I have waited my entire life
to disappear when a truck rolls
by in front of me.
One day I will vanish.
I'll be gone and no one will
ever know of my exploits after
my stage exit. No one will ever know
because when the truck is gone
so will I be.

I want to fix this small world
we share. Dig out all of it's tiny
problems and over blown drama.
Work so hard to break it down and
build it brand new and better.
They will all want to thank me.
Praise my altruism.

But the truck already rolled by.
They will wonder if I'm somewhere new
fixing other people's worlds
and expecting nothing but a sudden
and final exit.

But no one will ever know.
The job is done.

I remember your vigor.
You used to pick me up
and spin me around your head.
The sheer masculinity of it
was nothing short of
inspiring.

“Tomorrow, I'll wear it tomorrow.”

Now I watch as you sit,
reclined and growing.
Your hairline seems to move
more every day.

Were your ankles always so thin?

We eat in silence these days,
in halls once filled
with laughter.
The spoons are too short,
or perhaps the bowl is simply
too far away.
It's so hard to tell.

“I'll put it on one of these days.”

That tie you used to wear
lays on the bedside table.
I asked you to wear it
not too long ago, thinking
it would force you to remembered
the man you once were.
It lays there still

I stand in front of the mirror
for far too long everyday
and wonder if you see in me
the decline I've seen in you.
My arms used to be so strong.
We used to be so strong.

I hate that ******* tie.

The wind beats out it's
slow steady song
through this hollow city.
We were told to expect rain.
Half a pack in and still
nothing.
I saw lightning hit water once.
It awed me in ways nothing
has since.The power of nature.
It changed me.
Nothing profound, just a simple
muted difference in me.
You never noticed.

The buildings act like instruments,
played like expert jazz musicians.
I sit here in the window,
as the smoke makes it's lazy
circles around my hand.
It could almost be playful
as the music of the wind reaches
yet another crescendo of
awesome power.

I remember bruised nose and scraped
knees,bee stings and Popsicle sticks.
I remember when snow was not
another in an ever growing list
of enemies.

I focus on the trash cans and bits of
paper. They dance in the music
like manic asylum residents.
I have to concentrate on something
or I'll be alone with a declining pack
and these kiss shaped scars.

We were told to expect rain.
I fell asleep waiting for it.
The ashtray was left overflowing
and the wind never let up.
Like a lullaby it rocked me gently
as my mind wandered.
I missed the rain.

I saw lightning strike water once.
It could change me again.

They were wrapped in anything they could find.
The wind biting at them,
as the rain pelted every layer of cloth
they had swaddled themselves in.
It was difficult to remember
what brought them there in the first place.
To this monument of forgotten men and monsters.

Once upon a time they would gather,
all their materials put together
in the center of the room,
as the game went on.
It was always the same game
in those sepia toned days.

Now they stand there, trying to
cry for a fallen friend,
but unable to fight back the betrayal
in their hearts. Their words were hollow
,their strength had wanned.
The rain mingled with the dirt.

They had once discovered the fairer ***.
Hormone driven conversations
about the lurid things they would do
if ever given the chance.
Caught up in the notion that *** was
somehow life. Somehow it would
make them men.

Men now stood where
there should have been boys.
Only days ago
they were children. How could it
be misread so badly?
They assumed that growing up was
going to be slow, and fueled by wild
nights and the women who would
come and go. Now, in the rain stained
world they find themselves in as men,
it only took mutual tragedy.

When we were children we used
to pull the blankets up to our chins.
Repeating the same tired mantras
again and again, the more we can
repeat it, the more it will ring of truth.
“I'm alone in this room.
There is no such thing as monsters.”

The world is on fire.
I wasn't sure if you had heard.
We used to walk these gardens,
before the flames arrived
to steal our memories of this place.
I used to think it was heaven.

Our lake.

I always thought you
would sit beside me.
Thought you would watch with the
same pent up rage as they
destroyed all that was pure.
You always hated when I
skipped stones, as though somehow
I had tarnished the surface of our lake.

Our lake.

What have we done?
You were never so far away.
Once I could reach out and
feel you there,next to me.
You made the wind beautiful.
I don't know if I ever told you that.
It seems a silly thing to think of now.

Our lake.

The world is on fire.
In no small part because of us.
I wasn't sure if you had heard.
I don't know how else to tell you.
I wasn't sure how else to put it out.

Freed from these old bonds
I stretch my fingers
(in order that I scrape the sky)
And plunge, headfirst into
the still heaving earth.
My time is fleeting, here and gone,
But this mark will keep.

If not a monument then
I will become a stain.
An oil spot perhaps.
They will point at it
sitting there on the unmarked ground,
and marvel at the odd shape
it, I, had pooled into.

I will shake a nation,
If that is what it will take.
I will grow out my nails
and carve my initials
into the face of this living rock.
Pushing back the guise
that forever labels me;
"Temporary."

In my hour, waiting to see
if the gates will come, I will long
to feel your gentle knuckles
stroke my weakened cheek.
"You mattered, old friend.
They will not forget."

It was how still it was.
Like a photograph, a memory.
The dim light in the bedroom
Lighting the hair on your upper lip,
I don't know why I had never noticed it before.

You seemed so peaceful,
as though I could hold your hand
and feel the warmth. As though you had
never stolen fire from the world.

(There were moments, when I look back
where it all seemed so obvious.)

The hair didn't move.
I was sure it should sway,
moving with the gentle rhythm of
your living breath.

(Move ******* you!
Get up and move, you miserable ****!)

You once stole the sun from the sky.
You placed it in that little blue tumbler,
the one we found in the woods behind
the baseball diamond.
You trapped the sun there and told
us that it would be ours for
as long as we held our hand over the brim.

It was so still, so quiet.
The world had
stopped.
I tried so hard, like you said
but my hand grew tired.
I wavered and the sun escaped back into
the sky.
In my panic I didn't notice how you had
stopped.

(I never noticed the hair on your upper lip.
I wish you could tell me what that meant.)

“Love is impossible.”
Sitting so casual, so stoic
“It requires more from any one person
than they can actually provide.”
Did you hear it then?
Water dropping from
the faucet in the kitchen.
The slow patter as it falls
circles the drain.

How was a response to be made?
What series of words?
How does one string together
an argument to destroy a lifetime?
Is it possible to reverse the gears
that turn our world?
I was reborn in fire and ice
while you wallowed in your
stale word of smoke and shadows.
I rose triumphant to place the wake
in which giants would follow.
You sat in your murky pool
with sanguine arms and alcohol stained
words.
Strung together to defeat me.

“I don't want to be the one that wakes you up.”
Today he sleeps forever.
Tomorrow he digs through the wreckage
to discover the fluid prose
it's grace without contest
unchallenged by the
razor blades and shot glasses of the world.
The whimsical combination of combatants
required to shake the slumber from the halls
and utter the lines of magics
to share his dream with you.
“Love is impossible.”

I have tried to ****** Time.
To bring an end
to the movement of the spheres.
I spun counter to it's pull
but fell to the Earth
before the grave deed was done.
I have tried to slaughter God.
To wash the stain from my memory
Cossacks, draped around me,
habits dutifully worn.
Keep the others away from
that one.
He's not the same.
I have tried to fell a Giant.
Pushing back with every
ounce within.
Muscles tearing from the work,
and all the while coming to find
I needed this more
than I would like.
I have tried to drown a memory.
To dig a well so deep inside myself
that the bubbles will one day
simply stop.
As though somehow this one act
would forever redeem me.
I have tried to rewrite history.
Each swift movement of my pen
erasing the things I've done
the places I've been.
This clean slate will be all that
is left of me.
I have tried to overcome.
To find that place
where all is well and
my work,
such labors I have preformed,
can finally be
done.

With ease, with grace you slithered
into my air.
You breathed your chloroform,
noxious and stale
through the uneasy silence of this tiresome song.
The very word of your presence
chill and forgotten.
Quomodo Ego diligo vos.

The sheets are so cold,
I reach to feel you there.
Books and papers,
a cigarette case,
some silly stuffed **** thing,
left over one night.

Pulling pieces from a mason jar,
words and phrases.
The missive unclear.
Stashed away, here it can harm no one.
The letters familiar in hand.
Irgendwie Ich Liebe Sie , einmal nun jetzt

Oh that elegant flow.
The loops of a madman,
crazed and alone.
You taught him so many heartbeats.
Your long prattling song.

The painting rests by the end.
Short fevered work,
on one of the seldom afternoons alone.
I recall white walls,
toast with strawberry jam.
Loud, obnoxious music.
Brushes in water sticking out of an old can.

Who but I would remember?
Quomodo Ego diligo vos.
Now, perhaps more than ever.
Irgendwie Ich Liebe Sie , einmal nun jetzt


I feel you, wrapped in my skin.
A guest in my most earthly of homes.
Do you know how you intrude?
Even now, as the din has died down,
The curtains have closed.

A pen and the car keys,
insignificant things with no night table on which to rest.
Here, next to me have found a home.
Once there was you,
vile and lovely
warm on that side,
now abandoned.
Forgotten and cold.
Aborted as always.
Irgendwie Ich Liebe Sie , einmal nun jetzt

There was a story told when we were younger;
A marvelous thing filled with pathos and adventure.
We would admire the teller as well as the hero
as our minds soared with bright eyed wonder.

When were the myths replaced?
Where did they go?
How does one trace their way back,
through mires of time and innocence lost?

They mourned them there,
In the burned down chapel.
Roses were placed,
ever with care
The long gold locks pushed manageable
fair.
Speeches were spoken,
by boys long before they were men,
Of loss and of pain and of things forgotten.
Things gained.
Where are you now?
Are you still standing in the rye?

Rain mixed with dirt,
purity and decay.
They wondered how the young
could rob them this way.
A light, barely lit,
with so much wick left to burn,
Pushed into the wax.

In the story that was told, good found it's way.
The hero stood triumphant,
the black hats dismayed.
We were there once, you and I.
With your ******* beautiful eyes,
You and I saw a world to shape.
Bend, gently as ever, to our very own will.
We were so close our fingers grazed the surface,
sending ripples dancing through the water.

******* your eyes.

They mourned them there.
The dark ashen chapel yard,
Your hair pushed back and fair.
It seemed so soon.

******* your beautiful eyes.

Flashlights flicker a thousand miles away.
Old men, wrinkled and sagging,
like memories, they fade.
Drop by drop they slip away.
Into the ether.

Clouds. Fog. Haze.

In dreams so clear, what alert dissipates.
The candle still burns down to bleeding wick
(On both ends, as ever it was.)
As voices cry out,
Soft as age or over ripe fruit.

But here, by now, and there, in the end, it all melts into one.
Time catches up.
Speed was never to blame.
(Though we all thought we could out run it.)

The bile bubbles venom.
Rage turns an ugly shade of green.

All the while, as it'll ever be;

A thousand miles away, children play.