Snow covers Autum's
earth like a blanket on
a freshly made bed.
The sound goes out
of the world as you
walk through the winter.
The white sky meets
the white ground
in the far distance
and if not for the shadows
we might be standing
on blank canvas
waiting for some lesser
god to pencil in our
live's purpose.
Hoping it doesn't get
stale.
I can hear only my
footsteps in the cushioned
quiet of the air
and I've never felt
more alone.
When asked what grief
is all I can think of
is that crunching sound.
How dark a bright
white world can seem.
How life and bloom are
only ever inches away.
Maybe over this snow drift
perhaps the next?
These are the winter bones
of loneliness on which
spring is built.
It ain't over yet,
it may never end.
Before every spring
a winter
under every winter
a fall.

I remember, still, how
you smiled with blood
between your teeth
and the tangle of thrown
hands and kicked feet
in our search for Eliot's
elusive muttering retreats.
Neon bulbs and street lamps
lit up our nights and colored
these aching moments of our lives
and I recall we'd huddle
like insects under their lights
with lit cigarettes and lewd jokes
and the looming spectre of fights.
Children playing at being men
with so many tomorrows
still left ahead.
We knew each other
like story stucture.
Should the fire burn one
in would step his brother.
Alone but for each other
bonded with no shared
blood or father or mother.
Two of a kind
against a world
of full houses.
'Course that was then.
Before kids and spouses.
You're a country away
these days,
sharing facebook updates
about your son's latest
words and moods.
We send Christmas cards,
pictures of our families,
always a room should
the other ever visit,
say hi to the kid
to the wife.
Talk soon.
Good morning
oh? Sorry
Goodnight.
A million, billion years ago,
we tell our sons when
they ask about our
friend on the other
continent, before you,
during a period of strife,
Daddy trusted that guy
with his life.
They smile and we do, too.
Well, I do anyway.
I don't actually know
about you.

I'm locked in a death match
with the cynic in me
over whether or not to hope.
It's not been going well
but one of the two of us
will still have to go.
Perhaps if happenstance
was lately just
a little more kind.
Perhaps if light in darkness
was just a little bit
easier to find.
And, y'know, yes.
For sure, there is
more I could try.
But the truth is so
much smaller than
even any one lie.
At night, from the
other room I can
still hear you cry.
Though miles and ages
seperate me and you
from him and those dark times.
It has been a rough road
and barefoot we've
walked every inch.
We've been beggers and
heroes and labor and chore.
The songs of Darwin's finch
and the wheel turning
Twain's riverboat toward shore.
We've been the music of the spheres
impressive in sound but nothing more.
It'd be easier to hope
if it were easier to live.
That's the rub, I guess...
I'll have to give.
I've been thirty-five years
in search of answers
and I just don't know.
It's me verse my inner cynic
in a death match about hope.
But, still one of us must go.

I know it's still an ugly uphill
at thirty-five
from the **** soaked
floorboards of a punk rock dive.
I know you quit
but two packs a day
still leaves a scratch
in your voice that don't go away.
And look, hands up,
I know what you're thinking
but the gut don't vanish
when you stop drinking.
Turns out the weight
was Marley's chains
and we'd carry it every day.
Bruised bones and daily pains.
Our long told and retold
haunting, if threadbare, refrains.
Soak in the empty memories of
hard nights and bar fights
burned out stars and candle light.
Weathered skin and the
hungry, open and waiting pit.
There is a high cost to livin'
even the way we did it.
Times up, sales final.
Pipper's callin' and
the wind howls through.
Make your wishes, friends.
The price is comin' due.

I woke up to find myself
a million meters down a hole
I dug myself, lights out
fight bitten and looking
into darkness for a savior.
Thousands of travelled miles
ago a monster stood in my skin
and maybe I deserve this
slow burn punishment. I mean,
blame it on the rage or...

... There are hollow ringing notes
crashing off the walls and the back
of the inside of my head.
Playing cymbals behind my eye
Symphonies for my inner demon.
Young men wrung out and hollowed
used up and swallowed. Thrown away
like fastfood wrappers on the floors
of cars we would drive late into nights
thinking of beds we don't dream in...

...At some point you age out,
you ghetto geniuses,
and find a hostile world
not quite the fish bowl you
spent your life looking through.
And you write hundreds of thousands
of lines in the pursuit of high art
and praise and accolade
and" let's face it" fame
and never write one word that's true...

...you are always that little monster.
No matter where you go
how big you grow
or the quality of what you do,
No one will ever be proud of you.

I blink into darkness and hope
for help or better for rescue.
I find myself, some days,
looking at cherub faced photos
of myself from infanthood
It's been hard practically since
day one. I'll always wonder
if life had been different would
I have built the monster
in the skin in which I stood?

She had not known fear
until she could no longer
see the shore.
Drifting in alien waters
she felt pangs,
like butterfly wings,
against the inside of
her ribcage.
The fluttering, building hollow
that hope makes in it's
death throes.
When you enter the ocean
she heard her grandfather say
you enter the food chain.
The lazy, lapping drift
which brought her ever
farther into the empty sea
would have been soothing
in very different conditions.
Her eyes raked the clouds
searching out the signs
of bird flight.
She was suddenly at the
dawn of seafaring with
early man and his silent gods.
Looking for hope in
the blue void above.
She wondered idlely
whatever became of the
lifeboats from sunken ships
when the coast guard or
someone else pulls the
survivors free of them.
Would she, if she kept floating on
encounter them on the high seas
like a salvation graveyard?
She tried to think
of ways to stay out of the sun
but images of headstones
flocked like an armada
stalking the sea forever
growing but staying
impossibly empty always
pressed down on her.
She too was adrift.
Maybe she'd been headed
that way all her life.
Hard to say.

We are not your prayers answered
we are the sudden stillness before
the sick realization that the
woods around you have become
darker and so very unfamiliar.
We are a generation
treated as disposable
but asked for endless solution.

We are not the prize waiting
for you at journey's end.
We are the parting of ways
that follows like a raw nerve.
We are the departing
backs of comrades
that no longer have
purpose left to serve.

We are not an audience
of hushed worshippers
at your feet.
We are the shimmering
air that summertime
rises from the street.
We are the scared triggerfingers
on people who have finally
had enough.
We are the liminal
space between now
and an empty room of guf.

We are visions of
impending apocolypse.
We are faraway destinations
of many short little trips.
We are a little bit of
yesterday tomorrow.
We are emptied of laughter
and wasted on sorrow.