We are all going to live forever
As fragments floating in the ether
As tweets and emails
Photos and blogs
Our digital footprint
Will leave an imprint
On all of our graves
On the Internet
Nothing is private
Everything is public
Nothing is fleeting
Everything is forever

In the depths of my basement
Hidden behind the christmas decorations
And under the family albums
Lies a box waiting to be discovered
It holds a legend from a bygone era
The atari 2600
It may be the grandfather of gaming
But it still plays like it's 1977
It's been going strong for forty years
But my laptop called it quits after five
You have to start with the classics
Like Pacman pitfall and pong
Galaga asteroids and dig dug
All of them in glorious 8 bits
A throwback to simpler times
When there were no updates to download
Nothing to install to the hard drive
12 year Olds didn't mock you online
It was just you and a joystick

Take exit thirty six for the Last Resort Motel
Where the vacancy sign flickers like a beacon
To the wounded and the weary
The blue paint is ancient and peeling
Revealing all the colors that it used to be
Like the building itself
Is trying to turn back time
Its not a Red Roof or a Motel Six
Its the sole survivor of its species
And it clings bitterly to life
Its a place in between places
On the outskirts of a small town
Who draws their lifeblood from the highway
But the blood is starting to thin
The wounds are taking longer to heal
And the bleeding won't stop
It may be your last chance
To stay at the Last Resort Motel

I was walking through untouched snow
Feeling the frigid winds on my face
As distant stars dimly glow
From the cold depths of space

I was drinking cold water on a hot summer's day
As I sat out back in the reclining chair
Watching the clouds drift away
And a mockingbird's melody flowed through the air

The smell of scrambled eggs sneaks under my door
And suddenly I'm wide awake
My stomach would wait no more
I’m quickly downstairs devouring pancakes

We were the only car on the highway
Traveling in the dead of night
Where there are things you can only say
In secret and out of sight

Inspiration strikes in the dead of night
Fragments and whispers linger in my head
I write them in my notebook before they take flight
And choose another poet instead

Only poets read poetry
Only liberals watch msnbc
Only conservatives watch fox
Everybody is entrenched
In their own sound proof bubbles
A perpetual echo chamber
Where lies are repeated
Until they turn into truths
There are no debates only battles
One preconceived notion
Forever pitted against
Another preconceived notion
It is the duty of poets to humanize
To use our pens as swords
To burst our bubbles
To show that we are all humans
But only poets read poetry

so we’re not always perfect, and memories aren’t all good. But I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you, more than anything else on this entire planet, and my mind may be a mess and I might panic far too much and often  and I find it impossible to put my feelings into words but this is how it is. And like If I could capture the strength of the ocean on a stormy day or the smoke from a wild forest fire surging through the mountains in words on paper with my pen I’d write you the greatest love poem the greatest love story there ever was because I love you in natural disasters and I guess there is no other way to describe it. Because when we kiss the earth shakes and a thousand miles away a large city on the west coast experiences an earthquake of magnitude 10 and for a second life and time as we know it stops and stands still. And god when you touch me a warning comes on television and suddenly there is a tsunami crashing down and washing away the whole town and suddenly I don’t care because with the waves crashing around all I can feel and all I can see and all I can think is oh my god he’s touching me and my nerve endings are on fire and my heart is screaming can you hear it? You must hear it because it’s pounding out of my chest and it’s pounding for you. A tornado brews in the middle of a thunder and lightning storm with clouds and rain and fog so thick I can’t see and I am choking and I can’t breathe and the thing is that I open my eyes anyways and I breathe in the storm anyways and I run around and splash in the puddles anyways and I let the wind whip through my hair anyways as I stand up, throw my arms back and laugh into the wind. Because I am so tired and I am so sick of hiding under the trees to stay out of the rain and carrying around a fire hose to fight the fires around me. I can’t stop the waves but why would I when they can just wash me away? Because I keep hearing stories about people I know and how they keep the doors locked and keep the windows closed and wait for the storm to pass. And I am so ****** tired of locking myself up and waiting it out. I threw open my windows and blasted open the doors and ran from my house into the mass that surrounds it. There’s a state wide blackout in California from the way you looked at me on our first date. People scream in terror and my heart screams for you. An active volcano threatens to erupt and there is a nationwide panic. And through the ashes burning and molten lava all I ******* see is you. Hurricane Katrina broke Louisiana but my god it did not break our hearts. Because I love you in natural disasters. Big, destructive, dangerous, terrifying…beautiful.

I walked down the well worn path
As the sun climbed up the sky
Light seeped through the trees
And the heat pressed down on me

There was a large rock off to the side
Like it was placed there just for weary hikers
I climbed on top of the rock
And sat there for awhile

There was something carved on the side
"Kate+Roger summer of 87"
A day, a relationship, an act of love
Forever memorialized in stone

I wondered if they are still together
If thirty years later they come back here and laugh
Or maybe only one of them does
And smiles a bittersweet smile