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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

Here.
Alone.
To die.

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.

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.

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.

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?

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

“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.”

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I
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.”

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

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.

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

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

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

“I 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.

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.

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

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

Reign it in, lest you scare them all away.

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

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

Get it together, or it will all fall apart.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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