I'm not over anyone I've ever begun to love.
People always say they loved someone,
but I always stay present tense.
I always love.
If once, then always.

I remember racing down the streets,
intoxicated, drunk, hammered,
and out of my mind,
chasing party after party
and skirt after skirt trying
to drown the hole you left
in me.

I remember, not so long ago,
chasing down scheme after scheme,
saying mean things,
having no consideration for
anyone's feelings,
and completely denying the
existence of my own,
trying to justify
the holes we left in
each other.

It's hard to understand —
how I'm acting,
the damage I'm causing
in these situations —
until I've come out the other
side.

And even when I do, I still hear
the dark calling me.
It lies at the bottom of this bottle,
and at the top of my
mind,
waiting its turn.

I thought my home was with you,
but you sat upon a raft
with a motor that had a large,
sharp propeller.
A boat, and a powerful one.
While I sat upon my island,
some would say stranded,
but I would say
found.
You visited, happened to
glance my way on your travels,
and I wanted you to dock,
to stay for a spell,
but I knew your engine
would have cut my rope,
so I hopped upon your craft,
hopped off,
and watched as you again
drifted away.

For the days, weekends,
I can be wholly unbothered
and alone
with no expectation of any interaction.
I can let my thoughts settle,
hear my thoughts
stream
from one to another
in a constant consciousness.
I can shore up the things
in my life
which have been neglected,
do the things
that need to be done
without interruption,
free to do as I please,
content with the
company of myself
as I have been
since a toddler
drawing dirt tracks under a shed
alone
with Hot Wheels.
Perhaps I will go into work
with my book
and box of pizza
to play catch up,
perhaps I will write,
or perform maintenance on my car
or perhaps
I will simply
exist.

The universe was speaking to you.
Then you stopped listening.

The words are there,
suspended in front of my
eyes and yours,
to be read and
to be written.
Their curves around the drip
drops of rain
on the concrete,
they crash to
become one
but only become many
as the ink from their words
flood the cracked road
with a pure pitch.
They have spilled from our lips,
and have run their course
and have carved their ledges
and cliffs into our rock-slide
lives,
and settled
to be written
before they have been spoken.

I just wanted the rain to fall.
Soak me through.

I just want to fall off the Earth,
forget everything.

I have bedded these thoughts,
considered them in your absence
and in mine,
and still am.
I am busy untangling them,
forgive me for my distance.
I've done what was expected of me,
but it does not make a difference,
so how can I know it was
right
when all I have are the times before
to compare it to?

I've learned a few things,
not in your favor
or mine,
so I ruminate,
contemplate, meditate,
toss and turn these thoughts like
coins.
Heads or tails?

I'll write these words,
twist them just carefully enough
to claim plausible deniability,
or whatever that means,
and then write a more honest
account when my tongue
is not poisoned by alcohol.

By this account, and days, perhaps,
of turning it over,
I will decide what I must do.
You must know that I take
careful consideration of these decisions
which affect how I spend my
time.

You must know that I love you,
perhaps in ways that are
not in the ways that you love me,
but I know that you do.
I know.
But perhaps that is the
fundamental difference.

I've tried my best to reconcile,
but when evidence proves that I cannot,
I must deliberate,
I must decide.

It slips through our fingers.
At the end of it all,
there will be only a few
questions.

Did you love enough?
Did you give everything you could?
Did you spend your life on what mattered?

It rules us all.
Careful it does not pass you by
while you are busy sleeping.

The day you tried to live,
you could not,
and passed on to the
Superunknown
and let us fall on
black days.
You finally let yourself drown
in a way much
like suicide,
a spoon in your hand?
Spoonman?
You could never quite break
your rusty cages,
outshined by your own light,
burdened by your own hand.
You roll on like a stone,
the final hunger strike.
Someone forgot to
show you how to live,
and now you will be missed.

Dangling, hung by a thread
unraveling
slightly faster than it is
repaired,
but only slightly.
Like letters that are just
barely
out of focus,
so close to being illegible,
so close to becoming just
lines on a page in a
packed-away notebook
that was once an alter
for self-possessed ramblings.
A hand, a thought, a smile,
just out of reach,
clinging to a phantom of a
former reality,
grasping at the dust
kicked up by
feet dancing deftly away
as they have always done.

Sandpaper teeth,
a slight taste of dark,
bitter coffee grounds.
Ants.
Fire ants in the stomach
biting, stinging,
in acidic bile.
Working into a swollen
and unspeaking throat.
Into the veins and arteries.
A thin layer of sweat,
or rain,
as the cloud follows.
Can they see it?
Tongue, thick and heavy
as a brick sliding into
the windpipe.
Choking, gagging,
suffocating.
Over-active nervous system,
shocked by lightening
from the ever-growing,
ever-looming cloud above.
Shaking, tense, angry,
why?
Neurons firing too fast.
Why?

That I should hold tight
to these rampant thoughts
and frivolous and disconcerting
emotions.
That I should strangle them out,
extinguish their life completely,
leave them withered and drawn up,
tucked away in some far corner
of my mind.
That I should provide a steadfast
and assuring bedrock from which
to build a long and happy life
and to lay upon the dusty
traps of years past.
That I should be the place
you can lay to rest your head
and your fears and loneliness.
That I would put them to bed
with my own of which we seldom speak,
and kiss the harshness
from your lips each night.
That I should protect you in spirit
and in arms and in mind
such that you may blossom wild and free.
That I should cherish you in your
pure, unyielding and driven spirit.
That I should love you,
wholly, without reservations,
without conditions,
for everything you are.

I can feel it.
The wind which caressed your face
brushes by me
and leaves me
breathless
again.
The miles are not real,
state lines and roads apart,
but not
in all the same.
The sun sets and I see
your face in the sky
and feel your arms
around me.
You are still so close.
Days pass
and we fly through the sky
while the moon bears its stolen light
onto the ocean floors,
and the waves carry your
laughter and your words
over the sand and grass and
into my ears and over my
mind
and the sun rises with
a gentle and calming touch
into my arms and over my
body
to start the day
and I find
that you are still
not so far away.

i. Reasons Why
To seek to understand the self.
To put the scattered pieces
together
to form a coherent narrative of
my life.
To understand what pieces are missing
and how to continue without
them.

ii. First Memories
The first memory I have is
of a high chair,
ravioli,
and an unfamiliar older woman.
Mother working.
I explored the house,
a baby gate with dogs behind.

iii. Paranoid Tendencies
Later, Mom with her pistol,
nails in windows,
doors locked,
even internal ones.
Being hushed
told to hide under the desk
with my nieces.
Terrified of what was happening,
she went outside
to clear the perimeter,
certain,
so certain that people are
after all of us.
Why?
I remember her wild green eyes
and her hair of fire.

Nights of this,
waking up to her shooting outside
my window,
cursing at this alleged person
"creeping around."

Nights she would sit in a
small yellow chair,
only meant for kids,
at the door leading from the back room
to the kitchen.
I'd have to ***,
but she would clear the rooms
before I went.
That's love.
Protection.

iv. Missing Father: **** On You
The first time my father
held me,
I ****** in his face.
So I'm told.

v. Education Impressions
I wandered through the halls,
my first day of
school, Kindergarten,
with no clue where I was going.
Dropped off, late for work.
Always working, the bills had to
be paid.
That's love.
A roof over my head.

Paddled weekly, sometimes more,
in Kindergarten,
age 5.
Apparently I had some disciplinary
issues.

Pulled from this school, onto
the next.
Write-up forms weekly, or more.
I would slip them under the
bathroom door in the morning
while Mom was in a rush,
getting ready for work.
Always being paddled,
coming home to switches and belts
and hands
and a tired Mother.
Nothing abusive,
but that's love.
Discipline.

Fighting, kicking, punching,
pick on me,
try it.
Always fighting.
Their most used punishment was
to walk the fence
during PE.
Needless to say,
I never got my Physical Education.

Moved to another school,
discipline issues
again.
Stopped fighting,
and sacrificed my self-esteem
for it.
The issues continued,
but I graduated and
left.

vi. Missing Father: Formative Years
This is when you were needed most.
I made many poor decisions,
a stupid kid,
with a need for just a bit
of guidance.
I made it on my own though.

vii. Bologna and Ramen
There were special nights,
with an electricity through the air,
when Mom would cook.
Hamburger helper, green beans,
corn, a fresh gallon of
sweet tea, a slice of white bread
to top it off.
A meal for kings in those days.

But, typically, with a single income,
and a house of five,
it was sandwiches and noodles.
I despise bologna and ramen
still.

viii. Missing Father: The Second Time
The second time we met
was in a store my Mom frequented.
I asked you if I should get
a hot sausage.
I didn't find out who I had spoken to
for years.

ix. Control
As a kid I always could figure
out how to make things
go my way.
I would make sure things lined
up
just
right.

Most things are about the order
in which information
is revealed.
You have to see through others' eyes.

It's a ***** side of me,
but I do what I can to keep it at bay.
Still,
it remains.

x. Envy
Family in Auburn,
cousins, Aunts, Uncles.
There was one set in particular.
My Uncle who come from nothing,
as all the others,
and was so determined to have something
out of life.

I always wanted to take his kids'
places.
The nice clothes that didn't smell of cats,
the go-karts and swim lessons and
swing set and pool.
They had it all.

I modeled myself after this Uncle.
I'm going to have something.
Now I do.

xi. Kitchen Floor
I laid in the kitchen floor
at my Sister's trailer
for several hours.
I cried, maybe.
I didn't speak, I just
laid there.
Catatonic.

This is the first thing that
came to mind when I started
realizing the sickness in my mind.
A first clue, if you will.
All of the others fell into place
quickly afterward.

xii. Step-Father
It all started so perfect,
how could there be a demon in
this kind and gentle man?

But manic phases happened.
Regularly.

Usually spurred by alcohol.

He would stay up all night,
with *** after ***
of coffee.
Going through every item
in the house.

He and my Mom would scream,
so late,
she telling him to go to bed,
to get the **** out,
to quit messing with ****.
He would call her names
and throw things and make
word salad in the air of money
and get rich quick schemes.

I would pretend to sleep,
most nights I didn't while
he was manic.
I would sleep at school,
and dread the war-zone I'd
step into every day after.

He would finally be arrested
and committed.
This happened for years,
this cycle.

One of the last times it happened,
he put his hands on my niece.
I nearly killed him that night.

He died in a drunk driving
manic-induced spree
not long after.

He was a great man when he wasn't manic.
But that's love.
Through darkness and light.

xiii. Harm
I went through these years
filled with hatred and recklessness.
Lines on my arms,
and a barrel in my mouth,
but I came out the other side.

I know the dark times are here
when I regret not pulling that trigger.

xiv. Missing Father: Unneccessary Hardships
Things didn't have to be that way,
but maybe we are all better
for the suffering.

xv. Driving
I learned to drive by taking my Sister
back and forth to hospitals
because she was fiending for pain meds.
I watched her toss pill after pill down
her throat
for years.
"Migraines."
Aka, withdrawals.
She would scream and incite chaos
until she got her fix.
An addict.
It was not my Sister.

She attempted suicide multiple times.
Eventually the chemicals were too much,
she had a stroke.

I thought I was going to lose her,
my dear Sister.

She's clean now, and
I've never been more proud
of my big Sis.

xvi. A Final Word
My life was not hard,
no harder than anyone else's.
But it was mine.
I look at this myself and say
"oh boo hoo," in contempt of myself,
but it was real.

Somewhere, hidden in this
half-missing puzzle, is the
answer to the question on my
warped views on love and life.

This is my narrative,
these are my beginnings.

Let me do my work each day;
and if the darkened hours
of despair overcome me, may I
not forget the strength
that comforted me in the
desolation of other times. May I
still remember the bright
hours that found me walking
over the silent hills of my
childhood, or dreaming on the
margin of the quiet river,
when a light glowed within me,
and I promised my early God
to have courage amid the
tempests of the changing years.
Spare me the bitterness
and from sharp passions of
unguarded moments. May
I not forget that poverty and
riches are of the spirit.
Though the world may know me not,
may my thoughts and actions
be such as shall keep me friendly
with myself. Lift my eyes
from the earth, and let me not
forget the uses of the stars.
Forbid that I should judge others
lest I condemn myself.
Let me not follow the clamor of
the world, but walk calmly
in my path. Give me a few friends
who will love me for what
I am; and keep ever burning
before my vagrant steps
the kindly light of hope. And
though age and infirmity overtake
me, and I come not within
sight of the castle of my dreams,
teach me still to be thankful
for life, and for time's olden
memories that are good and
sweet; and may the evening's
twilight find me gentle still.

I inflicted a wound,
you showed me where the words cut.
How could I not see that in the
beginning?
How have I been so blind to
that side of
myself?

I get wound up,
like what happens when you
twist a slinky and that one ring
pops out,
never to go back in properly again.
A ball of anxiety sits in my stomach
daily,
but when I love
I get scared.
I get eaten up with fears of
being abandoned,
it tears at me to the point
that I can't even think straight.

So it comes out
eventually,
I lash out to those I love.
It must be their fault,
right?
But I know others can't be blamed
for my feelings.
I know that.

I've learned many lessons the hard way,
that was one of them.
It must be an unconscious thing
since I didn't recognize it.
As all, I'm still learning parts of myself,
I'm still growing.

I've also learned not to make excuses
when confronted with my wrongs.
This is simply my best explanation.
There is no justification I can make
in causing pain,
not for anyone.
I can't convince anyone that I can change,
we all hold beliefs on that.
But I am not the same person
I was
a year ago.
That's a fact.

I should not have been blind to this
for so long.
I can already see more pages in my
past where I have unknowingly
smudged the ink.
Places where I was blind before.

It's time to get to the root cause
of this.
It's time to apply the careful
introspection to a once dark place
of unknown anger.
It's time to dig into this childhood
pain,
this childhood cancer that eats me
alive,
this place where any sense of being
left
causes self-shattering tremors,
and rip this part from me
whole.

I need this to work.
It is no one's fault but my
own
that I have not accomplished
this yet.
It's time to bleed
so that I may finally
grow.

I woke up 30 minutes earlier
than usual
with a bladder of **** about
to explode out of me.
An entire 12 pack in one night,
that **** again.
Nothing new.
Not even hungover.

I lost my mind over some stupid
****,
childish ****, crazy-type ****,
and sat bare-*** on the
bathroom floor at 6:30 in the morning
with my ***** resting on the
cold wooden (and new, I might add) floor.

It's stupid, I knew that,
and still do,
but it's definable and measurable
and if it's measured,
to me,
it's real.
As anything.

I sat on that floor
and felt my converter kicking on.
You know,
that mechanism that takes ****
and turns it into gold?

I know it's stupid,
but forgive me for being honest,
or don't.
Fling **** at me,
do it,
******* do it
****.

Talk to others
if that's what you want to do,
is that how that works?
I don't actually know.
Unfounded? Maybe.
But that's only part of it.

Time is precious.
If I'm not worth yours,
how can I give you mine?
That's ok.
Fine.
That's the real issue.
Forget it.

My **** converter is on,
I know where all of these
energies go,
I know how this goes for me.

Let not the wind sweep you away,
let not the trappings of this world
keep you down,
let not the totality of it all
fall upon your shoulders,
and especially do not pin yourself
into negative cycles.

The leaves of seasons past will fall
and surround you completely,
the ice will freeze and melt
onto your numb fingers,
and the sun will rage onto your
skin to blister.

But among it all in the final grace,
you must remember:
you were born to fly,
so spread your wings.

It rained for three straight days
during my first visit
to you.
Fitting. I should have expected as much.
Especially if it corresponds to your happiness,
I can only be more thrilled
about rain
and what it brings down with it
and the slates it washes clean.

We drank with reservations
and read poetry with gusto
and fell to the floor with love
as the thunder clapped across the
valley
and the rain poured from our skin.

You are small,
not even close to helpless,
but I would face down anything
so that your hands may stay and fit
so delicately in mine and
so your lips would find mine
again.

When we met, finally,
and I felt your frame fall into mine,
trusting me enough for that
so soon,
I was honored,
and I knew that the fears I had
about what this would be like,
what you might be like,
what we might be like,
were unfounded,
and very complicatedly so.

Wouldn't it have been easier
to despise the other?
But no,
instead we fell into rhythm
as if we had never been out of sync,
we fell  into and onto each other
time and again
in ways that could only be described as
perfection.

I saw you gaze onto me
with a mystique only Picasso himself
would be able to render,
so I lost myself in your eyes
with words I've known for
long and with thoughts I could
finally say.

It rained for three straight days,
but on the day I left
the sun beamed through the sky.
So I left,
with kisses and kind words,
and it wasn't until I was on
the excruciating road back
that I realized
I was leaving home
for the second time
in only one trip.

A world plunges into chaos
as world leaders with worldly
egos make decisions
based on what?
Because these small men cannot
fight their battles among themselves
they send children to **** children
and for what?
They drop bombs, the
Mother Of All Bombs
to collapse tunnels on
Mothers' sons.
Who authorized this?
With nuclear tensions rising
in a sea of ships
invading a country's personal space,
while the drums of war
beat with fervor
and the blood pounds in these
leaders' ears,
and the people that elected them
just sit back in fear,
as if they're watching
World War III
live and in color in a crowded
and dark theatre.
These men all think they
are on the right side of history,
and they are showing,
flexing,
their country's muscle,
they think to back down is
a display of weakness,
but it is the monks of the world,
the meek of the Earth,
which will outlast them all.
They think they can justify the
killing and slaughter of others,
but what happens if you flip it?
Would you not militarize as
a regular human as well
should your homeland be invaded?
How can we blame these people?
Is it too much to hope for
that we lay down these arms
and not destroy ourselves?
There is no you,
there is no me,
we do not **** others,
we only **** ourselves.
There is only us,
and we are all in this together.

These words are like
flower petals strewn across
a forgotten floor.
A contrast in a desolate space,
but chew them,
examine them, love them
and see their origins
birthed in poison.
They escape from their captor's
skin through long trailing tendrils
of ink
much in the way
the ***** pollinates the flower
and is never seen again,
much in the way the words are warped
by alliteration and savagely
captive in metaphors
like they belong in a simile
like they belong under the skin
the way a past made up of
a universe
can never quite make
anything whole again.
They don't quite belong in a
barren place such as this,
but can never move,
for  their venomous
cover would surely taint
all that is green and
full of life.
And if a wind, a breeze,
should lift them from
their resting place upon the floor,
they would surely float and dance
along,
in all normality,
in all the ways they should,
and will wither
and shed their toxic pieces
along the way
to cause coughing, sneezing,
and noses ****** like the watering can
that sprouted these
heinous flowers.
And they will fall
again.

Give them some time.
Website design is not that easy.

A log rests upon a levee.
When will it break?

Anxious.
Like the attachment style.
Becoming involved,
and over-thinking everything.
That's what you called that, right?
Over-thinking
these old insecurities that I can
never seem to
quite push
away
for good
while my pen bears its ink
down into and past the current
page because all my muscles
are tight
and my stomach is
sick
and my mind
is distracted.

You. You. You.

She'll pick you up,
put you down
once she's read your pages
and harvested your words.
Is it true?

I've been discarded before.

Tried to trap the bird,
what a foolish mistake,
and it flew away
leaving my hands full
of ashes.
I've pushed too hard
and clung too tightly
and lost it all
many times.

I get nervous, but I know my center.

I see your wings,
a magnificent ocean blue
which have been carved
through years of struggle.
Never think that I do not.
I would never deign
to clip them.
I would never make that mistake again.

But I, too, have my share of books
which I have picked up,
read fully,
or half-way,
and put down,
discarded.
I have lifted from branches
and flown further
when I've been trapped,
clipped.

I get nervous.

I want to stay,
more than anything,
but there is fire in my wings,
and fire in yours too.
We are certainly
birds of a feather,
so I wonder,
can we not,
could we not,
should we not,
fly together?

The pressure drops,
and the leaves begin to
swirl around a dusty lake.
Fire in the sky
rolls in with the clouds
riding a difference between a
splitting of hot and cold.
The hot air ***** the rain
further,
while the cold air cushions
and pushes
further.

In another distance
a similar storm brushes in
with a deep wind that
has carried it across an ocean,
to pull in more water
to travel
further,
pushed by the cold of what
is behind
and pulled by the heat
of what is ahead.

These two of a system
meet over this lake
and crash together,
like two gas giants.
The Earth shakes,
the lake creates waves,
and a look above shows
the funnels coming down.

One of pure chaotic wind,
and another of raw destructive water.
Trapped by each others
opposition
and support,
they dance across the lake,
lifting the leaves
and spinning
the weight of their composition
into one another,
until finally
they merge into a
brief or non-brief
union,
pull into the sky
as it splits apart,
breaks the storm
and leaves
clear skies.

I'll send a nice message
straight through the wires
with the bird outside my window.
I'll wrap the paper up
with a nice little bow
and a short piece of twine
for him to carry onward
to speak into your mind.
He'll make it in the morning,
I know he surely will
to be there when you wake up
to tell you how I feel.

I write this as she sleeps
next to me, with me,
but not with me,
as a testament to the light
she spreads across my pages,
chest moving
in and out,
in and out,
breathing kindness into
these words with her own.
The object of my attention,
affection,
she will rise tomorrow
to the surprise of post-midnight
poetry, hopefully
bringing a smile to her face
as she does mine,
and our small habits
across hundreds of miles
unfold
to become larger rituals,
grander ceremonies,
separated by mere inches.

Sideways comments,
subtle degradations of character
masked as jest,
knowing the sliver of truth
that reveals one's thinking,
convenient forgetfulness
meant to pull me lower,
but it won't.

No.

Questioning motives as
I keep my plans,
my moves,
to myself
for fear they will set in
motion more copycats.
I see you all.

Hands reaching from their own
drowning depths to pull
me back under
into the place I
barely escaped from
as it is,
but I won't.

No. I will never return.

I will go further than most of you dare.
I am not afraid
of progress or
your negativity,
it only fuels the fire.

Applying these concepts to everything,
so I must wonder,
what it is she wants
from me?
Friendship, companionship,
words,
I have for free.
These she has from me already.

Though I have no reason
to suspect otherwise,
strategic paranoia
dictates I must
wonder.

Knowing smiles,
and playful eyes,
dancing into the night
with words rushing past
satin lips overflowing
into small,
but meaningful silences.
A light beckoning in the world,
to wait,
appreciate,
its singular illumination,
turning this place
more interesting,
and investing in all the
right places.
In these silly, same,
but so different games
we confess ourselves fully
in actions unveiled,
but tip-toe when
speaking, lest the gravity
of it all come crashing
through our lips.

I remember picking up the urn
that held your ashes.
They were so much heavier than
I expected.
I was drunk off whiskey,
and it finally hit me.

You were gone.

You visited me in a dream last night.
We laughed.
We used to do that, remember?
I did something goofy,
you made a comment,
we shared a good chuckle.

You showed me what it means to be a real person.
You had your darkness,
like everyone,
but you had your light as brilliant
as anyone's.

You gave us everything you could,
and while I appreciate it now,
I wish I could've appreciated it more
then.

I blame myself for your passing,
I know I shouldn't.
I just wish you were here
to see things now,
see where we are,
as a family.

I called the sky tonight,
just wanting you to know
that the good so outweighed
the bad,
even if we couldn't see it.

I called, just to say
I love you.

Never be ashamed to love.
It's all we ever have.

It's your birthday today.
You would've been 56 years old.
You kept me, raised me
when I was young,
worked me
to show me discipline,
and believed me when I told the truth.
You made me apologize when
I had said cruel things,
and helped me love the difference
of others.
You believed in me,
and celebrated my differences as well.

One of my fondest memories of us
is when you baby-sat me on a Saturday.
We went to garage-sales.
You bought me every baseball I could find.
They were cheap then,
but I'd give anything to still have one.

I watched you drum away to many songs,
mesmerized,
knowing I wanted to do the same.
I was often behind your drums,
dreaming of things to play.

Today I sat behind a drum kit.
I've been paid to play.
That makes me a professional, right?
You would be proud.

I broke down today, behind that kit,
thinking of you.
I lied, said I needed a bathroom
when really I needed a floor to cry.

I curled up in a friend's bathroom floor,
and, finally,
felt your passing.

I miss you so much.

It's obvious, isn't it?
When two similar planets pass by
each other
and get caught in
each other's
gravity.
It's obvious what must happen here.
The words not said
scream loud enough to
bridge the hundreds of miles,
and we still don't
say them.
Not yet.
It's obvious we haven't been here before.
Into uncharted waters,
we move so
very
slowly,
careful not to create waves
before we meet in the center,
careful not to misstep,
so that we can
do things right
for once.
It's obvious.

Listen to the rain fall,
and, carefully,
unwrap the words that
sit in the air like
raindrops frozen in time,
move slowly,
move slowly into this,
there is no rush
greater than what can come
and, already,
what is.
The sparks of the worlds
in the words shared
ignite
the neurons
fire,
but slowly,
the lightening of the night sky,
and hours late
turns the mind aflame
with just a few
special
moments.
The thunderous clap of a
sharp wit and the ocean
blue that pours from
the sky
and into the
different subjects as
it is time, again,
to grow.

Drowning it in,
and down it goes,
with a hook at the bottom
to sink you lower,
and take it all
away.

I saw you again last night
in my dreams.
It's been some time since
you've visited.
How are you?
We went all around
this dreamscape,
from lovers and friends,
to nothing
so quickly
as before.
With experiences irreplicatable,
irreplaceable,
even in this world,
the only place you live
in my life,
anymore.
How you touched my mind
as carefully
as you tore through my past,
and wreaked havoc
upon my future.
With your irrational expectations,
my sleep-induced brain
turned them into monstrous
representations while I dreamt,
still,
all this time later,
trying to find out what went
wrong.
Knowing, that
still,
where ever you are,
you still love me.

Tired mind, tired body.
Chaotic desk, chaotic kitchen.
As sleep escapes the eyes,
but not the mind,
dripping ink half conscious,
stalling.
Staying away from the dreams
which bring tomorrow's
cold reality.
Sickness pushing into the mind,
into the body,
with a dusty desk and
haphazard room in the dark.
We go up, we go down,
never to settle
as does the dust
upon our bones.
Misplaced my peace
(of mind)
at my alter of confidence,
and, once again,
exposed my insecurities.

Irons in the fire.
Irons in the fire.
Got a lot of things going,
a lot of irons in the fire.
Take one out,
put another one in,
keep them all going,
irons in the fire.

What do I desire?
A fundamental question.
Like asking what must
I be a slave to?
Music and the live crowd?
Finances and independence?
Knowledge and the books?
Words and the ink?
With many passions,
it is hard to choose.
And I must ask myself,
do I have to settle?
Why can I not have it all?

Never the one with a safety net,
having to move quickly, silently,
and calculated.
In a house pulling me into
depression,
further than I could pull myself,
I refused.
Never to be trapped into
ammonia soaked walls and
defeated thinking of years
past,
a "golden child,"
I moved on.
How it hurt to hear those words,
from someone that has
never been hungry,
never realized that the hunger
never fades and that I
never had a choice.
It was get up,
get out, stay moving,
or die
forever.

The smell of an old and cheap,
but priceless guitar,
the acrid and dry aftertaste of
beer, lingering
with a sour smell of
ink,
chances missed, and opportunities
lost,
in a mind of memory
where the air grows wet,
and the season
begins its change,
there are times like these
and others
that will be missed and
put upon when similar
elements meet,
the dance consumes our bodies
as our bodies
flay open to deteriorate
and regenerate the lives
after,
and we say,
"Today.
I will live today."

Dear Father,

     You don't deserve that title. But this is not meant to be degrading, so I won't explore that train of thought further. I don't know if you've realized your wrongs, your errors and follies, and reckless abandonment. I don't know if you're sorry. I don't know you.

     You're sitting in prison now. Maybe that's the right place, maybe it's not. But I know when I met you, this most recent time where I was old enough to process information, I know that looking into your eyes was like looking into a mirror. I saw the monster you passed on to me, passed into me, passed over me. I saw the same darkness, the darkness I've tried to reconcile my entire life.

     Maybe that's the difference between us. I am not ruled by my darkness as you are. If I had been under your influence, what would I have become then? Who would I be now? Was that what you intended - to stay away from me so that we would not spend years nurturing the darkness in one another? Is that giving you too much credit? Maybe you are aware of what lives inside of you as I am.

     I needed you. For years. I never saw a stable male role-model until I was a teenager, and by then I was years behind. I took so long to learn to "be a man," and, even now, I am still crippled with doubts and insecurities about such things. I needed someone to show me how to stand up, stand sure, stand my ground, stand up for myself. Someone to teach me to fight, stick to my guns, never back down, and to never give up. My precious Mother showed me many of these things as best she could, but we are more different than alike. As we have always been. She still did wonderfully, and I love her for it. She gave me everything I have today.

     I learned these things slowly, eventually. I've been down a long road. I figured things out, I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. I was knocked down, around, battered, bruised, confused, hurt, and lonely. I've been so lonely and scared. Like there is a child in me constantly trying to find his parents at a crowded supermarket. Panicked. But despite all of this, despite every single unnecessary hardship caused by your absence, I am alive, whole, and well. If for no other reason than to show you what I can be.

     I never needed you. And perhaps your abandonment was the only good thing you ever did for me.

                                        -Eric

Memories of snow-filled rock caves,
and of following the branches of water
to a faux river,
and becoming hopelessly lost.
Trudging up logging hills,
as the impending storm looms closer
and closer.
Your eyes, clearly,
lost in something we could never
be, but we tried,
didn't we?
The seasons passed too slowly for us
and our wandering, inquisitive
minds.
Stumbling up a road, a hill,
leading to your home,
as you were mine,
wearing gloves of mine
to keep your warmth for myself,
selfish,
knowing it will always belong to
Earth.
Snow angels.

I long for that Wintry, Willowy wonderland
still.

New year, new goals,
new places, new faces.
Stripping down the error of
how I've been, those I've
wronged, becoming gentle,
taking care of the self.
Forgiving the foolish things I've
said to unfoolish and foolish people,
simple-minded things I've done,
and those I have irreparably
pushed away.
I lost some people last year.
Some I should have,
some I shouldn't.
But mostly should have.
"Forgive easily, never forget.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
When someone shows you who they are,
believe them."
I regret nothing.
I had to be in all of those places
to be here,
to be present in a mind
that knows what it wants
and knows peace.
No longer at war with myself,
I still can't see where I'm going,
but I have quit destroying myself
along the way.
I can and do love,
and those that have not seen it
are still warring with themselves.
And to the first and only person
that has seen my love,
as it really is, love,
I should have believed you.

Today is your birthday.
I always got to be your age for
12 days.
We had years I threw away
like everything.
12-22.
The pin to my old phone for a
long while.
So simple,
people asked why.
I always shrugged it off.
How do I explain to people
that I carry around pieces of
everyone I ever love?
That I can point many changes
in my life
to a certain person?
That I never shed a person
completely, and
that I think of every lover
daily?
You helped me quit smoking.
Another showed me how to hang
on to those we love loosely.
Yet another taught me
the destructive power of anger.
I dream of them all regularly.
I dreamt of you last night.

I suppose we all carry the memories
of everyone, but especially the ones
we love.

I'm a loner, I know.
I love, and then I go
down the fabled dusty road,
with a broken pair of shoes,
knowing the dead ends, but
seeking the journey.
Many a mistress, but
only one love
and that's the motion of
trees passing and yellow lines.
Destined to sing alone in
a language only understood by
those in a distant future,
and, even then,
only partially
much in the way I understand
my own idols.
That's the life of a man
seen as a leader by those
whose purpose is to follow,
but those that do not know
the man is a slave to
himself and the music
he hears just around
the next bend.

I stare at the wall
with thoughts thick as molasses sliding
down my arms,
mind is blank, the refrigerator hums,
semi-solitude.
Tickle the ivories, hoping to spark
the motivation to learn a song,
but instead find ashes where
fire has not been in god knows how long.
My brain has heard the screams of
my liver and knows it is time to
rebalance the chemicals,
but it will take some time.
I'm surrounded by books with knowledge,
yet all I have the will to do is
add to mine my sub-standard
notes.
Write the things that feel like
sentences, but when spoke,
are accidental rhythm and
stride, I don't know.
My eyelids have attached to them
dangling rocks under gravity's
command while my eyes cannot
dare to fall under a restful pitch,
so I stare.
Catatonic, canonical,
half here, whole gone,
I stare.

I've been up for too long,
now it's time to come down.
Maybe face that the ideas
weren't really that good and
wouldn't have made me rich!
(Grandeur!)
Return to my natural state of
ink and guitar strings and broken drumsticks,
and tears,
so many tears as tears on the
pages, and I am
still unable to cry.
Have no doubt though,
they are there.
I'm withdrawing, pushing friends and family
away, it has begun.
I'm agitated. Always.
I wake up ready to scream
because even when I'm asleep I can't
sleep and my dreams are
of guns and terror and fear.
I run, but my body is not trained
well enough to run fast and far
enough to pull this thing out of me.
I'm scared.
But I will make it through,
knowing the next high is just
one low away.