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Some nights the panic wins
and I spend hours dwelling
on my accumulated sins
and the healing has started
but the bruises and swelling
have not yet departed
and I wonder if medicine
could put it all back to right
like years ago, it could have been
if you and I had survived the fight.
These tired days the whispered shout
all ancient grudge and new regerts
are all I got the time to think about
it's difficult as quitting cigarettes.
I wake from dreams about drowning
and search for meaning in mistakes
the face of god in toast browning
the ring of truth in well known fakes.
And maybe one day it all ends
and maybe we're all that remains
healing is over but nothing mends
a group of kids and growing pains.
I want badly to get better
I try hard every single day
But I still worry and fretter
and watch as it all slips away.
Strangers came
to my grandmother's funeral.
They came to say goodbye.
To say goodbye to a woman
that I never knew.
Because legacy is this odd
thing full of surprises.
We plan for it but we
cannot be the hand that
guides a universe we
do not fully understand.
I knew her well.
Lived with her for years.
She loved me as a son
and I her as a mother
but these strangers knew
a woman, by given name
and I knew my grandma
and that they were the
same person is something
I struggle with to this day.
I don't know who will
or even who won't
attend my funeral,
should there be one.
I don't know if Grandma
knew, either.

It must be so quiet
at the end.
I've heard it's peaceful.
But these questions.
Unanswered.
Drives me up
a ******* wall.
All broken promises
clueless leads
and feeling all unsolved.

In endings there is room
to forgive the vilains of
the piece and there is
space enough to finally
breathe.
Heroes take their victory lap.
And over the face of the
fiction there is the deep quiet
of gods at rest.
At rest without total closure,
because often some threads
went unresolved.
Questions.
But the unanswered questions
plague only the audience.
The characters are at peace
with the thready nature of
these things.
They aren't looking to answer
every question, they only
ever wanted to slay the dragon
and win the day and ride
off into that sweet good night
never to be asked to lift
a hammer or a sword
toward unfinished purpose again.

But the questions plague me still.

Strangers came
to my grandmother's funeral.
To pay respects to a woman
they all knew that I did not.
I don't know what became of them.
I don't know what becomes of me.
Unanswered questions
but the deathly quiet end
is growing larger on that horizon
and I'm still all unsolved.
I'm gonna tell you a secret
but I'll dress it up as a lie
I don't speak the language
and I don't know why.
I often dream of a distant wood
ceiling of green, shafts of light beaming
and the calm interrupted by
a horrible steady screaming.
When we were young I wished
to trap moments in frozen jars
left overnight in the fridge
to keep them as the the sky keeps stars.
Now looking at the rugged lines
on my worn and aging hands
I hope for rebirth but watch our
heroes travel to distant lands.
What becomes of us when
the clock winds down and tonight ends?
Do we push at an obstinent earth
and continue to hope it bends?
Your heart will
pump enough blood
to fill over a million barrels
with your single lifetime.
You'll pump a river of blood
before it's done.
You'll shed roughly 44 pounds
of skin in your life,
assuming you're an American,
it'd be measured in kilos otherwise.
That's the average weight
of a six year old boy.
You'll breathe about 300
million liters of air
before you dress up for
that ol' pine box.
Your heart will beat more
than 2.5 billion times
and it'll break a few times, too.
You'll probably have a bad
habit or two that you feel
will diminish you.
You're going to say something,
some day, to somebody and
it will fundamentally change
the way they always looked
at the world and you may not
even notice you'd done it.
And of course somebody
someday, somewhere is gonna
do that to you, also.
I hope you hear a sweet song
and let yourself cry.
I want you to sit and listen
to the mystic sounds the world
makes when the sun goes down.
Look out over the ocean
and listen to the waves lap
against the shore and feel small
in that peculiar way that makes
you feel powerful, too.
Kiss somebody in the rain,
if you're so inclined, they're
a miracle, too, and they may
have been waiting their whole
lives for a kiss of that kind from you.
You don't have to move mountains,
you've a river inside.
You don't need to worry about
the end, it's ending all the time.
Stand barefoot on rain wet
sidewalk and smell the city
after a storm.
I don't know what we're doing.
I've no clue why we're born.
But I believe our greatness
are often forgotten or ignored.
You may never do anything
of value, living in poverty
and wearing a basic shroud
and maybe you'll never know
that when I look at you
I'm so very proud.
Give me ****** noses
and scrapped knees.
Hold me down as I
kick and I scream
and smile your cyanide
as you watch me bleed.
Drag me through miles of
broken glass and burning ash
and call me hearty and hale.
Healthy as you push me to fall.
Find me in loose rhymes
muttered swear words, tomorrow.
Tonight, beat me about the brow
with frustration and sorrow.
Tell me your darkest secrets
until the dark in me reaches out
and together we sway and weep
whisper your chocolate sweet lies
give me promises for better
and endless angry time to keep.
I've come to be broken up by you
to be torn down and worn
to stubs by the venom in your blood.
I came to look in this mirror
and see less of me but all of you.
I came here to be one of many
while you're one of few.
Don't spit love in excuse
because I'm not young, not anymore,
I've not got forgivness waiting
behind any gameshow door.
I'm tired of moving foward
fatigued from this long, long run
I'm seven chords from a ballad
when discordant, it all comes undone.
I'll still show up tomorrow
till the stars burn and are gone
I live for the fighting
Go on, now: Bring it on.
In dreams I walk familar hallways
stepping through beams of
dust mote polluted sunlight
and while I know I can't
I could swear, really
that I could almost smell
the polish on the wood floors.
My beat up old black Converse
make sad little squeaks
like a protest
but I keep going.
Even once I've put all the
pieces of the puzzle together
even when I know what I'm
walking toward, into,
even then
I keep going.
I used to think that once
something got broken you
couldn't break it more.
I would take appliances apart
try to figure them out.
I can fix most anything, given
the right tools and enough time,
but I got broken again and again
and there are no tools
there is no time.
I keep going.
In the distance now I can make out
the disharmony of a key ring
hanging from an active belt loop
and drunken judgement given as
sermon more than in the lilting
tones of conversation.
I keep going.
I always did. I was the oldest,
choices had to be made
and no one else was.
The kids were cowering
the blood pounding in my ears.
So, I made them
I keep going.
Nothing can stop me now.
Lately he's living with ghosts
and maybe we all start to
when the memories pile up
like snow or highway commuters.
He's been seeing in himself all
the things he was supposed to be
and how far short he's fallen
and his ghosts cannot comfort
they shake their heads slow
pressed down by eyes that bore
and they'd flay him alive
if they could
you can see it plain as day.
You were meant to be more.
but he failed alone!
He didn't ask permission.
This might be who he is now
and maybe he's not happy either
living so far below his promise
but he put himself here.
All by himself, mind.
He might be low, but he'll be honest.

Look at him now, our boy king
set high up on his shelf
he'd be the beating heart of history
if only he could live with himself.
Look at him go, now!
a great piece of art
perfect, just perfect
excepting the twice broken heart.
Always out front, our boy
Leader of the bands
all spoiled second chances
and blood on his hands.

She waits for him there
in that little duplex
walk up on Dartmouth,
Love me, she begs him
with mounting fear
from their shared bed
because he can be absent
he can be distant
and so very difficult to read
loving him is a chore
choked with anxiety
but still she somehow knows
that he'll never leave.

They told him to be less
and he did as he's told
he's got another winning hand
and he's just waiting to fold.
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