We trade in our dreams
Cash them in
To achieve a dream is to realize that the world is smoke in a concrete box
Is to see it disappear before you
Is to make flower gardens and shutters into faceless monsters
A dream is a coin in your pocket
The luxury of the poverty stricken and the misfit
We never get what we think we will
What we want is a corner of the world
A place with smiling beautiful children
And homemade pies and shiny appliances
What we get instead is knowledge
We get the knowledge that another piece of the world is imperfect
Would you trade the coin in your pocket for knowledge–
To become a poet, an intellectual, someone deeply sad inside?
You don’t have the choice
We have to pay up
Feed our dream coin to the abyss inside of us
And pretend it will be different this time

It's 2:45 am and hunger tosses in his sleep
In my stomach
His temporary home
He comes and goes like an old friend
And we catch up and he asks me
If I've been ok
And have I missed him
But he is not really an old friend
That's wrong
More like family
A ancestor who's soul flows in my blood
Someone you would not ask into your life -
And I say I've been all right
On the fronts he's concerned about
But he is not concerned with everything
The much more is a blue gray moral fog
And I truly am a spirit hidden
My transparent skin mingled
With the heavy November moisture in the air
But I do not feel transparent anymore
I feel the full weight of myself
Like a bundled burden
Hanging onto warm broad shoulders
Shoulders belonging to a man
So familiar and yet distant because
Time and closeness make a beloved
Step baby steps into oblivion
And I reach
Hunger stretching into my fingertips
Guiding me back to emptiness
And that's how I go on
Years after my recovery.

Do you have a reason?
I don't.
I do it because I have no reason.
Because my heart is as empty as your whiskey glass.
Don't touch me now,
You won't feel it, I won't feel it.
We pour into each other
But we must have missed the leak,
Wherever it is.
But we do it because
There's no reason not to.

It's beautiful, he said.
Rain played its music on his thick, dark coat.
Look at this, it's beautiful.
The winds sprayed mist into his white hair.
He had seen her and it was beautiful.
He had seen her and danced with her.
He had to dance with her.
His thick lensed glasses fogged slightly.
They hadn't let it end, had they? he thought.
It was a beautiful darkness that she had fallen into.
One that froze their memories fresh in her mind.
He looked at the looming mountains in the distance, gray and gloomy with rain.
She had curled her short black hair on their wedding day.
They were in their church, in their city, and everything was how it was supposed to be.
Everything was still how it was supposed to be.
He had seen her blue eyes fade.
He felt her cold, pale hand.
He loved her.
It's just a beautiful day, he said.
Just a gorgeous day.

We were born with wings
But they are tattered like old photographs with blurred faces
And faded like curtains that brave the fierce sun.
But our eyes are still alive
And we never know the sun.
You say we whisper
But if we were brighter you'd say we shout.
You say we are ugly
Then wonder why we flock to the light.
You are the same as us but worse
You choose to become the things you fear
You chase after a light that only you can see
And it takes so much longer to **** you
So much longer for you to realize that you burn.