Following the twisting,
bobbing fairy lights
deeper into the dark
Pennsylvania forest,
surrounded by the musky
scent dirt has at night
and the pervasive odor
of pine sap, his foot
finds in the darkness
a curled, coiled tree root
and he stumbles,
seems for the smallest
of moments to recover,
and plunges toward the
moss covered earth of
the midnight Keystone
State woodland.

He remembers hay bales
stacked in double
out by the tree he'd
hung the rope swing from.
A target placed and
a quiver of bolts
and a lesson about
violence, firstly
about the kind that
we do and finally
the kind done to him.
There is a small
tool shed that stands
a witness to the
moment when he
did his best not to
cry or to call out.

Snow would fall in feet
and schools would look
for terrifying accumulation
before they closed for the day.
He spent the two hour delay
sleeping, he hoped.
But hope is for the wealthy
and suffering is for the
poor and his thrift store
wardrobe told him how
the world worked.
He leapt from his warm
bed and started in on
the chores that barroom
visitations left undone.

He rode his bike down
to the poorly built
and badly lit little bar
his step father frequently
spent time in on nice
summer or cold winter days.
He nodded to the old man
who ran the place as he
Began walking the old man
back toward the house.
He'd come back for the bike
later on, assuming no one
took it before then.

There was a dirt road
and a gravel driveway.
The radio was static or
country music and the
days lasted forever
or at least they seemed to.
The lot next to his house
was huge and barren
and bordered by dense
northeastern forest.
If you walk in far enough
the world grows dim
and everything else,
all of it, is unseen.
It can't touch you,
nothing can.
He wondered if anyone
had ever decided to
just not come out.

My whole life I've been
waiting for the music to swell.
I've been wincing at raised hands
and obidient of Pavlov's bell.
I've been thinking about the end
and what that might mean.
I've run with sudden violent shudders
I've never run clean.
I want peace and solitude
like a snowy mountain cap.
I've been lost. It's been
a nightmare without a map.
I'd secret away lits bits and bobs.
Some string, a subway token.
We used poverty as excuse, but we
weren't just broke we were broken.

I like the stinging numbness
of eating radish slices.
I like the quiet oblivion
of heavy rain.
I like to imagine that
this will all lead to crisis.
I'd rather leave behind the past.
I'd rather not focus on pain.

I often dream about dying.
Walking the room at
my own funeral and
wondering why no one is crying.

I locked away my heart
at a tender age
because it hurt to feel
and for reasons left off the page.
I put it in a cold, high place
locked it and told it to run.
Told to always hide.
But you journeyed there,
chased it down and picked the lock
releasing all the horrible
truthsome **** inside.

You could be better.
You should be more.
Instead you're this.
This miserable ******* chore.
I woke up this morning
and wrote the note.
I finally knew the ending.
It's tucked in my coat.
Why you ask did I not just
put it in the mail?
How could I have discarded
it, should I fail?
This is how it is
how it should be.
A little secret, reader,
between you and me.
You're free, of course.
Free as birds.
Not that it matters,
they are only words.

My best friend said
I like my endings to be sad.
Maybe he's right. I don't know.
But those are
the only endings I've ever had.

Your hand on the side
of my face, gentle but firm,
as long as you need
no need to squirm.
Your eyes steady and alive
burning from your core.
your voice whispering
that I deserved more.

Whether it'll be heaven
or it'll be hell
I'm not sure or at least
I cannot tell.
I'm feeling amazing
I'm going out on top.
In the distance the music
begins to swell.
To celebrate my short drop
and very sudden stop.
Swing life away.
Free as bees. Free as birds.
Of course, we both know,
these have been only words.

I heard a ghost story once.
It left my mouth tasting sour
my mind turned dark
my mood bleak and dour.
I was spitting for weeks
but the taste didn't come out.
I'd been screaming for hours
but only managed to shout.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe that is the truth.


There was once a house
where a murderer lived, high on the hill,
that we were afraid to walk by
because we'd heard he was there, still.
The curtain would move
you told me smiling wide,
I couldn't prove it but
I suspected you'd lied.

You mocked and you jeered
called me a coward.
Dared me to approach
and my stomach soured.
I stood out on the street
for a long time with shaking knees
before coming to my senses
and retreating into the bordering trees.
I could hear your laughter
even as you called my name
but I didn't turn around.
I couldn't face my shame.

One autumn I plucked up my nerve
and visited that haunted old place.
I walked through the front door
a chill in the air and sun on my face.
It was clear that no one lived there
and had not for a great while.
There was graffiti and trash everywhere,
holes in the hard wood, cracks in the tile.
I looked out a broken window
at the street down below.
I swear I could see me
as I was so many years ago.

I heard a ghost story once
in which I was the ghost.
No hooks for hands
no sounding heavenly host.
Just a man standing in an
empty house all alone,
looking back on the years
and thinking, my how you've grown.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe none of this is the truth.

We are echoes of the
long departed.
Built on the hopes
of our mothers
and from the bones
of our fathers.
If we're careful we'll
never leave a mark.
The tapestry of ancestry
will reflect us present
and unharmful.
The legacy protected
and complete.
But what if inside us
a rebel happens to live?
A troublemaker playing
devil may care with
the precious family name?
If we're brave, perhaps a little bold
we just might leave a stain.
Just might be remembered.
Just might turn out great.
And should we not,
should we fail,
in that we'll have to hope
there will be some grace.

Questions about tomorrow:
What happens when
one day everything is over
and all is at an end
and the next day we
all still have to go to work?
What do we do then?
Will it only really end
when finally money
doesn't spend?
Or will they find another
way to make us slaves?
Will we ever walk into
Plato's light or are we doomed
to stay in Plato's cave?
For what purpose
do we carry this load?
Is this building to something?
Or will it all just explode?

Fears about now:
The planet is in death throes.
We're killing it and
the clock to fix the problem
has wound down.
Journalistic integrity
can't survive the
new News cycle
but it has made it easier
for politicians to
take advantage, to lie
and to somehow become
childish shades of what
they once were.
Violence has become
one solution,
reticence another
and while I agree some
people say ****** things
freedom of speech
is never expanded
when it is taken away.
Kids shouldn't be afraid
of dying in schools.
Every generation leaves
business unfinished.
Every generation marches
us closer to the end.

One day no one will be left to remember any of us. The stars will blink out and entropy will advance. Intellectually, this isn't difficult to know, but practically it's barely worth considering. Tomorrow is still coming and we will need enough sleep to make it to the other side. We can worry about the rest at another time.


My mother dreamed me
the president of the USA,
my father was whip smart
always knew what to say.
My grandfather came here
for the promise of tomorrow.
His mother bought passage
beg, steal and borrow.
I look at my son
and am broken hearted.
We are just echoes
of the long departed.

He was all bible verse
and the broken, fraying
edges of song
gone slightly discordant
after having waited for
so ******* long.
He wondered at love
like you or I worry at
a scab on our arm,
with constant picking
and scratching
and sudden serious alarm.
He claimed he shined
like Summertime but knew
he felt more like Fall.
He was often scared
and frequently lonely
but so are we all.

She loved him from
a distance with a small
measure of shame
but would still have
melted into giggles
if he felt the same.
She waited for someone
to tell him,
to let her secret slip,
she waited for others
always because
she was terrified to trip.
At night she'd sit
outside her apartment
and stare at the moon
and pray that something
would happen and that
it would happen soon.

They lived lives
side by side and
from faraway
in quiet solitude
and creeping isolation
day by endless day.
Never touching
moving toward the
patient, waiting grave
they could reach out
and touch one another
if they'd been brave.
There is no making up
for lost time or
missed chances.
Nobody else will
ever hit the floor if
at first no one dances.

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.