half-finished books,
blank pages sandwiched between
scattered notes,
words lying limp on pages
purposeless,
bookmarks declaring incompletion,
things not said
or said but not heard,
a night like many nights where
I wish
it would all just come together
and be whole
and be full
and be done.
and I sleep instead another night
a night
a night.

I forgot to tell you,
When you were out of town
I sold my soul to the devil.

He was quick and proud
Found me kneeling on the ground
Now I'm promised to him forever.

Yes, he walked me down the lane
And he showed me all my shame
All my hope is a flower in the desert.
That devil said I can't come home to you.

Now your lots are in
So I'll confess my sin
Swear to god she could love you better.

I went and cast my line
Cause the devil said, "It's time"
But there's a deluge in the river.

He took me up the hill
Offered media and pills
All my hope is a flower in the desert.
That devil said I can't come home to you.

oh yeah, oh yeah,
I've been depressed too.
Don't tell me I don't know what it's like.
I do and I get that writing about the
difficulty of getting out of bed makes you feel productive
and a little better.
But
I just think you should throw out your sad songs and
melancholy pen somedays—today.
Take long drinks of something cold and feel sunshine
on closed eyelids. Something.
Stop writing poems about it.
I used to write poems about it and I can tell you,
it aired the ***** laundry,
took that weight off my chest
but it didn't free me from any demons,
just chained me to them with words.

I don’t have stories to tell anymore.
Maybe because I talk with myself less and talk to you more.
I walk to the car, to work, back to the car, into the house,
always an invisible string, a compass, a radar, looking for you.
There used to be stories, a string tied to a fantasy, a compass pointing into a future
I do not know if I should dream of or want.

There’s this undying want
That is hard to ignore anymore.
When I think about the future
All I think is “more,”
And I don’t know if more means me and you
And two kids and that white and wood paneled ocean house.

Take, for example, my own childhood house.
That was a place that filled me with heavy want.
Though we had everything we needed, I suppose, most children like me and you
Don’t follow our parents’ footsteps anymore
And we don’t see keeping up with the Joneses as anything more
Than a long-dead, rotted-out American Dream kind of future.

Where is the future
In a two-car-garage white house?
I know it’s not about the house, it’s more
About the people in it and being comfortable and I want to want
That future and see value in it, and oh the laughs we’d have around the kitchen table. But anymore
I can’t lie, I want to run and run and run away from me and from you.

I’ll use the cliché: it’s not you,
It’s me and my obsession with the future.
I don’t think I am ever awake in the present anymore.
I’m always up ahead and there are two simulations I play with. That one with the house
And the one where I run and I run, alone, wherever I want
And honestly, honestly, I don’t know which one I want more.

But couldn’t they have guessed? The more
I fear losing everything which is you
The more I want
To play by my rules and **** the future.
So in another imagining, they find me in the bathroom of this house.
My heart isn’t beating anymore.

I imagine there’s something more in the future
Other than you or running or a white-wood house,
But I don’t have stories to tell anymore. I don’t want to look there anymore.

your leaving
is quick, maybe calculated.
like all the other times
i have been turned from
in the most literal sense,
your leaving -- quick.
your leaving, your turning,
your back, my last glimpse,
your leaving, leaving me
numb not broken.
off you go.
vamoose.

She walks on fluttering ribbons
That wave in sunset breezes,
as silent and unsure as the night.
She sees ribbons, furling and twisting
underneath tentative steps.
A tightrope walker -
She wonders if ribbons lead anywhere
or if they only belong ******* in a little girl’s
waterfall curls.