There was a time,
I am certain,
when food tasted better
and summer wasn't humid
and the truth was so convenient
we hardly needed lies.
Well, broadly speaking,
I suppose.
Because, not everyone here
was there, you see.
Not every voice made a sound.
The streets were quieter
but not everyone was around.
And sure, we think it was better.
Whose to say?
Whose allowed?

Open a window and
listen to the violence
the shouting
the generations of impotent rage.
Listen for the cries
of oppression voiced by the oppressors
listen for the center as it
fails to hold but
just gradually shifts right.
Listen and maybe hear
the terrifying sound of sirens
approaching in the cover of night.

We've not grown or moved the bar.
Because the really sticky issue
is that the way things were
isn't terribly different
than how things are.

I sit and wait on the call.
Problem solving as a summons
lit high and bright in
dark nighttime skies.
I wait for the call.
For the pull in my blood
screaming toward labor
toward love or toward war.
I am consumed in patient hold.
Call me to action!
Drive me, like a weary stead
slathered in foam from effort,
into your biggest ******* mess!
Unleash me, like a hungry Karmen
starving and deep, on your worst foes.
I long for purpose.
I beg for need.
I don't know how to apologise.
I only know how to plead.
I don't know how to compromise.
I only know how to take wing.
I await your call.
But the phone sits still.
It just doesn't ring.

You spin your cardboard doggie book
in slow circles while you scrutinise
The covers, front and back.
You puzzle over it like it was
some ancient relic
whose meaning,
if only you could learn it
might explain it all.
You say
DAWW GE!
Language still so new,
molded like earthenware into
rudimentary shapes.
A small but growing
library of sounds
that you've attached specific,
and not so specific,
meanings to.
I am Ah-da or Da or,
my personal favorite,
Da-ee.
Your mother is Bah.
Hey-o, Bah!
I notice the pale blue lattice
of veins, visible from under your skin,
that descend from your palm
toward the elbow and points beyond.
My god, you are a human,
little for sure,
but whole and complete.
A little person.
Made from a little of the
person I love and,
impossibly,
from a little of me.

When we were young
I fell in your fire.
Your passion for life and love
kept me off balance and wild.

Sit back and marvel
as you spread your joy.
Your warmth
Correction:
You're warmth.

You are fire, my dearest.
Contained but beautiful.
I have always been cold
like the night sky
but you,
my great love,
you are the distant stars.
You burn light into my
frigid night sky.

You are a campfire, my dear
Filled with laughter and song.
I am old dry wood,
gathered to build you up.
You are vivid fire, my great love
And it has been
my pleasure to burn.

Tomorrow contains hundreds of thousands of choices.
Options galore.
Tomorrow could be anything.
Tomorrow could always be more.

Yesterday is all regret.
Oh the things we could see, say or do.
The hours spent in effort or whiled away with you.
It is always over.
Nothing is left to lose.

Today is the hardest thing we do.
Today is about making decisions.
Today decides yesterday's regrets.
Today is what builds you.

Looking back on failures
in life and love, measured
in observed movie trailers,
push some away, others treasured.

We were distant stars in inky night
pulling apart even as we embraced.
We were not the type to hold on tight.
Our travel sacks worn and shoes laced.

We'd trace a path toward finished
and sing our songs about oblivion.
And of course our feelings would diminish
We didn't know the towns we were livin' in.

And so it goes with old flames
you'll always be a part of the story
always something sacred in our names
a faded american flag kinda glory.

We were part-time lovers
in full-time pain.
We were like old song covers
we just didn't sound the same.

If your name doesn't even
grace the leaderboard
who remembers you?
If you vanish in the night
who will confess they always knew?
Who mourns the fallen tree
no one was there to hear fall?
Who listens against the wind
for the strangled call?

Is immortality within our reach?
If not, who will be here when we're gone?
Listen, because the end is coming.
As sure as the coming dawn.

Can we fool the march of time?
Will a lick of paint make us new?
Will the wondering ever stop?
And if so, what then do we do?

Immaterial concerns, perhaps.
But who here can know forever and ever?
And, look: if we wanna survive this
we're gonna have to do it together.