I have built my home
in the silence between screams.
I've earned my keep
with shattered back and bad knees.
The ends are no comfort
and I still weep over the means.
I wish it was a happy story
but it's always been just as it seems.

Foot prints in the snow
left for you, should you follow.
It's not exactly easy
and it leaves you god awful hollow.
But there is strength, not peace
as bitter a pill as one could swallow.
And everyone talks about sunlight
but there is no sign of Apollo.

There is little of love
and nothing to help cope.
There is limited patience
but endless miles of rope.
There are boundless depths
beyond measure or scope.
There is almost no light
and absolutely no hope.

There is roof over head
and no view of the sky.
Everything is truth here
there is not one comforting lie.
I'd make attempts to give up
but can't be bothered to try.
I have built my home
where good has gone to die.

Everything is over, everything ends
ecxept the daily weight and strain.
We were promised purpose
and fed catastrophe and disdain.
We were given sugared dreams
of sunlight but left out in the rain.
We were sold on endless mindless
pleasure and walked away with pain.
We want for things to be different
but it's always the ******* same.

They saw the hard turn coming
and steered into the skid.
They didn't ask our opinion
because heaven forbid.
The bottom of the jar is broken
don't matter that you got a lid.
Parents climbed to safety
but didn't leave ladders for the kid.

We know the ship is sinking
we've water to our chins.
We live in constant hellfire
but have committed few sins.
We had a promised future
it's been chucked into the bins.
Nothing ever seems to start
but everything begins.

I spend my days
strapped down
holding my breath
and bleeding out.
The world grows and
changes and is
ravaged by time
and tide.
Frost blankets the
morning world
and heaters go on
to warm the windows.
When the sun finishes
the cold night air
envelopes me and
if I can stop the bleeding
I will go home.
I'm getting older
how is it that time
is standing still?
I hear laughter
like distant thunder
with ears cold
and raw.
Skin chapped by wind
fingers shaking like
Electric Football
and dreams dying
on the vine
words dying in
the cooling evening air.
Sudden phone call
as a car changes lanes
without blinker.
Swearing into the phone
but alive
what passes for alive.
Breathing hard angry
clouds of chilled air
in rapid bursts.
Knowing the embers
in my heart are
burning low these days.
I was going to set
the world on fire.
But my spark casts
no light. No heat.
I've become November
In early August
because the playing
is done and the laughter
is over and only
the work is left.
Turn on.
Turn wrench.
Turn in.
I'm going to turn this key
And I'm going to hope the
engine turns over
so I can leave and
so I don't freeze.

Once, long time ago,
I was hungry
and I was strong.
I held you up,
carried you effortlessly
like a tune in a song.
Money was tight
and we were unprepared
but love was there.
It didn't make it easy
and it didn't fix the hurt
but we didn't much care.
Our timing didn't match
and I'd go to bed
as you left it, pillow still warm.
The blanket bunched up
beside me and underarm
in a parody of your form.
I missed you then
in our empty apartment
with a sharp, painful keening.
But the absences gave us depth
a pause in the action,
a break to find meaning.
God, those were the days
and we really lived
each and every one of them.
Hard as they were
flowers don't get to have
petals without first a stem.
Our love was forged hot
like the steel of a
battle ready sword.
Our course charted
and mapped for us
to point ourselves toward.
Things are better now,
I have you so often
money's less a trouble.
But we only stand this
tall today because we stand
on yesterday's rubble.

Broken eyesight and
shaking, weathered hands
reach toward the open
ocean and take in
what is there.
I wish I'd loved you
like you'd deserved
like you'd wanted me to.
Mixed into my hair
are strands of white
and I can feel the decades
in my knees and joints
but you'll sleep, forever
only ever twenty-something.
I should've missed you
when you were gone.
I should've felt your
heart through phone lines
and digital lines of type.
While you were one
of the many and not
one of my lost.

I know you wanted me.
I know you cared.
I know you were open.
I know you were always there.
If I'd been better or more
if I'd been different
if I'd cared...

I want to apologize
because you deserve it.
Because you always did.
And because I mean it
and that changes the
shape of the thing.

I'm moving closer,
all the time,
to that waiting pit.
But you beat me there,
by more than a little bit.

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.