******* it!
I'm my father's son,
all wasted potential
and missing someone.
Dog tired and thirty-one.
Ripped and torn
awed and reverential.
nail bit and forsworn.

I want Rockwellian sepia.
Perfection and meaning
published in old print media.
The American visionaries resplendent
with firework dreams and consumed
in whitewashed, denim faded pleasant.

But it's you, my love and my meaning.
The person to convince me I'm not broken.
I hope to be the one, who can get you to open.
You keep me alive and breathing.

You spin me around and make me crazy.
Let me know when you want to, baby.
I'm tired of being built on maybe.

I'm an hour away from the American Dream,
but I'm terrified by the winning team.
I want you and me, Lori.
I want the old theater stage story.

******* it!

I am my father's son
all wasted potential
and missing someone.

I've got pockets full of *******
and hard and swollen eyes.
I want more than I have found,
I need something real and new and warm.
I got plans for leaving,
but I can't go without you.
I want a world of fire.
I need you to have me with you.
I need this journey, for once-
once in this hollow life-
I need this to not be alone.
I want you forever with me,
like we promised to.
I love you like identity,
I can't be me without you anymore.
I don't know when it happened, love.
I can't do it anymore.
Climb these mountains of doubt with me,
because I don't know if I like me anymore.
I know I'm better with you,
but you're not around, dear.
I think I want to be gone and away.
I think It should be me that isn't here.
I want you to reassure me.
I just want you near.

I remember sneaking out as teenagers,
hoping you'd hold my hand.
I remember not asking you to dance with me.
I remember wishing you had.
I remember wanting you.
I recall being scared to death.

I'm a real piece of garbage without you.
I'm worse than I'll ever be.
I'm broken down and beaten,
haunted by the demons you keep at bay.
I ******* hate it, baby.
Please look at me like I'm not damaged,
like you always do.
Convince me I'm repaired.
I need to be here with you.

I'm here to get broken,
to be torn into pieces.
Discarded on the floor.
I found you so I could be remade,
Built up from nothing,
so you could make me more.

Break my heart,
burn my soul,
scar my history
with yours.

Glass fragile and brittle.
Prone to watch you pout.
I want moth eaten dreamscapes,
but I just keep bleeding out.
I'm tied to this iron ball and chain,
drowning like you need me to.
Writhing here in pain.

Feed me your bitter poison, love.
Bleed me with your leeches.
Push me, dear. Push and shove.
I wash away like chalk,
Temporary and incomplete.
I need you, sweet Hemlock.

Don't ever leave.

There is an absence.
It's killing me to say this:
I miss you.
I can't believe I haven't evaporated,
exploded,
now that you've gone.
State lines and power lines,
remember?
One less alarm
and it is so ******* hard to get up
in the morning.
One.
It's numbers, every day.
You know?
Arbitrary numbers that somehow
we've allowed to have an effect on our lives.
How did we do this?
How did we become this?
You worry about it too, right?
Two.
God, it's an illustration in futility.
I can't think.
I don't want to think.
To recall.
I don't.
I just don't.
You know how I am.
I can only barely live with myself, you know.
Don't know why I expected...
**** it.
Let's burn down tomorrow.
Let's set fire to it.
We can count the broken days
from birth to graves
and revel in it.
But, you know how I break apart.
How I go to pieces.
Wait.
No.
You left before that.
It was just me.

Everything has strings attached.
We're all waiting for it to start,
for our lives to finally,
******* FINALLY,
kick into gear.
But we can hear it calling.
Oblivion.
From a house, or a street
just a little further down.
And it chills to the quick,
to the bone,
one and all.
It calls us, friend, by name.
By our name.
How can we argue that?

I say we bleed out on filthy
tile floors in truck stop bathrooms.
The wound we walk through life with,
the one inside our hearts.
Let it bleed away.
Because, we are so ******* tired
of twin self destructive
thoughts chasing each other
through our minds.
Endless searching and finding,
for our trouble,
more trouble.

I will burn my heart out in the looking.
I will.
I will **** myself.
Shame myself.
I will lie to, twist up and hate myself
if it gets me where I need it to.
I am without hope or principle,
but I have a dog in this fight, friend.
You'd better believe it.

So shout it out.
Echo it down like mountain top hollering.
Make sure we all know.
We all hear it.
Make sure the whole world knows.
Remembers us.
We were here, future.
You don't scare us.
We were ******* here.

Be brave in the small hours.
We have it in us.
And time is tall, right now,
but as we move it grows so short.
We would **** and dishonor for tall time,
in only the space of a piece of lifetime.
We know it, and we know it well.

We get *******, though.
We move from place to place,
and from person to person.
We move, as best we can.
But the strings,
they bind us to earth and we sink.
Unable to drown, we breath in water.
And in the distance,
calling us by name:
Oblivion.

...
.......
C:\Q&A;>

Question: Is this love?

Tearing pieces away so
the world can examine them.
Ripping apart the whole,
the soul,
for scrutiny.
Hoping with each lost,
shredded piece that value is
traded.
That redemption is given.
Ultimately, though, it is
degraded.
Devalued and purposeless.
Still, the work must be finished.
Still, it must be given,
the words and the feelings
that are foreign,
to you.

Answer: This is incomplete.

...
....
C:\

I'm going to hold my darkness over your head.
I'm going to make you feel small and stupid.
My history will become the mountain you must climb.
I don't wonder about it anymore:
I'm the worst.

Always you want two things; it's never enough.
Two things which can't be had at once.
Always.
Of course I'll ask you how.
Of course I will.
Two things. Always.

I've been ******* hunger desperate and shelter poor.
I've been a hard luck, street wise,
charity case with no coin freely given.
A mean little ****, tempered in tragedy and shame.
Most my time was spent in various
states
of decay.
In urban squalor and late night tattoo parlors.
Picking my monster up off the sticky barroom floors.
Returning to nothing and knowing,
all the knowing,
neglect measured in pounds of
what am I to do about food this week?
All that knowing and twice that knowledge of abuse.

You don't care.
This is about your precious ******* feelings.
This has little to do with plans.
Nothing to do with me.
Feelings.
Let them be your unremarkable guide.
Let them.
Always.

I'll hang my history over your head.
Every ******* time, I'll do it.
I know it's wrong.
How could you argue a point
that could possibly quell my fear?
Because I am afraid, you know, I am so afraid.
I am one bad week, one bad decision away.

I am within reach of returning.
Always.

Don't argue with me, love.
Please.
I don't wonder anymore:
I'm the worst.