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.

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.

Falling backwards through an ocean of absences
with the quiet grace of aimlessness
together we have known each other's empty
we've learned about the small moments and the envy.
Traced our history and discovered little sad pieces of you or of me
and wondered if it was actually an ocean of absences or sea.
Spellcorrected sentimental nothings and autoplay left on throughout the night.
Towers of hopeful maybe and pillars of might.
Alone together all these many years and deep in study
until we've been kneaded smooth like so much putty.
I know you better than I know myself, she purrs in his ear
Ditto he whispers with new oceans of absent fear.

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.

I feel like a cover of a sad song.
I'm full of someone else's words
because they're better than mine.
Because honest is so ******* hard.
Because honest takes so much time.
I'm six miles away from her childhood home.
2002 miles from where I was born.
He was born in town.
I want to tell him everything I learned from being around.
I've lived in valleys and mountains far above this ground.
I've lived in cities that stretch as far as the eye can see.
I've lived in towns where my last name is had only by me.
You two have it now.
One by birth, the other a vow.

I feel like a bad cover of a great song.
Almost meaningful but also wrong.
What do I do?
I live in terror that my truth is repugnant
to you.
That if you found out or somehow knew.
I get down, you know? I'd feel blue.
I know we've been here. Deja vu.
Oh, love. My love. Many once. Now few.

I'm an earnest cover of your song.
You wrote a masterpiece, love of mine.
You wrote circles around me one word at a time.
I just want you to hear your words
Spoken in my accent and tone.
To see how I love them. Know you're not alone.
How important you are to me, I cannot say.
So I've borrowed your Melody so that I may.
I want you to know, love:
You're the reason I live.
You're the heart of me.
You're who I wanna be.

I dream of walls of fire and ice.
I watch them clash and arrive awake drowning on acid in my throat.
I long for apotheosis
but just get ready for the fight.
We line up in neat rows
to take hit after hit
and smile gap-toothed grins
as we spit the blood on
the pavement at their feet.
Rubbing our gumlines
to feel for new absence we
move with practiced discipline
to the back of the line.
Maybe, just maybe,
if we sell more time we can
get struck once more today.
We cower and we wail
and every ******* morning
we're back in line for more.
We talk the talk about
using our sick and vacation days
and we aknowlede that he'll only
be this little once
and we sob and we break
and we queue so that we
can bleed.
During our freetime,
the great modern myth,
there are yards to mow
things to fix.
Here a new socket, spackle there
and so much shopping to do.
Errands before we can
finally get back in line
to fight.

On the horizon on some distant day
there will be death.
There will be sleep.
If we can find the time
to lay down.
If we can just survive long enough
to hear the bell.
To get to heaven, we're told
you gotta go through hell.

She wakes up alone, thunder roaring distant warnings and churning up her worst memories and instincts.
She is desperate in her need of comfort,
scared of her loneliness,
And ashamed of her fear.
And ******* the storm!
******* this hollow need!
I've paid for my sins
But never enough, it seems.
Never completely.

Nothing helps.

And she wants him to hold her
But the French death only brings him drowsy to sleep.
She touches his back with cold fingertips and ignores the gnawing sense that tomorrow is still on the way.
He snores and she wishes life had been, if not different at least, bearable.
And ******* these worthless men!
******* the empty!
It was full of you once.
Nothing else is enough.
Nothing helps.

In the evenings she stares at the wall above her desk.
At the place where it used to be.
At a future that was taken. Stolen away.
******* the silence.
******* the absence.
**** it.
******* it.

******* the last kiss.
The chances always missed.
The hope she watched die.
Tomorrow is on its way
and somehow, she knows,
she'll have to get through another
Vicious
Day.

Aside:
The sun sets and the moon grows bold.
People grow up, grow old.
And so what if every story's been told?
So what if the telling leaves you cold?
Still hurts for those to whom it will unfold.
End of aside.

Across the ocean, a world and a lifetime away, he stands.
A boy, perhaps only just a man.
There is in his heart a very similar hole.
And it eats him up and it leaves him broken.
Wanting.
Weeping.
Lost. And desperate.
And he hates his fear and his lonely.
He hates that he hates the pity in your eyes.
But it doesn't help and he can't explain why.
He doesn't know why.
He once knew love. He once felt whole and safe. He knew happy as well as he knew family.
He wishes now only for his promised other. His love is a bird with broken wings.
Sure, once he tasted the sky,
But crippled and low he can no longer fly.
Nothing seems to help.

Her words could help. If he could only hear them.
Because we suffer by ourselves
But we never suffer alone.
"I'm not sure if that helps."
We all say with words and eyes
And they smile, because the thought is what counts.
But inside they know a truth, tried to tell us all along.
They'll get better. Stronger. But that's just getting through another day.
Another day.
Another day.
Because we mean well, they love us, but the truth?
The truth is:
Nothing helps.

I've got my still beating heart in my hand
and a deep ******* wound in my master plan.
Im heartsick from carin'
what jacket Melina Trump is wearin'.
I'm scared to death of the future
and wondering how big a suture
it's gonna take to fix all the broken
in this system I've lost hope in.
A beady eyed orange inside the Rose garden
preaching hatred and no pardon.
A cycle without warnin'
the American dream in mourin'.
**** scared of a media he says is lying
while the country he stole is dying.
And I'm supposed to nod and smile
but I want that racist ****** on trial.
From the seat of highest power
we're being told to cower.
I want my promised better tomorrow
where great change isn't followed by sorrow.
So, you racist old liar, tell me when
America is gonna be great again?

There are echoes in our children.
Echoes of the people that put them here.
He'll have your eyes or her laugh.
They'll be made of compromise.
Now, of course there are the things.
Everybody has the Things.
Things that I do, that no one else does.
The smile you seem to have invented.
Make me feel like I'm important with your eyes.
*******.
What have I left you but echoes?
I want to give you something forever.
Something that doesn't fade, but I'm...

Smoke escaping a sewer lid mingles with street light.
Impermanent and forever, mixed in a moment.
When the rain starts it adds something to the dance
of light and smoke.
It adds another layer of
Just this Once.
My god, we are a moment.

I hope, when we meet, you'll forgive me.
Kid, I really do.
I'm all spiderwebs and yesterday, now.
I coulda, shoulda, woulda been and didn't.
You're echoes staring down what could be.
We are a little impermanent
a little forever.

We can learn to fade away.
We can learn to let sleeping dogs.
Together, we can learn to hope.
To dream.
The three of us could be yesterday, tomorrow.

There is an absence.
It's killing me to say this:
I miss you.
I can't believe I haven't evaporated,
exploded,
now that you've gone.
State lines and power lines,
remember?
One less alarm
and it is so ******* hard to get up
in the morning.
One.
It's numbers, every day.
You know?
Arbitrary numbers that somehow
we've allowed to have an effect on our lives.
How did we do this?
How did we become this?
You worry about it too, right?
Two.
God, it's an illustration in futility.
I can't think.
I don't want to think.
To recall.
I don't.
I just don't.
You know how I am.
I can only barely live with myself, you know.
Don't know why I expected...
**** it.
Let's burn down tomorrow.
Let's set fire to it.
We can count the broken days
from birth to graves
and revel in it.
But, you know how I break apart.
How I go to pieces.
Wait.
No.
You left before that.
It was just me.

Once a giant they fall through night skies
and into the empty loam where truth lies.
The greatest among them, coward now and small.
It wavers and wans where once it stood proud and tall.
All things, they are told, eventually fade and die.
All things retreat rather than give or try.

And so they crash through dim and distant tropospheres,
through fatally close and relevent new world fears.
They are trapped by binding digital text.
Caught forever in one server rack or the next.
They are ancient relics that once screamed hope at a void.
They are now cold, ignored and most of all annoyed.

Notice me, no one hears them cry into the intangible nothing.
Notice me! they keen and wail and empty makes the noise ring.
They are surrounded by their own unheard pleas.
They are bound to die forgotten and on their knees.
And what then becomes of us? You may ask.
Who, if not the giants and the old gods, will bring us to task?

There is no longer a force pushing us to crisis.
There is fear and there is cold and here is echoed lifeless.
And are we willing to reinvent the past? To pay these prices?
To walk with old giants and call them good and righteous.
If we were better we could fix this open blindness.
If only we weren't weak, tired and so bitterly indecisive.

If we only had one small chance. One good clue.
If only we could make manifest choice and brand new.
In glades we sip from blades of forest grass a rejuvenating dew.
If only we numbered in many and not in so damnably few.
If we could turn these broken gears and feel red rather than blue.
If we could be anything but ******* me and ******* you.

I've got pockets full of *******
and hard and swollen eyes.
I want more than I have found,
I need something real and new and warm.
I got plans for leaving,
but I can't go without you.
I want a world of fire.
I need you to have me with you.
I need this journey, for once-
once in this hollow life-
I need this to not be alone.
I want you forever with me,
like we promised to.
I love you like identity,
I can't be me without you anymore.
I don't know when it happened, love.
I can't do it anymore.
Climb these mountains of doubt with me,
because I don't know if I like me anymore.
I know I'm better with you,
but you're not around, dear.
I think I want to be gone and away.
I think It should be me that isn't here.
I want you to reassure me.
I just want you near.

I remember sneaking out as teenagers,
hoping you'd hold my hand.
I remember not asking you to dance with me.
I remember wishing you had.
I remember wanting you.
I recall being scared to death.

I'm a real piece of garbage without you.
I'm worse than I'll ever be.
I'm broken down and beaten,
haunted by the demons you keep at bay.
I ******* hate it, baby.
Please look at me like I'm not damaged,
like you always do.
Convince me I'm repaired.
I need to be here with you.

Raised on absence and responsibility
we've moved from one catastrophe
to the next with no moment to pause
and take a collective breath.
We are a generation growing old
adrift on a raft in these choppy
oceans of neglect.
We are atuned to a universe
that doesn't care if we live or die
shoveled into our mouths were promises
of better lives if we got degrees
if we gave up our needs and forsake
or learned a trade or worked long
long hours and never took a break.
But here in the future we're broke
gainfully employed with no hope to retire
no pension party planned
one day, we're expected, to arrive at
the work site and simply die.
No paychecks left to send
no gods left to ask why.
We're a turn of the century generation
watching old mistakes repeat themselves
but being asked to wait our turn
if we wanna complain,
there are two or so generations ahead
of us who still have the floor
and one nipping at our heals
demanding so much more.
I think the world will forget us
and our arbitrary, necessary pain.
I think they move on to Z and Y
and treat them just the same.
Stiff upper lip, chums. It pays to be silent
in fact your silence is brave.
The generation that killed tradition
walks toward the same traditional grave.

Life is big and wonderful
and so very sad.
On one side it begins
and on the other it ends
The middle part is
where love, songs and adventure
are kept.
You'll find yourself shrink
further inside
every time your heart breaks.
That's fine. It's okay to be scared.
But try, even though it's hard,
to be brave. Because
the world is huge and
heart breaking
and above all, worth it.
It will not always
pay to be nice
but you must always
be kind.
In time you'll learn
the difference
and many more besides.
Don't force yourself
to smile.
Happiness will come and go
and you may miss it
when it's not around
but you can't trick
yourself happy.
It is okay to laugh
a little too loud,
if it's honest.
Comfort people in pain
even if no one comforts you.
And help people,
when and where you can.
What goes around does not
come around but goodness
shouldn't be about rewards.
Don't look for completion
in others. Only you can do that.
Other people don't complete you
they just love you.
When you look for love,
be earnest.
When you find someone
who loves you, be fair.
Return their love, if you can.
If you can't then don't lie.
Better to tell the truth
about love than to
lie about like.
Life is long and painful
but short and wonderful.
Getting from one end to
the other takes a lot of
careful navigation.
Most people are decent,
but they're not treated that way.
Keep that in mind when
dealing with others.
You're gonna make mistakes
and you'll have to carry that weight.
We all do.
Share the load with those
you love.
I love you.
You are not a burden.

The longer a blade is held
to the grindstone
the less remains.
Sure it gets sharper
but quickly it also
gets thrown away.
We are not axes, my friends.
We are not tools.
Not meant to be used
and discarded
and played like fiddles
like fools.
Don't compliment me
on my grind
It's meaningless.
It isn't even mine.
The system in place
requires the hours,
extreme in their need,
in order that I may
look on a family
that I can then feed.
When you take a blade
to grindstone it is
because the edge is poor.
When you let it rest
from that friction you'll
find it can do more.
Sharpen when needed
allow time for rest.
Give the people a minute
let them catch their breath.
We are not broken
but the system we labor under is.
We don't need to be sharpened
we just need time to live.

Let's talk, you and I,
let's talk about the end.
Discuss, with me, how it'll
conclude and where,
now that is,
we're meant to go.
Let's talk about growing up.
Growing old.
Let's talk about the light
and how it fades and bleeds.
Let's talk about the surprising,
and ever growing,
number of yesterdays behind us.
And the number still ahead of him,
because he hasn't even had one yet.

I want to find courage and depth.
I want the strength to face death.
I want you and I to believe we're not next.
I want to take this land with you,
length and breadth.

How we're still young,
but how that measure changes.
Falling sand, love.
You and I.
Falling sand in an ocean of sand.
I want the world for him,
and for you.
I wish, so often I wish,
that I could stop it briefly.
Just have this day for awhile.
But I understand.
I know what stopping looks like,
and I've seen so much of it.
Stopped and stopping.
Too much.
Falling sand.

I think, or I've heard,
that love will see us through.
I don't really believe that.
Do you?
I wish it could be true.

Let's visit this subject,
after perhaps a little time to think.
I don't know what waits,
and frankly,
I think it might be nothing.
But you know that, by now,
you know so much about me.
Let's talk, you and I,
about how we're closer now to the end
than the beginning.

Find him sun faded and aching
the prersistent sound of scrapping
from the shovel dragging pavement
six inches behind him as the day went.
He don't know how to make ends meet
he's pushin' his chuck taylors up the street
hoping for answers in tired shakin' hands
knocked knees and our endless demands.
Thirsty, for him, has become a profession
and broke a bitter given confession.
He'll fix what needs fixin', mend what's broke
and he'll smile and nod at every cruel joke.
He'll repair your service to keep his kids fed
work hours beyond when it's time for bed.
Overtime and weekends. Eighty hour weeks
his kids'll wonder where daddy sleeps.
We'll hate him for never being around
Say he was silence when they wanted sound.
We never wonder how he felt, if he's aware
not that it matters. No one will ever care.

I don't know how it got to safety last,
and cable television lifeblood.
I don't know when the dreams
got eaten out of you
and you turned into this.
Nonsense.
We were born screaming and unprepared,
we weren't meant for anything.
We weren't meant for this.
Was anything meant for this?

If we have nothing manifest
before us and no expectations
for better, and we don't, friend.
Let us be great, instead.
Let us lift those in need.
Let us sing the songs that bring peace.
I do not mean pacify, I mean peace.
Let us love the way we wish the world loved.
Let us become warmth and light.
And why not?
We aren't supposed to do anything else.

We are form seeking purpose.
We are lyrics without meaning.
We search for it, when we should create it.
We dig when we should build.
My God we can build.
What exactly do we think we are,
if not masters of our destiny?

Nonsense.

I've unpacked the letters you wrote,
and read them word for word and aloud.
I read them for the fire and for the sea.
I read them under millions of stars.
And I read them for you, love.
I read them for me.

I buried the wreck in the ground and walked away.
I promised to forget the noise.
Forget the pain and pretend away the bitter.
I try so hard to fix.
I try so hard, darling.
I remember everything.

I am remorse in the shape of coffins.
I am waves crashing against a shore of fretting.
I am worried hands fidgeting with the buttons on my coat.
I am the beads of sweat running down your back.
I am regret in the shape of a man.
I am the hollow sound of distant bells.
I am spoken word prayers ending up nowhere.

These things that we built are meant for decay.
We are proudly bound for pyres.
Words burn across the night sky and illuminate.
They tell us what we are. What we could be.
What we are not and should be.
What we were supposed to be.

Whisper me your secrets, dear.
I'll keep them. Press them tight to me.
I'm all read letters and buried wrecks.
I'm unanswered prayers to nowhere.
I'm disposable.
Use me. Let me course through you.
Let me find your heart by travelling your arteries.
Let me be the sore, the ache that reaches your core.

I'm putting the letters away.
I  remember everything, love.
I do.
And you and me?
We have so much in common,
and that hurts worse than I can express.
I pack them away in the wreck and walk away.
I vow on the fire and on the sea.
And I vow on you, love.
I try to forget about me.

I found an artifact from my
ancient life, filled with words
and drawings from before
I was your dad and it is with
some trepidation that I confess
it caused me to cast my mind
back to those days and look
upon them with fondness.
I used to be a different man.
Harder in many ways,
unhappy, lonely even.
I was, however, unburdened.
You'll know what I mean
someday.
On that day you'll have already
broken my heart by leaving
and by growing up
and by not needing me
to help you put your shoes on,
which we both agree now is a
pretty tricky thing to do.
And listen, I want you to
break my heart. I want so
much for you, my littlest man.
One day I'll find an old shoe
of yours, behind this or in that
storage box, and I'll remember
that once you could nap in the
palm of my hand.
You would throw your arms
out and demand, with a coy smile
lighting your eyes, to be carried.
To be held.
I wanted the world to be better
for you, bud, and it's not
and I'm so so sorry.
Someday you'll know what I mean.
But not yet Lil' guy. No need for
that just yet.
Not today

I believe in love now,
in ways I couldn't explain
to myself as a younger man.
I can just about wrap my
head around the ending,
at least I think I can.

We're not made to suffer,
even if it seems that's
what's most likely to be true.
We're made to come out
the other side limping but
knowing what to do.

I don't understand forever
because I don't think any
of us ever really can or will.
But I'm familiar with right now
and what it means to love you
not for forever but still.

Every now and then
I get to dreaming.
I've found victory in defeat
seen a loser win.
Saw joy in the midst of sorrow
and seen sadness in the midst of sin.
I seen monsters with hearts of gold
and grown folk with feet of tin.
I reckon everything that breathes is dyin'
whether it got scale, feather, bark or skin.
And we talk a lot about where we're goin'
while tryin' to forget where we been.
Maybe that's the big secret to happiness
among temporary and mortal men.
I've gone on a while now about this an' that
and things beyond my own mortal kin.
I guess I just get to dreaming
but only every now and then.

They never forgot the
distant sound of bells
or those specific autuminal
decay and cinnamon smells
or the long procession of cars
coming over the asphalt swells.
If it was cards the swollen eyes
and thin lips would be obvious tells.

Still, they recall the lingering
odor of well dressed bodies at mass.
The kids in ties and shiny shoes
who looked nothing like in class.
The ornate handles the men
grabbed at each side made of brass.
The long walk to the open pit
and the strangly bright artificial grass.

The man in black spoke low and loud
the warnings and lamented lost joys.
The older women wept, the men
clenched jaws and shushed all noise.
The children thought of homeroom jokes
and shared comics and borrowed toys.
They all touched on some unspeakable
truth not yet totally known by little boys.

When the day was over and the
workman's efforts finally done
the men gathered at an old bar
and toasted the setting sun.
They sat in tight circles and whispered
not about games or distances run
but about a brevity they couldn't fathom
and the unforgotten report of the gun.

The young men wondered where
they'd found the small coffin.
Had they built it special just
for the the day? To see him off in?
The old men spoke hard words
but their tired eyes would soften.
Box wasn't special, they wished for
different but built them often.

We live and have built uncounted cultures
on a spinning, pilotless spaceship
made of molten metal
covered in dirt and atmosphere
that is moving at 1.3 million miles-an-hour
and riding the wave of an explosion
older than the universe.
There is no fiction weirder
than every single second
spent alive in this universe
and we only get to be travelers
on this ship
for such a finite
amount of time.
Thank you,
fellow travelers,
for being here with me.

Drops of blood, a little each day,
have become my love letters to you.
Scraps from labors rendered,
meals paid in sweat and fatigue,
the only gifts I can give.
I don't know if the rules are the same.
Once upon and long ago seem
removed from me by oceans
of various "who can recall"s and
"I don't give a ****"s.
I'm not sure if it was ever easier
or better.
I only know that it is hard and
I am worse.
My god, how you can greet.
You hug and you kiss and you express.
It mystifies me, these strange magic
that you and yours possess.
It is alien to me and to mine.
We are not a talk of love kind of people,
my family.
I don't know how to whisper beauty at you.
I only know the work.
And the work, my love,
The work is for you.

Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Earnest effort discarded
the waiting pit held out as sacred,
reverential.
Call it nihilism or laziness,
call it in condescending tones
the failures and flaws,
gaps and cracks,
that will always best us
and hold us back.
Nevermind that the hills are higher,
disregard that the times more complex.
We are, as you say, wasted youth on young flesh.
One more unwilling sacrifice before the alter, burning at the pyre.
We are thirty something, educated
or dropouts, breathing pollution
and struggling with impulse control.
We aren't more, we aren't less.
We are here to be emancipated,
relegated, blamed and hated.
We're still here, that's something, I guess.
Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Earnest effort discarded
the waiting pit held as sacred,
reverential.
And we're here now, ******* it!
Struggling beside you, fixing the world from the trenches.
Our hands are ***** from work,
our hopes forgotten,
We turn the gears with crescent wrenches,
fight the fear with sarcasm and
inclusion.
We know a debts coming due soon.
So do you.
Behold a generation of wasted potential.
Be in awe of their effort.
And maybe they aren't doing their best, but at least they continue to search for ways to make it better.

I used to dream, my old friend,
how I dreamed.
In sleep I was a maker.
A creator.
I built and I drew and I crafted,
instead of living and breathing and consuming.
I was costumed like a fan at convention.
Dressed in the trappings of a sage.
Bad word.
God.
Dressed in the trappings of a God.
I will bow in my own worship before sleep.
Such sleep.
And in sleep I will dream.
Dreaming the dreams that let me do.

Now I mostly just am.
I don't dream. I sleep.
I just...am.
I wonder all the time if it'll change...
See me, friend, wilted on the vine.
Never knowing if I'm worth it.
Bad word.
Matter.
Never knowing if I matter.
I would like to.
I wonder if the world will wait for me.
I hope it will.

One day I will become.
I will be, finally. I will be.
I will stand in the fires of the firmament.
I will rise like the day or the phoenix
and grasp the tools, hammer and chisel,
in my two finished hands
and I will turn,
turn dear friend,
toward the work.
Such important work.
Wrong word.
Dire.
Such dire work to be done
and when I become,
when I become, old friend,
I will lift my fingers, ignite the sun
and get the ****** thing done.

I know that I bite
every time a cautious
hand is peacefully extended.
I know I break things
and people and promises
that are not easily mended.
I know your love was
gifted with purpose even if
I thought you'd just pretended.
You warned me to step lighly
while I was busy checking
all the boxes I had offended.
I'd asked for so much more
time and patience then anyone
could be expected to have lended.
I know you haven't heard
from me in a long while
longer than I'd intended
but please, read the text
and message back, I've oathes
sworn that I'd like amended.

Now there is the sweet smell of love and the warmth of our home.
Now there is you and me and him.
You guys.
My loves.
However, long ago, in another lifetime, in my youth.
In the city.
Long, long way down the road.
Years ago now I met her.
Older than me, a few years.
Friend of a friend's cousin.
Tall, lean, smarter than me.
I was hurt on the day she brought me into her room.
It was noisome with the smell of ***
and I was just old enough to recognize the odor.
I remember now the strange sinking tug in my stomach.
This is what it feels like to have your opinion of someone change drastically.
Visceral.
My head was still filled with puritanical Catholic nonsense.
Dogmatic ******* held with firm resolve.
I limped into that room broken
and left much the same,
except everything about me was different.
Years and traveled roads later I found myself changed by another room.
Another girl.
Another stop along a road that would eventually lead me home.
We are roadmaps for each other.
Geography.
Charting routes over troubled seas and loyal earth.
Finding ourselves along the way and again when we arrive.
Once, years ago, I misjudged a girl because I was unfinished and young and her experience scared me.
I was cleaner, less road dust.
I wish I could tell her I was sorry, but honestly she may not even know.
May not even care.
I was wrong but I was still many miles from home.
Many miles from you.
Geographically speaking.

He fell on a bit of errant tile
in a hall made of echoing footfalls.
He felt his face break through to Neverland.
He ripped his head out and threw it back and with great peels of laughter announced he was at long last a Pan.
"Crow all you like." Say the old white men, "No one cares."
And they didn't.

We are the oppressed screaming obstructed behind dynamically lit monochrome Utopias.
We are the forgotten imperfect.
We stand in the cast shadows of those with great power and shoulder all of their discarded great responsibility.
Washed up heroes in this digital millennium.

Great Caesar's Ghost licks the blood from his chops and curls into a ball to watch the passing storm with lazy impassivity.
If this too passes, they thought, what becomes of us?

There stands a sun bleached flag on our satellite. It is bent to give the impression that it is waving.
Once it had so much meaning.
Once it had a pattern, in color.
All of that was washed away in a cosmic bath of radiation.
One of them played golf up there.

I wonder if they brought all the golf ***** back?
I don't know.
I never asked.

He was the great regret!
The unfinished melody
going slightly sour in its final notes.
Once meant to be anthemic
now little more than a dirge.
The brokenhearted one that got away;
No tear shed or throat vice gripped
in the absence of you,
but changed none the less.
And make no mistake,
He hurt you and you hurt him.
Sometimes badly.
Sometimes very badly.
Because nothing shatters as completely as a heart,
"My God" say the old men of hearts,
"And not a one the same."
He's sorry.
He never meant to hurt you,
and he knows you didn't either, love.
Don't worry.
We hurt each other, we hack away.
We expose the pulsating and raw innards of each other.
We chip away at each other
Until what is left is the perfect shape.
You made him into her matching set,
And he fixed you for whomever came next.
And seriously, he hopes for the best
because he didn't love you the way you needed but he did love you.
Maybe you loved him, too.
Even if you don't miss one another.
You were broken notes.
It wasn't the right song.
You are the great regret!
The brokenhearted ones that got away.
Or rather, grew up,
up, up and away.

And he'll measure his freedom
in fractions of an hour
and wonder all the time
if the average person
the same one that spends
more time with coworkers
than family and friends
also dies unhappy or
at the very least unfulfilled
and if so if the average person
is on average unhappy
for the average length of
their lives are we, on average,
doing something very wrong?

And he'll learn to budget in
the age of autodeductions as
common bill pay procedure.
As if some company storing
his banking information is
a convenience rather than
a glaring imposition.
His personal life is on sale
at the cost of retweets and likes
but as long as people are watching
he'll be able to pretend
he's not so ******* alone.

And the weather will change
and the oceans will rise
and fall and spring may
disappear and summer may reign.
And he'll be the last generation
that remembers how it was
and he'll wonder how the
youth around him can take
so much of it for granted.
He'll wonder how they can
find it all so normal.

My grandfathers were born
in villages in other countries.
Their first homes had no toilets.
They were young orphans
on American streets, once.
When my father was born no
single man had been to the moon.
When I was born school shootings
were unheard of and most homes
had no computer and a landline.

I wonder how he'll be.
I hope he'll be okay.
And he will, even though.
We always seem to be.
But still...

...I wonder all the time.

Storybook ******* finds
a hero riding in on horseback
with grave purpose and noble intent.
Saving the day, or the damsel.
Kissing the problems awake,
rending the wolf's innards to find her.
Building the machine or spell that somehow fixes things.
Hard and dark, like burned wood,
are his eyes.
Broad and strong are his shoulders.
Trite and compromised are his deeds.
And so, in fiction we are saved.
In fiction we somehow still need saving.
Karma is a lie, kismit doubly so.
If there exists a path through the dark it is only because other damaged and broken people trod it there.
We don't have noble intent, we don't have hard eyes, but we occasionally accidentally build the mechanism that fixes things.
Not in whole.
Not completely.
And not even well.
Almost never is it perfect, occasionally it is better. But it is change, nonetheless.
It is change!
It is a start.
It is grave purpose.
Storybook ******* be ******.

I'm looking for artisanal  language.
Prose with a maker's mark.
Words that contain perfect imperfections,
evidence that a person first touched these letters and then my heart.
I need a personal touch to color the paragraphs that fill these pages.
I wanna see the hands that craft a stanza in the body of the text.
I want something real and alive.
I want these words to burn with the incurable human spark.
I'm on a quest to look at the tome and see the beating heart of the man.

I once read a note you left on the fridge and I could read in your word choice the shape of your smile.
My god! I would read volumes of your missives left throughout our life on CVS receipts.
They contain a warmth that I can feel even in memory of them.
I don't know if it is talent
or magic
or love.
Or all of the above.
My words...I guess, I fear that they're hollow.

Do they reach you through space? Is my pen alight with intelligence?
Does my writings evidence my soul?
I don't know that they do.
Certainly they do not seem to.
I've tried different theory, different pens.
I've written sonnets and songs with this and also the other hand.
The results are robotic.
Bland.

I want to explain you, my love...
I don't have the words.

As he falls
from orbit
he feels the friction,
the heat,
engulf him.
Moving at more than
175,000 miles per hour
he precieves time slow.
He wonders if
there will be
Anything left of him
to crash into the
welcoming dirt
of his home.
He can smell ozone
and a small rational
part of him worries.
He is surprised to find
out that he is still
capable of worry.
Moments ago he was
surrounded by the
seared meat smell
of the cold vacuum.
He is a fading light
in the sky over an entire
world of experiences
he has had and will
never have again.
He will be nothing
or debris depending
on angle and speed
and his own weight.
Moments ago he was
weightless.

Did you stop smiling
when they plucked
the stars from your eyes?
Did you cry out in pain
when you first began
to understand this life?
I hope so.
I hope you didn't just
let the moment pass
you by.
We learn to suffer
because to suffer is to learn
and we think that makes
it alright, but we never
get to hold the child we
were. We never get to
say goodbye.
We become cynics
born to burn away,
born to die.
Our innocence is borrowed
from the universe.
It's just on loan.
We have to give it back
when we're done with it.
When we're grown.
Knowing that we live
in mourning of
who we used to be.
Do you ever wonder
what became of you when
you stopped being me?
It's probably alright.
It's likely just fine.
Still, I hope you wonder
about it from time to time.

He fell asleep for the
final time surrounded by
three generations of
loved ones and friends.
He had planned, before
the accident, to run some
errands and get to the
bank the next morning.
He'd written it down in
his ratty old day planner.
For years his oldest grandson
would struggle to decide
if the great old man had
gotten the semi-mythical
Happy Ending
or if his unfinished banking
chore proved there was
no such thing.

Bury me in concrete
so I can't claw my way out.
When it's over I wanna
be finished and done
but I'll probably always
need help sitting still.

I could while away infinity
in the stone cask in
which I will be interred,
what a word, what a day.
I suppose I'll wait to hear
someone undoing my works
so I might begin, gamely,
to spin in place.

Should I be awake when
it's over, when it all ends
I don't know if I'll want people,
family and friends,
to surround me or not.
I don't know if that's
The Happy Ending
and I have given it much
great thought.

I do my banking online, now.

I want you to know how to like yourself,
because I never did and I've spent an unhappy lifetime
stuck with me.
I want you to be cautious where I was reckless.
I want you to understand the cost of your actions,
because I never cared for consequences and now...
consequences have become me.
I want you to learn to let people in all the way.
I want you to know how to be honest with yourself.
I've let no one in completely,
not even myself.
You can't be free if you can't be honest,
says the liar.
I want you to know your limits
and to approach them fairly.
I've spent 30 something years thinking
I was the exception to every rule
and now that they're all broken
I have no clue where to go.
I want more for you than I've allowed myself
because I love you
and I've never loved me.
You look at me to teach you these things
but I don't know.
I don't know how, buddy.
If there was a time I could've learned I let it pass.
My ambition, little one, has never equalled my potential.
Please, please if you learn anything from me
let it be from my mistakes.
However, if there was one thing I wish I could share with you,
one thing I think I do that you should,
it would be loving you.
Love you, buddy.
Please.

We were stunning in
the dying light of the moon,
full of consumed caffine,
mouths like ashtrays,
the whooping roar
of the cracked passenger window.
Music playing low now
so we could hear the breaking
hearts in our voices
as we raced dawn for
that distant horizon line.
******* we were beautiful.
Invincible as a wall that
has yet to be knocked down
and full of the confidence one
has before they've made the
very big and important mistakes.

You and I and our secrets
sat in parked cars in dark
parking lots and talked about
pain in a way that only people
who've never really been in love
can talk about pain.
You turned the radio up
because the lyric that would
change my life was about to
come on and you stared at me
and I counted the freckles
in your eyes and on your nose
and we learned, second hand,
what each other's brand of
cigarette tasted like.

One night you layed on the
hood of someone's car,
was it mine?
and you said you couldn't
wait to find out how this
all turned out and I said
you were beautiful and
you were and I don't
remember where or how
but maybe we're still
waiting to find out.

I miss them now,
old friends and lovers.
But the night is not long,
not anymore, and the days
bleed together
and I can't find you anymore.
Maybe I'm not looking,
not really,
not like I used to.
Nothing is how
you remember it.
But hold on to the
memory, anyway.

I have never owned
a glove that fit well.
I sleep best with
thunder in the distance.
I don't always know
where I'm going
but so far I've always
known when I got there.
Listen:
I'm not here because
we're perfect.
I showed up for the
mess.
I'm not staying because
all the pieces fit.
I just love all the
noise.
I didn't come here because
it's easy.
Because, love, it never
has been.
I'm here to put the
work in.
I'm here to labor
until it's just right.
You captured me with
those eyes
and you've kept me
and I've loved being kept.

We are not your prayers answered
we are the sudden stillness before
the sick realization that the
woods around you have become
darker and so very unfamiliar.
We are a generation
treated as disposable
but asked for endless solution.

We are not the prize waiting
for you at journey's end.
We are the parting of ways
that follows like a raw nerve.
We are the departing
backs of comrades
that no longer have
purpose left to serve.

We are not an audience
of hushed worshippers
at your feet.
We are the shimmering
air that summertime
rises from the street.
We are the scared triggerfingers
on people who have finally
had enough.
We are the liminal
space between now
and an empty room of guf.

We are visions of
impending apocolypse.
We are faraway destinations
of many short little trips.
We are a little bit of
yesterday tomorrow.
We are emptied of laughter
and wasted on sorrow.

Liars sit on gilded thrones barking orders into intangible every-*******-where and we plug our ears and we hum our throats hoarse but we still hear it.
We still hear it.
We hear everything.
You ran away and for office and I know what it meant and where it ends but I don't recall the lines of revolt forming like ants in formation against you. Neither do you, you *******. Doesn't matter. Never did.
We know everything.
I know late night talk radio vocabulary and I weild it like armor to protect me from the ******* conspiracy and the wild denials of things we've always known and I'm left cold and run-on.
I saw everything.
Inside the backrooms where the ******* deals get made there are secrets passed like currency and this gets exchanged for that and we're all smaller and less and our souls are laid bare before hungry jowls and damp fingers.
Everything is negotiable.
You want to stand, sycophantic, before me and prattle on about values? You value nothing. This is nothing. You cut up and sell the American dream to the highest bidder and sleep sound as houses while we burn with impotent rage and the gnawing feeling failure provides to giving up.
Everything is for sale.
And maybe, just maybe, we deserve you.

They lie spread across
bloodied battlefields
with the fallen and
The Nephilim of old.
Swords caught on bone,
sheilds that cover
against the heat of
liminal hellish landscapes
still within sight of the
large golden gates
behind which sit,
on impossible throwns
surrounded by hosts of
horrifying misshapen
monsters of eldritch
origin and madness born,
The Father and Son
and the third ethereal
component which completes
in some small but huge
and mysterious way.
Among the carnage stands
our hero, his sword turned
so the dullest part faces
toward the legion he
stares down, his shield
strapped to the bleeding
useless arm hanging
limp by his side.
His cape ***** behind
him in some breeze
which brings no relief,
it seems impossibly long
and so too does his shadow.
And look, o' sons and daughters
in the darkest part of
his shadow we are huddled
against the noise and the heat.
Between us and the bitter
finish our hero digs his
feet into the dark, dusty ground.
His countenance grave
but determined. His brow
a tight triangle, his lips
a small drawn line,
his eyes narrowed.
We desire his victory
but expect his defeat
and we know we will
both be safe and also
tell his story, regardless
of the outcome, because
of the time he's providing.
But that should he lose
should he fall in his attempt
we will love him
for all of time.
Stand tall, sons and daughters
but know always that
the hero, our hero,
he shakes, ever so slightly.
His eyes are set
and grim but they are
glossy with tears he'll
never be allowed to shed.
He stands amid death
and consigns himself
for us but he still
must die alone
and afraid.
But then, o' sons and daughters
so do we all.

When she was young
a lightening storm
brought her to life.
The transformer exploded
and six city blocks went dark.
She grasped along in
pitch black for the taper
of a candle she kept.
From above the doorway
Jesus looked on from his
usual perch, arms akimbo.
She wondered if he could
see her in the dark
then hated herself for the
clearly blasphemous thought.
Thunder rumbled dangerously
in the distance but the rain
had not yet begun.
Unable to find the candle
see felt her way around to
the door and then down
the stairs, knowing people
would gather in the darkened
streets outside and hoping
for the safety always promised
to be found in numbers.
On the stoop she found neighbors
and oppressive Eastern shore
humidity and summer heat.
At first she heard talk,
people wondering about dark
clouds and the specific
response expected from ConEd
and then, arriving all of a sudden
and with no announcement or
warning, the pounding sheets
of rain came and brought the very
unique quiet that loud, heavy rain
carries inside it.
She dashed into the empty
street, raised her hands and
kicking up water like she was
at a theme park, she played-
She danced like a wild thing-
In the pounding rain and
the deafening silence and the
temporary darkness
and with great peels of
laughter and a young
women's smile she danced
herself to life in the
storm under the powerless
Electrical lines.

I just want to say something real,
that lasts beyond my time.
I wanna know I mattered
before the number called is mine.
It may not matter that I tried
it might be futile to do my best,
and I'm not asking for accolade.
No need for Glottaman's rest.
And listen: I know it doesn't
matter, that it's all random chance.
I know that music only plays
until the end of the dance.
But if you could know
what comes after your fall
would any of that change
anything you do, even at all?
All stories end, all books conclude
and we don't always know when
and if we're lucky the mark stays
in the middle for as long as it can.
One day its over and every tomorrow
becomes one dreamless, endless night
there are more pages behind the mark
and the ending is already in sight.

There are great cities
coursing through my blood
and old mountain ranges
trapped in my DNA.
I am as much where I've been
as where I'm still going.
I am memories of the
excitement of screaming
life on steamy night time
city streets, routine tragedy
lit in neon lights and
the film noir sounds of
cabs and trains rushing by.
The cold street savy intelligence
that we all ignored to
play pickup on packed
streets, or swim in the
local members only or
smoke cigarettes and wonder
what life'll be for us as
we grow in anonymity.
I fell in love on a subway
platform and on building
tops and fire escapes
where buildings jut like
teeth reaching toward the
star absent moon filled sky.
I recall the pine scented
sidewalkless roads of deepest
Appalachia, the wind cut
rosy red cheeks of chipped
tooth kids scheduling their
meetings in advance.
Finding each other on school
yards and bus rides home.
Learning to love in crisp
mountain air and flannel
wrapped forms.
Building fires and seeing
in her eyes something
as wonderful as the hundreds
of thousands of stars in
the cosmic painting of the sky.
I settled in the brick row homes
of somewhere inbetween.
An alley behind the house
and a wall shared with a
neighbor in a place that
knows and throws
block parties
to recall my first love
and a yard and treeline
in the distance so as not to
deprive my boy of that
uniquely East Coast
forest and the magic of
a night sky full of color.
I long for yesterday
but have learned the hard
lesson of compromising
all that was once my
yesterday with what is now
My today in order that I
make a middle ground
for tomorrow

We weren't heaven
but we weren't hell, either
and maybe we're clichés
but there's nothing wrong
with plain average mediocrity.
We were ships in the night
all vision but no sight
and maybe we could've
tried harder to slide together
like puzzle pieces but we
just never fit quite right.
And they don't write songs
about what we had,
not even little humming
summer time pop hits,
but we still had it and we,
you and me,
might've been day one doomed
but we get to decide what
we meant to each other
and what we didn't and
we won't agree on what that is
but we never really agreed
on anything else, even when
we seemed to.
What's one more day
removed from never going
to happen?
Sure, we were a pit stop
a diversion on the road
to the places we were going
to finally end up, and
the memories are fuzzy
and the worth dubious
but here's that poem
you always wanted, finally.
I apologize it took me so long,
but hey, you were once
used to that, anyway.

Pardon me while I
repeat myself
in angry verse about
the usual things:

Death and violence
neglect and silence
abuse and regret
lost love and nebulous yet.
I try to think of brighter things
like your eyes or
the sound when the little guy sings
but it all turns cold
and I can't do as I'm told
and soon these things fall apart
and so I give up before I start.
I try to write myself out
on an ocean of wasted ink
but lose lungfulls of air
and finally just sink.
I don't know why you love me
and I'm afraid to ask.
I'm incapable of teamwork
and never up for the task.
I'm always seven words into
my biting verbal sting
before I realize it was me
who said the wrong thing.
And I know it's hard when
I shut down, it feels like lies
and ******* my silence
but that's me trying to apologize.

When I was young
I tried to call the thunder
and marveled when it came
but the dry dirt still cracked
and peeled, just the same.

He was all bible verse
and the broken, fraying
edges of song
gone slightly discordant
after having waited for
so ******* long.
He wondered at love
like you or I worry at
a scab on our arm,
with constant picking
and scratching
and sudden serious alarm.
He claimed he shined
like Summertime but knew
he felt more like Fall.
He was often scared
and frequently lonely
but so are we all.

She loved him from
a distance with a small
measure of shame
but would still have
melted into giggles
if he felt the same.
She waited for someone
to tell him,
to let her secret slip,
she waited for others
always because
she was terrified to trip.
At night she'd sit
outside her apartment
and stare at the moon
and pray that something
would happen and that
it would happen soon.

They lived lives
side by side and
from faraway
in quiet solitude
and creeping isolation
day by endless day.
Never touching
moving toward the
patient, waiting grave
they could reach out
and touch one another
if they'd been brave.
There is no making up
for lost time or
missed chances.
Nobody else will
ever hit the floor if
at first no one dances.

We got in the car and
looked out at the road ahead.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I'd been desperately poor
and so hungry I couldn't
bare to eat.
I'd been on buildings
so tall I thought I might
touch the sky
and valleys so low
one worried the levy
wouldn't hold
but I was 17 just that once.

I recall throwing back
my head and screaming,
full throated, into an
empty night sky.
I once called the rain
in a mall parking lot
just outside of Baltimore.
I got so sick I thought
I'd die on an NYC subway.
I traveled with you
across this country
for just shy of 3 months.
I was 17 just that once.

I was three years in exile
in Dover, Delaware.
I felt cold Chicago rain
and New England sea breeze.
I've labored in Floridian humidy
and dressed against the
chill fog rolling in off
San Francisco bay.
I shoveled snow in Alaska
and got chased by fire ants
into an above ground pool
in Austin, Texas.
But I was only 17 that once.

We got into my beatup
old car, loaded with
the Spartan bag of clothes
we'd learned to have ready
to go over a lifetime of
sudden and drastic moves.
We'd stop for beef jerky
and drinks.
We'd stop to see the sights
we wanted to see.
We'd stop to get off the road
and stretch our legs.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I was only 17 that once.