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Sep 2019 · 103
Time and space and love.
Paul Glottaman Sep 2019
We are three years and six thousand miles
from sunburned kisses at midnight.
We're exploding somewhere out there
in the great somewhen.
***** of fire. Great is a coin flip.

I am sixteen hours worth of coffee
and who gives a ****.
I drag broken skin across dried Earth and scream at gods, old and new, that I miss them half as much as I miss you.
I've become an engine running on what could've been and what might still be.

Somewhen we're joining like atoms,
our collision giving startling birth to universes of maybes and an entire cosmos of prizes at rainbows end.
Crumbling into disinterested sentence fragments trying their best to contain sentiments of truth. My truth.

What are happy endings in all this ******* nonsense?
What matters anymore if nothing ever mattered at all?
Why does absence breed such boring ******* nihilist sentiment in me?
I'm fighting for better.
Cracked knuckles and sweat and blood given freely at the alter of hopefully.
Make me better.
Make me whole.

Somewhen we are a fire, burning together through the whole of time and space.
We were then.
We are now.
Always.
Love.
Always.
Sep 2019 · 141
Unfinished.
Paul Glottaman Sep 2019
He was the great regret!
The unfinished melody
going slightly sour in its final notes.
Once meant to be anthemic
now little more than a dirge.
The brokenhearted one that got away;
No tear shed or throat vice gripped
in the absence of you,
but changed none the less.
And make no mistake,
He hurt you and you hurt him.
Sometimes badly.
Sometimes very badly.
Because nothing shatters as completely as a heart,
"My God" say the old men of hearts,
"And not a one the same."
He's sorry.
He never meant to hurt you,
and he knows you didn't either, love.
Don't worry.
We hurt each other, we hack away.
We expose the pulsating and raw innards of each other.
We chip away at each other
Until what is left is the perfect shape.
You made him into her matching set,
And he fixed you for whomever came next.
And seriously, he hopes for the best
because he didn't love you the way you needed but he did love you.
Maybe you loved him, too.
Even if you don't miss one another.
You were broken notes.
It wasn't the right song.
You are the great regret!
The brokenhearted ones that got away.
Or rather, grew up,
up, up and away.
Jun 2019 · 91
Wake, rise and shine.
Paul Glottaman Jun 2019
Be the immutable,
immovable
immortal
for as long as is possible.
Push fingers through dirt.
Climb through earth and veins of
rock and root.
Wake, like the dead at judgement.
Wake.
Wake!
Rise like heat
shimmering away above the blacktop.
Killed by distance
or a clever eye.
Leave it all behind.
Rise.
Rise!
Meet the day at the horizon,
grab hold of the sun.
Push it into noon, into night.
Take the empty spot in the sky.
Illuminate the path for others.
Radiate the warmth from inside.
Shine.
Shine!
Jun 2019 · 131
The trappings
Paul Glottaman Jun 2019
I used to dream, my old friend,
how I dreamed.
In sleep I was a maker.
A creator.
I built and I drew and I crafted,
instead of living and breathing and consuming.
I was costumed like a fan at convention.
Dressed in the trappings of a sage.
Bad word.
God.
Dressed in the trappings of a God.
I will bow in my own worship before sleep.
Such sleep.
And in sleep I will dream.
Dreaming the dreams that let me do.

Now I mostly just am.
I don't dream. I sleep.
I just...am.
I wonder all the time if it'll change...
See me, friend, wilted on the vine.
Never knowing if I'm worth it.
Bad word.
Matter.
Never knowing if I matter.
I would like to.
I wonder if the world will wait for me.
I hope it will.

One day I will become.
I will be, finally. I will be.
I will stand in the fires of the firmament.
I will rise like the day or the phoenix
and grasp the tools, hammer and chisel,
in my two finished hands
and I will turn,
turn dear friend,
toward the work.
Such important work.
Wrong word.
Dire.
Such dire work to be done
and when I become,
when I become, old friend,
I will lift my fingers, ignite the sun
and get the ****** thing done.
May 2019 · 95
Devotional.
Paul Glottaman May 2019
Can you feel the heartbeat?
It's pounding on the door.
It's calling from the empty street.
Screaming for more and more and more.
Can you hear the fire?
It's ripping through my chest.
Branding my skin with the word, "liar".
Consuming the world with no pause, no rest.
Do you smell the rain, love?
Drumming a rhythm on loyal earth.
Beating on sidewalks. Falling from above.
Meeting out new growth and startling birth.
Can you feel my ache, dear?
Rattling injury through my bones,
telling me to rise up against my fear
and claim newly conquered thrones.
Can you hear my past?
It whispers swear words in deepest night.
It tells me I come last
try and try as I might.
Do you know my love, dear?
Dripping devotion saccharin in it's sincerity.
I'm going to try, love, I'll always try to be there.
I want you see my love, crystal in it's clarity.
Apr 2019 · 360
Millennial ambition
Paul Glottaman Apr 2019
Look:
I aspire to greatness
But keep tripping in maybes.
And I hope
I'm always hopin'
That I can be honest
That I can be open.
But I'm always closed off,
Always building walls.
And I only want to look tall
But I feel small.
And I don't think there's a god above,
But even if there was
I still think we ****** up.
Listen:
I've stood close enough to me to smell the scared.
I know I'm totally unprepared
I make attempts to be candid
But I walk around feeling branded
By the life and crimes that that man did.
Now I wish wish wish
On oceans of my weak willed ****.
But nothing gets crossed from the list.
But listen, look and beware
Because the more you haunt the more you care
And sooner than later you find them there
You've put them in your path to greatness
As an excuse to fake this
And keep moving around, shaking.
Bones cold, feet quaking
Hands tied from errands unfinished
And sins and wins and all those **** wishes.
Millennial ******* couched in garbage transmission
With nothing to show for years of effort but failed ambition
How have I been awake through all these lost years?
How have I allowed these trivial fears
To own me?
Beware:
It all catches you up, friend.
It finds finds finds you in the end.
But regardless of warnings given
We never ******* listen.
Shush. Pulse quicken.
Bomb's tickin', but our
War of wills has turned toward attrition.
**** it. Good riddance to worthless
Millennial ambition.
Apr 2019 · 122
For Peter.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2019
I want you to know how to like yourself,
because I never did and I've spent an unhappy lifetime
stuck with me.
I want you to be cautious where I was reckless.
I want you to understand the cost of your actions,
because I never cared for consequences and now...
consequences have become me.
I want you to learn to let people in all the way.
I want you to know how to be honest with yourself.
I've let no one in completely,
not even myself.
You can't be free if you can't be honest,
says the liar.
I want you to know your limits
and to approach them fairly.
I've spent 30 something years thinking
I was the exception to every rule
and now that they're all broken
I have no clue where to go.
I want more for you than I've allowed myself
because I love you
and I've never loved me.
You look at me to teach you these things
but I don't know.
I don't know how, buddy.
If there was a time I could've learned I let it pass.
My ambition, little one, has never equalled my potential.
Please, please if you learn anything from me
let it be from my mistakes.
However, if there was one thing I wish I could share with you,
one thing I think I do that you should,
it would be loving you.
Love you, buddy.
Please.
Jan 2019 · 224
Cover
Paul Glottaman Jan 2019
I feel like a cover of a sad song.
I'm full of someone else's words
because they're better than mine.
Because honest is so ******* hard.
Because honest takes so much time.
I'm six miles away from her childhood home.
2002 miles from where I was born.
He was born in town.
I want to tell him everything I learned from being around.
I've lived in valleys and mountains far above this ground.
I've lived in cities that stretch as far as the eye can see.
I've lived in towns where my last name is had only by me.
You two have it now.
One by birth, the other a vow.

I feel like a bad cover of a great song.
Almost meaningful but also wrong.
What do I do?
I live in terror that my truth is repugnant
to you.
That if you found out or somehow knew.
I get down, you know? I'd feel blue.
I know we've been here. Deja vu.
Oh, love. My love. Many once. Now few.

I'm an earnest cover of your song.
You wrote a masterpiece, love of mine.
You wrote circles around me one word at a time.
I just want you to hear your words
Spoken in my accent and tone.
To see how I love them. Know you're not alone.
How important you are to me, I cannot say.
So I've borrowed your Melody so that I may.
I want you to know, love:
You're the reason I live.
You're the heart of me.
You're who I wanna be.
Dec 2018 · 333
Broken Promises.
Paul Glottaman Dec 2018
You're going to hurt me badly.
Leave me bleedin' on the floor.
You're gonna love me madly.
I'll have you needin' me for more.

You love to kick me, baby.
You love to kick me around.
I wanna make you happy.
But I only ever let you down.

I think of you like a queen, babe.
I polish and shine your crown.
Don't let go of me, honey.
I swear to god I'll drown.

You make me something less, baby.
Heartsick, weak kneed and grievin'.
You're about my only hope.
You're the only thing keeps me believin'.

I let you think you lead me.
Yeah, you really lead me on.
I made you think you need me.
But, all you really need is me gone.
Nov 2018 · 179
Seat of power
Paul Glottaman Nov 2018
I've got my still beating heart in my hand
and a deep ******* wound in my master plan.
Im heartsick from carin'
what jacket Melina Trump is wearin'.
I'm scared to death of the future
and wondering how big a suture
it's gonna take to fix all the broken
in this system I've lost hope in.
A beady eyed orange inside the Rose garden
preaching hatred and no pardon.
A cycle without warnin'
the American dream in mourin'.
**** scared of a media he says is lying
while the country he stole is dying.
And I'm supposed to nod and smile
but I want that racist ****** on trial.
From the seat of highest power
we're being told to cower.
I want my promised better tomorrow
where great change isn't followed by sorrow.
So, you racist old liar, tell me when
America is gonna be great again?
Nov 2018 · 207
Alone together
Paul Glottaman Nov 2018
Falling backwards through an ocean of absences
with the quiet grace of aimlessness
together we have known each other's empty
we've learned about the small moments and the envy.
Traced our history and discovered little sad pieces of you or of me
and wondered if it was actually an ocean of absences or sea.
Spellcorrected sentimental nothings and autoplay left on throughout the night.
Towers of hopeful maybe and pillars of might.
Alone together all these many years and deep in study
until we've been kneaded smooth like so much putty.
I know you better than I know myself, she purrs in his ear
Ditto he whispers with new oceans of absent fear.
Nov 2018 · 253
Hasn't worked lately
Paul Glottaman Nov 2018
All my little life I've been lonesome
waiting for permission to feel like someone.
I've taken late night cab rides to nowhere
looking for something I still can't describe and it's unfair.
Have you ever felt like life was living you?
Have your days felt forever rather than few?
Have you ever wondered when you'll find out?
Have you started as a song and ended as a shout?
And my ears are ringing with the clashes
of late night cigarette ashes.
I'm trying to look at my hobbys
as something that'll save me.
But I know it hasn't worked lately.
I'm writing discarded definitions
in tired lines of worthless ambition.
I've spent half my time in finding,
but came up empty in reason.
All the endless searching is hurting
and lack of cause is my demon.
I'm tired of waiting on sunrise
and I'm always finally belonging when I'm leaving.
Kismet is ******* and I'm wondering how long until I get it?
I got six puzzle pieces from the wrong set
and making them fit isn't making ends meet.
I'm trading mental health for gas receipts
and living just to be seen.
I'm trying not to think of hope in a vacuum,
but I'm lost for reasons why not to.
I'm not looking for favors,
or easy ways out for good behavior.
I just wanna put down this hammer
cause the noise is making me crazy.
Feb 2018 · 158
Future tense.
Paul Glottaman Feb 2018
Let's talk, you and I,
let's talk about the end.
Discuss, with me, how it'll
conclude and where,
now that is,
we're meant to go.
Let's talk about growing up.
Growing old.
Let's talk about the light
and how it fades and bleeds.
Let's talk about the surprising,
and ever growing,
number of yesterdays behind us.
And the number still ahead of him,
because he hasn't even had one yet.

I want to find courage and depth.
I want the strength to face death.
I want you and I to believe we're not next.
I want to take this land with you,
length and breadth.

How we're still young,
but how that measure changes.
Falling sand, love.
You and I.
Falling sand in an ocean of sand.
I want the world for him,
and for you.
I wish, so often I wish,
that I could stop it briefly.
Just have this day for awhile.
But I understand.
I know what stopping looks like,
and I've seen so much of it.
Stopped and stopping.
Too much.
Falling sand.

I think, or I've heard,
that love will see us through.
I don't really believe that.
Do you?
I wish it could be true.

Let's visit this subject,
after perhaps a little time to think.
I don't know what waits,
and frankly,
I think it might be nothing.
But you know that, by now,
you know so much about me.
Let's talk, you and I,
about how we're closer now to the end
than the beginning.
Jan 2018 · 151
The work.
Paul Glottaman Jan 2018
Drops of blood, a little each day,
have become my love letters to you.
Scraps from labors rendered,
meals paid in sweat and fatigue,
the only gifts I can give.
I don't know if the rules are the same.
Once upon and long ago seem
removed from me by oceans
of various "who can recall"s and
"I don't give a ****"s.
I'm not sure if it was ever easier
or better.
I only know that it is hard and
I am worse.
My god, how you can greet.
You hug and you kiss and you express.
It mystifies me, these strange magic
that you and yours possess.
It is alien to me and to mine.
We are not a talk of love kind of people,
my family.
I don't know how to whisper beauty at you.
I only know the work.
And the work, my love,
The work is for you.
Jan 2018 · 183
A day in the life.
Paul Glottaman Jan 2018
There are echoes in our children.
Echoes of the people that put them here.
He'll have your eyes or her laugh.
They'll be made of compromise.
Now, of course there are the things.
Everybody has the Things.
Things that I do, that no one else does.
The smile you seem to have invented.
Make me feel like I'm important with your eyes.
*******.
What have I left you but echoes?
I want to give you something forever.
Something that doesn't fade, but I'm...

Smoke escaping a sewer lid mingles with street light.
Impermanent and forever, mixed in a moment.
When the rain starts it adds something to the dance
of light and smoke.
It adds another layer of
Just this Once.
My god, we are a moment.

I hope, when we meet, you'll forgive me.
Kid, I really do.
I'm all spiderwebs and yesterday, now.
I coulda, shoulda, woulda been and didn't.
You're echoes staring down what could be.
We are a little impermanent
a little forever.

We can learn to fade away.
We can learn to let sleeping dogs.
Together, we can learn to hope.
To dream.
The three of us could be yesterday, tomorrow.
Jan 2018 · 157
Giants once tread.
Paul Glottaman Jan 2018
Once a giant they fall through night skies
and into the empty loam where truth lies.
The greatest among them, coward now and small.
It wavers and wans where once it stood proud and tall.
All things, they are told, eventually fade and die.
All things retreat rather than give or try.

And so they crash through dim and distant tropospheres,
through fatally close and relevent new world fears.
They are trapped by binding digital text.
Caught forever in one server rack or the next.
They are ancient relics that once screamed hope at a void.
They are now cold, ignored and most of all annoyed.

Notice me, no one hears them cry into the intangible nothing.
Notice me! they keen and wail and empty makes the noise ring.
They are surrounded by their own unheard pleas.
They are bound to die forgotten and on their knees.
And what then becomes of us? You may ask.
Who, if not the giants and the old gods, will bring us to task?

There is no longer a force pushing us to crisis.
There is fear and there is cold and here is echoed lifeless.
And are we willing to reinvent the past? To pay these prices?
To walk with old giants and call them good and righteous.
If we were better we could fix this open blindness.
If only we weren't weak, tired and so bitterly indecisive.

If we only had one small chance. One good clue.
If only we could make manifest choice and brand new.
In glades we sip from blades of forest grass a rejuvenating dew.
If only we numbered in many and not in so damnably few.
If we could turn these broken gears and feel red rather than blue.
If we could be anything but ******* me and ******* you.
Jan 2018 · 158
Distant bells
Paul Glottaman Jan 2018
I've unpacked the letters you wrote,
and read them word for word and aloud.
I read them for the fire and for the sea.
I read them under millions of stars.
And I read them for you, love.
I read them for me.

I buried the wreck in the ground and walked away.
I promised to forget the noise.
Forget the pain and pretend away the bitter.
I try so hard to fix.
I try so hard, darling.
I remember everything.

I am remorse in the shape of coffins.
I am waves crashing against a shore of fretting.
I am worried hands fidgeting with the buttons on my coat.
I am the beads of sweat running down your back.
I am regret in the shape of a man.
I am the hollow sound of distant bells.
I am spoken word prayers ending up nowhere.

These things that we built are meant for decay.
We are proudly bound for pyres.
Words burn across the night sky and illuminate.
They tell us what we are. What we could be.
What we are not and should be.
What we were supposed to be.

Whisper me your secrets, dear.
I'll keep them. Press them tight to me.
I'm all read letters and buried wrecks.
I'm unanswered prayers to nowhere.
I'm disposable.
Use me. Let me course through you.
Let me find your heart by travelling your arteries.
Let me be the sore, the ache that reaches your core.

I'm putting the letters away.
I  remember everything, love.
I do.
And you and me?
We have so much in common,
and that hurts worse than I can express.
I pack them away in the wreck and walk away.
I vow on the fire and on the sea.
And I vow on you, love.
I try to forget about me.
Dec 2017 · 270
For him.
Paul Glottaman Dec 2017
I will dream in technicolor failures!
I will pass time waiting on the lawn.
Bored and vapid and given pause to yawn.
I'll send my hopes in colored mailers.
Drowned in nostalgia and memory,
another 30-30 something casualty.
And together we chase the white picket,
acid washed American dream.
And with loaded backroom schemes
we seek to find and punch the given ticket.

Where there was two we invite three.
He'll have ten fingers and ten toes.
Wide masculine shouldered and elbows.
He'll be, I hope, a lot you and a very little me.
He'll have a chance, ******* it, he will.
He'll be alive and screaming and needing.
His mind and body young and always feeding
He will draw from this earth until his fill.

I hope for so much more than I have got.
We take on water so fast without balers.
I dream of tomorrow in technicolor failures.
Help me, love. I'm twisted into a knot.
I need so badly to understand these things we do.
Our rings and our tiny king's teething rings.
I need to be kind and true and bold.
I need so badly to have and to hold
him and you.

We left him so little and wished him so much.
Isn't it a sad twist of fate?
Isn't it just something you love to hate?
Ruins where buildings should be. Nice touch.
Dec 2017 · 168
Meaning.
Paul Glottaman Dec 2017
I don't know how it got to safety last,
and cable television lifeblood.
I don't know when the dreams
got eaten out of you
and you turned into this.
Nonsense.
We were born screaming and unprepared,
we weren't meant for anything.
We weren't meant for this.
Was anything meant for this?

If we have nothing manifest
before us and no expectations
for better, and we don't, friend.
Let us be great, instead.
Let us lift those in need.
Let us sing the songs that bring peace.
I do not mean pacify, I mean peace.
Let us love the way we wish the world loved.
Let us become warmth and light.
And why not?
We aren't supposed to do anything else.

We are form seeking purpose.
We are lyrics without meaning.
We search for it, when we should create it.
We dig when we should build.
My God we can build.
What exactly do we think we are,
if not masters of our destiny?

Nonsense.
Oct 2017 · 304
My American Dream
Paul Glottaman Oct 2017
******* it!
I'm my father's son,
all wasted potential
and missing someone.
Dog tired and thirty-one.
Ripped and torn
awed and reverential.
nail bit and forsworn.

I want Rockwellian sepia.
Perfection and meaning
published in old print media.
The American visionaries resplendent
with firework dreams and consumed
in whitewashed, denim faded pleasant.

But it's you, my love and my meaning.
The person to convince me I'm not broken.
I hope to be the one, who can get you to open.
You keep me alive and breathing.

You spin me around and make me crazy.
Let me know when you want to, baby.
I'm tired of being built on maybe.

I'm an hour away from the American Dream,
but I'm terrified by the winning team.
I want you and me, Lori.
I want the old theater stage story.

******* it!

I am my father's son
all wasted potential
and missing someone.
Oct 2017 · 175
With me.
Paul Glottaman Oct 2017
I've got pockets full of *******
and hard and swollen eyes.
I want more than I have found,
I need something real and new and warm.
I got plans for leaving,
but I can't go without you.
I want a world of fire.
I need you to have me with you.
I need this journey, for once-
once in this hollow life-
I need this to not be alone.
I want you forever with me,
like we promised to.
I love you like identity,
I can't be me without you anymore.
I don't know when it happened, love.
I can't do it anymore.
Climb these mountains of doubt with me,
because I don't know if I like me anymore.
I know I'm better with you,
but you're not around, dear.
I think I want to be gone and away.
I think It should be me that isn't here.
I want you to reassure me.
I just want you near.

I remember sneaking out as teenagers,
hoping you'd hold my hand.
I remember not asking you to dance with me.
I remember wishing you had.
I remember wanting you.
I recall being scared to death.

I'm a real piece of garbage without you.
I'm worse than I'll ever be.
I'm broken down and beaten,
haunted by the demons you keep at bay.
I ******* hate it, baby.
Please look at me like I'm not damaged,
like you always do.
Convince me I'm repaired.
I need to be here with you.
Oct 2017 · 548
For you, Hemlock.
Paul Glottaman Oct 2017
I'm here to get broken,
to be torn into pieces.
Discarded on the floor.
I found you so I could be remade,
Built up from nothing,
so you could make me more.

Break my heart,
burn my soul,
scar my history
with yours.

Glass fragile and brittle.
Prone to watch you pout.
I want moth eaten dreamscapes,
but I just keep bleeding out.
I'm tied to this iron ball and chain,
drowning like you need me to.
Writhing here in pain.

Feed me your bitter poison, love.
Bleed me with your leeches.
Push me, dear. Push and shove.
I wash away like chalk,
Temporary and incomplete.
I need you, sweet Hemlock.

Don't ever leave.
Oct 2017 · 174
Just me.
Paul Glottaman Oct 2017
There is an absence.
It's killing me to say this:
I miss you.
I can't believe I haven't evaporated,
exploded,
now that you've gone.
State lines and power lines,
remember?
One less alarm
and it is so ******* hard to get up
in the morning.
One.
It's numbers, every day.
You know?
Arbitrary numbers that somehow
we've allowed to have an effect on our lives.
How did we do this?
How did we become this?
You worry about it too, right?
Two.
God, it's an illustration in futility.
I can't think.
I don't want to think.
To recall.
I don't.
I just don't.
You know how I am.
I can only barely live with myself, you know.
Don't know why I expected...
**** it.
Let's burn down tomorrow.
Let's set fire to it.
We can count the broken days
from birth to graves
and revel in it.
But, you know how I break apart.
How I go to pieces.
Wait.
No.
You left before that.
It was just me.
May 2017 · 226
Strings
Paul Glottaman May 2017
Everything has strings attached.
We're all waiting for it to start,
for our lives to finally,
******* FINALLY,
kick into gear.
But we can hear it calling.
Oblivion.
From a house, or a street
just a little further down.
And it chills to the quick,
to the bone,
one and all.
It calls us, friend, by name.
By our name.
How can we argue that?

I say we bleed out on filthy
tile floors in truck stop bathrooms.
The wound we walk through life with,
the one inside our hearts.
Let it bleed away.
Because, we are so ******* tired
of twin self destructive
thoughts chasing each other
through our minds.
Endless searching and finding,
for our trouble,
more trouble.

I will burn my heart out in the looking.
I will.
I will **** myself.
Shame myself.
I will lie to, twist up and hate myself
if it gets me where I need it to.
I am without hope or principle,
but I have a dog in this fight, friend.
You'd better believe it.

So shout it out.
Echo it down like mountain top hollering.
Make sure we all know.
We all hear it.
Make sure the whole world knows.
Remembers us.
We were here, future.
You don't scare us.
We were ******* here.

Be brave in the small hours.
We have it in us.
And time is tall, right now,
but as we move it grows so short.
We would **** and dishonor for tall time,
in only the space of a piece of lifetime.
We know it, and we know it well.

We get *******, though.
We move from place to place,
and from person to person.
We move, as best we can.
But the strings,
they bind us to earth and we sink.
Unable to drown, we breath in water.
And in the distance,
calling us by name:
Oblivion.
Mar 2017 · 317
Command Prompt
Paul Glottaman Mar 2017
...
.......
C:\Q&A;>

Question: Is this love?

Tearing pieces away so
the world can examine them.
Ripping apart the whole,
the soul,
for scrutiny.
Hoping with each lost,
shredded piece that value is
traded.
That redemption is given.
Ultimately, though, it is
degraded.
Devalued and purposeless.
Still, the work must be finished.
Still, it must be given,
the words and the feelings
that are foreign,
to you.

Answer: This is incomplete.

...
....
C:\
Mar 2017 · 236
The worst.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2017
I'm going to hold my darkness over your head.
I'm going to make you feel small and stupid.
My history will become the mountain you must climb.
I don't wonder about it anymore:
I'm the worst.

Always you want two things; it's never enough.
Two things which can't be had at once.
Always.
Of course I'll ask you how.
Of course I will.
Two things. Always.

I've been ******* hunger desperate and shelter poor.
I've been a hard luck, street wise,
charity case with no coin freely given.
A mean little ****, tempered in tragedy and shame.
Most my time was spent in various
states
of decay.
In urban squalor and late night tattoo parlors.
Picking my monster up off the sticky barroom floors.
Returning to nothing and knowing,
all the knowing,
neglect measured in pounds of
what am I to do about food this week?
All that knowing and twice that knowledge of abuse.

You don't care.
This is about your precious ******* feelings.
This has little to do with plans.
Nothing to do with me.
Feelings.
Let them be your unremarkable guide.
Let them.
Always.

I'll hang my history over your head.
Every ******* time, I'll do it.
I know it's wrong.
How could you argue a point
that could possibly quell my fear?
Because I am afraid, you know, I am so afraid.
I am one bad week, one bad decision away.

I am within reach of returning.
Always.

Don't argue with me, love.
Please.
I don't wonder anymore:
I'm the worst.
Sep 2016 · 300
Knowing
Paul Glottaman Sep 2016
I believe that I am capable of anything.
I believe I am great.
I know that greatness is a part of me.
Liar.
I'm a ******* liar, is what I am.
Nearly thirty years I've done nothing
with all I've been given.
I'm overweight, I'm lost, I'm a giant of misplaced ego.
I am so ******* tired of being so ******* poor.
I am sick of living in a rut
and knowing--
In my ******* bones, knowing--
that I'm the only person who can pull me out.

I remember being young, sitting cross-legged
in your living room as you watched scary movies,
through your fingers as always.
I remember being brave and strong.
I cannot reconcile the me, sitting beside you,
trying to lend you my courage,
with me, balding and fat and constantly afraid of failure.

I recall my--
Pathetic!--
schoolboy flirtations with greatness.
I remember the adulation from my peers.
Liar, I remember the adulation from the peers
I picked.
The ones I decided to be around.

I am poor, and tired. I am beat down by the
riots and the killings
and the people running my country into the ground,
with my knowing--
in my bones, knowing--
consent.

I don't want to be great anymore.
I'd settle for good.
I could be good, I think.
Liar.
I hope.
They aren't mutually exclusive,
like I thought they were,
sitting cross-legged in your living room.

I whisper a truth to myself, now,
across years, across my lifetime,
"You would trade good, you liar.
You would trade good for remembered.
You would trade good for Great. And you know it."

And ******* my lying eyes, I do know it.
In my ******* bones, I know it.
May 2015 · 303
Fix it.
Paul Glottaman May 2015
Tired and beaten.
Clothes ragged and moth eaten.
Trudging the last few sad and broken miles
crushing the disappointment of our lifetime of trials.
And a whole world for a bit of rest!
Bunched up sheets and pillows our nest.
Age may serve to wash away our rage...
But it's still a tear soaked journey to the grave.

She stands on mountain tops and old lofts
and buildings that reach steel toward the sky.
From here there is perspective,
if you want to call it that,
A certain willingness to fear.
And she soars on scary because
the butterflies feel like dying
and nothing has ever made her feel
more alive.

She packed a hundred regrets
into the lifetime of one.
And they ran from her then,
because they were new and grown.
She called after them as they flew.
She tried to run them down. But the clouds kept them.
And she was without.

She would trade the ******* world to fly.
And who wouldn't?

Where has the wonder gone? Where now is our youth?
She tried to trap it and keep it and learned the only truth.
She couldn't hold it any longer.
If only she were stronger.
But darkness doesn't need to blink.
All we do is wait and worry and think.

She tried, for a time, to sleep forever.
In dreams seeing things that awake she had missed.
She spun the clock hands backward
a hundred thousand times.
It never came back though.
She'd missed it and she cried.

She'd trade her ******* soul to make it right.
But she can't....


....Try as she might.
Apr 2015 · 434
Baltimore holds its breath.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2015
Baltimore holds its breath.
It's the morning after.
It's Day One.
We are brought curfews,
we are told that they wished to destroy us.
There are soldiers standing on our streets.
We are not sure if we're safe.
We're not sure if we'll ever live it down.

Baltimore: (Noun) 1. A city in Maryland.
                                 2. Slang for Riot.

We're anxious.
Because it's over(?)
We are proud.
Because it's all we have left.

We cannot let this be a sad chapter!
We have to make something good come from this!
We have to get up,
dust ourselves off
and stand up.
We have to finally embrace the conversation
that we refuse to have.

They burned us!
******* it! They burned us All!
The implications reach beyond
the city boundaries.
This can't end on Pratt or on Gay Street.
This can't end with barricaded Police stations
and tanks on our streets.

We need to discuss this.
People burned down their own home.
This is worth discussing.

Our lungs ache with effort.
Our minds race with possibility.
Our hearts long for hope.
Baltimore holds its breath.
Apr 2015 · 461
My City is on Fire.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2015
My City is on Fire.
What do I do?
It did not creep.
It did not descend.
It Erupted.
Exploded.

My City is on Fire.
Intersections are blocked and streets are closed.
Barricades of men and women behind shields
occupy my home.
City hall is silence as the panic spreads.
Spreads with the fire and the noise.
Because once the sun goes down...
******* it all! Once that sun goes down!

My City is on Fire!
Protest turned to looting,
looting, in turn, to riot.
RIOT!
Of course they riot. Of course.
We are disenfranchised, obfuscated, beaten down.
Ignored.
God, if only we were ignored...

My City is on Fire.
It is a war zone of forgotten intentions and over reactions.
Like calls to like.
And we are so ******* human
we know only to answer violence with more.
More and more and more.
And what does it solve?
Nothing! They shout.
Their limbs lick with flame and mouths full of blood,
of hate.
And they know, in that moment, Nothing.
My city is on fire
and they would have it be for nothing.
Mean nothing.

Listen!  A struggle is proud, noble.
A struggle is worth it
A struggle is NOT a fight.
Disown that idea. Throw it from you.
Do not join the fight.
Do not join the riot.
STOP!!

My City is on Fire.
But my words are a whisper
against the shouting.
They are nothing against the violence.
Nothing.
What do I do?
Turn your pleas for help on the world.
Shout for change as messages
carried as updates
Through Trending Hashtags,
and Status Updates.
What else can we do?

@Baltimore: Help is on the way! #Baltimoreburning

My City is on Fire.
Get the word out.
People should know.
Need to know.
The world needs to see it
if they're going to join us.
If they're going to help us fix it.
My city is Burning, world.
We can't let it be for Nothing.
May 2014 · 781
Skyline
Paul Glottaman May 2014
I see my city from a distance,
small points of light inscribe
the shapes of it's skyline against
a dark blue and purple night
and I know I am near home.
I lead a tired life
in ratty sneakers
and find myself on Pratt Street
well after the bars have closed
but before the sun.
I walk these streets and think
about the years of pavement
under my feet and the
people who populate my memories
and my city.
There are lives, being lead
in the quiet and ignored way
that city lives are,
behind every lit window.
My city isn't defined by
the height of it's buildings
and there is little neon,
but if you are very silent,
and more than a little patient,
you can hear her breathe.
My city is a portrait,
from Monument to Key Highway
and all points around and between.
I stand, in the stillness of the
streets well after the bars close,
and know that my story
has been played at different
points throughout her heaving mass.
And it is played now, by me and
the many millions like me.
We are a city united in our mutual
distaste and love for the buildings
and lights and cross streets
that house us and are our
home.
Apr 2014 · 1.7k
Electricity.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2014
She would rub her feet,
in socks alone,
across the carpet.
She would carefully touch
nothing on her way out,
or at school.
Then she would reach out to him.

She had heard the myths
about love at first sight.
About a bolt of electricity
passing from one person
to another.
She tried so hard to recreate it.
To fake it.

Years later she would stare
out at the city from her
apartment and wonder
what tomorrow would bring.
She had become part
of a system that ignored her,
but she was used to that kind
of system.

At night she would write.
Fiction her plaything.
She would write stories
but she didn't let people
read them, because they
couldn't know that, this too,
was a part of who she was.

She had learned that
other people killed dreams.
With countless kindness.
They would talk about
how talented she was
until she felt confident.
But never confident enough
to show a publisher.
She liked her audience small
and appreciative.

Later still she would look
back on her life and wonder
what would happen if she
stood up and took the
chance.
Could she have moved,
with just her words,
other people to see her?

Could she have been
electricity?
Her thoughts,
her words,
moving from her
to another,
like love.
Apr 2014 · 323
Just barely have a name.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2014
Push the ignition on
this endless waiting.
Find the purpose behind
hours of need
with zero payoff.
Find the taxes gone
and the bills paid
and the paycheck empty
and count it another in
a long line of the very
same day.

Post your feelings across
the void and hope
a voice calls back in text.
Because gone are the days
when we could stand
for things and let ourselves
cry out loud enough to be
heard.

Gone is the moment when
the method was undecided
and the purpose grand.
Oh, we know just how to do it,
but our causes have shrunk.
Rebuilding a word with lines
of code
and the promises stolen from us
by three generations
of people who meant well
but delivered chaos and grinning
apathy.

We were great once,
I hear it all the time.
But with the buildings coming down
and the march of what
we can no longer call
progress,
I'm finding a disturbing lack
of evidence that
we were ever more than
what little we are.

Our voices have been caged
by the the things that were
meant to broadcast them.
We have been silenced by
the application of free thought.
Is there irony in that?
Or is it just another sad reminder
of how we destroy beautiful things
because we fail, time and again,
to recognize our potential?

It's the waiting that does me in.
It's this day by day
same old same old
that has it's hooks in me.
I'm a generation trained to
be delivered up what I need.
I want to call out a battle cry
and propel us toward the ill defined
"great" we could be.
But my generation doesn't have
a voice.
We only just barely have a name.
Apr 2014 · 441
Time to sleep.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2014
If there was time to sleep,
I would dream larger
than mountains.
My fingers would rake
the pale sky and leave
streaks of the cosmos
in their wake.
I would conquer fear,
and death.
I would laugh at entropy.
Heat death wouldn't harm me.
I would stand my ground
among the myriad humiliations
of endless days.
I would let out all
the things that I keep in
and no more would I stand
a monster, but become
free as a cleansed man.
Obstinate structures would
never stand in my path
to rewards earned.
I would force the *******
world to a halt to hear
my words and beat
the rhythm my world
moves to.
A billion what ifs
would stretch before me
as I plucked the strings
of maybe to arrange
a song that matches
the perfect version of my life
But of course,
there is no time to sleep.
There is only now
and what is waiting.
Apr 2014 · 354
Burning Bridges.
Paul Glottaman Apr 2014
We have burned the bridges. All.
We have lit the match.
We have watched it fall.
I no longer know the voice
when you call.

We are not friends or lovers.
We are now absentee voters.
We are nothing to each other.
Forget the times we were better,
like when we would dance,
remember nothing of us together.
We never had a chance.

When a thing is dead,
good and truly over,
Nothing more is said.
We move on in silence
and put the past to bed.

Don't look for me in torchlight,
on the other side of this chasm,
I am vanished into goodnight
with dreams of almost had it
and fresh wounds from the old bite.

We have burned the bridges. Every one.
And with the coming day
we squint into the sun.
We are heavy handed, cold
and in silence we are undone.
Apr 2014 · 911
Raised by TV
Paul Glottaman Apr 2014
Cryptic warnings in
dusty old books.
Lose floorboards and
cuts from fishing hooks.
Memories that aren't mine,
transferred over airwaves
and across time.
Lifetimes of bitter motes
metered out and measured in
Television tropes.

Sam and Diane until Rebecca
moved in.
I recall Coach's signature move,
taking it on the chin.
Frank until Winchester,
Better or worse,
Hawkeye and Trapper/BJ
ever perverse.

It's not who I am.
Not steps I've taken.
I remember it crisp as
overcooked Bacon.
Apr 2014 · 389
Building
Paul Glottaman Apr 2014
German/Irish as the rest of
White America,
with none of the German Efficiency
and less of the Irish Luck.

Tired and Twenty-Seven,
though some Forty years olds
think I'm their age,
and too overworked to see that
this is all building to something.

I hope it's building to something.

No tattoos and still loads of regrets,
a great wife,
a good life,
but no time to breathe when the
day ends.

My god I love her.
Does she know the things I do for her?
Does she notice that these
years I've added to my birth age
are in service of my feelings for her?

I hope it's building to something.

The second half of the eighties saw me enter.
How is it that less than thirty years on
I'm creaking when I stand and one night's missed
sleep ruins up to three weeks?

I hope it's building to something.
May 2013 · 531
Long Form Suicide
Paul Glottaman May 2013
Blinking back the bright,
arm as a shield against the light.
Lost in open spaces.
These free and empty places.
They shout it from rooftops
and bellow it at full stops,
"Run. Run and hide"
This is open forum, long form suicide.
Every verse a kind of hopeless rant,
from broken homes and men who can't.

Dreams are a curious thing...
Sheltered ears.
Scattered light.
Repressed fears.
Conquered might.
The ever present sting...

And y'know:
******* my eyes,
and sweetest lies.
******* these false starts,
and bitter hearts.
******* this fractured life,
and this endless strife.
******* my hell-bound pride,
and the day I'll have died.

Was it tough to live it all?
To build a cage and watch it fall?
Because, man, look at it...
Passionate anger and the waiting pit.
Look, it's all an excuse to grieve.
That said: How can we ever leave?
May 2013 · 376
Darkness.
Paul Glottaman May 2013
There is a darkness in you, Paul.
It races from the electric life
of your thoughts,
from your finger tips
and your deeds.
It pools on your heart,
like mercury.
It is a source of great,
terrifying,
strength,
and deeper sorrow.
Move with it,
but don't let it consume.
Keep this light,
that we've built from small
acts of kindness,
from the love that passes between
our eyes and our mouths.
Carry it,
like a torch,
and let it guide you
from that darkness.
But remember:
Light
doesn't expel dark, love,
it only pushes it away awhile.
Apr 2013 · 442
Today
Paul Glottaman Apr 2013
The Sky: Swollen and angry,
forces today into tonight.
It's going to open up.
Any minute now,
you can smell it already,
rain.
She cries: "Facebook me!"
Can you believe it?
Data, streaming endless,
from network to network.
P2P, not a single point of failure,
except this.
Except us.
Find me on the street,
friend.
Find me there.
Now: Never been so angry at youth,
or so scared of old age.
So young still,
but how my hair thins.
These bags under my eyes,
they won't go away,
these tired lines...
I suppose they  mean to stay.
Soon: Covered over in cinema fog,
haze to bleed the line away.
And so they go,
covered in clouds,
with the last remaining light
of today.
Mar 2013 · 2.3k
Tolstoy in passing
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
There is a mirror image
but does it still
look like you?
Do you stand before
the altar of your bathroom
sink and whisper,
"нет,
but not yet"
There isn't time
to pause
to think
to wonder.
Is there a ghost in this machine?
Is there a need
to put a notion
behind the gears
of our universal,
cosmic meme?
And were we to drown,
weighed down by
hanging lines and
albatroses,
the thousand stupid ways
that we try to prove
our opinion matters,
*******! Hear me!
Look my way!
We fade to nothing,
ashes in pots
on mantle places,
dry bones in wet dirt.
We are all good people,
bound for modest graves.
Undone by ambition.
"Да,
that is always the way"
We are small men,
good in our minutes a day.
We are Tolstoy in passing,
In a Gethsemane way.
Mar 2013 · 513
Kept in small places.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Kept in small places.
Inhale: Breathing in rain.
Leave this place to the winners
the sinners
the last people standing
when the rest fall.
Remember: That crystallizing moment,
at the eye of a raging storm
when everything made sense
at long last.
Turn away, retreat if there is time.
So little time.
(Receding hairline)
We have so much to do,
so much left to say
and so much to make up for.
So very much.
Atone: Do not repent.
Make up for the things
you have done.
Wrought.
Smells like sidewalks,
after a storm.
The very storm we
run from and we
run to.
Exhale: Visible breath
like winter.
Frozen rainbows,
light trapped by the cold.
And we wait for all of
this to thaw.
Spring...
Summer...
Fall,
and those left standing.
Here in these lives,
these apartments
and homes.
These spaces
and people
where we are kept.
These small places.
Mar 2013 · 509
Too much said.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Picture a room
without a view.
A world where we do
what we ought to do.
She paused, because
******* this was hard to explain.
We don't live there,
in that soulless place,
where no one sees
the hands in front of them.
Where no one cares
because it'll be fine in the end.

He moved his arm,
sore from the arm rest.
Irony?
He thought.
Perhaps it is,
but no.
It is not.
She spoke volumes
about very little,
on shaky ground
where she could not stand.
He listened,
she accused time and again,
but didn't hear.
Her conversation
didn't actually include him.
It was her's to steer.

There was a lightness
in the air.
When she got
around to her point,
the one she couldn't bare,
her weight shifted from
foot to foot,
floor to floor.
Like falling,
screaming out
and then
no more.

He stood before her,
an examined man.
She looked on her works,
as one does when
their works are short
and callow,
with a series of small crimes
and personality quirks.
She had said of him
that he was bright,
but no great sight
to look upon.
He had called her shallow,
trite
and not quiet right.
Both were, as we all are,
very young
and very
wrong.
Both were only a harmony,
not a verse,
in each other's
song.

What they didn't know,
couldn't really,
was there was such
a thing
as too much
said.
Words, as lovely as
they are
and can
be,
Do little more than
buffer the blow
or render it
dead
when the point is blunt.
Say enough,
which can be very little,
and watch as they
do not look,
yet somehow
see.
Mar 2013 · 446
Tell
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Locked away
in tiny clenching fists
are the stories.
The ones we always meant to tell.
Without these parts,
you know the pieces,
we cannot seem to build
the plot and your story...
I mean, look how it falls apart.

Could there be a moment
(take your time, think)
when all of this *******
falls away and only
you and I and the truth
of you and now
and me and then
remains.
Like coffee grounds.

How many cigarettes
does a day take?
I mean, what really gets you?
What sets you on fire?
My god,
how we need to be
on fire!
We need the light,
y'see,
because it is so ******* hard
to see in the dark
without it.

Color your language,
pepper it with purple prose
and profanity,
to tell the story that
sits like a stone
in your heart or your throat.
Because no one
(Seriously, believe me on this.)
can tell your story for you.
You have to take the pen,
look on your works,
and write it large
against the world.

Your story
(Beautiful as you are. Has to be.)
needs to be seen from the sky.
Open your mouth, love.
Tell.
Mar 2013 · 404
Just words.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
But aren't they all just words?
Little fingers, smeared with
whatever lunch may have been.
Beady eyes and the judgement
that comes from knowing nothing.
It was hallways.
It was all hallways.

Because there is a kind
of silence
in the moments between
wake and sleep.
A still over
the keep.
There is a kind of noise,
if you tilt your head
just right,
in the moment between
your words.
Like a hiss.

These are sticks,
those there? Stones.
Your words have weight.
Deny it
as much as you want.
That's all it is.
This is rubber, I'm told.
Under here, glue.
Nothing sticks,
nothing wounds.

You give them the power,
if you really think about it.
Sure.
Tell me another lie.
Whatever gets
you through the day, friend.
Lies, justifications
for monsters that look
like a little you.
They make you feel better,
perhaps.
But aren't they all just words?
Mar 2013 · 787
A wild thing.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Eat your fill from
the fat of my land.
Shackle my bone
break my hand.
Leave this place to me,
when you go.
You weren't there,
but I don't know.

In a forest
we two meet.
Stars ad nauseum,
but no sleep.
And here and there
go our feet.
No words
compromise this greet.

Lose yourself
in the music of now.
Pull on the ribbons,
make me bow.
But don't forget me
when you leave.
Broken man,
his heart on his sleeve.

Could you catch
a wild thing?
Could you tug
it's heart string?
Could you keep
a wild queen or king?
On our fingers,
bound by this ring.

Goose bump flesh
will be our warning.
Keep my soul
trapped in this morning.
And find me waiting
as I always do,
hoping the next person
to come along is you.

Reach for me
when I'm not there.
Feel my fingers
in you hair.
Step by step,
side by side we ascend a stair.
All these things, and more,
I cannot bear.
Mar 2013 · 339
Growing pains.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Who couldn't see that coming?
Veiled venom
and a world that is succumbing.
For this you shatter my good time.
How does it matter?
So ******* asinine.
You tell me how hard it is to get by.
Myriad reasons, I'm sure,
with infinite failures to try.

So, we're a material culture?
What a novel concept you've exposed.
Can you imagine?
How numb we'd be
if you hadn't disclosed?

Sell me a different song.
I know all the spots
you think we went wrong
Sing me a new pitch.
You've got options
but can't tell which is which.


Yes, living is hard.
We all come out a little beaten,
a little charred.
This I know, and a long while, too.
But that is why we do
all our living while we're alive.
Takes too much energy, otherwise.
Mar 2013 · 531
Somewhen.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
Restless/awake they live
in separation.


On his night stand there is a ring.
Thick and black and full of a promise.
Next to him, as he moves in his fitful sleep
there is only an empty half of the bed.
In dreams she's there
(all freckled kisses and soft hair.)
next to him.

Miles away she turns the ring on her finger.
Small and gold and half of a whole.
She smiles at the dark night sky,
knowing that somewhen he went to sleep
without her.
She knows he'll toss and turn
(his smoker's mouth like an urn)
and reach for her.

Love/longing they know
in isolation.
Mar 2013 · 943
One of these nights.
Paul Glottaman Mar 2013
One of these nights...

I will race through broken homes
and closed doors.
I will feel the driving rain
against cold momentum.
I will reach out into the darkness
and know that your hand
will meet my hand.

I will feel around in dust bins
and old insecurities.
I will climb over mountains
of stone and of doubt.
I will believe you when you tell me.
I will try to.
I swear I will.

One of these nights...

I will watch the tail lights fade
into memories we make.
I will force away the guilt
I will...

...One of these nights.
Feb 2013 · 1.1k
Altar of Lies.
Paul Glottaman Feb 2013
Stone me on your Altar of Lies.
I am not scattered light upon the stair!
You're all stuffed mouths and hollow eyes,
Spun from whole cloth but left bare.

The ****** never stirred, but only watched me leave.
Where's the Watchmaker for his Meek?
Tell me, where's the freedom in your Mustard Seed?
How can this be the Love we're meant to seek?

I am no Lamb!
I won't have your Love!
I couldn't give a ****,
and you, sir, are no Dove!


All seen equal, except those You exclude.
Let's not tout the best of us?!
I can see the cunning, you are shrewd.
But that still just leaves the rest of us.

'Cause what're we but broken people?
Empty lives and Original Sin!
Gird your *****! Guard your Steeple!
This is a club I won't belong in.

*Don't you preach to me
with ***** ******* hands
Holy love and His truancy.
You issue His commands.
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