It's the way Petrucci's guitar paints
Itself with one long stroke onto

LaBrie's voice at the
Beginning of the solo,

And the way we both look
Up at each other with eyes that

Know more about Dream Theater
Than most, smiling in new born

Infatuation and goosebumps
Shared, that I know that I'm in

The kind of sweet, sweet trouble
That sneaks in through your

Guard without you noticing; the
Path-to-heart that has been cleared

By little things upon little things;
How a good producer uses

Barely audible elements to lift a
Song into grace and perfection.

Lunch pack made with fresh love,  
Something like soft electricity

Between our skins; relaxed islands
In a carefree ocean. Music, music,

Music. She shreds the fastest air
Guitar this side of the coast, and

I just want to stay. Dig. Hang. Hold. I
Have nothing I want to escape to,

And with the song that will be ours
As long as she's mine, and remind

Me of us forever after, I find peace
In restlessness on the floor of her

Apartment, as if it's her singing
*This distance in my voice

Isn’t leaving you a choice,
So if you’re looking for a time to

Run away... you won’t find it here,
Look another way.

You won’t find it here.  
So try another day.

Out my window
the same world
different day, day after day

I want to grab my bolt bag
tie a red bandana
around my sweet mutt's neck
hop a train, act sane
for a change

Georgia's down the tracks a spell
and Birmingham's half-way to hell
New Orleans in September
sounds pretty good

Woof and me
living free
no cares to carry on our backs
singing clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

r ~ 8/13/14

18 is a hard age
to be black
and dead

tear-gas in our eyes
burns, baby, burns.

r ~ 8/14/14

A book,
just pages
on leaves, whitened-
river washed,
dried then wettened again;
tears of words
torn from a heart-
his then mine, and mine again.

A book
of poems, written verse,
la poema-
the saddest lines of all,
but not all, no,
not all; not always.

Pages of Odes;
oh, the odes
to fruit,
to wine
and song
of the sea and mermaids;
the pages sing his songs.

A book
of heights
and stone,
he took us there-
a shovel in the sand;
of monuments
and ships
of drunken men and love
once loved,
and loved again.

Words
on silken thighs,
*******
and a red dress-
on a dark night
the stars and moon did shine.

A garden-
he planted a *****
into our hearts;
his dog,
it died
simply
loved too much-
Ai.

A book,
just a book
of pages,
of poems
by my bed-
dog-eared,
much read and loved;
his words ending
the saddest lines of all.

r ~ 8/15/14

a crumpled milk carton
discarded...fallen
in the gutter, another
black and white photograph

a tooth fairy smile-
something missing,..

a coldness
from the shuttered window
in the shadows
of a quiet day
...Xavier doesn't play here anymore.

r ~ 8/17/14

1.
Before I knew he had.
His flight trailed off into a Utah
Sunrise. He left behind a little strand
Of thought, and, in a cramped, amber room that saw
Long talks of topics that soon thinned grey,
A set of dog-eared books has been put down.
Books that brought nearer to my thought his own,
While Interstate-5 grated the ground.

2.
He must have, as the plane touched the runway,
Felt the dawn’s shudder fracture his young bones,
His thoughts turning to those dog-eared days;
The seemingly endless months full of groans,
As they should have been, being spent alone;
And that set of books, at least it would seem,
Ignited the wick on which our passions gleam.

3.
These six years past since they took him away
Held minutes like a needle in plied dust.
There’s something in the spring that brings decay:
The outward beauty of the world just
Clouds the mind’s loss within the spinning gust
That all the blooming flowers usher in.
Then the rain comes...

4.
As the 5’s scratch cracks up the drying earth,
I recall Nietzsche, Guevara, Burgess:
Men who’d not anticipated births
Inside my brother and I like cypress
Trees, evergreen and coniferous, we
Drop seeds year-round. The setting Utah sun,
Barely audible, gasps in the copse.
He’s with me now. What’s done is done.