A salty mist sprays into the air,
As water crashes against the shore.
A lone gull glides against the wind,
Over an abandoned January beach.
The sun, a cold dot in the bleak sky.

Sometimes in the depths of the silence
From the back of my tiny shack
I can hear your laughter
Ever since I boarded that train
To travel out west to the territories
Every cell in your body has changed
You've become a different person  
When I read your replies
I don't hear your voice
I constantly look at your photo
To remind myself
What you look like
And why I am here
But I'm starting to feel the strain
Of the three thousand miles
That are between us
I long for the day
When instead of paper and ink
You will be flesh and blood
When you're no longer just words on a page
And I can hear your laugh again

Maybe you were never really there
Maybe the park never happened
I could never prove it
All evidence was destroyed
In the wake of your sudden departure
Memories faded
Like old photographs
Tucked away
Forgotten in shoeboxes
When you flood my mind
I write you letters to dispel your ghost
A one sided conversation
With your unknowable future
Boxes full of unsent letters
Someday I'll burn them all
And hope that the smoke
Carries my words to you

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