Here we are
Like always
Dog yelping
in the other room


I try to explain to you
My pain is like yours
Just fragmented
Amongst your own ghost

Don’t you see it?

The bruises of whiskey
The long sighs of relief
When you come home clean


Clean


Clean

Isn’t that a funny word?


I wait so long to hear it.
And then you whisper -
The essence of it.
It floats within me
For a fragment of time
Even if
I admit
It’s now on its’ ninth life,

Each time I beg
That your life
Still has truth

And then it goes out




The meaning of it all
And you laugh
Because isn’t joy
Just the ignorance of pain?


I’m crying
There’s tears in the living room now
And on the sofa where you spoke your first sound


I’m trying
To contain the little of my remains
But how do you die when you’re still living?


You look at me now
Those same eyes I saw
When you were four


Four and trying to show me
How your spaceship made of sand
Will take us far -
Take us to the moon
Take us there
And back

I’m standing in your room
And I’m trying
To figure out how I got us here
To figure out how to get us back
Do bottle tops shimmer like sand?

did we have better plans?
was the world ours?
was it going to be
something we could be?
and with that wish -
with that breath -
with that hold on the world -
it was ours
it was really yours
but with that
maybe it was mine
too

here we are
in this night
and in the next
- if we're lucky -
and we are alone
as always
wishing to be
something
that we are not
complicated
complicate
complications
and then the new
day
starts


around the world
we kiss
we give
we live
can we please
swear
that this is more
because
for me
this means more


complicated, i swear

take me away, my dear
to whichever land you call your own
where the strangers don't play alone

take me away, my love
to those in this world who don't know fear
to those who listen to what they can hear

take me.
take me to the edges of this earth
to the depths of the souls
to the laughter and the tears and
to all that is known

I hear us in the dark
when the rain falls on the dirt
it is clear now
there are secrets that both haunt and love our hearts.

There are all these secrets
shared among full rooms
and we are in one of them
quietly awaiting our own hearts.
You were young when I met you.
Full of breath
but now age comes fast
and the air in your lungs is less than half.
I loved you most in the morning
when the sun was rising and new
but I needed you more in the darkness
when all I knew I loved
faded with the time of day.

Here we are in the middle of it all.
And you lean into my heart
to whisper in my ear
"I love you most, my dear."

Follow your footsteps and
Fall asleep to your song and
Free from the tears and
Fasten the love and

and
and
and

there was this time
when I no longer cried
and i tried
to remember the last fight.
but you stole it
took it all
left nothing but my name.
it was just a name
burned at the corners
letters missing from your lungs
and i stood there in the sun
wishing for the cliche
of pouring rain
but you stole the moon
and the night
left me with the burning rays
and the ability to see
everything that used to be
and everything that is

so we wait now
resting our shoulders on hotel pillowcases
water dripping slowly from a shower head
you read a book about echoed mountains
and I wait because I love you.
I keep coming back to a moment
something about you in tears
crying over a fight with Dad
and I keep picturing you like that.
You're quiet now
waiting to be lost again
waiting to be in a moment without us
there is a pain you have
that no one can compete with.
And I remember now
why I saw you in tears
I can't be enough
and I'm sorry.

There’s an emptiness today
One covered with fall leaves and broken trees
Window half open
Inviting small pellets of breeze to drift into the room
Chapstick broken in the bottom drawer of the desk
Those days, back when I was a kid
Crawling around in the playground outside
Father putting white blocks of sunscreen
On the forehead of my face
Didn’t even know what existed yet
This is nostalgia, isn’t it?
Or maybe it’s a what if.

run around the world
and you get lost and dizzy.
wait for it to turn
and you become nothing but impatient.
fight the way it laughs
and you have every type of ending.
just be
and you have nothing but a story

Breathe in through the tops of your lungs
Let him believe you see dusk not stars
Hold your laugh until the heart falls
Then lock your love under the dark

disillusions of the soul
falsify the truth of the now
so we fall back remembering
lost times where people
met in space and light
that paralleled a greater life

when you are in love with the way
the sun bends to the west
as it lays roses on billowed light
the movements of the heartless wanderer
shatter in the fragments of the broken moon
the stillness of the soft glare of glazed eyes
melt a sorrow sound of infinite lust
and I break my fear of losing a love
I have never truly claimed.

If we were just passing
It would be okay.
If breath only stung air
We would never have to stay.
But we have always been broken
and fear the truth of living.
So we circle our own place
Until the rope strays.

You tell me that the world is pretty
That we are only wanderers
Under an unknown sky.
That if I closed my eyes and prayed
We would never try to die.
But last night a plane crashed into a man
And children never went to class.
You sat on a worn porch
And drank beer as it rained.

I do not believe my love is pretty
Or that it belongs among your soul.
It is pathetically afraid of catching glances.
And it clings to distance with a passion.
It is alive but it dances among shadows.
It curls under your hands
And races backwards
Hiccupping into the dark.
I never claimed to love
Before any of my heartbreaks.
So you kiss my lovely friend
Unaware that I have fallen.

I am angry over all the things you can't makeup to me.
You hurled words through worlds of tinted windows and dying girls.
Lives where black men cried and wives tried to mend shattered eyes.
You promised all this love to my little boy - a place where he can sit and still be a man.
But you lost me long ago when you whispered goodnight
When you danced your white hand through the air
Promised change in the name of equality
Marched through the streets for our fallen love.
But here we are lost and late to our own sins.

I am afraid of all things lovely
Climbing trees at dawn
Kids on swings
Modern art
Classical art
Empty coffee shops
The heart of romance
The art of it.

I sit still fighting fear
But I know better to let free
You are too good for me.

I am afraid of all things with unknown endings
Religion
Final Exams
Death
The Starbucks Line on Black Friday
Loveless Relationships
Heartbreak.

In my dream
You ran so far
Away from my 'I love you.'

To fall in love with romance
Wouldn't that be grand?

It would make more sense to fall once
To love until it surrenders to the hurt
Found in folded laundry socks
And empty grocery carts.
When I met the soul a second time
I tried to run so far and fast
That I stumbled into a war
Of paper plated pizza and sweatpants.
Maybe there is a second way to turn back
To get tangled in the way it feels
But remain attached to your puppet string.
I fell for you because it made sense
To a believer of this one time chance.
But now the soul is settled on a goodbye kiss
And I am afraid of losing my own grip.
But I let it go.
And feed love to the cats.

Yesterday was a time for intimate tongues
Ones that lunged for lust not love
Crept through secrets on a nighttime train
And marched with a runaway parade

The lips fell softly on subtle skin
Blame of scarcity born within
Caught cheating on another plane
With a love that always fades away

We breathe that we are brave
Force forks in the road for a good name
As the patterns on the weather tick away
We are left with a dreary rain

The world spins just as fast
As a man running to catch his hat
That flies and flutters in an inside train
Past the lovely girl who has no say

The hero takes a chance at fate
But the villain makes his own good day
And that is all he will ever take
Brave is not a name

All of our memories are ghosts
Shadows of broken knives
Sketches of passing time.
They sit still on lasting years
Cradled on puppet strings
Masked away history.
We forget that they wait
Embedded in a secret
Lost among sleep.
Let it be.

The fireflies bloomed an indiscrete love
And we cursed at the shadows
Of an infinite dark.
The good nights remained
In a thought of a kiss.
And we ran
For youth was a liar.

He comes into the kitchen cold as night
and we fight because love bickers
The news on the tv flickers red
and we hate because we think we have to
She falls in the direction of the rose
and she breaks because lust is an ending
The clock sticks to the ticking of a hand
and I wait because nothing is lovely

Quick glances into the corner of his eye
Side smiles inspired by a fallen lullaby
We dance like lost souls on ice

Murmured hellos to a love that is only mine
Captured secrets that prance in the middle of time
Whispered footsteps that run to the rhythm of crime
We love with a heart that died

I want you to see me here
Waiting for you to realize my fear
So your lips will crawl so near
You love me, my dear.

Here we wrote a broken book
One that's told by a lovely crook
Who lived his life bent to defy
History seen from a man's good eye.

The hero lost to a man he fought
A stranger who broke down and caught
Rain that slipped from behind a cloud
And landed on a bride who vowed.

Through fairytales and twisted schemes
A little girl in war still dreams
Of promises devoid in books
The truth abandoned in her looks.

We hide away from truths we seek
Questioning the ways we sneak
Beneath the lies of death that bled
Are the ends of stories left unsaid.

On October 5th the moon dances
The trees sway
The voices pound the cement
All like they did on October 4th, 3rd, 2nd
The wind sweeps the air a little harder
And rain slips from beneath a gray cloud
But otherwise the world as we know it is the same
Except a stranger’s mother died
And another shadow lost a life
And the voiceless man fought a war
And everything as we know it
Disappears in the night
But here I am again.
So tell me, what do I do?

I am ready.
To fall apart.
To meet you.
Again.
Say 'I love you's' in a park.
To hate when it breaks.
I met you somewhere along an avenue.
Coffee, I suppose.
And then I lost you. Again.
Found you. In a place of expected conquers.
Kiss me. Please. Just once.
For old time's sake.
You've moved on.
So have I.
Just not with you.

I think it was when I wiped away the 57th tear
That I realized I was no longer as strong as I thought I was.
That somewhere in between the screams and the apologies
I lost myself again to the repetition of apologetic syllables.
But then I try to tell you,
Show you my epiphany of purpose,
And I remember why I cry and scream.
Why the 'sorries' can never be overdone.
I have lost you, brother.
Somewhere before the burn in the throat
And the screech of the breaks.
Sometime before the 1st tear and still after the 608th.

the most terrifying moment in the world
is to step into a love that pre-exists your soul
for the fear of crumbling the condition of dependence
whispers into the plausibility of a broken bond.

I hate you for this.
The way your warmth has crawled out beneath an evasive watch
Escaping without proof.
I knew there was a reason for your lies
The ones that curled beneath fingertips and mistaken smiles.
Is that what you wanted?
A moment of utmost clarity.
Because it exists now
Instead of you.
I get it
That darkness bound you to a corner
A victim of victimless lovers.
Are you happy?
Because I am here sitting on half a roll of toilet paper.
This is life I have been told.
Don't you get it now?

I was prepared to tell her that the fight was only temporary
That her perception of the world would disappear with the rest of her love for stars
But she cried that night over something on the news
So I held on tight to the obnoxious secret of missing ends.

We watch a separate life
Our souls colliding only half the time.
Fighting in the way a soldier dies.
I used to love the way you lied
Bent the truth in a way a hungry man survives.
But it took fourteen times of broken eyes
Corrupted from a lack of trying times
To block out hateful words of a man
Forcing little girls to fake a lovely laugh.

we watch it unfold.
their love. if it was ever permanently there to begin with.
i think they watch their time closely.
i like to hope.
so maybe when he hated her the first time, it didn't hurt as much.
i close my eyes.
sometimes i cry.
but usually i sit cross legged and wait for her to walkout of the bathroom.
she banished her soul to his reserved moments of breathless pause.
and that is how i learned what love is.

We missed eight more full moons
Before the world caught us in its breath
There is some kind of lost innocence
When burnt lungs collapse
It's the irregularity of orbital distaste
That sends her storming into empty wings.

The last time I fell in love with a liar
You warned me of the heartbreak
The tragic disposition of shallow grace
And panicked distaste.
But the truth reserved itself
Somewhere in a goodnight kiss
And the hurt lay hidden in the sleep.
So when the turn of the century awoke
The complacency of goodbyes fell.

There's a secret sorrow
Summoned in pockets of his lost love
for roses and yellow speckled daffodils
The last night she cried he asked her
To fight for a blue moon
Bruised with ashes of failed stars
Caught in methods of paralleled insanity
She whispered things
Long strings of infinity
Phrased into meanings
That made his soft hands cringe
Before yesterday the universe was basic
A long attempt to run the saviors to a purpose
But his last breath
One that edged its way into a sprint
Caught the corner of her world on a purple heart
The end of the hero.

We are the lucky ones if we die old.
But we are the brave ones if we see the world
And the smart ones if we understand it.
We are the kind ones if we appreciate strangers
And the happy ones if we love somebody.
We are the infinite makers of most of our destiny
Because we are human.
So let it be.

Somewhere in the world invisible time ticks by
Invincible from the last blind eye
She catches a breath from some hiccup in the night
And she worries that it was his last fight.
For a boy caught in the middle of the moon
He speaks fast
Feared for a pricked heart
That leads a version of an irrational life.
Swung in the beginnings of a father
Who lost his wrath on a beautiful daughter
Forgotten from a cold lie
That hid on the bottom of a sometimes sorrow.

Wrinkled face
Stands in the shuttered photograph
Pierced into the frame by winds of faded shame
The mother comes in cold from the dirt that spiced her soul
And she whispered to the brother to find a time to cry
For once upon a time began that day
The lives that were marked with protests and riots
Define the fairytales
We now live in a world with silent voices and whispered requests

Hands made of delicate necessities
hovered in pockets of sauntered gratitude
Cold expression - hate that phrase –
too generic for a girl of 16.
Man made of hostile intentions
wrapped in a worn face of 32 years
gently staring at the blue moon
****** with the desire of washed off anger.
Cries of impeccable distaste run through the air
whip her hair into her mouth
spits all too precariously into the manmade dirt.
It's supposed to make sense - this - this war
the bodies - buried – breathing
half awake with the intention of survival,
of listening,
of passing on some kind of importance
to some menace of a next generation.
She catches herself in a hiccup of solitude
The man watches the blue moon
It's supposed to mean something - the blue moon
supposed to make you think,
want something,
understand the unknown,
understand why there is fighting,
why her brother is dead.
But a blue moon means nothing to a cold face.
Split amongst anger
Run past the world
Fall down
Carelessly
No. Not carelessly.
Purposefully.
Some kind of purpose –
just keep telling yourself this. Please.
Anger.
Can't waste that emotion.
Not on her. Not on this. Not on him.
Silence.
It's too maddening. Too loud.
In all of its soft intentions.
So scream. Why can't you?
It will break up the world, even if it is only your own.
Drown yourself in it.
But you know how to swim.
Well, make yourself forget.
But you can't.
Because there is something about survival that is inherently good.