The boat gently rocks
in time with the gentle
lapping against the hull
of the waves in the
ocean of abandoned
things in which I find
myself adrift.
I've no oar or rudder
and the sun beats down
on my uncovered head
and I'm so thirsty I cannot
drink and so hungry that
the idea of food makes me
dry heave and the steady
purposeful movement of
the raft slows my mind
and makes my bones weary
and I wonder, often and
for exceedingly long stretches
of time, if you've noticed
that I've gone.
Does it matter at all that
my lips are cracked but no
longer contain blood to bleed
or even that my monotone reaponses
have stop sounding from
the room adjacent to the one
you shout questions you've
long ago had the answers to?
Does it matter at all that
the ocean is vast and I'm
without sextant or stars
by which to find you or that
the chorus of pleasant sounding
compliments you've requested
my presence be has become
silence and void in place of me?
I'm waiting for rescue on this
sea that I've found myself in
and couching decades of pain
about your wishing I'd never
been born to my childhood face
in thin metaphor because
to tell the truth would destroy you
and only one of us has ever
had to suffer these waters
and why not just let it be me?
Navigating your sea has taught me
that suffering proves you care
and if I suffer enough you may
glance at my absence and
notice that I am not there.

We give the world nine months
to prepare for our arrival
and almost always no warning
to prepare for our departure
and we wreck up the place
in the time between.
Some party we got invited to,
we'll lament, but the music
sure was a comfort to dance to.
It's only ever a heartbeat
from just being over
any and all random second
and we're still arguing
about what love means.
If we could line up all of
our days, end to end, and count
all the seconds we'll ever get
it would then be a great deal
of time we wasted worrying
but the line would be longer
still just to have the chance.
And maybe there is no solution
to the problem of this deep
anxiety about the finish line
and maybe the world stays
broken in the wake of our
wasted lives and we just have
to learn to live and die with it.
And maybe the questions are
a waste of time but what else
do we have to do but to ask them?
Because that beating sound
your heart makes, the normal
drum inside you thudding
away your sinus rhythm
isn't just a comfort, it's a warning,
it is a ******* countdown
that could finish on any
random beat or counted second
and the place will be wrecked up
and the party will long be over,
the dancing died with the last
strangled cords of the music
and yet, one single heartbeat
from done and we don't still
don't know what love is.

I know that you'll never
accidentally be happy,
not the real kind, not in
the way that will last.
I know that confronting
and moving on with purpose
toward a whole future is
how to deal with the past.
I know that forgiveness is
possible and healthy but
I don't know that spell
well enough to cast.

I'm doing my best,
I swear that I am.
I'm pushed down on
but, with knees bent,
I'm still able to stand.

It's a matter of time now
before the clocks chime
to midnight and I'm
still cold and unresolved.
I'm a locked room mystery
with all the clues present
and lined up and just
waiting to be solved.
It's getting hard to talk about
and harder still to fix and I don't
want help, exactly, but it's clear
someone needs to get involved.

I think we all wish for tomorrow
to be perfect and beautiful and bright
but it'll just be like today
all over again unless we set
our point of view just right.

There were still stories to tell
before the bottom dropped out
and the whole ******* world fell.
There was a song playing soft
in a further room that was meant
to thunder but only got a cough.
There was time to finish and to start
there were daydream visions
and wonderful, weird outsider art.

That's done now. Blown apart.

What if all the stories have ended
and we're living the the final words?
What if the sky becomes dark and
empty and is absent of birds?
What if the songs have all wound down
and we're resolving notes and not the verse?
What if everything boils like oceans at
end times and all words become curse?

Tomorrow is coming because things can always get worse.

Under uncaring stars
fatigue drowns the worry.
They have no concern
as I finally cannot make
it one more ******* hour.
I fell asleep sitting up,
sick in an unfixable way,
and recalled that once
I touched magic
from a distance
and heard whale song
on still, moonlit waters
and watched storms
roll away from mountain
top retreats leaving both
wreckage and beauty
in their sudden wake.
I heard music in the
car clogged summer street
and felt a subway replicate
a city's heartbeat under my feet.
I watched forever light
dance with smoke in rain
drenched neon midnight gutters
the permanent and the temporary
mixed for a moment that
only I got to see.
And a cynical part of me
knows that I take it all
with me when it's done.
But the stars look down on
our impermanence with
cold dispassion as they burn
for thousands of years and
remind me that just because
it doesn't matter that it
happened doesn't change
the fact that it did and
I am as witness to it as
the stars.

We are dust that woke up
haunted by the places
we've been and the things
we've seen and we often
mistake our trival electrical
misfires for fundamental truths
and lie to one another about
the meaning in the lyrics of
old songs and also inside our
own hesitantly spoken words.
We prize above the science
the feelings we have for others
and the things that they create.
We live in terror of
time running out
even though time running out
is essentially meaningless in
all but a very select number of
grand schemes...
Maybe there is something else
or some other way
or maybe we've always been right.
Who can say?
I wish I had the secrets to give you
to help you through the day
but I'm empty of prediction
and unsure of advice.
I know no science that will
point you proper and right
I know only that I love you
and maybe we'll only have tonight.

The throne sits empty
and absolution is a lie.
We have to live with our
petty sins until we finally die.
Remebering always what we are
and everywhere we've been.
As hollow inside as as bird bones
with convictions brittle as cold tin.
It must be the old catholic in me
looking to find some small grace
but inside these bones there
doesn't seem to be a trace.
I was told we had inside our
hearts a shared spark of the divine.
I've spent a lifetime searching
but I don't feel it inside of mine.
I wish a solution could be found
for all the chaos I cause
but I don't know how to change it
and the attempts give me pause.
Maybe there is no forgivness
that'll fix all that we've broken.
Maybe what we carry with us
is defining and not simply token.
I hope when it's finally over
I'll feel something more than numb
I pray I'll be better or at least
I'll be more than what I've become.