Here’s a toast
To the beginning of the rest of our lives
We’ll relish in contemporary high end curtains + urban loft fitted sheets
We’ll speak of sunlight, rain + what to wear to a Company dinner on a Tuesday night in the Middle of May because what’s mine is yours.
We’ll exchange opinions + fail exceptionally at escaping our desire to love
We’ll say words we regret.
I’ll shamelessly sleep on the couch at night more than once.
We’ll play in the garden of the deceased until daylight+laugh ourselves into silence,
We’ll deal well.
You’ll fuel my fire + I’ll fuel yours.
I wonder what our ghosts would say.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

Cruising down the interstate
Agonizing flashbacks, raw + detailed
The stench of happiness saturated my ’06 Black Volkswagen
Bathed in Blink 182 + Jimmy Eat World
“Hello there, the angel from my nightmare”
I was invaded by your act of being able to take one’s breath away
But you weren’t present
You weren’t even close.
I bordered on an unforgiving reality
I was just about to inherit that single standing tree.
Like my brother + his best friend did back in ’00