It's funny to remember
You loved someone;
The feeling foreign,
Awkward in hand,
Rotting in a way,
But beautiful in yesterday
Or week
Or month, or year -

A decade even -
So far
But not too distant
To remind you
To stay far enough away.

I used to love
When you and I
Got too drunk to speak
And watched the stars
From my bathroom sink
In well-lit Boston
Because
Imagination is important
In times like these.

I fell in love at 17,
19,
21,
22,
23
23.

You’re pretty
Beautiful,
In the way you
Speak
Walk,
Talk,
Look at me,
And all our friends
Who spectate
Agree.

What I need
Is to live, learn
And love
A time where
The only lies
I tell
Are to myself,
Alone
In the confines
Of a simple life.

It’s not fair,
To let you into
A mind,
Heart,
Life,
That may not be
Capable of truly
Letting your heart
Reside
Anywhere
Close
To
Mine.

It
Will end
With a broken heart,
Guaranteed.

I can’t
Even let
You start.

My apologies.

Have you ever
Mixed memories
With what you wished
They could be,
Creating a fictional
Reality
Blended together
Like bitters and whiskey
Vermouth and a cherry,
The Manhattan of your dreams.

My words may sound similar,
Though my pen bleeds aged ink.

I am no longer the devil you once loved.

It’s amazing.
I had it all,
And watched as it all fell apart.
Unaware
Of how it would feel,
Running through my fingers
Like sand lost in time,
The memories I have
Barely forgotten.

When I was a child,
I was given a silver necklace by my father,
Told the stories of how it was there when he met my mother
And cherished it dearly.
But as childhood would have it,
I lost the necklace,
In a full contact game of two-hand touch football,
In the backyard of my frenemy neighbor.
I searched for hours in the grass,
Coming across spiders, quarters
The remnants of dog’s passed,
But never again saw the silver chain
With the little cross
That was the closest thing I ever held to God.
Now I look back,
To the necklace, the touch football games
The neighborhood loving brawls,
And realize youth is an object,
It’s something we hold close
But never realize the importance of
Until years later,
When we miss it
Around our necks,
And we regret
Never truly
Falling in love
With what we had
Before it was gone.

Some of you make it look
So effortless.
Love, I mean
In all different geographies.

And so we sit,
Amongst the dudes, bros and half-hipsters
With their overpriced skin tight
Third world friendly workout attire
Under a half fog of cigarette smoke.

And I love your words.
And I love your lines;
While I look across the bar
Towards a television screen
Of onscreen fear and distrust,
To which I must subside.

Your stories, I welcome all,
Overseeing the ocean of information,
But like Columbus, you've never sailed before,
And fear the monsters we can't name,
Their drawings now pencil thin in comparison
To the bombs and the lunatics we face daily
On the news stands we read, and tremble,
Afraid to die
In some new terrible way
The news will commemorate.

But for you, against all odds, I'll keep on
Amongst bullets and bombs,
Through the smoke and the fog,
I'll keep on,
And on
And on.

I was told,
Some line, some time ago
About bravery being not who killed the dragon
But who had the courage to face it first;
Like learning to love the dark,
Or leaving home before it hurts.

It’s those times,
With final hugs and long goodbyes,
Tears that wait until the car ride
When it’s just you alone,
But for the stars above,
That you find yourself searching
For that shine across the sky
To signify
There is a chance
To wish
For one last
Goodnight.

Some men are just there
For the good time,
And that's not me.
Or so I'd like to believe,
But I'm sure they lie and cheat
So I understand why
You wouldn't believe me.

Feelings turn to confusion
Confusion turns to frustration
Turns to anger,
Turns to action,
Turns to writing,
Turns to poetry,
Which in turn becomes a feeling
That frustrates me entirely.

Stories you told, they stuck with me
In my field trips through your memories
I loved to learn the places you'd been.

Places unlike anything I've seen,
Brought to life through storytelling
From France to the Indies; the top of Mount Washington.  

Now today, times change and pass you by
Like cars on the street at night
Yet you never seem to mind.

Your stories that never grow old,
In the aged leather bindings of your soul
Will rest peacefully between you and me.

Time it seems, it learns to dream
When the world keeps on turning
As the pages in your book are running out of ink.

Time it seems, has been kind to me
As I've keep my youth steadily
In kind with the rhyme and the reason
Of your bones.

Time it seems, will catch up to me
Some point before eternity,
In kind, with the rhyme and the reason,
Of your bones.

I found you over the rainbow,
In some kind of spectrum glory
Talking colors and how they only matter
When the eyes of the world are closed.
So I kissed you as the sun rose,
All yellows, oranges and light.
Hearts some kind of colliding.
Full spectrum love-shine.
Fading fast to daylight.
Never to return.

Because you are you,
And I will always
Be me;
In love with the notion of color theory
And colorblind to reality

She said there was zero squared chance of reconciliation
That our lives were not the circle she dreamed,
But two separate lines diverging at a point
Arranged in rays, and some other math terms I never understood
Because she finished top of her class, myself a comforting third
Tier, of the last tier, of those who made it through the door.
And the story has stayed the same, regardless of the term change
I was back in school, receiving a bad grade,
Thanking God for the bell curve, which rang
"Some things always stay the same, but keep trying anyway"
And my averages will remain somewhere between middle of the line
And the bottom of the drain.

So
I will raise my hand for hope,
I will raise my hand for shame,
I will raise my hand to look good,
And to never learn
Quite exactly what I should.

Living for the highs,
And dying with the lows
It's artistic, how it flows
Unconditionally, with time
Everyday a change
Yet uncomfortably the same
Leaving fleeting feelings
Of guilt and love
And the question
"What will tomorrow bring?"

I brew beer because I like knowing
I created something from
Only what the Earth gave me
My father taught me
And my hands could carry

I was outside a bar one night, smoking a loaned cigarette and looking at the stars. Next to me was an old man on a stoop, smoking too. He asked me what was one my mind, and I said love.

"It's stupid, the way we think sometimes" I said.

He got up from his stair, and joined me by the street side, looking up at the stars while he took a deep drag, paused for a moment, then exhaled and walked towards the night.

"It's stupid to think."

I am jealous of you who find love young
And understand how to make it stay
Because I have found it many times
And it always seems to fade away.

It’s these days
When things start changing
You begin to realize
How much you loved them
The same.

I don’t think I offended her,
And I don’t think she was sad
But the way she looked out at us
With envy, perhaps,
As we walked out of the club
Left me feeling something
In the pit of my stomach
I can’t quite understand.

She stared as if
We were kids at the party,
Boredom matching desires
To let the night take fire,
Arriving in nice cars,
Ordering expensive drinks
Watching a show
We'd only paid money to see.

She stared as if
Not from her view;
Legs split
Betwixt stage and sound,
Dancing somewhere between
Some kind of neon dream,
And a place she’d prefer not to be.

The beauty of living life out of the ordinary
Is the view no one else sees.
The tragedy of this lifestyle
Is the lonesome journey to the peak.

While you wait for me I’ll try and get you to change your mind
While you wait for me I’ll try and get you off mine
Love’s a fickle thing it comes and goes with time
While you write sad songs I’m out underneath bar lights

Because love, it doesn’t go away sometimes
Though you give it all these chances
And love, will put you out of your right mind
Knock the footing off your stances


So fall, fall with me
Until you’re bloodied on your faces
And fall, fall with me
Until you’ve thrown in all your aces
And still you’ll fall, fall with me
Until I’ve found a new replacement
So fall, fall with me
Fall in love with me tonight

If you missed me,
Like I miss you
And we both wanted
One another, again
Together,
Badly,
Sadly, even,
Because it's been so long
And there has been so much
Anger,
I like to think
We're hear something
More than just
Silence.

I saw your fire red lips today,
Lighting up someone else's world
With a kiss, to the air, to their lips
I'm sure their heart was in flames.
I wanted to feel that burn
And I missed it, for a moment
And a lifetime.

Times like these are when hearts sink,
Like lame Titanic references, inserted here,
Because I'd like to think it sinks in deep.

Sometimes I feel like it's better to be alone for a long time before trying again.
Sometimes I'm wrong about these things and regret it in the end.
Sometimes I'm right.

This time I'm right.
And this didn't go the way I imagined.

Burn on.

When you walked,
it looked as if
you were dancing under the stars.

Little feet have
a soft-stepping cadence
when they explore small town streets,
and yours were no exception.

You danced the ballet vino,
each sway a dive
ready to be caught
in the movement of
the music you paced.

You stumbled,
I caught you,
and we laughed
like we had
Many times before.

It was cool and misty,
the burnt smell of fallen leaves
was in the air.

It was October,
the world was painted autumn,
and we were in love.

We went to museums,
Curated our own desires,
Provided our own insights
To brush strokes
And pencil thin lines
While the world around
Tried to decide
What colors matched our style.

Do you remember that day
We go in your old Volvo after class
And drove west out into west of nowhere
Passing a museum about dinosaurs
And their place in western Mass.
Until we found that old, small town
That belonged in another era,
With small houses, and small streets
And signs on the doors giving various history degrees.

The music you played didn’t fit
With the scenes we passed,
Children on bikes that laughed at us
As we stared down their streets
Hands over eyes like explorers
Notebooks out and ready like cartographers
Pens tips chewed in the ends of our mouths
Like the writers we wanted to be.

And It was all fun and games
Until we had to turn around,
In that corn field of all places,
That seemed to never end,
Because it was fall and the corn stalks yellowed
And I imagined they would have crunched under our feet
In the cool autumn air
I breathed through the open window.

You went deer-in-the-headlights
As some farmer came by in his truck
And you started joking
-Until fear start creeping-
“This is the end for us,”
Because it looked like something from a film

Where two college kids die alone in a cornfield,
****** unsolved
Scythe found with no prints
The beginning of a bad movie script.

But we lived,
Because he gave us directions back home
Back to route 93
Or 94, or 270
Where we parted for one of our final times
Before you left for the big city,
Losing this memory to history
Like all those little houses
And all their little families.

Maybe someday I’ll cross the ocean,
To see if the grass is greener
With a little blue between us.
Or if life is sweeter,
A few hours in the future.

I have never wanted so badly to be weightless in my life,
Than I have wanted to be weightless tonight.

Words are like melodies.
Without notation,
rhyme
or reason
they mean

nothing.

I want to say I’m weak for wanting
But I’m human, and we’re all inherently weak,
And we all want what we can’t have
Just to say we got it.

She was deciding our fate
On the petals of flowers she picked
From her mother’s garden
When she left it at
“He loves me not,”
Convinced herself this was true,
And chose to float away
Like the petals in the wind.

These ghosts, the come to me nightly
And wake me with what they say
Of their lives and last charades
Spoiled moments at their end of days

My whiskey dreams are so lovely,
Keeping them away
Until the half light of the break of day
Keeping them in the dark, half seen, at bay.

My decisions may haunt me,
Like these ghosts I once betrayed,
Like these dreams see in night after day
I surrender, I give up; parlé

Because you don’t know what it’s like
To be haunted by you
To be haunted in the night
By love.

Life goes by in a flash,
In an instant plans are memories,
Photographs the only residue
Of past normalities,
And then the realization
You’ve been going on along the whole time,
Without ever seeing it.

Sunlit dew is beautiful.
A blanket of stars across the night sky is beautiful.
Cold beers at the end of a long day are beautiful.
A new year is beautiful.
And even a broken heart is beautiful, when seen from the right angle.

The key is the point of view.

The only thing holding me back
From this new year

Is you.

Loving you broke my heart,

But I can't love any other way.

Do you remember the day we bought our beers, packed our bags and made our own party on the hill beside our building? It was just you and me and the sun. We were celebrating the first warm day of spring, but you still insisted on stouts, and they quickly lost their cool in the sunlight but I didn't mind. I brought my camera and photographed the wind curling through that blue and green sundress you loved, and you danced as if you were a leaf in autumn.

Until you spilled your beer, to which I reacted only with regrettable anger. You stopped dancing.

That lead us inside, away from the sunlight, to end the memory. You never wore that sundress again, and didn't enjoy those stouts the same way. We never celebrated another change of season, and I never again photographed you in the wind.

I had a heart once.
It looked something like a locket that broke in two;

She took half,
And never gave it back

So now I love things incomplete.

What makes you feel better
Than long walks at night,
A lung's breath of cold air,
Inklings of dreams and aspirations
With a halfhearted plan to get there.

In time
We clap to music,
Beats of our own drum
Sung by someone
Over small speakers
That only we appreciate.
And we dance without reason.

In time
We’ll look back
And laugh
At the clothes we wore
When we spent
All that money
On those drinks
That we now wish we saved.

In time
We’ll understand
The implications of our actions
And how it all played out
In the end
And maybe even have
A little better understanding
Of how we came to be
Who we’ve come to be.

In time
You will grow strong
With the seasons
And when the leaves fall again
You will stand tall
And brace the winter
Without fail.

In time
We may meet again
Somewhere else
In a different chapter,
And you will be different
As I will be different
But alike in that
We are no longer who we were,
Our words will have changed.

In time
When we understand
We may see it all.

In time
When you are strong
You will succeed.

In time
The time spent between us
Will feel like nothing at all.

In time
Your dreams
Just may come true.

In time
I hope
that
you
will
fly.

Keep me in your heart and mind,
As I’ll keep you in mine,
Though I know it may be difficult
For your journeys this point in time.

Good luck with everything,
I’ll always love you,
I hope happiness is what you find.

And if our paths cross again,
Same place, different time,
A future point in life,

It’s all the same for me if we
Become us again,
Sharing heart and mind.

She walks like
the wind --

A wall of cold air
A flurry of autumn leaves
A wakeup morning breeze

-- every step disappears
into the next.

We stayed up all night,
Drinking wine, listening to Dire Straits.
I told you I loved you like Romeo loved Juliet
You told me to get more creative,
So I said it again, in French.

Uno mas,
or "one more."
One more stop until we're home
or close enough to call it so.
One more stop until we're close enough
to driving our car and picking up ***,
roadside.
To grabbing a coffee
to restart the night.
To talking 'till that predawn light
that reminds us why
we fell in love
the first time.
Uno
mas.

When we come here
We come here to dream,
To live wealthy seaside fantasies
Until it's time to leave.
We hang our hats by the door,
And exchange our dreams for reality
Holding dearly to our memories
To keep us working, endlessly
Until our next retreat.

When the sun hid behind
a cover of trees
You shone with the intensity
of the full moon.
Stars in your eyes
like twilight skies,
Beetlejuice, Orion's belt;
the big and little spoons.