Fall is for falling in love
Or so I thought
When I felt your heart beat next to mine,
Our legs tangled, bodies intertwined
And you told me that you loved how the leaves
Turned golden yellow from their vibrant summer greens,
And I told you, under harvest moonlight
"That's just because they're dying."

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

I wonder how your city Christmas went,
If the air is still thick, your backyard small
Do you still catch fireflies at night by candlelight,
Or is January too cold?

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.

I felt
Oddly alone
Once I realized you stopped following my blog.
Because I did it
For you
In the summer
Of my 21st year
In the comfort
Of warm summer's heat
And the promise
Of seeing you soon.

Now I realize
I’ve been alone all along.

You’ll be branded a fool,
A coward,
And a lier,
Same as I should,
Only I kept my tongue
Far enough away from my heart.

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



Or so I say.

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.

There are few things I love in life

And you are one of few.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This love was built on half lies,
And the truth, so deeply hidden inside.
I can’t even trust the love you felt,
Or pretended to feel to the touch of heart.
Every smile you sent was a mask,
Pretending to be the lover you were not,
Pretending to be a little more than you were,
And looking for anything but to be lost.
But you can’t lie to me,
Anymore than you lie to yourself,
And your stories don’t match
The stories of the history of your past.
So please, take my leave as a sign,
That not only did the truth I find,
But a new way, new style of life,
Devoid of you, your history, your lies.

I hate this holiday. I always have. Dressing up like someone else to cover up the monster I truly am has never been an ideal time for me. And trying to hit on the slutty girls with their fishnets and minuscule mini skirts has never been my scene. I’d rather spend the night having everyone dress up to who they truly are: the misogynist, the adulterist, the studious, the conversationalist...I’d rather not hid behind the disguise.

But I love the ghouls, and the ghosts, and the stories we tell ourselves to stay up late at night, reminding each other to check behind the shower curtains at 3am because, you never know, he could be in there.

He could be, or he could not be. You may never know. But it’s always better to check.

I love this holiday for the stories, both of history and of those of today, which we create in our liquor laden haze. The face-covered costumes, the ghoulish festivities, the next morning apologies... Oh, and pumpkin everything.

The horror filled movies and hay rides and walk-through-corn-mazes we subject ourselves to, all in the name of fun, of suspense. I love it, I love every second of it. Heart racing, adrenaline running, it’s life in a sense we can no longer find without the threat of true death behind it. And that’s likely why we do it, as we feel a need for this sense of adventure, of thrill, without the everlasting and promising black blanket of the true end lurking in the shadows

And tonight I went out, dressed to the nine’s, white shirt and tie, and watched as all those fishnet girls passed me by, boys in toe behind their masquerading lies while I smoked cigarettes on the sidelines.  And I had my picture taken, and I had my face mistaken, and I couldn’t help but wonder

Isn’t it just all a lie?

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I love this holiday.

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.

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 can’t steal her heart,
But I can steal back mine
So that’s what I’ll do
In the dead of night,
I’ll sneak back
Into her life
And bring back home
What I know is mine.

The house on Hillside Ave is massive. It’s three stories tall, with a turret at the top and a set of stone lions at the front steps to greet welcomers and ward off intruders. It used to house 5 people, but now only 4, and even Christmas and Thanksgiving don’t always live there every year.

Before, the gardens the lined the house were beautiful, lining the foundation with more colors than in a Crayola box. At the roots of the flowers was a base of fresh cut grass, offering soft spots to sit and look at the clouds on slow summer days.

That was when Nana was still alive, and when Nana took care of it all. After days spent outside in the sun she’d come in and carefully wash the green of the plants off all her fingers and drink cold lemonade on the porch.

My father tried to take over the gardening, but it’s not the same. He doesn't wash his hands as carefully and doesn't drink lemonade, instead a cold beer from the cooler downstairs. Now the flower beds are a little sadder, the colors not as bright and dark patches of emptiness are seen amongst the once thriving flora. The flowers aren’t quite as happy when he tends to them. His hands just aren’t as green.

I left the town and the girl I loved to come to college when I was 18. The night before I left, she came over and cried, which made me cry, so we cried together about being torn apart by the unloving forward movement of time. The next day she watched as my parents packed my car and drove away, and she texted me the entire time.

I still go home sometimes, for weekends, vacations and holidays, but I never see the girl I once loved. She loves someone else now, and I love no one, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to go. I’m not even sure I love the town anymore, but I realize it’s prettier than I gave it credit for. However, when I go there now, the friends aren’t around, the school no longer my own and when I walk my dog on the farms the regulars look at me with an hint of distrust, as if I’m a foreigner in their land.

The scenery could be on a postcard somewhere. “Welcome to Small-Town Massachusetts, the town that soon forgets.”

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 want you to say
Nothing at all
I want you to say
Everything-
Why the stars
Come out at night
Why love feels different
In day light

I want you to stay
Just for the night
I want you to stay
For my life-
We’ll wake up
To the sunrise
Change our minds
Go back to sleep ‘till night

Snow falls,
Outside, around my feet
As I smoke a cigarette;
But now, I can’t sleep
As I try to,
To the sound of heavy machinery,
Clearing the streets.

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.

I met a girl,
Who wrote a poem for me,
Took a picture,
And put them together.

It took some time for me to say it
But I loved her,
Nonetheless,
Though the picture was in waiting, lonely.

Today, it sits beside my nightstand,
For my to wake up to,
Her face shining in morning light,
To remind me why I wake up every day.

Her face, the place
I want to say good morning to.
I want to say good afternoon to.
I want to say good night to, too.

What is young love?
I can’t even remember.
I thought I knew once, but that was long ago,
And I am too young to recall it now.

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.

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.

In time
  We will become lost
     In all that we have
        Become.

She’s different,
She’s great,
She’s nothing like
The other 5,000
I’ve ever met,

I say.

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?

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.

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 know nothing about you,
Other than you feel alone
And don’t want to feel that way
Anymore

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."

The lone man walks into the night, looking up to the sky and cries
“Stop expecting so much from me, I’m only one life!
Only one mind to work with the complexities you compile!”
To which the stars take lightyears to reply,
“Do not pray to us, we are not your kind.”

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes love makes you say incredible things.
Sometimes they're right.

Love is not easy,
No one ever said it was,
But in the end it's worth it,
Or so we plan.

I’ve written a lot of love songs,
Poems,
But none more honest
Than saying
We tried
And failed,
And that’s all there is to us.

At home, after work
TV news anchors talk the world,
Overzealous sportscasters yell the scores,
Mindless celebrities say nothing at all.

I never listen,
My ears lie with you.
Only love speaks to me.

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.

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.

Sometimes I can’t see you anymore,
You’re nothing like the girl I fell in love with.
Your voiced change, I noticed,
And your hair parts in different ways.
It's almost like you’re someone new,
Something I never understood.
And I can’t begin to understand
Why the hell you ever changed.
You were beautiful,
You were great.
You were heartwarming,
And you made my day.
Everyday.
But now you’re gone,
This girl I loved, she’s moved away
In her place a mannequin, a fake.
She looks like you, but she's not the same.