We've all sweat through
everything we own
and the grief blends into
late summer humidity
like a poison miasma descending
on us with cutting talons
sharpened by the wonderful
memories of our better times.
And behold this new hole
inside of me that somehow
adds weight to my burden.
I cannot fill it with oceans
of shed tears or cover it
with misplaced stoicism
because when the room is dark
and the people on whom
I should lean have left to
tend their own bleeding wounds
I stare into the distance
and boil regrets to chew on
in bitter silence for the
things I didn't do or say
and the meal isn't filling
and the liquid is unpleasant
and **** this stupid pain
and the tears always waiting
to break and *******
for leaving and **** me
for all my miserable
failures and these stupid
******* dreams unfulfilled
and my dumb ******* human
need to feel and to heal.
And forget all I've just said
because you were good
and wise and whole against
a once blue sky
and I don't know what
I'm meant to say
I wanted to say something
profound and beautiful
and blistering true
reaching toward meaningful
with fingers stretched out
almost able to touch
but all I've got is
I love you and I'm going
to miss you so much.

Helicopter searchlights
probe the area around
our home as the haunting
final refrain from long ago
plucked guitar strings
fill my brain, the kid sleeps
in summer heat so strong
the a/c fails to fight it
the baby next to you
and the window unit
as grandpa slowly dies
in the finished basement
and life goes on in every
lit window with variations
of the same song
played in blue or as a dirge
or a 4 chord pop tune
or stilted verse and endless
repeated bridge.
Mumbled or strummed.
Power chords or hummed.
Played different as snowflakes
but played all the same.
I thought it would be
blue collar poetry
with gearhead love stories
or porch swing sincerity
in cable knit sweaters
or even fire escape nights
with the radio on low
but this ain't so bad.
I don't know.
I knew life for it's
difficulties, spoke hardship
like a native tongue
and expected to get covered
in dark earth right about
where I'd begun
but the joke, says John
the joke.
So I trudged all those
miles in beat up old shoes
and wrote punk rock
love songs but had in
my secret heart the blues
because love always seemed
bitter and days always long
and hearts seemed closed
and everyone was gone
should it have ended exactly
like I thought, I'd have been
ready for overstayed heartache
grim poems left in typewriters
cigarettes left burning in old
brown glass ashtrays
once white now yellow walls
The sad old static inside
us one and all.
Like tin foil on braces or
the derelict old mall.
Decay by commission
a corpse by design
ending in omissions
and claims that I'm fine.
But the joke, says John
the joke.
Youth is ending, the sun
circles the western bowl
and hopes are different
when dreams don't come true
and nothing is the same
in the absence of you.
My hair isn't thinning
though my teeth are now long
and I'm so far from the beginning
I've forgotten the original
shape of the song.

It's over now
the lights expire
remember the love songs
and the burning funeral pyre?
I recall blue eyes and
sad, sweet lullabies
and promises we'd keep
until the day that we die.
And I remember the weather
in that bleak week we spent
in a faraway November
and the way light touched
your long thin hair
and the feeling of forever
mixed into everywhere.
It's over now
you know I hope you know
I always meant well
I know there's secrets we shared
and stories you can tell
but know that you weren't
a passing fad or a forgotten
stage play to me
even though I'm winter hearted
and short on what you needed
I tried and failed on the path
just got lost in the leading.
I meant well enough, baby,
I wanted to do right
but I climbed hills without end
and was always just
shy of sight.
You're gone now, kid.
Left with packed bags
and jet exhaust
left behind cold hearts
and early morning frost.
But go on now, you go
where you gotta be.
Make the life you want living
the one you got from your seeds.
Be big, be beautiful
all you could never be.
But load your gun careful
cause you got so much ammo
in the belted feed
meant to break hearts
and hurt in ways you don't mean.
So, when you tell me to your
fancy new friends on the
other coast of no place
in particular and away from
here and from then and from me
have mercy.
Don't kick me around without need.
Have mercy.
As much as you can, for me.

A caution from the end of this
line to the the start of yours,
my dear,
we can't define love,
try and try as we might,
because it writhes and it yearns
and it's all cutting and bite
because life is mean and the world
will one day just burn and
we want love to be greater than
the end of one life or the stain
left behind words.

Love can lift you and love can burn
and love gives power and it is stern
but love makes you capable
of things beyond your means
and love is wise but love also bleeds.

And we talk about love like it
is some kind of cure but it's
as poison as palliative and it's
often much too much to bear
you get on the river boat,
smile warmly, the wind wafts your hair
but love is/isn't a river and
life is so often crueler than fair

and love can lift us and love can burn
and love can make us capable
and love can sing and love can turn
but what we find we can do
to win a heart or persevere through
we can also inflict on people
as in love as you.

when I say I love you, dear
I mean it with all my heart.
this thing we've built is
my greatest work of art.
but life is difficult to live
from finish to start
and love can seem bright,
my dear,
but it can also be dark.

We're on a path now with only
one real tangible end and though
we wish it was like before with
laughter and lessons and wisdom
passing down through hard love
and barely acknowledged affection
the generation of stoic men is
passing before our eyes
and there are questions without answers
and no more hellos left
to soften all the goodbyes.
It's medications administered and delivered
in rotating various numbered hours
a regiment of strictly adhered to
suffering now that cures have all been discarded
because only comfort can be offered
in these: The final days.
And we put food out that you won't
eat, you're not concerned
with getting stronger because
it only matters to us that you
stay just a little while longer
and we all respect these wishes
because dignity is at a premium
now that it's so hard to come by
and it's all over but for the years
and years left with which to cry
but we can't change the facts
or back away from the course.
We've agreed to watch you die.

We're all fresh bones
on a downward slide toward
sunken coastal homes
and time and tide pull
us toward empty tomorrows
and wave like wheat fields
and drunken stadiums.
When we miss the mark
we are not landing in
starry pools of promise
because people drained them
swearing to throw down
ladders that we could climb
but laughed and pointed as
we hung limp from the rungs
and whistled sorrow at
everyday pain that came
disguised as hellos but
smelled exactly like goodbye.
And I don't know the magic
or the art
I can't read the prose
or find the start
and Mexican radio used
to broadcast rebellion but
the airwaves are digital now
and the beating heart
of our once burning dreams
is stilled, becalmed as
the ocean with absent breeze
and painful as unfulfilled
needs or bended knees.
If I pull back my hair there
is so much white underneath
and if I search too long
I only find what everyone
else needs.
Pirate radio waves filled
with static speak for the dead
and for the spreading disease
but this isn't complaint, mind
just payment for the fees.
Fresh bones and broken dreams
fail to thrive in these
tired times and hollow
lines of coded insta feeds.
And tomorrow belongs
to the children we posioned
with endless noises
and glowing blue screens.
The ocean is closer
but it ought to just about
drown all the screams.

You were here for
such a small piece of time.
Met at twelve, gone by Twenty-five,
and I don't know how
to seek or find
all the love lost
when I was left behind
but look there you are
once again on my mind.
I remember in patchy
sunlit rhymes
the way you seemed
so hardy as you withered
on the vine.
And I loved you forever
as you loved from time to time.
I know I'd hate you if you'd
stuck around cause you
always toed that line
but I miss you all the same
you may be gone
but you were a friend of mine.

I tell truth couched
in lines of metaphor
and marvel when you're
unable to decipher it.
I riddle my feelings
at you in digital media
under assumed names
and lament how you
can't see how I feel.
I pretend at such depth
but swim so close
to the surface I can
hear sing-song sounds
gurgling in my ears
and still feel the warmth
of sunshine on my neck.
I move with eyes
open in shallow water
but pinch my nose closed
against the current
to prevent it from
invading me with
the honesty that will
break me completely
in two.
I look at you through
this distorted mess
and apply new paint
to the same tired
******* wreck.
I sink when I try to float
even when I hold my breath
but I lie about it
about everything
if that isn't too much
to tell.
Did you believe me
when I said I was beside
you during those laps?
I was waiting in the shallows
crouched to seem in much
deeper than I am
and hoping that you
would pretend you couldn't
see through me for a while.
If I closed my eyes
and fell backward on the
surface of the lake
would you agree that
I'd floated or would
you tell the truth
for my sake?

What doesn't **** you
hobbles and breaks you.
Maybe gray skies invite
silver linings but rain
still falls too.
And **** cliché sentiment
this tired old meaningful fight
because tomorrow is
coming and daybreak
is not the invitation it's
meant to be tonight.
I paint myself in
purples and greens
and you stand on promises
but I still don't know
what that means.
Push the daisies through dirt
and share your various hurt
with the group.
Love isn't fire
and promise isn't hope.
Waiting for light in
the dark is the same
as hanging from rope
waiting for a savior
who never comes through.
Or waiting for me
to love you too.
And sure the ocean is open
and wishes are free
but fish don't have answers
and there is no completion from me.

Forty-seven minutes
from home and I look
at the lot by the side of
the road to see a couple
hugging each other
and it seemed real
and it seemed desperate
and it was odd because
there was this intimate
moment that they shared
with me and only I know
and I don't know if
that changes my understanding
of humanity or if I'll
even remember it in a few
hours time but I know
that it happened and
that to two strangers
it mattered and I'd like to
think that makes it
important but who knows?
Not me.
People pass overhead
in airplanes cutting paths
through the sky and
they look down on pillbox
homes from heights too
far to make out people
and they wonder about
the various day to day that
goes on under their feet
and who knows if
any of it matters?
Not me.
And in the pages of old
published works are the
thoughts of the dead
and maybe a turn a phrase
moves you or a theme
defines your life and
isn't it bizarre that the
author will never know
what they meant to you?
It's wild that no one
ever knows, not you
Not me.

You've moved inside of me
like a fire moves through
a dry and desolate forest
until the things I always knew
as landmarks no longer
look at all like or
even make any sense to me.
You've folded into my
past like ingredients
into raw dough
and I see you in my
memories during nights
I was sure you weren't
there and I doubt
my eyes and my senses
and worry that my mind
now tells lies as well.
There is an incursion,
an invasive species inside
me now where only
I used to be
there is now you
and the places inside
that have become your
colony.

There are days when
the fire stops and the
skies are blue
but the number is
small and the expectations
of good so very few.
The Bible does use the
word happy, ignore what
they say, unless
you have the money
to make them go away.
Don't settle for good enough
because it'll never be
because more courses
through our culture
and our blood.
And love under starlight
when you can because
love is difficult to find
and starlight won't be
free for long
nor likely will the night.
Find hope in the little
places where it still
grows because
the flood is forever
and we've seen the
last of the dove.
And dance, not before
God, but on the Earth
for your own sake
because the music still plays
and it isn't over yet
but we know how long
it'll take.

My blood is on fire
in dark night as the
drag burns fresh scars
across autumn skin.
You called me from
a thousand miles away
and spoke soft flowers
of need into a half dead
heart as easy as you
breathed perfume into
musty rooms filled previously
with gloom and anxious fear.
I have never loved more
than I have loved you
but the night here is long
and the moon absent from
the starless sky and while
I live for your approval
I cannot douse these flames
even as they brittle my
bones and melted my
useless heart and scorched the
backs of my eyes where you
have long lived.
I can't promise wealth
or status or even tomorrow.
I can't hunt down the moon
to fill the empty sky I've
given you or sing you
one single star.
But...
Call for me still, love.
I will respond as long
as I am able.

You've got vision
and you've got need
and there is power
in following where
you lead.
But I'm dead tired
and broken hearted
and the light outside
has fallen
too low to see.
And I've got meaning
and I've know tough
and I've got all
the memories of
all the things
that I've seen.
Maybe tomorrow we'll
be well
enough to walk from this
burning hell
into fields and pastures
of brilliant green.
One day, I hope and pray,
you'll be beside me
when I lay
down forever for
more than sleep.
Until then we'll be strong
and we'll manage,
together, to get along
because since the start
you've always been
all I need.
And so take heart
and take love
and every ounce
of the blood
that we'll bleed.
Walk with me
hand in hand
all along and across
this land.
Together, my love,
you and me.

We weren't heaven
but we weren't hell, either
and maybe we're clichés
but there's nothing wrong
with plain average mediocrity.
We were ships in the night
all vision but no sight
and maybe we could've
tried harder to slide together
like puzzle pieces but we
just never fit quite right.
And they don't write songs
about what we had,
not even little humming
summer time pop hits,
but we still had it and we,
you and me,
might've been day one doomed
but we get to decide what
we meant to each other
and what we didn't and
we won't agree on what that is
but we never really agreed
on anything else, even when
we seemed to.
What's one more day
removed from never going
to happen?
Sure, we were a pit stop
a diversion on the road
to the places we were going
to finally end up, and
the memories are fuzzy
and the worth dubious
but here's that poem
you always wanted, finally.
I apologize it took me so long,
but hey, you were once
used to that, anyway.

Thirty years ago was yesterday,
it's amazing how fast it all goes
considering how long everything
has always seemed to take.
Hours ago, I was a boy
learning life lessons from
twenty-five year olds
without a clue about
what they were doing
and struggling in the
everyday poverty we all
pretend isn't as ordinary
as it is. As it always has been.
My parents, not yet
forty years old when
I graduated high school,
didn't keep their vows
but many parents didn't.
The whole homes I saw
were odd to me, alien
in their completeness
and intimidating in their
warmly expressed affection.
I always knew, in my bones
and in my blood, that
I would be better, even
incomplete I would look
whole from a distance
if I could just guide the
narrative and live the
white lies about hope
and promise I would
someday see a tomorrow
that made yesterday look
small in it's distance
from today.
It was seven lifetimes
living this lifetime
and it still happened in
the blink of an eye
and everyone tells you that
it will happen that way
and you believe you understand
but I didn't.
I sure thought I did,
a million years back
when it was still
five seconds ago.

I don't know how to quench
I only know how to burn.
When the house burns down
I do not know how to pull
you to safety, love, but
I know how to lift the burning
beam you are trapped under
and take your place among
the flames.
I don't want to shoulder
your every burden I want
to gently press my lips
to your wounds and ****
the poison from your blood.
I want to feel the anguish
and the grief and the lifetime
of pain and anxiety course
through my beating heart
until the hurt you cannot
shed lives in the tips of
my fingers and toes where
I can wiggle them with
both effort and abandon
while you finally breathe
the easy breaths of the well.
I don't want to catch your sick
I want to take it.
I want to rut in sweaty sheets
until you haven't got the fever
that now burns inside me.
I don't want to exorcise your
various demons because I've
long lived with my own and
know exactly the place on
my back where I've room
left to carry.
I don't want to live with
the healing conversations
because they are difficult,
because honesty and openness
require me to move foward
but suffering is second hand.
I have long known how to
walk on a limp but have
never learned to hand out
a crutch.
I'd apologize but I don't
know how to begin
empathy is anathema but
assuming blame is rote.
The house is on fire, love,
and only one of us can still
get out. Allow me to settle
in where you are pinned
as you slide from under.
I'm not here to guide you
safely to the fresh air.
I hope you will feel better
if you can watch me char
to worthless cinder and ash.
I hope this will help but I
don't even know how to ask.

Maybe it's the twisting,
the shrinking on the vine
or the hollow feelings
I've buried deep inside.
Or the late night emergencies
and the bleeding that
can't be stopped or tied.
Or maybe it's tomorrow
and the secrets it'll
find to scheme and hide.
Maybe it's the failures
following everything
we've ever tried.
Maybe the answers
aren't coming no matter
how much time we bide.
Maybe tonight is all the
chance we'll ever have
to stem the rising tide.
I don't have answers
to the long questions
of this ride
but I'm working toward
solutions to the promises
and the lies they've lied
even if it seems I'm aimless
or in penalty or standing
on the other side.

I am so tired of toiling
blind in the dark
and of the casual unkindness
of traffic or queues for
parking spots or telephone
operators or restaurant tables.
I am tired of endless power
cords crisscrossing my
lifetimes and tabletops.
Of phone battery life and GPS
coordination and livestreams.
Tired of digital leases
and tubes for late night
breathing machines.
I am tired of learning
that sometimes it is too late
to try new adventures
and tired of ten hour
shifts at a minimum breaking
my hands and my back
and I'm tired of dying
but only half as much as
I'm tired of living.
I'm tired of timed pills
and twice a day vitals.
I'm tired of eating and sleeping
and winning and losing
and pressure cooker choices
and cooking.
and I'm tired of fighting
so hard to survive and tired
of having a ****** up childhood
and tired of trauma and
rehabilitation and tired
so very tired
of the nonstop
need to stop and explain why.
Why it's hard and why birds
are real and the earth isn't flat.
Why I'm like this because we all
know why I'm like this
it's been talked to ******* death.
I'm tired of me.
I wanna crawl outta my skin
and dance the night in my bones.
I wanna leave the past and the
shackles and the now and
the pain and the future and the
uncertainty and lay about
as nothing nowhere for untime.
I'm tired of it.
**** me and my *******.
How're you?

A cresent Halloween moon hangs
in the bruised-dark October sky
like a crooked smile or a victim
and we talk sweetest poison
about long ago, far away spring
like it has any meaning
because it's gone now and we're
all still here and there is
no fixing that or replacing
the wasted hours we've spent
longing for yesterdays.
No how-to tutorials or quick
video essays that'll point us
toward the thaw and the chill
inside our bones will serve
to remind us of the flaw
in our planned escape
like clotting blood or
traffic stops wait for us
in those dark, lost hours
we remember so ******* fondly.
Maybe we'll run this too
so far into the ground that
it'll plant like seed and be
fertilized by our *******
dead dreams until it grows
into something not too twisted
for us to recognize and sing
spiritual around
because hope springs eternal
if you've got the money
the rest of us just gotta learn
to enjoy all the leftover suffering.
Here, they say from wifi
and airwaves and bandwidth,
is some free advice,
This is not financial advice:
long is the night, the night is long
and even the bard didn't
know how to burn it into sunrise
but with your hand in mine,
and a little hope and a little time,
we might see an April sun
in this nighttime October sky.

The people we know are not
those people, not really.
They are constructs of our
imagination, living in our heads
and they are more or less
accurate based on how open
we manage to be with each other.
Our memories are not recordings
they are simulacrum of things
that happened acted out
in pantomime by the homunculus
we all make of friends and loved ones.
And the tragic thing is that
when we go, when we finish
and make memories no more
they go with us, our shadow people.
Every dead person takes everyone
they ever met with them, every time.
No one is an island.
No life is just one is one life.
A light doesn't go out
a blackout occurs.
A drop doesn't fall
the flood comes.
What a terrible tragedy that
singular death is because it
contains a multitude of deaths
and the only comfort I can give
is that when you go, and we all must,
the make believe ghost of you lives on
in the memory mummer's play
inside the heads of everyone
that you have ever met.
Small comfort.
Perhaps.

All I have are fraying nerves
and pleasant whispered lies.
I'm made of potential squandered
and unaknowledged regrets
swimming just below a calm surface
of ******* I just haven't said yet.
And I'll ask you, in pretend passing,
to consider my debts squared
and my intentions over my actions
but I'm not really to be trusted
you just didn't have anyone to warn you.

Break me like a promise
keep me like an oath
love me like a faith
and mourn me like a ghost.

I know the problem has always,
always, always been me
but I've blinded myself to growth
by wallowing long in misery.
I'll say I need a light to guide me
but I'll ignore the lighted path
because I don't want to be better
I just want to be excused from the math.

I know I'm hard to live with
and I never apologize
I know my fictions don't fix
what I always vandalize.
I know that knowing isn't
efforts made to correct.
I know you'll hope for things
that you'll just never get.

I know the road to take
to change into a better man
but I'll never step foot on it
even though we both know I can.
You can lay bricks to build a foundation
on which to finally build it all
but I lay bricks just as easy
to put up a great big wall.

We're all dying,
some just a little
faster than others
and we all wanna know
we mattered to our
sisters and our brothers
because we're short
on time and long
on meaning
with tarnished souls
and empty hearts and
minds that need cleaning.
We talk about legacy
while we struggle
from day to day
but we leave aside our
value when we refuse
to stand and play
these forever games
of trying to find the
hard and honest truth
before it's far too late
before we've gotten just
a little too long in the tooth
And still it isn't over
not by a long shot
and certainly not yet
because they'll never let
it finish before we
pay our outstanding debt.
I do not know if I'll
be here tomorrow to
guide you on the way
because tomorrow is
a foreign land and all
we ever have is today.

I will guide you like
a pencil across the smooth
face of blank paper
or brush on canvas
to define the shape of you
from abstract nothingness.
I will chip away at marble
slabs and whittle logs
of chopped wood until
I've revealed you.
I will bend words until
meaning is clear and the
simple prose of you
will speak honesty.
I compose on sheets
and instruments until
the sweet song of you can
be sung proud from chorus
to substantive verse.
I will labor, young one
to put only what is needed
of myself into the work
that is you so that you'll
be built a better man
than I ever was.
Until the art is complete
I'll labor tirelessly.
One day you'll be unveiled
and I hope you'll be ready
because you will have to
stand tall before a world
that will yet, I swear it,
learn to admire you.

Let's build a man, whole cloth
but let's build him wrong.
Let's make him distant and cold
give him lyrics but no song.
Let's curse him with gifts
take his hands and give them art
but leave out his ambition
so he'll never know how to start.
We'll wire his brain backwards
so he'll have the capcity to deduce
but let's not include every *****
so his sanity is always loose.
And what if we give him
outrageous faith in the wrong places.
Have him be confident in failure
when he looks at disappointed faces.
And just for a lark, what if we
made him concious of these facts.
Gave him awareness of deficiencies
so he'll understand all that he lacks.

I just want to say something real,
that lasts beyond my time.
I wanna know I mattered
before the number called is mine.
It may not matter that I tried
it might be futile to do my best,
and I'm not asking for accolade.
No need for Glottaman's rest.
And listen: I know it doesn't
matter, that it's all random chance.
I know that music only plays
until the end of the dance.
But if you could know
what comes after your fall
would any of that change
anything you do, even at all?
All stories end, all books conclude
and we don't always know when
and if we're lucky the mark stays
in the middle for as long as it can.
One day its over and every tomorrow
becomes one dreamless, endless night
there are more pages behind the mark
and the ending is already in sight.

I want to write about the ocean
but only ever manage
verse after verse about fire.
I want to sing about hope
but always belt out choruses
filled with unfufilled desire.
I want to listen to the falling rain
but get so ******* distracted
by all the miserable daily pain,
And I don't know what'll fix it
I'm only ever a moment of falling
away from going totally insane.
I want you to know, I believe
even if it would appear I
only really know how to grieve,
I want you to miss me
and ask me seriously
when I go not to leave.
Because, I don't want to fight
it's like I can see just fine
but haven't got any sight.
Give me a spark, love, light up the night
and I'll drown it in an honest
desire to get just one ******* thing right.
.

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 stopped 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.

There is blood red bitterness
blooming like a time lapse flower
in cold, hard rivulets
exploding like popcorn
from a kernal with the
same intensity of a sudden
summer squall or a casual
unkindness from a onesided
object of abject obsession.
There is a blood-quick
dull throb at the temples
and a sudden drunken
lack of reasonable inhibition
filled with buzzing curse words
boiling deep in the throat
and deeper in a history of
neglect and pain that ache
to burst through to visit
rewards of anguish.
There is fire and then there
is calm and then, finally,
there is regret.

I think we waste lifetimes
decoding the lies of purpose
and maybe forget to fill
our mouths and stomachs
while the food is still out.
I think we leave empty
cupboards and memories
that we should fill up or
even just shout about.
I don't think it's revolutionary
to recognize these failings and faults
but maybe it's all the more tragic
that we all seem to know
but still just listen to the music
when we should join
together and waltz.

I've spent a lifetime with
first draft mentality.
Growing without purpose
and leaning ******* personality.
There has been very little
long-term format or structure
just walls built too hasty to
hold back floods and only rupture.
I think with a second pass
there are things I could get right
I think with a little care
there are battles I wouldn't fight.
The arrogance of refusing
to rewrite my singular voice!
The foolishness to pretend
there wasn't always a choice.
I was so worried about being
paralyzed by worthless indecision
that I executed a lifetime of
kneejerks with no revision.

I believe in love now,
in ways I couldn't explain
to myself as a younger man.
I can just about wrap my
head around the ending,
at least I think I can.

We're not made to suffer,
even if it seems that's
what's most likely to be true.
We're made to come out
the other side limping but
knowing what to do.

I don't understand forever
because I don't think any
of us ever really can or will.
But I'm familiar with right now
and what it means to love you
not for forever but still.

**** it.
Let's stare into the abyss
you and me.
Lets turn our backs
on pop music optimism
ignore the little questions
and walk, hand in hand,
into the unknown dark.
Forget endings
let's only ever start.
Fight the unsung battles
without caring about the
tuneless song of our
impending defeat.
Let's move our feet with purpose,
let's not just sit and talk
let's take shaking breaths as
we stand together and walk.
I want to feel the static in my teeth
like I bit down on tin foil.
I want the ozone smell
after a lightning strike to
fill my nose with adventure.
I want to feel the rapid
heat of pressure loss
boil away in my blood.
I know the future is uncertain
I know the work and the bills
will long bleed us before
our hearts can pump enough
for us to catch up.
I know the erosion of our souls
has killed the childish laughter
inside us and nothing
is grand anymore, saving the fear
of those stone teeth punched
through graveyard soil
and the names which they
will one day hold.
I want you still.
**** it.
While, I still have the time
I have always been yours,
I only want you to be mine.

When we were kids
you would chase me around
the block trying to kiss me
and giggle if you caught up.
I recall that you said
you liked my glasses
after I got my first pair.
You had missing teeth
and freckles on your nose
and a smile that looked like
flowers in bloom and somehow
I still remember your name.
I will remeber it the rest of
my life and I don't know why.
Maybe you still remember me?
I hope so, I really do
and I think if I hadn't
left that town...
Listen: Timing is everything.

I recall the look in your
eyes when you discovered
that we liked the same
Oasis song, I recall you
pulling me out of the store
we worked at during the
middle of our shared shift
to look at the brilliant colors
the pollution gave the setting sun
and saying you didn't think
any of our co-workers would
understand the beauty that
only you and I could see
and you looked at me with
your impossible blue eyes
and bit your lower lip
and I think I knew then
how you felt, but a few years
difference still mattered at
that age, and I was already
in love with someone else...
Timing, y'know? It's everything.

I loved you before you lived
and of course you never did.
We didn't even get a chance
to give you a name, didn't
need one yet.
Never would need to, in fact.
You were gone before
you were even here and
even though I never had so much
as one single interaction with you
I have never felt so sharp
a loss as I felt when I lost you.
It wasn't what was gone
that hurt so badly
it was the years and years
of what would never be.
Timing.
******* timing is everything.

There is a breath out there,
air, waiting for me to breathe
that will be the last one I do
and I'm running toward it
and I have been my whole life
and the people along the way
who I loved live in the air
I breathe in the interim
and the people I missed out on
or who missed out on me
live inside all that air that
I will never breathe.
I loved you madly in those
missed breaths, I hope you know,
but timing is everything.

You've spent a lifetime torturing
yourself over history
and too many repeated mistakes
ignoring platitudes because
you don't want to feel better
you just want to hurt.
Hurt then.
Hurt like hell.
Until the pain becomes
steel in your bones and
your back becomes straight
and your gaze inherits the
cold of the metal inside you.
Hurt until you're finally complete
until you're whole against the sky
like portraits of powerful
figures depicted from low angles
whose own history shares
the darker hues of the painting
that lives inside your own heart.
Hurt until you feel better
but you'll never feel better
not really, none of us do.
We can't bleed out regret
it isn't that kind of poison.
Hurt until you don't.
Then get up off the floor
dust the pain from your
too apologetic soul,
grit your teeth like you
always do and instead
of hurting on purpose
by picking at the scabs
still growing over those mistakes
finally let the wounds heal.
Go out there, hurt and limping
and unwell in so many ways
and just try to be better.

I know that I bite
every time a cautious
hand is peacefully extended.
I know I break things
and people and promises
that are not easily mended.
I know your love was
gifted with purpose even if
I thought you'd just pretended.
You warned me to step lighly
while I was busy checking
all the boxes I had offended.
I'd asked for so much more
time and patience then anyone
could be expected to have lended.
I know you haven't heard
from me in a long while
longer than I'd intended
but please, read the text
and message back, I've oathes
sworn that I'd like amended.

I feel you in the air
like the smell of fire
or the lingering humidity
of a lightning burst on
a humid summer night.
I love like a teenager still
as though you haven't
been here all along.
I've wanted you since
we were kids and the future
before us still loomed.
There is still a broken home
and an empty void deep
inside the boy but
there is light there, too.
There isn't much me left
outside of what I've been with you.

I want to write honestly.
Speak the truth.
I want to stare in a mirror
and see anyone but you.

I want to love out loud
and speak my feelings, too.
I'm not the kind of brave
that counts, no matter what I do.

I wish it wasn't almost over
that I had more time to spend.
I want to speak words into facts,
to stand tall but only ever bend.
I'm working toward a finish
but only coming to an end.

I want to walk in step
by your side.
Breathe the same air
under the same stars.
I want to feel you course
like struck fire through my veins.
To lean back half lidded and bask
in the heroine embrace.
I want to think your thoughts
and know your pain.
I want to be the version
of myself that goes by your name.
I don't know how to
believe and I don't really want to.
I want to soar on rising
warm currents of air
until the bright light blinds
and comes to be too much to bare
and then crash into the green sea
until all that matters are
the memories you have left of me.

Me and Sisyphus have been
watching that ******* boulder
retreat down the *****
for a lifetime and there
has been no improvement yet.
A comma would change the
meaning in these decades
of regret but butterflies
don't beat wings at any distance
in the story we were born in.
Maybe you can tell?
I've bleeding bone where
fingers once wiggled but
the work is still incomplete,
****** up or half finished.
I used to watch raindrops
race on the car window
on long drives or bright storms
but I never could seem to
pick the winner.
We're alike in that way, love
even if you think I'm wrong
and why shouldn't you?
I've made a career outta
always being wrong.
I had thought this thing
was finally about over,
thought I'd get it up that hill
for good and for always,
but you know how it is
with me and ol' Sisyphus.
Somehow the story isn't over
and I find myself looking
at the ***** again.
always again.
I grit my teeth, darling,
wipe the sweat from my brow
place my hands on the friction
smooth surface of that obstinate
rounding old ******* rock
and push again and again and
always with all my might.
Stick around, love.
One of these days I may just
accidentally get something right.

Let's repurpose tragedy
so it's defined as building
instead of losing everything.
Let's bake a promise to be better
into every broken promise
we write, speak or even sing.
Let's try to improve our wasted
efforts and douse the fires
so our better angels can take wing.
Let us make, tonight, a promise
like partners and seal it
with a kiss, a pact even a ring.
We can keep on limping down
this pathway or we can own up
to our fault in this latest sting.
We may not be perfect or pretty
but we've lived long in misery
bleeding out in hopes of spring.
There are miles of torn up road
between what we've always had
and what tomorrow may yet bring.
We've come along side now,
ropes tied tight to the rigging, love,
now we gotta take a breath and swing.

Find the path you took
to get here and walk inside
your own footprints.
Marvel at the difference in size,
were your feet ever that small?
Was the sun brighter?
Did cooling pies smell better?
Were doors held open more often?
And really, really were people more
polite and civilized in those
hazy distant times?
The shoes I wore as an infant,
as a toddler, all white and blue
sit high on a shelf, forgotten almost,
in the basement of this house
that I own with my wife.
My kid asked to see them
for whatever reason a six year old
has for wanting to examine a world
he is still puzzling out and I obliged.
They were not, in my hand
as I passed my youth to my son,
himself in his own yesteryear still,
as I remembered them.
The bottoms of the shoes were thin,
practically cloth, in fact.
He looked them over and
then handed them back
and all unchanged he smiled
and returned to his play games
and so did I, but I waited a beat first.
I let myself feel the weight
of those shoes, heavy in a specific
world changing way, and then,
like the boy who'd asked to see them,
I put them away and moved
on with my day.
Were things better when
these feet left those prints?
So small and insubstantial
in the soft dirt are they.
Eclipsed by the prints
I now leave today?
Or do we just hope/remember
it that way?

On the other side of almost over
you'd think I'd waste less time.
I'm still idling, I'm just closer now
to the finish than the starting line.
I was so proud of how far I'd come
in moving out of the dark
but I assumed there were miles more
turns out the number is quiet stark.
There are mountains of things
I swore I wouldn't dread.
Loves allowed to wither and
important thoughts left unsaid.
I wish I'd made an actual imapct
an impression in the Earth
a record of how I'd mattered
not just a certificate of birth.
I doubt I've left behind impression enough
for you to love me when I'm done.
I'll be remembered like that car
in grandpa's garage that doesn't run.
I'm pretty sure I'll be remembered.
Although, perhaps I won't.
It doesn't seem right or fair.
I don't want to stop. I don't.
But like the sunset lives at the
other side of every single dawn
some things are writ large and forever
and pretty soon now, I'll be gone.

I search for meaning in your
every broken promise and phrase.
I push the dirt from yesterday
into tomorrow's waiting grave.
I'm coming up on truly empty
with each stupid ******* breath I save.
I've wanted honest answers
for every honest answer that I gave.
There could be peace between us
if it wasn't hostile chaos that you crave.
I keep letting you kick me down
because I think that makes me brave.
I don't how to love you like I'm meant to.
I'm unsure why this is how you behave.
Grit your ******* teeth, you *******,
time to finally leave the cave.