We live inside an explosion
and mistake trajectory
for free will and we talk
about nothing. We just
perform meaningless tasks
and boggle at the scope of
existence and how miniscule
it makes our lives seem.

We are each a record of failures
and success and sure
time is an illusion
but how we perceive it
is all of who we are.
A loosely held collection
of memories and half
recalled facts.
Most of, but not all of,
a thousand different
stories and opinions.
Piles of electrified dust
and water in the shape of people
haunted by the memories
of where they've been.
We are ghosts inside
homunculi all hoping
we're not going to stop.

We will, though.
Stop, I mean.
What we do and where
we've been will become
meaningless in the grand
big picture.
Our smiles will be forgotten,
our laughs, too.
If we're lucky our names
will be spoken in a hundred years,
but most of them won't make fifty.

I don't know how to
explain this,
but here goes:
That's why all of it matters.
All of it.
All of us.
The big picture is every thing.
The small ones are everything

So many years ago now
my canvas sneakers crashed
into the cold water of puddles in
our wintery East Coast city streets.
The ratty and frayed ends of
my jeans absorbing the
freezing liquid until the
cold damp was almost to my knees.
The notebooks in my bag,
filled with the near incomprehensible
mathematics of young heartbreak
and the earliest sparks of
drafting talent,
and also the stray notation
copied only occasionally in classes,
jostled dangerously; threatening
to fall out into the cold and wet
world of early January near
the Atlantic.
The trees were long bare,
and I wore mostly flannel
and denium and the absurd
certainty that I would be remembered
long after I no longer walked
these city streets or moved from
class to class inside the halls
of my high school.
I fell in love with a girl who
I knew was too good for me
and I drank and smoked in the
thin wood behind my school.
I made promises of eternity
that I only half suspected that
I couldn't keep and I screamed
full throated with the endless
viger and vitality of youth
into the darkened clouds as though
to seed them with ice cold rain
through the sheer power of
my determination.
I was righteous, though often wrong.
I was proud, though of what
I couldn't say.
I was powerful and I was alive.
I was electric.
I was lightning, crashing into
the earth and demanding to be felt
insisting I be known.

These days I'm not even thunder.
I'm a river-smooth stone.
My edges have been pared off,
my exterior polished to shine.
I'm on display in a suburban home,
occasionally noticed, complimented
and just as soon forgotten.
I watch life go by and it seems
faster now than it was.
So glad you could come.
How are the kids?
What was it you did for a living?
Does any of this matter?
We were meant to move the world.
We were meant for more.
I was supposed to be more.
There will always be then
and time may be an illusion
but it feels like we're coming
to the end, regardless.
We're all just moments in a life
and when those moments are
forgotten what's left only
looks like we did
Once.
I used to care so much...
I am a ghost haunting my own bones
and I dream of distant thunder.
I look at the darkening clouds
but do not dare.
Do not scream.
I do not believe I can call the rain.
I struck this earth once
but I can never strike the same
place again.

I found an artifact from my
ancient life, filled with words
and drawings from before
I was your dad and it is with
some trepidation that I confess
it caused me to cast my mind
back to those days and look
upon them with fondness.
I used to be a different man.
Harder in many ways,
unhappy, lonely even.
I was, however, unburdened.
You'll know what I mean
someday.
On that day you'll have already
broken my heart by leaving
and by growing up
and by not needing me
to help you put your shoes on,
which we both agree now is a
pretty tricky thing to do.
And listen, I want you to
break my heart. I want so
much for you, my littlest man.
One day I'll find an old shoe
of yours, behind this or in that
storage box, and I'll remember
that once you could nap in the
palm of my hand.
You would throw your arms
out and demand, with a coy smile
lighting your eyes, to be carried.
To be held.
I wanted the world to be better
for you, bud, and it's not
and I'm so so sorry.
Someday you'll know what I mean.
But not yet Lil' guy. No need for
that just yet.
Not today

I heard your voice
turned through digital
lines and distance
into a hollow shadow of itself.
You screamed my name,
almost roared with that
wild lion power you've
never kept secret,
tonight, you'd say, tonight!
We're gonna fix you, man
and then we're gonna
save the world!
We're gonna burn our
faces on the surface
of the moon so big that
we'll be the advertisement
for Earth throughout the cosmos.
You and I, love, cosmic
ambassadors.
And we'll never feel alone
in the universe, my love,
because our faces will be
there together, for always.
Tonight, baby, we're gonna be
forever.

Royal blue floral patterns
painted in tight rings
on bone white china plates
on red and white checkered
tartan table covers.
White wild flowers growing
randomly in the dark green
grass of the lawn.
Clouds drift happy and high
in the smooth light blue
ocean of sky above the
dark brick fronted home.
A bicycle sits on its side
in the blue/gray gravel
driveway, its kickstand
never used, its front wheel
still spinning.
It would be bucolic
if not for the lifetime
of bloodshed.
It would be barncore
******* beautiful
if you could ignore all the screaming.

You sit nearing forty
doing nothing noteworthy,
doomscrolling and
wondering when the
wisdom comes.
Sure, you mocked
us when we broke against
the distant ground
because you had the
knowledge not to leap,
knew where to keep
planted firm with both feet.
But now you worry
at why we seem to know
why we move confident
you wonder at the secret
behind our success and your stall
and the truth is there
is knowledge not to leap
but wisdom comes from the fall.

Did you stop smiling
when they plucked
the stars from your eyes?
Did you cry out in pain
when you first began
to understand this life?
I hope so.
I hope you didn't just
let the moment pass
you by.
We learn to suffer
because to suffer is to learn
and we think that makes
it alright, but we never
get to hold the child we
were. We never get to
say goodbye.
We become cynics
born to burn away,
born to die.
Our innocence is borrowed
from the universe.
It's just on loan.
We have to give it back
when we're done with it.
When we're grown.
Knowing that we live
in mourning of
who we used to be.
Do you ever wonder
what became of you when
you stopped being me?
It's probably alright.
It's likely just fine.
Still, I hope you wonder
about it from time to time.