Helicopter searchlights
probe the area around
our home as the haunting
final refrain from long ago
plucked guitar strings
fill my brain, the kid sleeps
in summer heat so strong
the a/c fails to fight it
the baby next to you
and the window unit
as grandpa slowly dies
in the finished basement
and life goes on in every
lit window with variations
of the same song
played in blue or as a dirge
or a 4 chord pop tune
or stilted verse and endless
repeated bridge.
Mumbled or strummed.
Power chords or hummed.
Played different as snowflakes
but played all the same.
I thought it would be
blue collar poetry
with gearhead love stories
or porch swing sincerity
in cable knit sweaters
or even fire escape nights
with the radio on low
but this ain't so bad.
I don't know.
I knew life for it's
difficulties, spoke hardship
like a native tongue
and expected to get covered
in dark earth right about
where I'd begun
but the joke, says John
the joke.
So I trudged all those
miles in beat up old shoes
and wrote punk rock
love songs but had in
my secret heart the blues
because love always seemed
bitter and days always long
and hearts seemed closed
and everyone was gone
should it have ended exactly
like I thought, I'd have been
ready for overstayed heartache
grim poems left in typewriters
cigarettes left burning in old
brown glass ashtrays
once white now yellow walls
The sad old static inside
us one and all.
Like tin foil on braces or
the derelict old mall.
Decay by commission
a corpse by design
ending in omissions
and claims that I'm fine.
But the joke, says John
the joke.
Youth is ending, the sun
circles the western bowl
and hopes are different
when dreams don't come true
and nothing is the same
in the absence of you.
My hair isn't thinning
though my teeth are now long
and I'm so far from the beginning
I've forgotten the original
shape of the song.

It's over now
the lights expire
remember the love songs
and the burning funeral pyre?
I recall blue eyes and
sad, sweet lullabies
and promises we'd keep
until the day that we die.
And I remember the weather
in that bleak week we spent
in a faraway November
and the way light touched
your long thin hair
and the feeling of forever
mixed into everywhere.
It's over now
you know I hope you know
I always meant well
I know there's secrets we shared
and stories you can tell
but know that you weren't
a passing fad or a forgotten
stage play to me
even though I'm winter hearted
and short on what you needed
I tried and failed on the path
just got lost in the leading.
I meant well enough, baby,
I wanted to do right
but I climbed hills without end
and was always just
shy of sight.
You're gone now, kid.
Left with packed bags
and jet exhaust
left behind cold hearts
and early morning frost.
But go on now, you go
where you gotta be.
Make the life you want living
the one you got from your seeds.
Be big, be beautiful
all you could never be.
But load your gun careful
cause you got so much ammo
in the belted feed
meant to break hearts
and hurt in ways you don't mean.
So, when you tell me to your
fancy new friends on the
other coast of no place
in particular and away from
here and from then and from me
have mercy.
Don't kick me around without need.
Have mercy.
As much as you can, for me.

A caution from the end of this
line to the the start of yours,
my dear,
we can't define love,
try and try as we might,
because it writhes and it yearns
and it's all cutting and bite
because life is mean and the world
will one day just burn and
we want love to be greater than
the end of one life or the stain
left behind words.

Love can lift you and love can burn
and love gives power and it is stern
but love makes you capable
of things beyond your means
and love is wise but love also bleeds.

And we talk about love like it
is some kind of cure but it's
as poison as palliative and it's
often much too much to bear
you get on the river boat,
smile warmly, the wind wafts your hair
but love is/isn't a river and
life is so often crueler than fair

and love can lift us and love can burn
and love can make us capable
and love can sing and love can turn
but what we find we can do
to win a heart or persevere through
we can also inflict on people
as in love as you.

when I say I love you, dear
I mean it with all my heart.
this thing we've built is
my greatest work of art.
but life is difficult to live
from finish to start
and love can seem bright,
my dear,
but it can also be dark.

We're on a path now with only
one real tangible end and though
we wish it was like before with
laughter and lessons and wisdom
passing down through hard love
and barely acknowledged affection
the generation of stoic men is
passing before our eyes
and there are questions without answers
and no more hellos left
to soften all the goodbyes.
It's medications administered and delivered
in rotating various numbered hours
a regiment of strictly adhered to
suffering now that cures have all been discarded
because only comfort can be offered
in these: The final days.
And we put food out that you won't
eat, you're not concerned
with getting stronger because
it only matters to us that you
stay just a little while longer
and we all respect these wishes
because dignity is at a premium
now that it's so hard to come by
and it's all over but for the years
and years left with which to cry
but we can't change the facts
or back away from the course.
We've agreed to watch you die.

We're all fresh bones
on a downward slide toward
sunken coastal homes
and time and tide pull
us toward empty tomorrows
and wave like wheat fields
and drunken stadiums.
When we miss the mark
we are not landing in
starry pools of promise
because people drained them
swearing to throw down
ladders that we could climb
but laughed and pointed as
we hung limp from the rungs
and whistled sorrow at
everyday pain that came
disguised as hellos but
smelled exactly like goodbye.
And I don't know the magic
or the art
I can't read the prose
or find the start
and Mexican radio used
to broadcast rebellion but
the airwaves are digital now
and the beating heart
of our once burning dreams
is stilled, becalmed as
the ocean with absent breeze
and painful as unfulfilled
needs or bended knees.
If I pull back my hair there
is so much white underneath
and if I search too long
I only find what everyone
else needs.
Pirate radio waves filled
with static speak for the dead
and for the spreading disease
but this isn't complaint, mind
just payment for the fees.
Fresh bones and broken dreams
fail to thrive in these
tired times and hollow
lines of coded insta feeds.
And tomorrow belongs
to the children we posioned
with endless noises
and glowing blue screens.
The ocean is closer
but it ought to just about
drown all the screams.

You were here for
such a small piece of time.
Met at twelve, gone by Twenty-five,
and I don't know how
to seek or find
all the love lost
when I was left behind
but look there you are
once again on my mind.
I remember in patchy
sunlit rhymes
the way you seemed
so hardy as you withered
on the vine.
And I loved you forever
as you loved from time to time.
I know I'd hate you if you'd
stuck around cause you
always toed that line
but I miss you all the same
you may be gone
but you were a friend of mine.

I tell truth couched
in lines of metaphor
and marvel when you're
unable to decipher it.
I riddle my feelings
at you in digital media
under assumed names
and lament how you
can't see how I feel.
I pretend at such depth
but swim so close
to the surface I can
hear sing-song sounds
gurgling in my ears
and still feel the warmth
of sunshine on my neck.
I move with eyes
open in shallow water
but pinch my nose closed
against the current
to prevent it from
invading me with
the honesty that will
break me completely
in two.
I look at you through
this distorted mess
and apply new paint
to the same tired
******* wreck.
I sink when I try to float
even when I hold my breath
but I lie about it
about everything
if that isn't too much
to tell.
Did you believe me
when I said I was beside
you during those laps?
I was waiting in the shallows
crouched to seem in much
deeper than I am
and hoping that you
would pretend you couldn't
see through me for a while.
If I closed my eyes
and fell backward on the
surface of the lake
would you agree that
I'd floated or would
you tell the truth
for my sake?