I'm remembering...

The chlorine damp of your hair.
I'd never seen you in a bathing suit before.
You saw me and bit half of your bottom lip.
It wasn't sultry, we weren't capable of that.
Not yet.
It was bashful. Age of innocence.
You were shy.
And ******* me for not noticing.
Failure to recognize.

I'm remembering...

Observing the grass stains on the back of my tee shirt.
I had lay down on freshly cut grass to take in the smell and the blue sky.
I wondered if grass could bleed. I hadn't rolled around.
I know grass doesn't bleed. I know.
Not yet.
Age of innocence. Season of ignorance.
******* all this knowing.
It's left me undone.

I'm remembering...

The bottom fell out of my stomach when you smiled at me.
When you laughed. I remember the weird mixture of fear and hope.
Two parts coward, two parts poet.
So many warring hormones. So much lost time.
Not yet.
I recall thinking.
Notice me. Notice me!
******* it! Notice me!
I've been here the whole time.

I'm remembering...
Long walks at night with holes in the bottoms of my sneakers.
The stale taste of cigarettes mixed with crisp night air.
I can hear you breathing, even now, on the other end of that digital tether I had in my left hand.
You were hundreds of miles away and falling asleep to the sound of my voice and I was young and so were you and we were alive!
I'd love you forever, I knew.
But Not yet.
Not yet.
******* we were so alive.
So far from the waiting pit, those days.

One day I'll look back on now and remember...

But not now.
I am undone with knowing.
With failure to recognize.
Age of ignorance.
Soon, the pit. Sooner every precious day.
Not yet.
******* it all, it'll come. And I'll be here.
I've been here the whole time.

I drank all your poison, every drop.
didn't know to beg for help or to stop.
Surrendering to vengeance I've bought?
Suicidal intentions? Perish the thought.
I was born complete. Now I'm not.

Don' you forget me. Don't you dare. Please stay and love and care.
Come mornin' I sure wish I could be there.

'Fore I was rubble I was a man.
I'm not nothing, just nothing that can stand.
Can you fix this barren, empty land?
And create something else to spec? To plan?

Feed me sweet poison, if you think it'll help.
Treat me badly, like some churlish whelp.
But beware the skyline, my dearest friend
'Cause that sun is gonna set and this'll end.

An' listen, you're gonna remember me like the lingering taste of fruit.
I'll be seen in muddy footprints and a discarded roadside boot.
I'm gonna matter to you, I'll stick around like an elm and soon take root.

Don' you forget me. Don't you dare. Please stay and love and care.
Come mornin' I sure wish I could be there.


Build me like Lego.
Bake me like Eggo.
But don't forget to let go
before darkness falls and we go.

Forgotten as flowers on a grave plot.
Loved as long as unbraided hair.
I do care. I'll miss you a whole lot.
And come mournin' I'll be there.

I find it hard to say,
I say it's hard to find.
I'm over a bail of hay,
and broken of spirit and mind.

I'm lost in the woods in the dark.
I'm running out of time.
I struggle against pitch black and bark.
I want to be happy, but worry it's a crime.

And can we be real for a second?
'Cause every new day is a ******* chore,
and I am always tired and terrified
teetering on the precipice of a steep decline
in mental health or personal wealth
out of luck. Out of time.
There is no ******* context.
Only words.
Words that always have to rhyme.

Let's pretend we're happy. Let's dance.
You and I will keep perfect step, we two.
We can set the world alight given the chance.
Become us and not just me and not just you.

I need you to tell me that I'm not alone,
that others feel this from time to time.
I'm feet of clay and heart of stone.
I'm useless ******* meter and ******* rhyme.

I love you. I really do.
I need you.
Believe me when I write.
I wish it was easy to say. I wish I was better.
More.
I'm buried in style but wish the substance was there.
On better display.
I am a museum of hidden exhibits.
Tradition in the place of honesty.

I love you.
I really do.
I hope you love me, too.
But I honestly haven't got a clue.

Storybook ******* finds
a hero riding in on horseback
with grave purpose and noble intent.
Saving the day, or the damsel.
Kissing the problems awake,
rending the wolf's innards to find her.
Building the machine or spell that somehow fixes things.
Hard and dark, like burned wood,
are his eyes.
Broad and strong are his shoulders.
Trite and compromised are his deeds.
And so, in fiction we are saved.
In fiction we somehow still need saving.
Karma is a lie, kismit doubly so.
If there exists a path through the dark it is only because other damaged and broken people trod it there.
We don't have noble intent, we don't have hard eyes, but we occasionally accidentally build the mechanism that fixes things.
Not in whole.
Not completely.
And not even well.
Almost never is it perfect, occasionally it is better. But it is change, nonetheless.
It is change!
It is a start.
It is grave purpose.
Storybook ******* be ******.

Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Earnest effort discarded
the waiting pit held out as sacred,
reverential.
Call it nihilism or laziness,
call it in condescending tones
the failures and flaws,
gaps and cracks,
that will always best us
and hold us back.
Nevermind that the hills are higher,
disregard that the times more complex.
We are, as you say, wasted youth on young flesh.
One more unwilling sacrifice before the alter, burning at the pyre.
We are thirty something, educated
or dropouts, breathing pollution
and struggling with impulse control.
We aren't more, we aren't less.
We are here to be emancipated,
relegated, blamed and hated.
We're still here, that's something, I guess.
Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Earnest effort discarded
the waiting pit held as sacred,
reverential.
And we're here now, ******* it!
Struggling beside you, fixing the world from the trenches.
Our hands are ***** from work,
our hopes forgotten,
We turn the gears with crescent wrenches,
fight the fear with sarcasm and
inclusion.
We know a debts coming due soon.
So do you.
Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Be in awe of their effort.
And maybe they aren't doing their best, but at least they continue to search for ways to make it better.

Waves crashed onto the shoreline
on the day I was born.
In future: Gone will be I
and the shoreline
and the day I was born.
But the Ocean will keep.

Liars sit on gilded thrones barking orders into intangible every-*******-where and we plug our ears and we hum our throats hoarse but we still hear it.
We still hear it.
We hear everything.
You ran away and for office and I know what it meant and where it ends but I don't recall the lines of revolt forming like ants in formation against you. Neither do you, you *******. Doesn't matter. Never did.
We know everything.
I know late night talk radio vocabulary and I weild it like armor to protect me from the ******* conspiracy and the wild denials of things we've always known and I'm left cold and run-on.
I saw everything.
Inside the backrooms where the ******* deals get made there are secrets passed like currency and this gets exchanged for that and we're all smaller and less and our souls are laid bare before hungry jowls and damp fingers.
Everything is negotiable.
You want to stand, sycophantic, before me and prattle on about values? You value nothing. This is nothing. You cut up and sell the American dream to the highest bidder and sleep sound as houses while we burn with impotent rage and the gnawing feeling failure provides to giving up.
Everything is for sale.
And maybe, just maybe, we deserve you.