On the 1:28 a.m. train
all that have left to ride west
are the night shifts
high on coffee and hope
the lonely rock climbers
with caves under their eyes
and the young lovers
too late to stay out
too early to say goodbye.

There have been

seventy six million
nine hundred forty two thousand
three hundred and fifty one poems

about falling asleep
next to someone you love

that was a lie, of course
but by God is it ever wonderful.

Seventy six million
nine hundred forty two thousand
three hundred and fifty two.

I'm a boy made out of wood
And with you I know I could
Be painted better than I am now
To befriend an artist like you somehow
My hair and shoes are made of clay
Molded carelessly, messy, you'd say
Fix me, bend me, make me new
But please don't make me into you
Someone made me, someone great
But made of wood, I know my fate
Will be met in a fire, so easy to catch
For I know I'll fall in love with a match.

Don't be sad
Life is just
Death's coping mechanism.
Maybe someday
He'll find another way
And we'll never get lost again.

If life is death's coping mechanism
Love is life's way to say
"Sorry about all that, friend.
Here, have something good in the end."
And it will be no fun sometimes
It will hurt as any journey does
It will teach you, learn you, sear and burn you
But when life gives in to death's warm hand,
You'll know you've loved, and it'll be grand.

I'm lying to you,
and I'm afraid to admit it.
This cannot be my admission,
because I am a liar.
Do you see my dilemma?

If you seek adventure
You search for something
You never want to find
Because if you find adventure
You are no longer seeking it;
If you are lost,
You must stop searching
To be found.

I will not make you last forever
forever is too long a sentence
imagine

writing you down
will not immortalize you
don't you know pages tire too

how selfish of me
to think I can preserve
a force like you

so you can tear yourself up
whenever you want to be forgotten.

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

It's a gorgeous day
Outside today
Enough to say
You'll pave the way
For it to be better than yesterday.

Like a candle in a hurricane
We flickered out in the wind
And anyone who saw us burning
Thought it must have just been
A little trick of the light.

Sometimes I'll
come to you in pain
but I won't know
how to tell you
where it hurts.

Falling, catching
Falling, catching
Falling, catching, then
You hit the ground, and until you're found
You'll never fall again.

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.

Singing songs of simple sweetness,
we sit and stare at soundless skies.
Your call caresses cloud and crevace,
while mine can scarce hold on.
In sleep, it seems we see ourselves,
awake, we will not wonder
why we leave our wonder wary,
when we sing and stare at the sky.

It was suddenly twenty-eight minutes
                 after three in the morning,
and I found myself in your bedroom.
     Your sheets were cheap and creased,
                     your quilt was older than you,
                   and your pillow cases didn't match.
There were three pillows, and you had all of them.
                                                                ­       I didn't mind.

Your breathing was the steadiest thing in your life right now,
              and your back rose and fell
                          as regularly as your hopes did in the daytime.

                    There was nothing on your back -
           whatever was there
an indefinite number of hours previously
     had joined the convention of disorganized stress on the floor
              that slept a mere seven and a half inches from us.

                      The mattress was as warm as we were,
           and the whole of it held tightly to the scratched hardwood floor
that was probably still owned by those that lived here before you.

                                                           There was an appalling lack
                                            of glow-in-the-dark stars
                              on your dull, cracked ceiling.

We used
to talk
for hours.

The boy who waved the boats from shore
had still never set sail,
but he was lonely.
One day or morning,
a sailor's sunrise,
a girl approached the boy on the pier.
It was a long walk
and they could see each other
on each side, approaching.
They watched each other,
each studying the other,
as if other could learn about each
before even speaking.
Eventually, she arrived,
and they looked at each other again,
faces full of curiosity.
"What are you doing?"
asked her eyes.
His replied,
"What's it to you?"
"Well," she blinked,
"You seem all alone here.
Boats leave, but you do not."
She communicated across a short sea
of rotting, sun-dried boards
between them.
The boy said nothing.
Instead, he cocked his head
and flicked a smile
from the corner of his lips
across the metre-long lake of boards.
She asked him after a pause,
"I've nothing to do,
may I please sit on the dock with you?"
The boy nodded warmly,
and they sat,
fewer boards between them than before.
She pulled off her shoes,
her socks too, pink and blues,
and dipped her toes
in the water she knew was cold.
They spoke very little,
but they would inevitably fall in love.

You will catch me up on things
I hadn't even caught to begin with
a rain of pieces of puzzles and prose
with gaps wide enough to fit your hand

and partially understand what you would
have been holding, had your hand held it

we will chase trains and hop thoughts
tongues exhausting themselves untiring
lengthy discussions on whether or not
we would find ourselves bored of one another

we never were.

The way
you look
at me
makes me feel
so **** powerless.

You
are
my
best
days.

A headphone splitter cable
for a late-night neon dance

like fools to the rest of the world
fully content in our own rhythms

the lights swirl around us in streaks
as we peacefully forget we're not alone.

I see
a flag,
shredded
by much more
than just the wind.

"What are you even doing?"
I asked the boy in the mirror,
a recent friend
(and forever a mortal enemy).

"Trying.
And it's mental,
but we're getting getting there."

He sounded convinced.
I turned my head to the side,
his eyes followed mine,
glistening in the dim light.

"Are we a we?"
I asked him.

"No, you idiot,"
he replied, laughing.
"We're just you."

With you it's so easy
to dance in the middle
of an empty road
with a song on repeat

it's simple with you
to lay on the couch
with my hair in your lap
and feel complete.

To whom I hate:
If I truly knew you
I wouldn't hate you
Such is life.

Before
you fall
asleep,

count the
reasons
you'll wake up

even if
there's only one,
now you have a reason.

If the moon
can embrace
the whole
of the sun,

you **** well
can be kind
to the earth.

The answer
We've both been searching for
Is the question
We both avoid.

I would tell you
                    that time is money,
                              if I had any of either.

                    I do not, and neither do you,
           so please understand,

                              your time
                                        is your life.

I wish my pen to be a dancer,
graceful, strong and wild.
I wish my words to fill with wonder,
curious as a child.
I wish my tongue to shed its silver,
to slow its warm descent,
and to act against the worst of enemies
whose words I can't prevent.

What comes down
must first have been up
but we all must start
in the sea.

Steeper hill
and darker valley,
descending to climb
new disaster after another,
ricocheting from high to low
the tunnels whisper you are a fighter
as you’re up for air, grinning with a migraine.

                                    Echoes of the shouts of down
                                           fade as you crest a tidal wave,
                                           and in these weightless moments
                                                        y­ou built a home, a whole life,
                                                           ­   you fell in love over and over
                                                           and carved strength from the iron
                                                             that allowed you down once again.

                                Rational heartbeat of the never-ending
                   keeps your will steel and your eyes hot,
           but when tunnels whisper I see an end  
          it is easier to smile at comforts
      and it is okay to be scared
  on a rickety roller coaster
with an expiration date.

The artists of the alleys
have all stayed home.
Their tags are fading,
they're too old to roam.
Where are you, artists?
Have you lost your say?
Painted over, your pain is over
but are you any better this way?
Your spray cans seem silent
and the walls are all grey -
this is when we most need colour,
but there's nothing bright to say.

The lights flicker
every once in a while
at number 6 Sea Robin

I'm too young for ghosts
and too poor to fix it
so I will just believe in angels

at number 6 Sea Robin.

They said you'll go places, kid
I heard it so often I believed it

I could be this shining spark
hope for a fire from nowhere

but like nearly every other spark
I crashed lightly into the grass

flared up once
and flickered out
into the darkness.

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.

And all of a sudden
spring awoke and

my sleep faded
from the icy teeth of winter

to the cool, orange glow
of a beginning.

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.

It was the thunder
that told us
her bedtime story
that night

tales of new life
of rains, spring
and morning flowers
far, far away

a storm story
to sing us to sleep.

I can speak only for myself,
but I also know
I'm not the only one
trying to navigate
a series of *****-ups,
misunderstandings
and blown opportunities.
I'm trying to figure out how to balance
being in school full-time,
holding multiple jobs,
maintaining a social life,
understanding a relationship,
missing my family,
not being able to afford books
and remembering to eat or sleep.
God knows
you've got it harder than I do.
No one deserves
to go through crap on top of that,
but we always do anyway.
I'm surely going to be
an ******* sometimes.
I'll do what I can not to be,
but it's never been enough before,
and I don't see that changing.
All I hope for
is someone to talk to,
send stupid messages,
bounce homework answers off of,
have coffee with
when we should be
doing that homework.
I owe you that.

Two people
were admiring
the sunset together.

"If the sky
were always
this pretty,
we'd have forgotten
to look at it by now,"
one spoke over the breeze.

"I don't think that's true,"
the other replied,
"because I still look at you."

Tonight I'll swim in your sweater
and I'll dream of waking up

in a soft nest of white gold
with your messy hair

teasing the freckles
off my tired nose.

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.

You are
Addicted to blossoming
And yet
Afraid of being a seed.

Your grandfather’s cold cup of coffee.

Breeze on your toes from a hole in the door.

Dust and cobwebs on glass Geisha figurines.

A staircase the creaks twice every second step.

Beads.

Mildew and paper holding hands.

Milk crates with records in them, three.

Sinatra and Woody Guthrie.

Lavender.

Dense wooden chests of cloth, linen frayed.

Threadbare towels.

Woodrose pink.

White duster’s gloves.

Floorboards that whisper epics.

Bookcases that smell of mahogany dreams.

Cardamom.

Brown sugar.

A television older than you and your mother.

Playing cards, missing the six of hearts, neatly labelled.

Another cold cup of coffee.

Lace, white.

Winter sunlight and swirling dust.

China in a locked cupboard.

Skeleton key tied to the handle by a faded ribbon.

Paper, folded, an incomplete crossword in blue pen, lazy scrawl.

An armchair, plaid, brown, yellow, comfortable.

Hand-knitted blanket, stained in the top right corner.

Wine glass.

Sleepy.

Quiet.

There is
an abundance
of beautiful people,
for beauty
should be
in your mind.

Dear man in the moon,

I am beyond saving,
but there are others
that need you
far more than I do.