Looking at your picture,
Is addicting,
Narcotically,
Like staring into the bright
Reflections of true gold,
A pirate’s treasure,
But you’re not a find,
Not under the X-mark,
But more of a
“Try again, hit restart;”
You know,
Fool’s gold.

You must have had
No idea
What we had
Because you were a fool
To throw it away...



Or so I say.

Two friends sit alone outside the campus pond on a cool fall night under a blanket of distant stars and wrapped in the misleading warmth of whiskey. They don’t speak often, but pass between them a flask. After a prolonged moment of silence:

“Do you ever wonder if, in five or ten years, we’re going to look back on all of this and regret everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, every decision you ever made here. Every fight you had, every girl you ever slept with. Every night you went out and partied instead of doing your work, or, every night you stayed in and did work while your friends lived their lives.

The major and classes you chose, and skipped. The types of beer you drank, and where you spent your free time. Every friend you made and every friend you lost. Every heart you passed by and never allowed to open up to you. Every time you opened your own heart and had it closed for you.

Really, every chance you never took, and every chance you shouldn’t have taken. The extent of your life leading up to where you will be. The choices in your life, big or small, that will have made you who you will become.”

“I guess it depends on who I’ve become.”

“What if you’ve become no one?”

“Well, in that light, I think it would be impossible not to. But no one is still someone. They’ve still been somewhere, they’ve still done something.”

Behind them the wind blew across the water, breaking the reflection of the moon into shards of glass while the whiskey ran dry.

It hurt to write before,
But now that I know
So many people see my words,
It makes every cut a little bit deeper
And reminds me
You all understand love
The same as me.

The best part about knowing you’re gone
Is knowing I no longer need to try;
The worst part is
Knowing I no longer can.

I will always think of you
When I listen to Andrew Bird,
And will always miss you
When I choose the next song.

Seriously though,
I see no point
In writing sad poems
About a girl who will
Never even read them
Never even care again
That I put my heart on the line
While she looked at other men
So instead, I’ll write something happy
Something about me.
Today I drank a bottle of wine,
Kept a smile,
And pet a dog.
I feel congratulatory.

Dear New Jersey,

There is only one state I hate, and that state is you.

I know it’s unfair, given we have a whole other 49 states for me to have a distaste for, and as home to 8,721 square miles and 8,8640,590 people, New Jersey is not only home to the ungodly show, but the girl I once knew I could have loved. I could have loved, given the chance.

She said “Spanish” like “Spaunish,” “Camera” like “Caumera,” and I fell for it. I loved the way her A’s in Mass turned to the ponderous AU’s of southern folklore. She had never seen the shore, but lived 15 minutes outside “the city,” which I learned is term for New York City, which is the Jesus of suburbia when it comes to kids who live far enough way from Boston to realize we are the true Yankees you should be rooting for.

Not to mention, I was lost there once, in the mountains, coated by a blanket of fog with my father yelling in the front seat of our Hyundai as mum held the maps and did her best to navigate. And to be honest, that’s an unfair reason to have a distaste for a state, as the fog and the mountains were beautiful, and minus the cussing and the yelling, I go back to that place a lot nowadays.

I truly hate New Jersey because of her, as a reflection of how she made me feel about my own self, my own state, of being that is. And because I’ve always felt Bruce Springsteen was overrated. Sorry Bruce, but Blinded by the Light was the closet thing I ever got to singing your songs, and I always preferred Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s version. I fell for the keyboard, mainly, and the way his lyrics flowed like whiskey into a Friday night kept me dancing for more than five minutes. His finished piece was over seven minutes, you know, and I listened to the whole thing.

She spoke of the city a lot, though she wasn’t a city kid. You could tell by her smile and the way she laughed at all the things I said, all the time, like she was nervous of what I thought. Her brown eyes were lost in a smiling squint when I spoke, and her camera bounced against her chest as she laughed. She was beautiful and smart and naive all at the same time, and I loved her for it.

New Jersey, I mainly hate your state because I no longer have a reason to go there. Because I made so many plans to visit, so many dreams to photograph you, to write you, to allow your festivities and sites and proximity to “the city” to change my own view on how I saw you, which were all crushed within a single night, within a single conversation, from a now single girl. I feel this unfair to say to you, but I hate your 8,721 square miles and 8,8640,590 people solely because of one girl. One beating heart amongst millions, one lonely state within a union.

I don’t think I’ll ever plan to visit you again, New Jersey, unless it’s another one night stay over on my way to New York City. And for that, with all I know you must have to offer under the mystique of America’s Armpit, I apologize to you, New Jersey. I never gave you the chance you deserved, and never will.

If you can ever offer me more than something related to heartbreak, you know you can always find me in New England, the heartbreak capitol of my United States. And while she may be a child of "the city," she broke my heart closer to home, and I'd rather roam the myriad streets of Boston than the gridlock of New York any day.

Oh, and Newark *****.

One of the most amazing things about women is, they shine early. At age 20 you can tell the girl you’d love to love, and she shines. Her smile and her eyes light up the room like a roaring fire. And while she smiles, she loves the world around her, twofold; like a young girl in lust and a woman in love. She draws you in, and you cannot escape.

When you’re young, she will never love you as you deserve, if you deserve to be loved, which is a conundrum in itself. And that’s the motive here, and I apologize to those looking for a more obscure message. But when you’re 21, with a ****, and hormones, and a life waiting for you to **** it up, chances are you are not ready to be loved. But you want to be, because we all want to be. It’s our incarnate desire as humans to love and to be loved, unconditionally. And while she smiles, and while you think you love her and she’ll love you, understand she’ll always be looking towards the future, because the future right now is the best she has, and if you aren’t the future, which you likely aren’t, say goodbye.

It will get better than you. It will always get better than you, statistically. Statistically speaking, you are not the best. Statistically speaking, you will never be the best. It’s statistically impossible, and even I understand this having failed every math class I’ve ever begun. It’s impossible because you are you, human, and from two parents who were also human, so therefore perfection was never truly in your nature. You can try, and the rest of us will watch you fail. And as you fail, we will laugh. We will joke, and we will make fun, until it is our own turn to fail, wherein we shall weep and expect the sympathy of those around us.

But she’s still smiling, only now, at other guys. And these other guys have bigger chests and more defined arms than you. **** IQ and emotional reality, they have abs you couldn’t ever work for, and they’re southern regions, let us not digress. She wants Superman, all you can offer is Clark Kent, before he’s cool. You are not a superhero. You are mortal.

You will love her, you may always love her. She had the smile to draw you in at first, the smile to draw you in at night, and the smile to keep you awake for years after. She was it, she was perfect, she was the one, or so you tell yourself. Because hindsight offers the beauty of 20-20 vision, and you want so badly to see clearly. But you are young, as is she. And in youth comes lust, comes the man with defined features, chiseled abs and the IQ of your ******* dog.

BUT he’s not as hairy, thank god, because you own a Golden Retriever and you’d be ashamed to know the girl you loved is ******* someone hairier than you dog. At least you can pet your dog, but petting a man is, frankly, a little creepy. At least you know she’s not ******* someone like you, who undergoes the self conscious activity of man-scaping every Friday, when your friends pump you up enough to get you dreaming you have a chance of getting laid that night. So you pluck every extraneous hair hoping Ms. Lucky will not notice the red marks and the razor burn where you tried to hide the history of your sad genetics.

So call them Fido for me, of Fluffy or something else that sounds like they dog they are. **** him until your ***** is so ******* sore you forget what my name even was, how I spelt it, or how I pronounced it. And keep doing that, until you realize, eventually, of all the men you saw, of all the men you slept with, maybe one of us knew you’re middle name, and maybe one of us knew how you pronounced your last name correctly, and one of us us knew exactly how you spelt your first name, with the two t’s and the e at the end, every try, no regrets.

I never got it wrong.

I never told you this story:

The story is, when we first me, first falling in love, I had a choice. I was at a party, with my friends, and you texted me. You wanted to get drunk, bring a friend and show off some new guy you met.

And I was talking with a beautiful French girl.

She was impeccable, with long dark hair and she scared many of the guys away with the intensity in her stare. Her accent made every word a masterpiece, and her style strict Parisian. She did it all like we could do it, but she did it differently. And she could dance.

I asked my friend what I should do.

He took a drink and told me “If she comes man, she’ll only want to dance with you.” He said this as he glanced at the beautiful French girl smiling at me, and I smiled back at her. And that sealed the deal in the kitchenette.

So I walked backed to her, and she held out her hand. She pulled me in close, and I could smell her hair. She smiled as she taught me, laughed as I failed, and it took a while to get the hang of it, but I finally prevailed.

And I danced with the French girl.

I ignored your texts, blocked your calls. And it was her that I was texting on my walk home, forgotten about you at a bus stop far from home. It was the feel her of her body against mine I missed, not yours.

And even though I later chose you, I later fell for you, and I later lost you, that night, I chose her. I chose the dream over reality; someone knew over a scene well seen; I chose love, I chose me.

And do I regret that decision?

Well, out of all the decisions I made which lead me to loving you, I have absolutely no regrets in dancing with the beautiful French girl.

Maybe it was a precursor, a sign I should have taken. But to me, it’s just a memory, and a memory I’ll never forget, a memory I'll always have about dancing with the French girl in the downstairs kitchenette.

Someday,

I want to sell it all,

And buy a Leica,

And a 35mm lens,

And tour the world,

And show you all,

"That's not what you need."

Sit still beauty,  
Through still life imagery
And the golden light
Caught on silver nitrate,
In half a second forever remembered
In a frame above your bed,
Catching dreams as they leave your head
While you sleep alone at night,
Dreaming of him,
Maybe of me,
Mostly of them,
And how the memories affected,
And drew you into the
Beautiful portrait you are today,
And I can’t help but notice that
Sunlight always hits you in the
Most spectacular of ways.

I used to think
I’d rather have a girl
Love me less
Than not love me at all.
But I’ve since learned
That love’s a glue
And without it
Nothing’s held together,
Nothing’s whole at all.

I viewed our pictures,
Our visual memories,
And felt the chill
On the back of my knees,
of that cold winter morning,
Where the dorms were cold,
and classes cancelled,
and we walked out in the snow,
near knee deep,
and photographed the children playing.
Where we ran into Snowstorm,
Shivering in his sweatpants,
While doing the same as we.
So we drank our whiskey,
warmed by our hot apple cider,
and hot cocoa with schnapps,
While you viewed my photos,
Telling me,
“they’re your best you’ve done,
I love you,
I’m cold, let’s warm up
Like lovers do,
On winter nights.”
And convinced each other
We’d be the ones to hold

One another tight when
Our lives ever got out of hand,
To this cold again,
Together.
And with lights fading,
And buzzes deflating,
At last you told me,
Those pictures weren’t
As good as I meant them to be.

I’d love to find someone worth loving,
But need to find myself worth loving first,
Because I feel I have a long way to go.

Sometimes,
I have feelings.
And sometimes,
They pour out like
A bowl of chicken noodle soup
On on a kitchen table,
When you grab the handles
And it’s still too hot.
So you panic,
Turn, and spill,
And make a mess
Of noodle letters, sauce and
Over boiled vegetables,
With an impossible rhyme scheme
Of mismatched vowels and
Consonants on your kitchen table,
Spelling nothing other than
Failure in the most basic of tasks;
Which makes you wonder,
What’s the point of this
Anyway, to begin with?
Who ever actually
Learned to spell from soup?
I sure as hell didn’t.
My words are my own.
And soup never suited me anyway.

I just pray
The silly words I dictate
Inspire someone new
To write something truly great.

I literally
Do not understand this
Desire to write words,
Sadly,
About things I’m past
In life,
Distant memories,
And how they affect me,
While I’m so on track,
So right in
The left lane of life.
Learned from mistakes
And choices made right.
But I still do,
I still write
About you,
Every single night,
Like a sickness inside
My heart that’s healed
With scar tissue trapping
You inside,
Your memory,
With all the love
And misery I’ve
Held for days,
Months, years,
And I’m sure it’s harsh,
Living there.
So, I’m sorry.

I originally kept you
As a friend online
To showcase my new life
And remind you just how well
I’ve been doing without you.
But the truth shone through,
That I’m doing better
While you’re still stagnant,
And now I feel a little bad
About showing it all off.
But I still show it all off.

Let’s make it a point
To never talk about you again;
Lock away the memories,
And burn away the keys.
Even happy memories
Can lose themselves in peace.
So let’s burn it to the sky,
Every happy lullaby
I sang to you under the
Midnight sky while you’d lament
About lost live in another country,
And I’d hold you, tears in hand
Promising to never leave your side,
Like you did mine.

It gets
So incredibly frustrating to me
When you use Facebook
As a way to voice
Insecurities
And try to find a voice
In the people full of apathy
To guide you in a sense of
False security.

So please,
Just shut up
And nut up,
(Or get out).
And if you need someone to hear your thoughts
At least find a site
Away from Sam and the gang,
Where nobody knows your name.

I’m lost
On your world on a string
When I can’t figure out the
Continent your finger’s pointing to
We laugh, sit back
Soaking in the light of springtime
And you tell me you love me,
And will take me here,
And there,
And there,
And I believe you.
Your quiet lips sprouting such
Eloquent promises of adventures,
With camera in hand
I believe you
And fall for you
In perjury.

I think I can honestly say
I loathe you,
-If you even know what that means-
For keeping me here,
Trapping me there,
With promises of foreign affairs
When I could have lived
In such lavish housings
And seen the world
With mine own eyes
Ten times brighter
Than this screen on my computer
Ever could display.
With the photographs my own,
Memories in mind,
I could have lived a life
So far beyond your lies.

Some of us are meant to dream and do,
While some of us are meant
To dream and wish we could

A key to a lock long forgotten,
Is a key worth holding onto
Because you’ll never know when it will come in handy
To be able to unlock the past.

I’m kidding myself,

When I say I love you;
I miss you,
Because truth be told
I’m ten times the man
I could have ever been,
Without you

I want to live where the lights are grand,
And it’s still magic, even the slight of hand
Where love takes no effort,
And I’m good enough for you and you
Are good enough for me.
And if we fall apart
You’ll remember me,
For the idea you loved
And not the man I was
When loved turned sour the golden hour
Ran into screams and yells and liquor
And problems we’ll never address
The next day sober
In bed,
Pretending last night was
Too distant to remember

You see things,
Like no one else before you
And I’m afraid I’m
Falling in love with it.
With the way the
Light hits your cheeks,
In memories
Held tight forever
In film grain
And photo paper.

And you are
The angel
In composition,
Artistic reposition,
That reminds me why
I fell in love with it to begin with.

There wasn’t even
A single note
In the box
Of the things I owned
That you sent back home

The facts have never been
All too important to me,
You see,
It’s more about what I feel,
And see and think in my
BRIAN,
-Which is BRAIN spelt wrong,
Because doesn’t always work on cue-
My BRAIN,
That dictates the world around me,
And the girls that **** me
And the girls that **** me.
And the girls that think the world of me and this mind,
Or an admiration of some kind,
Or so I hope,
And no
I don’t expect you to understand.
Not like this, not without my hand
In marriage? Hell no, a proposition, I hand you,
So ******* and your little dog too,
Cindarella,
And I didn’t even spell your name right,
Because the classics don’t lie,
But I think lying’s fine,
At least once, tonight.
Tonight, I’m right,
And tonight we’ll be just fine.
So which one was the lie?

“nevr again,” she said,
And she couldn’t even
Ever ******* ever spell
“Never.”
So I never dropped a tear on that one.
Never.
Ever.
And we never spoke again,
And life was technically never the same;
-With all romantic abnormalities
And social angst aside-
It improved, as friends came home
And new love peaked on the horizon,
And the beauty of a bachelor’s bank account
Shone through the dull glow of the ATM like Monet.
And I basked in the light of day,
Alone and free, just the wind in me
Ready to dance to the beat of
A one man drum machine;
But will you never hear it?

And you think to yourself,
“There’s only one girl I want back in the world,”
But you don’t want her back, Jay.
You never wanted her back bud,
Because you never wanted her to begin with.
That love was a false idea of a prize
Like something given away at a fair;
You can’t love girl who gives it all away
So easily.
No, Jay, not you,
You can’t.
You never wanted her back
Because you never wanted her to start.

There was a time,
In life, lit
In the yuletide glow,
In the winter’s cold,
Our love held weight,
Like the snow on our shoulders
As we walked home on crooked legs,
As went to bed having never thought
We’d end up like this.
Sleeping apart,
Heads far from heart,
Listening to the rhythm of it beat as
We try to fall asleep, alone for the first time
In a long time.
In such a long time.

I can’t keep
Track of how much I have
To do, before I leave with
Too many degrees,
Two count, because
I’m bad at math, plus
Or minus a few figure’s but thats
Okay when I can write
My own obituary at the end of my life and leave
You all my hopes I never
Once accomplished while alive but
Dead they’re somehow more
Surreal than when
Then they were just
Dreams I had,
Under the sycamore tree 
Out front on the cool
Summer days when we held hands and talked
Silently for hours about all of
Nothing we had never done and never
Would accomplish, subtracted
By all our hopes and dreams we
Wrote down under our sleeves
And I’ll store those
In a shoe box labeled
“Memories and things, etc” for you to find
Yourself in the words and drawings I’ll have left
Right for you under
The ceiling
We shared
Alone
Together.

So yeah,
On the subject of “**** him,”
Which you did, for three months or so
In a place three thousand or so
Miles away and
I’m sure his blue eyes gleamed,
When he saw your *** naked,
And I’m sure those blue eyes rimmed
With tears when you told him you weren’t coming back
And he’d have 3,000 miles between him and that ***.

So now you’re a whole ******* ocean
And 246 days later
With a boy with brown eyes,
Me,
Whose **** is bigger,
So they say,
“Like an upgrade,” with the included price tag,
“Like an upgrade,” which you justify as
“Not that bad, really not too bad,”
But you won’t leave me for him.
Will you?

I hold my breath.
Clutch my hands.
Taking in a moment.
A lifetime.
Because I’m losing you,
and I know you feel it,
too.
So I promise to write,
poems,
and letters,
and songs,
-as you say you’ll do-
but words on a page from
3,000 miles away
just don’t mean
what they used to.
And the smile on your face,
as you turn and
fade away,
down the dimly lit terminal
at the end of your stay,
is the same one
on the same face
on the first day
you first came home
with me.

Fall is for falling in love,
I say this, because I met you under
The skeletons of October trees,
Stepping on crunching leaves,
So yellowed and gold.

With our matching eyes brown,
We walked through downtown and
I bought us coffee the we drank,
While we people watched from
That little cafe’s front porch window.

Hands intertwined, I felt alive
Or some bit farther away from death because
My heart was beating faster than it had
In days and weeks past and all
I wanted to do was kiss you.

And when I finally did, in the dark
Of my room, behind the courage of
The wine I brought us, I was so
Scared that you wouldn’t resist,
And that it would be a real kiss.

So when my fears became true you
Fell asleep on my chest, your soft hair
On my chin and I knew at that moment I
Was lost in you, intertwined like
Our bodies at the time.

Fall is for falling in love,
I say this, because I met you under the trees,
Stepping on crunching leaves,
So yellowed and gold.

Like a dream, I remember the first time,
Your hand in mine,
Walking in the crisp night air,
We had no idea where we'd lead.

With the winter breeze,
You alluded to leave, but instead
You took refuge by the fire
Of my heart, inside my bed we slept.

While we wait for spring thaw,
I’ll love you, like I did that first night,
Enjoying the cold’s necessity
For the confines of these blankets.

Every time we wake up, I’ll look into your eyes
And you’ll know you were right to stay.

Sometimes I wish life was simpler,
But then there would be no need for the poets and the prophets,
Of which I am neither.

This will fade away, 
in time, 
guaranteed.
And I’ll be waiting,
watching,
letting the happiness 
**** me slowly.
In a moment it will be true,
written in red ink,
scratched in vinyl
recorded in tune.
We’re worlds apart
but right next door,
Across a road we’ll call Atlantic
And a sidewalk that lines the ocean floor
So far gone,
so far from “start.”
Far to far
to time our beating in hearts.

There was a time I’d wait for days to hear your voice,
Over the phone, under the table, through the radio
To hear you whisper my name,
And now I long for silence.

The way you sang with the wind as I drove too fast
Down backend roads and up empty streets,
And you thought I couldn’t hear you;
And now I long for silence.

And I waited for days on end by the telephone on my nightstand
Listening so hard for the telltale signs of a ringing heart,
Wanting only to hear your voice call mine back,
And now I long for silence.

Quiet used to be so deafening, like sirens blaring,
I could feel it, I hated how it hung in the air all around my head.
I’ve since found peace in the absence of your sound,
And now I love the silence.

When I hear your words through song
I hope I someday can sing

In harmony with your love

But for now I long for silence.

All the pretty girls with their pretty boys too
Holding hands along the beaches of the lake,
Singing together nearly inaudibly,

Of songs about hearts that beat in time.

And it’s while I watch them silently,
From a distance I know quite comfortably
Seeing how they move near effortlessly

That I know it’s time for me to leave.

So home is where I’ll go,
But the only home I know
This home somewhere on the road,

The home I don’t own where I belong.

I think I met an angel
Once she fell from the sky
She took my heart in hand
Promising she knew right.

In her eyes I saw the past
And love, and wisdom and lies
And in her hands
Some kind of warmth
The kind you feel when crying.

She showed me the light
Some place far off, inside
My mind, where she took her place
Placed her chords
And played a melody
Which stole my soul in time.

I think I met an angel
Once she fell from the sky
She took my heart in hand
Promising she knew right.

In her eyes I saw the past
And love, and wisdom and lies
And in her hands
Some kind of warmth
The kind you feel when crying.

She showed me the light
Some place far off, inside
My mind, where she took her place
Placed her chords
And played a melody
Which stole my soul in time.

Words are not
A source of income,
But of outcome,
Because they should
Flow from within you
And if they don’t
Flow from within you,
Maybe you need to
*Turn the faucet on.

It’s funny,
It started with a play.
A date, to watch a friend live life
Set forth by words on a page.
Now one year later,
New words are being said.
And you’re back home,
Not here,
You’re back home
With new love in your head
With new love in your bed.
I hope he makes your heart
Beat faster than I did.

I am
A breaker of hearts,
An annihilator of love
A wordsmith in his own mind,
Someone who thinks they’re always right.

I am
Desirable in theory,
Not recognized in society
Quiet in the ways of my life
Someone who you’ll forget in two days time.

I am
A man of music, or was for one life
An artist of some unknown kind.
A capturer of light and moments within
A sealed vault of poetic emotion

I am
The person looking at the stars
The person counting the clouds
The person you walk right by.
The person who’s ready now.

I know, I know
I’ve been told so many times to give it up.
That what happened when I wasn’t there
Was what made her the girl I loved
But the problem is, now that we’ve moved on
She’s still the girl I loved
She’s still the girl who is liked
And I’m still the guy who is not.

You can’t necessarily turn feelings off,
I mean I have, but it wasn’t good
It kind of ended in misery, to be honest.
I think thats why she’s gone,
In a way I mean, on top of disasters past, and
Mainly because of everything we said to one another.

It kills me, you know, knowing she’s fine
That she’s probably gone on and found some other, new guy,
While I sit here at night, writing line after line
Of sad poetry and lyrical lies.
I’m sure he’s taller, of course, she likes that a lot,
She always wanted love taller than 5’9”.

It kills me, you know, knowing she’s fine
While I’m sitting alone at home,
Cooking dinner for one over an open stove.
Writing these god awful, sad sappy poems
That no one will ever even read.
It kills me, you know, knowing she’s fine
All the while I’m sitting at home
Slowly burning inside.

My dad is a smart man,
Not smart how I am,
Because he doesn’t like to write
And can’t always see my theories
But he can fix anything
And I mean anything
From a broken heart
To a leaky pipe
And he’s always willing to help.
One time I watched him fix a funeral,
With just a page of words
I was wrong, he can write.
He helped us remember
And understand why we loved her.
He fixed that day, because he cared
He kept it from falling apart
For no other reason than he knew he should.
He didn’t get any money,
And she didn’t hear his thoughts.
No one even respected him that day,
Except me, but I stayed quiet.
Why did I stay quiet?
I knew I should have spoken up,
And told him I respected his words.
But I didn’t, and I regret it.
I probably always will.
I like to think deep down he already knows,
That it goes without saying
By the way I watched him speaking,
That he knows what I wanted to say
But never had to courage to.
I know he would have.

My friend asked me to write her memoirs,
To pen her life
That she has yet to live.
I laughed, knowing this
Knowing she was planning too far ahead
What makes her think she’ll want to remember
Every little thing she’s ever done?
I hope she can live that life,
Without regret, so full of love
With such stories to share and tell
That she would want them written down
I hope she can live that life,
Because I’ve heard of too many people who have died
Regretting all they’ve done.