June. Warm, breezy day.
Three O'Clock, all beauty ceased.
Now, only ennui.

I was going to write a poem

about the distance
I walk
girls to their cars.
You know, to the door?
down the stairs to the front porch?
out to the first step for that last, awkward hug?
do I really like them?
Am I concerned for their safety
or is this just
the obligatory,
socially and culturally
acceptable
distance for me to walk with this particular individual?

Did I even get out of bed?
Is the distance I walk directly proportional to the amount of feelings I have for that person at that time?
Or does time of day or night play into it?

Do I actually walk them
all the way
down the hill
to where they are allowed to park,
if they are a one nighter but it is 3 a.m.?

Or perhaps to the end of my lawn,
at the opening of my small,
rickety,
barely noticed
fence,
which keeps nothing in or out,
to hold them so tight that they know,
they just know

with every molecule in their essence

that I am theirs,

all of me,

and that I do not want them
to leave
but if they must,
I shall be waiting

eagerly

with every molecule of my essence

to breathe them in again,
to feel them near me again,
to smell their sweat again?  

I was going to write about that.
But then I thought,
why not write about your plants?

I realized the other day,
while watering my various plants,
six in total,
that all of them had been given to me.

They were all gifts.

By women.

My dear mother,
both of my  beautiful sisters,
two  rotten ex-girlfriends of mine,
and a kickass lesbian friend
I met through somebody
that got walked to the front porch.

Surely
there must be a poem
in there somewhere, I thought.
With all the females
and the ***
and the plants
and soil
and life

and all that other *******,

surely
I must be able
to conjure up

something beautiful,
something wonderful
and profound
and bewildering
and inspiring

and all that other *******,

but sadly for you
dear reader,
all I could come up with

was this *******
you just read.

The good thing is,
I didn't write this for you.
I wrote this for me.
I have to.

These people
They do not even see me.
they are blind to me
I am not invisible
I walk by them
I see them
they don't see me
they look away
look at the floor
they look around
they look anywhere
but my eyes

which is fine
for if they did
they would see
the eyes of a madman
a lover
a father and a brother
a ***** hobo
a ragged lonely nomad
a slave
a tree climber
a ruiner
a fighter
a healer
a *****

They would see centuries upon centuries of amber and curry and garlic and sand and bones

If they dared
to step a little closer
they would smell the *** and soil of a thousand worlds
the blood
the ****
the tears
of a million little girls and boys left in my wake
lilies and lilacs and roses and daffodils would mix with
mangoes and dragons blood
and sweaty lust.

I am Love and I walk among you.

A breath,
in deep,
Eyes black,
and I smell your amber skin.

Another breath,
I feel your hips
cradle my hands.

Centuries between us,
yet a breath away.

I write these words
but can't feel.
My words ring cold as ******,
no echoes there.
No warmth or weight,
ashes.
A grey frost on ancient soil
as midnight blooms cold.

A breath,
in deep,
Eyes black,
and I smell your powdered skin.

Another breath,
I feel your hips
cradle my hands.

Nothing between us.
A breath away.

and when I hear of your death,

I will fall to my knees and weep

for I will know that all I have now are memories.
I will not be able to call you out of the blue.
I will not be able to drive by and not stop.

I will not know that you are ok and safe and warm.
I will weep because a part of me dies with you.
I weep now thinking of that day.

You are my rotten lover baby.

No other as pure as ours.

I will weep the day I hear of your death.
Most of me dies with you.

is what I tell them, now.


"I am only going to hurt you.
I promise."

I will laugh with you
and I will let you see my core,
and you will want so terribly much
to be a part of me

you will do almost anything.

"I told you not to."

I will let you in.
I will open myself completely
and make myself vulnerable at your feet.
You will trust me.

" Stop."


I will tell you about my family
and you will meet them.
You will think you understand me.

Did you think I was lying when I told you I was a *******?

I ******* told you.

I'll make you feel like the most beautiful
woman in the universe.
You will know in your bones
that I am yours alone.


It will be magical and true,

at the time.

We will be in love with each other. Madly, crazily, undoubtedly and completely in love and it will be the most wonderful and pure and good thing that has ever happened to us both and we will pledge eternal loyalty to each other and we will both mean it and we will be happy beyond our comprehension.

Then... I will

change.

I will grow tired of you.
I will become distant.
I will become indifferent.
I will become cruel.

You will be confused
and cry
and plead and pout and sulk and berate and beleaguer.

You will question yourself
and your motives, like it was your fault or your failing
when it was neither.

If it makes you feel better,
I will apologize.
I won't mean it though.
Not all the way, not like I should.

It was just me
being me
and doing

exactly

what I said I would.

I realized the other night,

as I stood
screaming
at my son,

that I was breaking
our hearts.

I walked away
as soon as  I saw
the line
in the distance.

The line that
I will never cross.

I walked away
and felt my fathers fist
across my face.

I spared my
precious boy
the terror of
being beaten
by the man
he wants to grow
up and be just like.

I walked away
when I saw
the tears well up
in his innocent eyes
and the confusion
contorting his face,
when I heard some
frustrated father
misdirecting his own
anger and confusion
towards an undeserving
child and realized the
******* father was me.

I heard my father screaming at his woman about having a kid who would do "whatever the **** I tell him to if you hit him hard enough" and realizing that kid was me. I remember a part of me withered when I heard this.

He was right.
My father conditioned me
to take a beating.
He taught me how to
shut the **** up
and do what the **** I am told.
He taught me not to question his orders,
even when I knew they were wrong.
He taught me obedience
by beating me.
He taught me submission
by leaving me no other choice.

He taught me how to be broken.

I learned my lessons well.
I let people push me around because that was my place.
I let people get over on me because I didn't want to confront them.
I lost my girls to other guys because I was weak and scared.
I got passed up for promotions because I was hesitant and indecisive.

How do you forgive someone for conditioning you to be a failure?

How do I reconcile loving my father for the frail human that he is and hating him for the vile and abusive monster that he was?

When I saw the look on my sons face I wondered briefly if that was how I used to look when my father was berating me.

Right before fist hit face.

How the **** could he hit me with that look of fear and confusion and conflicting feelings on my face that must have registered somewhere in his drunken mind.

I can't help but think
it must have been devastating
for him,
somehow, someway.

He stopped apologizing for the beatings and
I stopped thinking
I didn't deserve them.

All of these thoughts and feelings passed
through my brain in a split second
and I turned away from my son.

My precious son.

My reason for existing.

My everything.

I turned away from his tear
stained face and sat down to cry
for a while myself.

I knew that I had caused some damage.
I thought back to all those times I sat crying in my room as a kid and wondered what would have made me feel better at the time, besides the obvious of not just having my *** kicked by a grown man.

42 years
of  gnawing pain
and frustration
and fear
and silence
and tears
and rage
and crushing loneliness
and shame

and fear and fear and fear

walked up the steps to
where a ******* 12 year old boy
sat alone.

42 years
of  breaking
the cycles of abuse and addiction
walked up the stairs and
spent the next hour
healing what I had damaged
in two minutes.


Later that night,
as I lay in bed questioning
every ******* decision I have ever made,
again,
I heard some sort of noise that startled me.

I leaped out of bed and took a quick route through the place to see what the noise was.
I never did find out what caused it but I called up to the boy quietly and asked if he heard it.
It appears he had been awake as well and had been rattling around in his own thoughts.

My boy had been thinking about death.

He was realizing the eventual imminence
of our own mortality and the weight of that thought was
crushing.
I was there for him, though.
I was able to put his mind at ease.
We talked of death, and life, and God, and philosophy
and we had a wonderful conversation
together sitting in his darkened room.

His small hand in mine, we healed each other.

I can't listen to the ******* cure
ever again with out feeling empty.
Way to go robert smith,
you big ******* depressing
*******.

Ever since you told me
lovesong was yours and fuckfaces
song I can't listen to some of my
favorite cure songs without thinking of....them.
Them being you and him, not us.
Us being you and me.

I can't listen to cat stevens
because harold and maude
was our movie. Ours!
Now, the last love song makes me cry like a *****.

I can't listen to ******* inxs anymore.
Never tear us apart drops me to my knees.
I can't listen to the kinks
or edith piaf
or talking heads
or leonard ******* cohen
or great lake swimmers
or fever ray
or peter sarstedt
or portishead
or killswitch engage
or paul mccartney singing maybe I'm amazed
or pearl jam
or ween,
especially ween, one of my favorites, *****.

Gotye is a prophet.

If I even think of antony and the johnsons,
my chest seems to cave in on itself
and I am filled with such a deep despair,
a longing for something,
anything
to take away
the pain of knowing
I lost you.

I can't listen to so much good music out there because that was our thing.
So many times we would lie in bed after loving each other
and listen to mixes we had made for one another.
Those were my favorite times.
Sipping whiskey with lime juice,
Reveling in your smells,
your juices covering me.
Your dog farting so bad
all we could do was laugh
or we would puke.

The first few notes of alexi murdochs
love you more, bring forth tears like niagra.
I cannot listen to that song without crying immediately.

I don't understand how feelings like that go away so suddenly.

It's *******.

This isn't a poem.

Poems are supposed to be beautiful
and about love
or beautiful and about loss of love
or just plain ******* beautiful
about something like a ******* tree
or a nice view
or flowers.

I have to write about how I hate the empty ******* space in my chest whenever I think of your name.
I have to write about the thousandth time I cried over you,
like now.
I have to write about how
the bright blue
of our love was replaced by
the ***** brown of
our lies and deceit.

Nobody gives a **** about that stuff.
I can't write a ******* poem to save my life.
I want to put down on paper
the weariness and exhaustion.
I want to express how I feel
so that maybe I can save
someone else
the pain of suffering alone.
I want to write you the most beautiful poem on the earth,
the one that makes you
understand just how much I care
for you
and how much and I love you
and I want you to read it
and forget about your fears
and past hurts
and realize I am the only man for you
and nobody else will ever come between us ever again.

But I can't.

I am not smart enough.
I am not creative enough.
I am not...enough, for you.

I don't want to even try anymore.
I want to forget you like I said I never would.
I want to love another like I said I never would.
I want to be a liar, like I said I never would.
I want to stop loving you, like I said I never would.

I want to listen to love songs and not miss you.