I die every single day. It comes slowly, gas leaking out of a tank; a river drying up to a trickle. It has taken years to notice, but here I am: On empty. In a muddy riverbed.
    Standing on the short timeline of my life, I look back at the man of the past. The man is not myself, and yet he is more complete than me. He is younger – yes – but brimming with delight. He knows nothing of Walls and Comments and Likes, and yet he is whole. He has no outlet for his happiness other than his own physical canvas. His sadness is absolute and crushing, but it belongs to him.
I am not he.
I am the autumn of his soul.
There is an emptiness inside me.
    It has not grown like the lines on my face nor the aches in my bones. It is something immeasurable.  
    I want to step out of my own identity.
    I want to live in a construct that is more unique than my own.
    We talk of living vicariously through others, but I live vicariously through myself. I live ten feet behind and thirty seconds after my own person. I watch the man in front of me go through every motion, and I feel nothing. I notate the changes, categorize the achievements, collate the emotions, and I feel nothing. On paper, I look quite good. Great things make headlines. Pictures show unforgettable memories, laughter, joy, and contentment.
    And every feeling of inadequacy, vulnerability, shame, doubt, and fear is greeted with a blind eye.
    The more my construct grows, the more I diminish.
    I am the Portrait of Dorian Gray, reversed.
    Each day the picture is more successful, happy, wealthy, and loved.
    And the man weakens and decays.
    I am frightened of what I’ve become.  
    If there is a way to halt this, I spend every day searching for it. Perhaps, in moments of looking into another’s eyes, I can hide from nothing. At those times, the construct falls away, and the man on the timeline comes crashing into the present.
    I wonder who will greet me in the morning. Will the Man diminish, or will the Portrait grow fainter instead?

I inherit the tome of your life nearly complete.
The first pages well-worn and traveled by your daughters,
Now yellowing and stiffening before the onslaught of grandchildren.

The middle is clean and organized,
The pages laid out in the brick of a self-built home,
The words of 'wife' and 'child' recorded with care and detail.

As the chapters progress, your handwriting turns.
Tidy inscriptions widen and loop, and mastery becomes primitive.
In the mire of your later stories I am lost, as - it seems - you are.
It is hard to discern the fact from the fiction,
The present moments from the conjured memories.

In the final pages, there is a remarkable renaissance.
You shed the child's scrawl and the ******'s jargon,
And the master stands before us once more.
You write of pain, of struggle, of fear,
And the pages crack and fall out.

Closing the book and adding it to the shelf,
Your story is not yet ended.
All around are novels of lives,
And they take from yours their inspiration.

There are four novels of daughters, and four of their husbands
Twelve of grandchildren, six of their spouses
Thirteen of great grandchildren, and three to be delivered.

There are books of neighbors, books of friends,
Pamphlets of patrons, and journals of soldiers.

Each a part of your story, each a part of the library
Each magnificent, and each unique.
And in the center, care-worn and complete,
Is you, grandfather.

It does not seem so strange, this current age.
A Generation of Amazing Things
And yet it is impossible to own
The things that we have lost while we have grown

Just sit in thoughtful silence in a bar:
Those Meeting Houses, Dens of Ill Repute
And listen to the hum of conversation
And feel the emptiness in their vibration

It does not take a skilled interpreter
A master linguist or psychologist
To feel the paint that’s chipping from the wall;
the rot that has begun to claim us all

Look up, look out, connect, and know that pain
Will be the saving grace to keep us sane.

On a wall of stars hangs a pearly eye.
Its light carries slumber, its presence brings absence.
Why should this traveler cross the skies in solitude?
Her brother hangs just across the heavens, yet their paths rarely cross.
When their lives do meet, the world turns upward in chaos.
The life of a heavenly body is eternally lonely.

Red and yellow marigolds planted by the roadside
Hide the fact that nothing grows nor ever will but
Trees, trees tall pines thick and fat like old monks with
Hoods thrown off gazing upwards at an unchanging sky and
Weather, weather oh-my-god the weather, so unchanging so unending:
Sunshine and blue skies and cold nights and always these
Pine trees.

Give me leaves thick and fat and broad like the hands of a giant with
Veins and rivers of life always flowing, ever-changing, and
Doomed to die and rot.

Give me the rustle: the sound that those orchestras make,
A tumultuous journey from heaven to earth.

Give me the apple, so fair and full of fall and
Reeking of the crisp, the downward spiral of life into
Decay, disease, and decadence. And the pumpkin with
Flesh so firm and taut, ready to be
Bought or stolen
Felt or broken
Carved or thrown

Give me December, nights of warning and longing and
Echoing silence
Bring me a snowfall, each perfect flake's descent
Destined to be marred in slush and salt and snowplows and sunshine.

Give me the end of the year, the short days, the long nights
The perpetual trudging through aching ages of decay and disease
and decadence and

.

On nights like this
When the sky is a black cup of coffee
You can sweep your hand across the velvet of nothingness
And feel the pinpricks of the infinite stars

On nights like this
When warm air comes up from the gulf
And a cold breeze clips in from the north
You stand and stare
Trying to comprehend the gods in their houses
And how limitless the heavens have become

And on nights like this
When there is nothing above you
Nothing beside or around you
No connection to this lifetime or any other
There is the knowledge
That you are the fathomless
And the gods in their heavens cannot possibly comprehend
How infinite you are

i pause in the west
with gas pump in hand
feeling the sand kick up
against my white tee
and the wind whip
my coif of bed head
staring off at the frosty white heads
of sentinel mountain peaks

would that she could see these
floats across the fluid of my brain
with a metal clang the pump
announces it has belched its fill

would that she were here
follows slow and somber
with printing receipt

another chance
begins a rainfall in my mind
that will not cease
until each inch is soaked

You've got it, kid!
(That thing you've got).
The world is yours!
(Bad things are not).

Put on your hat,
Zip up your coat.
Those things will keep
Your ship afloat.

You've got your dreams
All packed up tight.
And never fear
Bumps in the night.

But you will find
The things you fear:
Those Huffs and Puffs
That laugh and jeer.

You might get sad
(Oh yes, you might)
And that is when
You'll take your flight.

You'll run away
(Oh yes, you will).
Those things that huff
Will chase you still.

Your flights, you'll find,
Will take you far.
About as far
As Barnard's Star.





Those Huffs will fall,
And you'll be free!
The day is yours!
(I guarantee)

Yet don't forget
When you've grown tall,
The dreams you dreamt
When you were small.

have you ever rubbed a piece of chalk on the asphalt

shading some beautiful image

only to be washed away in next tuesday’s rain?

have you noticed how the chalk disappears under your fingers?

imagine the ends of your dna

(it’s a leap, but picture it)

a protective coating

like the aglets of your shoelaces

guarding the fragile building blocks of you

and once those telomeres break down

your dna frays

like so much loose cloth

and your fragile little human copy machine

makes bad copies

that is how we age

beautifully

gracefully

like chalk being rubbed smooth on the sidewalk

only to be washed away

in tuesday’s rain