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?

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

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

Cast your eyes toward me,
like a fisherman's line.
I will sing you starlight,
one single star at a time.

Breath in this air together,
and build toward the sky.
Because the dream is within us,
and these lover's knots we tie.

Don't promise me these rewards,
when I only want you.
Whole and total and every ounce.
Every word is true.

Yes, my love, distance is a factor.
Though the heart grows fonder.
But you know how I am,
my god, how my feet wander.

But if you kiss me before I go...
If you add up our days,
if I fight my very nature soul,
we will cut to the heart of our ways.

In the morning, how I love you.
Because of how the light hits your face.
Because of the smell of you.
Because I know this is my place.

Did you know your gums recede?
Or how you're never free?
The Endless march of yesterdays?
The difference a paycheck makes?
  It's so easy, it is, to lose a friend?
  How, in moments, you feel young again?
   Bruises form like rock under your skin?
   Having to buy your own recycle bin?
    When your spine cracks when you stand?
    How hard it becomes to walk on sand?
     Your muscle turns to dough?
     And no year ever goes by slow?


Did no one tell?
You're not walking hell.
Did you not know?
It's a Road we all must go.

There is an art to saying,
“Hello.”

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

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

I’m a goodbye man.

Alone, you are but two.
Caged by bitter words,
and a history shared
with so precious few.

Together, you find yourselves one.
Free from bonds that chain you down.
Etched large against the bluest sky.
Your song sung full flush in the sun.

Each fractured piece of your hearts,
keep so high out of reach
in little boxes on tall shelves.
Chained like drowning to your arts.

When, on park benches and this cold street,
with the flicker of the reckless
and the knowledge of the very bold,
you find, now and always, your hands meet.

Locked away
in tiny clenching fists
are the stories.
The ones we always meant to tell.
Without these parts,
you know the pieces,
we cannot seem to build
the plot and your story...
I mean, look how it falls apart.

Could there be a moment
(take your time, think)
when all of this *******
falls away and only
you and I and the truth
of you and now
and me and then
remains.
Like coffee grounds.

How many cigarettes
does a day take?
I mean, what really gets you?
What sets you on fire?
My god,
how we need to be
on fire!
We need the light,
y'see,
because it is so ******* hard
to see in the dark
without it.

Color your language,
pepper it with purple prose
and profanity,
to tell the story that
sits like a stone
in your heart or your throat.
Because no one
(Seriously, believe me on this.)
can tell your story for you.
You have to take the pen,
look on your works,
and write it large
against the world.

Your story
(Beautiful as you are. Has to be.)
needs to be seen from the sky.
Open your mouth, love.
Tell.

An Experiment:

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

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

Sounds wonderful, in it’s way.

A Reality:

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

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

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

A Truth:

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

The Sky: Swollen and angry,
forces today into tonight.
It's going to open up.
Any minute now,
you can smell it already,
rain.
She cries: "Facebook me!"
Can you believe it?
Data, streaming endless,
from network to network.
P2P, not a single point of failure,
except this.
Except us.
Find me on the street,
friend.
Find me there.
Now: Never been so angry at youth,
or so scared of old age.
So young still,
but how my hair thins.
These bags under my eyes,
they won't go away,
these tired lines...
I suppose they  mean to stay.
Soon: Covered over in cinema fog,
haze to bleed the line away.
And so they go,
covered in clouds,
with the last remaining light
of today.

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

If there was time to sleep,
I would dream larger
than mountains.
My fingers would rake
the pale sky and leave
streaks of the cosmos
in their wake.
I would conquer fear,
and death.
I would laugh at entropy.
Heat death wouldn't harm me.
I would stand my ground
among the myriad humiliations
of endless days.
I would let out all
the things that I keep in
and no more would I stand
a monster, but become
free as a cleansed man.
Obstinate structures would
never stand in my path
to rewards earned.
I would force the *******
world to a halt to hear
my words and beat
the rhythm my world
moves to.
A billion what ifs
would stretch before me
as I plucked the strings
of maybe to arrange
a song that matches
the perfect version of my life
But of course,
there is no time to sleep.
There is only now
and what is waiting.

Baltimore holds its breath.
It's the morning after.
It's Day One.
We are brought curfews,
we are told that they wished to destroy us.
There are soldiers standing on our streets.
We are not sure if we're safe.
We're not sure if we'll ever live it down.

Baltimore: (Noun) 1. A city in Maryland.
                                 2. Slang for Riot.

We're anxious.
Because it's over(?)
We are proud.
Because it's all we have left.

We cannot let this be a sad chapter!
We have to make something good come from this!
We have to get up,
dust ourselves off
and stand up.
We have to finally embrace the conversation
that we refuse to have.

They burned us!
******* it! They burned us All!
The implications reach beyond
the city boundaries.
This can't end on Pratt or on Gay Street.
This can't end with barricaded Police stations
and tanks on our streets.

We need to discuss this.
People burned down their own home.
This is worth discussing.

Our lungs ache with effort.
Our minds race with possibility.
Our hearts long for hope.
Baltimore holds its breath.

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

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

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

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

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

Kicking out against the sheet,
trying hard to find sleep,
I wake and wonder why
when we fall we don't shy
our eyes against the sky.

The truth, if ever there was one,
is you find the ground when falling's done.
To feel the earth below your feet,
to wander empty city streets,
to keep from flying when complete.

But to reach out toward the sky and soar
imagine wanting that and nothing more.
When we are young we could trade it all to fly.
If asked the moon in return we would comply.
To see it all, our world, from on high.

Whatever happens to this urge?
Why dismiss it? Where is it's funeral dirge?
I think it comes back to us in dreams.
The little cracks in our lives between the seams.
(Maybe it returns in our winter.)
It lives on both ends of age's extremes.
(As our minds begin to splinter.)

I hope old age finds me thinking of flying.
Hoping to soar when I'm dying.
I have to try to find that place,
before I finish my solitary race,
where I can reach above and hope to touch space.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the face of this wall we stand and laugh.
Not because it's funny,
anything but at times,
but because we just don't
know what else to do.

Had you stayed,
beyond your time
here and there,
there would have been so
much more for you to see.

I recall that the news broke,
and it rained.
Did it ever rain.
It rained as if in response.
I embraced a man in the street
and we felt something for someone
that wasn't ourselves for the first
time in our short lives.

Because you didn't stay,
we can't reflect on the power
of those odd days.
How they shaped us in ways
that we couldn't have predicted.
But you didn't stay,
so it fails, not falls,
on deaf ears.

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

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

Bright. Strong. Awake!

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

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

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

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

One. Two. Three.

Run!

I will live and die a man,
and that much I know is true.
But when the word is through,
will it say the same for you?

Because the message is clear,
if at times somewhat condescending,
that life matters more than it's ending.
It's purpose doesn't lay in it's rending.

And if honor isn't the purpose,
for which you struggle through this world,
how will you know when you become unfurled?
All this talk has my ******* toes all curled.

Love is not the answer,
but I believe it is a cause,
And when we stop to contemplate the flaws,
we are given to moments of real pause.

Because it's almost over,
and I stand before the hands of time.
You will kneel before, as I arise,
and stare in awe from your house of lies.

How does one begin to end?
Start from here and back again.
It seems we spend our lives trying to die,
yet each person's success makes another cry.

It's when all the hours and minutes are spent,
that they begin to seek atonement.
But if there was no purpose, would that be so bad?
Couldn't we find value in all we had?

From Rattle to Rattle, a human life.
Though it is not meant to live in strife.
While we can move from form to stance,
we should endeavor to make ourselves dance.

Why must we mourn the flame,
Do we believe death is a thing to tame?
If the goal is not to live well and die...
...Then, if not...why?

Scream with me, into the dark.
Match my pitch with your high arc.
And hear the sound of us, bare, stark.
Listen to it, feel it in you, the very human spark.

Wasted time, reversed rhetoric and given pause.
From the steep climb, we can look down on our flaw.
The very thing we never counted on, the err in this design.
The bitter notes of our old song,  it's love, it's divine.

Dig through the tainted wrecks.
Feel through your bones the context
of man made heart string reflex.
And ask me, soft as feathers, "What's next."

Can you feel us slip and fall?
The pit asks and we heed the call.
Does you stomach lurch and twist?
The fear is how you know you exist.

We may never know what we'll land upon,
but trust me, it's always darkest before dawn.
You have to understand, that though our era is bygone,
I refuse to become another man's pawn.

Reach inside you, my love, for the very human spark.
We will face down the ****** dark,
I the dreamer and you my skylark.
Forever, this night, will be our mark.

But aren't they all just words?
Little fingers, smeared with
whatever lunch may have been.
Beady eyes and the judgement
that comes from knowing nothing.
It was hallways.
It was all hallways.

Because there is a kind
of silence
in the moments between
wake and sleep.
A still over
the keep.
There is a kind of noise,
if you tilt your head
just right,
in the moment between
your words.
Like a hiss.

These are sticks,
those there? Stones.
Your words have weight.
Deny it
as much as you want.
That's all it is.
This is rubber, I'm told.
Under here, glue.
Nothing sticks,
nothing wounds.

You give them the power,
if you really think about it.
Sure.
Tell me another lie.
Whatever gets
you through the day, friend.
Lies, justifications
for monsters that look
like a little you.
They make you feel better,
perhaps.
But aren't they all just words?

Because I don't know how I will tell you,
or because I don't know if I am strong enough
to fight for the words,
I will say this:

When I was young I learned about tragedy.
I learned about loss on a scale that is unimaginable
unless you are there to see it, to breath it
and to be a sad living part of it.
I learned about hope, and courage,
and how the ordinary are extraordinary.
I learned that life is not a series of
tragic events, but a moment within where
you can find love and absolution.

How can I make you understand that this wasn't what
I wanted for you?
I didn't want to you to grow up in a world
that had once been so crippled by fear and
hate and pain and loss.
I wanted to give you the gift of peace,
like my parents wanted to give me.

How can I tell you that evil does not have a face,
but it does have an intention?
How can you possibly understand that
when everything is horrible we stand together
in the middle and embrace one another?
How?

There is so much that you will never see,
that I pray you will never have to learn.
What I want you to know,
indeed what I am struggling to tell you,
is that when everything seems darkest,
when everything is blood and dust and pain
and death, it is then, in that moment,
when we must
Hope the most.
It is then when we must
Love unconditionally.
It is then when we must always
be willing to let ourselves dream.

Because I don't know how to tell you,
because I don't want you to have to learn,
because I love you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because, he will not swoop from the open skies,
he will not gift crops on barren land.

Because, no one will lift you from the concrete,
carry you to your soft, clean bed.

Because, the plunge is the worst part of the fall,
and the landing the end of the fun.

Because, life is small and terrifying,
but long in it's sad short.

Because, with time we learn we are fragile,
and with love we learn we are not.

Because, there are no hand outs waiting,
nothing in this life is free.

Because, when the shadows dance across your eyes,
just for a moment, I can see forever.

Because, when my life ends, I will realize
how much time I wasted asking for more.

Because, one day the word of advice you need
will be the chain that holds you down.

Because, for a sudden moment I felt the sky,
and fooled myself with delight.

Because, what doesn't melt turns to dust,
and nothing else is solid.

Because, in time I will tell you all of my secrets,
and where will we be then?

German/Irish as the rest of
White America,
with none of the German Efficiency
and less of the Irish Luck.

Tired and Twenty-Seven,
though some Forty years olds
think I'm their age,
and too overworked to see that
this is all building to something.

I hope it's building to something.

No tattoos and still loads of regrets,
a great wife,
a good life,
but no time to breathe when the
day ends.

My god I love her.
Does she know the things I do for her?
Does she notice that these
years I've added to my birth age
are in service of my feelings for her?

I hope it's building to something.

The second half of the eighties saw me enter.
How is it that less than thirty years on
I'm creaking when I stand and one night's missed
sleep ruins up to three weeks?

I hope it's building to something.

The sheets still warm with you and me,
I am overcome with the same old guilt.
A shame that whispers,
like a dark secret down cobwebbed allies,
my own hidden name.

How, I lay and wonder, as the
sweat cools on our skin,
did man ever grow if the result
is always this?

Obvious, though it is.
After all, here we sit.

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

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

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

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

There is a darkness in you, Paul.
It races from the electric life
of your thoughts,
from your finger tips
and your deeds.
It pools on your heart,
like mercury.
It is a source of great,
terrifying,
strength,
and deeper sorrow.
Move with it,
but don't let it consume.
Keep this light,
that we've built from small
acts of kindness,
from the love that passes between
our eyes and our mouths.
Carry it,
like a torch,
and let it guide you
from that darkness.
But remember:
Light
doesn't expel dark, love,
it only pushes it away awhile.

I found a letter you wrote
when you were thirteen
and it doesn't bleed right
it barely reads right.
In youth there was fear
and lightning and violence
and sure maybe you weren't
complete but you were whole.
An island on which only you
could stand.
You could look into the distance
but you couldn't see forever
and maybe it scared you
but it didn't really matter.
You didn't deserve forever, anyway.
I read the letter and didn't
see you anymore.
Time and tide have long since
had their effect.
The island has gone
the violence
the silence
the fear
they've gone, too.
I look out into the distance
and I can see forever
but this letter,
these scared pages,
they aren't me
and by that, I mean you.

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

Look:
I aspire to greatness
But keep tripping in maybes.
And I hope
I'm always hopin'
That I can be honest
That I can be open.
But I'm always closed off,
Always building walls.
And I only want to look tall
But I feel small.
And I don't think there's a god above,
But even if there was
I still think we ****** up.
Listen:
I've stood close enough to me to smell the scared.
I know I'm totally unprepared
I make attempts to be candid
But I walk around feeling branded
By the life and crimes that that man did.
Now I wish wish wish
On oceans of my weak willed ****.
But nothing gets crossed from the list.
But listen, look and beware
Because the more you haunt the more you care
And sooner than later you find them there
You've put them in your path to greatness
As an excuse to fake this
And keep moving around, shaking.
Bones cold, feet quaking
Hands tied from errands unfinished
And sins and wins and all those **** wishes.
Millennial ******* couched in garbage transmission
With nothing to show for years of effort but failed ambition
How have I been awake through all these lost years?
How have I allowed these trivial fears
To own me?
Beware:
It all catches you up, friend.
It finds finds finds you in the end.
But regardless of warnings given
We never ******* listen.
Shush. Pulse quicken.
Bomb's tickin', but our
War of wills has turned toward attrition.
**** it. Good riddance to worthless
Millennial ambition.

We have burned the bridges. All.
We have lit the match.
We have watched it fall.
I no longer know the voice
when you call.

We are not friends or lovers.
We are now absentee voters.
We are nothing to each other.
Forget the times we were better,
like when we would dance,
remember nothing of us together.
We never had a chance.

When a thing is dead,
good and truly over,
Nothing more is said.
We move on in silence
and put the past to bed.

Don't look for me in torchlight,
on the other side of this chasm,
I am vanished into goodnight
with dreams of almost had it
and fresh wounds from the old bite.

We have burned the bridges. Every one.
And with the coming day
we squint into the sun.
We are heavy handed, cold
and in silence we are undone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who couldn't see that coming?
Veiled venom
and a world that is succumbing.
For this you shatter my good time.
How does it matter?
So ******* asinine.
You tell me how hard it is to get by.
Myriad reasons, I'm sure,
with infinite failures to try.

So, we're a material culture?
What a novel concept you've exposed.
Can you imagine?
How numb we'd be
if you hadn't disclosed?

Sell me a different song.
I know all the spots
you think we went wrong
Sing me a new pitch.
You've got options
but can't tell which is which.


Yes, living is hard.
We all come out a little beaten,
a little charred.
This I know, and a long while, too.
But that is why we do
all our living while we're alive.
Takes too much energy, otherwise.

You're going to hurt me badly.
Leave me bleedin' on the floor.
You're gonna love me madly.
I'll have you needin' me for more.

You love to kick me, baby.
You love to kick me around.
I wanna make you happy.
But I only ever let you down.

I think of you like a queen, babe.
I polish and shine your crown.
Don't let go of me, honey.
I swear to god I'll drown.

You make me something less, baby.
Heartsick, weak kneed and grievin'.
You're about my only hope.
You're the only thing keeps me believin'.

I let you think you lead me.
Yeah, you really lead me on.
I made you think you need me.
But, all you really need is me gone.

Push the ignition on
this endless waiting.
Find the purpose behind
hours of need
with zero payoff.
Find the taxes gone
and the bills paid
and the paycheck empty
and count it another in
a long line of the very
same day.

Post your feelings across
the void and hope
a voice calls back in text.
Because gone are the days
when we could stand
for things and let ourselves
cry out loud enough to be
heard.

Gone is the moment when
the method was undecided
and the purpose grand.
Oh, we know just how to do it,
but our causes have shrunk.
Rebuilding a word with lines
of code
and the promises stolen from us
by three generations
of people who meant well
but delivered chaos and grinning
apathy.

We were great once,
I hear it all the time.
But with the buildings coming down
and the march of what
we can no longer call
progress,
I'm finding a disturbing lack
of evidence that
we were ever more than
what little we are.

Our voices have been caged
by the the things that were
meant to broadcast them.
We have been silenced by
the application of free thought.
Is there irony in that?
Or is it just another sad reminder
of how we destroy beautiful things
because we fail, time and again,
to recognize our potential?

It's the waiting that does me in.
It's this day by day
same old same old
that has it's hooks in me.
I'm a generation trained to
be delivered up what I need.
I want to call out a battle cry
and propel us toward the ill defined
"great" we could be.
But my generation doesn't have
a voice.
We only just barely have a name.

...
.......
C:\Q&A;>

Question: Is this love?

Tearing pieces away so
the world can examine them.
Ripping apart the whole,
the soul,
for scrutiny.
Hoping with each lost,
shredded piece that value is
traded.
That redemption is given.
Ultimately, though, it is
degraded.
Devalued and purposeless.
Still, the work must be finished.
Still, it must be given,
the words and the feelings
that are foreign,
to you.

Answer: This is incomplete.

...
....
C:\

******* it!
I'm my father's son,
all wasted potential
and missing someone.
Dog tired and thirty-one.
Ripped and torn
awed and reverential.
nail bit and forsworn.

I want Rockwellian sepia.
Perfection and meaning
published in old print media.
The American visionaries resplendent
with firework dreams and consumed
in whitewashed, denim faded pleasant.

But it's you, my love and my meaning.
The person to convince me I'm not broken.
I hope to be the one, who can get you to open.
You keep me alive and breathing.

You spin me around and make me crazy.
Let me know when you want to, baby.
I'm tired of being built on maybe.

I'm an hour away from the American Dream,
but I'm terrified by the winning team.
I want you and me, Lori.
I want the old theater stage story.

******* it!

I am my father's son
all wasted potential
and missing someone.

Tired and beaten.
Clothes ragged and moth eaten.
Trudging the last few sad and broken miles
crushing the disappointment of our lifetime of trials.
And a whole world for a bit of rest!
Bunched up sheets and pillows our nest.
Age may serve to wash away our rage...
But it's still a tear soaked journey to the grave.

She stands on mountain tops and old lofts
and buildings that reach steel toward the sky.
From here there is perspective,
if you want to call it that,
A certain willingness to fear.
And she soars on scary because
the butterflies feel like dying
and nothing has ever made her feel
more alive.

She packed a hundred regrets
into the lifetime of one.
And they ran from her then,
because they were new and grown.
She called after them as they flew.
She tried to run them down. But the clouds kept them.
And she was without.

She would trade the ******* world to fly.
And who wouldn't?

Where has the wonder gone? Where now is our youth?
She tried to trap it and keep it and learned the only truth.
She couldn't hold it any longer.
If only she were stronger.
But darkness doesn't need to blink.
All we do is wait and worry and think.

She tried, for a time, to sleep forever.
In dreams seeing things that awake she had missed.
She spun the clock hands backward
a hundred thousand times.
It never came back though.
She'd missed it and she cried.

She'd trade her ******* soul to make it right.
But she can't....


....Try as she might.

I believe that I am capable of anything.
I believe I am great.
I know that greatness is a part of me.
Liar.
I'm a ******* liar, is what I am.
Nearly thirty years I've done nothing
with all I've been given.
I'm overweight, I'm lost, I'm a giant of misplaced ego.
I am so ******* tired of being so ******* poor.
I am sick of living in a rut
and knowing--
In my ******* bones, knowing--
that I'm the only person who can pull me out.

I remember being young, sitting cross-legged
in your living room as you watched scary movies,
through your fingers as always.
I remember being brave and strong.
I cannot reconcile the me, sitting beside you,
trying to lend you my courage,
with me, balding and fat and constantly afraid of failure.

I recall my--
Pathetic!--
schoolboy flirtations with greatness.
I remember the adulation from my peers.
Liar, I remember the adulation from the peers
I picked.
The ones I decided to be around.

I am poor, and tired. I am beat down by the
riots and the killings
and the people running my country into the ground,
with my knowing--
in my bones, knowing--
consent.

I don't want to be great anymore.
I'd settle for good.
I could be good, I think.
Liar.
I hope.
They aren't mutually exclusive,
like I thought they were,
sitting cross-legged in your living room.

I whisper a truth to myself, now,
across years, across my lifetime,
"You would trade good, you liar.
You would trade good for remembered.
You would trade good for Great. And you know it."

And ******* my lying eyes, I do know it.
In my ******* bones, I know it.

I live in fear
I've said a little too much
or that once counted out
my deeds won't've been enough.
I feel tight awaiting release
coiled like a spring or rubber band.
Cocked like a shaking gun waiting
for input from an unsteady hand.
Now I know that I know what I am
but I worry that's the catch.
While everyone else unwound
I just continued to twist and stretch.
I don't know on what criteria
a human life is accounted
I measure and I weigh
but the summit is not mounted.
I wish that I believed
"Love will save us all!"
but I can't and I don't
and my spring is turning to fall.
Still, I am surrounded by love
and would do well to remember:
That this could be the criteria
on which human life is measured.

I will dream in technicolor failures!
I will pass time waiting on the lawn.
Bored and vapid and given pause to yawn.
I'll send my hopes in colored mailers.
Drowned in nostalgia and memory,
another 30-30 something casualty.
And together we chase the white picket,
acid washed American dream.
And with loaded backroom schemes
we seek to find and punch the given ticket.

Where there was two we invite three.
He'll have ten fingers and ten toes.
Wide masculine shouldered and elbows.
He'll be, I hope, a lot you and a very little me.
He'll have a chance, ******* it, he will.
He'll be alive and screaming and needing.
His mind and body young and always feeding
He will draw from this earth until his fill.

I hope for so much more than I have got.
We take on water so fast without balers.
I dream of tomorrow in technicolor failures.
Help me, love. I'm twisted into a knot.
I need so badly to understand these things we do.
Our rings and our tiny king's teething rings.
I need to be kind and true and bold.
I need so badly to have and to hold
him and you.

We left him so little and wished him so much.
Isn't it a sad twist of fate?
Isn't it just something you love to hate?
Ruins where buildings should be. Nice touch.

When we were young
I fell in your fire.
Your passion for life and love
kept me off balance and wild.

Sit back and marvel
as you spread your joy.
Your warmth
Correction:
You're warmth.

You are fire, my dearest.
Contained but beautiful.
I have always been cold
like the night sky
but you,
my great love,
you are the distant stars.
You burn light into my
frigid night sky.

You are a campfire, my dear
Filled with laughter and song.
I am old dry wood,
gathered to build you up.
You are vivid fire, my great love
And it has been
my pleasure to burn.

Push this weight from your shoulders,
my friend, I know that you can.
Do not make the mistake of wallowing
in this despair.
You are so much bigger than it.
So much better.
Yes, I hear you, I know that
we are human.
That we doubt.
Doubt so much.
They stopped making boot straps,
you say,
How then are we meant to pull
ourselves up?
Reach, my friend. Reach!
Inside of you there is so
much that you can do.
So much that you are,
if only you can find it in yourself
to know it like I do.
I know you, my oldest friend,
I know you so much better than
anyone else possibly could.
You are amazing.
You are great.
You are the only person that
can hold the light to guide the way.
Only you.
You have to see.
You have the know.
You have to believe me.
I know.
RISE!
Rise and be, old friend.
Rise and lead us through the dark.
In your presence, there is no dark.
There is only the way.
Your way.

All my little life I've been lonesome
waiting for permission to feel like someone.
I've taken late night cab rides to nowhere
looking for something I still can't describe and it's unfair.
Have you ever felt like life was living you?
Have your days felt forever rather than few?
Have you ever wondered when you'll find out?
Have you started as a song and ended as a shout?
And my ears are ringing with the clashes
of late night cigarette ashes.
I'm trying to look at my hobbys
as something that'll save me.
But I know it hasn't worked lately.
I'm writing discarded definitions
in tired lines of worthless ambition.
I've spent half my time in finding,
but came up empty in reason.
All the endless searching is hurting
and lack of cause is my demon.
I'm tired of waiting on sunrise
and I'm always finally belonging when I'm leaving.
Kismet is ******* and I'm wondering how long until I get it?
I got six puzzle pieces from the wrong set
and making them fit isn't making ends meet.
I'm trading mental health for gas receipts
and living just to be seen.
I'm trying not to think of hope in a vacuum,
but I'm lost for reasons why not to.
I'm not looking for favors,
or easy ways out for good behavior.
I just wanna put down this hammer
cause the noise is making me crazy.

I'm going to hold my darkness over your head.
I'm going to make you feel small and stupid.
My history will become the mountain you must climb.
I don't wonder about it anymore:
I'm the worst.

Always you want two things; it's never enough.
Two things which can't be had at once.
Always.
Of course I'll ask you how.
Of course I will.
Two things. Always.

I've been ******* hunger desperate and shelter poor.
I've been a hard luck, street wise,
charity case with no coin freely given.
A mean little ****, tempered in tragedy and shame.
Most my time was spent in various
states
of decay.
In urban squalor and late night tattoo parlors.
Picking my monster up off the sticky barroom floors.
Returning to nothing and knowing,
all the knowing,
neglect measured in pounds of
what am I to do about food this week?
All that knowing and twice that knowledge of abuse.

You don't care.
This is about your precious ******* feelings.
This has little to do with plans.
Nothing to do with me.
Feelings.
Let them be your unremarkable guide.
Let them.
Always.

I'll hang my history over your head.
Every ******* time, I'll do it.
I know it's wrong.
How could you argue a point
that could possibly quell my fear?
Because I am afraid, you know, I am so afraid.
I am one bad week, one bad decision away.

I am within reach of returning.
Always.

Don't argue with me, love.
Please.
I don't wonder anymore:
I'm the worst.

Everything has strings attached.
We're all waiting for it to start,
for our lives to finally,
******* FINALLY,
kick into gear.
But we can hear it calling.
Oblivion.
From a house, or a street
just a little further down.
And it chills to the quick,
to the bone,
one and all.
It calls us, friend, by name.
By our name.
How can we argue that?

I say we bleed out on filthy
tile floors in truck stop bathrooms.
The wound we walk through life with,
the one inside our hearts.
Let it bleed away.
Because, we are so ******* tired
of twin self destructive
thoughts chasing each other
through our minds.
Endless searching and finding,
for our trouble,
more trouble.

I will burn my heart out in the looking.
I will.
I will **** myself.
Shame myself.
I will lie to, twist up and hate myself
if it gets me where I need it to.
I am without hope or principle,
but I have a dog in this fight, friend.
You'd better believe it.

So shout it out.
Echo it down like mountain top hollering.
Make sure we all know.
We all hear it.
Make sure the whole world knows.
Remembers us.
We were here, future.
You don't scare us.
We were ******* here.

Be brave in the small hours.
We have it in us.
And time is tall, right now,
but as we move it grows so short.
We would **** and dishonor for tall time,
in only the space of a piece of lifetime.
We know it, and we know it well.

We get *******, though.
We move from place to place,
and from person to person.
We move, as best we can.
But the strings,
they bind us to earth and we sink.
Unable to drown, we breath in water.
And in the distance,
calling us by name:
Oblivion.