Sometimes when I lay down my head
I'm sinking in oceans of neatly made bed.

I finally work out exactly what to say
and look to see you're a billion miles away.

Light dances delicate from pane to pane
in the apartment and between bouts of rain.

Heat spreads across my legs and chest
as I snuggle in and hope for the best.

And these are the whiled hours of our very own.
Not the hours bought and paid outside our home.
Flashes of smiles and visions of light
now and then interrupted by the odd fight.
And I'd trade it for nothing, we all always claim.
But we head in to work and trade it for money just the same.

I often wonder what life could really be,
If allowed to be just you and me.
When able we while away or moan and fuss.
It seem to be about currency and not just us.

We are ten thousand miles up
where the air is thin.
We're pushing against the fourth wall
begging just to be let in.
Our hope like giants humbled before
large and ancient gods.
Wishes lost in prayers or dismissed
with quick and somber nods.
Generations aching to wake
like a Phoenix and in fire be reborn.
American dreams cast like scattered light
or ripped hair and shirts torn.

The heat pushes down
the humidity will not break.

Fog rolls in off the bay.
In stagnant pools of cool salt water
the mermaids lay.
Children race down lamp lit streets,
they run and play.
And we pull and pull
but only push away.
We speak volumes of print
without anything to say.

Tomorrow calls for rain.
Tomorrow calls for rebirth.
I fear it will have little worth.
If we're only ever reborn in pain.

I am overkill given voice and form.
Rubble as shelter against a storm.
A band saw used to slice morning toast.
Never the center, always a coast.
I am extreme opinion.
Crowned king with absent dominion.

I am extreme measures taken
with little reward.
Hours of banging for only one sword.
Hand squeezing oranges
for a single glass of juice.
I am always on but of little use.

You are magic and truth.
Honest and sincere proof.
You're a hiding place from thunder.
Something built that none can sunder.
A true shelter from storm.
Wonder given voice and form.

In some distant place,
some barren field,
We will meet once more.
You will be pleased,
We will smile and laugh.
I won't be such a ******* chore.

We are waiting on lightning,
so I might make glass.
We are wandering in search of hope
but find I am unequal to the task.

Somewhen I will know truth from lie.
I'll be forgotten. Somewhen I'll die.
We will burn the candle down to wick.
We'll smile as we know every single trick.

We are seed, tossed to birds.
We are empty hours and hollow words.
Without a purpose but filling a need.
Monitors left absent a scrawling digital feed.


Tomorrow the sun will burn
Our stomachs will move and churn
That angry old moon will rise.
And our lips will tell innocuous lies.

We'll scrape the bottom of every barrel
Our eyes always wise but also feral.

We will be small gods with small needs
Big on mood but lost for worthy deeds.

One day we will love without earthly fear,
With wild abandon and endless cheer.
We will release all that we've pent.
Now only embers. I am fires spent.

In the dark wood, where the stars
whisper stories to the fallen leaves,
we sit in robes of cobwebs and moonlight.
In search of lighted windows,
skeletons hanging from fire escapes,
perhaps punished mariners
caught by East India on open city seas.
Oh, we have our secrets
and they are kept.
Silence like mausoleums.
We cast will-o-wisp lights
from corpse candles and laugh
smoke into cold night air.
Walk inside the flashlight beams,
roaming ghoul haunted city streets.
We sit in gutters and divvy our spoil.
Yesterday's joyous revelry disappeared
in the digital blue light of tomorrow.

It's so strange how it changes scale.
See, my whole life I've been the star.
At the center of the tale,
head and chin over the bar.

The story is yours, now.
So casually it changed hands.
Started, with a sacred vow
two meaningful matching bands.

And you look a little like us
a little like them.
Borrowed expressions of fuss
on an unfinished gem.

My identity changed overnight
without the help of a phonebooth.
I'm become "Dad", my new birthright.
I was me until you altered my truth.

You amaze me, kid.
I watched you learn to smile.
Knocked me right off the lid
every loss just one more for the file.

And one day it'll be over and done.
One day you'll leave me. Get up and go.
When you're gone what do I become?
I'll be empty? Take of me for you to grow.

The ghosts of
mothers and fathers
move in us all
still.
Unfinished
as the first draft of act three.

Listen: we are the heirs
of memories.
We are the inheritors
of bones and dust.
Ours is now monochrome
end of broadcast days.

The blue of
her eye.
The spiral in his
hair.
The toothy wide
smile.
The thousand yard
stare.

Shockwaves and echoes all.
Static on old television sets.
Guitars with repurposed frets.
Poetry borrowed from cemetery pall.

The aftereffects of
the dead, are we.
Bright sunny you,
big gloomy me.

Echoes calling through
the mists of time
with different words
But the mistakes?
The mistakes are the same.

Not repeat or homage
but with certainty
pastiche.

We are the shadows of
tombstones,
in many and
varied ways.
Built like roads on
these thousands and thousands
of graves.

Historical nonfiction
on endless
repeat.
Each of us a clip show,
nostalgic but
still,
obsolete.