i believe your heart is just overgrowth sworn to a secret oath of her bleach stained teeth, what was and what never will be. i sleep with buckets beside my bed and tear stained pillow cases and a knife under one of my mattresses. i wake up with a head heavy with dread and most early mornings i feel like i could be dead, but i know that i'm not because the knife is still under my bed.
and she kissed my forehead in my sleep and i held his hand under the tree where in real time people never meet, junkies just take turns staying there and sleep. i held a heart there. i held it in my hands and it was beating until there was something like a scream, i still think it was the wind.



the way the sunset skips some houses is really prophetic for the way some families in those houses become too broken to be noticed. the way the tops of the mountains can be seen on the darkest nights at times helps me understand the sounds the strings make and the sounds small creatures make when they awake. this chest is full of unmeasurable emotion that gave so many the notion that i don't know how to love, only curse the things that can't curse me back. i am skillful at allowing you to know my eyes and know my lies and the truth is i will never love anyone like i love the way i can make them love me late at night. i will never love. love never. never enough.

months ago on a friday night the bouquet of different memories we passed around was haunted by this idea that we could extract all of the hard parts from ourselves, all of the sad parts, and create god with it. everyone fell asleep that night and i went outside and buried this bouquet because i know that if there is such a god, he is sadder than all of us. we could never recreate something that's already been made with such disgrace to be full of anymore distaste, so we won't. we never will. our voices stay shrill now and some nights our ghosts steal our voices and run away to be near this tree, and they scream and scream and scream.

I pass the places we were
one year ago today
not purposely,
it's just that my Gods seem
to have an ill sense of humor.

Walking slowly, numbly, dreamlessly around
a blinking city
that refuses to belong to me
ever again.

With every step kicking up clouds of dirt
in form of awkward memories
from not too long ago
that feel like a hazy far away dream.
it is easier to pretend they were merely that.
Reality is much harder to accept.

Bright Cakes with soft candle light
that graced your brow.
And I find myself hoping and wishing
I didn't know that you were doing so well,

if so...I'd be able to lie to myself
and imagine that you think of me
a little sometimes.

I hope you found what you wanted,
what you relentlessly worked so hard for.

Happy Birthday.

When I allow myself to think of
the first mornings we spent together,
I think about how you kissed my shoulder
with sleep still in your eyes;

I remember watching the the city blocks
whimsically turn to fields
and back to blocks again
from the train window,
on my way home.
The train rides were never
a clear picture
as much as they were a feeling,
as thoughts of you consumed me.

I thought about your small,
hot apartment,
the grand weight of our wallets,
empty.
The exaggerated love/lust
as our bellies swished,
full with cheap *****.

Contrary to how it sounds,
this is not a love letter
as much as it is a lament for a person
that once meant everything,
and now is another stranger
on crowded city sidewalk.

I no longer yearn to find you
in some corner of the world,
with arms that have again learned  
how to hold me,
no, this is not a love letter.

I just want to think of you sometimes
and hold on to the parts of you
that already felt like they were mine.

Once again,
I try to remember your scent;
there is no use,
it’s already gone.

You forgetting me, me forgetting you
such a quiet disease

it gets worse with time

soon you nor I will feel
the feeling of loss when you think about
kissing, touching or making love

If we're lucky we will live on in each other
in a form of nostalgia
Like the feeling you get when you remember
something that used to seem so simple or innocent in your childhood

but at worst we wont remember or pretend not to remember at all

We'll go on with our beautiful lives
Charming this world, one boy, one girl at a time.

God, it is so hard to believe we were once so perfect.
Life is hard and we just kind of get by
I guess it takes it's toll on us.

We stood at the foot of Elephant Mountain
looking at scattered pieces of metal
illuminated by the blinding sun,
they stood out in the green grassy hill
reminding us with every glimmer how much it really hurt.

A government official tried to convince you
that that was all that was left of the people you love.
He was a liar, we both know that.

You took a seat on the ground, on a bed of rocks and dirt.
It seemed so appropriate so I joined you;
In times like these there is no where to go but down.

I begged the god I often ignore
for direction for the first time in years,  
I searched my memory for every or any wise words I've ever
heard my mother or father speak.
Nothing, absolutely nothing came to mind that would actually matter.
I guess that nothing really matters when faced with death.

so there I sat on the ground
trying my best to hold you
as you tried your best to hold yourself together

I am so sorry, I am so sorry, I am so sorry.

in school
at home
in slumber
or wake
I fight
for your trust
for love
for friends
like a boxer
in the ring
blows hit me
left and right
never do I
give up hope
I think of you
and swing