Move the couch there.
Push the dresser up against
that door.
Draw the shades.
(Who talks like that?)
Throw the blankets against
the bottom of the door.
Move close to me, across
the ocean of cotton between us.
We have built seclusion.
Isn't it wonderful?

You make me feel...

How does one go about
describing music?
How would you explain
the color red?
If you have bread after
starving for three days,
can you describe to someone
that has always eaten three
squares what it felt like to
be full?
What words capture the smell
of earth after a hard rain?

You make me feel...

I have told myself a million times
that “this is the best moment in my life.”
I have sworn, billions of times
that leaves never seemed to fall
like this before, that rain never
felt so good on my skin.

It's just the fit.
Like we were factory made.
My hand fits perfectly into the
small of your back.
You fit against my contours, as
though you were molded, or I was,
into a shape convenient to the
purpose.

Sometimes, when you breath out,
your eyes flicker slightly.
Like the end of a first date.
They aren't sure if they should
stay or go.
I watch as you mumble and
fall back asleep. Re adjusting so
you won't have to sleep with your hair
pushed against your neck by my elbow.

You rested against the pillow.
Sweaty and smiling. Your cheeks
flushed, your eyes half closed from
the exertion. You looked wonderful.
Messy hair and tired eyes.
Wonderful.
It was the million and first
best moment of my life.

There are bodies in motion.
Bumping into one another,
as they drift through time
and space.
Each new contact creates
a slight deviation in their course.
They spin off, tangentially.

Here in this city, where
ambulance sirens make
the sour notes of our love
song, I sit missing you.
Missing the contact.
Missing our slight deviations.

So there's this dark room, right?
When you walk in, there's this odd
warmth rising from the floor.
I know, crazy.
But here's the hitch:
The warmth isn't mechanical.
It doesn't have the familiar consistency
of Air Conditioned heat.
It feels like animal warmth.
Human warmth.
How weird is that?

Anyway, what happens next is the lights.
They go on like crazy, all over
the place. It's bright, is what I'm saying.
So you throw your hand up over
your eyes, who wouldn't yeah?
So while your hands are up,
and your blinking back those
bright-light style tears and everything
you feel something on the small
of your back.

Creepy. I know, I know.
What's going on, right?
That's the crazy part,
I have no idea either.
I guess I never will.
I changed the channel.

Today I told a secret.
Yesterday I lied.
I read an inscription,
in someone else's book.
It told a tale about the folly
of the wise.
I'm hoping to find solace,
in a remote place.
Instead I find noise/chaos
with a friendly and familiar face.
There was a song you used to sing.
I don't recall the words.
I used to sing it in the shower,
and fantasize about being king.
Turnabouts fair play,
my god the things we used to say.

There is a huge portion of
his leg missing.
He has a cane these days,
though he didn't used to.
He hobbled up the streets
of the Catonsville intersection,
even beat me and my car to Towson
once.
He did this during the triple
blizzard. During the crippling
heat wave. During the frost
covered fall mornings now.
Always his sign reads
“God bless you.”
Always he smiles a genuine
smile, all the way to his eyes,
when even the most limited
amount of change drops into
his ***** palm.

His skin shines with the dirt,
beyond age or race he is filthy.
The skin around his wound has
begun to turn green.
I've asked him, for me, to see
a doctor. Told him I'd wait with
my car if he wanted to take
the home boy express.
He can't afford to be off the streets.
For him, if for no one else,
time is money.
No matter how small.

I worry for him.
But only for an hour a day.
And only because guilt is easier
to manage than shame.
I have heard all the arguments.
All the cynical stabs and jabs,
and I confess that I have agreed.
But for an hour a day
I still worry for him.

I'm glad someone gave him a cane.
His leg looks bad.
Worse than ever.

The window is rolled down halfway
so I can let the ash off my cigarette.
The music, which holds special
meaning to us and faceless others
who have been touched by it,
blares from the dying speakers.
The yellow lines snake ever onward,
winding parallel to each other.
Forever yearning to meet and always
being denied.

The sun went down so long ago
that it is daring us to watch it rise.
We are six cans of monster, two packs
of Red 100's and eight hours past
caring what the fickle thing decides to do.
We are also two days past the desire to
sleep at all.

We tell jokes, poking fun of the things
we don't dare in polite company.
Enjoying the kind of monsters we can
only be around each other.
We share tales of our ****** deviations,
more candid than we've ever been to
anyone else. The lesser experienced,
namely me, blush profusely at the
notion of where parts of us have been.
We lament lost love, unmitigated failure,
wasted potential and the million little
white lie excuses for why we've yet to
become the icons we dreamed ourselves.

When finally sleep begins to win the
battle for control of our eye lids
we take turns behind the wheel.
The window is never rolled up, although
I'm the only smoker aboard.
It's constant noise a reassurance that we
are still moving.
Though in what direction is anyone's guess.

We'll know our destination when we
get there. We'll know when our bodies
cry for food, or *****, or our girlfriends
cry for us to come home.
Mostly we'll know when we can't
go any farther. When we have to turn
around.

I'll always remember our late night
“adventures”.
I'll be an old man, waiting on the
final stroke of any clock I'll ever
hear, and I'll still be listening for
the reassuring sound of wind rushing
past my half open window.
Still feel the cold in my fingertips.
Still feel the warmth and laughter
in my heart.
That has been your gift to me, my friends.
I cherish it always.

“I do not have an anger problem.
The world has a problem managing my anger.”

He leaned closer. Inviting me to share.
Bear my soul to the strangers
in the circle of metal folding chairs
around me.
As if it were so easy to explain away
the healthy anger of a bright
young man.
Why am I so angry?
Why aren't you?

Hit the ******* floor choir boy!
I'll come up for air when the
vein in my neck stops throbbing.
I'll lay down my arms when you
admit that there is a war going on!

What kind of men are we?
Is anger so bad?
What about when it's focused?
If there is a purpose, then does it
matter if it's out of control?
If it serves to make a better world
should I stop screaming because it's
unpleasant?

I can't breath in this ******* room!
I'm not sick, you smug *******!
I'm not broken. I'm not defective.
I'm right.
I'm right, ******* you!

I look at this world, at this hole and I
honestly don't see how you can't be
******* about it too.
I saw the news when I was a boy.
I switched it on, to see if the
camera crew at my school had
picked me up.
The things I saw changed me forever.

We were lied to.
This place isn't fair.
Miracles don't happen here.
Karma is a flawed concept.
No one is safe, and it's dangerous
to start thinking we are.

The people in the chairs fidget.
My view of their world is not a
popular one. Not because it is dark,
but because underneath all the venom
that only a child can generate, there
is a deeper truth.
We should all be angry.
We should all fight.
It's not a problem, it's not a sickness.
It's a symptom.

Fractured light cascades in.
                     Flowing, ever wider, ever wilder
          with each passing moment, leaving
great pools of heaving color on the desk by
the notebooks I refuse to keep.

I.

There stands a building, overrun
by the very nature it once fought
so proudly to keep out.
It's walls hardly more than crumbled
stone, it's staircase, hard white concrete
interspersed with moss.
You keep a cozy home here.
Your beagles run about, guiding
lost or lonely travelers to your
warm and inviting den.

II.

The hallway was long, dark and
under water. The people floated about
still trapped frozen in the moments
that must surly have been their last.
At it's greatest spots the roof is so
high, the tile so dense that it
seems like a subway, a train station.
The blue lips of the people around me
seem to whisper pleasant lies.
Seem to call me, as though a touch
could wake them from forever sleep.

The sun's rays do not touch these places.
                     They do not know my works.
         How could they? Why would they? They don't belong.
The light breaking in are from the passing ambulances, cabs
and cars. Sounds I have learned to ignore.

III.

We are never more pathetic than when we
are swinging. Each time we hang back, we let
our heads dangle. It feels like that moment
when we lean our chairs back in class.
Proudly stride on two legs, and know
absolutely know that we are very near
to death. We reach through the world around
us, bending the color and light, forcing the
air from our skin and our bones and we hold
on to each other. We are so very near death.
We are so young, so close.
We swing on, and we open the same door,
again and again, only to find it still
closed.

IV.

My teeth are falling from my head.
They are healthy, they are wonderful
bright and shiny white, like they never
are, and they are falling from gums.
New ones grow in, without the irritating
itch that I remember from my youth,
but with bursting skin and a lack of blood.
They come in immediately. When I look up there is
food. So much food, the smell is so good.
But my teeth, my new teeth They are
too dull to chew. Soon they are falling out
as well. I shove them back in, pushing
them hard through the broken gums
but they won't stay. I don't know why
they won't stay.

When I open my eyes to the dull buzz of the alarm
                     My head swims, my brain reaches for the
         last few remaining images. It tries to put them in order,
tries to make sense of them. But nothing seems to fit.
There is only me, the light, and the desk. My works are in order.

Bend your ears to this:

“There is a wake, wrought
in the destruction you crave
and littered with your advertisements
for false joy.
It is in this storm that I seek you.
That I always seek you.

I seek you now, perhaps in the
same old ways, with the same old means,
but with a truer, more purposeful
intent. I have come to share with you.
I have come to give you a gift,
something much greater than you
deserve and much more powerful
than it pretends to be.
I seek to give you the truth.

There are times, when the
light grows wain and the
waves threaten to capsize
our vessel, that I look to you
for the comfort that even I
know is totally beyond you.

Feel free to pick me apart,
my every flaw a wonderful new
verse in the song of your
trials and tribulations.
I offer it to you. Chastise me.
Rend my cheeks pink and my
heart afire with anger.
Do what you will.

But please, and I ask only this
small favor of you, a pittance really,
keep your arrows from my heart.
You see it beats for another,
in many ways it always has.
I can no longer offer this part of
myself to you, it is no longer really mine.
And we both know it was
never really yours, though you
thought it was.

Curse my name, burn my home,
scare friends and family away
from me. It is all yours but for the
doing, and it always has been.
But this once, do me a kindness
and leave my heart to it's devices.
I have always left you to yours.”

This book is closed. The tale is told.

I won a competition I never lose.
There was no joy,
though there never is.
Not even the first time I played.
It was difficult to share,
once and long ago,
but now it comes as easily as
anger in a traffic jam.

I agree. It must've been rough
that your parents were not
supportive. It must have been
difficult moving from child to
adult without anyone telling you
how proud they were.
I may not agree with your
choice of reaction, but I understand
that it can be difficult to listen
to someone whine about their
kind and supportive parents.

Was all of that difficult to tell
everyone? You never felt like
the world was watching you,
waiting for you to slip up
so they could beat you?
It must've been hard to let
everyone into that, said the
spider to the fly.

I would take your fear of abandonment
over these storied scars.
I would take your careless parents
over the ones that cared enough
to beat me until I cared as well.
I would take your difficult life,
filled with family you can't stand
and a mother you hate when she's
not around over what I had.
It would have been easy.
People say that emotional wounds
run deeper, and it's true. They
just never bother to articulate
that physical pain can be a wonderful
source for emotional wounds as well.

But this is not a competition, not
that it would matter.
Having come from violence, and
neglect and abandonment, this
is not what wins this fight for me.
It is not what defines me.
I have built a family out of strangers
that will care for me with a caress, that
will support me with kind words,
that only yells and calls me names
with the inside joke smile of friends.

I have built a life that I always wanted.
That, my sad lonely girl
forever only three beers away
from living in the past,
That is why I win.

She stands before a mirror,
swaying gently to the sounds
of anguish in the room above.

She sits in the café.
She's nursing the same drink
she always orders.
Just trying to drag out the time.
Because today could be the day.
Today you may look over and see
her. You may recognize her from
the hallways. From the mail
boxes. From the laundry room.
You may see her. Really see her.
If only for a minute.

She reads to herself. Holding
her place with her thumb.
Withstanding the interruptions.
It's you and that woman again.
That woman hates you.
She can feel it. You can't.
How easy would it be to
come downstairs. There would
be a friend, a lover, a soul mate
waiting for you. All you have to
do is move. All you have to do
is notice.

She is alone. She is always alone.
It's such a big city. There are so
many people. She is so afraid to
talk to them. To show the world
who she is. They tell her it'll change.
That the pills will help.
That all she needs to do is make one
friend and the others will just happen.
But it doesn't.
They don't.
They won't.

She sways gently to the noise.
She loves the way she looks
when she dances.
It's the only time she can look
at herself in the mirror.
She wishes you could see her.
She wishes you would see her.
But you won't.
You never will.

The gears have spun their
final rotation.
The beat of this place has
finally died down.
Now we dance.
There is a song that
shoots from our core.
A rhythm that we spend
our entire lives denying.

Step charts discarded, we
pave the world beneath our
unsure foot falls.
I swear to god that I lived once.
Now, if only for these moments,
these short and wonderful
seconds, I will push my face
through the obstinate surface
of this dying rock and
I will live again!

It is blue and here I am in
the middle of it.
Bleed your hues into me.
Free this romantic from the
tired bones of this warrior's flesh.
Pace before me, let the hunger
wash over you, let it come.
Rip from me the beating essence
of this song.

I will be yours forever in this
moment, if only you will
follow me. If only you will close
your eyes and put your hand in mine.
I can take you to the streets in
my head. To the heaving city
alive behind these green eyes.

Give me the chance. Forgive me
the past, the indecision, the
false steps, the wayward consequences
of my misspent life.
I will burn the world down,
leaving tinders in my wake,
blaze your name across the face
of our worthless world.

Dance with me.

“How about a pick-me-up?”
The strap of your bra was peeking
through the slight fabric of your
thin shirt. Inviting me to get
lost in the pale shoulder it clung to.
There were lots of places around
that would sell us energy drinks
and cigarettes at three in the morning,
but I acted as though I couldn't
remember where they were.

“We'll just drive until we see one.”
But I didn't want to drive. I wanted
to hold your hand forever.
To have your small, delicate hands
wrapped up in my oafish and
calloused fingers. I wanted
to feel your soft, I needed to know
that it was there. I wanted to sit
awhile in the smell of you
and pretend that this night meant
as much to you as it did to me.

“We could walk, if you're worried about gas.”
I don't believe in fate, I don't
think anything is predetermined to be
any one particular way. But just for
that one minute I wanted to believe
that you were being pushed by
invisible strings toward me. That
in your earthly home I could find a
place where I finally belonged.
I held your hand as we crossed streets.

“I'll protect you.”
I joked, I lied, and I hoped.
I would protect you forever, from
anything if you would let me.
I would cradle you close, like a
precious gem or a hurt animal,
I would breath my stale life into
your form until we were both
alive and fresh for the first time.
Let me be that man. Let me be the
man you want but don't need.
I would do anything for that.

“I had a lot of fun tonight. Thank you.”

I can feel the raw power of it
charging through my blood.
I've seen his face too often.
I know what he's here for.
It moves through me like a
cannon ball, a wave that forces
bile into my mouth.

I've tried worming my way
through the covers.
Getting lost in the many folds
and patterns, my god the patterns
I can see, but he's still there.
He'll be there tomorrow too.

I feel for the cold comfort
of the base ball bat beside my bed.
Aluminum. Red. The wrapping
slightly worn.
I once unwound a baseball.
I removed it from it's skin.
Followed every little thread until
it's cork heart lay bare before me.
I remember the lesson well.
Be slow. Methodical. Don't quit.

I know your eyes are on me.
I can feel it burn my skin.
I hate you, you *******.
Do you know how much I hate you.
I had a dream about killing you.
I woke up with a smile.
I used to be so nice.

My grip tightens on the bat.
I hear you put away the last
of your bottle. I know there
are more to come.
Do you have the ambition to
come over here?
Can you muster the strength to
pull me from this bastion,
kicking and screaming and swearing?
Do you have it in you to hit me
tonight?

I hope not.
Coward. Weak. Sick.
Stupid. Afraid. Small.
Alone. Unloved. Freak.
Loser. Wimp.

Do it. Just do it you
******* monster.
But this time do it right.
Finish the job. I'm tired
of this borrowed time you've
given me. I want an end in sight.

I hear a soft yawn.
Keys jangle. The wind chime
sound of your walking.
The door closes.
Not tonight. Not tonight.
I can still hear your keys.
They are forever a reminder.
Don't think you're safe.
No one is safe.

I drew a picture on my wall.
It was a pattern. Lines weaving in
and out, in and out. Always.
The lines never end.
They connect to each other.
They form a strange circle.
People ask what it means.
I tell them it means patience.
Always patience.
And sometimes, not always
but sometimes, when I look at it,
staring me down with it's
impressive infinity from it's
corner of the room I can
hear keys and wind chimes
and I remember the baseball
I destroyed.

I'm twenty-four. By all accounts
I am a man. But every night I
check for the baseball bat by my
bed. I wake to sounds like a
door **** turning and
I hate you still.
You *******.
I used to be so ******* nice.

There are moments in life.
Small moments, little lies,
things on the edge of memory.
Things that while to an outside
observer may seem totally
                    Innocuous,
are the very foundations
on which life is built.

I keep your jacket around.
I tell myself that I can smell
you on it.
I tell myself comforting lies.
I've had the jacket too long.
You've been released from it.
Your scent is extinct.
How will anyone ever know
what you were? Your smell is gone.

I found the note you left.
You remember that book you
let me borrow. I am ever out
of things to read.
I found the note. I read it twice.
Twice more than I read the book,
so far anyway. I would love to see
the world with you. To show you the world I see.

There are no photographs of you
yelling and waving. Of the pride
when I crossed that stage.
There are only my memories of it.
I wanted to share you with
the world. I wanted them to see how amazing
you were. At one time there were six generations. Now there are none.

I remember your temple throbbing,
that solitary patch of hair on your head.
Remember when I filled that desk
with dissection worms?
I made you old while you were still young.
I've been long gone from that
place and that time. I remember you still.
Black board justice. I don't even know if you're still alive.

There are moments in life.
Small and stupid. You're a
Part of them.
A part of me.

There is a meaning to life.
I know that there is.
I also know that it isn't
just one thing for all people.
How could it be?
Are we not told, a million
times and in a million different
ways, that we are all unique?
Are we not snow flakes, to use
the vernacular.

There is a meaning to life.
I know this more now than
ever before.
I don't know my own.
I'm afraid to, I'm young yet.
There is so much meaning to
be squeezed from this
humble man.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
Always changing.

There is a meaning to life.
I know that it can be hard to
see.
So ****** hard to see.
It is not blinding, it is not
far off.
It is based on drive,
on ambition,
on joy,
on pain,
on you.

There is a meaning to life.
It is made.
Never found.
Stop searching, put down
the maps and the books.
Cast off the chains and the
labels.
Make it.

Someday I will be a parent.
It isn't that I wouldn't like
to avoid it. I would.
Loving something so completely
is a scary prospect.

My mother, regardless of how
we feel when we flew the
nest, built a world for me.
She never cried when they
stole our money.
When the insurance wouldn't
cover her surgery.
When the world got so
hard to live in, that there didn't
seem to be a point.

She wept when the teacher
told her I had talent.
She held me close to her,
rocking gently and smiled
as the tears rolled down her lips.
You were always worth fighting
for, my little one. My little
boy blue.

I saw her spend what little money
she had, from waiting tables,
from nursing, from a million
jobs she worked.
She spent it, not on the shoes
that her co-workers said she
had to buy, because her ankles
looked so sore, her knees
felt so weak.
She bought me sketchbooks.
Hundreds of sketchbooks.
Never a regret. She smiled.
She was proud of my talents.

How can you love someone
so deeply?
How do you watch as your
own idea of who you
are is ripped away?
I don't know that I have
that kind of courage.

I will be a parent, perhaps not
young like my parents were, but
a parent nonetheless.
It is inevitable. I know this.
I hope, regardless of how
I felt when I flew the nest,
that I can be the kind of
parent that never cries, except
to acknowledge how important
his child is.

I want her to know, when
my own child comes to visit,
that it has talent. That I
support it.
I want her to know that
I'm proud of her.

I saw a child playing.
He was alone, in a huge field.
His arms extended, too far
away to hear.
I'll bet he was making airplane
sounds.

I found a note you left me.
It was scribbled on the back
of some old notes, for
something I was sure
I was going to write.
The missive was short.
Just long enough to
say you loved me.

I stand alone on my post.
Twelve hour shifts.
I would like to be sleeping.
I would like to be home.
But there are so many
bills to pay.
There is so much to do.

I was told that what I had been through.
The k through 12 of the
****** thing was meant to
prepare me.
That college too was just
the short version of
the real world.
Except no one has any fun
in the real world.
I feel under prepared.

I find myself alone.
In a big empty field.
There are cars passing,
little arguments from the
back seat.
Little glimpses of other
people's life.
I extend my arms, and run
in tight circles.
I'm too far away to hear,
but rest assured.
I'm making airplane sounds.

The pain is all at once sharp and subtle.
Something you can work with,
but not use.
There is no advantage to this.
The hour hand seems frozen
in place.
Time has given up.
It has finally surrendered.

This moment stands triumphant.
You are witness to the
Second Victorious.

There are thousands of other
moments that would have been
better.
Moments of small bliss.
The warmth of a lover,
her weight beside you in bed.
The accomplishment of a job,
finished and well done.

The arm hangs flaccid.
The elbow at an odd angle.
There is no break, just the
dull fire sensation of a shoulder
ripped out of joint, yet again.
The pain that you've learned to ignore.

It is just this one moment,
this five block walk to where
you know in your stomach that
you need to be.

There is no way to make it.
There is only the quiet comfort
of defeat, and the joy of
the coming darkness.

The knot in your stomach turns.
The tears work their way, protested
against, from your eyes.

Ignore it.

Don't give him the pleasure
of defeating you.

You can hear the complaints from
the farther rooms.
The pain is intense, like
waves of light cracking up
just under the eyelid.
Snakes made of fire crisscrossing
in your lungs and under your skin.

Happy birthday, you think.
It's bitter.
You're bitter.
It's cold outside.

The doctors come in,
the same questions,
the same tired lies.
They can feel the truth,
because it bubbles in the back
of your throat.
You're free for the telling,
but fear of the man is more
than a compelling enough
argument.

One break, eight fractures.
They show you the parallel bars.
It's here that you will come
to feel like a human being again.
You can't help but feel that
they should be taller.
This place should teach you to
stand taller.
Walk taller.

Fear rules the small world
you call home.
The nurses know it more
than the doctors. Some
of them lived it, others
have just seen enough to
know the warning signs.
You are not a warning sign.

You're a billboard.

The complaints drift to you.
Back aches, sports injuries, cancer.
The small, black spot inside yourself
that you know is a coward,
it cries out.
How I wish I were you.

Is it senseless when the young die?
Is it without purpose?
Were they unable to live a life
of meaning just because they
had so little time here?

I have seen them lost, all around
me for a very long time.
13. 14. 15. 15. 16. 17. 17. 17. 18. 23. 23. 60. 64. 64.
Were you able to live lives full of
purpose? Were you able to
prove to us that you swept
this broken world into dizzying
thrill while you were here?

If I could ask, would you tell me
that you regretted it?
That you only wanted just a little
more time. We wanted that
for you as well. With all our
hearts.

Were your last thoughts profound?
I'd like to think that they weren't.
No one seems to understand the comfort
I get in the idea that the last thought
to cross your mind would be
a mundane one.
Would Spider-man be able to beat G.I. Joe?
Is there something wrong with my CD player?
I like swiss cheese, I don't care what they say about it.

I am comforted by your humanity.
Big and small.
I hope your last thoughts were small.
I hope that when your light went
out, so early in your day,
that you weren't plagued by
questions unanswered.
I think you made an impact.
I don't want to think your deaths
were senseless.

How could any reasonable
person not live in fear
of the moment when,
swaddled in blankets,
their child opens their eyes
for the first time?
Who could want that?
And why?
It is a kind of madness.

I have seen what a father is,
what they do, or don't.
I have seen the ones that
want to be a friend,
the ones that have given up,
and the ones that respond
with violence.
I have seen the violence above all.

Tell me how I am supposed
to look at this world,
this broken, horrible *******
world that we were handed by
the irresponsible
Me generation before us,
and see a place where I
would want my children to grow,
to live to breathe and to learn.
This place doesn't dream,
it only sleeps.

And we are so many, and
there is so little.
Room, food, money,
joy.
The quantities are all out of sorts.
My god it's a nightmare.
It's unthinkable.
It's a ******* of nature.

But sometimes, through the
polished glass door, I see my reflection
super imposed on your face,
and I think, we would
make such wonderful children.
You would make such a wonderful Mom.
It is a kind of madness.

With a single sentence
he sent them to their deaths.
He knew what it was,
he knew what it meant.
He now understood
the ruthlessness of war,
the sacrifice of victory.

There was a time when he was normal.
Just a kid, like we have
all been at some time or
another. Gazing into the sky,
envying the birds their flight.
Dreaming of a future he had
absolutely no reference for.
He had no perspective.
He would be young forever.
Wouldn't we all?

The burden on his shoulders
was too massive to control.
Most days he would sink in it.
Wallow in that place
between dreams.
He couldn't be touched there.
He couldn't be asked to
decide. He was free
from that horrible
responsibility.

But it would be back.
It always was. They would
look to him, as their world
fell apart, and he was expected
to have the answers.
To have the resolve.
He was expected to order
his friends into danger,
to order them into eternal
silence. And it was accepted
that his word was law.

He had made so many mistakes.
So many ******* mistakes.
He had failed to see the bigger
picture. He had failed to
see the end coming.
It was here now. And what terrified
him the most wasn't the battle,
wasn't the fear, wasn't
the impending doom.
It was the quiet acknowledgment.
The smooth, calm
smile on his face.

It was the end of everything,
and he was ready for it.

A predictable motion,
my body into yours.
It's beautiful,
in it's circus act
kind of way.
The way you wince,
so slightly,
and even then,
only for a second.
The way you grasp,
my hand or my wrist,
and lean into me,
when your time
arrives.
As if you were afraid.
Standing on the cliff,
looking down,
and shaking with
fear.
Hold onto me,
I will not let go.
Roll into me,
like waves on your
beach,
like static lines
on our Television.
Gently, ever so gently,
I'll loosen my grip,
and you will loosen yours.
We will plunge together.
But we will not let go.

This world is a nightmare.
It is something dark and sinister
and destructive and
wrong.

It is made up of people who
do not laugh at their faults,
people who do not think for
themselves when others are
willing to do it for them.
People with no capacity for wonder,
no drive to learn or to grow.

Every time someone stands for something
or tries to help they are cut down
by simple minded people
that are afraid of a world where
they might yet be proven wrong.
Every time a leader rises to right
a wrong he becomes some small piece
of the problem he set out to fix.

We do it.
We are poison. We are poison.
A product of a tough planet.
A **** or be killed kind of people.
But we could be so much more.

If only we tried.
We can still change.
We have only to find a reason to.

We inherited a nightmare, from a
generation of people who meant well.
We were given a promise of a bright
future and delivered something foul
and expired.
We don't have to settle for making
it bearable. We can change it.
Fashion it into something we can
be proud of.

We are so small, so insignificant.
Yet we are so great, so mighty.
We can accomplish so much.
If only we tried.

Why can't that be reason enough?

You must learn to forgive.
No one is perfect, and in that
broken person sleeps the very
creature which will rip the
heavens apart and remake a
world that thrills and awes.

You must learn to forget.
Because old battles don't need to
have a victor. They don't need
to become new wars,
better weapons, or another
mark in the “cons” column.

You must learn to stop comparing notes.
No one sees the world the way
you do, with the wonder,
with the cynicism, with the tired
eyes of experience or the fresh
eyes of hope.

You must learn to let a part of yourself die.
Holding on to a single thing is dangerous.
No one thing makes us what we are,
no interest or hobby or opinion can
possibly build a human being as
unique and clever as we all are.

You must learn to retreat.
While you live there is always
hope.
The beginning of a new day,
as wonderful and memorable as
you can make it.

You must learn to laugh.
My god are we flawed, useless
broken things on this tired
worthless world.
It's hysterical.

You must learn to accept the consequences.
Take the step, not ignoring the
possibilities for disaster, but relishing
them. How exciting can one life be?
When it is over, you will have your answer.

We must learn to grow.
Evolve or die.

There was time still!
My god there was time.
Time to do the millions of stupid
things we always talked about doing.
Time to run and dance and play,
like dogs or like children.
Time for so much more.
So much more.

You stole it away.

Thousands of fireflies, trapped
in mason jars, with air holes
poked in the top.
How were we to know that they
would escape?
We were so young.
My god we were young once.

You had those Velcro shoes,
you had such a time trying to
remember what Bunny Foo Foo
was supposed to do.
I'm not sure I ever let you live it
down.
I remember those Velcros pounding
the rain puddles next to my cheap
fish heads, a long time ago.

I loved you then. In those days
when tomorrow was an eternity away.
When eternity itself had no meaning
to us.
It does now. It has so much meaning
to us now. You saw to that.

Lesson learned. Damage done.

I hated you for a long time.
I hated you so much that it stirred me
from my sleep, shaking with quiet rage.
There was not a horrible word invented
that I did not call you.
Sitting in that church, that ******* church.
Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.
Who were these people?
Did they mean anything to you?
You *******, just answer me.
Just sit up, you *******.

I don't hate you anymore.
It's not that I came to understand,
like you said I would. It's not that
I grew up enough to lament.
It's just been a long time.
It's been such a long time.
You would have loved what we've
made of the place. You really would have.

When I see a picture of you, rare though
they are, I do not wince. I do not cringe.
I do not scream.
But I also don't cry, I don't long, I don't
wish.
I do pity, I do sigh, I do care.
There was so much time, Corey.
There was so much time.
My god was there time.

There is a part of me that loves it
when you haven't washed your hair
in four days, loves the smell of it.
There is a part of me that doesn't understand
your playful nature about ******,
but loves you for it regardless.
There is a part of me that watches you
play your video game even though I'm
pretending to be caught up in my book.

You told me that your eyes are blue
when you are happy.
I confess that at first I never noticed,
that is until the day they weren't.
Eyes like a mood ring, we are
a curious species, and you a prime
specimen of the lot.

Your weight is so slight to me, even though
you never seem to be happy with it.
Beating your hands against your thighs,
complaining that most girls aren't so
thick. I don't understand how you can't
just look in the mirror and see that you're
beautiful.
I don't understand that you can't see your
life swelling to burst, infecting the world
with laughter, and with joy.
It seems so obvious to me.

Five years into the experiment of us,
and I am utterly captivated by you.
This is not a freak occurrence, not some
strange collection of lies and comfort,
every time I see you, I can feel my cold,
cynical outlook melt into the
living, breathing, screaming word of hope
you create around you.
Your own personal bubble of paradise.

I have green eyes always. Dull and uninspired.
But you can see the storm there,
just behind these eyes, these old man's
eyes on a young man's face.
(Remember when they said that?)
You, of all people, can see through the disguise
of my eyes, you can see into the heart
of me.

I stand in awe of your movement.
Did you know that?
I suppose not. You're every move is a
miracle to me.
When I freeze, so struck by you,
I see the slow smile spread, the giddy
joy that moves from your lips to
your limbs. That compels you to
run for me, across crowded rooms,
empty hallways, and filthy bedrooms.

My god are your eyes blue today.

Everyone is isolated, if only they
would stop to think about it.
Because regardless of the battles
we fight, the wars we wage or
the love we spread, the love we make,
we walk through our dreams, and our
world with only one voice in our head.

It is not always a pleasant voice, and it does
not always ask of us the things we would
like to believe we are capable of.
Sometimes it will say “run.” when we always
thought we were the type to stand.
Sometimes it will say “yes” when we know
that the occasion calls for no.
Sometimes it will tell us to hate even when
it understands that the intentions were good.

It does not speak in hollow platitudes.
It does not spare feelings.
It does not care that a world exists beyond
the frame it is concealed within.
It is small, weak, self serving, and scared.

My god! Where is the animal confidence?
Here at the top of the food chain of countless
ecosystems, it's secret ambition is to make us think
like prey. Ever watching the ground, the corners the sky
for the predators it knows are coming.

And in the moment, when a plan goes south,
when, looking back at you with boredom glazed eyes,
she says that this was not what she expected, when
you wake from your lonely dreams to an unexpected
noise from a distant room, the clenching of your
bowels screaming terror unimagined.
In the moment when it is right about the
hostile world you inhabit
It doesn't even have the courtesy not to
scream that it told you so.

We are all isolated, with an animal fear
screaming against a civilization it doesn't understand.
We are all lost in a spinning ball of predictable yet
frightening chaos, trying not to listen
to the part of us that wants only our safety.

Cowardice is a word that crawls inside of us.
Digs out a pit in the stomach, and lives there
surrounded in your shame and your guilt
and grows fat.
Because it's easy to listen, to accept
the single minded voice. It is so hard,
so damnably difficult, to aspire toward
a loftier goal, to ignore the voice.
We are all Isolated, if we think about it.

My city has a heartbeat.
I can feel it thunder beneath my feet
as I race across her massive face.
She has a whisper, not a voice like we know it,
but a whisper always.
Telling me what she wants and
more so what she needs.
The wind, roaring through my city is her own voice
and instrument, it plays her mournful song.
The song has only three words in it's composition.
Vengeance, justice and hope.

Steam pours from the manholes,
distorting vision, adding one more
in an endless number of reminders that
my city lives, my city has a presence.
Has a pulse.

The gear, the pulsing brain of this
once airborne metropolis,
sits still against the night sky
she remembers as her former company.
Her companion.
From here, from this vantage point, I can see her.

She's more or less a mile,
in any direction from this point, long.
Her streets are a complicated maze,
a spiral built on a grid.
Her boarders are round. She was once known
as the circle city, another grim reminder
of her days above it all.
Within her boarders there are millions
of nooks and crannies. Hard to find, hidden away spots
that people can live in, work in, or hurt each other in.
Her people are aimless.
They are concerned,
they are worried,
but they are proud.
We used to be something,
and one day we will be again,
she will be again.

From here I can see her.
In her entirety,
like no where else in the
whole of her body.
She's beautiful.

Before there was a field,
filled with fragrant, though strange,
flowers, stretching on forever.
It was in this place, this bastion
at the end or the beginning of
eternity that I found you the first time.
Splayed, as you often are, against the
grasses, eyes watching the clouds as they
find their way across a lazy sky.
You with your impossible answers to
serious questions. You and your
******* riddles.

There is only this room now.
It is squat, squalled, musty in now
familiar ways. It is piece of mercy,
in an ocean of hell.
Beyond these flimsy four walls
lays entropy, the end of all things.
A nothingness of another kind, like
I'd never known before, and hopefully
will never know again.

There are no windows in my room,
for that is how I have come to think of it,
as my room. Yet even windowless I can
still stare into the vast emptiness it is wrapped
up in. I can see the frightful void.
I know what lurks just behind the horrible
safety of my walls.
I scream into the void, if only to
keep my sanity.

You put me here. You wanted me here.
It was through your machinations,
devious and brilliant as they are,
that I find myself facing this nothing.
This was all just one more of your
self-serving, stupid ******* riddles.
And I, ever the pragmatist, ever the
logical counterpoint,
I played into it.

I thought we were so clever, to put
these symbols on our faces.
To shout to the world that this, not
the weak beings we used to be, but
these powerful, noble creatures.
This is who we are.
But I didn't pick the symbols.
They were always there.
You expected them to be.

You counted on my arrogance.
Oh, but you know me so well.

Fire burns across the universe.
Lighting it up, showing all of it's
darkest flaws, and brightest gifts.
It is this fire, burning it's way
across the cosmos, building one
on another, crafting this place as
infinite, as eternal, as unending,
it is this fire which brings us to
the place where we will all see
the beginnings and the ends of
our tired songs.

The fire rages still, waiting it's
long wait, it's silent smoldering,
waiting for us. And we will join
it, that is not something that can be
stopped or denied, only delayed.
Energy is forever, it will never fade
it will never leave, it will only become
something more profound, only more
amazing.

We are that energy, and it is our
life's sole purpose to end. To wither
and fade into some lost and tangent
flow of energy, one more wisp on the
cosmic winds. But it is with this purpose
that we become great, it is in the joining
of matter and time that we will be complete.

Fire burns across the universe.
I will one day burn with it,
until then this energy, this body,
this me.
I will become eternal.

I have misread “meek”.
I thought it was the wise, but weak of
skill, of body. Rich in mind.
Brilliant, crafty and clever.
It was us, we were promised to
inherit the Earth.

I have come to realize that I was
naïve, young, and a little too hopeful.
Now, with jaded eyes, and a cynical
heart I realize, only now, that it was
never meant to be us. The clever
are not meant to rise to the occasion.
It was always going to be the meek of mind.
Like it has always been.

We are outnumbered in a war I never realized
we were fighting.
How did this happen? How did I not see before?
The phrase that inspired hope during all
those years of catholic school, of
nuns hating my left handed writing, of
priests telling me that atheists like me
were horrible people.
All that time being told to look, but not see.
To listen but not think.
To move but not dream.

How did I not see?
“The meek shall inherit the Earth”
It's a warning. It was always a warning.

Sometimes,
The world, I have been told long ago
by people I have since forgotten or
hold dearly, runs on “Sometimes”.
Fueled by the occasion that exceeds expectation
or explanation. Once, in every life, if not
more often, we are all the exception
that proves the rule.
In these moments, when tears fall, or hearts
swell, when memory and present exist in the same
place, and impossibly at the same time, the world
itself heaves, shrugs and thanks us all
for the way we struggle.
How we long, how we need, to feel one more time,
or for the first time, the way we felt when...

Sometimes, with the lights dim and the rain
threatening an otherwise sunny sky, we reach
out our hands, and we hold onto the very fabric
of life and time and love.
We want to squirrel it away, secret if off to
some quiet place where we can visit it when we like
and live it when we need a reminder.
We know that we can't, that it's these moments,
these seemingly small or random moments of
epiphany or joy or pain or rage, it is these
Sometimes which make the world spin, which
make us spin.
So we release our hold on the stream, we relinquish
it to memory, locked inside ourselves we hold onto
this piece of providence. It is no longer real, it
does not breath with us as it once did,
but it is ours, forever, and no one will have it
from us. No one can.

Sometimes,
If not for Sometimes, where would we be?
Life would be shallow, a dreamless place,
noisy and surrounding, but pointless.
It is the Sometimes that turn the gears of the
world, and it is the hope for Sometimes that
turns the gears of our worlds.
Let us turn The Gears of the World, as
only we can. Let us Sometimes, one day, and hope
until then.

The shadows of my past whisper to me,
The scared boy huddled, fetal, listening to the
violence from behind his locked door,
the weak kneed love struck teenager,
the confident man, holding his future
torch like before him, they call
to me, whisper words in my ear.
They say, or so I'm told, that the world
runs on Sometimes.

I have been halted by a blinking
black vertical line.
It taunts me, it's subversive
stillness, waiting to move, to become
solid with each new character in it's
horrible wake.
I long for the sentence structure that
will make it tangible, that will force it
to silent life.
The great white expanse seems so
lonely, so barren. Sterile,
like an operating room, or
the breath of a school mate first thing in
the morning.
Who decided it ought to be white?
Glaring and bright, illuminating failure
as if it were a spot light.
The words won't come, they stay hidden
away in the place stories are born.
Locked in that deep, hard sought and often
not found region of the mind.
Waiting, most times without patience to
be brought, screaming excitement, to life.
I imagine that in that place, that undiscovered
country of premise and prose, that there
are no blank white pages, no jittery yet still
cursors, only complete and
wonderful tales, just waiting,
yearning to be free.

Sometimes, when I shake badly
tossing pillows on the floor,
waking with a start because of
the invisible pressure around my throat
or on my eyelids; you're there
again. Like you always were.

Bigger than I was. Beer bottle
judgment and fingers fattened
from work. Fingers I lived in
fear of. You're there as you
always were.

I never saw a monster under my bed.
That's the healthy paranoia
children get when they
aren't afraid they'll die,
or worse; Live.

There are scars that remind me of you.
Lines of poetry, and the dialogue
in bad movies. Spite.
Spite reminds me of you.
Because it was spite that made
me strong, that made me hard,
that made me angry.
It was letting go of that spite,
at long last resting from tired work,
that made me happy.

Lying in bed next to her. Waking,
with a start, perhaps gasping,
her hand resting on my face,
the future spreading out endlessly
in her eyes back at me.
The look of understanding dancing
a timed waltz with concern.
She loves me.

After everything I was told, all
that was beaten into me.
She loves me.
You taught me not to see that
coming. Taught me to think it never could.
You only taught me spite.

Thanks for the pleasant surprise.

Casting light, from finger tip
to hard sidewalk top.
Sneakers, the kind with laces,
send squeaks up and down the streets
of this old town.
Basking in the reflection of
youth. Soft hands. Small feet.
Eyes large enough to dream.

Bright. Strong. Awake!

The bounds are called. Monsters here.
Lava (molten and flowing like
the letters on the board that
fill up our days, and ignore our
nights) here.
The night is our bastion.
It will hide us. Mask us.
Make secret our clubs,
our crowns, our meetings.

And here! My god, here!
Mark this place; Remember it!
(How could anyplace not be made for small hands?)
This will be our place. It is
all ours. Find us, we dare you!

Dreams are filled; sugar candies.
Cartoons. Not with life as it is known,
but with shades of not known, instead.

Cast this light. Tip to top.
From here to there, on the count.

One. Two. Three.

Run!

If the heavens were to part,
if the earth were to crack,
if everything we knew before
and everything we now know
turned out to be a wonderful
fiction, would you find me?

                                                There is a path. It is not long
                                                it is not dark. It does not wind.
                                                It is simply there. I have looked
                                                for purpose there.
                                                          ­             It is gone now. So much is gone now.

Between stale smoke, making circles
as it leaves our table, and conversation,
which does much the same, we found
ourselves in undiscovered territory.
You had not known that there was a
place inside me that you had not lovingly
explored. You did not know that when
you found it, you would not want to.
And in you, my god in you, I found a
place that was all at once not as inviting
as you had always been.
I need to know more. I need to find this place.
I need to map it out, and leave an imprint there.

                                                They should know who we are, that we were there.

Raindrops are battering the window. A storm
rages outside, the kind that knocks over trees
and lights up the sky a million times. The
kind that reminds us that the war on nature
has not gone unnoticed. My favorite kind.
Your warm body is wrapped in mine.
My arm feels dead. Just below the elbow.
Your pressure is slight, but constant.
I can't decide if that is irony.

                                           I gave you a potato. I told you that it
                                           was more permanent than a flower,
                                           more useful.
                                           I told you that I loved you like I loved the potato,
                                           like I could never love a flower.
                                                                ­                               Forever.

I'm waiting for you now.
Waiting for the heavens to open,
the earth to crack, and the wonderful
fiction that is my life to collapse. I'm hoping too.
Come find me.

Two young lovers laughed
and carried on.
Sneaking glances at the doors,
at the people, and mostly at
each other.

“Let's run away together.”

Two best friends cradle bottles
of dark, musky beer.
The first of many they will
share as men. The memories
of a life spent within a mile
of each other, and the docks.

“Velcro shoes, with power rangers on the side!”

Two brothers sit quietly and watch
as their sister walks the aisle.
Her white dress a constant
inside joke. They look at each
other and smile, she looks
so beautiful, so happy.

“Congratulations! Your vows were lovely.”

One man sits alone in the living room
of his home. Their home, not so long ago.
He looks at the photo.
The one of her, the one he keeps by
his favorite chair. He never
thought he would be the one
alone. He had never prepared for
it. He doesn't know how to sleep
alone.

“I miss her.”

One woman misses the man who isn't
around. She had told herself
that she wouldn't be the type.
That she would never become so
dependent on him, that she would be
strong. Now he is so far away,
she could call him, but she won't.
It's not the same.
She wishes he was with her again.

“Come back to me, when you can.”

One father rests his son on his knee.
The young man is not yet aware
that his dad is a mortal man, with
mortal fears. With an expiration date.
His son giggles his boyish giggle as the
father imparts greater wisdom, that the young
boy is still too young to understand.

“You are the greatest miracle of all. I live forever, through you.”

I.
There was a time,
remember?
My God how you smiled.
Your perfect crooked teeth,
the freckles on your *******.

All of it, designed to keep me.
How I love to be kept.

II.
Some nights, when there is no
noise in the hall, I think of you.
I wonder where you are, if you're
sleeping, if you're laying awake,
as I am, thinking of the other.

Even in this time, where conversations
are carried out blind on airwaves
and in text, I dare not call.
I don't want to wake you.

III.
Ours is an odd kind of courtship,
this dance we do. Around each other,
around city limits and state lines.
Two drifter souls, trying so hard
to find intimacy.
Trying to find one another,
no matter how far our feet travel,
no matter the distance we put between
ourselves. We search for one
another.

IV.
We lived together. Tried to
co-habituate,
remember?
It wasn't the disaster we thought
it would be. So long as we
had each other. So long
as we didn't bother each other.

We feel like we bother each other now.
We keep our distance.
How we love our ******* distance.

V.
I reach out for you some nights.
I try not to tell you that.
My hand, moving
of it's own accord, feels for your
warm body next to me. Searches
the cold, empty, silent sheets for you.
I try not to tell you that.

I don't know whose benefit I'm considering.
I don't want to hurt you, or
destroy us. We are too wonderful
too magical to mess up.
I just can't keep my feet from wandering
away. From bringing me places
I've never been.

I'm not in control of my hands and feet.
Not anymore.
It wasn't always this way.

VI.
Remember?

There are talcum powdered noses
     And perfume floating in the air.
She makes a graceful exit, before she
     makes a triumphant return. Still they
Are dancing. One step, two step, back and
     forth across the floor. Clumsy feet and
old soda cans, clothes, an empty pack of
     cigarettes. Nervous glances, not at the
obstacles but at each other.

         She had never danced before, not really.
         Not like they did that evening.
Sure,
         there had been feet on top of her father's
         shoes, and the faux waltz she would do
         with her older brother when the radio in

the kitchen hummed a note they enjoyed. Those moments
were only for seconds at a time.
                    Never like this,
             never because she meant it.

She didn't know how to dance, she never had before.
It was so much more ****** than she thought.

In time she would come to compare the two
moments. Her first dance, with her first love.
Her first night with him, her first “night” at all.

               Clumsy movements dominated both.
               Stifled laughter, serious glances mingled
            with nerves and ecstasy. It wasn't like that
                           in the movies.

In the movies, there was no wet spot on the sheets.
Still, they danced.
           Awkward,
                    horrible,
                            amazing.

                          ­                  They danced that night for the first time.

                                                            The­y dance now.

I
I want to stop the hand from turning
Moving it's slow circles around the face.

It looks like it's stalking prey. I often wonder
if that is intentional. It is, after all, killing my

time. It moves my life away. I wish to grab the
****** thing, twist it back like a neck in a violent movie.

II
Corey's mom would spray perfume on her pillows.
I would lay against them and breathe her in.
He would ask why. If I wanted her.
I didn't know how to say I only wanted her scent.

III
Now it appears to be an absurd mustache on a pock
marked face. It's nose dull and flat. It has no eyes.

How horrible it must be that way. Blind, but still
useful. Put on display, but unable to see your captors.

It is pity now. How can I be angry with it? It is lashed to
the wall, it rests on a desk. That is it's life.

IV
I remember laying in a field with you. Looking up
into the sky, just before night. Brightly lit clouds
mingling with stars. We would make up our own
curse words. Our own private arsenal of slurs
we could never get in trouble for. One day we
realized that these words were harmless as all words
are harmless. They have only the power they are
imagined to have. Imagination had so much power once.

V.
The blind monster cannot chime. It merely glows
to tell me how much of my night is still alive,

long after it ought to be dead. I don't pity you. I hate you.
You are counting out my life in silent movements.

I try so hard to look away, but the numerals burn through
my eyelids. Informing me. Commanding me. “Watch this.”

I do not envy the one that
must make the call.
The boy, whose words had always
been so soft and wonderful and funny,
but are now like warm razor
blades on the eardrum.
It doesn't hurt at first, it's too quick.

“Burn him.” The child said.
“Leave only the memory of his deeds.
Let them be, as they were, forever.”

There are no burials today.
No funerals, no dirges.
There is only hot flame licking
the gaping wound left on the
earth, there is only the sound
of the wind rushing past our ears,
and the comfort of forgetting.
But not the release of sleep.

I can smell the ocean, and feel the world
from this ******* apartment.
I see it now, as I must, as a place
that used to be filled with wonder,
with rebellion, with futures.
It has these things still, but they are
a pale interpretation of the place
they once knew. It has changed
for them. They must live each day
hoping that their deeds will leave
a legacy behind them.
Will leave a memory

In tossing and turning the realization
dawns that it is still not finished.
After what has happened, he will still
find his way back to the beat.
To the ever changing path.
To the slow march toward
the pyre. It is how it must be.

“Burn him.” The boy had said.
The men had listened.

They live with themselves only
holding onto the thought that
it will continue.
Only with the thought that somewhere
out there, even after they have
made the way to sleep,
the Boy Hero sits, awake,
hoping his words can one
day be filled with Laughter
again.
The Boy Hero does not dream this night.

I have seen a man saved by a secret
another destroyed by a truth.
I have heard the halted
whispers as they cascaded
down the hall.
I have heard the mournful
melodies, and I have sang
them all.

There is a scratching at the door.
Once, then twice.

There have been different fears
which have coddled and gripped
us all.
Consume our thoughts and
drive actions, we can't
believe we've done, or saw.

Once, twice, three times on the door.
I hear that ******* scratching. I wish
to hear no more.

They swore that the nervousness
would pass.
A weak, meager thing,
bested without much effort.
It is here still. I can feel it in my
bones, moving with my skin.
Seething in my mass.
Calling through
the walls.

One, two, three.
One, two, three.
Simply maddening.

I keep a truth at arms length,
and a secret to keep me safe.
I keep it in my vest pocket,
where no one dare disturb.
There are two things,
of which I know are fact:
Life is a love song,
moving with grace and tact.
And life is a funeral march,
all attention rapt.

The moon is a soft blue
colored gem, floating somewhere
above all of the worries and concerns
that fill, day in and day out,
the ever waking, eating, sleeping
hours of our lives.

It's quiet blue light reflects off the water,
mirroring it's hidden world without
complication on the now
molten lead waves as they crash
onto the half sand half pebble
beach on which they stand.

There are shouts in the distance.
A bonfire, beer wrapped in aluminum
and the company of people they
will meet only once and then never again.
Stories they will share,
no great secrets, but minor insights and
a shared sense of wonder.

Were you here, he would sing to you.
A song so wonderful and sad that
you would be as whales are. Communicating
in somber notes and ancient melodies.
The weigh of the song would pour tears
onto your pale white skin.
You would love him then,
as you had loved no other before.

As the waves fall on the hard and calloused
skin of his feet and knees sending cold shivers
up his body, he watches as the full moon
describes his world as a dream.
He marvels at the smells of salt water and the
slow rhythm of waves and beach as they meet
again and again throughout eternity.
Later he will be at the bonfire.

He will share stories that mean nothing
he will drink and dance, but he will not sing.
He will miss you. Wish you could see
what he does.
How can it ever be the same?

There is peace in this place.
Not the kind you read about,
there is no comforting smell
or quiet atmosphere.
Only peace. True and complete.

There is a stillness. Uneasy at first.
Eventually it goes. Subsides into
a kind of white noise.
Constant.
Dependable.
Careful.

All at once the sky heaves
the rain falls about your contours
and makes clear what we all try to hide.
The blush on your cheeks is
so endearing I forgot for a moment
to look away.
It might have been then,
or later perhaps, when you
swelled to me on the rough
burlap like couch,
that I first truly saw you.

There is a stretch of road
in a far away state that
will always be ours.
There is a storm that will
always belong to a moment,
which while now passed is
forever only seconds away.
There is a satellite which will
always carry our love song
across state lines and shared history.
There is an expression, which I
do not now remember
that will always be mine to give
to you.

There is a temporary nature to
the things that are forever.
I took so long to figure that out
that the first time around it was ignored.
How many moments were not
glorified when they occurred?
How many should be?
Really?

There is a peace here.
It is not neat, it is not still.
My god the commotion of this
peace is deafening. The anxious
feelings inspired by this peace are
maddening. Some days it is hard
to imagine how we will survive.

There is so much anguish,
so much pain,
so much heart break.
So much love.
There is a peace in this place.
I would trade it for nothing.

You'll never see this.
Jesus Christ, There is a finality in that.
I can't believe you're gone.
I can't believe you'll never see this.
I'm going to miss you.

I know it's flat sounding
but it's true.
You'll never know the impact
you had on my life,
how important it was
that I knew you.

You once said to me that
you were trying to build me
into something greater.
“A better Bonsai tree.”
I hated you more than I ever hated
anyone in that moment.
But the wisdom of your
words has shined through.

Though your hand was not there,
and was in fact joined by others,
my roots have been tended,
my branches bent in ways
subtle and amazing.
I stand this Earth as,
while not a lovely small tree,
a mature and compassionate man.

You will never know the
way you've crafted me.
You'll never know how I've
grown because of you.
You'll never see this.
There is such ******* finality in that.

I once reached into the skies
to pull down the light that
would serve to guide your way.
I was never asked.
I once tender hard labor,
and the lashings of crooked teeth
and stained shirts
to find for you the bauble
you so requested.
I grew old under your
careful tutelage,
until such an age I reached that
the hair grew thin and the
spittle became obvious.

O' the wonders you found in me.

I was such a shell
in the time before we fell,
cradling each other through the shakes
like new born babes,
to the Earth.
Together we found lost
realms which we would hide away
from keen eyes and pointed
questions.
Together we squandered our
time and our money on things
we called our adventures.
If only to smell the sweet
lavender and honeysuckle of
your skin, freshly bathed.

I once crossed a canyon on foot,
such days of thirsty work,
to bring you back the sunshine
we would rub into our smiles.
I was not asked.
I once learned the quick, dutiful
motions of a trained glassblower
so that I might make for you
a thing as beautiful and fragile
as yourself.

It is here, as the skies we once reached
grow dim that I find,
after all the effort and all the
painstaking labor that,
together as we promised,
our greatest work is rewarded.