I held you captive
in a chance photograph.
Tucked into a small
notebook filled with
page after page of tired
unfinished verse
I travelled with you.
Moved from end table
to locker to glove box
I carried your cage with me.
When I got lonesome
or things seemed too
difficult for one person
to bare, in those moments
I would take the photograph
from the little notebook
and I would absorb you.
The curve of your smile
the shape of your nose.
I swear it looked just like you,
except the eyes were wrong.
Usually there is a light there
that makes everything around
them brighter and better
and more important
but from the cage,
as a prisoner of time
trapped in just that one
singular moment,
it wasn't you anymore.
I couldn't push through
and live in the moment
with you.
I was hundreds of miles
from home
and horribly alone.
I had your photograph
and though I treasure
it still, there is no going back.
I had learned that
when it comes to prisons
where the bars really are
can be misleading.

I live in fear
I've said a little too much
or that once counted out
my deeds won't've been enough.
I feel tight awaiting release
coiled like a spring or rubber band.
Cocked like a shaking gun waiting
for input from an unsteady hand.
Now I know that I know what I am
but I worry that's the catch.
While everyone else unwound
I just continued to twist and stretch.
I don't know on what criteria
a human life is accounted
I measure and I weigh
but the summit is not mounted.
I wish that I believed
"Love will save us all!"
but I can't and I don't
and my spring is turning to fall.
Still, I am surrounded by love
and would do well to remember:
That this could be the criteria
on which human life is measured.

My whole life we've been
a generation about to collapse.
An abanboned cigarette burned
down to a cylinder of ash.
We get up each day
full of new aches and old hurtings
and we make our commutes
to chain ourselves up to our hauntings.
We find ourselves caught in forever.
Our fingers break, our nailbeds bleed
as we scratch at eternity. Stuck fast as flies
our bodies shake out sorrow and need.
We're preached body positivity
and self ******* care
by billionaires with no intent
to ever ******* share.
We look at heavily curated streams
of the lives of friends, who boast
their picture perfect weekends
and wonder what we could ever post.
Between work and sleep
we manage something like twenty-three.
That's hours a week we don't owe.
For less than a day you can find us free.
People scream at us to fix it
while giving no proffered solution.
The blue strong arm of the system
kills in the streets with no retribution.
We find no solution
from asking or starting fires.
We're just cast away
as criminals or as liars.
I'm not Superman, I don't have the answer
though I really wish I did.
But we aren't Kandor
safe behing glass or lid.
And the wind will find the cylinder
and scatter it to ash.
And just like my whole ******* life
we'll still be seconds from collapse.

I look for myself in fiction.
In music and in sport, too.
I look for flashes
of my green eyed reflection
in the words that friends choose.
I look for all the parts and pieces
of myself I claim to resent but
that I'm terrified to lose.
And when I find them
in the art you've left behind
I leave me in some small way
and in exchange
I keep it in my mind.
I feel myself disentangle
and fall unto the floor.
Left behind to worship at
the altar of the me
in your art I was looking for.
When I create I see myself
trapped inbetween the lines
and I hate him and wish him gone.
I don't want it to seem like mine.
That duality is ******
or maybe suicide
it drives me crazy
either way you decide.
I just want purity
in the things I do or make
I want people to see themselves
when they go looking
and leave parts and pieces I can take.

There are these things...

Things I don't know how to say.
There are things I can't articulate.
Things I never learned to speak.
Perhaps, lost along the way.
I've hated myself for so long
it's difficult to know if I can change.
I feel different some days but
don't know if it means I've
stopped or if I'm happier
but still hate myself the same.
That hate grew inward and festered.
It attached itself to my identity
and became who I am. Innate.
I want to get better. I do want to change.
I need to see improvement.
To somehow rise above my fate.
It's just that...
When certain feelings are too big
or are too much like pain
I bury them somewhere inside
and pretend they never came.
You watch me with those big eyes
and repeat the things I say
and I know I gotta fix it.
I know it's not a ******* game.
(Language!)
For you I make the effort
I try to find the crooked path
back to good, and healthy and sane.
I love you, little bean
more than I hate myself.
I love you more than it's
possible for me to say.
Kiddo, I hope you know.

It's just that...

There are these things...

You were brought low
by ******* pomp and circumstance,
fed a line of nonsense and
made to shutup and dance.
But I remember when.
When you held strong
as the levees.
Stood firm as trees
and thick as blood.
I remember you, love
and I remember you
at your best
before the flood.
I don't think I ever
told you
because I'd never tell
anyone,
but I used to
wanna be you
in spite
of what you done.
That was before
everything broke
and the rivers swelled
to run over and they
ran over bad.
That was before
we threw away
all that amazing
stuff we didn't know
that we had.
Now there's just
this place
all dim light
and broken trust.
After the flood
everyone else dwindled.
Disappeared and forgotten
until it was
just us.

The past exists in my memory
as a prolonged scream.
Unfinished nonsense bellowed
at the uncaring sky
or roared down the maw
of the savage beast I'm
still terrified I'll become
before finally being published.
I can hear the rough draft
in my hard and swollen throat.
We were so ******* Once upon a time,
y'know, once upon a time.
You and me, babe
my god, we were yesterday.
In the mornings I wake up,
sore and aging away from limber,
and I miss who we were
and I worry about who
I'm still becoming
and the only
benefit of age
I've so far discovered
is the knowledge that
I always will.
We don't ever get back
the people, and places
that we've lost.
They're gone,
but so is 17
and so are we
and so are they
and ******* it all, so am I.
If you're not careful
you'll fall into a nostalgia trap
and you'll stay until
you discover that the only
way out is to remember that
we're never really happy
not even then.
We carry a little sad around
always.
I know, I know:
That's hard to get
nostalgic about.
What can I say?
We are so yesterday.