Decades of industry speak
has polluted the vernacular
our cultural literacy has reached
dazzling hieghts but our ideas
have become threadbare with use
and the element that made art
is missing, lost in algorithms
you can download on your phone
and pimped out by YouTube
video essays and the sponsor segments
that fuel a burgeoning industry
of future exclusions and despair.
We're all thought transmissions
floating in the atmosphere
lords and ladies and battles
and songs and millennia of
triumph and tragedy and strife
replaced with canned laughter
because the sound of our tears
didn't hit the editor's ear just right.
Ten once in a lifetime catastrophic
events in every decade I've walked
this earth have numbed me to
the sense of awe that those men
had as they watched the cloud
rise over barren American desert.
I have seen Death on the periphery
of my whole lifetime and find
that I am so well acquainted with
it that the fear has been replaced
with a muted sense of resignation.
Yes, of course this is how it is.
This is how it's always been.
If we just keep "yes anding" to
the absurdity of every new day
we might claw our way clear to
the surface and breath rarified air.
Or we'll end up as Sisyphus
pushing the Gordian knot of
centuries of tangled unsolved
problems for all of time.
Or we'll be lost in scattered airwaves
when we fail to hold viewer interest
and the channel gets changed
to a more colorful and exciting
kind of suffering.
We're not historically good
with the Nielsen numbers
because we always shoot
the Blue revision.

Years ago we four stumbled
drunk down neon streets
and ate takeout chinese
on a marble park table
encouraged by a man who
made bird calls for drinks.
We were alive.
So ******* alive.
You flirted with every girl
in every bar we ever found
ourselves careening into
like flights without navigators.
We made dumb jokes
kept almost exclusively inside
and ordered manly dark
colored beers and whiskeys.
our loyalty without question
or peer we stayed steady.
We found the booth in the
corner to squirrel away
from the noise and the others
and talked about music
and comic books and youth
until we were drunk enough
on spirits and company to
talk fear and hope and pain and love.
Capital L love, boys.
You feared there was no one
out there waiting for you
and the two of our four were sure
we'd found, in those blushing
soon to be brides waiting at home,
our reward for long service.
And you worried you weren't
the type for settling down.
And in some ways we were
all right, in some ways not.
Love was a mystery
and we're talking history.
I loved all of you then.
Just so you know.
I love you all now.
Although,
it's been a long
time since we've all been
together, you are still who
I mean when I say
"my friends".
For what it's worth,
and I hope it's worth plenty.
It's been years, but not quite twenty.
I talk to other people now in group
chats and conference calls
and there are loyalties and
inside jokes but you guys,
the four of us they are not.
Good guys. But not like us four.
We were real friends.
Brothers by blood and by calling.
Young enough to care
too much about one another.
No one could replace you
though far away you might be
you still burn away in memory.
One of us will probably be
laid down in that old pine box
before we're all in the same
room again, and that makes me sad,
but the future waited for
no man and time got away
from us.
You were the best friends I ever had.
And we're distant these days
parenthood, careers, conflicting
schedules and life styles.
Nothing broke us up, no blood is bad.
I would trade our time for nothing
but I wish I'd known that
small and simple fact
when time was something
we all still had.

Lovers in mourning stand at
odd, opposite angles and reach
for one another through growing
animosity and they watch
with trepidation as the love
that had named and defined them
presently withers to nothing.
Maybe once they had hope
and maybe once they could
lift hands and touch pain away
maybe once they had each other
Guide posts in the darkness,
made suddenly impossible to read.

Walking down the street
on the way to a lifetime
of further nonsense
a tune sprang to mind.
Simple and sweet as a
a summer day.
She once whistled it while
you swept the dining area
of that apartment you'd
shared together.
A cleaning song,
she'd said,
from when she was young.
You'd not heard it before
she whistled it to you.
Now it lives in you, too.
A vestige of her youth
that you'll carry forever.

Patchwork people
A little yesterday planted
to grow today.
Tomorrow is another
person's problem, perhaps.
Once they had each other,
Lovers in mourning.

Plunge into icy depths
I remember waking to
****** knees on the sidewalk
outside your house
hungover and so *******
desperate.
I remember the cold in
your eyes and my bones
and the words,
"Go home."
I remember the walk back
stiff and aching.
You spent years bloodletting
only to move on to
another chump when
the veins ran dry in me.
I crashed into puddles
filled with frigid Feburary
rain water and felt the
frozen blood move in
disused chambers of a heart
I was certain you'd ripped
out and mounted to point
and laugh with him and your
friends, who never liked me
at all, anyway.
Nothing hurts so bad as
the first time your heart
shatters in your chest.
*******, the skill with
which the damage was done,
like a surgeon or clockmaker
set to careful work at the task
and equaled only by the
precision with which it was
built up again from the ruin
by nimble fingers and
careful consideration, sweet
words and earnest patience.
And it was months before
I felt the "*******" inside
me leaking out
and months more before
I felt nothing at all.
One day she said something
and I smiled because it was
funny and you didn't cross
my mind at all and I didn't
know it had died then
but that, that moment with
her, was the end of you
living inside my heart.
And we didn't last either
and I don't know what
became of you or her
but love isn't made to
stretch and rebound
it lives inside all the others
and it waits with quiet
patience for you to
search it out.
Love is out there,
again and again,
just waiting to be found.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If I could just pull the
stars from the sky,
one at a time,
I could rewrite the
universe in a shape
more pleasing.
If I could just exert
the confidence inside
I could lead us all
toward the burning
tomorrow alive inside
my head.
If I could just fix the
myriad things *******
wrong with me I could
stand tall and become
a person of record,
worthy of note.
If I could just forgive my
mother I could put
these old demons to bed
and be whole against
the sky or at least try.
If I could just forgive myself
No.
Never that.
If I could just get out
of this bed I could empty
the sink of ***** dishes.
If I could just make the bed
I could lay tomorrow's
outfit down and feel like
in all this ******* I
for once have a plan.
If I could just get this laundry
done the constant dull
echo of time-distant pain
would go away and I
could feel like a person,
for a change.
If I could just learn to love myself
No.
Never that.
If I can just hold out
until he's in college and
she's happy I will
die with that *******
wrench in my hand
and not all of it will
have been a waste.
If I can just hold on
I could wade in just
to my nose and struggle.
Wait for it to end in dignity.
Still, it is remarked in refrain:
it isn't over!
Not yet for them
but my sun set a long
long time ago.
The sky is dark now.
If could just find the light
I could trace the awkward
footfalls that lead me away
back beyond those distant
moon-leaden waves toward
the swaying city lights
where, in our home with
him, I will find you.
I will breathe deep
close my eyes
and hope not to sleep.

Lightyears away sit the
burning embers of the night sky
and I cannot chart the
distance between stars
with factors or maps
but given a tall ship
I will navigate a course
through ink-dark midnight
and light signal fires
in cosmic bodies for
you to find, I will brave
the darkened void
leaving light in my
frieghtened wake
to guide you by.
We spent years
passing in the night
before you refused
to let us pass you by
and two decades later
I return the favor
because a lamp burning
against deep and endless night
only works if, by turn,
we endeavor to keep it alight.
The waters now are calm
and that's a deception of
the deep, luring us into
complacency and rocking
us in time with each heart's
pounding and specific beat.
I'll stay awak at the helm, love.
I'll fight the dark and push off
sleep. I'll keep us afloat.
Water tight and far from
the ever present brink.

This time of year always
brings the memories.
Here they float
to find me in my melancholy
evening hours.
Float, days gone by.
Float.
Snow, four or five feet deep,
walkways carved into
city sidewalks and streets
and dreams of Americana
countryside livin' carried on
radios tucked into our
windowsills in front of the
frosted glass world we
could almost make out.
Float, ancient melodies.
Float.
I sat under an umbrella
in the rainy season,
feet dangling from the edge
of the fire escape, toes
just about grazing the surface
of the rising flood water.
Escaping into comics about
heroes living in our city
and always wondering why
they never came around
our neighborhood.
Float, my childhood heroes.
Float.
Suddenly suspended in nothing
I am afraid of that
ship, of those memories.
I swerve my head
trying to steer away.
So anxious I become
conscious of the weight
(Of the wait)
and worry that I'll sink.
I breathe slow. I blink.
There in the distance...
Here you float
from somewhere deep down
and long, long ago:
A blanket laid against the
scratchy roof surface
our backs to hell, our
eyes to the bursting explosions
of color against the night sky.
Our beating hearts beating,
for one night only,
for each other.
Your hand finds mine
and my face is hot
and I'm unable to look
at you, but you are all
I want to see.
Float away, love.
Float.

We cut up this country
in miles per gallon,
punctuated with roadside
attractions and the yellow-green
median strips on highways
painted across purpling
distant mountains and
the ever absent affection
of young parents trying
to put thousands of miles
between the fight and
who was right.
Finally we got stuck,
like an axe in a stubborn tree.
We stopped moving
we grew a fixed address
and a waiting tragic
second act to sit in.
There is nowhere and there
is there and there is
right ******* this second
but we're always here,
just right ******* here,
and broken hearts won't
solve it and tears won't
stop it and nothing can
save us from the darkness
over that horizon
no point in begging
we just gotta live it.
It's funny how many places
have a Cambridge
how many streets are main.
It's ******* darkly
hilarious how often
you'll find a mean drunk
******* and cowering
scared kids.
Have a look in any
old mountain town and
you'll find us there.
Sing a song, Guthrie,
make it mean something.
Teach me the magic you found
in the bottoms of bottles
in the ends of needles
in the warmth of strange beds
and under night skies.
I want to learn to forget
because the limping
is giving me away.
I want to learn to forget
because all this remembering
is ******* killing me.
I'm full up on ghosts
and haunted by old hopes.
Oh, I learned the swear words
and prayers and the little
hours of quiet terror.
Love comes in so many
forms, no one warns you.
We notice all the little details
like a television detective
who only notices the
signs of his ordinary tragedy
in other people's kids.
What a gift we've been given.
At night we put out the
lights and close the doors
and we close the bottles
and whistle from the porch
into deep dark night
for the dog and for
the mystery and we
brush the day from
our teeth and our faces
We lay in the dark
facing the bare wall
and we remember everything.
I miss feeling youth
in my bones and blood
but I never want to go
back to being young.
I'll always love you,
you *******.

We were stunning in
the dying light of the moon,
full of consumed caffine,
mouths like ashtrays,
the whooping roar
of the cracked passenger window.
Music playing low now
so we could hear the breaking
hearts in our voices
as we raced dawn for
that distant horizon line.
******* we were beautiful.
Invincible as a wall that
has yet to be knocked down
and full of the confidence one
has before they've made the
very big and important mistakes.

You and I and our secrets
sat in parked cars in dark
parking lots and talked about
pain in a way that only people
who've never really been in love
can talk about pain.
You turned the radio up
because the lyric that would
change my life was about to
come on and you stared at me
and I counted the freckles
in your eyes and on your nose
and we learned, second hand,
what each other's brand of
cigarette tasted like.

One night you layed on the
hood of someone's car,
was it mine?
and you said you couldn't
wait to find out how this
all turned out and I said
you were beautiful and
you were and I don't
remember where or how
but maybe we're still
waiting to find out.

I miss them now,
old friends and lovers.
But the night is not long,
not anymore, and the days
bleed together
and I can't find you anymore.
Maybe I'm not looking,
not really,
not like I used to.
Nothing is how
you remember it.
But hold on to the
memory, anyway.

When I hear myself scream
I hear your echo coming
back at me.
Howling at the moon,
just like you taught me to.
I feel your rage boil away
in my blood.
Running my tongue along
my teeth and trying
not to remember the
comforting burst of copper.
But the way I feel sick
and hollow inside, the hate
I always feel for myself,
that's all me, man.
I worry that the bruises
and the broken bones
and the bloodletting
weren't enough to get
your poison out of me.
I'd lock myself away
on moon bright nights
if it came to that
and often I've felt the
sickening pull toward
rending flesh and shedding blood
felt the unconscious twitch
of a hand raised,
knuckles out,
you *******,
and I know the curse is
strong still inside me.
There is forever an itch
for the easy way.
I know how to circumvent
understanding and empathy.
I know the paved smooth path
to becoming the beast.
I'll always wear your mark,
you ragged old creature,
but I don't have to
live your life.
I don't have to find
someone else to bite.

We got history wide and
terrifying as the sky
and we're screaming a
million different versions of why
at crashing waves and
and big hollow lie.
I don't know if it'll get better
but we've just got to try
because one day soon
it'll be over, spent as a sigh.

If we had the ******* music
we'd need a key change
a drum coming in over this
slow corded refrain
marking the start of something
anything that might just
breathe life into me again.

Smoke off musket barrels wafts
toward the forever just beyond
the sapphire sky and mingles
with in the clouds there in a dance
waiting to expire against eternity.
The blood seeps into the ground
but somehow does not spoil
the earth it contaminates.
Take from that what you will.

The ship tears apart as the
lighter front end lifts from
the cold black sea and shudders
in the air before screaming
it's seperation in the ancient
moans of protesting metal.
We build them much bigger now
because we dare and we do
and we never ******* learn.

We got a history, you and I,
volumes enough to publish,
big as the whole ******* sky
and it'll be gone forever
just as soon as we both die.
I don't know how to take comfort
in forever in this blink of an eye
but if I know anything at all
I know how to say goodbye.

A prize fighter stands and sways
a lifetime of bruised flesh
and broken bones keeping
him on his feet after the
latest in a long series of beatings
has left him here again
in that nebulous space
between living and dying
and still he hasn't got a prize
he's still got no answer.

There is a question burning
away in our cores and we
ask the universe every day
in different ways and often
for very different reasons.
Some of us have a theory
a hope locked away
a secret wish
but none of us have an answer.

He could get up again
but he doesn't know if
he'd make the count
doesn't know if he counts.
After the pain and the
abuse, after a lifetime
of violence
he doesn't know what
matters or if he ever
even did.
Blood and sweat are moving
in rivulets, slow and uneven
threatening to blind him
and his opponent is still
out there, moving
unlike the blood and sweat
in tightening
circles around him,
waiting for him to fall
or failing that to
start beating him more.

I want to believe we get
better as it goes
that time doesn't march
away from the best version
of ourselves but it's
more difficult to tell than
one might imagine.
We were stronger and faster
yesterday than we ever
will be after tomorrow
but that day's knowledge
makes a difference, too.
I hope.

Maybe he'll win the match
maybe he won't
the pain follows forever
and the glory is gone
before he'll really be
able to enjoy it.
There might be more
to life than endless battery
and constant recovery
but he's only ever known
the fighting and he
learned years ago the only
secret he's ever needed
how to take a hit
and still stand up.
Damage is inevitable
like death.
The boxer flirts with
the inevitable
in search of
an answer.

I cant seem to get the words right
or find meaning on a moonless night
or impart wisdom from an endless fight
I mean to but cannot, try as I might.

It's all inconsistent meter
and rhyme schemes which teeter
on the edge of verse but too eager
I wonder am I even the speaker?

God, give me a second try at youth
I swear I could do a better job
I know the pits and traps and
I know how it feels on the other side
of wasting it.
I know I could be me better.

I heard a song on the radio
from when we were young
and I thought of all the promise
when we'd just begun
and I've loved you like crazy
even though I know it's not
been enough.
I want you to know that I fought
too late to be greater
perhaps too late to be good
hopefully not too late
to be loved
or too late to be understood.

I can't seem to get the words right
You've got vision and I've only got sight
You've got power and I've only got might
You grew up yesterday and I haven't quite

I can hear you breathing
beside me at night, curled in your blanket
eyes shut but not tight
and you look like twenty years
of versions of you I've known
you smell of warm comfort
and feel just like home.

I've been avoiding the mirror lately.
For reasons of my own.
I want you to be happy
You risked much to get here
and taken hit after hit
gritted your teeth and swore
to love and commit.
I'm in constant awe of your grit
your charm, grace and whit
but I wish I'd been a better fit
as your prize for fighting in the pit
I'm hardly a get. Not even worth it.

I can't seem to get the words right
or the structure, and what's worse
the language is halted and terse
not remotely poetic.
Just formless verse.
Language cannot frame my regret
or my mortality, or hue.
And if it fails to frame me
it could never capture you.

I think of love in
terms of distance.
I look at life as a
motorbike journey.
I've never bought a
second console controller.
I know solitude with
the same warm
familiarity as my
father's laughter.
I'm a go-it-alone man
in the age of teamwork.
And it isn't working anymore
like it used to did.

I wish I could lay my head
gently on your shoulder
and explain how the
suffering never seems to end
or how the breaks are
still broken and I'm never
actually on the mend.
I wish I could open up myself
and bleed out toward healthy
but instead I hide the pain
and become accustomed to
always playing pretend.
And it's now all broken links
on chains that no longer bend.

One day I won't wake up
and the choices will no longer
be mine to make about
where I go and what I am.
I hope I learned to love you
like you need and deserve
and I hope that...****.
I hope, little guy
that I told you
I said the words
because I mean them.
I am insubstantial
and meaningless
in my specfic silence
unsaid as a life story

Pushing through water
is a human face frozen
in time forever.
Hung on walls in the
stuffy offices of
guidance counselors
accompanied by frivolous
encouraging platitudes
and are meaningless as the
echoes of happiness
sprinkled throughout
bouts of depression.
Just once I wanna feel
the earth move underfoot.
I wanna hear the swell
of the string section
as I say the oh so quotable
one liner about pushing
ahead in spite of pain.
Just once in the *******
miserable suffer I wanna
be the hero of a story
with a happy ending.
Stucco walls and yellowing
ceiling tile dominated my
earliest memory and now
blood, sweat and hard labor
define a period that ends
when I do.
Ring the ******* bell, Ref.
I can't throw in the towel
but I can't do this
anymore, either.
I thought we were dancing
before the lights came up
on a theater of embarassing
mistakes.
I thought we were building
but surrounded now by
all this debris I can clearly
see we were breaking
all this time.
Amazing the difference
a day makes.
How slowly the chorus
of shouts turned
to couplets and verse.
I can smell the bread
baking, early morning
downtown and the world
seems at peace but
only because the people
the thieves and the time wasters
are asleep and the streets
are empty.
The world rose colored
but still deeply mean.
Now calm and pleasant,
if not better or clean.
The illusion is nice
like coinop or tarot,
but it isn't whole.
It's all bone and no marrow

There is so much orange
in these polluted sunsets
and they're beautiful but
the silver lining is breaking
and all of our silly smiles
are starting to look just
exactly like when we're faking
Where is our blue collar hero
callused hands soaked
in motor oil and turning wrenches.
Wasn't he supposed to dip
his toes in Americana
and save us from corporate concerns?
We while the time away in
Endless forever
composing sad love songs
tinged with sepia yesterday.
When will he get here?
I hope it will be before the words lose all meaning and the world burns.
I don't know what it'll take
to hurry it along
we're living on our knees
and breathing in every lie
but they're stalking like lions
in deepest night
waiting for the funeral
but they can't have it until
we just give up and die.
If we take this step
they warn and they warn
it'll mean our very sudden end.
If we insist they remove the scourge;
but still I feel my sneaker move
my toes weightless at the ledge.
And I smile, 'cause baby,
you'd better sing me a dirge.

Color me with Technicolor
like prisms casting light
meet me in the middle, love
'cause I don't think we'll last the night.
Find me in your multi-chambered
beating, hungry heart
because all this screaming,
lately, is tearing us apart.
Whisper sweet nothings
instead of just demanding ***
or start getting ready, honey
to pester whoever comes next.
I don't want to argue,
I don't care if I'm even right
just please come to the table
I just don't want to fight.
No one said it was gonna be easy
but how is it this hard?
I'm pacing up halls and stairwells
doing nightly rounds like a guard.
It was supposed to be transcendent
supposed to lift us off the ground
all we're doing is shouting
our better angels lost in all the sound.
We're still angry as the purpling
sky turns red with the rising sun
and we're promising to fix it
'cause it would hurt more to be done.
Color me in the nighttime hues
the dark blues after sunset
I kiss your finger tips and smile
we both know it ain't over yet.

I've been a lifetime trying
different combinations of words
looking for the series that
forms the litany needed
to cast the spell that'll make
me love myself.
Lost magics are these
somehow beyond my reach
or comprehension but are
all I would need to stop
living in the suffer
and the hurt;
all I need to look into
that ******* mirror
and care about it's
fat, stupid inhabitant.
If not a magic, maybe an art.
Perhaps I can learn it
with practice rather than
conjour it into being
like the skill that comes
from the repetition of sketching
the same line or shape
for hours and days.
I've drawn the character
I wish to be onto the earth
and in my place for
exactly one mortal age
but it still looks rough
and unfinished like the
frantic scratches and doodles
of a child before motor skills
can help to make sense
of their work.
Art, perhaps I've not the skill.
The right art can transform
wht couldn't it transform me?
Magic, perhaps I've not the luck.
The right words in the right order
could save me.
Ancient magics or arts
whichever it may be
that I am certain that
once I knew, before the
thick fingered punishments
and judgements.
Things I understood before
the casual unkindness
and ever present violence
learned me my value
and taught me to think like
a tool on my best days
a weapon on my worst
and a lump of useless ****
the rest of the time.
I do not know why
I continue on from day to day.
I do not know if it's
some form of love
that even I am able to
show to myself
or if it is rank cowardice
and I'm not sure if there's,
when you think about it,
even a real difference.
I may never know
what I don't know
and that, I'm sorry,
is one of only a handful
of things that I know.
Perhaps the right words
in the right order
will fix me.
The right sketched lines
in the right place
could make me forever.
Perhaps that's too
much the ask
of magic or art
but I've no other clue
where else to start.

Do you remember?
Do you recall?
The story starts
the same way,
don't they all?
Once,
There was a storm raging
against the outside
of the building we
were in that we could
hear through the wall.
We both reached for
the same object
at the same time
and there was something
in the casual intimacy
of that brief touch
that I've thought about
all my life.
I've been chasing lightening
through dark skies
and old mythology
and coming up hollow,
empty as a promise to behave
but I'm still hunting
it down as I while away
these humid dog days.
In the soft wet soil
with Nimoy tracking
In Search of...
but finding questions
answered, discarded or
pointless and losing
years in the rabbit holes
that I fall down.
What was the magic
of a moment just after
I knew what I know
but before I knew that
I had no clue what
I know, afterall.
And how do you explain
a longing for something
as ineffable as a fleeting
moment of comfort
wrapped in nervous
flirty laughter?
Once,
I found myself attempting
to recover and laid
out against a bare floor.
You floated over me in
dimples and sunlight
and soft, sweet kisses
or...am I remebering that right?
I'm sitting in the Summer
trying to relate to
Winter how I got
caught up in the Spring
trying to explain the Fall.
Still, fires burn
and waves crash.
Babies are born
and nothing will last.
But for a moment,
years and exactly
one lifetime ago,
I was okay with it all.
I found comfort
in the thunder
and shelter
in the squall.

There are great cities
coursing through my blood
and old mountain ranges
trapped in my DNA.
I am as much where I've been
as where I'm still going.
I am memories of the
excitement of screaming
life on steamy night time
city streets, routine tragedy
lit in neon lights and
the film noir sounds of
cabs and trains rushing by.
The cold street savy intelligence
that we all ignored to
play pickup on packed
streets, or swim in the
local members only or
smoke cigarettes and wonder
what life'll be for us as
we grow in anonymity.
I fell in love on a subway
platform and on building
tops and fire escapes
where buildings jut like
teeth reaching toward the
star absent moon filled sky.
I recall the pine scented
sidewalkless roads of deepest
Appalachia, the wind cut
rosy red cheeks of chipped
tooth kids scheduling their
meetings in advance.
Finding each other on school
yards and bus rides home.
Learning to love in crisp
mountain air and flannel
wrapped forms.
Building fires and seeing
in her eyes something
as wonderful as the hundreds
of thousands of stars in
the cosmic painting of the sky.
I settled in the brick row homes
of somewhere inbetween.
An alley behind the house
and a wall shared with a
neighbor in a place that
knows and throws
block parties
to recall my first love
and a yard and treeline
in the distance so as not to
deprive my boy of that
uniquely East Coast
forest and the magic of
a night sky full of color.
I long for yesterday
but have learned the hard
lesson of compromising
all that was once my
yesterday with what is now
My today in order that I
make a middle ground
for tomorrow

Pardon me while I
repeat myself
in angry verse about
the usual things:

Death and violence
neglect and silence
abuse and regret
lost love and nebulous yet.
I try to think of brighter things
like your eyes or
the sound when the little guy sings
but it all turns cold
and I can't do as I'm told
and soon these things fall apart
and so I give up before I start.
I try to write myself out
on an ocean of wasted ink
but lose lungfulls of air
and finally just sink.
I don't know why you love me
and I'm afraid to ask.
I'm incapable of teamwork
and never up for the task.
I'm always seven words into
my biting verbal sting
before I realize it was me
who said the wrong thing.
And I know it's hard when
I shut down, it feels like lies
and ******* my silence
but that's me trying to apologize.

When I was young
I tried to call the thunder
and marveled when it came
but the dry dirt still cracked
and peeled, just the same.

Time marches foward with
little regard for you or me,
and of course much has changed
but I wish I could still ******* believe.
Remember how sure
we used to be?
Running around with dreams
and the myth of meritocracy.
Years ago we were strong
as a lapping ocean wave
or the mile wide light and heat
of a forest fire blaze.
We were songs stuck
in each other's swollen head
we were so ******* alive
absent a mounting sense of dread.
And I'm lying if I say I didn't
think back and miss us then
but I've been scraped along a lifetime
of disappointment again and again.
There is hope still for you
to climb to success, I hope
but my dreams have gone,
I'm at the end of my rope.
It's a hard thing to have learned
and to know better.
It's a hard thing to listen to
her go and to just let her.

She moves like low fog
settling in place
leaving no sign or signal
or any particular trace.
It isn't on purpose
oh no, dear me, far from
she longs to be thought of
gladly marching to your drum.
She spent her life in
hope and holding her breath
shambling from one approval
to the next like living death.
She heard them throughout
like a distant echoed shout
and learned to care for others
learned to just do without.
Build us a temple
fit for the age.
Make us some content
and watch them engage.
She longed for the one
who would light up her life
so she kept walking
along the edge of the knife.
She thought she knew what
was needed, round about
but finds herself coward
and so full of doubt.
She was taught right from wrong
and where to begin
She was made to know rote
the varied qualities of sin.
She was oh so prepared for
the tightening noose
education metered in daily
lessons and routine abuse.
Made different from the others
but told not to stand out
She blended in like kale
was as common as grout.
Talents were hidden behind
practiced and placid modesty
average and ordinary
plain yogurt, not prodigy.
It is a difficult journey
when you try to atone
and she knows that, she does
but she is terrified to be alone.
She slaved under winter freeze
and through summer melt
and hoped to be noticed
or have her absence felt.
She often worries about
what she's already become
but has no clue that it's over
that the damage is done.

I've been thinking lately
about tumbling into space.
Spinning heel over head
through the cosmos
in intergalactic freefall
for the rest of always
and how familiar that
would feel to me.
I've been thinking that
if I could change the entire
fundamental makeup of
the slowly migrating universe,
to warp space and time, would it
be to my benefit to do so?
Small changes ripple outward
having profound consequence
on things we cannot even
fathom the connections between
and is it right?
Is it Good, capital g,
to make those changes?
Is it worth the risk of
losing this to illustrate
the profundity of it?
If I could move stars
would I do so for you?
If I could compress gravity
enough to warp time
would it even matter
that, from a
specific perspective,
we'd technically have
more time together?
I've been thinking lately
about forever
because it doesn't exisit,
it's an abstraction,
a thought given etheral form,
but it is also the only unit of
measurement that feels
consistent with what
I feel for you.

I've spent counted years
terrified of what those
hands could do.
I'm forced to keep a record
of their works,
a tapastry of scar tissue
and memory seared into me
like a branding.
I have shaken awake
like colors swirling together
into screaming horror
in a paint mixer.
Every choice I have made
good, bad and indifferent
has been informed
by the childhood you
stole from me with
your violence and
your base, spiteful meaness.
You drank yourself,
nightly, into oblivion
and took the day you'd
self-medicated away out
on three scared children
and still not a day went by
that you didn't make
sure they knew how
******* big you still
thought you were.
I was convinced you
were evil incarnate.
That you were larger
than life and too bad
for good to touch.
You took my mother from
me, turned her into
a sobbing wreck,
alternatively apologizing
and pretending nothing
was even happening.
It was so cruel, so precise
it just had to be on purpose.
You drove me so far
into the darkness
I was a lifetime finding
my way back out
and I assumed you'd
known what you were doing
and I learned to hate
everyone and everything
and I started with you
because you taught me
to be that way.
You taught me how little
to trust, how unhelpful
hope can be, how a little bit
of light or laughter only
makes the hurt deeper.
You turned me into an engine
of spite. You taught me how
worthless love can be.
How important it was to be
tough, unfeeling and cruel.
You taught me to be exacting
in my actions, and people
praised me for the lessons
you cut into me.
With distance and with time
I see a different you.
Beaten, as you beat me,
scared and lost and
small, so very ******* small.
You had no designs
no great plan.
You're a little man
who felt big by hurting
some kids.
Nothing original there.
You're an ordinary monster
and I'm not afraid of you
any longer.
I wanted you to know
I do not and may never
forgive you for what
you did and what you are,
for what you made me,
but I do understand.
You made sure of that.
Maybe that was your plan,
I don't know.
I think perhaps you were
not smart enough
to have a plan.
I learned to always have
a plan.
With our cruelty you
accidentally gave us cunning.
I know, it bothers me to
think you may have helped
me in any way, as well.
But I have always had a plan
I have one still.
I have one right now.
Wanna know mine?
I plan to die with the knowledge.
My plan is to make sure
my son doesn't understand.
You must've been so lonely,
you oridinary monster.
I don't need the company.

Raised on absence and responsibility
we've moved from one catastrophe
to the next with no moment to pause
and take a collective breath.
We are a generation growing old
adrift on a raft in these choppy
oceans of neglect.
We are atuned to a universe
that doesn't care if we live or die
shoveled into our mouths were promises
of better lives if we got degrees
if we gave up our needs and forsake
or learned a trade or worked long
long hours and never took a break.
But here in the future we're broke
gainfully employed with no hope to retire
no pension party planned
one day, we're expected, to arrive at
the work site and simply die.
No paychecks left to send
no gods left to ask why.
We're a turn of the century generation
watching old mistakes repeat themselves
but being asked to wait our turn
if we wanna complain,
there are two or so generations ahead
of us who still have the floor
and one nipping at our heals
demanding so much more.
I think the world will forget us
and our arbitrary, necessary pain.
I think they move on to Z and Y
and treat them just the same.
Stiff upper lip, chums. It pays to be silent
in fact your silence is brave.
The generation that killed tradition
walks toward the same traditional grave.

I had a dream that
I was young.
That my lyrics were
unwritten,
my second verse
unsung
the final bridge
still hidden.
I woke to the same
empty sky.
I trudged to work
tired and old.
I wonder what you see
in me, love.
You're fair and wise
with all to offer.
I'm lowly and small
you're place is above.
I work and toil, sweat and bleed
but cannot fill the coffer.
In youth we made sense
but no longer seem to
you've grown out of me
but have yet to leave.
I'm full of points but
the good are few.
But you hold my hand
whispering, "I still believe."
I search the histories
for why
but am unanswered
and left cold.
I have burned this candle
down to bleeding wick
and myself along with it
all ash and regret.
I don't know the magics
or the secret trick
to accidentally be happy
at least, I don't yet.
In dreams I'm young
and so very strong.
I take your hand
and love the sweet notion
that life, our lives
are more than song.
We're giant as moons
pulling on the ocean.

If you've the gumption
you can watch the soul
burn right outta me.
Any minute now it'll
hit the ground in
a smoking heap.
You can marvel as my sails
deflate and gasp, the scandal,
as all my dreams crash
to earth like space debris.
We're not looking through
rose colored shades
we're here to talk on
the whole uphill thing.
I don't know if it's left
the station or not
but I don't see even
dim light down the line
and I've been at this
platform for ages
waiting on a train
don't come.
I was made in the image
of failure and loaded to
the brim with potential
without drive.
Cast out into a world
with nothing,
told about plenty
and mocked as I struggle
to survive.
I am the king, lord over
all I see, of having just
enough rope to dangle
like a possibility above
an ocean of
try hard dissimive noises.
Metaphor pushed here
beyond the breaking point.
It's hard to describe
with words
but it was painted
in violence clear enough
for me to understand.
Without pressure gasoline
goes stale, left in cans
in the garage until it's
only usable in the lawn mower.
Online influencer culture
leaves me cold,
television shows are barely
on TV anymore
and the lives of friends
and family are curated for
timeline efficiency to the
point of unbelievablity.
No one posts about the fight
or the bad vacation.
No one admits that their
kid says a lot of real unwise ****, too.
Cursed with lackluster
millennial ambition I now find,
nearing forty,
myself in compition with
Instagram accounts of people
I have known for years
but never see and
I hate it.
At least from the bottom
of the well you can
see the sky,
at least from nothing
one can still hope
to climb.
The final embers of my
soul are dying out
growing cold at my feet
where they fell
and I wish I could say
they burnt like a
funeral pyre throwing
light into the starless
night sky and warmth
like a blanket across
the world around me
but I'm cold and it's
been dark a very long
time and the train
has yet to arrive.

Waiting in the nebulous
some day
is a hole that has yet
to be be dug in the ground
and we hope it
stays closer to
some day
and doesn't touch
soon.
We picture it as
a looming figure
in deep dark robes
with the gums pulled back
on a corpse smile
somewhere in the inky
depths of the hood.
Bone fingers point
toward our suddenly
very certain future
but that isn't it.
Not really.
It's that
Some Day
we're afraid of.
We stuck a stick
in the ground and
divided the shadow
into hours
strapped it to our
wrists and have
been terrified of it
ever since.
Nothing else on Earth
is worried about
Some day.
Just us.
They put a countdown
on our phones,
so important is it
to know how close
we are to over.
It is so vital we
can look over the
distant,
fingers crossed,
horizon and see it.
We invented a unit
of measure so we
could,
with growing fear,
count the seconds until
The End.

Yesterday I held you, buddy
in the palm of my hand.
You'd crawl up my chest
when you'd nap
in search of warmth and
the steady drum of heartbeat.
I watched you learn to smile
and I celebrated your
most minor accomplishments.
That was you and me, little guy
that was us, yesterday.
You drew a monster today
on a coloring book page
and it looked vaguely
like the monster on the cover,
you'll never believe how much
that my heart broke.
Tomorrow you'll be grown
the next day you'll be gone.
The world spins
uncaring circles through
time and space.
I looked out a window
and watched steam rise
from a gutter into
a beam of light on
a rainy night.
I watched the dance of
temporary and forever
and felt small.
I watched you light up
when I came in the door.
You laughed and smiled
and screamed, " Daddy!"
I felt powerless in a
brand new way.
Pages fall away from
the calender in the hall
and I want them back
I want more.
You'll leave one day
and maybe I'll already
be gone.
My father never told me
his story.
I never asked.
I am proud of my
independence and will
one day be proud of yours.
Doesn't make it hurt less.
Doesn't give me any more.

Under all the suffering
is a drum beat.
Staccato, like rain
on a tin roof
or the steady off beat
pounding of a heart
filled with fear and love
and it moves in us,
slithering under skin.
A parasite growing fat
on the swell of blood
inside us.
One word and our feet
leave the earth
as suddenly we're
soaring toward the stars
at a velocity high
and strong enough
to break gravity and
punch a hole in the atmo.
We're baseballs, our skin
shed, as we sail over
the parking lot outside
the stadium.
A glance and we're
crashing through car
windshields and bouncing
off of highways.
We're burning up on re-entry
hoping our time outside
the suffering made a
difference, hoping that
one ******* time in
all this stupid, sensless
daily pain that we
scratched important.
Hoping we mattered.
We are high metaphor
wrapped in low fantasy.
We were young and
in love and it was extraordinary,
even though it was
so ******* ordinary,
because it was happening
to us.
Does anything ever
feel that big again?
We are always chasing
oceans inside ourselves.
We contain multitudes,
as sure as I'm alive,
and all of it fades
into nothing,
as sure as I'll die.
I loved like an ocean,
like a wild summer storm.
Burned like starlight
distant and faintly warm.
I once lit up the night
just like approaching dawn,
We burn hot for awhile
then one day: we're gone.

I have never owned
a glove that fit well.
I sleep best with
thunder in the distance.
I don't always know
where I'm going
but so far I've always
known when I got there.
Listen:
I'm not here because
we're perfect.
I showed up for the
mess.
I'm not staying because
all the pieces fit.
I just love all the
noise.
I didn't come here because
it's easy.
Because, love, it never
has been.
I'm here to put the
work in.
I'm here to labor
until it's just right.
You captured me with
those eyes
and you've kept me
and I've loved being kept.

I have built my home
in the silence between screams.
I've earned my keep
with shattered back and bad knees.
The ends are no comfort
and I still weep over the means.
I wish it was a happy story
but it's always been just as it seems.

Foot prints in the snow
left for you, should you follow.
It's not exactly easy
and it leaves you god awful hollow.
But there is strength, not peace
as bitter a pill as one could swallow.
And everyone talks about sunlight
but there is no sign of Apollo.

There is little of love
and nothing to help cope.
There is limited patience
but endless miles of rope.
There are boundless depths
beyond measure or scope.
There is almost no light
and absolutely no hope.

There is roof over head
and no view of the sky.
Everything is truth here
there is not one comforting lie.
I'd make attempts to give up
but can't be bothered to try.
I have built my home
where good has gone to die.

Everything is over, everything ends
ecxept the daily weight and strain.
We were promised purpose
and fed catastrophe and disdain.
We were given sugared dreams
of sunlight but left out in the rain.
We were sold on endless mindless
pleasure and walked away with pain.
We want for things to be different
but it's always the ******* same.

They saw the hard turn coming
and steered into the skid.
They didn't ask our opinion
because heaven forbid.
The bottom of the jar is broken
don't matter that you got a lid.
Parents climbed to safety
but didn't leave ladders for the kid.

We know the ship is sinking
we've water to our chins.
We live in constant hellfire
but have committed few sins.
We had a promised future
it's been chucked into the bins.
Nothing ever seems to start
but everything begins.

I spend my days
strapped down
holding my breath
and bleeding out.
The world grows and
changes and is
ravaged by time
and tide.
Frost blankets the
morning world
and heaters go on
to warm the windows.
When the sun finishes
the cold night air
envelopes me and
if I can stop the bleeding
I will go home.
I'm getting older
how is it that time
is standing still?
I hear laughter
like distant thunder
with ears cold
and raw.
Skin chapped by wind
fingers shaking like
Electric Football
and dreams dying
on the vine
words dying in
the cooling evening air.
Sudden phone call
as a car changes lanes
without blinker.
Swearing into the phone
but alive
what passes for alive.
Breathing hard angry
clouds of chilled air
in rapid bursts.
Knowing the embers
in my heart are
burning low these days.
I was going to set
the world on fire.
But my spark casts
no light. No heat.
I've become November
In early August
because the playing
is done and the laughter
is over and only
the work is left.
Turn on.
Turn wrench.
Turn in.
I'm going to turn this key
And I'm going to hope the
engine turns over
so I can leave and
so I don't freeze.

Once, long time ago,
I was hungry
and I was strong.
I held you up,
carried you effortlessly
like a tune in a song.
Money was tight
and we were unprepared
but love was there.
It didn't make it easy
and it didn't fix the hurt
but we didn't much care.
Our timing didn't match
and I'd go to bed
as you left it, pillow still warm.
The blanket bunched up
beside me and underarm
in a parody of your form.
I missed you then
in our empty apartment
with a sharp, painful keening.
But the absences gave us depth
a pause in the action,
a break to find meaning.
God, those were the days
and we really lived
each and every one of them.
Hard as they were
flowers don't get to have
petals without first a stem.
Our love was forged hot
like the steel of a
battle ready sword.
Our course charted
and mapped for us
to point ourselves toward.
Things are better now,
I have you so often
money's less a trouble.
But we only stand this
tall today because we stand
on yesterday's rubble.

Broken eyesight and
shaking, weathered hands
reach toward the open
ocean and take in
what is there.
I wish I'd loved you
like you'd deserved
like you'd wanted me to.
Mixed into my hair
are strands of white
and I can feel the decades
in my knees and joints
but you'll sleep, forever
only ever twenty-something.
I should've missed you
when you were gone.
I should've felt your
heart through phone lines
and digital lines of type.
While you were one
of the many and not
one of my lost.

I know you wanted me.
I know you cared.
I know you were open.
I know you were always there.
If I'd been better or more
if I'd been different
if I'd cared...

I want to apologize
because you deserve it.
Because you always did.
And because I mean it
and that changes the
shape of the thing.

I'm moving closer,
all the time,
to that waiting pit.
But you beat me there,
by more than a little bit.

We live inside an explosion
and mistake trajectory
for free will and we talk
about nothing. We just
perform meaningless tasks
and boggle at the scope of
existence and how miniscule
it makes our lives seem.

We are each a record of failures
and success and sure
time is an illusion
but how we perceive it
is all of who we are.
A loosely held collection
of memories and half
recalled facts.
Most of, but not all of,
a thousand different
stories and opinions.
Piles of electrified dust
and water in the shape of people
haunted by the memories
of where they've been.
We are ghosts inside
homunculi all hoping
we're not going to stop.

We will, though.
Stop, I mean.
What we do and where
we've been will become
meaningless in the grand
big picture.
Our smiles will be forgotten,
our laughs, too.
If we're lucky our names
will be spoken in a hundred years,
but most of them won't make fifty.

I don't know how to
explain this,
but here goes:
That's why all of it matters.
All of it.
All of us.
The big picture is every thing.
The small ones are everything

So many years ago now
my canvas sneakers crashed
into the cold water of puddles in
our wintery East Coast city streets.
The ratty and frayed ends of
my jeans absorbing the
freezing liquid until the
cold damp was almost to my knees.
The notebooks in my bag,
filled with the near incomprehensible
mathematics of young heartbreak
and the earliest sparks of
drafting talent,
and also the stray notation
copied only occasionally in classes,
jostled dangerously; threatening
to fall out into the cold and wet
world of early January near
the Atlantic.
The trees were long bare,
and I wore mostly flannel
and denium and the absurd
certainty that I would be remembered
long after I no longer walked
these city streets or moved from
class to class inside the halls
of my high school.
I fell in love with a girl who
I knew was too good for me
and I drank and smoked in the
thin wood behind my school.
I made promises of eternity
that I only half suspected that
I couldn't keep and I screamed
full throated with the endless
viger and vitality of youth
into the darkened clouds as though
to seed them with ice cold rain
through the sheer power of
my determination.
I was righteous, though often wrong.
I was proud, though of what
I couldn't say.
I was powerful and I was alive.
I was electric.
I was lightning, crashing into
the earth and demanding to be felt
insisting I be known.

These days I'm not even thunder.
I'm a river-smooth stone.
My edges have been pared off,
my exterior polished to shine.
I'm on display in a suburban home,
occasionally noticed, complimented
and just as soon forgotten.
I watch life go by and it seems
faster now than it was.
So glad you could come.
How are the kids?
What was it you did for a living?
Does any of this matter?
We were meant to move the world.
We were meant for more.
I was supposed to be more.
There will always be then
and time may be an illusion
but it feels like we're coming
to the end, regardless.
We're all just moments in a life
and when those moments are
forgotten what's left only
looks like we did
Once.
I used to care so much...
I am a ghost haunting my own bones
and I dream of distant thunder.
I look at the darkening clouds
but do not dare.
Do not scream.
I do not believe I can call the rain.
I struck this earth once
but I can never strike the same
place again.

I found an artifact from my
ancient life, filled with words
and drawings from before
I was your dad and it is with
some trepidation that I confess
it caused me to cast my mind
back to those days and look
upon them with fondness.
I used to be a different man.
Harder in many ways,
unhappy, lonely even.
I was, however, unburdened.
You'll know what I mean
someday.
On that day you'll have already
broken my heart by leaving
and by growing up
and by not needing me
to help you put your shoes on,
which we both agree now is a
pretty tricky thing to do.
And listen, I want you to
break my heart. I want so
much for you, my littlest man.
One day I'll find an old shoe
of yours, behind this or in that
storage box, and I'll remember
that once you could nap in the
palm of my hand.
You would throw your arms
out and demand, with a coy smile
lighting your eyes, to be carried.
To be held.
I wanted the world to be better
for you, bud, and it's not
and I'm so so sorry.
Someday you'll know what I mean.
But not yet Lil' guy. No need for
that just yet.
Not today

I heard your voice
turned through digital
lines and distance
into a hollow shadow of itself.
You screamed my name,
almost roared with that
wild lion power you've
never kept secret,
tonight, you'd say, tonight!
We're gonna fix you, man
and then we're gonna
save the world!
We're gonna burn our
faces on the surface
of the moon so big that
we'll be the advertisement
for Earth throughout the cosmos.
You and I, love, cosmic
ambassadors.
And we'll never feel alone
in the universe, my love,
because our faces will be
there together, for always.
Tonight, baby, we're gonna be
forever.

Royal blue floral patterns
painted in tight rings
on bone white china plates
on red and white checkered
tartan table covers.
White wild flowers growing
randomly in the dark green
grass of the lawn.
Clouds drift happy and high
in the smooth light blue
ocean of sky above the
dark brick fronted home.
A bicycle sits on its side
in the blue/gray gravel
driveway, its kickstand
never used, its front wheel
still spinning.
It would be bucolic
if not for the lifetime
of bloodshed.
It would be barncore
******* beautiful
if you could ignore all the screaming.

You sit nearing forty
doing nothing noteworthy,
doomscrolling and
wondering when the
wisdom comes.
Sure, you mocked
us when we broke against
the distant ground
because you had the
knowledge not to leap,
knew where to keep
planted firm with both feet.
But now you worry
at why we seem to know
why we move confident
you wonder at the secret
behind our success and your stall
and the truth is there
is knowledge not to leap
but wisdom comes from the fall.