When I hear myself scream
I hear your echo coming
back at me.
Howling at the moon,
just like you taught me to.
I feel your rage boil away
in my blood.
Running my tongue along
my teeth and trying
not to remember the
comforting burst of copper.
But the way I feel sick
and hollow inside, the hate
I always feel for myself,
that's all me, man.
I worry that the bruises
and the broken bones
and the bloodletting
weren't enough to get
your poison out of me.
I'd lock myself away
on moon bright nights
if it came to that
and often I've felt the
sickening pull toward
rending flesh and shedding blood
felt the unconscious twitch
of a hand raised,
knuckles out,
you *******,
and I know the curse is
strong still inside me.
There is forever an itch
for the easy way.
I know how to circumvent
understanding and empathy.
I know the paved smooth path
to becoming the beast.
I'll always wear your mark,
you ragged old creature,
but I don't have to
live your life.
I don't have to find
someone else to bite.

We got history wide and
terrifying as the sky
and we're screaming a
million different versions of why
at crashing waves and
a big hollow lie.
I don't know if it'll get better
but we've just got to try
because one day soon
it'll be over, spent as a sigh.

If we had the ******* music
we'd need a key change
a drum coming in over this
slow chorded refrain
marking the start of something
anything that might just
breathe life into me again.

Smoke off musket barrels wafts
toward the forever just beyond
the sapphire sky and mingles
within the clouds there in a dance
waiting to expire against eternity.
The blood seeps into the ground
but somehow does not spoil
the earth it contaminates.
Take from that what you will.

The ship tears apart as the
lighter front end lifts from
the cold black sea and shudders
in the air before screaming
it's seperation in the ancient
moans of protesting metal.
We build them much bigger now
because we dare and we do
and we never ******* learn.

We got a history, you and I,
volumes enough to publish,
big as the whole ******* sky
and it'll be gone forever
just as soon as we both die.
I don't know how to take comfort
in forever in this blink of an eye
but if I know anything at all
I know how to say goodbye.

A prize fighter stands and sways
a lifetime of bruised flesh
and broken bones keeping
him on his feet after the
latest in a long series of beatings
has left him here again
in that nebulous space
between living and dying
and still he hasn't got a prize
he's still got no answer.

There is a question burning
away in our cores and we
ask the universe every day
in different ways and often
for very different reasons.
Some of us have a theory
a hope locked away
a secret wish
but none of us have an answer.

He could get up again
but he doesn't know if
he'd make the count
doesn't know if he counts.
After the pain and the
abuse, after a lifetime
of violence
he doesn't know what
matters or if he ever
even did.
Blood and sweat are moving
in rivulets, slow and uneven
threatening to blind him
and his opponent is still
out there, moving
unlike the blood and sweat
in tightening
circles around him,
waiting for him to fall
or failing that to
start beating him more.

I want to believe we get
better as it goes
that time doesn't march
away from the best version
of ourselves but it's
more difficult to tell than
one might imagine.
We were stronger and faster
yesterday than we ever
will be after tomorrow
but that day's knowledge
makes a difference, too.
I hope.

Maybe he'll win the match
maybe he won't
the pain follows forever
and the glory is gone
before he'll really be
able to enjoy it.
There might be more
to life than endless battery
and constant recovery
but he's only ever known
the fighting and he
learned years ago the only
secret he's ever needed
how to take a hit
and still stand up.
Damage is inevitable
like death.
The boxer flirts with
the inevitable
in search of
an answer.

I cant seem to get the words right
or find meaning on a moonless night
or impart wisdom from an endless fight
I mean to but cannot, try as I might.

It's all inconsistent meter
and rhyme schemes which teeter
on the edge of verse but too eager
I wonder am I even the speaker?

God, give me a second try at youth
I swear I could do a better job
I know the pits and traps and
I know how it feels on the other side
of wasting it.
I know I could be me better.

I heard a song on the radio
from when we were young
and I thought of all the promise
when we'd just begun
and I've loved you like crazy
even though I know it's not
been enough.
I want you to know that I fought
too late to be greater
perhaps too late to be good
hopefully not too late
to be loved
or too late to be understood.

I can't seem to get the words right
You've got vision and I've only got sight
You've got power and I've only got might
You grew up yesterday and I haven't quite

I can hear you breathing
beside me at night, curled in your blanket
eyes shut but not tight
and you look like twenty years
of versions of you I've known
you smell of warm comfort
and feel just like home.

I've been avoiding the mirror lately.
For reasons of my own.
I want you to be happy
You risked much to get here
and taken hit after hit
gritted your teeth and swore
to love and commit.
I'm in constant awe of your grit
your charm, grace and whit
but I wish I'd been a better fit
as your prize for fighting in the pit
I'm hardly a get. Not even worth it.

I can't seem to get the words right
or the structure, and what's worse
the language is halted and terse
not remotely poetic.
Just formless verse.
Language cannot frame my regret
or my mortality, or hue.
And if it fails to frame me
it could never capture you.

I think of love in
terms of distance.
I look at life as a
motorbike journey.
I've never bought a
second console controller.
I know solitude with
the same warm
familiarity as my
father's laughter.
I'm a go-it-alone man
in the age of teamwork.
And it isn't working anymore
like it used to did.

I wish I could lay my head
gently on your shoulder
and explain how the
suffering never seems to end
or how the breaks are
still broken and I'm never
actually on the mend.
I wish I could open up myself
and bleed out toward healthy
but instead I hide the pain
and become accustomed to
always playing pretend.
And it's now all broken links
on chains that no longer bend.

One day I won't wake up
and the choices will no longer
be mine to make about
where I go and what I am.
I hope I learned to love you
like you need and deserve
and I hope that...****.
I hope, little guy
that I told you
I said the words
because I mean them.
I am insubstantial
and meaningless
in my specfic silence
unsaid as a life story

Pushing through water
is a human face frozen
in time forever.
Hung on walls in the
stuffy offices of
guidance counselors
accompanied by frivolous
encouraging platitudes
and are meaningless as the
echoes of happiness
sprinkled throughout
bouts of depression.
Just once I wanna feel
the earth move underfoot.
I wanna hear the swell
of the string section
as I say the oh so quotable
one liner about pushing
ahead in spite of pain.
Just once in the *******
miserable suffer I wanna
be the hero of a story
with a happy ending.
Stucco walls and yellowing
ceiling tile dominated my
earliest memory and now
blood, sweat and hard labor
define a period that ends
when I do.
Ring the ******* bell, Ref.
I can't throw in the towel
but I can't do this
anymore, either.
I thought we were dancing
before the lights came up
on a theater of embarassing
mistakes.
I thought we were building
but surrounded now by
all this debris I can clearly
see we were breaking
all this time.
Amazing the difference
a day makes.
How slowly the chorus
of shouts turned
to couplets and verse.
I can smell the bread
baking, early morning
downtown and the world
seems at peace but
only because the people
the thieves and the time wasters
are asleep and the streets
are empty.
The world rose colored
but still deeply mean.
Now calm and pleasant,
if not better or clean.
The illusion is nice
like coinop or tarot,
but it isn't whole.
It's all bone and no marrow

There is so much orange
in these polluted sunsets
and they're beautiful but
the silver lining is breaking
and all of our silly smiles
are starting to look just
exactly like when we're faking
Where is our blue collar hero
callused hands soaked
in motor oil and turning wrenches.
Wasn't he supposed to dip
his toes in Americana
and save us from corporate concerns?
We while the time away in
Endless forever
composing sad love songs
tinged with sepia yesterday.
When will he get here?
I hope it will be before the words lose all meaning and the world burns.
I don't know what it'll take
to hurry it along
we're living on our knees
and breathing in every lie
but they're stalking like lions
in deepest night
waiting for the funeral
but they can't have it until
we just give up and die.
If we take this step
they warn and they warn
it'll mean our very sudden end.
If we insist they remove the scourge;
but still I feel my sneaker move
my toes weightless at the ledge.
And I smile, 'cause baby,
you'd better sing me a dirge.