There is shadow in the corner.
The barest hint of a shape.
Another boy.
So much pain, so much
cruelty. So much...
His eyes flicker with danger.
A silver glint reflects from his hand.
His left hand.
Odd, I think.

There is a shadow, a boy, and
a bullet meant for me.
When he issues his charge the
sound roars through the small
alley.
He drops the weapon,
I shout to bleed out the noise.
Next to me there is no noise.
The projectile moved so quickly,
I didn’t even understand what had
happened until after the shadow boy
had run off, until after I held you.

There were no last minute confessionals.
There was no kissing your forehead
no shouting vengeance to the heavens.
I wish there was.
I wish it had all been different.

I don't know if it was the sound,
how unbearably loud it was,
or if it was the inexperience of the
shadow boy, or some magical combination
of all of these things.
I never will.

There was only a boy
and what was left of the other one.

Muscles strain with the effort, each one
fit to burst from this skin in protest of the
things I do for you.
When I saw you falling by I couldn’t
help but to throw out my arm for you
to grab. I will anchor you to safety.
Sometimes I think that this act,
rescuing you, is all I know.

A toast!
To those buildings from our lives
which at times meant so much,
and how we saw them torn down.
To those people, who we loved and
hated and ignored and couldn’t be
away from, and to how we stood
by to see them torn apart.
A toast to the rips and tears.

When I’m not around, and this dark world
looms like death about your aspect,
how do you go on?
Do you have a bevy of pretenders,
waiting in the wings to assume the mantle
of hero for you, at your beck and call?
I think not.
No, the state that I always find you in.
Teetering on oblivion. Breathing in your
own acrid impending ruin.

A toast!
To the victimless crimes that always
find themselves a victim.
To the altruist with ulterior motives.
To the new car with seven hundred miles on it.
A toast to the rut I find you in.

How could I do anything other than rebuild you?
I sit and cobble you from the heart break
you discovered on your path to forget or forgo.
With delicate hands and loose calculations
I will rend you into a form that resembles
yourself, and when I am done I will
walk away.
You have never once thanked me.

A toast!
To the victimless victim of
self inflicted crime.
To those torn down and made whole
again.
To buildings wrecked and replaced.
To the occasional altruist with
understandable ulterior motives.

Seven words that are better left unsaid.
Steps descend from here to
the farther room, and within
there is the chained box,
a demon soul inside.

There is no way to win this.
No chance to come out on top.
Stand still, and line up,
better to be dropped on the spot.
For all the effort, and so much
of our precious time, and here we
stand, our empty hands a
reminder of what we haven’t got.

Gift me with this silver tongue.
So I may sing for you the dirge
of our day. Explain it with the timbre
and the fire that it has not just earned,
but perhaps even deserves.

Find me, just please god, find me.
There’s a distance between us.
I know it wasn’t always there.
The day in, day out daytime fuss.
The hard won raking against our coals.
I wonder if it will ever be enough.

***** and giggles.
Thrills without frills.
My god, the things you consider
mantra.

How have you become this
sad, blind, pathetic person?
Where is your animal force?
Your keenly tuned force of nature smile?
You never had a chance.
Never.

You scream in shades of
burning gasoline.
You cry in tuneless guitar strumming.
You move with mechanical imprecision .
The very soul of you is the very sole of you.
Was it always so?

You were never so repulsive as when
you begged me to stay.
You couldn’t keep the dawn lit,
and I refused to be your book of matches.
The things you said, the things you did.
Phone line regrets paid in full.

I know you have the strength, if only you
would bend without breaking.
If only you would dream without
having to borrow.
If only you could remove the sepia
tone from your expectations.

We were only children.
Kids playing pretend at happily ever after.
Now you’re gone.
I never told you that...

“If only” right?

There is sky stretched almost to break,
a countless number of stars breaking through
the ink of this soft night.
The moon, a lost child in a wood, his mother
long gone and him alone, is absent from
the sky. Absent from your eyes.
A streak of still white clouds glaze
through the iris to end in the pupil.
Your head so far back, taking it all in
with that senseless wonder of yours,
that your mouth hangs open.
As you tilt your head down to earth,
down to me and us and all that means
and all that once meant,
your gaze falls on me.
The same gaze that could behold the
entirety of the moonless sky.
A slow smile spreads your cheeks,
makes them gently touch your amazing eyes.
With a nod we leave.
Leave the night, leave the city, leave the state.
It is only us now.
Lost and alone like the moon.
Forever searching, forever leaving,
to find new distractions.

Black and white judgment,
cherry colored lips and creme colored eyes.
I saw you bathing. I didn’t mean to.
The door was open a crack.
I was so young, I didn’t fully understand
why I was frozen on the spot.

Habits pulled tight against the
driving rain. A world where the
nuns stood in closed circles, their
hands wrapped around the glowing,
almost living embers of their cigarettes.
Protected from the water. From the skyward
vengeance, no irony felt at all in any part of it.
Dignity, among all things, maintained.

Bruised knuckles were my badge of honor.
Arguments heard from three doors down.
Dare me to question the one thing you
won’t allow anyone to question.
Dare.
Deny all things, young man, but do not
deny the truth of the Holy Spirit.
Do not ask me why!

The water, so unlike the rain all over
your black and white, this time with
a purpose, almost a mind of it’s own.
It forms a train, a pattern of clean skin
between your shoulder blades, your *******.
I knew that those things were there.
I’m sure I did.
So tell me, why am I so surprised to see them?

Every Empire falls.
Every reign ends.
Every time.
Every Time.

So tell me, whisper into
my ear if it makes you more
comfortable, my god the things
we do for comfort,
tell me, my friend:
How will this Empire end?

Will it be in fire?
A large bang, followed in course
by smaller ones into a
rubble and tear filled
oblivion?

I think it’ll be a whimper.
I think it will fall apart inside itself,
so slowly and so quietly
that when it’s over we’ll
wonder if it ever was to
begin with.

I’d like it to be a fire.
I’d like it to be a boom or a bang.
I’d like it to end in glory,
if possible.
I’d like it to end with you.

There is something in the breeze.
Something about your scent.
Some secret thing that passes,
from you to me, like telepathy.
It catches in the wind,
blows back like sand in our eyes.
I can feel it even now, miles apart
in distance and certainty apart
in moral high grounds.

I loved you when we were children.
I loved you in a way I didn’t understand,
in a way I still struggle to understand.
The electricity of breathing in the same air.
You moved, not like water or silk in
a light wind, but with the calm purpose
of sports figures and politicians.
I always had to fake the confidence you
were born with.
I loved you for it.

If the rain gets any harder, I fear that
we’ll be swept to sea.
You and me crashing against the waves.
Borrow my strength, it is all I have to
give, it is all I know to give.
Float next to me, I will do the swimming.
When we are awash on our own island,
I will build for you the life you always wanted.
I want you to understand,
to feel from me what I feel for you.
Returning that feeling has always
been for you to decide.

My limbs ache in captivity.
I stretch in these shallow confines
and feel hard wall and harder resolve.
Freedom will be mine.
If only for these minutes
or that hour,
My god, if only for today!

I have watched you spend
time.
I have seen you preform these
great labors.
I have noticed the effort,
the struggle
the care
with which you constructed
the perfect cage to keep me.
I think you proud of these
walls and this narrow slat
that light can trickle through.

But there are so many things,
so many things, friend,
which you have left unconsidered.
Yes, you have left me no key
and yes, one would be useless
were I to have it.
Yes, you have forced me to
stay. Yes, you have created in
your trap a mechanism which I need.

You must sleep. In those dark hours
I may yet steal away.
You never thought I could learn to
need less and want only one thing.
You built this cage to keep who I was.
You didn’t consider who I am.

I will be free.
I will be whole.
I will feel the wind against my back.
I will not look back,
I will never try to find you again.

You keep me for now,
because I don’t know how to
be anything but kept.
I’m learning.
I’ve had a good teacher.

You are a crucible,
within you are the ingredients
that will coalesce into such
wonderful shape and form.
I am an unlit pyre aching to burn

Find the spark that will
push me to ignite.
Feel for the pressure that
will force your contents to unite.

You will make forever in your own shape.
A fine thing it will be.
People will look on your
achievement and inundate
you with deserved praise.
You are more than a glorified stain.
You are permanent. You will last.

I am almost nothing.
I will blaze for such a short time.
Ash and dust and nothing.
But, my god,
my friend,
my love,
I have such a gift for you.

Watch as I burn.

Color my smile in you vibrant shades.
Knowing the edges of my cast shadow
is a freedom of sorts.
Find the stars in my eyes, each with
the name you knew to be true.
Kiss me with any of the seven kinds
that you know. I yearn for them all.
Know me in your slow and steady way,
one hand on the back board one on my chest.
Love me as you always have. Without
condition and with only desperate need.
Sing to me, the songs you love and more so, the
ones you only barely know. I love those the best.
Close your hands around me, and cage me
like a firefly so that I might shine for you.
So that I might make you smile.
Any one of the hundreds you know.

Look for me in the usual places,
that is where I’ll be.

Find me smiling at an old joke,
heard so many times it has become
an old friend, and you will know me.

Hear me call out across a room,
perhaps it is gentle and perhaps loud.
Spot me and you will never go alone.

Know my secret name, the one
that only you are entitled to because it
is the one you gave me. Keep it with you.

Run through these empty three am streets,
giddy like children on adrenaline and life
and together we will tear the sky down around us.

Believe me when I tell you that I love you.
It is not lightly said and it is always deeply meant.
It is the first of three gifts that I will give.

Love is a contradiction without terms.
It is often compared to music,
but that doesn’t sum it up.
It is thought to come from ***,
but that is less than a third of it.
It is said to come from the heart,
but it’s true location is only known to
the people suffering under it.

Love is not one thing or another.
It is not a thing that fills,
nor is it a thing that drives.
It is not freshly fallen snow,
or the first red leaf of Autumn.

It is pleasure, and it is pain
and it is both and neither and all.
It is not found in books,
or songs,
or contact
or smiles.

It does not live in a gentle embrace,
or a baby’s breath.
You can not spot it’s home
from the eyes.
It is not in these places,
it would be a fool’s errand to look for it there.

Love cannot be defined or quantified.
It cannot be discovered or hunted.
It does not just happen, although it
happens all the time.

If you are extremely lucky,
and profoundly doomed,
you will know it when you know it.
Do not cherish it, do not avoid it,
accept it.
That is all that can be done.

Kept in the plaza,
by the booth
we once laughed
away an evening,
(How does time get away from us?)
There is a locked box.

My heart is kept inside.
There is only one key.
Crafted by birth and
shaped by a fire inside.
(I have stoked that fire to keep us warm and alive.)
I don’t possess the key.
I never have.

Follow the twisting pathways,
fight through the crowd
and deep inside a dark room,
high on a shelf
(So high I can barely reach)
You will find the box.
Unlock it,
beautiful eyes and dark hair,
quick wit and wisdom.
Unlock it, My love.

Set me free.

If that bell tolls one more time
I’ll rip it’s clock work out.
What does a man do with
all these hours in a day?
How do you fill them with meaning?
What is the meaning?

Tomorrow I will lay next to you,
breathing in the air
knowing home and love
and life and hope.
Knowing you.

There are raindrops racing each
other down my window pane.
I have these pictures, some are
of us, some are of places,
most are of you.

Tomorrow I will caress your hair.
I will fix the sheets on your bed,
rub your feet.
I will listen to your day,
and you will listen to mine.

Tonight (******* it tonight!)
I keep the time without you.
I hate the clock, I hate the light bulbs,
I hate the way your smile doesn’t
light up your eyes in pictures.

Tonight I’m on fire,
burning to ash and bone.
Tomorrow I will rise.
Reborn.

An Experiment:

Imagine a place without pity.
Where the strong survive
and the weak must force themselves
to create in order to achieve.

Imagine a world were no one
sits around feeling sorry for themselves.
Where things get done and no
one complains about the toll.

Sounds wonderful, in it’s way.

A Reality:

When you told me about your
Father, about how he died.
You leaned your head on my
chest and sobbed uncontrollably.
After all that time, years, you still
felt so raw and vulnerable.
I had never really seen you before.

Your pity allowed your grief to
wash over you. To throw some dirt
in the hole you had been tossed into.
Not enough, not nearly enough.
But your pity allowed you to take a step
closer to getting out alive.

My pity, as you rocked ever so gently
with tears. My pity, as you rubbed your
face against me leaving the smell
of you in my clothes.
My pity.
My pity let me love you that day.
It let me love you in a way
that hasn’t gone away,
that hasn’t faded.

A Truth:

As wasteful and useless as pity
is, I wouldn’t want to live in
a world without it, because it
is a world wherein I don’t love you.
I couldn’t bear to not love you.

I stayed awake to watch the sun come up.
I stayed up to watch it go down.
I climbed a tree to see what the country side told me.
I stood on the parking complex to hear the music of the city.
I ate food that were bad for me.
I drank V-8 and took those ****** vitamins.
I checked my blood pressure compulsively.
I checked my heart beat infrequently.
I drove fast through silent streets.
I slowed down on the highway.
I had not places to be.
I was in a hurry to get no where.
I breathed in the smoke from the end of this cigarette.
I breathed out under water to watch the bubbles.
I read like books were never going to be published again.
I watched DVDs until my eyes hurt.
When the third day came I slept.
I had such dreams.

Keep me in your bastion
until I dream of home.
Twist me into lover’s knots,
till flesh rips from the bone.
Close me in the pages
for all I must atone.
Lodge me on this winter night,
I’ve come from places unknown.
Lock me in you golden heart,
least I once again be allowed to roam.
I beg you, to keep me in your heart,
just don’t leave me alone.

Fall would bring down the
leaves and reveal the
entrances to their secret
tree forts.
They would wave *******
in their faces and pretend that
the early morning steam
of their breath was cigarette smoke.
They would laugh like maniacs
when the teacher wasn’t looking,
and be as quiet and innocent
as babies when he was.
The sun gone down, the last
inning played and the first
street lamps came on they could
be found under blankets,
reading scary stories by flash light.

When the winter arrived
they slept near the cold
glow of televisions.
Tomorrow screamed of
Baseball, and school books,
and notes passed in class
to the girls they pretended
to hate.
It would beg them to throw
off their shoes and feel
the sun warm blacktop
on their bare feet.
It would whisper secrets
of life, new things discovered.

When spring came around they
would chase through the
tall grass, looking for Pokemon.
They would accuse each other
of contracting cooties from
their spring fever addled crushes.
They would send away UPCs
from the backs of their comics
for the prizes, treasures untold.
In the evenings they would study,
and write and miss the summer.

As summer finally came they
would gather together, their
days at long last free for planning.
They would make additions to their
tree houses, tell fictional stories
about how far their old crushes
had let them get.
They would wrap on the side
of the old TV every Saturday morning,
when the static interrupted the cartoons.
Tennis ***** were made for bouncing
off the sides of houses.
When the air grew cold at night
they would string a clothes line
between their beds and the wall.
A sheet hung on it made an excellent
tent, a flash light a fine camp fire.
They would tell each other
what they would do when they
grew up.

There is an art to saying,
“Hello.”

It is a small and wonderful
art.
Hard to learn.
Harder still to practice.

I’ve never learned the art
of,
“Hello.”

I’m a goodbye man.

If you were a place
you’d be a temple in Tibet.
You’d be cold as ice,
and hard to reach.
You’d be fraught with
danger and legend.
I could get lost for days
with no attention or
assistance.
Yes.
You would be a secret
temple in the mountains
of Tibet.
I would find you looking
for an answer, a cure
a purpose. Looking
for completion and peace.
I would leave
whole and calm
and perfect.

Years Ago:
We ran around in the snow for hours.
Shed our coats
and watched as the steam
rose from our skin
into the night sky.
We marveled at body heat
and cold air.

Yesterday:
I crushed what was left of the snow
into a rain puddle
and stepped on it.
It felt violent and wonderful.
I watched as the water
moved the tread prints
further and further apart.

Now:
You’re miles away,
watching the snow melt.
You’re looking at your phone,
wondering if you should call.
If I’m free. If I miss you.

All the time:
There is no window to
the past, no way to reclaim
what we built, there is
only now.
There is only the horror
and the glory of now.
I miss you, more than you know.
But I am not free.
I may never be.

I have walked these halls,
through eight nights and nine days,
I have waded through
the lies and false promises
of these tired days,
in this tired time.

There are no great men,
and if there were who would
even welcome them?
Who would match?
There may have never
been a time for great men.

I will find the door,
thousands of them, all
the same color,
all the same width,
they all open on the same
******* place.
Still I wander, still
I search.

Count my life in penny and dime.
Measure my hours in tea.
Know the whole of me,
if you have the time,
using lengths of twine.

Keep me in your cage.
It’s comfortable in it’s own way,
if only for a very brief stay.
Kept too long and be met with rage.
So say Magi and Sage.

Run with me to a place far from here.
Hand in hand I can lead you.
Be with me, be strong, be true.
There is a time and place for cheer,
So I’ve been told, so I hear.

The fear engendered by a righteous act
is called cowardice.
To preform a righteous act because,
or in spite of, this fear
is called courageous.
To allow this fear to prevent,
or delay, a righteous act
is nothing short of
pathetic.

How I long for a righteous act.
What is the mettle of this man?
In what shapes and colors
am I defined?
To what parts are derived my sum?

For so long I have waited.
There was a time when I could
see them.
When you could point them out
and I would know them by name.
That has changed.
Miracles don’t happen here.

Are the pious also righteous?
Are the sinners capable at all?
Can a man be just one?

For so long I have waited
for a miracle.
For a spark of the divine.
I have labored for this
harvest, but am forbidden to
partake of the fruit.
Is that not a righteous act?

Every year it gets farther away.
The cowardice, the jealousy,
the pain, the heartbreak,
the anger and the fear.
With time it seems so distant.
I don’t fall asleep facing the
door anymore.
I don’t dig inside myself
when trouble arrives,
or lament my station and it’s
hopelessness.

It took so long to see
what this world could offer.
To find the wonder.
Now that I am here
I pride the ability to
wonder, to create, to think,
to dream and above all
else the power to endure.

Life is trial.
It is test and failure.
It is pain and affirmation.
Light is strong and good.
Wise and powerful.
But there is no teacher
as good as darkness.
This I know.

I find myself in search of
a mountain.
So I may preach my own
sermon on the mount.
To an audience of one.
I hope that if my words
carry the right gravity,
my volume high enough,
my content strong enough
that you will hear me.

My message would be clear:
Endure. Build this nest
inside, where no man can
reach, and hold it.
Each year past it will grow.
You will be so filled with hope,
so unafraid of the world
and the dark, ****** terrors
it has in store.
Endure, my friend.
There is so much to look
forward to.

Meet me in the forest,
what passes for one here.
Tell me your secrets and I
will tell you mine.
Over flashlight and
blood pacts we will
save our bottle caps
for our whispered projects.
In a notebook we keep the
page for decoding the
language we invented.
Each night we’ll bring the latest
chapters of our story.
In the morning we’re strangers.
We don’t talk, we don’t laugh,
we don’t look.
We’re each others best kept
secret.
One day we’ll decode love,
without the help of invented
language or spiral bound
notebooks.
My god, I miss the illusion
we had built around our
“Love.”

Through this window there is light.
I cupped it in my hands,
careful to keep my fingers
from opening.
I dropped it into that old
soda bottle I kept around,
for reasons you never understood.
I hide it under my bed,
wrapped in a scarf I had left
over from that cold winter.
It’ll be my sunshine.
Mine and mine alone.
Of course, if you whisper
the right ***** jokes,
throw the right smile,
kiss me under the stars
until I feel like that boy with his
soda bottle of sun rays again,
if you will do these things for me:
I will fish under my bed,
unravel the scarf,
unscrew that lid
and finally, after all these
years, I will watch the
sunlight dance around
this room with you.

I never remember what song was
playing.
I never recall the weather.
I can’t force the patterns to align
in a way that will let me see
the time on any nearby clock.
I don’t smell something in the
wind that will take me back.
But your eyes, blue and
filled with tears.
Your mouth, the lower lip
****** in slightly. Your
teeth pushing it so it looked
as though it would burst.
Your words, I’ll always remember
the words.
The sentence that defeated me.

Where were we?
What had we eaten?
Was anyone else even there?

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

I’ll always hear that in my head.
My gift for memory is tied to
the people I want to remember.
It always had been.
But you, my love,
I remember you best of all.

Place mats covered in doodles
have defined all of my outings with
friends and loved ones.
With pen and the blank spaces
around the adverts
I will push a new world into
this tired realm.
Here are people without
their hands chained to the
baggage of their lives.
Here are perfect people.
I wonder if they have belly buttons.
I wonder sometimes if I
have any control over them at all.

How you delight to watch me struggle.
I’m tearing always at these bonds you’ve
shackled me with.
Always.
Like trying to breath in cellophane.
Sinking.
Waiting for the bottom to fall out.
In endings it is said that there
is a new beginning.
I won’t ask for that.
I want freedom.

For too long this mold you’ve cast
me in has been my identity.
Has been my purpose.
Chained to this floor while
the world spins and grows
and laughs and loves around me.

******* your nature.
The weight of your aspect hangs
about my neck.
Labeled.
Contained.
Quiet.
Polite.
Behaved.

I will touch that sky.
I will feel my finger tips graze
the surface of greatness.
I will be so hungry for more.
How will you keep me then?

Outside: I can hear the cars race by.
Horns blare out their dull song.
Radio broadcasts barely audible over
the outside world around them.

When movement strikes these bones
I rise with nothing and wander
to nowhere.
I stand among parking lots
and trees.
Among people and night skies.
Sun and moon.

My soles are worked almost bare.
There is peace in solitude.
There is life in movement.
There is a quiet kind of strength in
looking forward.
I want to be a part of these things.
I want to feel them stir in me
until they are all that is left.
Until my thoughts are
consumed by them.
By the chill wind against my cheeks.

Until I am a new man.

When I read the lyrics they were different.
I’d spent the last twelve years
singing the wrong words.

I sang words filled with hope.
Words that moved me to act.
That challenged me to better.
I sang words of my own invention.
Words I didn’t know were wrong.
.
Twelve years ago I was telling
myself to persevere.
Today that song came on.
I opened my mouth and waited.
I like my words better.

I’m flat on the table staring up at myself.
There is a small smile on my face.
As though I understand something.
I’m younger on the table.
A decade?
More?
What did I know?
My god, I was young.
My hands move.
They are weathered.
Beaten and old.
Veins pop out in odd places,
at odd angles.

I’m sitting at the table looking down at myself.
I’m older now.
Wiser, I hope.
There is no smile.
I tell myself that wisdom and smiles
are not mutually exclusive.
I hope I’m right.
No more cameras.
No more pictures.
I can’t handle it anymore.

She crosses the room.
Sets her things down
and sits beside me.
“What do we do?”

There are platitudes.
Overcome.
This too shall...
Words are false and hollow.
They don’t prepare you
for these challenges.

Envelopes filled with bad news
and money owed pile up
on the little table by the door.
“What do we do?”

Tired eyes search tired eyes.
There is love there, but far too
much struggle.
Life was not meant to be
a battle.
Love was meant to prevail.
To guide.
“What do we do?”

“I don’t know! I don’t ******* know!”
You shout. Too loud.
Too sudden.
Tired, so tired.
This is now.
This is who you are?

She smiles. Holds your hand.
You smile back. Weak and defeated.
“I know, baby.”
She says.
“I know.”

I.
Where does the time go?

With cupped hands going slowly empty.
Ignite like a sun in this very room.
Burn for us.
Burn.

II.
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Falling.
The wind rushes by.
Accompany this flight with taunts.
You cannot achieve.
Over and over.
Falling.

III.
I’ll never be you! I don’t want to be you!

Voices echo back.
Bouncing off tile and brick.
Distorted.
Words that don’t fit
in sentences that don’t make sense.

IV.
I just have to get out of this town.

Turn signals switched like muscle memory.
Showers taken like anniversaries.
Faces cycle through.
Features changing only with time.
This is forever.
Escape.

V.
How did I become this person?

Read to me.
Teach me the stories.
Tell me the values.
Whisper life into these bones.
I ache to fly.
I see your sky, the clouds soft and perfect.
I want that.
Show me.

Out the **** light.
Away with feet and shoes.
Laces drawn and Velcro snapped.
He runs his personal miracle mile.
From dawn to dusk,
wake to quick to finish.
He sleeps now. The shades
closed, the world soft and still.
His breathing ragged always.
Patience and peace his only virtues.
Tomorrow!
Tomorrow will blaze.
Will burn.
Tomorrow!
He’ll ignite his dreams, and track the
ever elusive spirit of this country
to it’s rest chamber.
Buckled saber, shield aloft
he will vanquish the soul and
in it’s place he will carve himself
and his future.
Tomorrow.
Patience.
Peace.
Tomorrow.
Always.
Out the **** light.

She said she didn’t care if I was
anything else,
so long as I believed in something.
As though I don’t believe, as
though I do not have the
capacity.
I do not need the comforting lies
from the pulpit to find
wonder in this world.
I do not need the rosary
to teach me dedication.
I do not need the ethereal
to know right from wrong
in the ephemeral.

I believe that I am whole.
The the world can be fixed.
That man has such strength in
imagination and invention.
I believe in the infinite and the finite.
I believe in helping each other to
accomplish tasks big and small.
I believe in a world that is not
divided among the petty lines
of bigoted accusation found in
your old, small book.

I know who I am.
I know who you are.
I can see a beauty
in this place that is
uncorrupted by the nay saying
of an imagined giant.

I say to you that I believe!
I only wonder if you do.

Tonight, my god, tonight!
I will meet you,
the first and last time.
Your cloak and dagger
existence, your
pallor of decay,
your dark dreams.

I will walk from this
comfort to the hill
by the moon.
Water rushing somewhere
below us.
I will find you there.
Patiently waiting.
Chess board before you,
sickle in hand.

I will meet Death tonight.
I will laugh at him,
turn my nose at him.
I will take the challenge.
I will rise to the occasion.

Tonight, my god Tonight!
I will be immortal.

I am not little anymore.
I have learned many things,
none of them may be taken back,
or altered to lobotomize
me into the child you miss.

I am a man now.
Albeit not the best example
of the lot. Perhaps not
even the best example of
humanity in general.
But grown, nonetheless.

I cannot change this.
I don't want to.
I know it is difficult to
see that I'm angry often,
that I'm bitter,
and worst of all that I
often hate the things you love.

I am not little anymore.
I wouldn't want to be.
Better of worse;
This is who I am.
It is who I have to be.
Hate it if you must,
but it is also
What you made me.

If the world ended
Now,
would any of us notice?
Would it be difficult
to see?
Could we plug in the
coordinates in our GPS?
Would it be a whimper?
Would it make a lot of noise?
If the world ended
Now,
would any of us care?
Could we divorce ourselves
of the tasks we have left
to do for the day?
Would we keep all our
appointments?
Would it bother us
at all?

Falling through space
matter reflects the light
from a failing sun.
Here,
between the now and the then,
we slip past these gates,
provided a toll
exchanges
hands. From us to
them.
From them to
us.
Teach, or preach
of the wonders
around you.
If you can find the
words.
If you can find the
time.

There was an old man,
who had a sinister plan.
To take his own life.

It all basically happened in Vegas,
Which is to say it was outrageous.
But when the car pulled away,
and we examined the remains of the day,
it turned out what most of us had was contagious.

I remember having to break
the binding so I could see
the full image.
I remember the pools of dark
shadow defining the world.
I remember the pithy banter,
long before I knew the word
was pithy.
I remember the smell of it.
The wonder.
I remember how fragile
the two staples that
held it together were.
I remember putting it
down and looking up
at my Uncle and telling him
that one day I was going to
be Spider-man.
Perhaps I remember best
him looking down at me,
smiling his knowing smile
and saying,
“Yes. Yes you will.”

The boundaries between dreams
are made up of the finest strands
of silk and carelessness.
One tends to flow into the next,
without elegance.
Without pause.
Without apology.
Someone told me that
life was like that.
I don't remember who,
and perhaps that says all
that needs to be said
about my opinion on
the matter.

I always liked fall.
It's a better word than
Autumn.
Leaves fall.
We fall.
I fell.

We do not glide into love.
We have no control of it.
I did not glide for you.
I fell for you.
Closed my eyes,
leaned backward,
took a deep breath
and fell into you.
Into us.

There is a hill.
It stands between there,
the who I was, and here,
the who I am.
It is large, it has odd
lumps in it and it smells
of leather and flowers.
Like spices and fruit.
Sin and altruism.
It smells like your hair.
It smells like your neck.
Like your skin.

I have long since landed
but every time you smile,
your slow and wonderful smile,
I can feel the weightlessness
of the ****** thing.

I will always fall for you in
the fall.
I don't care for the
vagueness of
Autumn.

You told me you hated me.
Then you told me you loved me.
That was the first time you said it.
I had always heard how close
those two feelings are.
Love & Hate.
(The ampersand is fancy.)
But you said it.
“I hate you.”
“Why?”
“Because I can't stop falling
in love with you.”
I should have laughed.
I should have bristled to
mark how silly I thought
that cliché was.
But I didn't.
I danced in place.
I gave the wall next to me
a high five.
I never do that.
I believed you.
I actually believed you.
How remarkable is that?

My bones don't ache.
My food doesn't taste different.
My eyes don't play tricks.
My home is still my home.
My colors are as vibrant as always.
My dreams as dark and empty as always.
When you aren't around
I'm not a different person.
My world isn't different.
I'm just not alive.
Not really.
Not without you.

You breathe my stale air.
I know it's not romantic,
not to anyone but me.
But you do.
My head rests higher on
the bed. My warm
breath trickles down
to where you breath in.
I can't sleep with my head
under a blanket. Warm air
doesn't breathe right to me.
But you breathe my stale air.
I love you for that.