I wish I understood
why I've lost the ability
to fully understand.

You're like a helicopter
falling off the face
of the moon:

You had no right
                          
                                to be there

                                            
                                                      in the first place.

Careful boy,
don't talk that way
she's hanging on
to the things you say
if you let go
with her, they'll stay
so careful boy,
don't talk that way.

In the flashes of passing streetlights
I carved out sentence after sentence

the endless noise of the slipping road
flickering into the highway I knew
was beneath my feet but I couldn't see

I was a child searching for solace
looking for a new imaginary friend.

Your bed is too big for you
yet you lay in the same spot
every night without fail
the imprint of you
reminded over and over
of your shape, size, your outline
your mattress will never forget you.

When I was fifteen years old
I was a pacifist and I knew everything

a boy I knew from school
caught my ear with a right cross

hey ****** he said
it was all he said

it hit me as we were walking
to the baseball diamond half past four

it spun me around
and I recognized him from class

quiet panic froze my feet
facing him in stunned confusion

a ringing bounced through my skull
my chest tightened my eyes wide

I felt another before it fell
as wordlessly he swung his hand again

this time it hit my stomach
my bottom rib to the left

I tried to stop his hands again again
but it never works like the movies

and it hurt
when ringing in my right ear cut out

this I didn't know
I thought I knew everything

it hurt
when he hit my nose

there was immediately blood
on my good blue sweater

it was muffled frenzied silence
I wanted him to say something

say something say anything
tell me why you're hurting me

tears burned in my eyes
but he couldn't see them

maybe he would have stopped
but they were easily missed in the red

on the ground now I covered my face
stop it I finally said please I said

if he heard me
he made no mention of it

and then there was fire in my side
his foot pulled back again

I turned away from the hurting
then fire in my back above my hip

then nothing
footsteps toward my eyes shut tight

another kick and I heard it coming
and I was ready for it to hit my face

but instead a barrage of little rocks
the gravel I lay in now in my hair

then the footsteps left
silent as they arrived

I lay there three or four eternities
aching and still so so confused

I didn't go to baseball
I hid under bleachers in the other field

man up my dad said that evening
as I wept in the passenger seat

I was a pacifist and I knew nothing
and it hurt.

Like well-worn denim
we got so comfortable

then were taken by surprise
when we ripped at the seams.

Dear man in the moon,

all I wish for
is that when it ends,
you might tell me
I fought bravely.

Together
we watched
the sun

rise deep
into the shallow sky.

A pair of imperfect bodies
is all we outwardly are,
but there is a warmth,
a rich, devoted touch,
an understanding
and a strength
that reassures
both of our
imperfect
hearts
that we
are already
more than we
thought we were.

Oh you
feel more
like home
than home.

All I
needed
to do
was fall
to learn
to fly.

Now we wait
in the rain
for the sun
to come again.

Careful boy,
don't think those things
you let her believe
in diamond rings
you'll never know
the power that brings
so careful boy,
don't think those things.

I'm not sure I'll ever have a home
in the way I imagined I would

maple trees and softball games
silverware and a chess board
and a leather chair that remembers me

I will always be an unsteady train
on tracks that diverge and separate
where will I work and where will I go
I will forever ask out the window

today the ground is too concrete for roots
only money buys you soil
and that too will **** you
slowly, slowly.

One twisted wreath ring
stainless steel, size 8, scratched
******* on right hand

leather wallet, bi-fold, European-style
my father's, my nineteenth birthday
three train tickets, debit card, folded five

five keys, two keyrings
keychain says Budapest, never been
four keys decades older than me
just one, newly cut

headphones, black
one ear doesn't work
wrapped carefully
never tangled

lip balm, mint

coffee receipt

three quarters
four dimes
a nickel

and the understanding
that I've a hell of a long way to go.

We let it
get too easy

to slip and fall
into the sun.

You smell of
cheap laundry detergent
and my favourite memories.

Dear good men,

if you observe
bad men
and do nothing,
say nothing,
help nothing,
stop nothing,
change nothing,
inform no one,
educate no one,
or remain
uneducated,
uninformed
yourselves,
you are not
good men.
Good men
must stop
letting bad men
prove good men
do not exist.

There is nothing new
under the sun.
Now, under the moon,
what is not unique?

I will always steal flowers
from your garden of wonders
to take to our cemetery
for I know you love violets

in the mess of daffodils
and green I've seen you
red and yellow see you too
yet we are both searching for blue

among the crystal petal headstones
I run through names I'll forget
leaving white and pink chrysanthemums
everywhere I can still remember

the sun will soon go to bed
and our shadows will finally kiss
we can sleep till purple morning
for you do love violets.

And we
spent the day
in the bed with
white sheets,
wasting away
our golden hours,
our youth
and our future.

Hope and love
are so often
but the casualties
of satisfaction.

I'll write you a song and
I'll sing you to sleep,
but only
if you tell me
the words.

Just out of curiosity,
what was it that
killed the cat?

Words
won't
water
flowers.

There was a time
when I wrote poems
about longing and love

but I love how long it's been
since that was okay, since
I didn't have other things
to worry about, to think
about, to dream about.

Lovers and dreamers
write out your hearts
but I am no longer
one of your many.

I stood there,
in the angry, dark air,
my hair curling everywhere,
and it was all I could do not to stare.

We spent all our free time alone
and so our time together cost us.

We fall into just the right places
now it's easy to undo these things
there's nowhere our hands
          don't know where to go
and we're asleep when
          the morning birds sing

our breath knows its way into rhythm
new is quiet and sincere
but still there are sparks
          in the spaces in the dark
and nothing can ever
          reach us here.

You don't expect
the best of me

so some days
I can make you
so so happy

and others
you know
I'm trying.

It's as if
we find
peace

in each
other's
wars.

Hospital flowers
don't live very long

and frosted windows
will miss your reflection

we give up when we know
that we will never win a fight

but today I hope to bring you more
red and yellow flowers to fight for you.

Some evenings I'll catch myself
looking through all of the grey
messages you gave me at night
and everything goes numb and

I can smell your laundry detergent
and see the way you could not tie
shoe laces and all your sweaters
were always dark colours and oh

how well they fit your neck and
your eyelashes held snowflakes
as if they loved them so and you'd
devour depressed books because

sad made you happy and I made
you happy too you always told me
often enough that I believed you
and we always missed the sunset

and you would drag your fingernails
across my shoulders while grinning
I loved it, you knew it burned my skin
and you would slam cupboard doors

by accident, you never meant to do it.
You would notice afterward and laugh
at yourself because it made you forget
that you hated everything about you

that was something I never forgot but
it never did anyone any **** good
because you slipped away so quietly
and suddenly there wasn't any more

slamming cupboard doors.

Good men
are a myth.
If you are good,
and you believe
you have others
to compare yourself to,
you are not good enough.
Good men must see bad men
and must help them understand
how they can strive to be better men.

Good man,
if you observe
a bad man
and do nothing,
say nothing,
help nothing,
you are also
a bad man.

I've become one of my stories,
twisting, developing, growing

as I tell myself
over and over

the life I led
became lives

the lies I fed
met reality

sincerity blur
narrative overlap

the story of the end
of the storyteller.

I will always be
acceptable and
yet comfortably
disappointing.

They do this because they love you,
your parents* I tell you over and over

see I don't know but what else do I say
they just don't have experience in this

wouldn't it be reassuring to believe
someone loves you in any situation I ask

as hospital flowers wilt in your window
we wait for everyone to understand

but we have been waiting forever
and a lot of eternity will soon expire.

Once
we
were
able
to
cre-
ate
life
with
only
words.

Always a writer
always running
out of things to say.

It was with you
that I spent all I had,
and I do not regret it.
I had more time than you, after all.

All the best people
can burn you sometimes
and often the worst
will offer you aloe

but those in-between
are those you should look for
who notice your burns
and know what they're from.

The thing is
after a sunset
things get dark.

"I shall always
be second to the sky,"
the clouds admitted to the sea.
The sea did not think this was so.
"I may reflect the blue when I'm still,
but you hold me like the sky never will."

It's a wonder
this old road
does not have
my footprints
etched into it.

Each subway platform
has two trains, see.
One east and one west,
or one south and one north.

In many cases,
you must cross a bridge or tunnel
to reach the other train.
On these bridges,
there is often a bench,
equidistant between either directions,
atop the two trains.

This is where you must sit
when you are young and in love,
and with the person
with whom you are in love and young,
for each of you
will inevitably need to go another direction,
west or east
or north or south,

but it is wonderfully easy
to just sit on the bench.

You step into the dark
and you continue to walk
forward and it gets colder
but your footfalls follow
your feet further and further
further and further forward.