Raised on absence and responsibility
we've moved from one catastrophe
to the next with no moment to pause
and take a collective breath.
We are a generation growing old
adrift on a raft in these choppy
oceans of neglect.
We are atuned to a universe
that doesn't care if we live or die
shoveled into our mouths were promises
of better lives if we got degrees
if we gave up our needs and forsake
or learned a trade or worked long
long hours and never took a break.
But here in the future we're broke
gainfully employed with no hope to retire
no pension party planned
one day, we're expected, to arrive at
the work site and simply die.
No paychecks left to send
no gods left to ask why.
We're a turn of the century generation
watching old mistakes repeat themselves
but being asked to wait our turn
if we wanna complain,
there are two or so generations ahead
of us who still have the floor
and one nipping at our heals
demanding so much more.
I think the world will forget us
and our arbitrary, necessary pain.
I think they move on to Z and Y
and treat them just the same.
Stiff upper lip, chums. It pays to be silent
in fact your silence is brave.
The generation that killed tradition
walks toward the same traditional grave.

I had a dream that
I was young.
That my lyrics were
unwritten,
my second verse
unsung
the final bridge
still hidden.
I woke to the same
empty sky.
I trudged to work
tired and old.
I wonder what you see
in me, love.
You're fair and wise
with all to offer.
I'm lowly and small
you're place is above.
I work and toil, sweat and bleed
but cannot fill the coffer.
In youth we made sense
but no longer seem to
you've grown out of me
but have yet to leave.
I'm full of points but
the good are few.
But you hold my hand
whispering, "I still believe."
I search the histories
for why
but am unanswered
and left cold.
I have burned this candle
down to bleeding wick
and myself along with it
all ash and regret.
I don't know the magics
or the secret trick
to accidentally be happy
at least, I don't yet.
In dreams I'm young
and so very strong.
I take your hand
and love the sweet notion
that life, our lives
are more than song.
We're giant as moons
pulling on the ocean.

If you've the gumption
you can watch the soul
burn right outta me.
Any minute now it'll
hit the ground in
a smoking heap.
You can marvel as my sails
deflate and gasp, the scandal,
as all my dreams crash
to earth like space debris.
We're not looking through
rose colored shades
we're here to talk on
the whole uphill thing.
I don't know if it's left
the station or not
but I don't see even
dim light down the line
and I've been at this
platform for ages
waiting on a train
don't come.
I was made in the image
of failure and loaded to
the brim with potential
without drive.
Cast out into a world
with nothing,
told about plenty
and mocked as I struggle
to survive.
I am the king, lord over
all I see, of having just
enough rope to dangle
like a possibility above
an ocean of
try hard dissimive noises.
Metaphor pushed here
beyond the breaking point.
It's hard to describe
with words
but it was painted
in violence clear enough
for me to understand.
Without pressure gasoline
goes stale, left in cans
in the garage until it's
only usable in the lawn mower.
Online influencer culture
leaves me cold,
television shows are barely
on TV anymore
and the lives of friends
and family are curated for
timeline efficiency to the
point of unbelievablity.
No one posts about the fight
or the bad vacation.
No one admits that their
kid says a lot of real unwise ****, too.
Cursed with lackluster
millennial ambition I now find,
nearing forty,
myself in compition with
Instagram accounts of people
I have known for years
but never see and
I hate it.
At least from the bottom
of the well you can
see the sky,
at least from nothing
one can still hope
to climb.
The final embers of my
soul are dying out
growing cold at my feet
where they fell
and I wish I could say
they burnt like a
funeral pyre throwing
light into the starless
night sky and warmth
like a blanket across
the world around me
but I'm cold and it's
been dark a very long
time and the train
has yet to arrive.

Waiting in the nebulous
some day
is a hole that has yet
to be be dug in the ground
and we hope it
stays closer to
some day
and doesn't touch
soon.
We picture it as
a looming figure
in deep dark robes
with the gums pulled back
on a corpse smile
somewhere in the inky
depths of the hood.
Bone fingers point
toward our suddenly
very certain future
but that isn't it.
Not really.
It's that
Some Day
we're afraid of.
We stuck a stick
in the ground and
divided the shadow
into hours
strapped it to our
wrists and have
been terrified of it
ever since.
Nothing else on Earth
is worried about
Some day.
Just us.
They put a countdown
on our phones,
so important is it
to know how close
we are to over.
It is so vital we
can look over the
distant,
fingers crossed,
horizon and see it.
We invented a unit
of measure so we
could,
with growing fear,
count the seconds until
The End.

Yesterday I held you, buddy
in the palm of my hand.
You'd crawl up my chest
when you'd nap
in search of warmth and
the steady drum of heartbeat.
I watched you learn to smile
and I celebrated your
most minor accomplishments.
That was you and me, little guy
that was us, yesterday.
You drew a monster today
on a coloring book page
and it looked vaguely
like the monster on the cover,
you'll never believe how much
that my heart broke.
Tomorrow you'll be grown
the next day you'll be gone.
The world spins
uncaring circles through
time and space.
I looked out a window
and watched steam rise
from a gutter into
a beam of light on
a rainy night.
I watched the dance of
temporary and forever
and felt small.
I watched you light up
when I came in the door.
You laughed and smiled
and screamed, " Daddy!"
I felt powerless in a
brand new way.
Pages fall away from
the calender in the hall
and I want them back
I want more.
You'll leave one day
and maybe I'll already
be gone.
My father never told me
his story.
I never asked.
I am proud of my
independence and will
one day be proud of yours.
Doesn't make it hurt less.
Doesn't give me any more.

Under all the suffering
is a drum beat.
Staccato, like rain
on a tin roof
or the steady off beat
pounding of a heart
filled with fear and love
and it moves in us,
slithering under skin.
A parasite growing fat
on the swell of blood
inside us.
One word and our feet
leave the earth
as suddenly we're
soaring toward the stars
at a velocity high
and strong enough
to break gravity and
punch a hole in the atmo.
We're baseballs, our skin
shed, as we sail over
the parking lot outside
the stadium.
A glance and we're
crashing through car
windshields and bouncing
off of highways.
We're burning up on re-entry
hoping our time outside
the suffering made a
difference, hoping that
one ******* time in
all this stupid, sensless
daily pain that we
scratched important.
Hoping we mattered.
We are high metaphor
wrapped in low fantasy.
We were young and
in love and it was extraordinary,
even though it was
so ******* ordinary,
because it was happening
to us.
Does anything ever
feel that big again?
We are always chasing
oceans inside ourselves.
We contain multitudes,
as sure as I'm alive,
and all of it fades
into nothing,
as sure as I'll die.
I loved like an ocean,
like a wild summer storm.
Burned like starlight
distant and faintly warm.
I once lit up the night
just like approaching dawn,
We burn hot for awhile
then one day: we're gone.

I have never owned
a glove that fit well.
I sleep best with
thunder in the distance.
I don't always know
where I'm going
but so far I've always
known when I got there.
Listen:
I'm not here because
we're perfect.
I showed up for the
mess.
I'm not staying because
all the pieces fit.
I just love all the
noise.
I didn't come here because
it's easy.
Because, love, it never
has been.
I'm here to put the
work in.
I'm here to labor
until it's just right.
You captured me with
those eyes
and you've kept me
and I've loved being kept.