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 ******.

There are secrets and distances
kept between us.
Small dark truths we dare not face.
Large scary facts left buried.
Yet...
There you stand, shovel in hand.
Prepared to uncover, unearth
and learn all about me
and us.
But, my love, word of warning:
you can never not know again
and once it's all been exposed
you'll have to face the future.

Here: Take my hand and walk awhile.
The future is scary.
It's full of uncertainty
even those of us that have found
the truth have not found the path.
And yes, now it's all out there,
a public manuscript of secrets
but look, love, I'm here beside you.
Sure the facts are now present
between us but absent is the distance.
I know the future is a scary thing to face
But you don't have to face it alone.

We got history wide and
terrifying as the sky
and we're screaming a
million different versions of why
at crashing waves and
a big hollow lie.
I don't know if it'll get better
but we've just got to try
because one day soon
it'll be over, spent as a sigh.

If we had the ******* music
we'd need a key change
a drum coming in over this
slow chorded refrain
marking the start of something
anything that might just
breathe life into me again.

Smoke off musket barrels wafts
toward the forever just beyond
the sapphire sky and mingles
within the clouds there in a dance
waiting to expire against eternity.
The blood seeps into the ground
but somehow does not spoil
the earth it contaminates.
Take from that what you will.

The ship tears apart as the
lighter front end lifts from
the cold black sea and shudders
in the air before screaming
it's seperation in the ancient
moans of protesting metal.
We build them much bigger now
because we dare and we do
and we never ******* learn.

We got a history, you and I,
volumes enough to publish,
big as the whole ******* sky
and it'll be gone forever
just as soon as we both die.
I don't know how to take comfort
in forever in this blink of an eye
but if I know anything at all
I know how to say goodbye.

Time marches foward with
little regard for you or me,
and of course much has changed
but I wish I could still ******* believe.
Remember how sure
we used to be?
Running around with dreams
and the myth of meritocracy.
Years ago we were strong
as a lapping ocean wave
or the mile wide light and heat
of a forest fire blaze.
We were songs stuck
in each other's swollen head
we were so ******* alive
absent a mounting sense of dread.
And I'm lying if I say I didn't
think back and miss us then
but I've been scraped along a lifetime
of disappointment again and again.
There is hope still for you
to climb to success, I hope
but my dreams have gone,
I'm at the end of my rope.
It's a hard thing to have learned
and to know better.
It's a hard thing to listen to
her go and to just let her.

Color me with Technicolor
like prisms casting light
meet me in the middle, love
'cause I don't think we'll last the night.
Find me in your multi-chambered
beating, hungry heart
because all this screaming,
lately, is tearing us apart.
Whisper sweet nothings
instead of just demanding ***
or start getting ready, honey
to pester whoever comes next.
I don't want to argue,
I don't care if I'm even right
just please come to the table
I just don't want to fight.
No one said it was gonna be easy
but how is it this hard?
I'm pacing up halls and stairwells
doing nightly rounds like a guard.
It was supposed to be transcendent
supposed to lift us off the ground
all we're doing is shouting
our better angels lost in all the sound.
We're still angry as the purpling
sky turns red with the rising sun
and we're promising to fix it
'cause it would hurt more to be done.
Color me in the nighttime hues
the dark blues after sunset
I kiss your finger tips and smile
we both know it ain't over yet.

She moves like low fog
settling in place
leaving no sign or signal
or any particular trace.
It isn't on purpose
oh no, dear me, far from
she longs to be thought of
gladly marching to your drum.
She spent her life in
hope and holding her breath
shambling from one approval
to the next like living death.
She heard them throughout
like a distant echoed shout
and learned to care for others
learned to just do without.
Build us a temple
fit for the age.
Make us some content
and watch them engage.
She longed for the one
who would light up her life
so she kept walking
along the edge of the knife.
She thought she knew what
was needed, round about
but finds herself coward
and so full of doubt.
She was taught right from wrong
and where to begin
She was made to know rote
the varied qualities of sin.
She was oh so prepared for
the tightening noose
education metered in daily
lessons and routine abuse.
Made different from the others
but told not to stand out
She blended in like kale
was as common as grout.
Talents were hidden behind
practiced and placid modesty
average and ordinary
plain yogurt, not prodigy.
It is a difficult journey
when you try to atone
and she knows that, she does
but she is terrified to be alone.
She slaved under winter freeze
and through summer melt
and hoped to be noticed
or have her absence felt.
She often worries about
what she's already become
but has no clue that it's over
that the damage is done.

The dreams of dead men
are absent of purpose
Dreams lose meaning when
living stops.
Dreams may not
die, but the same
is not true for
you and I.
The dreams left behind
by centuries of the dead
suddenly become empty.
They are hollowed out
and meaningless as soon
as the living turn cold.
Dead men are stones
and the mountain ranges
that define our world
see nothing and think nothing.
Land does not dream
but we hang purpose on
things.
There is no meaning
in the words of the dead.
There is power, perhaps,
but the dream behind the words
is for the living to define.
Stones and bones
and empty words.
We build on the dead,
raising shared visions
into being.
We build on the dead.
We should be in no hurry
to follow them.

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.

He was a halfhearted attempt
at a slow motion smile
and it made my spine tingle
in all its goblinesque glory.
At noon he'd start drinking
to forget but by six o'clock
he was drinking to remember.
He would become oblivian
and the sound of his keys
jingling as he walked up the hall
broke a cold sweat across my
forehead and sat me bolt
upright in bed.
She was loneliness in human
form and she'd do anything
ignore all of it if he'd tell her
she belonged.
She'd try to fix things
from time to time.
Smoothing our hair and
trying to make us smile.
We were collateral damage
moved like pawns and treated
like puppets by the people
meant to care and teach.
We grew into adults at young
ages or arrested in place
never really seemed to change.
It's hard to remember
but I remember all the time.

Snow covers Autum's
earth like a blanket on
a freshly made bed.
The sound goes out
of the world as you
walk through the winter.
The white sky meets
the white ground
in the far distance
and if not for the shadows
we might be standing
on blank canvas
waiting for some lesser
god to pencil in our
live's purpose.
Hoping it doesn't get
stale.
I can hear only my
footsteps in the cushioned
quiet of the air
and I've never felt
more alone.
When asked what grief
is all I can think of
is that crunching sound.
How dark a bright
white world can seem.
How life and bloom are
only ever inches away.
Maybe over this snow drift
perhaps the next?
These are the winter bones
of loneliness on which
spring is built.
It ain't over yet,
it may never end.
Before every spring
a winter
under every winter
a fall.

Can you feel the heartbeat?
It's pounding on the door.
It's calling from the empty street.
Screaming for more and more and more.
Can you hear the fire?
It's ripping through my chest.
Branding my skin with the word, "liar".
Consuming the world with no pause, no rest.
Do you smell the rain, love?
Drumming a rhythm on loyal earth.
Beating on sidewalks. Falling from above.
Meeting out new growth and startling birth.
Can you feel my ache, dear?
Rattling injury through my bones,
telling me to rise up against my fear
and claim newly conquered thrones.
Can you hear my past?
It whispers swear words in deepest night.
It tells me I come last
try and try as I might.
Do you know my love, dear?
Dripping devotion saccharin in it's sincerity.
I'm going to try, love, I'll always try to be there.
I want you see my love, crystal in it's clarity.

Try brevity, they tell me.
Short and concise.
The distance between points,
not stars.
Essential employee,
stressed out,
hurting financially,
most of the time I'm scared.
I'm also...
I dunno...blond?
I still don't really know
my father.
I guess that's now.

I'm a father. A millennial.
I've seen several epidemics,
I remember AIDS after school specials.
I remember the towers and the rash
of tragedy that followed.
I've survived two recessions,
a war and Y2K.
Hell, I remember where I was
when they killed Superman.
Is that enough, y'know?
Probably not.
Fill in the blanks for me.
History is in the books
But a man's life is in his hands.

I'm worried about now.
I'm terrified of what's next.
I held your tiny hand,
soft and new in my hard
calloused mitt, and watched
as you learned how to smile.
I quit smoking years ago.
Hardest thing I'd ever done.
This?
This'll rip out the heart of me.

Tomorrow I'll blow away
scattered across eternity
on a warm summer breeze.
Tomorrow all that's left
of me will be these blinking
transitor tube memories.
I had planned to build
great things but those
dreams are long
abandoned and now
given up completely.
Sifting through dimly
glowing embers and other
remnants which once
were so amazing and
tomorrow will be nothing
of consequence, I suppose.
Maybe we'll look back
and marvel, I mean
who really ever knows?
Tomorrow I'll be burnt
up into nothing more than
a history of almost was
and a future filled with
hundreds of could have beens.
Nothing really matters
except how everything does.
Tomorrow I'm dust
and you're searching for
the warmth of another
glowing fire somewhere
in the night, just beyond
this fork or that turn.
Tomorrow it'll be over
but tonight, I will burn.

Waves crashed onto the shoreline
on the day I was born.
In future: Gone will be I
and the shoreline
and the day I was born.
But the Ocean will keep.

Broken eyesight and
shaking, weathered hands
reach toward the open
ocean and take in
what is there.
I wish I'd loved you
like you'd deserved
like you'd wanted me to.
Mixed into my hair
are strands of white
and I can feel the decades
in my knees and joints
but you'll sleep, forever
only ever twenty-something.
I should've missed you
when you were gone.
I should've felt your
heart through phone lines
and digital lines of type.
While you were one
of the many and not
one of my lost.

I know you wanted me.
I know you cared.
I know you were open.
I know you were always there.
If I'd been better or more
if I'd been different
if I'd cared...

I want to apologize
because you deserve it.
Because you always did.
And because I mean it
and that changes the
shape of the thing.

I'm moving closer,
all the time,
to that waiting pit.
But you beat me there,
by more than a little bit.

I've seen churches on fire and wondered what that meant.
Is God's judgement final? Is his wisdom all spent?
I saw the parishioners teary eyed, jaws muscles tightly knit.
But, like, how does this help me understand the world or where in it I fit?
I don't know if it's courage that you battle the darkness every day
Just because you know how much I want you to stay.

I gotta be honest, man.
I don't know how to be happy.
I don't know how other people do this ****.
I don't know much about life or happiness or love.
But I do know: it's gonna have to come from us.

Life can be dystopian. It's a long relationship with violence.
I've known it to be twisting pain and having to suffer in silence.
We are clenched little fingers, nails dug deep into the palms of our hands.
We are all odd, emotional nationals of strange and distant lands.
Sure, I mean, we were born and raised in the same places.
But we stare out from foreign countries behind the eyes in our faces.
What works for you, my old friend, will not work for me.
You bask in shining, brilliant light but I gotta squint just to see.

We'll lie and say we're happy.
Say we're just fine.
We try to believe it, too.
But we just feel like we were left behind.
Like, somehow we missed the day they taught this ****.
How is everyone smiling in timeline photos?

Everyone's got perfect teeth and an audience to keep.
A life of happiness, assuming we don't look too deep.
I wonder if the pervasive sadness is in the water or if it's just in me.
I hope for end of tunnel lights and locks to fit this ******* key.

Keep up the fight, my friend. Don't quit. Stay.
I know it's ******* hard. I know. Find a way.
I love you. I need you. Don't you dare leave me.
I'll fit the mold. I'll be what you need me to be.

I remember the air
shimmering above hot roads
and sidewalks.
It rippled like water
and invited mirage.
We'd meet up in the
alleyway under my
fire escape and set off,
on bikes and skates and boards
and even on foot.
We'd be gone from the block
but usually still in the neighborhood.
Sometimes at lunch,
when everyone came back
to eat, I'd go up to the
corner store and one of
the uncles would buy me
a coke if I swept up or
moved some boxes.
I'd roll up comic books and
stuff them in my back pockets
because I had seen
Ric's older cousin do it
and I thought it was
the coolest thing.
At night we'd sneak into
the public pool to go for swims.
Some of the us would smoke
and talk about gossipy nothing
and some of us would try
to convince the girls to
give us secret kisses under
the water.
We were happy to be out
of the heat.
One weekend we biked,
my brother and I,
onto the island so we
could go to the good
theather, the air conditioner
worked and the movies
were played as double features.
We killed an entire
afternoon watching films
from the 80s play
back to back.
I sat, one evening, on the
lip of the roof of Ami's building.
She was staring at me
from across the roof
daring me to call her attention.
"Whatchu got, big guy?"
I leaned back and threw
out my arms, making slow
lazy circles and smiling
broadly at her and at everyone.
For a second, though it was
brief, the smile vanished.
I could feel the pull of
gravity in my belly and groin.
I felt suddenly weightless.
I was so sure...
but my feet kicked out and
the weight shifted
and I was fine.
She was making her way
over to me and I don't
remember what happened
next or what we said.
I remember the feeling.
I remember the fear.
I had nothing to compare
it to. It was huge and
intense and profound.
It was like...
It was like falling in love.
When it rained,
like sheets with wind whipping
between the buildings
as though through canyon walls,
we'd stay in and futz
with Great Grandma's
old black and white set.
One of us would hold the antenna,
the rest indicating how high
or far away.
We'd take turns,
switching out during commercials.
Waiting out the rain.
It's gone now, of course.
The city has a gestational period
like cicadas.
The city I know,
the city I moved away from
is gone.
Yesterday's New York.
I've learned since
to fall in love, elsewhere.

Do you remember?
Do you recall?
The story starts
the same way,
don't they all?
Once,
There was a storm raging
against the outside
of the building we
were in that we could
hear through the wall.
We both reached for
the same object
at the same time
and there was something
in the casual intimacy
of that brief touch
that I've thought about
all my life.
I've been chasing lightening
through dark skies
and old mythology
and coming up hollow,
empty as a promise to behave
but I'm still hunting
it down as I while away
these humid dog days.
In the soft wet soil
with Nimoy tracking
In Search of...
but finding questions
answered, discarded or
pointless and losing
years in the rabbit holes
that I fall down.
What was the magic
of a moment just after
I knew what I know
but before I knew that
I had no clue what
I know, afterall.
And how do you explain
a longing for something
as ineffable as a fleeting
moment of comfort
wrapped in nervous
flirty laughter?
Once,
I found myself attempting
to recover and laid
out against a bare floor.
You floated over me in
dimples and sunlight
and soft, sweet kisses
or...am I remebering that right?
I'm sitting in the Summer
trying to relate to
Winter how I got
caught up in the Spring
trying to explain the Fall.
Still, fires burn
and waves crash.
Babies are born
and nothing will last.
But for a moment,
years and exactly
one lifetime ago,
I was okay with it all.
I found comfort
in the thunder
and shelter
in the squall.

I don't know how to apologise.
Never got the hang of it.
Don't know how to be human around humans.
I'm worst when it matters.
I've a lifetime of dropped ***** surrounding me.
I'm suffocating.
(I digress)
McDonald's removed it's ball pits for that reason, I think.
(Do I ever?)

Here are the ten thousand examples of my absence!
Here the times it mattered when I couldn't live up to the set bar.
Dig deeper with me, oh archeologists, and find my failure after failure.
How did I measure up?
Did I even?

I'm forever enigmatic, barely in the pictures.
I wonder if they'll know I was here?
You probably didn't find me out in the field, under dusty rocks.
Future historians may puzzle over our ancient customs but I doubt any evidence of me will survive.
For the best really.
(I digress)
I suppose so. Do I even matter?
(Do I ever?)

For what it's worth, I am sorry.

Be the immutable,
immovable
immortal
for as long as is possible.
Push fingers through dirt.
Climb through earth and veins of
rock and root.
Wake, like the dead at judgement.
Wake.
Wake!
Rise like heat
shimmering away above the blacktop.
Killed by distance
or a clever eye.
Leave it all behind.
Rise.
Rise!
Meet the day at the horizon,
grab hold of the sun.
Push it into noon, into night.
Take the empty spot in the sky.
Illuminate the path for others.
Radiate the warmth from inside.
Shine.
Shine!

Thousands of years from
right ******* now
they'll find us decorated
in the 21st century version
of hundreds of fox teeth
strung together on lines of
hair and they'll speculate
our importance to the tribe.
They won't know our
sharing of posts about
out of state listings for
our jobs making more money
with more paid time off.
They won't care that we
often got home the afternoon
of the day following the
morning we left for work
and in this way they'll resemble
best from our point of view
the folks who employ us.
Will crypts be discovered
hewn deep into the living rock
of our dying Earth or will we
have to find our dead through
the thousands of lines of
scrolling text that we
leave behind us when we go?
And if so...
What is the value of human life?
The price point, as econ 101
would have asked me to
specify, to be immaculate in my
words. Allow for this
question to haunt us all:
How much?
How many crumpled
peices of cloth infused paper
with numbers printed on them
for the sanctity missing?
In dollars, what is the cost
of a human soul?
Sure, once in the past, it was invaluable
but late stage capitalism
has taught us some
new lessons and I'll bet
it's got a value now.
I'll bet its dropped already.
Appreciably.

I've been a lifetime trying
different combinations of words
looking for the series that
forms the litany needed
to cast the spell that'll make
me love myself.
Lost magics are these
somehow beyond my reach
or comprehension but are
all I would need to stop
living in the suffer
and the hurt;
all I need to look into
that ******* mirror
and care about it's
fat, stupid inhabitant.
If not a magic, maybe an art.
Perhaps I can learn it
with practice rather than
conjour it into being
like the skill that comes
from the repetition of sketching
the same line or shape
for hours and days.
I've drawn the character
I wish to be onto the earth
and in my place for
exactly one mortal age
but it still looks rough
and unfinished like the
frantic scratches and doodles
of a child before motor skills
can help to make sense
of their work.
Art, perhaps I've not the skill.
The right art can transform
wht couldn't it transform me?
Magic, perhaps I've not the luck.
The right words in the right order
could save me.
Ancient magics or arts
whichever it may be
that I am certain that
once I knew, before the
thick fingered punishments
and judgements.
Things I understood before
the casual unkindness
and ever present violence
learned me my value
and taught me to think like
a tool on my best days
a weapon on my worst
and a lump of useless ****
the rest of the time.
I do not know why
I continue on from day to day.
I do not know if it's
some form of love
that even I am able to
show to myself
or if it is rank cowardice
and I'm not sure if there's,
when you think about it,
even a real difference.
I may never know
what I don't know
and that, I'm sorry,
is one of only a handful
of things that I know.
Perhaps the right words
in the right order
will fix me.
The right sketched lines
in the right place
could make me forever.
Perhaps that's too
much the ask
of magic or art
but I've no other clue
where else to start.

Yesterday I held you, buddy
in the palm of my hand.
You'd crawl up my chest
when you'd nap
in search of warmth and
the steady drum of heartbeat.
I watched you learn to smile
and I celebrated your
most minor accomplishments.
That was you and me, little guy
that was us, yesterday.
You drew a monster today
on a coloring book page
and it looked vaguely
like the monster on the cover,
you'll never believe how much
that my heart broke.
Tomorrow you'll be grown
the next day you'll be gone.
The world spins
uncaring circles through
time and space.
I looked out a window
and watched steam rise
from a gutter into
a beam of light on
a rainy night.
I watched the dance of
temporary and forever
and felt small.
I watched you light up
when I came in the door.
You laughed and smiled
and screamed, " Daddy!"
I felt powerless in a
brand new way.
Pages fall away from
the calender in the hall
and I want them back
I want more.
You'll leave one day
and maybe I'll already
be gone.
My father never told me
his story.
I never asked.
I am proud of my
independence and will
one day be proud of yours.
Doesn't make it hurt less.
Doesn't give me any more.

Fog still clings to
the dips and valleys
on the battlegrounds
of my fathers.
Sirens still echo off
the late-night faces
of the tenement buildings
in countries where my
last name was first uttered.
Since before man walked
this planet the rivers wound
through desert stone and left
deep furrows of earth
behind them and they will
when once more man
doesn't walk this planet.

Hear as history calls us
from chambers of our
minds and we are brought
back to scope.
We are forever made small
by the billions of footsteps
that walked this path smooth
before us.

Innovate! I dare you!
**** your heroes
by replacing them
or live a solitary life
forgotten by history!
Perhaps that's too humble
but when I sit by the ocean
and look out on
Eliot's mermaids
I know deep down
that history will one
day be forgotten, too.
Remember, the heroes call,
no one is forever.
We all, one day, bleed
all the blood we'll
ever bleed.

In the heaving metal
and mortar monster
of my home, in the winter,
steam pours out into
the cold and ignoble air
from man holes and vents
in the sidewalk.
The stream of hot human
refuse so very much
warmer than the heavy
eastern seaboard air.
And there is beauty in
the impermanence of it.
There is wonder in
the brevity.

Yesterday was today
and not long away
is tomorrow, soon to
be long ago and forgotten
but there is blood
in the soil of the
ancient battlefields,
relativistically speaking.

Nothing is immortal.
Nothing is forever.
Maybe this is a reason
to look at your legacy
and really try.
Maybe it's an excuse
to be as happy as
you can be before
slipping into obscurity
when you die.

Following the twisting,
bobbing fairy lights
deeper into the dark
Pennsylvania forest,
surrounded by the musky
scent dirt has at night
and the pervasive odor
of pine sap, his foot
finds in the darkness
a curled, coiled tree root
and he stumbles,
seems for the smallest
of moments to recover,
and plunges toward the
moss covered earth of
the midnight Keystone
State woodland.

He remembers hay bales
stacked in double
out by the tree he'd
hung the rope swing from.
A target placed and
a quiver of bolts
and a lesson about
violence, firstly
about the kind that
we do and finally
the kind done to him.
There is a small
tool shed that stands
a witness to the
moment when he
did his best not to
cry or to call out.

Snow would fall in feet
and schools would look
for terrifying accumulation
before they closed for the day.
He spent the two hour delay
sleeping, he hoped.
But hope is for the wealthy
and suffering is for the
poor and his thrift store
wardrobe told him how
the world worked.
He leapt from his warm
bed and started in on
the chores that barroom
visitations left undone.

He rode his bike down
to the poorly built
and badly lit little bar
his step father frequently
spent time in on nice
summer or cold winter days.
He nodded to the old man
who ran the place as he
Began walking the old man
back toward the house.
He'd come back for the bike
later on, assuming no one
took it before then.

There was a dirt road
and a gravel driveway.
The radio was static or
country music and the
days lasted forever
or at least they seemed to.
The lot next to his house
was huge and barren
and bordered by dense
northeastern forest.
If you walk in far enough
the world grows dim
and everything else,
all of it, is unseen.
It can't touch you,
nothing can.
He wondered if anyone
had ever decided to
just not come out.

There is a beauty in
fixing what is broken.
In the act and art of
finding and mending.
We break so much,
we really do.
We're in constant need
of you to make whole again
what we have rent and ruined.
Just one more job.
Always another. And another.
Burn out those daylight hours
and drive home in the
twisting tracer lines of
Van Gough like light.
Eat your lonely dinner
cold from the microwave
where she left it and
live in quiet terror of the
night you open the door
and find nothing there.
That will be the warning
stones bouncing at your feet
before the avalanche of
your life falling apart.
We break so much,
we really do.
And yes, your tired hands
have proved the beauty
in the ability, in the process
by which you mend
but there is beauty in
the masterpiece we make
before it is broken.
There is art in the act
of not breaking a whole
and perfect thing.
One more night,
you hope it lasts
one more every night.
But you know, even
with care the machines
will break down.
It's what they do.
You know what happens
when they're neglected, too.
Of course you do;
You are in repairs.

I walked home in the rain
with holes in my shoes.
You asked why I didn't throw
'em out and I told you I couldn't.
I told you they were my favorite.
You thought I looked at love
that way, and you let yourself
trust in me for the fall
but the truth was poverty
and shame.
I'd been laughed out of one
too many pools in cut off jeans
to tell you I couldn't afford
another pair of shoes.
All of my clothes were threadbare
all of my belongings battered
I ordered water when we went out
and skipped meals.
Oh but Mr. Fictional just
cannot fail!
The excuse is solid!
His check is in the mail!
I was late to campus most days
or didn't show up at all
because I couldn't make the
bus fare materialise.
I was counting the ticks
of clocks in eternity
waiting for the chime
but you didn't really
understand poor, you knew
about it, sure.
You even claimed it on days
you didn't have funds to see
a movie or bowl.
But you didn't really
know poor.
Not like I did.
You didn't really understand
hunger or pain.
You had cried over lost
loves and unkindnesses
but I lived my life with
a sadness in my bones
I couldn't shake and I
...
I hated it. I hated myself.
Mr. Fictional, what a guy!
He'll always be there!
Why would he lie?
I valued others more than myself
and you thought me heroic,
but I just didn't care if it ended.
I liked the person you thought
was me
even though I knew
that person wasn't who I
had had to be.
Thank you for believing,
even if it was all misunderstood
or shades of play pretend,
You made up the best in me,
and that's the person I still try to be.
Mr. Fictional, what a go-getter!
He's been three decades a mess
but he's tryin' to be better.

Your judgement rains down
like machinegun fire,
but I grew up in a viperpit
full of violence and ire.
You wonder why I'm distant
but I was raised under attack.
Struck down in the moments
before you swore you'd be back.

You want to share credit
for my accomplishments but
where even were you?
What claim has your absence
on these things that I do?
I made myself from your ashes
like some backwards phoenix
worried at all times of the you
inside my double helix.
I went booming across the midwest
chasing the Thunderbird
and nuclear aftershocks.
Hoping any moment to be stirred
to freedom by these mythical hawks.


I was awoken
consiserably broken
and while I've done work
glass just don't uncrack
and there's **** from which
we just can't come back.
I don't know what to say
don't know who to tell.
I'm sorry, Pavlov
but we can't unring that bell.

I love you.
I always will
I've tried not to
and here we are. Still.
You watched them turn
me into this horrible closed off
monster shaped man
and then demanded explanations
for why I am what I am.
I've not got it all fixed
but I'm trying.
I've got a past to escape
and the cracks aren't uncracked
but they are traced in painter's tape.
I'm gonna be better
I'm gonna likely die trying.
And the credit will be all mine
in spite of your lying.

I wanted more but here's
what I've got.
I want to be whole and normal
but ******* it, I'm not.
You weren't there to teach
or to provide or to even try.
I wasn't worth staying for
and I still don't know why.

Once, long time ago,
I was hungry
and I was strong.
I held you up,
carried you effortlessly
like a tune in a song.
Money was tight
and we were unprepared
but love was there.
It didn't make it easy
and it didn't fix the hurt
but we didn't much care.
Our timing didn't match
and I'd go to bed
as you left it, pillow still warm.
The blanket bunched up
beside me and underarm
in a parody of your form.
I missed you then
in our empty apartment
with a sharp, painful keening.
But the absences gave us depth
a pause in the action,
a break to find meaning.
God, those were the days
and we really lived
each and every one of them.
Hard as they were
flowers don't get to have
petals without first a stem.
Our love was forged hot
like the steel of a
battle ready sword.
Our course charted
and mapped for us
to point ourselves toward.
Things are better now,
I have you so often
money's less a trouble.
But we only stand this
tall today because we stand
on yesterday's rubble.

Pushing through water
is a human face frozen
in time forever.
Hung on walls in the
stuffy offices of
guidance counselors
accompanied by frivolous
encouraging platitudes
and are meaningless as the
echoes of happiness
sprinkled throughout
bouts of depression.
Just once I wanna feel
the earth move underfoot.
I wanna hear the swell
of the string section
as I say the oh so quotable
one liner about pushing
ahead in spite of pain.
Just once in the *******
miserable suffer I wanna
be the hero of a story
with a happy ending.
Stucco walls and yellowing
ceiling tile dominated my
earliest memory and now
blood, sweat and hard labor
define a period that ends
when I do.
Ring the ******* bell, Ref.
I can't throw in the towel
but I can't do this
anymore, either.
I thought we were dancing
before the lights came up
on a theater of embarassing
mistakes.
I thought we were building
but surrounded now by
all this debris I can clearly
see we were breaking
all this time.
Amazing the difference
a day makes.
How slowly the chorus
of shouts turned
to couplets and verse.
I can smell the bread
baking, early morning
downtown and the world
seems at peace but
only because the people
the thieves and the time wasters
are asleep and the streets
are empty.
The world rose colored
but still deeply mean.
Now calm and pleasant,
if not better or clean.
The illusion is nice
like coinop or tarot,
but it isn't whole.
It's all bone and no marrow

The past exists in my memory
as a prolonged scream.
Unfinished nonsense bellowed
at the uncaring sky
or roared down the maw
of the savage beast I'm
still terrified I'll become
before finally being published.
I can hear the rough draft
in my hard and swollen throat.
We were so ******* Once upon a time,
y'know, once upon a time.
You and me, babe
my god, we were yesterday.
In the mornings I wake up,
sore and aging away from limber,
and I miss who we were
and I worry about who
I'm still becoming
and the only
benefit of age
I've so far discovered
is the knowledge that
I always will.
We don't ever get back
the people, and places
that we've lost.
They're gone,
but so is 17
and so are we
and so are they
and ******* it all, so am I.
If you're not careful
you'll fall into a nostalgia trap
and you'll stay until
you discover that the only
way out is to remember that
we're never really happy
not even then.
We carry a little sad around
always.
I know, I know:
That's hard to get
nostalgic about.
What can I say?
We are so yesterday.

Waiting in the nebulous
some day
is a hole that has yet
to be be dug in the ground
and we hope it
stays closer to
some day
and doesn't touch
soon.
We picture it as
a looming figure
in deep dark robes
with the gums pulled back
on a corpse smile
somewhere in the inky
depths of the hood.
Bone fingers point
toward our suddenly
very certain future
but that isn't it.
Not really.
It's that
Some Day
we're afraid of.
We stuck a stick
in the ground and
divided the shadow
into hours
strapped it to our
wrists and have
been terrified of it
ever since.
Nothing else on Earth
is worried about
Some day.
Just us.
They put a countdown
on our phones,
so important is it
to know how close
we are to over.
It is so vital we
can look over the
distant,
fingers crossed,
horizon and see it.
We invented a unit
of measure so we
could,
with growing fear,
count the seconds until
The End.

I can't seem to stop
thinking about the end,
about the final moments
the life I've worked so
hard to finally sorta
start to figure out
is over, finished
I've spent most of my life
selling my time to other
people and being largely
cheated on the deal
and I'm at the point
where the sand is
no longer in greater
amounts on the top
of the hour glass than below
and in the distance I can
just make out the rounded
edges that will mark
the empty place where dry
bones will soon lay at rest
and I worry what you'll get.
Will my legacy be something
you can hold high?
Will you reach into your memories
of me in times of difficulty
to use words spoken to you
in my atonal version of
warmth to help you get through?
Or will you just feel left behind?
Everyone leaves, given enough
tide or enough time.
Everybody goes foward toward
a reward of some kind
and they fade in the middle
distance as you sit behind.
It happened to me, too.
So, should you feel abandoned
when I'm no longer around
I'm sorry, buddy. I really
didn't want to go,
so long, goodbye.
I really hope you can
forgive me, but it's up
to you to do or say.
Tomorrow belongs to you
I still belong to yesterday.

There was a time,
I am certain,
when food tasted better
and summer wasn't humid
and the truth was so convenient
we hardly needed lies.
Well, broadly speaking,
I suppose.
Because, not everyone here
was there, you see.
Not every voice made a sound.
The streets were quieter
but not everyone was around.
And sure, we think it was better.
Whose to say?
Whose allowed?

Open a window and
listen to the violence
the shouting
the generations of impotent rage.
Listen for the cries
of oppression voiced by the oppressors
listen for the center as it
fails to hold but
just gradually shifts right.
Listen and maybe hear
the terrifying sound of sirens
approaching in the cover of night.

We've not grown or moved the bar.
Because the really sticky issue
is that the way things were
isn't terribly different
than how things are.

If you've the gumption
you can watch the soul
burn right outta me.
Any minute now it'll
hit the ground in
a smoking heap.
You can marvel as my sails
deflate and gasp, the scandal,
as all my dreams crash
to earth like space debris.
We're not looking through
rose colored shades
we're here to talk on
the whole uphill thing.
I don't know if it's left
the station or not
but I don't see even
dim light down the line
and I've been at this
platform for ages
waiting on a train
don't come.
I was made in the image
of failure and loaded to
the brim with potential
without drive.
Cast out into a world
with nothing,
told about plenty
and mocked as I struggle
to survive.
I am the king, lord over
all I see, of having just
enough rope to dangle
like a possibility above
an ocean of
try hard dissimive noises.
Metaphor pushed here
beyond the breaking point.
It's hard to describe
with words
but it was painted
in violence clear enough
for me to understand.
Without pressure gasoline
goes stale, left in cans
in the garage until it's
only usable in the lawn mower.
Online influencer culture
leaves me cold,
television shows are barely
on TV anymore
and the lives of friends
and family are curated for
timeline efficiency to the
point of unbelievablity.
No one posts about the fight
or the bad vacation.
No one admits that their
kid says a lot of real unwise ****, too.
Cursed with lackluster
millennial ambition I now find,
nearing forty,
myself in compition with
Instagram accounts of people
I have known for years
but never see and
I hate it.
At least from the bottom
of the well you can
see the sky,
at least from nothing
one can still hope
to climb.
The final embers of my
soul are dying out
growing cold at my feet
where they fell
and I wish I could say
they burnt like a
funeral pyre throwing
light into the starless
night sky and warmth
like a blanket across
the world around me
but I'm cold and it's
been dark a very long
time and the train
has yet to arrive.

Dragged bleeding across Two thousand seven hundred and seventy-miles
a dozen times
before we met.
I saw a tornado rip
the roof away from
my shelter once.
I learned to sleep sitting
up straight with city sirens
or pounding rain
as a constant refrain
in the back seats of cars
we lived out of.
I saw the open vastness
of the Grand Canyon
and heard the gentle
weeping of the ocean as it
met the rocky New England shore.
I found tree canopy darkened
groves, thickets, woodlots and stands
by streams and creeks
brooks and rills
and wondered in the almost
shelter of the forest if any other
person had ever stood there.
In cities I've danced on streets
and eaten exotic meats
and smelled the densely packed
cultures breathing on their feet.
On mountain peaks and deserts
I've encountered extremes
and bow before nature, esteemed.
Down highways and roads
that crisscross the map like veins
I've felt this country heave
and I've never been the same.
Off the map are memories
of a time before you.
A bygone era when
I was a different man.
Did you know me as a traveller?
Could you sense the roadwear?
I apologize for the damage.
Like most well travelled
things I've been battered
and beaten and left
broken beyond repair
on the way here from there.
I've got some use left in me,
I'm pretty sure, at least.
Now, I've met you I can
feel my roots plant deep.
Now you're beside me at night
I can finally close my eyes and sleep.

My whole life I've been
waiting for the music to swell.
I've been wincing at raised hands
and obidient of Pavlov's bell.
I've been thinking about the end
and what that might mean.
I've run with sudden violent shudders
I've never run clean.
I want peace and solitude
like a snowy mountain cap.
I've been lost. It's been
a nightmare without a map.
I'd secret away lits bits and bobs.
Some string, a subway token.
We used poverty as excuse, but we
weren't just broke we were broken.

I like the stinging numbness
of eating radish slices.
I like the quiet oblivion
of heavy rain.
I like to imagine that
this will all lead to crisis.
I'd rather leave behind the past.
I'd rather not focus on pain.

I often dream about dying.
Walking the room at
my own funeral and
wondering why no one is crying.

I locked away my heart
at a tender age
because it hurt to feel
and for reasons left off the page.
I put it in a cold, high place
locked it and told it to run.
Told to always hide.
But you journeyed there,
chased it down and picked the lock
releasing all the horrible
truthsome **** inside.

You could be better.
You should be more.
Instead you're this.
This miserable ******* chore.
I woke up this morning
and wrote the note.
I finally knew the ending.
It's tucked in my coat.
Why you ask did I not just
put it in the mail?
How could I have discarded
it, should I fail?
This is how it is
how it should be.
A little secret, reader,
between you and me.
You're free, of course.
Free as birds.
Not that it matters,
they are only words.

My best friend said
I like my endings to be sad.
Maybe he's right. I don't know.
But those are
the only endings I've ever had.

Your hand on the side
of my face, gentle but firm,
as long as you need
no need to squirm.
Your eyes steady and alive
burning from your core.
your voice whispering
that I deserved more.

Whether it'll be heaven
or it'll be hell
I'm not sure or at least
I cannot tell.
I'm feeling amazing
I'm going out on top.
In the distance the music
begins to swell.
To celebrate my short drop
and very sudden stop.
Swing life away.
Free as bees. Free as birds.
Of course, we both know,
these have been only words.

I will give you sweetest comfort and sweeter lies.
I'll tell you that everything will be alright. That everything is fine.
You're the best. You're so ******* great.
You'll be remembered. Laid in state.
People are trying to improve. I've seen it.
This is real. Big. Stand! We've no time to sit.

Sympathy for the devil is the order of the day.
Sit back and relax. I assure you it's well underway.
And listen, some people are wealthy and lucky and full of despair.
Some are in love but married into the wrong pair.
You wanna be happy? Grow up, kid.
Happy is cheap. Remembered is big.

And if it gets bad, dark and cold, no worries. I've got your back.
Sure you're running in a hamster wheel but on the wrong track.
And there is comfort to be found in living just to die.
But I'll always be there and love you. And why would I lie?

Lessons come on like glass cuts.
Sudden welling blood
pooling in your palm,
understanding crystallizing
roughly analogous.
And so are we.
Analogues for bigger things.
Our absences filled with
the crippling enormity
of grief.
******* wounds in the world.
And somehow we're expected
not to recover but to be
suddenly good as new.
Glass cuts jagged through skin
like understanding
but you're gone like
forever
and I'm having a hard time
grasping that.
We are analogues for absence
we're just standing in the
place where missing us
and losing us
and forgetting us
is supposed to go.
We are cenotaphs
adorning our own
empty graves.
Roughly analogous.
Like understanding
and the violent, jagged
cuts that the glass made.
The blood pools in my palm
and try as I might
I don't forget you.

I can feel his words
carve themselves into my skin.
Twisting in me always,
over and over
and one final time, again.

So tell me, baby, what're
we headed for?
You and me
and silence
and the old crimson door.

Several cycles of sun
and then moon,
twenty. Thirty-four.
I had fresh knees,
a strong breeze,
a straight back and more.
I had miles and miles of history,
headfuls of lore.

That was years ago, now.
More ghosts than memory
and sanity
will allow.
And even without
I'm still haunted,
by specters of fear and
shadows of doubt.

Right ******* now, I've got a fever boiling away at one 'o four.
I got salt and moisture bleeding from, it feels like, every last pore,
but I can't sweat you out
Not anymore.

Real talk:
I can't leave you behind me.
And I've tried.
I've burned the heart outta myself,
Buried me alive.
But this heartbeat, this cold sweat,
sweet memories and alchemies
All of these...
They survive.

I think of love in
terms of distance.
I look at life as a
motorbike journey.
I've never bought a
second console controller.
I know solitude with
the same warm
familiarity as my
father's laughter.
I'm a go-it-alone man
in the age of teamwork.
And it isn't working anymore
like it used to did.

I wish I could lay my head
gently on your shoulder
and explain how the
suffering never seems to end
or how the breaks are
still broken and I'm never
actually on the mend.
I wish I could open up myself
and bleed out toward healthy
but instead I hide the pain
and become accustomed to
always playing pretend.
And it's now all broken links
on chains that no longer bend.

One day I won't wake up
and the choices will no longer
be mine to make about
where I go and what I am.
I hope I learned to love you
like you need and deserve
and I hope that...****.
I hope, little guy
that I told you
I said the words
because I mean them.
I am insubstantial
and meaningless
in my specfic silence
unsaid as a life story

What is this even?
He writes about writing
and the world is possibilities
Probabilities.
Maybes.
My god the maybes.
And I wonder all the time,
"Is this too much about me?"
Because I have no idea if it comes through.
****.
...pomp and circumstance is the measure of the day!
I know what's next
I'm destiny, made manifest.
Sheer will power capped by shear valves
and sure the plumbing works
But let's talk about the cost.
Brass tacks.
Numbers.
******* it all...
He writes about writing,
lacks understanding.
He has no clue what any of this is.
What any of it is about.
And, yeah, in our 30s we aren't...aren't...
We are no longer figs, Sylvia.
No longer plums.
Not yet prunes.
**** it.
Leave it.
Start fresh tomorrow.
With fresh eyes and...
He writes about writing.
Y'know?
Get it?
Do you get it?

A prize fighter stands and sways
a lifetime of bruised flesh
and broken bones keeping
him on his feet after the
latest in a long series of beatings
has left him here again
in that nebulous space
between living and dying
and still he hasn't got a prize
he's still got no answer.

There is a question burning
away in our cores and we
ask the universe every day
in different ways and often
for very different reasons.
Some of us have a theory
a hope locked away
a secret wish
but none of us have an answer.

He could get up again
but he doesn't know if
he'd make the count
doesn't know if he counts.
After the pain and the
abuse, after a lifetime
of violence
he doesn't know what
matters or if he ever
even did.
Blood and sweat are moving
in rivulets, slow and uneven
threatening to blind him
and his opponent is still
out there, moving
unlike the blood and sweat
in tightening
circles around him,
waiting for him to fall
or failing that to
start beating him more.

I want to believe we get
better as it goes
that time doesn't march
away from the best version
of ourselves but it's
more difficult to tell than
one might imagine.
We were stronger and faster
yesterday than we ever
will be after tomorrow
but that day's knowledge
makes a difference, too.
I hope.

Maybe he'll win the match
maybe he won't
the pain follows forever
and the glory is gone
before he'll really be
able to enjoy it.
There might be more
to life than endless battery
and constant recovery
but he's only ever known
the fighting and he
learned years ago the only
secret he's ever needed
how to take a hit
and still stand up.
Damage is inevitable
like death.
The boxer flirts with
the inevitable
in search of
an answer.

We live inside an explosion
and mistake trajectory
for free will and we talk
about nothing. We just
perform meaningless tasks
and boggle at the scope of
existence and how miniscule
it makes our lives seem.

We are each a record of failures
and success and sure
time is an illusion
but how we perceive it
is all of who we are.
A loosely held collection
of memories and half
recalled facts.
Most of, but not all of,
a thousand different
stories and opinions.
Piles of electrified dust
and water in the shape of people
haunted by the memories
of where they've been.
We are ghosts inside
homunculi all hoping
we're not going to stop.

We will, though.
Stop, I mean.
What we do and where
we've been will become
meaningless in the grand
big picture.
Our smiles will be forgotten,
our laughs, too.
If we're lucky our names
will be spoken in a hundred years,
but most of them won't make fifty.

I don't know how to
explain this,
but here goes:
That's why all of it matters.
All of it.
All of us.
The big picture is every thing.
The small ones are everything

What if there was no moving on?
Once in our hearts and never gone?
What if the hurt was forever?
We always haunt our every endeavor?
The tears only ever seconds
from falling.
Our hearts moved one minute
and the next stalling.
What if that ******* song
must always be avoided?
And no matter how hard you try
you always feel exploited?
That bar open to the public
but forever closed to you?
And it always hurts too much to open
up and let in someone new?
What if, once we get broken,
we never get to be complete again?
What, seriously, what are we supposed
to do then?
Would we work harder?
Fight longer?
Or would we be more careful
with the words we say?
More open to seeing things
the other way?
Or would we lock ourselves away?
Why bother trying if it always
ends the same ******* way?
Better to lock ourselves behind
doors another day.
Better to be alone
than torn open and left on display.

I'm locked in a death match
with the cynic in me
over whether or not to hope.
It's not been going well
but one of the two of us
will still have to go.
Perhaps if happenstance
was lately just
a little more kind.
Perhaps if light in darkness
was just a little bit
easier to find.
And, y'know, yes.
For sure, there is
more I could try.
But the truth is so
much smaller than
even any one lie.
At night, from the
other room I can
still hear you cry.
Though miles and ages
seperate me and you
from him and those dark times.
It has been a rough road
and barefoot we've
walked every inch.
We've been beggers and
heroes and labor and chore.
The songs of Darwin's finch
and the wheel turning
Twain's riverboat toward shore.
We've been the music of the spheres
impressive in sound but nothing more.
It'd be easier to hope
if it were easier to live.
That's the rub, I guess...
I'll have to give.
I've been thirty-five years
in search of answers
and I just don't know.
It's me verse my inner cynic
in a death match about hope.
But, still one of us must go.

I've spent a lifetime
being replaced with the
family you married
into next.
I've been left behind
walked away from
and ignored.
Saddled with your
responsibilities and never
once thanked for feeding
and caring for the others.
Only replaced
or abandoned
or harmed.
There was a darkness
the second time you
married and we all
suffered, of course we did
but don't pretend
you didn't know.
Don't playact as a person
who didn't see it all.

We sat in the kitchen
and had our heads
shaved by the hands
of violence you brought
into our lives.
We were told to be men
to grow up.
Not to make faces
not to cry.
He'd pass out on his recliner
drunk before the flickering
blue television light
as I balanced our checkbook
at the kitchen table and
wondered about the knife block
and the deep dark Appalachian
woods just beyond the
flood light on our back door.

Eventually the night came
where you couldn't hide it
from the neighbors anymore.
When lights touched the darkness.
I'd left by then.
You escaped as well.
Too little...
But perhaps not too late.

Before he was born you asked
if I could forgive you.
I wasn't sure.
I'm still not.
He looks for you in the
spare room you stay in
when you visit.
He wants to see you
on my phone.
He loves you the way
I did once and I invite you
I beg you
Please, please this time
after everything that's happened
love him back.

Closer and closer still.
Boiled blood and ******* bones.
Hallowed out the marrow
hung on a string around your neck.
Crossed like salvation
But backed with trumpets like judgement day.
Knuckles pronounced like a second language
stand on cracked and stained hands but hold nothing.
And that old sun is setting
future, my love, the future is coming.
Bored like teenagers into the meat of our chests are messages cryptic and final.
Messages written about us and left by others, cross pollination.
Freeform Saturday shopping trips are become the air I live for.
You my raison de'tre.
Stand back and watch us bleed for the future.
His quiet breathing like music between us.
Bring on the judgement.
Welcome the night.
Stand.

I am seventy pounds of coffee and salt
trying my best to be good or at least understood.
You are promise and blueberries served chilled while in bed.
Dappled sunlight and smiles.

And what a bent and twisted world you'll come of age in.
Will you grow crooked among all the other imperfect reeds?
If there was time left to fix it...

Can I paint a perfect world over this canvas of broken promises?
I hope so.
I doubt it.
If possible I would leave you a perfect world.
But all I have is this.
I'm doing my best.

I am cracked leather features and water damaged paper.
I get the job done, I guess.
You are the lingering taste of sweet fruit and cream.
Pleasant travels and a good dream.
But we are moments from disaster.
You and I and this.

I had a dream that
I was young.
That my lyrics were
unwritten,
my second verse
unsung
the final bridge
still hidden.
I woke to the same
empty sky.
I trudged to work
tired and old.
I wonder what you see
in me, love.
You're fair and wise
with all to offer.
I'm lowly and small
you're place is above.
I work and toil, sweat and bleed
but cannot fill the coffer.
In youth we made sense
but no longer seem to
you've grown out of me
but have yet to leave.
I'm full of points but
the good are few.
But you hold my hand
whispering, "I still believe."
I search the histories
for why
but am unanswered
and left cold.
I have burned this candle
down to bleeding wick
and myself along with it
all ash and regret.
I don't know the magics
or the secret trick
to accidentally be happy
at least, I don't yet.
In dreams I'm young
and so very strong.
I take your hand
and love the sweet notion
that life, our lives
are more than song.
We're giant as moons
pulling on the ocean.