Consider the optimism of alchemy.
See how desperately we strive
to create what we never were
from what we really are.
A stone, a potion, a spell:
anything that can transform us
into the actual we aren't,
into the being we'll never be,
through a pulseless world
of winter, still and lifeless;
where yet, the tantalizing
possibility of Spring
beckons like the ghost
of a beautiful woman
murmuring to us:
*yes I said yes I will Yes.

in the dark
compass spinning
wanton wind
howling, wailing
brittle arms
in concert waving
emerald waters
whipped and raging

sky crushed velvet
sequins sewn tight
to the shattered
span of night
a million times
each time as new
with stardust eyes
with gratitude

There's a better version of me,
    up, ahead. And
        he loves you in ways,
        I can't figure ways,
how-to. Yeah,
you cried when he
left you.

And lonely,
    you screamed.
"But if he'd come back, then,"
you think,
you'd believe it? The
            roads don't just sparkle, every
            time that you need it.

            In the poem I write next,
    we're both losing games.
I press up then, catch on,
turning to flames.
                In a grand winning gesture
you burst
into diamonds,
                before I can remind you
                about asking Simon.

    In the distance, outside the door to your
    basement, a crowd la-las the
    Star-Spangled Banner.
From the bulkhead and foundation,
from "the Hobbit door," but,
behind me,
the Anthem goes silent.
                            "Not home. Headed home. Stopped
here. On-my-way."

"Where would you rather be,
                                            than right here, right now?"
Ralph Wilson died a rich man,
with a football stadium
by which to remember him.
            "Well then trace your
depression to its sources."
                        I'm afraid I'll never own the franchise.

There's a father, presiding
over a service,
                for both of us. It's the
same priest, at every
                    front of the room.
                        Our parents are crying, regardless.

                        I'd say somewhere, we sit,
together,
            sipping on the universe. This one
                                                    or another.
        If we don't, then they do.
And they're having the best time.

        But in our past,
        the same one we share now,
        a version of you stiffens.
She glazes her eyes, sugary.
Holds out her palm, fingers to the sky.
And he matches her thumb first,
before the four digits.
                                    Her face bursts, all rosy.
His turns away.

that deal where we squeal our insides onto paper
try to paint on canvas the depth of human feeling
take clay between our fingers feel it up
into magic illusions half assed statements
work into the night's  dark feeling
make allusions
hide nothing
it's all right there before your eyes
just camouflaged by metaphors
and painted sunsets with our fingers
that that makes us human
alive
death has in our flow no
control anymore
and love is visually stable
never  ephemeral
caught in time by a heart
a soul and put on paper
forever
in return we release
an artistic ******