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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm here to get broken,
to be torn into pieces.
Discarded on the floor.
I found you so I could be remade,
Built up from nothing,
so you could make me more.

Break my heart,
burn my soul,
scar my history
with yours.

Glass fragile and brittle.
Prone to watch you pout.
I want moth eaten dreamscapes,
but I just keep bleeding out.
I'm tied to this iron ball and chain,
drowning like you need me to.
Writhing here in pain.

Feed me your bitter poison, love.
Bleed me with your leeches.
Push me, dear. Push and shove.
I wash away like chalk,
Temporary and incomplete.
I need you, sweet Hemlock.

Don't ever leave.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Restless/awake they live
in separation.


On his night stand there is a ring.
Thick and black and full of a promise.
Next to him, as he moves in his fitful sleep
there is only an empty half of the bed.
In dreams she's there
(all freckled kisses and soft hair.)
next to him.

Miles away she turns the ring on her finger.
Small and gold and half of a whole.
She smiles at the dark night sky,
knowing that somewhen he went to sleep
without her.
She knows he'll toss and turn
(his smoker's mouth like an urn)
and reach for her.

Love/longing they know
in isolation.

Blinking back the bright,
arm as a shield against the light.
Lost in open spaces.
These free and empty places.
They shout it from rooftops
and bellow it at full stops,
"Run. Run and hide"
This is open forum, long form suicide.
Every verse a kind of hopeless rant,
from broken homes and men who can't.

Dreams are a curious thing...
Sheltered ears.
Scattered light.
Repressed fears.
Conquered might.
The ever present sting...

And y'know:
******* my eyes,
and sweetest lies.
******* these false starts,
and bitter hearts.
******* this fractured life,
and this endless strife.
******* my hell-bound pride,
and the day I'll have died.

Was it tough to live it all?
To build a cage and watch it fall?
Because, man, look at it...
Passionate anger and the waiting pit.
Look, it's all an excuse to grieve.
That said: How can we ever leave?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tick. Tick. Tick.

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

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

Faster now. Faster.
Tick. Tick. Tick.

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

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

Tick. Tick. Tick.

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

Tick. Tick. Tick.
Faster, ever faster.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Catch your breath.
Breathe.
In.
Out.

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

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

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

Catch your breath.
Breathe.
In.
Out.

Kept in small places.
Inhale: Breathing in rain.
Leave this place to the winners
the sinners
the last people standing
when the rest fall.
Remember: That crystallizing moment,
at the eye of a raging storm
when everything made sense
at long last.
Turn away, retreat if there is time.
So little time.
(Receding hairline)
We have so much to do,
so much left to say
and so much to make up for.
So very much.
Atone: Do not repent.
Make up for the things
you have done.
Wrought.
Smells like sidewalks,
after a storm.
The very storm we
run from and we
run to.
Exhale: Visible breath
like winter.
Frozen rainbows,
light trapped by the cold.
And we wait for all of
this to thaw.
Spring...
Summer...
Fall,
and those left standing.
Here in these lives,
these apartments
and homes.
These spaces
and people
where we are kept.
These small places.

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

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

Picture a room
without a view.
A world where we do
what we ought to do.
She paused, because
******* this was hard to explain.
We don't live there,
in that soulless place,
where no one sees
the hands in front of them.
Where no one cares
because it'll be fine in the end.

He moved his arm,
sore from the arm rest.
Irony?
He thought.
Perhaps it is,
but no.
It is not.
She spoke volumes
about very little,
on shaky ground
where she could not stand.
He listened,
she accused time and again,
but didn't hear.
Her conversation
didn't actually include him.
It was her's to steer.

There was a lightness
in the air.
When she got
around to her point,
the one she couldn't bare,
her weight shifted from
foot to foot,
floor to floor.
Like falling,
screaming out
and then
no more.

He stood before her,
an examined man.
She looked on her works,
as one does when
their works are short
and callow,
with a series of small crimes
and personality quirks.
She had said of him
that he was bright,
but no great sight
to look upon.
He had called her shallow,
trite
and not quiet right.
Both were, as we all are,
very young
and very
wrong.
Both were only a harmony,
not a verse,
in each other's
song.

What they didn't know,
couldn't really,
was there was such
a thing
as too much
said.
Words, as lovely as
they are
and can
be,
Do little more than
buffer the blow
or render it
dead
when the point is blunt.
Say enough,
which can be very little,
and watch as they
do not look,
yet somehow
see.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

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

Until I am a new man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who among you will save us?"

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

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

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

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

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

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

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

I.
Where does the time go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V.
How did I become this person?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If only” right?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He sailed to sleep
on oceans of bitter
angry tears wept
into his pillow
across years of pain
and neglect.
The only time they
noticed him was
when they hurt him.
He didn't know why
he would sit on
the floor and look
up at them and smile
but he always did.
Like he missed them.
Loved them.
The smiles would
sink in his sad little
ocean of weeping
until on the other side
a broken and bitter
man emerged.
He never cried.
He barely felt anything.
This man, lithe from
dodging emotional
connections and clean
friendly physical contact,
seemed more than just
put together. He seemed
superhuman in his way.
He was special. He was funny.
No one could hurt him
or think around his
sometimes cruel machinations.
Inside he wished he
could look up with a smile
and be treasured and loved.
He wished his life had
been softer, less hungry and
much less afraid.
He wished he didn't have
to be strong and cynical.
He wished he was wrong
about things more often.
Wished he could afford
to be, in fact.
He wished most of all
that he could die.

He doesn't know where
the line is between
discipline and abuse.
He's so afraid to get
anywhere near it
that he worries he's
becoming a brand new
kind of bad parent
in the generational saga
of bad parents he has
always been a part of.

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.

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

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

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

Set me free.

My City is on Fire.
What do I do?
It did not creep.
It did not descend.
It Erupted.
Exploded.

My City is on Fire.
Intersections are blocked and streets are closed.
Barricades of men and women behind shields
occupy my home.
City hall is silence as the panic spreads.
Spreads with the fire and the noise.
Because once the sun goes down...
******* it all! Once that sun goes down!

My City is on Fire!
Protest turned to looting,
looting, in turn, to riot.
RIOT!
Of course they riot. Of course.
We are disenfranchised, obfuscated, beaten down.
Ignored.
God, if only we were ignored...

My City is on Fire.
It is a war zone of forgotten intentions and over reactions.
Like calls to like.
And we are so ******* human
we know only to answer violence with more.
More and more and more.
And what does it solve?
Nothing! They shout.
Their limbs lick with flame and mouths full of blood,
of hate.
And they know, in that moment, Nothing.
My city is on fire
and they would have it be for nothing.
Mean nothing.

Listen!  A struggle is proud, noble.
A struggle is worth it
A struggle is NOT a fight.
Disown that idea. Throw it from you.
Do not join the fight.
Do not join the riot.
STOP!!

My City is on Fire.
But my words are a whisper
against the shouting.
They are nothing against the violence.
Nothing.
What do I do?
Turn your pleas for help on the world.
Shout for change as messages
carried as updates
Through Trending Hashtags,
and Status Updates.
What else can we do?

@Baltimore: Help is on the way! #Baltimoreburning

My City is on Fire.
Get the word out.
People should know.
Need to know.
The world needs to see it
if they're going to join us.
If they're going to help us fix it.
My city is Burning, world.
We can't let it be for Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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?