I walked home in the rain
with holes in my shoes.
You asked why I didn't throw
'em out and I told you I couldn't.
I told you they were my favorite.
You thought I looked at love
that way, and you let yourself
trust in me for the fall
but the truth was poverty
and shame.
I'd been laughed out of one
too many pools in cut off jeans
to tell you I couldn't afford
another pair of shoes.
All of my clothes were threadbare
all of my belongings battered
I ordered water when we went out
and skipped meals.
Oh but Mr. Fictional just
cannot fail!
The excuse is solid!
His check is in the mail!
I was late to campus most days
or didn't show up at all
because I couldn't make the
bus fare materialise.
I was counting the ticks
of clocks in eternity
waiting for the chime
but you didn't really
understand poor, you knew
about it, sure.
You even claimed it on days
you didn't have funds to see
a movie or bowl.
But you didn't really
know poor.
Not like I did.
You didn't really understand
hunger or pain.
You had cried over lost
loves and unkindnesses
but I lived my life with
a sadness in my bones
I couldn't shake and I
...
I hated it. I hated myself.
Mr. Fictional, what a guy!
He'll always be there!
Why would he lie?
I valued others more than myself
and you thought me heroic,
but I just didn't care if it ended.
I liked the person you thought
was me
even though I knew
that person wasn't who I
had had to be.
Thank you for believing,
even if it was all misunderstood
or shades of play pretend,
You made up the best in me,
and that's the person I still try to be.
Mr. Fictional, what a go-getter!
He's been three decades a mess
but he's tryin' to be better.

Yesterday has fallen like
Autumn leaves or
capitol siege.
History written small
in cuniform apologies,
and arterial bleeds.
Uttered oaths
and guttered hopes
Ashes now where once, Oaks.

And still we try to remember
what's better forgotten
because the outside is tempting
but inside we're rotten.

Nostalgia as commerce has
become the way of today
kicking sleeping dogs
which growl to just lay
Watch us pull on childhood
begging it to stay.
Riding on horsebacks we're
still unsure will obey.

In abandoned towns filled
with waving ghost dolls
and in the fiber of desire
that lives in our phone calls
We search our yesterday for
thunderous warmth and applause.
but with questions unanswered
and great worrisome cause
I wonder if given a chance to redo it
would we do more than pause?

We are the look back
finding at near forty
all the things we lack.
Hoping tomorrow comes
and brings it all back.
Knowing it can't unless
we lay a solid track.

I recall you turning,
from a few feet ahead,
that ******* smile
under your button nose
and knowing brown eyes
but you were spinning
and laughing, squealing,
really, great peels of
girlish delight before setting
your eyes on distant
climes and racing away
toward where the sun
seemed to meet the pavement
and the entire ******* world ended.
White sundresses and
static in the air around you.
Hair tied on either side of
your head, in thick braids
with those ties that have
big colorful plastic *****.
Sometimes you'd have beads
in your hair, flowers now
and then, too. And your eyes
the color of earth after a
hard rain, I thought you
were a fairy, back then.
Mythical, you seemed to me.
Magical in a way I now
only pretend to understand
but recognized with awe
in those ancient days.
I've been a lifetime looking
for moody British countryside
in American urban squalor.
I've seen fairy-circles drawn
in chalk on black ashpault,
trickling heat waves rising
like a ******* spell
from them on hot days
and I used to feel the voltage
of lightening running in my
veins when I still believed
in that sort of magic.
I saw you on a rooftop once,
the one with the valley of
bare roof like the chamber
at the heart of a temple.
You stood against the moon
and though shadow obscured
your knowing beautiful eyes
and that ******* smile
I know you smiled at me.
I know it.
I danced with you in dreams
for the last years of my
too short youth.
I still see white sundresses
in echoes in my dreams
but I no longer believe
in magic things.
I no longer dance,
not even in my dreams.

The boy king shuddered
under another massive
weight, a crown made heavy
by the varied day to day
concerns of a kingdom
that was his to command
to preserve and to save.
If he seems curt, or haughty
or even rude,
please keep in mind
the pressure at his magnitude.

Looking back at the
boy king turns a man's
stomach in Gordian knots
loving him for what he is
knowing what he'll yet be
and hating all that he is still not.

No one's flying to the moon
or day tripping to Mars.
No one is wishing for a brighter
tomorrow from a field of stars.
We are still captives, tied to earth
for all the good it'll do us
waiting for a chance to blow this scene
before the world starts to rue us.

The boy king yawns and curls up
ready to hibernate away again.
Sleep in, best you can.
You will always be a boy
but the blood and fire
are callimg for a Man.

I've spent decades holding
my tongue and pretending
that the pain is normal.
Just operating procedure
and it don't matter if
it hurts or not
and I'm too hard,
too tough, too street wizened
to feel it the way other
people do, anyway.
And all I have
to show for acomplishing
this massive deception
is an inability to express
my needs and a tendency to
put my health secondary
to everything else.
I've been bleeding for
twenty years but I
won't fall down.
I've rubbed these wounds
in the dirt and refused
to blink until the wet
went back into my eyes
and I've taken it out
in fits of violence against
car doors and broken
household items
but the pain won't
******* stop and I'm
all outta ideas and
advice.
And the fix ain't working
and I can't make it right.
But listen: I know the rules.
I know 'em by heart
I could recite them right now
but let's not start, yeah?
I've worked sick or hurt
through many a shift
and I've complained about
stupidity in my workplace
or long shifts I gotta work.
I've complained about
being asked to do work
while I do that same work,
but not about the problem.
No, never ever about
my deeper, darker needs
for fiscal security over my
desire to create and be free.
It some times hurts
to breathe, and my finger
no longer bends.
My knees crack and
there is a soreness in
my elbow that just stays.
I thought it
would go away
but I guess this is the new
normal.
It hurts to live
and I can't seem to
stop the bleeding,
but I'm still here, love.
I'm not leaving.

Tomorrow I'll blow away
scattered across eternity
on a warm summer breeze.
Tomorrow all that's left
of me will be these blinking
transitor tube memories.
I had planned to build
great things but those
dreams are long
abandoned and now
given up completely.
Sifting through dimly
glowing embers and other
remnants which once
were so amazing and
tomorrow will be nothing
of consequence, I suppose.
Maybe we'll look back
and marvel, I mean
who really ever knows?
Tomorrow I'll be burnt
up into nothing more than
a history of almost was
and a future filled with
hundreds of could have beens.
Nothing really matters
except how everything does.
Tomorrow I'm dust
and you're searching for
the warmth of another
glowing fire somewhere
in the night, just beyond
this fork or that turn.
Tomorrow it'll be over
but tonight, I will burn.

distant burning signal fires,
complicated knots in lines
of tightly wound rope.
star sounds resonating
on frequencies our own ears
are not properly aligned
to receive or transmit.
blood stains on
fresh white linen that
won't come out and are
too difficult to hide.
that one lopsided too
toothy smile, all coy
and unassuming under
slightly uneven bangs,
that cast us away from
the shallow water like
a siren song.
the rusted out bottom
of a wheelbarrow that
you'd hoped to have
one more winter with,
and that odd earthy smell
blood gets when it's
settled beneath your
fingernails overnight.
language is a failure but
math hasn't the terminology
for vivid human memory
Life's like that, I think.