It doesn't matter
How loud
Or how long
Or how hard
I scream
My voice will end up
Vanishing into thin air
As if nothing happened

I wish I could write songs-
I know exactly what I'd say.
I'd tell you that, "I wrote you a poem today.
If you're reading this, I loved you more."
And it would cut me to the core
but I'd sing it anyway. Only by myself, though-
full blast on the highway. Alone on the road.
But I can't write songs. I just sit at home
sometimes, and remember, and wonder.
We used to say things would never change but
in the end, I guess, I made you forget
or you forgot on your own.
Either way, I loved you more.
So I (or you) had to let go.

Being swept off my feet--taken by surprise.
It won't be the thrill, just the look in your eyes.
Spontaneous adventure, you have carefully planned.
It won't be the trip, just that moment hand in hand.
Pouring rain--a cliched kiss.
But when you're gone, that's not what I'll miss.

It'll be the pecks on my lips as we're hurried to leave.
The quite moments spent listening to you breathe.
The easy silence.
Effortless talk.
Meaningless laughter.
Aimless walks.

The grand gestures make it fun and wild--
But the little things make it all worth while.
If you ever grow wary--if we ever part--
It'll be losing the simple bits that will break my heart.

What words would I have written then
If my fate had lied within?
Stories remembered? Studied lines?
Or eroded by passing time?

Quantified to the last--
Every freckle, each fluttering lash.

To the debt of necessity I am tethered;
I can't afford life's priceless treasures.

Calculated: now are numbered
Even that which philosophy wonders.

My love, my life, my ambivalent faith:
Measured out to the hundredths place.

Reproduced for mass consumption--
Trivialized by the deduction.

Weigh my heart, buy my soul,
Celebrate the dream you stole.

If you think of me in the spring,
think of dogwood petals
in my hair, greener grass
and new beginnings.

If the summer solstice
finds you walking alone
in the garden of the moon,
remember that I'm somewhere
walking alone, too.

If you sing of me,
sing in the fall
in blue flannel and jeans
like the saddest song of all.

And if I pretend to die,
and you pretend to weep,
I promise to do it in the winter
when there are no flowers
to send in your pretended grief.

He stuck two sticks in the mud
Forked like a moccasins's tongue
To hold both poles while we smoked
Camels we stole from the coal
Truck man and drank homemade
Wine swapped for a knife and a dollar
To the drunk up the holler and a can
Of sweet corn ten years old still dusty
And rusted but the trout hit it hard
Anyway like slow flies on a slow
Golden Saturday a long time ago.

I was ten when
I got caught stealing
blue chalk from the pool hall.

My daddy wore me out
with a black leather belt.

He said *What'd I tell you
about writing sad poems
on the back of the stones
at the orphan's graveyard?