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.

She had not known fear
until she could no longer
see the shore.
Drifting in alien waters
she felt pangs,
like butterfly wings,
against the inside of
her ribcage.
The fluttering, building hollow
that hope makes in it's
death throes.
When you enter the ocean
she heard her grandfather say
you enter the food chain.
The lazy, lapping drift
which brought her ever
farther into the empty sea
would have been soothing
in very different conditions.
Her eyes raked the clouds
searching out the signs
of bird flight.
She was suddenly at the
dawn of seafaring with
early man and his silent gods.
Looking for hope in
the blue void above.
She wondered idlely
whatever became of the
lifeboats from sunken ships
when the coast guard or
someone else pulls the
survivors free of them.
Would she, if she kept floating on
encounter them on the high seas
like a salvation graveyard?
She tried to think
of ways to stay out of the sun
but images of headstones
flocked like an armada
stalking the sea forever
growing but staying
impossibly empty always
pressed down on her.
She too was adrift.
Maybe she'd been headed
that way all her life.
Hard to say.

There is so much orange
in these polluted sunsets
and they're beautiful but
the silver lining is breaking
and all of our silly smiles
are starting to look just
exactly like when we're faking
Where is our blue collar hero
callused hands soaked
in motor oil and turning wrenches.
Wasn't he supposed to dip
his toes in Americana
and save us from corporate concerns?
We while the time away in
Endless forever
composing sad love songs
tinged with sepia yesterday.
When will he get here?
I hope it will be before the words lose all meaning and the world burns.
I don't know what it'll take
to hurry it along
we're living on our knees
and breathing in every lie
but they're stalking like lions
in deepest night
waiting for the funeral
but they can't have it until
we just give up and die.
If we take this step
they warn and they warn
it'll mean our very sudden end.
If we insist they remove the scourge;
but still I feel my sneaker move
my toes weightless at the ledge.
And I smile, 'cause baby,
you'd better sing me a dirge.

I woke up to find myself
a million meters down a hole
I dug myself, lights out
fight bitten and looking
into darkness for a savior.
Thousands of travelled miles
ago a monster stood in my skin
and maybe I deserve this
slow burn punishment. I mean,
blame it on the rage or...

... There are hollow ringing notes
crashing off the walls and the back
of the inside of my head.
Playing cymbals behind my eye
Symphonies for my inner demon.
Young men wrung out and hollowed
used up and swallowed. Thrown away
like fastfood wrappers on the floors
of cars we would drive late into nights
thinking of beds we don't dream in...

...At some point you age out,
you ghetto geniuses,
and find a hostile world
not quite the fish bowl you
spent your life looking through.
And you write hundreds of thousands
of lines in the pursuit of high art
and praise and accolade
and" let's face it" fame
and never write one word that's true...

...you are always that little monster.
No matter where you go
how big you grow
or the quality of what you do,
No one will ever be proud of you.

I blink into darkness and hope
for help or better for rescue.
I find myself, some days,
looking at cherub faced photos
of myself from infanthood
It's been hard practically since
day one. I'll always wonder
if life had been different would
I have built the monster
in the skin in which I stood?

You saw me brought low
broken, bereft and grievin'.
You stopped on your way
to pick me up when I was bleedin'.
My god, I recall your taste! I felt you
in empty veins as a powerful needin'.
I kicked the dust and wallowed in the dark
but still you just kept on believein'.
I wish I'd been different. Wish I was better.
Despite your wishes, despite your pleadin'
I was never there for you
I couldn't stay. I'm the best at leavin'.

Late night on the subway platform
you whispered, "I'm in love with you."
and thought the train would cover the sound
and I let you continue to think it true
because I didn't have an answer
I didn't know how I felt about you.
Life changed for both of us
we were two kids without a clue
and we've grown in my absence
we've our triumph and our rue.
We've grown in ways alien to each other
in times of laughter and in blue.
Time isn't flying, old friend.
Time already flew.
And look, I may have a regret
maybe one or two
a half dozen, hundreds
let's say I've got a few
Listen, I've got the love of my life
and I heard and hope you also do.
I don't wish any harm
and I don't want anything from you.
I just thought you should know
when the train passed I loved you, too.

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 are ten thousand miles up
where the air is thin.
We're pushing against the fourth wall
begging just to be let in.
Our hope like giants humbled before
large and ancient gods.
Wishes lost in prayers or dismissed
with quick and somber nods.
Generations aching to wake
like a Phoenix and in fire be reborn.
American dreams cast like scattered light
or ripped hair and shirts torn.

The heat pushes down
the humidity will not break.

Fog rolls in off the bay.
In stagnant pools of cool salt water
the mermaids lay.
Children race down lamp lit streets,
they run and play.
And we pull and pull
but only push away.
We speak volumes of print
without anything to say.

Tomorrow calls for rain.
Tomorrow calls for rebirth.
I fear it will have little worth.
If we're only ever reborn in pain.

Rain was crashing against
the shoreline in angry sheets
and you were yelling something
at me through the cacophony.
I didn't know what you said
but I knew you weren't smiling.

Half of my lifetime earlier
I was in the basement
orchestra practice room.
She was there, weeping about
harsh criticism.
I thought she played beautifully.
Everything about her was
beautiful.
She kissed me, then
but I turned around and ran.
I didn't know what else to do.

When highschool ended
I sat her on a bench outside
of the eatery we both worked.
I told her that we were
done now. That it was the
wise way to go.
Distance, I told her,
has always proven too much
for me to overcome.
She said she loved me.
I said I was sorry.
I didn't know what else to do.

Her successors didn't have
better luck.
They would love me
and I would run away.
A heart meant to break.
I thought, if you really care
for them you'll leave.
I thought, you're not capable
of reciprocation.
You're not capable of love.

I had never been in love
but I had not been kind enough
to have always been alone.
I used to wish I had.
I don't pretend to understand love
but I know this much:
It is like a tragedy and a miracle,
you can't manufacture it
it just happens to you.

You shouted into the oncoming
maelstrom words I didn't know.
Couldn't hear.
Your eyes were strong
you're the strongest person
I've ever known.
I shouted back,
"I love you."
Lightning crashed in the distance
and that oh-so-serious face
finally turned into a smile
and in so doing
it broke my heart.

This time of year always
brings the memories.
Here they float
to find me in my melancholy
evening hours.
Float, days gone by.
Float.
Snow, four or five feet deep,
walkways carved into
city sidewalks and streets
and dreams of Americana
countryside livin' carried on
radios tucked into our
windowsills in front of the
frosted glass world we
could almost make out.
Float, ancient melodies.
Float.
I sat under an umbrella
in the rainy season,
feet dangling from the edge
of the fire escape, toes
just about grazing the surface
of the rising flood water.
Escaping into comics about
heroes living in our city
and always wondering why
they never came around
our neighborhood.
Float, my childhood heroes.
Float.
Suddenly suspended in nothing
I am afraid of that
ship, of those memories.
I swerve my head
trying to steer away.
So anxious I become
conscious of the weight
(Of the wait)
and worry that I'll sink.
I breathe slow. I blink.
There in the distance...
Here you float
from somewhere deep down
and long, long ago:
A blanket laid against the
scratchy roof surface
our backs to hell, our
eyes to the bursting explosions
of color against the night sky.
Our beating hearts beating,
for one night only,
for each other.
Your hand finds mine
and my face is hot
and I'm unable to look
at you, but you are all
I want to see.
Float away, love.
Float.

I sit and wait on the call.
Problem solving as a summons
lit high and bright in
dark nighttime skies.
I wait for the call.
For the pull in my blood
screaming toward labor
toward love or toward war.
I am consumed in patient hold.
Call me to action!
Drive me, like a weary stead
slathered in foam from effort,
into your biggest ******* mess!
Unleash me, like a hungry Karmen
starving and deep, on your worst foes.
I long for purpose.
I beg for need.
I don't know how to apologise.
I only know how to plead.
I don't know how to compromise.
I only know how to take wing.
I await your call.
But the phone sits still.
It just doesn't ring.

Gods once walked among us.
They loomed overhead
and we felt comfort
and had no fear in their presence.
They made us feel small
and also powerful.
They taught us jokes
and how to snap or whistle.
They showed us love
in it's most gentle, gracious form.
They fill us with wisdom
coded as stories from their youth.
And they left us far, far too soon.

They burned you in
a pine box, but removed
your rings.
We got a bag of ash
to fill the ******* wound
left in the world.
Stiff upper lip.
Locking the doors behind
we all found ourselves
in different rooms.
We didn't just lock out
the world, we locked out
each other.
We learned to grieve
and we learned to die
And learned to do them alone.
The gods are dying
but we still worried
that people might think us
weak.

I agonized over the words.
Arranging them in different ways
structuring a cyclical ending
to tie back into the begining.
I wanted so badly to make
you proud of me, one last time,
using the only tool that
had never failed me.
Using my words.
The dead are not shamed
but they are also not proud
and furthermore
I don't even remember
what words I said.

I remember you.
I remember all of you.
And I still remember
what is was like before
I carried all the years
and the sad around with me.
I remember when songs
didn't make me remember
just because they're somber.
I used to be whole and complete
but time has turned me
away from the loving face
of those long dead gods.

If I could just pull the
stars from the sky,
one at a time,
I could rewrite the
universe in a shape
more pleasing.
If I could just exert
the confidence inside
I could lead us all
toward the burning
tomorrow alive inside
my head.
If I could just fix the
myriad things *******
wrong with me I could
stand tall and become
a person of record,
worthy of note.
If I could just forgive my
mother I could put
these old demons to bed
and be whole against
the sky or at least try.
If I could just forgive myself
No.
Never that.
If I could just get out
of this bed I could empty
the sink of ***** dishes.
If I could just make the bed
I could lay tomorrow's
outfit down and feel like
in all this ******* I
for once have a plan.
If I could just get this laundry
done the constant dull
echo of time-distant pain
would go away and I
could feel like a person,
for a change.
If I could just learn to love myself
No.
Never that.
If I can just hold out
until he's in college and
she's happy I will
die with that *******
wrench in my hand
and not all of it will
have been a waste.
If I can just hold on
I could wade in just
to my nose and struggle.
Wait for it to end in dignity.
Still, it is remarked in refrain:
it isn't over!
Not yet for them
but my sun set a long
long time ago.
The sky is dark now.
If could just find the light
I could trace the awkward
footfalls that lead me away
back beyond those distant
moon-leaden waves toward
the swaying city lights
where, in our home with
him, I will find you.
I will breathe deep
close my eyes
and hope not to sleep.

I don't believe in it's over
I'm not here for that.
I came to be cut up before you
and you're gonna watch
while I bleed out.
I'm not here for joking
you can miss me with all that
I'm here to labor till my knuckles
grow fat and my skin wane.
Watch, love, as I work these
******* bones to dust
and choke on exhaust
and douse my dreams in
stale gasoline
and sit here laughing about
nothing just you, me
and my lit match.
I didn't show up for easy.
I don't believe in that.
You want me to run because
it's hard now? It's been hard
the whole time, my love.
I've bled and cried and
wished I'd ******* died.
I'd do it all three more lifetimes
if it would make you believe
like I do.
I'm not here 'cause you're perfect.
How could you think that?
I'm not gonna leave
just because it's gotten harder.
I was born to die on this hill.
I'll be here when the forests
are gone. When the stars go cold.
I'll be here when here is over
and mankind long forgotten.
Give me your worst, love.
It's why I'm here.

I look for myself in fiction.
In music and in sport, too.
I look for flashes
of my green eyed reflection
in the words that friends choose.
I look for all the parts and pieces
of myself I claim to resent but
that I'm terrified to lose.
And when I find them
in the art you've left behind
I leave me in some small way
and in exchange
I keep it in my mind.
I feel myself disentangle
and fall unto the floor.
Left behind to worship at
the altar of the me
in your art I was looking for.
When I create I see myself
trapped inbetween the lines
and I hate him and wish him gone.
I don't want it to seem like mine.
That duality is ******
or maybe suicide
it drives me crazy
either way you decide.
I just want purity
in the things I do or make
I want people to see themselves
when they go looking
and leave parts and pieces I can take.

The Milky Way cuts the sky
straight down the middle.
A broken ribbon snaking like a river
through the purple swirled night.
A starlight highway looms overhead
as he stirs through
the remains of the fire.
White dust that once was love
spilled on the page
and glowing embers
that appear to mirror
the smothered rage that started them.
But when the adrenaline stopped
and the anger cooled
the regret arrived too late
to save your beautiful words.
On his knees in green, green grass
he can smell the dark musty
country night dirt and he can feel
the many cracks forming
inside him and he prays the center
will hold.
His center.
He hopes the stars will look down
on a man destroyed but unbroken.
Silent grief that is noble in some
ancient masculine way.
But his secret heart knows,
as you know,
they won't.
His friends will say he's
in bad shape but he'll recover.
But he won't.
His children will tell him
they understand that there are
no sides.
But they don't and there are.
He had hoped that now, at this age
his heart was beyond this
terrible ache.
He had thought wisdom
brought a kind of muteness
or numbness.
It doesn't.
He now wishes that it did.
Too old to find a better partner
Much too old to forgive in good faith.
He will face tomorrow when it comes.
And now, ashen hands
and green, green grass
and the infinity of the sprawling cosmos
on and around him he knows
that from here on out,
no matter who is there,
he's gonna face all his new tomorrows
Alone.

Twenty miles outside nowhere
we finally broke down.
The engine had been knocking
but oh so **** faithful.
The last hundred or so miles
had been the worst.
The suspension was all but gone
and sharp turns were met
with fear and anger.
When the trip started we
were so **** happy.
The engine purred like
rolling laughter and our smiles
ticked off miles as we headed somewhere.
But we've totally broken down
and finding ourselves with
no power and still miles from nowhere
we finally begin to talk about it.

You know what?
**** it.
Let's just be on fire.
Least we'll be clean.
Sterile or whatever.
Like ****.
Because God forbid we
live our lives behind masks
and doors.
We are more, oh so much more,
they claim,
than an estate.
This is not captivity
and we are not kept.
This is the contract we sign
when we agree to be a part
of a society.
We have to protect one another.
We have to put each other first
Because they are not other people's kids,
they are the future.
Our future.
So obvious we joked about it.
Called it a cliche.
How in hell did you forget that?
This short sighted nonsense...
It's for the birds.
Open the country
but close the boarders?
You want a police state?
Wait until the collapse.
Bad choices and hypocrites
Will have us there soon.
They've dismantled the programs
designed to save us
and whine about being stuck
in the flood.
You know what?
**** it.
Let's just be on fire.

You can rake yourself
over fire and over stone
but they'll still punish you
should you stay home.

And you can bleed out
when they ask for blood
but you'll not find justice
you'll not earn love.

You can trade every second
of every day for an inch of floor
but when you ask what's enough
the answer will always be, "More."

Listen: They don't really care
and you won't change their mind.
Everyone knows it's a living
but it still feels like a bind.

You can spit out teeth standing
there's no place left to sit
they'll not give up a chair
because they don't give a ****.

He looked back at where he'd been...

The Baltimore night sweats
like cans of cold beer
and smells of warm ****
and inside the thick air
is electricity and it's moving
from you and into me.
It was a thousand years ago
in a math class a thousand miles
from where I was born.
And it hurt so ******* much
when I felt that first push
against the walls I'd put up
to protect me from everyone
and everything.
When finally, after years of
work and millions of soft
warm smiles, the walls broke
I thought it would **** me.
Part of falling, my love,
is landing.
I have dragged myself through
three states and out of hell.
I have labored under burning
sun and freezing snow.
I have tried to reach impossibly
distant shores.
I have looked inside and found less
when I knew you needed more.
I fell when I was still a boy
and dusted myself off as a man
and knew that for the rest of
my worthless ******* life
I belonged to you.
And knowing that was true I made
attempts to improve.
I stand outside myself and watch
as he tries.
I see him struggle to make
the right choices.
He moves through a foreign life
trying his best to be better.

He's walked an uncertain number
of miles in these seventeen years.
Wondering when it would be over.
He stopped, the candle burning low
in his heart, and sighed.
He looked back at where he'd been...

...and it didn't seem as though
he'd come very far.

I spend my days
strapped down
holding my breath
and bleeding out.
The world grows and
changes and is
ravaged by time
and tide.
Frost blankets the
morning world
and heaters go on
to warm the windows.
When the sun finishes
the cold night air
envelopes me and
if I can stop the bleeding
I will go home.
I'm getting older
how is it that time
is standing still?
I hear laughter
like distant thunder
with ears cold
and raw.
Skin chapped by wind
fingers shaking like
Electric Football
and dreams dying
on the vine
words dying in
the cooling evening air.
Sudden phone call
as a car changes lanes
without blinker.
Swearing into the phone
but alive
what passes for alive.
Breathing hard angry
clouds of chilled air
in rapid bursts.
Knowing the embers
in my heart are
burning low these days.
I was going to set
the world on fire.
But my spark casts
no light. No heat.
I've become November
In early August
because the playing
is done and the laughter
is over and only
the work is left.
Turn on.
Turn wrench.
Turn in.
I'm going to turn this key
And I'm going to hope the
engine turns over
so I can leave and
so I don't freeze.

I know it's still an ugly uphill
at thirty-five
from the **** soaked
floorboards of a punk rock dive.
I know you quit
but two packs a day
still leaves a scratch
in your voice that don't go away.
And look, hands up,
I know what you're thinking
but the gut don't vanish
when you stop drinking.
Turns out the weight
was Marley's chains
and we'd carry it every day.
Bruised bones and daily pains.
Our long told and retold
haunting, if threadbare, refrains.
Soak in the empty memories of
hard nights and bar fights
burned out stars and candle light.
Weathered skin and the
hungry, open and waiting pit.
There is a high cost to livin'
even the way we did it.
Times up, sales final.
Pipper's callin' and
the wind howls through.
Make your wishes, friends.
The price is comin' due.

My whole life we've been
a generation about to collapse.
An abanboned cigarette burned
down to a cylinder of ash.
We get up each day
full of new aches and old hurtings
and we make our commutes
to chain ourselves up to our hauntings.
We find ourselves caught in forever.
Our fingers break, our nailbeds bleed
as we scratch at eternity. Stuck fast as flies
our bodies shake out sorrow and need.
We're preached body positivity
and self ******* care
by billionaires with no intent
to ever ******* share.
We look at heavily curated streams
of the lives of friends, who boast
their picture perfect weekends
and wonder what we could ever post.
Between work and sleep
we manage something like twenty-three.
That's hours a week we don't owe.
For less than a day you can find us free.
People scream at us to fix it
while giving no proffered solution.
The blue strong arm of the system
kills in the streets with no retribution.
We find no solution
from asking or starting fires.
We're just cast away
as criminals or as liars.
I'm not Superman, I don't have the answer
though I really wish I did.
But we aren't Kandor
safe behing glass or lid.
And the wind will find the cylinder
and scatter it to ash.
And just like my whole ******* life
we'll still be seconds from collapse.

Here's to absent friends
and present worries.
For clear skies of blue
or storms and their furies.
To our now idle hands
and our unfulfilled dreams.
For the cough drop weekends
and the week full of screams.
To you and I and the we
that we've now become.
And to the many varied pasts
we stole each other from.
Because everything changes
that has once begun
and because after every rising
there's a setting sun.
I do not wish to know the wonder
and terror of whatever comes next.
I'm a terrible student
and life's a hell of a test.
And finally here's to you
my very big, little one
I'm a boy become father
because you are my son.
I hope you'll find peace and love
and all that you deserve and need
just please do your best, son,
but just don't follow my lead.

If your name doesn't even
grace the leaderboard
who remembers you?
If you vanish in the night
who will confess they always knew?
Who mourns the fallen tree
no one was there to hear fall?
Who listens against the wind
for the strangled call?

Is immortality within our reach?
If not, who will be here when we're gone?
Listen, because the end is coming.
As sure as the coming dawn.

Can we fool the march of time?
Will a lick of paint make us new?
Will the wondering ever stop?
And if so, what then do we do?

Immaterial concerns, perhaps.
But who here can know forever and ever?
And, look: if we wanna survive this
we're gonna have to do it together.

Everything is over, everything ends
ecxept the daily weight and strain.
We were promised purpose
and fed catastrophe and disdain.
We were given sugared dreams
of sunlight but left out in the rain.
We were sold on endless mindless
pleasure and walked away with pain.
We want for things to be different
but it's always the ******* same.

They saw the hard turn coming
and steered into the skid.
They didn't ask our opinion
because heaven forbid.
The bottom of the jar is broken
don't matter that you got a lid.
Parents climbed to safety
but didn't leave ladders for the kid.

We know the ship is sinking
we've water to our chins.
We live in constant hellfire
but have committed few sins.
We had a promised future
it's been chucked into the bins.
Nothing ever seems to start
but everything begins.

I was born many years
and hundreds of miles
from here.
On any given day all
I really want is just
to disappear.
I don't know the truth
but have told thousands
of clever lies.
I'm one half a practicing
prisoner and one half a
series of goodbyes.
All my little life it's been
what've you done
for me lately?
I'm soured on bitterness
and hoping to appear
at least stately.
I don't know where things
are going. I don't know
how it'll end.
I'm trying very hard
not to lose it. Not to snap
but to bend.
I don't know how to
talk to you in scrawling
lines of text.
I'm worried about
the future and everything
that comes next.

I heard a ghost story once.
It left my mouth tasting sour
my mind turned dark
my mood bleak and dour.
I was spitting for weeks
but the taste didn't come out.
I'd been screaming for hours
but only managed to shout.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe that is the truth.


There was once a house
where a murderer lived, high on the hill,
that we were afraid to walk by
because we'd heard he was there, still.
The curtain would move
you told me smiling wide,
I couldn't prove it but
I suspected you'd lied.

You mocked and you jeered
called me a coward.
Dared me to approach
and my stomach soured.
I stood out on the street
for a long time with shaking knees
before coming to my senses
and retreating into the bordering trees.
I could hear your laughter
even as you called my name
but I didn't turn around.
I couldn't face my shame.

One autumn I plucked up my nerve
and visited that haunted old place.
I walked through the front door
a chill in the air and sun on my face.
It was clear that no one lived there
and had not for a great while.
There was graffiti and trash everywhere,
holes in the hard wood, cracks in the tile.
I looked out a broken window
at the street down below.
I swear I could see me
as I was so many years ago.

I heard a ghost story once
in which I was the ghost.
No hooks for hands
no sounding heavenly host.
Just a man standing in an
empty house all alone,
looking back on the years
and thinking, my how you've grown.
Everything seemed bigger once
in dreams or in our youth.
Maybe that was just me
maybe none of this is the truth.

Yesterday has fallen like
Autumn leaves or
capitol siege.
History written small
in cuniform apologies,
and arterial bleeds.
Uttered oaths
and guttered hopes
Ashes now where once, Oaks.

And still we try to remember
what's better forgotten
because the outside is tempting
but inside we're rotten.

Nostalgia as commerce has
become the way of today
kicking sleeping dogs
which growl to just lay
Watch us pull on childhood
begging it to stay.
Riding on horsebacks we're
still unsure will obey.

In abandoned towns filled
with waving ghost dolls
and in the fiber of desire
that lives in our phone calls
We search our yesterday for
thunderous warmth and applause.
but with questions unanswered
and great worrisome cause
I wonder if given a chance to redo it
would we do more than pause?

We are the look back
finding at near forty
all the things we lack.
Hoping tomorrow comes
and brings it all back.
Knowing it can't unless
we lay a solid track.

There are words laden with specialty or pop-cultural necessity.
They exist in this language or that and have meaning for the natives that the rest of us can't see or simply lack.
To give pause or to from front to back.
They add specificity to a subject to increase the clarity of communication to people of similar cultural heritage or proximity.
When we translate fictions that contain these linguistic marvels we get clever with syntax and verbage until the characters sound like they're speaking through marbles.
The words don't translate. The meanings are alien or insensate.
What need have I for a word that describes the particular movement of snow? For what purpose is that something I would ever need to know?

I think when I feel something emotional the exact same struggle to translate will invariably ensue.
How do I express my love or rage to someone that can't feel it
the way I do?
Does it feel like a switch or a crack?
Do you experience shock like a towel draped over your world or pulled taught for attack?

I am overcome with emotional schilderwald and left in bokketto.
A modicum of understanding, a lagom, if you will.
These words, alien and specific a keepsake for you. A momento.
No need to become so excited. Calm yourself; Chill.
But marvel with me at language and the tricks it can play.
And like battles or executions, like poker, this could be your moment to stand
or to stay.

It comes on in waves
crashing against and pulling at you.
It draws you out of everyday
and surrounds you
in blues so dark they become black.
For a moment beams
of warm light lit the cool water
around you.
Lines appeared, with promises
they couldn't keep.
Now you find yourself pulled
and caught in the undertow.
Floating naked and dazed
no way of knowing up or down.
So you pick a direction and move,
hoping it'll bring you clear
hoping it will bring you home.
Perhaps you will,
there is always a chance.
Fifty fifty.
Live
or
drown.

So many years ago now
my canvas sneakers crashed
into the cold water of puddles in
our wintery East Coast city streets.
The ratty and frayed ends of
my jeans absorbing the
freezing liquid until the
cold damp was almost to my knees.
The notebooks in my bag,
filled with the near incomprehensible
mathematics of young heartbreak
and the earliest sparks of
drafting talent,
and also the stray notation
copied only occasionally in classes,
jostled dangerously; threatening
to fall out into the cold and wet
world of early January near
the Atlantic.
The trees were long bare,
and I wore mostly flannel
and denium and the absurd
certainty that I would be remembered
long after I no longer walked
these city streets or moved from
class to class inside the halls
of my high school.
I fell in love with a girl who
I knew was too good for me
and I drank and smoked in the
thin wood behind my school.
I made promises of eternity
that I only half suspected that
I couldn't keep and I screamed
full throated with the endless
viger and vitality of youth
into the darkened clouds as though
to seed them with ice cold rain
through the sheer power of
my determination.
I was righteous, though often wrong.
I was proud, though of what
I couldn't say.
I was powerful and I was alive.
I was electric.
I was lightning, crashing into
the earth and demanding to be felt
insisting I be known.

These days I'm not even thunder.
I'm a river-smooth stone.
My edges have been pared off,
my exterior polished to shine.
I'm on display in a suburban home,
occasionally noticed, complimented
and just as soon forgotten.
I watch life go by and it seems
faster now than it was.
So glad you could come.
How are the kids?
What was it you did for a living?
Does any of this matter?
We were meant to move the world.
We were meant for more.
I was supposed to be more.
There will always be then
and time may be an illusion
but it feels like we're coming
to the end, regardless.
We're all just moments in a life
and when those moments are
forgotten what's left only
looks like we did
Once.
I used to care so much...
I am a ghost haunting my own bones
and I dream of distant thunder.
I look at the darkening clouds
but do not dare.
Do not scream.
I do not believe I can call the rain.
I struck this earth once
but I can never strike the same
place again.

I wonder sometimes
what I'll miss
when I'm gone forever
and there's still...this.
Long past the second death
the last time you say my name
will the world still turn?
Will anything be the same?
Running around on earth
people with my blood
in miniscule quantities
long after the flood.
Children's children I'll never know
doing jobs that maybe aren't yet
and all the time I'm dead
all of my doings done. Settings set.
It's hard to picture nothing
we don't have a reference
We ignore it, outright, best we can
pretend it's a preference.
Anasi speaks gently
as he wraps the fly
"The end isn't real.
All endings are a lie.
The story keeps on spinning
long, long after you die."

I heard your voice
turned through digital
lines and distance
into a hollow shadow of itself.
You screamed my name,
almost roared with that
wild lion power you've
never kept secret,
tonight, you'd say, tonight!
We're gonna fix you, man
and then we're gonna
save the world!
We're gonna burn our
faces on the surface
of the moon so big that
we'll be the advertisement
for Earth throughout the cosmos.
You and I, love, cosmic
ambassadors.
And we'll never feel alone
in the universe, my love,
because our faces will be
there together, for always.
Tonight, baby, we're gonna be
forever.

I went to church as a boy.
Learned my saints
and my psalms.
Memorized "and with you."s
and The Hail Mary
(Full of grace, you see.)
Drank the wine
ate the Eucharist.
Spectacles, testicles,
wallet and watch.
I sat at each station
and read my reading.
Said my prayer.
At some point I wondered
if god was even there.

I went to school in my youth.
Carved swearwords in desks
and learned an insane amount of math.
I sat through pep rallies
and detentions.
I read poems and novels
and text books and notes.
Passed to each other in class
(Check yes or no.)
I didn't know the diiference
between *** and love.
I often wondered at the
line of trees I could see
from the window.
What kept me there?
Who held the power?

In my childhood I fought a monster.
He looked like a man
and smelled of a bar.
He seemed a giant
as he loomed over me
(I'm six inches taller now.)
I remember his thick fingers
meaty from blue collar work
pressed against my eyelids.
I remember my head through
the hallway wall.
I still have that uneasy
feeling before bed.
I sometimes wonder
if one of those times
I never got up at all.

Years and miles
time and tide ago
my world was very
different and I wasn't
in control.
Tonight her gentle
breathing fills our room
and the sweet laughter
of our son fills our house
and I 've never been more happy
and I've never been more proud.
(He can count to 30 out loud!)
And I pray to an absent god
that an unknown power
taught me better.
I hope I got back up.
I do sometimes, when it's late
or I've allowed my thoughts
too much free reign, wonder
if maybe one day
my sweet little boy
will have to fight
a monster, too.

I will try to measure my life
in codes for digital downloads
and in the many hundreds
of hours I've spent alone.
I don't know how else to do it.
I don't know how else to make it fit.
We never know it's finished
until it finally is.

One day we don't wake up
and we live in fear until it's over.
Because we don't know the
measure of us.
When my life is over and examined
what underlaying themes
will I find present?
And how do I prevent it?

And what of unfinished business
and loose story threads?
Do they get picked up and continued
in some later person's tale
or are they frayed too much for mending?
Am I too concerned with the ending?

Can I map a life to
Campbell's hero's journey?
Is the living as predictable
as a story circle?
It's certainly not as entertaining.
Do we reach apothosis
without a threshold being crossed?
Are we remembered fondly
or are we eventually lost?

I don't know the answers
but I sure wish I did.
We are thirty years from collapse
and riding a very fine line.
I need to learn not to fear
the fast approaching ending
because we're running long on story
but very short on time.

Tomorrow contains hundreds of thousands of choices.
Options galore.
Tomorrow could be anything.
Tomorrow could always be more.

Yesterday is all regret.
Oh the things we could see, say or do.
The hours spent in effort or whiled away with you.
It is always over.
Nothing is left to lose.

Today is the hardest thing we do.
Today is about making decisions.
Today decides yesterday's regrets.
Today is what builds you.

We are echoes of the
long departed.
Built on the hopes
of our mothers
and from the bones
of our fathers.
If we're careful we'll
never leave a mark.
The tapestry of ancestry
will reflect us present
and unharmful.
The legacy protected
and complete.
But what if inside us
a rebel happens to live?
A troublemaker playing
devil may care with
the precious family name?
If we're brave, perhaps a little bold
we just might leave a stain.
Just might be remembered.
Just might turn out great.
And should we not,
should we fail,
in that we'll have to hope
there will be some grace.

Questions about tomorrow:
What happens when
one day everything is over
and all is at an end
and the next day we
all still have to go to work?
What do we do then?
Will it only really end
when finally money
doesn't spend?
Or will they find another
way to make us slaves?
Will we ever walk into
Plato's light or are we doomed
to stay in Plato's cave?
For what purpose
do we carry this load?
Is this building to something?
Or will it all just explode?

Fears about now:
The planet is in death throes.
We're killing it and
the clock to fix the problem
has wound down.
Journalistic integrity
can't survive the
new News cycle
but it has made it easier
for politicians to
take advantage, to lie
and to somehow become
childish shades of what
they once were.
Violence has become
one solution,
reticence another
and while I agree some
people say ****** things
freedom of speech
is never expanded
when it is taken away.
Kids shouldn't be afraid
of dying in schools.
Every generation leaves
business unfinished.
Every generation marches
us closer to the end.

One day no one will be left to remember any of us. The stars will blink out and entropy will advance. Intellectually, this isn't difficult to know, but practically it's barely worth considering. Tomorrow is still coming and we will need enough sleep to make it to the other side. We can worry about the rest at another time.


My mother dreamed me
the president of the USA,
my father was whip smart
always knew what to say.
My grandfather came here
for the promise of tomorrow.
His mother bought passage
beg, steal and borrow.
I look at my son
and am broken hearted.
We are just echoes
of the long departed.

I ache and mewl and burn to life
under a sky the color of the sea.
Slow and sluggish I push through
the world.
From street to street
Lettered, numbered and named
and I'm ten years old again.
We ride our bikes all the way
to Coney and laugh first, then conspire.
We talk about the small things
that occupy lifetimes at a mere decade.
The world is on fire
red and blue pills and choices.
The sky is burnt from the smoke
a dull orange color.
I am seventeen.
We are strong in this new city.
Bold and young and alive.
We smoke until the filters feel
hot against our lips and joke
and we talk about the girls.
If only they knew the secrets.
If only.
And with speed we tear through
another city, another lifetime.
The sky purpling like a new bruise.
I'm 26 and downhill,
though we don't know it yet.
The street lights hold us in place.
We plan our plans across digital
airwaves and we smile small smiles
as we talk about the women.
What is too personal? What is too much?
Love is an unbroken chain of
icecream stains.
The time just soars now.
I'm a father. A husband. I'm not really me anymore, but then you aren't either.
It's been how long since we spoke?
The sky seems either blue or gray.
We're happy but we don't talk.
I send you a picture of my little man
and get a thumbs up in return.

And I remember bike rides and comic books.
I recall laughter and a world vivid beyond explanation.
I...
I remember when...

We cut up this country
in miles per gallon,
punctuated with roadside
attractions and the yellow-green
median strips on highways
painted across purpling
distant mountains and
the ever absent affection
of young parents trying
to put thousands of miles
between the fight and
who was right.
Finally we got stuck,
like an axe in a stubborn tree.
We stopped moving
we grew a fixed address
and a waiting tragic
second act to sit in.
There is nowhere and there
is there and there is
right ******* this second
but we're always here,
just right ******* here,
and broken hearts won't
solve it and tears won't
stop it and nothing can
save us from the darkness
over that horizon
no point in begging
we just gotta live it.
It's funny how many places
have a Cambridge
how many streets are main.
It's ******* darkly
hilarious how often
you'll find a mean drunk
******* and cowering
scared kids.
Have a look in any
old mountain town and
you'll find us there.
Sing a song, Guthrie,
make it mean something.
Teach me the magic you found
in the bottoms of bottles
in the ends of needles
in the warmth of strange beds
and under night skies.
I want to learn to forget
because the limping
is giving me away.
I want to learn to forget
because all this remembering
is ******* killing me.
I'm full up on ghosts
and haunted by old hopes.
Oh, I learned the swear words
and prayers and the little
hours of quiet terror.
Love comes in so many
forms, no one warns you.
We notice all the little details
like a television detective
who only notices the
signs of his ordinary tragedy
in other people's kids.
What a gift we've been given.
At night we put out the
lights and close the doors
and we close the bottles
and whistle from the porch
into deep dark night
for the dog and for
the mystery and we
brush the day from
our teeth and our faces
We lay in the dark
facing the bare wall
and we remember everything.
I miss feeling youth
in my bones and blood
but I never want to go
back to being young.
I'll always love you,
you *******.

There is guarantee of neither
wisdom or age,
and to have either there's
a price must be paid.

Feelings are the ocean,
you may surrender or fight,
but they'll wash over you
regardless of might.

Speak softly,
the replacements are on the way.
They'll have our voices
and rob us our say.

One day we'll be Romans.
They'll trod the roads that we pave.
They will discover our ruins
and puzzle in the silence of our grave.

We're not eternal or immortal.
Perhaps we're a coded line of text?
Incomplete and unfinished
without the line that comes next.

I am overkill given voice and form.
Rubble as shelter against a storm.
A band saw used to slice morning toast.
Never the center, always a coast.
I am extreme opinion.
Crowned king with absent dominion.

I am extreme measures taken
with little reward.
Hours of banging for only one sword.
Hand squeezing oranges
for a single glass of juice.
I am always on but of little use.

You are magic and truth.
Honest and sincere proof.
You're a hiding place from thunder.
Something built that none can sunder.
A true shelter from storm.
Wonder given voice and form.

In some distant place,
some barren field,
We will meet once more.
You will be pleased,
We will smile and laugh.
I won't be such a ******* chore.

We are waiting on lightning,
so I might make glass.
We are wandering in search of hope
but find I am unequal to the task.

I think I'll just stay here and burn awhile,
thinking about the match and the gas.
Remembering the smile on your perfect ******* face.
Yeah, I think I'll just burn here awhile more.
I got no place else to be. No one to love and nothing to see.
Waste your potential at my side a bit.
Get warm, love.
Settle in.
Feed the fire with you hopes and dreams,
fresh kindling as mine has begun to badly deplete.
Thank you for all you do to keep me going.
I love you more'n I know how to say.
But there ain't enough left of me now to save.
You should head to bed. Let the dreams begin, my love.
Go. Rest up.
You've much to do and tomorrow will bring new trial.
I think I'll just stay here and burn awhile.

He awakens in dirt and sand
and rises, flinching, to suffer.
His days are spent in toil
and his future is destined
to be just as grim and unforgiving
as the landscapes of his moods.
As ****** and callused
as the workman's knuckles
of his hands.

He spends most of his time absent,
his boy growing while he labors.
He wishes it was different
but knows his place.
Some men build pyramids
others just push the stones.
There are worse things to be
than a man pushing the stones,
he wants to believe.

He trys to remember that most
of the time he's happy.
He thinks he is.
Hopes.
It seems like mostly he's frustrated
but really he's just sad.
Tired and sad. Not hopeless,
not exactly,
but aware that there is no hope here.

Lightning crosses like sword blades
on the distant horizon
and he feels empty
when he sees it happen
because all of sudden it
matters that he was alone.
His life has been filled with moments,
experiences that he's always treasured
but now he sees them for true.
They, like his life,
happened to only him.

At night he curls on his stomach
and falls fast and dreamless asleep,
he is always tired.
And although he knows it won't
solve anything
(why would it?)
he finds a small measure of comfort
in the fact that
if we're all fading
into nothing, anyway
at least it's all happening
under the same indifferent stars.

I think maybe
you been on my mind, baby.
Stop.
Letters in the post
missing you the most
texts left on ghost
and every word outta your mouth is fire
and every step is climbing higher
and you and me, which one's a liar?
'Cause we're scant yards from the pyre
and it's overwrought and in under the wire
but my eyes droop and I tire.
Stop.
The last shelter you take in the storm
is the the only spot I'm safe and warm.
I kept buzzing but got lost in the swarm
blended in style, substance and form.
No.
Real now.
I miss you.
When I'm out here on the road tired and alone, I miss you.
You're on my mind.
Not always, but often.
And sure, we've been together a long time
but I don't want anyone else.
I'm miles away and covered in sweat and dust
and my knuckles bleed
and
my skin cracks
and my dream fades American
and I miss you.
I always do.
This much, only, is true.
Stop.

You spin your cardboard doggie book
in slow circles while you scrutinise
The covers, front and back.
You puzzle over it like it was
some ancient relic
whose meaning,
if only you could learn it
might explain it all.
You say
DAWW GE!
Language still so new,
molded like earthenware into
rudimentary shapes.
A small but growing
library of sounds
that you've attached specific,
and not so specific,
meanings to.
I am Ah-da or Da or,
my personal favorite,
Da-ee.
Your mother is Bah.
Hey-o, Bah!
I notice the pale blue lattice
of veins, visible from under your skin,
that descend from your palm
toward the elbow and points beyond.
My god, you are a human,
little for sure,
but whole and complete.
A little person.
Made from a little of the
person I love and,
impossibly,
from a little of me.

I'm remembering...

The chlorine damp of your hair.
I'd never seen you in a bathing suit before.
You saw me and bit half of your bottom lip.
It wasn't sultry, we weren't capable of that.
Not yet.
It was bashful. Age of innocence.
You were shy.
And ******* me for not noticing.
Failure to recognize.

I'm remembering...

Observing the grass stains on the back of my tee shirt.
I had lay down on freshly cut grass to take in the smell and the blue sky.
I wondered if grass could bleed. I hadn't rolled around.
I know grass doesn't bleed. I know.
Not yet.
Age of innocence. Season of ignorance.
******* all this knowing.
It's left me undone.

I'm remembering...

The bottom fell out of my stomach when you smiled at me.
When you laughed. I remember the weird mixture of fear and hope.
Two parts coward, two parts poet.
So many warring hormones. So much lost time.
Not yet.
I recall thinking.
Notice me. Notice me!
******* it! Notice me!
I've been here the whole time.

I'm remembering...
Long walks at night with holes in the bottoms of my sneakers.
The stale taste of cigarettes mixed with crisp night air.
I can hear you breathing, even now, on the other end of that digital tether I had in my left hand.
You were hundreds of miles away and falling asleep to the sound of my voice and I was young and so were you and we were alive!
I'd love you forever, I knew.
But Not yet.
Not yet.
******* we were so alive.
So far from the waiting pit, those days.

One day I'll look back on now and remember...

But not now.
I am undone with knowing.
With failure to recognize.
Age of ignorance.
Soon, the pit. Sooner every precious day.
Not yet.
******* it all, it'll come. And I'll be here.
I've been here the whole time.

Looking back on failures
in life and love, measured
in observed movie trailers,
push some away, others treasured.

We were distant stars in inky night
pulling apart even as we embraced.
We were not the type to hold on tight.
Our travel sacks worn and shoes laced.

We'd trace a path toward finished
and sing our songs about oblivion.
And of course our feelings would diminish
We didn't know the towns we were livin' in.

And so it goes with old flames
you'll always be a part of the story
always something sacred in our names
a faded american flag kinda glory.

We were part-time lovers
in full-time pain.
We were like old song covers
we just didn't sound the same.

I remember, still, how
you smiled with blood
between your teeth
and the tangle of thrown
hands and kicked feet
in our search for Eliot's
elusive muttering retreats.
Neon bulbs and street lamps
lit up our nights and colored
these aching moments of our lives
and I recall we'd huddle
like insects under their lights
with lit cigarettes and lewd jokes
and the looming spectre of fights.
Children playing at being men
with so many tomorrows
still left ahead.
We knew each other
like story stucture.
Should the fire burn one
in would step his brother.
Alone but for each other
bonded with no shared
blood or father or mother.
Two of a kind
against a world
of full houses.
'Course that was then.
Before kids and spouses.
You're a country away
these days,
sharing facebook updates
about your son's latest
words and moods.
We send Christmas cards,
pictures of our families,
always a room should
the other ever visit,
say hi to the kid
to the wife.
Talk soon.
Good morning
oh? Sorry
Goodnight.
A million, billion years ago,
we tell our sons when
they ask about our
friend on the other
continent, before you,
during a period of strife,
Daddy trusted that guy
with his life.
They smile and we do, too.
Well, I do anyway.
I don't actually know
about you.

Lightyears away sit the
burning embers of the night sky
and I cannot chart the
distance between stars
with factors or maps
but given a tall ship
I will navigate a course
through ink-dark midnight
and light signal fires
in cosmic bodies for
you to find, I will brave
the darkened void
leaving light in my
frieghtened wake
to guide you by.
We spent years
passing in the night
before you refused
to let us pass you by
and two decades later
I return the favor
because a lamp burning
against deep and endless night
only works if, by turn,
we endeavor to keep it alight.
The waters now are calm
and that's a deception of
the deep, luring us into
complacency and rocking
us in time with each heart's
pounding and specific beat.
I'll stay awak at the helm, love.
I'll fight the dark and push off
sleep. I'll keep us afloat.
Water tight and far from
the ever present brink.

I'm so full of nervous energy
but I haven't got air to shout.
I'm scratching at understanding
with no clue what it's all about.
I'm six hours of sleep away from
another triple shift and I've slid
from past to present on the
slideshow of stupid **** I did.
The one that plays in my head
when all I want is anything else instead
the voice that tells me
better off dead
than loosed and unhappy
mean and angry and underfed
I'm so tired of talking to myself
about myself, I know you didn't ask
apologies sent but unrecieved
Still, I'm not undertaking the task
I complain out loud
to an audiance of me about how
I still don't got **** figured out.
I've heard so many answers
but none of 'em make any sense.
If I learn to love myself how
does that repair the fence
That I put up to keep all of them away
so I don't have to deal with
what all of 'em have got to say
I think we've learned talking doesn't work
and if I can't get a few hours sleep
I'll be another day running empty
How do I make me feel better?
What's the cheat code or the trick
to getting over all this *******
I've reached the breakdown
where it all falls apart
and I'm lost again
still not knowing where to start.