ****** ,
I see you.