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 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.

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.

When I sat in bare white walls
with unbought picture frames
and dusted ash from cigarettes
I was just usin' to count the days
I never fretted about the meaning.
I didn't care, then, about the end.
There is a cruel poetry in the
many and varied way things change.

I've never thought a greatness
or said something wasn't already said.
I've never been first up a mountain
or even spoke kindness to the dead.
I'm better at silence than talking
and I always leave everyone on read.
I'll be late when it matters
first into the breach, last into bed.

I'll love you until I'm finished
until the earth swallows these bones.
I'll miss you when I'm lost in darkness
with my heart failing and made of stones.
I'll feel you like whispers in my hope
light the dim blue light cast by phones.
I've lost all reason I'm all discordent
a melody of solitude absent of tones.

When I was harder and lost and alone
I didn't worry about the future.
Time was still on loan.
I don't got answers. Don't know from true.
I know things have now changed,
but it's too late to fix, loan's come due.

Last night I started digging.
Tunneling through miles
of dirt and pounds of flesh
and leaving red wine droplets
on mud covered tile in my wake.
I scratched fine deep furrows
into my arms and legs
and wondered at mortality
as I watched 'em bleed for days.
Somewhere inside there's
treasure to be found
buried deep and hidden,
like a secret,
somewhere underground
or perhaps it's metaphore,
to add spice and substance
a tiny bit of charm
to an everyday benign chore.
What, after all, would be the harm
in cutting through the corded
tendon and raw meat
of the arm or in throwing
fistfuls of moist dirt
at an ever growing mound
and knowing you'd done
no real wrong?
Last night I started digging.
I don't even know what
I'm looking for.
I've put mountains of dirt
over my shoulder
added to that growing pile,
and I don't feel any better
though I'll keep at it a while.
I've spent countless hours
racked with nerves or anxiety
or guilt, an old catholic standby,
and I'm not saying that
I'll find my answers in the pit,
but I just can't see how it hurts
if I just wanna live with it.
Digging for answers
digging for treasure
tunneling toward profundity
on our way through.
I wonder why we think
the process is worthy
when the result is what
we avoid talking about.
The digging is in service,
at least lets admit the truth,
permit us all the option to be brave
we think we're out here
digging for answers or truth
searching for our
reurn to Plato's cave.
We're not digging out wisdom,
We're digging out a grave.
I'll burrow deep into the chest
in search of heartache
and then, weary, I'll rest.
Beyond bleeding or dirt
is purpose and truth
and so much more ******* hurt
but I'm digging, searching
to soothe an old painful need
stop my broken heart from lurching
from one minefield to the next
kisses and smoking craters
old flames and great heaving wrecks.
Last night I started digging.
Looking through blood and sinew
tree root and rocky soil
for the happy ending.
I ain't found it anywhere I been to.
I'll keep going tomorrow.
It isn't over yet. I don't mind.
I'll be searching forever
or until I learn what it is
that I hope to find.

I read the passages of giants
from the scattered debris of their wake
and I feel my soul splinter
and my shoulders quake.
I don't have these powers
the qualities that work to seperate
the detritus like me from
the very best, the great.
They have booming prose
with gravity and magnitude
and my own scrawling throes
is more often slim, crude
they belong in company on Olympus
while I merit only solitude.

I've divided the individual
failures of decades of hate
from the love shaped residual.
I can't see lost or departed hearts
among the horizon line
and the myriad false starts.
I am now about six months shy
of the burning need
to work harder or even to try.
Love what's left or don't bother
it's all only finite time
and I can't go on any farther.

Life is what life will be, I guess.
All inherent need and ache
for hours of pain and stress.
I'll grow and change until
one day I don't,
it's not about won't or will.
Things work out, they always do
one way or another it ends
with or without me or you.
I love you just like thunder
following the fury.
Drowning, love, going under.

It's only a moment to bare.
It's a whirlwind, a maelstrom
but it's only short term care.

The truth is
you aren't the
one who got away,
my long lost love,
you're just the
one who didn't stay.

There was no life
we could've comfortably
lived together
We had that one
******* summer, kid,
we never had a chance
at forever.

You wanted more
when I needed less
you needed better
but that was my best.
I know the love was real
we tried so hard
but temporary was
always part of our deal.

I know it isn't easy
swallowing a bitter pill
can be tough
And although I love you, madly
sometimes even love
ain't enough

I am digging through the zietgeist
for complicated meaning
and answers to questions
I've been sorely needing
but finding my pop culture
references are all aging
and the rest of my peers
are through staging.
The construction has long begun.
They've moved toward purpose
and still standing on this lonely
hill I find: I'm the only one.
I put my dreams and hobbies away.
I became a toolbelt
a punch card, a rope begun to fray.
I think I thought I'd be him again.
That man I so briefly was
at the lip of the wolf's den.
But I don't know how to mend
I don't know that man well enough
to even know start from end.
Gone at the turn and kept in
place still running until I've become something with which it's easy to reckon.
Where's that **** and vinegar gone?
The blood between your teeth?
The last fading embers of your dawn?
No one gets to do it again, my friend.
It only goes around once.
To each one start and one end.
I'm getting sick and tired of painful truth.
Give me pleasent fiction to enjoy.
I'm short on time and long in the tooth.

Life is made up of
pit stops filled with
people you knew.
Long stretches of road
between, empty of all
but your own company
until you stop again
and meet new people.
You stay with them
for a time but eventually
all relationships end,
even the ones we
promised each other
were forever.
Maybe especially those.
We make promises of
time we cannot live
long enough to fulfill
with the casual unkindness
of a natural disaster,
mercurial as a sudden
daylight summer storm.
And so we bow, hand in hand,
with the current round
of players fretting the stage
with us, or else slip away
with an Irish Goodbye
in spite of what we always
said we had meant to each other.
Still, we go back to that
dusty, lonesome stretch
of jagged road and head for
distant horizons.
And we feel bad,
maybe, in measured hours,
but mostly not at all.
Life moves on and
we find this sitcom's
cast of characters from
school or various jobs
replaced by the next
group from school or work.
Group chats will one
day go inactive and
the constant chirp of
digital friendship will
be as silent as a confession
of teenage affection caught in the
back of a young man's throat.
Some days we'll hear a
familiar laugh or see
a once discussed TV show
and it'll draw it out:
we'll have moments
when we miss the days
when...
But, don't let yourself
dangle when you hang up
on those thoughts,
because it may be sad
when one thing dies
but it isn't really the end.
Nothing is ever really
The End.

Give me a fast horse
and dark purpose
and watch as I burn
down the night time sky.
I'll pull sack cloth
across the cosmos
darkening the starlight
and bringing the evening to a hue
closer resembling pitch.
I'll take a fireplace poker
from it's rest and raise it up
and poke holes to
let the light through.
I'll make new constellations
of pin ****** and let
you name each and every one.
I will always be here
as long as you never leave.
I'll always be true
so long as you always believe.
No one will ever hurt you
my love
while I'm here and alive.
I'll love you until it hurts
until neither of us can survive.
I'll love you in absence of light
and long after hope has died.
Give me a fast horse
and dark purpose
and I'll chase the dark from the skies
I'll track it to whatever dim cave
in which it then hides
and bring light to a world
full of outrageous lies.
And if you'll search me out
'neath that bridge on the outskirts
of our lonely, haunted town
I'll love you for always
for as long as I'm around.
I don't know if lost things
can heal completely once found
but I've been lost for so long
in such a state that I would
gift you forever for a song.
A sweet deal, should you
love me back
a tad massive in scale, I guess,
but serious as a heart attack.
Give me a fast horse
and dark purpose
my love
and nothing will save me
from the great waiting fall.
But, I'll go down with a smile,
I've been so alone, afterall.
Give me a fast horse
and dark purpose
a smile, a working of the jaw,
a hangup and an intractable law.
I have a loss, a win, a draw.
One ounce a hope my fatal flaw.
Give me dark purpose
and a way out of here.
Without you I'm empty of cheer.
An escape rope, to make myself clear
I've somewhere to be, somewhere I fear.
Give me a fast horse
and by evening I'll be long gone.
The curtain can close, finally drawn
around nights wasted in endless hold on
before the breaking light of dawn.

The past is like a hangover
memory in my skull.
Barely remembered and sorted
in headachey chaos.
I don't recall, in detail or
even in any semblance of order,
the events of my youth.
I know this or that thing happened,
but when it happened in the
sequence alludes me.
I don't remember where my
head was or the other worries
I had the night we were over
or the day we began.
I can't picture giving you
a rose and dancing in the
hallway of our workplace.
I know it happened, you told
me it did.
I don't remeber tying your shoes
for you and imparting any
wisdom, poor or great, but
you told me all about it.
You said I brushed the hair
from your eyes before I really
saw you for the first time
and that my doing that made
you really see me.
The events, kiddo, gone like
smoke on a breezy summer
afternoon by the ocean,
but the feelings I'll always
recall the emotions of the times.
I remember feeling things bigger
and stronger than I ever had
or have felt since.
The sequence is meaningless
but the emotions meant everything
to me back then, and they have
all been shadows of those feelings since.
And that's good, that's exactly how
it should be, after all.
Yesterdays were for dreaming
of tomorrows, todays are for
thinking about yesterdays
and tomorrows may never come,
but I'll still have loved you all
as best as I could with the
limited powers that I have.
So, here's to the feelings we
left in yesterdays in the dim hope
that they'd help shape today.
And here, raise your glass higher,
Here is to tomorrow,
I know we ****** it all up
so, let's hope it never comes,
or arrives very gently
and does little to worsen
our poor headaches.

Let's make a list of all
the things I've failed to be.
We'll start with successful
and work back toward infinity.
If wasted potential could
be shaped like stone or clay
I'd be a pit fit as a source
that'd last until the very last day.
From the very bottom
I've scaled toward the middle
and along the way fallen
in stature and grace, just a little.
But still I'm on the front lines
fighting for the American dream
my hours consumed by employers
my words lost in the scream.
I got broken bones rattling through
me that never quiet properly set
I'll probably die of blood poisoning
or some other kinda self neglect.
I'm supposed to follow up on conditions
but can't afford to lose the day
I'm supposed to love myself better
but no one else ever did, anyway.
I'm not supposed to write these words
men shouldn't burden with complaints.
I'm just supposed to shut up
don't tug on these cumbersome restraints.
I know you want me to prize myself
more than I really try or do.
You guys want me to love myself
but I only ever learned how to love you.
I've taken all you see and love in me
and I've put them in this letter.
I'd mail it to myself today,
but maybe tomorrow is better.

Commands and demands shouted
down bloodlines in dead languages
carrying an urgency matched
in intensity only by the obscurity
of the meaning lost on me.
I've been a distant third since
before anyone else was in the race,
measured, forgotten, denied
easy to ignore or to replace.
Love and acceptance always seemed
the unattainable golden ring
born in the hands of others
but just beyond my own reach
I'd make my way without help
or affection. Fixated on fighting
the monsters of the dark
that everyone else had light enough
to keep away, until the same
light inside you also seemed
to keep me at bay.
Without the shared warmth
of the crowd I grew used to
breathing smoke as the venom
of jealousy in my stomach
bubbled and burned away.
Snapping loose the hanging
icicle barbs around my heart
became a task too great
and now the path in is covered
by a near impenetrable gate.
I don't know what others feel
they are owed, by virtue of
being born into this place,
but I've learned to expect nothing
because when I tried to
give you my love
Nothing is what you gave.
There are echoes of you
in my pumping blood
but you've hidden your heat
from me.
You've filled all around you
with what you have and
what they'll stand to have you be
but you've taken in incremented
turns from me.
Leaving me hard, perhaps,
but also empty by degree.

When it's over will tired
bones rest below the surface
in dry dirt and clay or
will they be compelled, once more,
to rise with the dawn on
forever unfinished work?
And which would we prefer?
Because tired and beaten
is a scene we've rushed toward
eternal silence to be done with
but the sacrifice is tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
And sure, trudging uphill
through pain filled rooms
with congealed blood pushing
in our viens is hard
but the sun may still rise
on the sweat of your brow.
And when it's over will
there still be love?
Will there still be need?
And what of the stiffness in
our backs and the sharp
stabbing looseness in our knees?
When the time comes do
we just stop or is there some
idea shared of what might
come next?
Would that be tragic or
would it be best?
When it's finally all over
will they wake in mourning
and live in slowly healing
lament?
And will he, after looking
at the total collection of
my life's works and worth
still respect me in the morning?

Leave it to Linklater films
to figure out what life is
we're rivers of blood seperated
forever from the greater ocean
we are constantly told we're
supposed to be a part of
and we walk around this
spinning ball of dust
and historically significant bones
wondering why we feel so
******* alone all the time.
On a sub-molecular level our
surface bends against the
surface of all other things
meaning, on a quantum level,
we never actually touch each other.
We sort of repel, in fact.
Maybe that's why we try so hard
to write ourselves into each other.
Can you feel me, in these words?
Do they stir in you the same
things I feel them move inside of me?
In this way, with text and grammar,
syntax and purpling context,
do you feel the bumps raise on
your flesh almost as if in
anticipation of the moment,
after the strings have swelled
and a valley of sweet percusive
harmonies have laid bare the
beating heart of the piece
you know a crash of cymbals must
be on the way?
Does hair stand on end on
the back of your neck when
you read, like a whisper in your
ear of late summer time regret
for feelings left unsaid or said
only in jest as the days grow shorter
and the time for action disappears,
at the words, in sequence, that
I've chosen to seranade you with?

Leave it to folk bands to figure
out what love is.
You and I are running at a sprint
against the wind toward the eternal
tomorrow and we've got no
idea how to engage the brakes.
We're on Barry's cosmic treadmill
without a clean understanding
of escape velocity that we need
to get off and go back.
Can we go back?
And inside our clothes
they will find only regret and
our time smoothed bones.
I'm workin' on it
I swear I am.
After walking through a lifetime
of doors it becomes hard to look
at how few are still open
and suicidal, in a sense,
to open many of them back up.
We're very near the top
in this endless climb.
This will not be a satisfying conclusion,
just a landing between flights of stairs.

I've not become bolder
with age,
but so much more afraid.
I don't miss being young
not really,
I miss having options before me.
We both know what most of
our days
will be between now and the grave
and for some reason we pretend
to ourselves
and to the world that it's okay.

It is not okay. It just isn't.

But there, as the bard would say,
is the rub.
One days have become coulda beens
and the ******* tomorrows are
no longer endless
but corralled into a very small pen.
I don't use a rearview anymore
looking back hurts.
The world's changing again.
How many more times in just
my single lifetime
will we leave people behind?

I'm so sick of playing games.

Games that last a lifetime and that
nobody ever even wins.
Games that count out our lives in
color coded swaths of angry nonsense
like daytime television refugees
until we've bitten our nails all the way
down to the quick
and have nothing but quitting smoking
to hold above the marquee with
any kind of pride
Of course I'll need to explain briefly
to my son what a marquee was
our history is wholesale
but much of it was priced out
of our ability to purchase it.
Old tv shows streaming
on services like new content is
judged against modern values
because finally time failed
to matter and only content may rule.
I rant in hope of caesura breaking
into my random line
with finality and meaning.

There is no depth. This was not a discussion.

You fall backwards and
slide into the earth unbidden.
The contours shaped to a tee
around your every line and curve.
You fade and slip without remorse
or resistance to be found or given.
You may wonder why
I smile as you snarl and venom.
You've spent years throwing
dirt on my name
to match the petty and
filthy needs you crave.
Go ahead, dear.
I've spent this time
digging you a perfect grave.
You made poor calls
and I've made mistakes.
We've been together when
we ought to have hit the brakes.
You've considered me nothing
more than target or fodder
but this isn't a fight, love.
This is a ******* slaughter.

In youth I followed bitterness
and poverty down the
95 corridor and finally found
perfect gasoline rainbows and
humid sudden summer storms.
I found your wide, wonderful smile
and freckles and love and
so, so much more.
I know you fell long ago
and have built up around
your landing spot a lifetime
of interconnected infrastructure
and much of it has lost the
sentimental spark it had
when, so many years ago,
you first erected it. I know.
Maybe now, so far down this
road you met me on,
the feeling is more distant
inside you than once it was.
Changed. Mutated. More
a memory of great passion
more than a physiological pull.
There is comfort in my doings
and stability in my works.
Fond familiarity in my features
and that is enough for me.
All you need do is love me
in the echo left behind
from your fall.
I can live as ghosts do,
on half recalled longings
and in the phrases and inside jokes
in the little smiles you give me
like when rereading a favorite
book or laughing at a scene
from a movie you're fond of
in spite of repeat viewings.
I don't require any more.
Stretch your wings into the flames
of the pit, my love.
You've landed, long ago
and set about your calling.
I'm still lost in you, as ever
and I'm still falling.

I've been nearly forty years
spent just picking at this sore
and if bleeding me is winning
I wish I'd been keeping better score.
I don't know how to stop
it hurts worse than it did before
And if I don't start walking out
I'll just be crawling back for more
I wish I had something to sing
an answer or solution or a cure
but all I got are worries mounting
beating anxiety over what's in store.
White coats and medication
can't seem to fix what I tore.
Deep woods remedies and meditation
not even workouts for your core
Mystics and religion give scripture
and then walk you out the door.
Should you want to find me,
though I can't imagine what for,
Follow the trail of blood I'm leaving
'cause I'm too weak now to roar.
Trying to see a light ahead to follow
but can't stop staring at the floor.
I thought love could save me
if I wasn't such a ******* chore.
Don't ask me, after my years of looking,
for answers, love. I'm still not sure.

I'm so full of nervous energy
but I haven't got air to shout.
I'm scratching at understanding
with no clue what it's all about.
I'm six hours of sleep away from
another triple shift and I've slid
from past to present on the
slideshow of stupid **** I did.
The one that plays in my head
when all I want is anything else instead
the voice that tells me
better off dead
than loosed and unhappy
mean and angry and underfed
I'm so tired of talking to myself
about myself, I know you didn't ask
apologies sent but unrecieved
Still, I'm not undertaking the task
I complain out loud
to an audiance of me about how
I still don't got **** figured out.
I've heard so many answers
but none of 'em make any sense.
If I learn to love myself how
does that repair the fence
That I put up to keep all of them away
so I don't have to deal with
what all of 'em have got to say
I think we've learned talking doesn't work
and if I can't get a few hours sleep
I'll be another day running empty
How do I make me feel better?
What's the cheat code or the trick
to getting over all this *******
I've reached the breakdown
where it all falls apart
and I'm lost again
still not knowing where to start.

I can't seem to stop
thinking about the end,
about the final moments
the life I've worked so
hard to finally sorta
start to figure out
is over, finished
I've spent most of my life
selling my time to other
people and being largely
cheated on the deal
and I'm at the point
where the sand is
no longer in greater
amounts on the top
of the hour glass than below
and in the distance I can
just make out the rounded
edges that will mark
the empty place where dry
bones will soon lay at rest
and I worry what you'll get.
Will my legacy be something
you can hold high?
Will you reach into your memories
of me in times of difficulty
to use words spoken to you
in my atonal version of
warmth to help you get through?
Or will you just feel left behind?
Everyone leaves, given enough
tide or enough time.
Everybody goes foward toward
a reward of some kind
and they fade in the middle
distance as you sit behind.
It happened to me, too.
So, should you feel abandoned
when I'm no longer around
I'm sorry, buddy. I really
didn't want to go,
so long, goodbye.
I really hope you can
forgive me, but it's up
to you to do or say.
Tomorrow belongs to you
I still belong to yesterday.

Here's to absent friends
and present worries.
For clear skies of blue
or storms and their furies.
To our now idle hands
and our unfulfilled dreams.
For the cough drop weekends
and the week full of screams.
To you and I and the we
that we've now become.
And to the many varied pasts
we stole each other from.
Because everything changes
that has once begun
and because after every rising
there's a setting sun.
I do not wish to know the wonder
and terror of whatever comes next.
I'm a terrible student
and life's a hell of a test.
And finally here's to you
my very big, little one
I'm a boy become father
because you are my son.
I hope you'll find peace and love
and all that you deserve and need
just please do your best, son,
but just don't follow my lead.

Time is a Springsteen song
in that it may not have happened
at all to anyone but it almost
definitely happened to all
of us, if you squint around
the details, a little.
There was no front porch
in my youth with it's old
wood boards creaking
under foot as we danced
to the tinny sound of our
portable radio playing the
eras of blue collar rock music.
I don't have recollections of
suped up hotrods and
engine heavy motorcycles
tearing up the east coast
suburban streets as white
knuckled operators behind
the skid learned to forget her
or just finally felt something
come alive inside 'em again.
No dark red hair blowing
in the wind as her long skirt
sways like a flag to the movement
she keeps her hips in time to.
Somehow, though the details
are so different
I find I still miss it.
I remember tapping our
feet to the open car door
deep bass beat, sirens calling
like the song of our people
in the distance and the
hard to describe but always
present constant low hissing
pressure of warm city streets.
I remember swaying with
her in place, my hand on
her shoulder as she smiled
and laughed at my lack
of "Island rhythm" and I
know she wasn't named
Mary but it was still American
yesterday and I remember
it all in weather beaten sepia tone.
I remember riding our bikes
to get pizza together
a group of us, trying to
stay together, but not get
noticed by the cops,
and the weird anxious
feeling of forever and fleeting
that mixed together just
to trouble my thoughts.
We were going to be young
forever and we were never
ever going to die.
We'd be in love forever
and we'd always see eye to eye.
I don't know what became
of you, I hope you're well,
we've reached the age where
looking backs hurts me
more than I know how to tell.
A million years ago,
yesterday, that intangible
all at once way time works
if viewed extrademensionally,
like a helicopter taken
to see our old city from above,
it looks the same, but different.
It's all at once and it no longer
looms over you and makes you
feel small and also like you belong,
somewhere in all the mixed up
time stream nonsense we
went out of our way one
Thursday to get guava and cheese
empanadas from that hole
in the wall place you like(d)
run by that Korean guy and his
Mexican wife.
Your skirt never kicked up
to the far away sounds our
radio played, but somewhen
we shared that emanada
and even though it hurts
and even though I'm somewhere
farway from your view
it was my pleasure to have
been able once upon a time
to dance with you.

I cast out into the dark
letting the line drag across
the surface of a river
lit by neither moonlight
or halogen bulb and I ponder
the ever increasing presence
of entropy in our universe
and mostly in our own lives.
I haven't got a reference point,
nothing to point to on the
far horizon, no lyric pulled
from an oingo boingo song
and given false depth now
that it can breathe without all
the stifling context it had before
it was excised by way of example.
I've lamented a mouthful of
purpling nonesense and let the
truth go understood, perhaps,
but most certainly unsaid.
I am concerned now with what
happens at the end
because credits won't play
and I've prepared no coffin
in which to finally lay
And I'm tugging so hard at
my beard that my bottom lip
is flapping in a silent mockery
of language and I don't know
what it would say to a lip reader
but it means stress to me.
I've got lives at stake
and mouths to feed
and one thought starts
and sorta then just bleeds
into the next idea until
it becomes a nightmare
of neurotic over think
just like me.
I had my hand on a metaphore
that was, generously, unclear
but the truth is difficult
to parse and I'm not sure
how to start or with what chart-
The sun has gone down
on things I thought
were forever and the
sudden impermanence
was a shock to my system
that is still rippling out
like the water around
the fishing line I've cast
into the dark.
I'm too old for
wait and see
but I reel the line in slow
and what I hope to find
on the hook
out there
in this dark?
Frankly, I don't know.

When I was young I had insomnia
I would stare at the ceiling
picking up on all the scattered
ambient night time noises
a bedroom could make and
deaperately do the math,
If I fall asleep now I'll
have x hours of sleep.
I was awake.
And I was alone.
I'm awake and writing this
late at night, my wife and son
asleep in the room with me,
her by my side as she always
is, I'm so lucky to have found
her in all this ******* chaos,
and the boy asleep on his
little kid bed, his room empty
because I still don't have the
heart to turn him away and
send him back to his nightmares.
I lived enough of my own,
little man, you can sleep here.
Protected.
I'll fight the monsters,
as a boy I learned how
and it used to bother me
because I had this skill
which allowed me to survive
but I'll never have need of it.
Never again.
Baffled me,
until you came along, bud.
I know now that I learned it
so that you'd never have to.
I can take a measure
of pride in my years of bleeding
but let's not speak too loud.
They're sleeping.
I can't sleep.
I've done the math.
I've done the pleading.
I've laid still and quiet
and tried not to think of the needing.
I'm awake.
Wide.
I wait for the heavy blinks
and smile because
I spent a lifetime feeling
alone and hopeless
and even though tomorrow
I'll be just as tired as I was then
I will not be alone.
I'm awake
but I'm home.

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.