Kicking out against the sheet,
trying hard to find sleep,
I wake and wonder why
when we fall we don't shy
our eyes against the sky.

The truth, if ever there was one,
is you find the ground when falling's done.
To feel the earth below your feet,
to wander empty city streets,
to keep from flying when complete.

But to reach out toward the sky and soar
imagine wanting that and nothing more.
When we are young we could trade it all to fly.
If asked the moon in return we would comply.
To see it all, our world, from on high.

Whatever happens to this urge?
Why dismiss it? Where is it's funeral dirge?
I think it comes back to us in dreams.
The little cracks in our lives between the seams.
(Maybe it returns in our winter.)
It lives on both ends of age's extremes.
(As our minds begin to splinter.)

I hope old age finds me thinking of flying.
Hoping to soar when I'm dying.
I have to try to find that place,
before I finish my solitary race,
where I can reach above and hope to touch space.

Staked to the ground we find ourselves at
the crossroads.
Though no deal is to be struck,
no bargain arranged
and no promises kept.
This is a place for looking
and, if we are all very lucky,
a place for seeing as well.

Stand here with me, in these chains,
and sing me the song that is
the night.
Breath this starlight and look out
on the expanse of our ever
expanding universe.

Do you see it yet?

Pinned though we are,
wondering though we might,
we have to find the single spark,
we have to see the light.

It is here, in the darkness that we revisit.
That we revise.
That we dig it all up and decide.
Because tomorrow, thankfully not today,
we grow toward the sunlight
more efficiently,
as the people we have to be.

We are staked here, at the crossroads,
but when these pins are drawn,
our chains lifted,
we will soar the skies above the crossroads.
We'll wonder, one has to hope,
as we look down on the trail that
had become our prison,
The path here is crooked,
so many obstructions
too many hazards.
The paths lead nowhere...
How did we ever get around?

Tripped on an errant root
in a tiled hall.
Took a dose of ******* silence
and slipped from it all.

Remember when true was truth
and love was bold?
Can't reconcile these lines with lies
Not still young, not yet old.

Don't know how to search inside and find
the mettle.
(Be a better man?)
Try to grip the flower, but tear out
the petal.
(Turn you to dust, to sand.)

Find her sat against a lower shelf
down on time and health.
Can't figure who to be from self,
hard to know coin from wealth.

How do you not see the things you can do?
How can you see your life,
this thing you've built
by yourself and with your own power,
and not see the triumph within?
Because who cares if you're not
what we all thought we would be?
Fortune and fame are such
trivial things when compared
to having nothing, which
(To let slip a small secret of the universe)
is all we are ever given,
and making from it something.
What you do?
How the **** does that matter?
Why would it ever matter?
You are what you are,
my friend,
you are what you have become.
But, hold your breath this is a big one,
you have managed, somehow in spite
of all the **** this world has to offer,
all that is forced on you,
you became yourself.
How amazing an accomplishment is that?
You, sir/madam are an amazing,
an astounding,
a fantastic
accomplishment!
How do you not see the things you can do?

I have these pieces,
remnants of you,
scattered through my life.
A jacket, red flannel,
which I am afraid to wear.
How do I measure up to it?
A series of cloth belts.
The rise of a man who
had, in a long ago,
in a far away,
mastered this art already.
Tucked in a box, a note in your
wife's handwriting,
like a treasure map,
laying out the path to take
to find the things
that are all I have you.
Because the photos aren't you.
You did not smile that way
in my memories.
The photos are a ******* lie
that tell the story of man
who grew old an abandoned
me on this **** planet
with these monsters shaped like men.
They are not you.

I look at my things,
my random crap...
What will I leave?
What of this crap, that I treasure,
will be me one day?

I can't find your voice.
Everything is disposable
all of a sudden
and I've come to find out
that we are too.
All of us.
We become the trash
that our children are afraid to
throw away.
The measure of our lives
a series of fuzzy memories,
photographs and knick knacks.
Possessions, sir.
That is what we become?

We are so much more.
Aren't we?
Of course we are.
I remember your hand on the
seat of my bike.
I remember the way that you
could laugh with your nose,
smile at us with your eyes.
Blue. They were so blue...
I think back on the lessons.
You taught me to love, sir.
Did I ever thank you for that?
Of course I didn't.
Of course.

You're a little wooden box
on the night stand next to my bed.
An envelope with my name on it,
the last of your handwriting I have.
You're an episode of the Power Rangers,
I know, I can't believe it either.
You're in the way I love, now.
The way I feel it, the way I show it.
The Experience that you taught me.
You're in the presence of a flannel jacket,
that I haven't earned the right to wear.
You're not in the photos,
you're not in the jacket;
Neither am I.

In my wake are ruins
where wonderful flowers grow.
I will leave behind desolation,
but alive inside will be hope.
I will become Krishna,
if that's what it takes.
I will roll storm and fury,
across oceans, rivers. Across lakes.
Behind all my clouds,
to the observing eye,
you will find sunlight.
You will see the truth in the lie.

But kept in soft cages, where only grass grows,
the sounds of our heartbeats can deafen,
the plague can wind to a close.

And so it goes, where it goes.
Along mountains and inside homes.

We'll rise from the debris.
Singing songs as easy as leaning.
And terrible hope gives way
to wonderful damage and deep meaning.
In classrooms, where the calls are called,
we'll answer in ways too subtle to see.
Children, ostracized by accident of nature,
will finally not have to defend to just be.
I cannot say it'll be better.
I cannot say it'll be worse.
It will only have to be different.
Destruction as a cure for our curse.

Speak answer to riddle, at least as best you can.
Words can be poison, we learn much too young.
When we can't/won't help, can we call ourselves "man"?


And so it goes, where it goes.
A helping of heart with highs and lows.

And where it goes, when we find ourselves through,
is as much mystery to me,
as it's evident to you.

Push this weight from your shoulders,
my friend, I know that you can.
Do not make the mistake of wallowing
in this despair.
You are so much bigger than it.
So much better.
Yes, I hear you, I know that
we are human.
That we doubt.
Doubt so much.
They stopped making boot straps,
you say,
How then are we meant to pull
ourselves up?
Reach, my friend. Reach!
Inside of you there is so
much that you can do.
So much that you are,
if only you can find it in yourself
to know it like I do.
I know you, my oldest friend,
I know you so much better than
anyone else possibly could.
You are amazing.
You are great.
You are the only person that
can hold the light to guide the way.
Only you.
You have to see.
You have the know.
You have to believe me.
I know.
RISE!
Rise and be, old friend.
Rise and lead us through the dark.
In your presence, there is no dark.
There is only the way.
Your way.

Everything breaks.
Because porcelain isn't shatterproof.
Because glass can even chip.
Everything falls, everything breaks.
The truth, were words to be used
for things aside from lying,
is that while we remain strong
on whatever frontier we choose,
there is always the truth.
Everything fades.
Though, and lets be as honest as we can,
when the sweater turns from black
to gray, does it change
the thing?
My god,
Everything Breaks!
Could you imagine a world
where life isn't, day after day,
all this **** is the same?
Listen: Everything Breaks!
            Everything falls.
            Everything bristles.
Life isn't just short, lovers & friends.
Life is cruel, honest
Life is played in blue.
Could anything be...
Lose yourself in the light of
days without sun, dance for awhile.
Who the hell would run for fun?
Do all your vitamins protect you
from graying, fraying?
Did--
Interruption: Everything Breaks!

The feeling is catching.
Fire, from person to person,
life to life.
The soles of our shoes to
the meanings behind our
labored breaths.
In storm drains the
detritus gathers.
Kept, like secrets, from us.
Remnants of our wasted days;
our whispered nothings.
Our shouted everythings.

Fiding the purpose in these
things keeps us from looking
too deeply at what
really matters.
Because ******* these
age lines, these race differences.
******* what's trending on Twitter.
We are the ravings of a madman.
We are angry but we hope
so much for peace.

We find our message,
the one we're certain that
we were born with, and
we become fire so our
birthright might carry.
So that we might carry.
We are angry,
in the soaked detritus of
our storm drain.
We shout everything
in the sake of peace.
And the feeling is catching.

Help, we hear the scream.
The temple just does not last.
And in kitchens and cars,
in meadows and pools,
in various states of undress,
young and old
they will find us.
Spread out, our eyes,
sightless, tracing the clouds.
The words we meant cold on our lips.
In falls they hear the cries,
phone calls truncated by disaster
and lifetimes made out of moments
that hardly matter
in hindsight, were we gifted
enough to get that far.
But it's all dying tastes on the tips
of our tongues and memories
of math classes we likely slept through.
It's far from Autumn, and far from home;
snow isn't falling, but we're always alone

I'd like to think that Adam
would rake his fingers through Eve's hair.
Like a comb.
I'd like to think she would rest her shoulder,
his smile as infectious as her laugh,
against him as he brushed the day from her hair.

I'd like to think that Penelope,
brushing  her fingers on the nape of his neck,
would cradle Odysseus while he cried;
In the bed he had made,
but they shared.

I want to believe that, had things
gone another way, Romeo would
welcome Juliet home each day,
as the sea welcomes her storms.

I need to know that love
makes equals of us all.
That life grows inward
as well as outward
when two souls touch.

What are we?
If not two people engaged in
this single life we have made?
I don't know my way, my love.
I am lost
without your hand
gently squeezing my own.

How does one begin to end?
Start from here and back again.
It seems we spend our lives trying to die,
yet each person's success makes another cry.

It's when all the hours and minutes are spent,
that they begin to seek atonement.
But if there was no purpose, would that be so bad?
Couldn't we find value in all we had?

From Rattle to Rattle, a human life.
Though it is not meant to live in strife.
While we can move from form to stance,
we should endeavor to make ourselves dance.

Why must we mourn the flame,
Do we believe death is a thing to tame?
If the goal is not to live well and die...
...Then, if not...why?

Did you know your gums recede?
Or how you're never free?
The Endless march of yesterdays?
The difference a paycheck makes?
  It's so easy, it is, to lose a friend?
  How, in moments, you feel young again?
   Bruises form like rock under your skin?
   Having to buy your own recycle bin?
    When your spine cracks when you stand?
    How hard it becomes to walk on sand?
     Your muscle turns to dough?
     And no year ever goes by slow?


Did no one tell?
You're not walking hell.
Did you not know?
It's a Road we all must go.

Pour through me the magma
in your dreams.
I will feel as it burns me down,
cinder, bones and shattered screams.
Still my breath, scattered light,
Broken things,
Heart strings and moon beams.

Face my frigid air with your fire,
breath the light of our twinned
desire.
Beat the door of my house,
clinched little fist, reddened eyes,
far off cries and lover's tides.

With the elements, and a little glue,
these pieces come together,
beneath unsure hand and
eyes of green & blue.
This ****** thing is almost back to together,
love,
bask in these broken things we do.

The sheets still warm with you and me,
I am overcome with the same old guilt.
A shame that whispers,
like a dark secret down cobwebbed allies,
my own hidden name.

How, I lay and wonder, as the
sweat cools on our skin,
did man ever grow if the result
is always this?

Obvious, though it is.
After all, here we sit.

My song is a lifetime,
wasted in triviality.
Crescendo close to daylight,
although the sky is ripped and torn.
The meaning of it,
if any can be found,
is vague and small,
the sound is all too loud.
My song is made for screaming,
from a higher vantage point.
Building tops and cigarette shops,
feature in the refrain.
And always, beating against the backdrop,
the steady sound of rain.
My song is a broken chain of failure,
and small independent success.
It is lifting to the ones who need it,
it takes little time to rest.

You will not find me
coward, pleading at your feet.
I'm searching through the heartbeats
of these breathing city streets.
My ear is to the grindstone,
my purpose, flight and free.

Ankle deep in rainwater,
as lightning tears apart the sky.
Pained breathing, bleeding, barely alive.
Skin feels like fire, struggle to survive.
I will grit my teeth,
and bare it.
Think before you act.

Jump to your conclusion,
pardon my intrusion.
They say multiple contusion.
Blood loss and confusion.

Scratch my fingers through this land.
Cough red spots toward the ground.
I will find the power in me.
Just watch. I will stand.

You will find me
complete through your pushing,
a little stretched after you pull.
Breathing ragged, and loud spoken.
You will find me
Unbroken.

I'll follow, four steps behind, into hell fire.
I'd topple the champion of that dark place,
just to feel your hand, gentle on my face.

I struggle through the wound
of Earth's cracked crust,
to find the simple solitude of us.

Reborn again man, with cradled brow in hand,
I will force my way down the aisles
so that, together, we may stand.

I bow my head, and repeat all words,
I fight back my mind's latest coup,
so I may find the courage to utter, "I do."

In this world, all of it's sights and wonder,
I have found only peace, your hair pinned under,
my eyes focused, laser, as I watch you slumber.

Every fear I possess,
every lie I can attest,
and here I stand, head held low,
until I clutch my heart in death throe.

Alone in an empty room,
I can recover here,
heal as healing dictates.
But here, in this safe,
still place,
I can smell you.
I can always smell you.

But kept from the truth,
in these waning years of my youth,
I can reach past it, through it, and into you.
From there, I hope, you can feel me, too.

In life, we are told,
there is hope.
I would trade an
eye for half a chance
to see you.
My love,
these hours keep us,
alone and apart,
My love,
I know you,
my work of art.

How you thwart,
my cleverest, my sweetheart.
my attempts at recovery.
My love, how I envy.

I am tired flesh
and splintered bone.
Somehow I've lost my way,
but I'm not alone.

These four limbs,
that are my cage,
have become my home.
Buried with bottled rage.

Clip my smile,
so it can never widen.
Loose my mind,
and let it glide in.

Freed from bonds,
I move my feet.
Door to door,
until we meet.

Claw out your eyes,
bite your tongue.
The things I've done for you,
and you'd leave me here.
To die alone.
Here.

Sew your ears shut,
break your hands,
this is my life.
You have twisted me,
perverted me and made fetish of me.
To your purpose, and yours alone.

But here, in the still of this night,
the moon high in the sky
and this shaking in my bones.
I will call forth the rain,
because I alone know it's secret name.
I will make flesh your fear,
I will watch as you live it through.
Tonight is the night I leave you.

Here.
Alone.
To die.

Because, he will not swoop from the open skies,
he will not gift crops on barren land.

Because, no one will lift you from the concrete,
carry you to your soft, clean bed.

Because, the plunge is the worst part of the fall,
and the landing the end of the fun.

Because, life is small and terrifying,
but long in it's sad short.

Because, with time we learn we are fragile,
and with love we learn we are not.

Because, there are no hand outs waiting,
nothing in this life is free.

Because, when the shadows dance across your eyes,
just for a moment, I can see forever.

Because, when my life ends, I will realize
how much time I wasted asking for more.

Because, one day the word of advice you need
will be the chain that holds you down.

Because, for a sudden moment I felt the sky,
and fooled myself with delight.

Because, what doesn't melt turns to dust,
and nothing else is solid.

Because, in time I will tell you all of my secrets,
and where will we be then?

In the absence of hope they found this
dark, damp, ******, dreary place.
Where the music of the spheres
and the dream of what "might"
mingle, both together, in the dirt.
The cynic and his assertion of  the lives we lead,
his theories on those that seek it out.

Somewhere in the soil the tale is told.
The men who fought the snake, on both ends,
come out on top, only on top, but never
the victor.
In this place where light meets dark,
and grey prevails.

The Aching Question burns ever on.
Answered only by the cryptic riddles,
the matters of opinion.
They fight their very Nature.
Battle against the soul of the ****** thing.
Dreaming of a sunrise in these lands
where it only ever sets.

The message, writ on stone wall in cold blood,
rings of failure with a clarity and echoing presence.
Haunting the waking hours,
reverberating defeat in every small triumph.

A vigil was stood over the keep,
which in turn,
kept them all.

Cast your eyes toward me,
like a fisherman's line.
I will sing you starlight,
one single star at a time.

Breath in this air together,
and build toward the sky.
Because the dream is within us,
and these lover's knots we tie.

Don't promise me these rewards,
when I only want you.
Whole and total and every ounce.
Every word is true.

Yes, my love, distance is a factor.
Though the heart grows fonder.
But you know how I am,
my god, how my feet wander.

But if you kiss me before I go...
If you add up our days,
if I fight my very nature soul,
we will cut to the heart of our ways.

In the morning, how I love you.
Because of how the light hits your face.
Because of the smell of you.
Because I know this is my place.

Fire lights the sky,
messages in flame
and human remains.
Blown out store fronts,
and the anguish writ
large on their faces.

"Who among you will save us?"

Hero is a broken word,
weighed down by the too tall
myth of song lyrics and
epic yarns.
There won't be a signal,
reaching toward the stars.
But attend this quiet vigil,
and weep for us all.

You don't brave fires,
or tough stinging barbs.
You don't fight hunger,
or exhaustion, or flesh wounds.
You smile, when it's called for,
you go a little out of your way.

No one is coming to save you.
There is no help on the way.
But be brave, my friend, because
the story isn't over.
When we die, we just become more odd.

I will live and die a man,
and that much I know is true.
But when the word is through,
will it say the same for you?

Because the message is clear,
if at times somewhat condescending,
that life matters more than it's ending.
It's purpose doesn't lay in it's rending.

And if honor isn't the purpose,
for which you struggle through this world,
how will you know when you become unfurled?
All this talk has my ******* toes all curled.

Love is not the answer,
but I believe it is a cause,
And when we stop to contemplate the flaws,
we are given to moments of real pause.

Because it's almost over,
and I stand before the hands of time.
You will kneel before, as I arise,
and stare in awe from your house of lies.

You went upstairs to go to bed,
but you never came back.
Or rather you didn't come back
under you own power.

It was MEs, stretchers,
and tear stained sunrises we never
saw from the kitchen floor
where we wept.

The arrangements were made,
open casket confessions and so little else.
You were ashes by the days end.
No mantel piece resting place.

Because it's not fair.
Because nothing ever is.
Because you were so young,
because we weren't ready.

Because your love was so vast
that it would light up the room.
Because you taught us to close our hands
and catch starlight in between our fingers.

There is a hole in my soul.
An error in my morning light.
I can still smell the tea.
How you loved strong tea...

"Black as the night and
sweet as a stolen kiss."

Memories of your made up language,
the one so few of us knew fluently,
will always dance in my brain.
To think, I failed Spanish.

When, days later, we opened the microwave
to find your cup of tea,
the one you left out every night,
you were such a fan of strong tea...

How are we supposed to go on?
Where will the hand be that is meant to guide?
I had never cried over tea.
I had never cried over much of anything.

Imagine my surprise,
my sweetest mentor,
my treasured care giver,
when my shoulders began to shake.

When the last bell chimes.
Sordid tales in locked journals,
kept in places all too familiar.
There will be light to balance
the steady rain.

Chained to burning pyres,
echoes of long ago nights of fire.
Sing the song that you learned
from the dead.

Leave through the hidden door,
push out against the giants,
barely kept at bay,
because dreams are such fragile things.

But in your moment of greatest need,
when the dark surrounds you,
when crimson falls from the skies,
you may find the trick.

Spread your arms,
wide as you can,
tip forward against the wind,
and fly.

Scream with me, into the dark.
Match my pitch with your high arc.
And hear the sound of us, bare, stark.
Listen to it, feel it in you, the very human spark.

Wasted time, reversed rhetoric and given pause.
From the steep climb, we can look down on our flaw.
The very thing we never counted on, the err in this design.
The bitter notes of our old song,  it's love, it's divine.

Dig through the tainted wrecks.
Feel through your bones the context
of man made heart string reflex.
And ask me, soft as feathers, "What's next."

Can you feel us slip and fall?
The pit asks and we heed the call.
Does you stomach lurch and twist?
The fear is how you know you exist.

We may never know what we'll land upon,
but trust me, it's always darkest before dawn.
You have to understand, that though our era is bygone,
I refuse to become another man's pawn.

Reach inside you, my love, for the very human spark.
We will face down the ****** dark,
I the dreamer and you my skylark.
Forever, this night, will be our mark.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

We're moving, so much faster.
Push the stop, let us off,
condescend if you must. Go, scoff.
We're moving toward disaster.

This wasn't the plan, not the one I made.
I wasn't looking for love...
I'm so ******* sick of...
This is so little, this is so done. So staid.

Faster now. Faster.
Tick. Tick. Tick.

I don't want to see the finish line.
I want life, sweet and long.
This feels right, and that's so wrong.
It's okay. It's just *******... It's fine.

                         But speak soft words against the moonlight.
                         Because it's dark as pitch, and I'm your knight.
                         But when it falls, as it must, as it will, as it always does
                         And, sweet pea, I can see the end, but I can't save you because...

Tick. Tick. Tick.

These are the hours of my life.
Watch as they fly away, gone is the day,
when I held you and watch us sway.
Ring upon your finger. My little wife.

Tick. Tick. Tick.
Faster, ever faster.

And now, around the next bend,
Where our children will play,
and laugh away the lazy day,
Tell me you can't see the end.

From every drop
springs just a little more.
An urgent pounding
against the bedroom door.
Because it's out with
the pilot light,
it's in with the
same old fight,
and it's back to work,
the same old way.
Every ******* day.

You say you believe
that love is the answer.
I don't know,
but hate is a cancer.
And it's miles and miles
to beat my retreat.
Some days it's  ******* the sound
of my own heartbeat.

I'm not another hack,
building out but holding back.
I live in the here in now, or so I say,
until the noise starts.
Rent's late.
Time to pay.
Every ******* day.

I would love, you must believe me,
to see peace.
I would love to lay my head down
and finally get sleep.
But there's work to be done,
there's hours and hours,
and so little ******* sun.
But if you stay with me,
hold hands and live with chance,
I might feel like I can be free.

But the knocking never goes.
We're not some dead beats,
though heaven only knows.
I'm spent from all my mediocre feats.
I can't find my bed and lay,
because the noise doesn't go away.
Every ******* day.

Pages float from the empty window
to the busy city streets.
Pages of our diary, the one we kept
so the ******* world wouldn't see.

But wipe your tears, smile with your whole soul.
You see, it's the freedom of the act
that we have to cherish, that we have to embrace.
Look past the shame of our secret story,
and find the beauty we've now shared.

You see, it's our lives on display for those people.
It's our words and our days and our ways,
and it's out there, and it touches people.
We have made the world aware of our lives,
and in so doing, they have found a part of
who they are, who they wish they could be.

In every person, holding one of those pages,
there is a little bit of you, a little bit of me.
There's so much beauty in that, can't you see?

You wanted the truth behind the lies.
You wanted to see the forest from the tree.
but you never actually wanted to see,
You never actually wanted to open your eyes,

Find the fire from within me?
You want to seek me out in burnt out husks.
You want to make blood packs and secret trusts.
But you lack the vision to simply be.

So here, in the now and then, we find the key.
We send the message to a hidden place,
deep within us, just behind the face.
And finally, our arms spread out, we are free.

Mutter your words
across these invisible channels.
Tell me, spare no detail,
the ways in which you have missed me.

Tonight I am selfish,
because you are here with me.
Tonight I am complete.

Reign it in, lest you scare them all away.

Kept in chambers, buried so deep within
that they can be seen from the sky,
I spy you treading the ground of my
empty grave.

Steal my youth, if you believe yourself
my better.
But be warned that even freedom cannot keep me.

Get it together, or it will all fall apart.

Keypads and sorcery, and all points between.
Feel free to use me, as you might a tissue.
I am one among many, and always have been.
I am far from unique, factory issue.

But who can say, at four a.m.,
that they are fine and well?
Life is various bedlam faithless wonder and mayhem.
Patiently waiting to ring the bell.

Step back and breath. Don't let it fall.

Because you wake beside me in our shared bed.
Because you love me with blue eyes.
Because you promise me with sweet lies.
Because you are my living heart and head.

And in a moment, when all of this is done,
when you lay your head against my chest,
when our souls plead for sweetest rest,
will it matter which of us has won?

Alone, you are but two.
Caged by bitter words,
and a history shared
with so precious few.

Together, you find yourselves one.
Free from bonds that chain you down.
Etched large against the bluest sky.
Your song sung full flush in the sun.

Each fractured piece of your hearts,
keep so high out of reach
in little boxes on tall shelves.
Chained like drowning to your arts.

When, on park benches and this cold street,
with the flicker of the reckless
and the knowledge of the very bold,
you find, now and always, your hands meet.

In the face of this wall we stand and laugh.
Not because it's funny,
anything but at times,
but because we just don't
know what else to do.

Had you stayed,
beyond your time
here and there,
there would have been so
much more for you to see.

I recall that the news broke,
and it rained.
Did it ever rain.
It rained as if in response.
I embraced a man in the street
and we felt something for someone
that wasn't ourselves for the first
time in our short lives.

Because you didn't stay,
we can't reflect on the power
of those odd days.
How they shaped us in ways
that we couldn't have predicted.
But you didn't stay,
so it fails, not falls,
on deaf ears.

Everything was silence,
waiting for my song.
Before there was a face
to meet your face there was
this tired man.

Within myself I felt the ripple
indicate that change,
whole and complete,
was waiting in the still air
between then and horrifying
******* Now.

Fight the pressure on your eyelids.
Push the dark away.
Feel around for the primal fear of death.
You may cower from it always,
but you may never again deny it.

Life is fire and pain.
It is see through flesh and
the dull ache of mending bones.
It is screams heard before the dawn
and so much courage.
So much love and so much gritted teeth.
So much stubborn justice.
So much missed time and perfect
accidents of arrival.
Life is love,
first and foremost.

So much comes down to timing,
and so much comes down to skill.
In between the two is where you can
find me.
The barrier is torn down,
but it remains in our hearts
and in our dreams.
I wonder if I am what it will take
to puncture the falling fog.

Where there was a void there is now
my presence. My feet on solid ground.
The world waits, poised to see what I do.
I look upon my city, from high and from low.
I feel the bile turn my stomach sour.
I hear the voice in my head shouting that
I'm insane.
I see them waiting and I leap.

How I hate to disappoint.

I remember gravel drive ways,
the smell of spaghetti sauce.
I remember a life filled with
cheap knick knacks and late night
television judgment.
My flash light would burn to life
across the winter landscape of
east coast forest.
You were waiting somewhere
within. Somewhere ahead.

I remember buildings scape the sky.
Paper, and the smell it only gets in stacks.
I remember potted plants on the balcony,
and sitting to watch the skyline
as the sun rose behind it.
I remember, my god I sill remember
in cold sweat, the noise Zelda makes
when the heart meter runs low.
You were there with me, or at least it feels
that way sometimes.

I remember you, but mostly I don't.
I try to joke and kid, because I don't
miss you. How could I miss anything?
Except that I do.
And somewhere in these half remembered
things I know that I will find you.
Strong and wonderful and prepared to
applaud when I take on the world.
You would wink.
You used to wink.

I.
When the snow came we sheltered ourselves away.
Warm by the pyres.
We let them burn.
Cinder and ash.
The dying light of our fires,
like a hundred stars swaying,
winking almost, against
the banks of snow covered hills.

Deep in our slumber we felt the
touch of warm spring.
Water cool enough to swim in.
Blue and green and milk white.
In waking, and we did so with protest,
there remained only the gray white
of winter dawn and the ****** cold.

When one of us fell, frostbite or exhaustion and little else,
we would carry them along.
Burials impossible, we added
their number to the pyre.
In this way we could keep warm.
In this way we could pretend that
we still felt human and alive.

Some days the snow was hard enough to
stand on.
Other days it was clean enough to eat.
Still we walked.
Always, it seemed, we walked.
Always we.

II.
In the heat of desert day we would fan
ourselves with our hands.
We didn't dare to remove any .
We didn't dare not to stop to drink.

We wrapped our heads in cloth and
worshiped long forgotten gods.
On days when we couldn't move through
the sand storms we made camp.
We were once many.
We were so many.

Now we are walking.
If this trudge toward oblivion
could be called walking.
And walking we called it.
We would stop to smile lies
at one another.
We would stop to die.

Forgotten as old gods.
Less than the sand we died on.
Less than the whole.
Incomplete.

And we would be left were we left.
We didn't bury anyone.
We were so many.

III.
Call to me, for I can only just hear you.
Call for me
and I will come.
I will find you against odds and
skies.
I will see you whole.
I will breath you complete.

We awake to movement.
We are movement.
Ever walking, ever here and there.
Looking, we believe.
We believe in nothing.

IV.
There are those that want our things.
Our sad detritus.
Our lives before it ended.

Incomplete decks of playing cards.
Eye glasses with lens missing.
A license plate from an old car.
(They are all old cars.)
Mason jars, soda bottles,
cans, thermos, can of peanuts
all filled with water.

It's the water they want from us,
though they will take the other things.
They always take the other things.
Memories and dust.
Memories and Dust.
Cinders and Ash.

We were many.

V.
When finally we are alone,
the leaves fall about us.
The moon hangs in our imperfect sky.
In the end there is us.
And the end is us.
And we?
We are alone.
We were many.
We are one.

Occam's Razor blades burn through the air
around us.
Because You blush when you laugh.
Because I pay attention when I joke.
Obvious.
So ******* obvious.
Because I swell to see you,
and you meet me among the clouds.

Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora

Obvious.

I can't tell you. I've told you a million times.
But it's too hard to say it right.
The words are difficult.
I love you like a religion.
I worship you with the devotion of the faithful.
I know, the atheist claims faith.

I love you like the spot behind the
living room recliner that a dog hides
behind during a thunderstorm.
I love you like a thunderstorm.
I love you with the depth of an
Irish song about heartbreak.

I don't know how to do anything else.
Because you blush when you laugh.
Because I notice.
Because I...

Obvious.
So ******* obvious.

I run my fingers across the surface
of the water.
Above ground pool.
I'm eleven.
You stare out your window,
you know I'm there.
So very Romeo.

I call to you.
I throw stones at your window.
My god, the innocence in an age
before cell phones, and Instant messages.
The freedom of love before email.

You press your lips against the glass.
Puckered. A kiss.
You didn't wear lipstick.
You were young still.
Little girls weren't yet taught
to think they were adults.
The grease from your lips left an imprint.
It wasn't shaped like a kiss.
It mostly looked like your cheek.

Above ground pool.
My fingers damp across the
always blue ripples of water.
So very Romeo.

There were notes, folded into tight and
puzzling shapes, and passed in class.
The checkmark appreciation game.
I kept them.
Unchecked boxes.
They were in my pocket.
They're gone now, but so are you.
So am I.

When I kissed you I had my eyes open.
I didn't know any better.
It was nothing.
A peck.
Everyone thought
we would be married one day.
I like to think that you knew better.
So very Romeo.

Catch your breath.
Breathe.
In.
Out.

Hold it.
Feel your lungs burn, ready to burst.
Hold it.
Let go.

Feel your heart?
It's beating fast because it was convinced
that it was going to die.
Your blood is pumping.
Your arms and legs feel alive.
Gloriously alive.

My heart does that when you say my name.
And I love you for making me feel
so close to death.
For making me feel so
Gloriously alive.

Catch your breath.
Breathe.
In.
Out.

Forever you have been the opposite side
of the coin that is us.
Brazen with life and love and anger
where I am alight with the same,
though in different measured amounts.
We don't finish each other's sentences,
and there exists no reason why we should.
But we do share the same content in our
bold paragraphs, the same feed in our blood.

Blood.

Blood was never a choice, but friendship is,
and you are unique in that we share both.
You are a brother, a confidant, a partner in crime,
a friend, a conspirator, a business partner,
and so much more.
People remark about the nature of our bond,
and admittedly they get it wrong often,
but they remark frequently.
Too close to be normal,
too extraordinary to be labeled.

Follow where I lead and I will
follow your lead.
Such is our nature.
We seem two circling wolves.
We seem to vie for dominance.
How is it then that we are both and neither?

Who could I trust more with my secrets?
Who could I trust more with my life?
Who could I trust more with my lies?

So we circle.
So we vie.
So we live.
So we die.

Because I don't know how I will tell you,
or because I don't know if I am strong enough
to fight for the words,
I will say this:

When I was young I learned about tragedy.
I learned about loss on a scale that is unimaginable
unless you are there to see it, to breath it
and to be a sad living part of it.
I learned about hope, and courage,
and how the ordinary are extraordinary.
I learned that life is not a series of
tragic events, but a moment within where
you can find love and absolution.

How can I make you understand that this wasn't what
I wanted for you?
I didn't want to you to grow up in a world
that had once been so crippled by fear and
hate and pain and loss.
I wanted to give you the gift of peace,
like my parents wanted to give me.

How can I tell you that evil does not have a face,
but it does have an intention?
How can you possibly understand that
when everything is horrible we stand together
in the middle and embrace one another?
How?

There is so much that you will never see,
that I pray you will never have to learn.
What I want you to know,
indeed what I am struggling to tell you,
is that when everything seems darkest,
when everything is blood and dust and pain
and death, it is then, in that moment,
when we must
Hope the most.
It is then when we must
Love unconditionally.
It is then when we must always
be willing to let ourselves dream.

Because I don't know how to tell you,
because I don't want you to have to learn,
because I love you.

Put upon me, if there are things
that will fit
(once there),
all the issues that you have saved,
for later days and open ended calls,
that must be solved.

If it were simple, and we both
know it is not,
then I expect that most would
have told you
(by now at the
very least)
how it really ought to
have turned out.

You have impressed me with your
perfect imperfections and I can only hope,
each held breath is anticipation of our
day, that you will find in me
broken pieces of a man
which you will adore
(in kind.)

We are all blind through this life.
Heads held high or low, or which ever way
keeps them out of sight, so that we may be
seen and not feared.
But in this blindness we are two,
where one would probably do,
and there is so little
(about that)
worth changing.

You'll always be twenty-three.
Always.
And that kills me.
You were older than me.
Now...

******* the futility of it all.
******* ******* it all!
I wish that I could punch a hole
in the world with my words and
find you.
I wish you knew.

I just wanted to tell you..
I just thought you needed to know,
at least once before everything is
broken headlights and crushed
tomorrows.
Blood and pavement and a median.
Crushed glass and a world
standing hollow without you.
I wish you knew.

I think I loved you once.
Think.
Coward.
I need to find you some days.
**** this tired world and it's
arbitrary thefts.

Your name should have a million hits a day.
You should have been...
My god how brilliant you were.
Like a jewel and like a genius.
You should have been forever.

I guess, in a way, you are.

You were a part of my life,
and a much bigger part than I ever would
have had you believe.
Did you know that? Had you figured it out?
Perhaps not.

A year since. Fifty-two weeks.
More in fact.
It was May.
Day after my brother's birthday.

******* it.

You were older than me.
October to my November.
One month that you lorded over me.
One month.

You'll always be twenty-three.
Always.
Forever.
Now...

Find in those dark places
the spot of light.
The driest spot in a damp place.
The warmth inside this bleak cold.

Find in yourself the beauty I see.
How every freckle is a road map
for my mouth to yours.
How each white hair you find
is another moment I would never trade.

Find in me the purpose that I struggle with.
Take my hand and lead me
to the place atop that hill where
all the turmoil will finally be answers
to my endless questions.

Find me, if you are of a mind to look.
I have searched your eyes for
my own reflection, and on the
rarest and happiest moments,
I have even discovered me there.

If discovered, and one so hopes it will be,
I can promise you that I will in turn,
with every ounce within,
find you.

There is purpose in truth,
but no truth in purpose.
Every course set is the perfect
opportunity to take the wrong turn.
Life is not precious, and certainly not protected.
Living is both these things,
and for good reason.
Interaction through a phone is
fine for the moment,
but strap an embellished bed sheet to your
back and jump from a plane
and call it forever.
Find in yourself the spun steel which has
always been part of who you are.
Reach for the things that are denied you,
because no oath is more powerful than the
ones which are occasionally broken.
Fight your ingrained faith,
but never lose your principles.
There are millions of people who
will sit in millions of dusty corners of this
world and examine life,
and so pitiful few that will prove it.
There exists no boundaries.

Regret is a cornerstone on which we have built a lifetime.
Forced from shelter into life,
we live as though mistakes are not expected.
Show me the man,
who at the end of his life,
does not look back and wonder.
Were it not so easy to dwell on our missteps
we would have no room to grow.
We will never reach out and find that we have
always had perfect teeth,
proper endings,
promises kept.
We are small.
We are considerably broken.
Therein is our most valuable attribute.
We are people, **** it.
Whole and complete, with mistakes made,
doors slammed shut and no path but to the grave.
And how magical is that?
Live, always and everyday,
with the past behind you.
Tomorrow there are a million more mistakes
never to make again.
And marvel , my friend,
the glory of being small and considerably broken.

Battered by the words
thrown my way I hesitate.
I know what needs to be said.
I know how to defend myself.
I know how to fix that tired
arrogant smile of yours.

You never walked the mile.
Never carried the load.
You never faced down the barrel.
Never lived as a boy without sanctuary,
or as a man without a hometown.
Nine words never changed your life.
Six seconds never changed your world.
Love never found you, and you’ve never
hunted for it, not in earnest.

The sacrifices for friendship are a burden
to you. Do you even know how truly
pathetic that is? Could you ever?
You’ve never fought in the night,
or run throughout the day.
Never let your blood stain
those you trust so that their own
might be spared.
Never so much as lifted a selfless finger
in repent of your nine selfish ones.
Never been so happy someone died
instead of you, only to hate yourself for it.

You are a boy. A man child.
Hold onto that arrogance.
I could blow it away with a
sentence. I could show you a world
where love and trust and hope are
tantamount to survival.
The world is cold and dark and
amazing and you haven’t the barest
idea at all.

I open my mouth.
I close it.
Sleep well, you sad
wonderful
man-child.