somehow it happened like this
---------------------what is
meant to be broken
must break

I am meant to be broken
I must be
otherwise I'd be happy
otherwise I'd wake up
and put my feet to the floor
because I'd feel as whole
as the night before

there would be no more shards of me
that litter my mind as I fall asleep
-
but nevermind

some things are
meant to be broken
-----------------------------
and so they break
themselves

is not fragility the
true nature of beauty?

and with things so delicate
I can only be clumsy
and I stumble blindly
with bruises and scars
because I know not how fragile
we really are

I hear a truck backing up in the distance
that droning, desolate
isolated
a sound so repetitive it's invisible
in-audible
sorry
diction is failing me
I might be drunk
I miss you
I miss you so much
and you're not even gone
well, I guess you're not here
but you aren't even gone

I found a photo of you
I'm packing
I finally started packing
three days before I move
I found a photo of you
from a while ago
before you left that note in my sketchbook
I need to leave a note in your sketchbook
you should probably know how I feel
you should probably know that even though
I may be distant and confusing and quiet but too loud
all I really need you to know
is that I want you
I want you
like I want summer to stay with me forever
I want you
and you think I don't know what I want

anyway, I found a photo
of you
smiling
and *******
why isn't this easier?
smiling
you don't have to say anything
just smile
please
please please
just be with me
a little bit longer
don't leave
just stay in bed
just look at me
like you're still sleeping
(and you are, I'm sure)
and smile
so I know

so I know
finally
for just a little bit longer

as I find my self older
than I ever was
I must come to terms
with a reality more plausible
than the one I choose to inhabit

I must accept
that people die
that things break
and that time passes

that time passes and
there will be there are
moments that I was to act
but didn't
and now
it's too late

I will find that
there will be people
whom I never meet
there may be
a love I belong to
but I will pass it by
or leave it behind

I need to see that fate
is merely a myth
that future
is a concept I own
as do all

as soon as I see
that life will never
be good to me
that life will never
be anything
or easy

maybe then
I'll wake up
alive and finally free

you are a pause

you are the second
before the air raid
an anticipation so loud it's deafening

you are the stillness, the static,
pins and needles between lightening
and thunder. 1. . . 2 . . . 3. . .

you are the heartbeat, last blink
separating bullet and flesh
crescent cuts bleed from empty hands

you are red lights. stop
knuckles white through a
raindropped windshield

you are elevators
early morning coffee stains
shifting eyes. look away.

you are the dead air
on a faraway radio station
bent antenna. turn the dial. silence

you are the needle
on that half broken phonograph
sidling arthritically away, back to sleep

you are the skip a beat
nervous lip bitten hesitation, envelope stamped
staring into the letter box. just let go

you are punctuation. . .

you are the hyphen
splitting words in two
leaving lonely nothings on different pages

you are 0:00

you are the force that
draws our eyes together
if only for an instant

it's a brown paper bag poetry kind of day --
one of those with multitudes of foggy fleeting
passive agressive hypotheticals

and I realize, that all I have to share
are half-assed transcriptions
of an intangible boredom
only born of a self-inflicted state of stagnation

this isn't a poem.
but my guess is that you're
indifferent anyway

my guess is that the words are
flowing through you
passing right through
no time to sink in

no, people like me
thoughts like mine
they're so tired
used up -- old news
no, we don't stick

you'll forget soon enough
what it is that brought you here
to this place
of tired hypotheticals

I saw a girl today
on the bus today
she was beautiful
in a  broken-a-little-bit-too-young
kind of way

her face a beacon
a mast rising above a restless sea

she was beautiful
musta been about 16
I saw for a second
fleeting, the child she coulda been

a cheap haircut
ill-fitting jeans
but she was beautiful
a story worth telling

and I couldn't tell her
no, not a single word

I don't like what life has made me
but I like what you have made me

I don't like to believe that anyone can change me
but I like what you have made me

I don't like that I'm blind and lazy
but I like what you have made me

I wish our lives weren't so far apart
so vastly different
you're a tough one
I learned to read people
before I learned to read books
and your face is a foreign language

I wish you weren't so, I don't know,
somewhere else
you'll disappear, vanish for days
you stay with me but leave so early
that my eyes are still adjusting to morning
as you step out the door

I wish that you would talk to me
that you would tell me who you are
because I don't know who you are
not at all, I just know
that if I did, I would like you
and so I like you

I wish when I was with you
when we're drinking
I could just shut the **** up
just for a minute
I might hear you wondering in silent volumes
like I know you do

you're like that one thing
that I have so close I can feel a pulse
but that I just can't hold on to
and I'm afraid, so scared I can't sleep
that I won't be able to hold on to you

and what if I can't hold on?
what if I was wrong?
what if you're just like them?
the other ones
the parade of dead-weight wastes
deflated infatuations
that tie me to the ground
and turn my eyes down

but this wasn't a sad poem
I'm sorry. let me tell you
I don't like how much being takes out of me
but I like what you have made me