Catching herself halfway through a smiling sentence,
She heard the familiar door slamming "goodbye",
And her jaw told me she knew exactly what was going to happen
But neither of us really ever know anything.

Remember Diana
With the sailboat of dreams?
I know she's out there in the great blue sea,
But she's lost her way, it seems.
The trouble with sailing
When no one says you can,
Is that when you set off,
You lose your hat and some of your confidence
When the first great blue wind blows.
If you're made to doubt, told to doubt
You'll still sail, but you'll sail without
The parts of you that hadn't a doubt -
So when your anchor is fused to uncertainty,
You think you're destined to sink.
To sail, you need a great blue sheet,
And spit and grit and piece of meat
To give to the great blue shark you meet -
But you can do without those, if you're clever.
What's essential for sailing
(And Diana knew this quite well, I can tell),
Is the awareness and understanding
That your boat is built with dreams in mind.

What use is a sailboat of reverie
If you haven't any imagination?

The fact of the matter, this is not.
You forgot: she's lost at sea.
The great blue doubt overcame even me,
And I stopped believing in her sailboat,
So it stopped sailing,
For she was the last great blue believer.
She fused that to her identity,
She was wrapped in her sails
But things got tough
Blue seas got rough
So it wasn't enough
And the blue called her bluff.
She escaped from land,
But didn't understand
That the waves of the deep
Wouldn't hold her hand
So her great blue view
Sank smaller and smaller.

Dear Diana,
What on earth do you do
*When the next wave is taller than you?

Withholding, confiding
Understanding, trying
Wondering, deciding
Smiling, crying
Staying, fleeing
Sleeping, tiring
Learning, being
Wishing, desiring
Thinking, bleeding
Listening, losing
Helping, conceding
Whining, choosing
Loving, winning
Overcoming
Finding, sinning
Not becoming
An empty word
Waiting on the fence;
A together verb
In the past tense.

Diana was a dreamer.
She wished to sail away
On a sailboat made of reverie
To let her mind wander.
"Why, sail away?" you ask,
"It's such a bad cliché!
Writer, writer,
Be more original", you say.
But no, I can't, see:
This Diana wished to sail
And if you disbelieve that
She's surely destined to fail.
Diana wished to sail far,
For she knew she couldn't fly
(And talk of cliché!)
But she knew to sail a boat.
Why sail, why, it's easy:
If you knew no other escape
Wouldn't you take that route?
If you could fly, you'd fly.
So she could sail
And that, she did.
You'll notice, here,
I haven't told you why
Or where she chose to sail.
Well, I don't know!
Are you surprised?
Gosh, I didn't ask her where!
She just up and left,
But I know she's happy there.

The sailboat in question
Is a sight for sore lies:
Sails of soft green
And gold like her eyes.
It smells of the sea
And all that is sweet
And under those sails
Is such a lovely retreat.
This boat, while lovely
Requires much care:
No assembly required,
But imagination and flair
Are what makes this boat run
For, it's imaginary, of course
And only Diana can see this sailboat;
In her mind, forever, it'll be.

Little one, don't harden your heart
You're almost done, your garden, your art
Some of leaves and growth and green
The rest of paint, the beauty you've seen
Translates through you
And those who knew you
So all you see and all you leave
Are growing more than you'd believe
For you are a garden of life and seed
And while you do have all you need
You grow abundance, you've love to spare
And so, with all you know, you share
Your art, your garden, and don't despair
For they'll all remember you for this
And you've always more for whom next you kiss.

Be proud of those who are proud:
You are then, in turn, proud of yourself,
And the cycle of healthy pride repeats.

We lend so much life
To so many things
That have no need of it
And we take all we can
From those that so desperately crave it.

She'll fall asleep tonight
Hearing the thundering rain
Making love to the impractical skylight
And hating that she can't fall asleep
But rain will relent.

There is
An abundance
Of beautiful people.
We all know this,
We see them everywhere.
You can be one too,
If you are not one already,
Simply by stating something stupid:
"I'm a beautiful person too."

I told you not to forget me
So you did
And I didn't want you to
But I guess I have to call it
My own fault, this time.

Mornings are unparalleled
When you didn't expect
To wake up
From the night before.

I could just drop off the face of the world. I could get off this train and never go back to anywhere I've ever been before. But I won't. Maybe someone would miss me, or someone would be hurt, I'm sure. I don't want that. I thought about this as I walked, in an old sweater, through relentless grey drizzle before six in the morning, and I began groundlessly grinning, as if I were walking down the aisle. I was on my way to mount a train and embark upon the monotonous commute to a job I need but don't want, to work toward a profession I may not ever achieve. But somehow I don't seem to mind. I've affixed an artificial facade of contentedness to my mindlessness, and for whatever reason, I can't help but enjoy it. I could drop off the face of the world, but instead I smile in the rain and stay on the train.

I can tell
You're almost okay
Though you're a thousand
Miles away.

(A poem over a few thousand miles)
by JAC and JAB

We never age in memories,
But in stories, we do.
Our words mature with us,
So our stories do too.

Our days grow older
And our pages unfold,
Until we become the author
*Living a story untold.

We will
Knock you
Down.

It's amazing what you find when you're looking
It's astounding what you see when you're not
And what you see when you're looking at me
Is nothing you've never seen before.

All at once, it was a rainy day
Chilling and grey,
And I wanted you to stay
But you had to go
So I took back my "hello"
And kissed you goodbye
While the clouds in sky
Continued to cry,
"Oh, who am I?"

She made a bird with her hands
And her shadow flew away.
Her hands remained, of course,
But that shadowy imagination soared.

You are overpriced coffee:
You taste like all of the wonderful things
That wake me up and warm me
But you leave my pockets empty
And leave me needing more.

There is an inherent musicality
To your bare humanity
A soundtrack to what makes you human
There's a rhythm to your movements
There's harmony in your breathing
There are chords in your voice
There's​ a deliberate delicacy to your touch
As if you care deeply about an instrument
There's a tempo to the way you love
And notes in your laugh
And there are so, so many kinds of music
In your solo act.

I walked her down to the train
Which I know I shouldn't have
But, see, it was starting to rain
But I know, I shouldn't have.

I just like to watch her walk
And watch her cheeks turn red
Listening to her lovely talk
Even if it's just in my head.

We used to talk
We did, it's true
But now we don't
Which is probably why I'm with you.

I walked you down the subway stairs
Hoping it was us we'd find.
Like I used to, I carried all your cares
Like a train, trailing behind.

We got to the train, and you nodded goodbyes
But as the doors sighed, I stepped inside
You didn't say anything, which was an odd surprise
We used to do this, when in you I'd confide.

We sat in silence
Beside you, I was
It was the closest I'd been to you
Since we ended things, because...
Oh, well.

Searching for something stupid to say,
I muttered, "I don't regret it."
She whispered, "What?" and I looked away.
It was childish, but I let out, "Forget it."

But then I looked back,
And said, "I don't regret us. Even though..."
("Clickety-clack," said the tired train track)
"... Even though we ended like we did, you know."

She looked at me with eyes that said nothing and everything
And the words stumbled off of her tongue,
"I don't either, though I wish I did,
Then it would be easier."

I reached for her hand
(Which was a stupid idea)
But she let her fingers lace
Between mine, in case
I really did let her go.

Carpenter, carpenter
With hammer and nails
Fix all your problems
'Till something else fails
When something does
You're not to blame
It's the end of your youth
The end of this game
You've built what you needed
And fixed what you could
But this adult life
Isn't made of wood.

Now I'll walk down that grubby old road, the same one I'd always run through when I was happy to go home, when I was free enough to be inspired by the expanse of greyed-out asphalt that led me home or away, and I'll feel nothing. I've never liked the word "nothing", because it was a useless answer to any question and a waste of a loaded word. Nonetheless, that was undoubtedly what it felt like, sliding my shoes across the pebbles, litter and pollution coating the aging path toward what used to feel like my home. Now it, and this asphalt, was a sort of limbo - a space I inhabited between paychecks and numbing social catastrophes, the place at which my deliveries of obliviously impersonal mail were dumped. When you find yourself lost (ha) in the standard crises you know every human being has tasted in one way or another, it feels juvenile, childish, frivolous. But we feel that way anyway.

The t-shirt
You sleep in
Is mine.

As thunder rolls across the sky
Though I know, I wonder why
We faded away, you and I
Like thunder, rolling across the sky.

I can't
Help but
Keep her
Toothbrush
Where she
Left it.

Seeing you
makes me
miss you
more.

A laugh bounces through the street below
Followed by that laugh's friends
A happy neighbourhood
Even this far into the evening
The sun was visiting elsewhere
Leaving a dull blue-grey
Spread over the sky.
A loop of those favourite songs we all had
Stumbles from second-hand speakers
You don't really hear them
Or rather, you don't hear them like you did
When you loved them.
This remedy-less loneliness
Is temporary
But you wouldn't know it to see it
It pulls you nowhere
And drags you into bed
It makes effort difficult
And overfills your head
With nothing it should be full of.

When heaven and hell collide
Then we'll both be satisfied
Until then, we should stay
On our own.

We'll both fall apart
If we try putting each other back together.
Our pieces are limited
And once we start to lose them,
We can build only with what we have.

I'm not describing anything
Any differently​, anyway
I'm not that kind of poet.
I'm not providing anything new for you
Just another way
To feel okay.

There's triumph in each step
Walking timidly home
Looking down
So no one can see the grin
Spread generously across my face
Or the love marking my neck
Because, selfishly,
I want it all to myself.

"For a moment,"
Said their lips,
Warm, but fleeting

"It's okay,"
Said the rain,
Falling again

"I missed you,"
Said your bed,
Empty and tired

"Not today,"
Said the night,
Long and dull

"Maybe next time,"
Said the morning,
Sleepy and still

"Just wait,"
Said the week,
Dragging on

"Just breathe,"
Said the sidewalk,
Every day

"You're fine,"
Said the wind,
Colder than them

"I need you,"
Said your heart,
Resigned and dry

"..."
Said your lips,
Silent.

He looked at me,
The helpless boy in the mirror,
And said,
"You can't do this on your own."
Then his shoulders shook
Not hard enough for their burden to fall
And he in the mirror
Sobbed like a broken man
But he was just a helpless boy.

It'll be another one of those conversations
where neither of you really say anything
in all the words that spill from your lips.
Half of you wants to cut them off
Press the knife of your lips to their sentence
and tell warm stories until you cease being a storyteller
without even a word

But half of you wants to just scream to them
that all you're screaming
is poisonous nonsense to validate them
To validate yourself
To insist feebly and unconvincingly
That the time you burned together
wasn't a waste
of the only thing more precious than time:
Them.

We lay there, calm
Talking about our wildest dreams
Chasing only the end of our conversation
Hoping never to catch it
With hands laced loosely
Our breathing returned to pace
Hearts steadied once again,
It was purely right
Everything was warm.

There's a soft blue spark
That materializes in the smallest of moments
That illuminates those that love
Whoever they may be
And we can see it, that blue glow.
Just like a fire never chooses where to burn
A spark never chooses where to find itself:
Between animal and friend;
Between fingertips during a movie neither cares for;
Between the flick of your smile
And the words on a page
Or the flash on a screen;
Between mother in mind
And child that may only be there too;
Between laughs that bubble up
When nowhere and nothing clash;
Between one here and one far,
Or one here and one gone.
We fall in love with those sparks of love
And they show us just how to do so -
Teaching you how to teach,
Showing you how to show,
And they care not for who
For what
For when
For why
For how;
They simply show.

I feel too young
To be this old
Yet I'm too old
To feel so young.

You were right
And I was wrong
You were the right person
And I found you at the wrong time.

I write to share humanity
And the only thing humanity shares
Unanimously, is love.

We have what it takes
To end the world.
We've had it
Since the beginning of humankind.

You were the only one
Who mattered
And now
You're the only one who doesn't.

To change one thing
We need everyone
Why does it only take one
To change everything?

Please don't be
Temporary
To me.

All at once, all of a sudden
There was a cacophony of you
Resounding around my head
And quietly I imploded outward
****** into the very sounds
Your voice made in my mind
Because they sounded so good
I had to have them to keep
But instead of having them
They took me as a prisoner
Of a war that doesn't matter
And refused to give me back
So I'm left in a state of willing limbo
Ricocheting off the inside of my thoughts
Losing track of the times I think of you
Tallying the times you think of me
I could count on my fingers, I'm sure
But my thoughts don't have hands.

We stood in silence
Staring at the water
That sparkled, black
Far enough away that I knew
It matched that sparkle you held in your eyes
The one you held from other people
The one that needed hours and hours
Of seemingly pointless conversations
Of my tired serenades
Of laughing arguments and long messages
Of silences that bettered us
We were so high up, see
The wind didn't even reach us
On the balcony of the building
You know you can't afford to live in
We stood in silence
Admiring the feeling
Of being overcome by wonder
Overcome by patience
And overcome by comfort
Over black, sparkling water.

Waiting to see the love of my life
Home as a husband, in love with a wife
In a dream I can see it, she'll walk through the door
So I'm waiting to see the love of my life.

She'll be with child, and happy as me
We'll hear the news and shout happily
Find comfort inside a home of our own
For she'll be with child, and happy as me.

I'll be a good father, your mom loves you so
We'll show you love denied to us so
You'll grow up and be so much better than me
So I'll be a good father, your mom loves you so.

I'm waiting to see my love, my wife
We made it so far, we were good to this life
Our love has grown up now, with loves of their own
Now I'm waiting to see my love, my life.

Differences
Are but blemishes on the surface
Of safety, comfort, love and strength
But blemishes hurt like hell.

Your room has seen your secrets:
Your dangerous apathy
Your restless midnights
Your inviting sheets
Your missed mornings
Your tireless love
Your tired admiration
Your sore beauty
Your tentative bravery
Your half-awake kiss
Your sober frustration
Your wasted excitement
Your naked safety
Your thoughtless stresses
Your mind being torn apart
Your soft intakes of beautiful breath
And it will never, ever not want you.